This blog post is meant to be more of an affirmation to an already occurring trend than a persuasion of any kind. The reason being is there shouldn’t need to be any coaxing to get businesses to leverage technology at this point, from internal software that can increase efficiency to social media marketing to help build brand recognition and customer loyalty, properly utilized technology is a necessary component of many successful companies.

Brave River Solutions has hashed out a few ways technology is being utilized by businesses.

Advancement in technology

Technology has really evolved over the last 10 years in ways that are allowing businesses to conduct activities in new ways not previously available. With new technology assets such as smart phones, applications, and tablets, businesses  have new channels to reach customers, and new devices to helping their business run faster, smoother and more efficiently.

 

Access to the Internet

Related to the above, with a huge percentage of the words cell phone users having smart phones, how people are accessing the internet has changed drastically. A comScore report found that nearly 1/3 of all internet access today is through mobile phones. Tablets are also quickly becoming the consumer’s product of choice and internet access is a crucial functionality point of all tablets.

Social Media

Social Media has taken the consumer and business worlds by storm. With close to 1 BILLION users Facebook is the place to be, and not just for people. Businesses are realizing that by having a presence on Facebook is an easy and efficient way to interact with existing and potential new customers, enhance brand recognition, and build brand loyalty.

 

At the beginning of each New Year, many of us embark on a self-assessment, self-improvement plan that promises to be the year of change.  It’s our way of being able to start fresh, lose those extra pounds, start an exercise program,  get that second chance; the “do-over.”

So what about your Company’s New Year’s Resolution List?  It’s the start of a new year, with sales targets and strategic and tactical plans in place and new products and ideas waiting to be implemented.  More than one of the items on the list will include some kind of change in the organization and current business process.   How will you manage that change?  How can you ensure that everyone in the organization is on board with the Resolution List targeted for the coming year? 

Well, it’s time to check on your organization’s change management plan.  Implementing change within a company can be threatening to some employees and can be unsettling for employees at all levels of an organization.  However, a well outlined change management plan can provide a solid foundation for successful organizational change.  

Here are some quick tips:

• Communicate the vision – don’t assume that everyone understands the vision; as a leader and coach it is your responsibility to ensure that the team understands the game rules and plan.

• Involvement – beginning with the leaders, change should be embraced.  Create a sense of ownership and responsibility in making the change happen through the employees within the company; everyone wants to feel that they are part of a winning team
• Setting Priorities – set realistic goals and milestones; clear, concise and honest goals are better received and attainable.  Keep in mind that a series of smaller wins is important in gaining confidence within the troops.
• Provide Feedback – provide frequent feedback on progress and status which will help build confidence and yield greater positive results.  Employees want to feel that their contribution and efforts are producing good results.

We all know that creating the New Year’s Resolution List with plans and goals is only the first step.  Change happens when we are consistently willing and open to accept the change, act on the change and incorporate the change into our daily lives.

Best Wishes and happy New Year!

Are you planning to buy or develop a new eCommerce website or other type of online product catalog? If so, there are a number of factors you should plan for…

1) Identify the specific benefits (in business terms) that you hope to get from the new site. If you are a B-2-B company, this should include a list of things available to all site visitors, and those that would only be for logged in customers. This high-level goal setting should drive the features and functions we hit in the next two bullets.

2) Identify the features that you want to make sure are part of the new site? If you have an existing site, document the specific things that you want to change. Look at other sites and decide what features they have, that would work in your business (look at major retailer sites, competitors, other industries, etc…). If you are replacing an existing site/application: Is there any functionality that you do want to carry forward to the new site?  (i.e. if it isn’t broken let’s not fix it!)

3) Is integration with other business systems part of the plan (ERP data such as inventory availability, pricing, payment processing, accounting, CRM, etc…)? If so, this may impact where you host the new site/application, the technology platform, or other things that should be considered during the initial design.

4) Do you have the content you need for an online product catalog / ecommerce site? Very often the product descriptions in your internal ERP or ordering systems are not descriptive enough for public consumption. You should begin to gather/develop the content to load into the product catalog (which typically includes individual product photos with the item number or SKU as the file name).

5) You should also evaluate your business processes: When you implement a new online tool for your customers to place orders, make payments, or conduct similar online functions, your internal business processes will most likely be affected. You should map out your existing processes, and work with your eCommerce / application developers to understand how the new site will fit into your processes (and how the processes may need to change to accommodate the new system). This type of exercise will identify needs and potential changes in staffing, technology, information flow, and audit trails.

6) How will you market/promote the new site? The internet is no long a “build it and they will come” kind of environment.  A complete ecommerce solution must include a plan for marketing the site. While you may not utilize every medium, you should consider “traditional marketing”, email, Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Search engine Marketing (Pay Per click campaigns), and Social Media.

This up-front planning will help you to understand all of the pieces to the project, and ultimately ensure that you get the most out of your ecommerce investment.

More and more companies engaged in ERP Selection Searches; entertain SaaS Cloud model in addition to the traditional on premise hosting model. There is one ERP company that is solely SaaS model; while several others are now offering both.

Below is an outline of the advantages of both Saas/Cloud and “On Premise” solutions:

SaaS / Cloud Advantages

• Reduced IT staff requirements
• Reduced 1st year cost
• All Hardware / Software upgrades managed by service
• All System maintenance managed by service
• High Availability / Disaster recovery included
• Typically Browser based
• Reduced hardware setup time

On Premise Solution

• Typically better pricing over 5 years; much better over 10 years
• Less concerns of confidential information
• More controls of environment
• Single location not reliant on Internet access
• Possible system speed advantages
• Better phone integration’s (TAPI)
• More options of High Availability / Disaster recovery

So, you have a Microsoft SQL Server deployed on a 32 bit server architecture and it is getting heavy traffic. It looks like it may be time to migrate your SQL server to a 64 bit architecture so you can take advantage of more memory to give your solution more speed. This is not your only option though.

Through the use of Physical Addressing Extensions (PAE) and Address Windowing Extensions (AWE) you can breathe new life into your Microsoft SQL Server. By using PAE you can expand the available memory from 4 gb maximum on the standard 32 bit operating system to up to 32 gb, depending on the server version you are using. Once that has been configured, you can then set up PAE in Microsoft SQL Server to take advantage of the memory you added.

 

Although this is not as efficient as a new 64 bit SQL server, it is a very cost effective way of scaling up your data server to meet the demands of your business.

Everyone loves a good deal, and in many cases that “20% off” or “buy one , get one free” can be the deciding factor in whether or not we go to this restaurant or buy those shoes, but how can a business provide deals and engage customers on the move? Check-in Deals from Facebook is the answer.

Want to know how to use Check-in Deals? Keep Reading.

To describe Check-in Deals there is no better explanation that Facebook’s,

“Deals gives businesses the opportunity to reward customers when they check in on Facebook, and this helps generate awareness, encourage in-store traffic and build customer loyalty. Deals connect businesses with people and help them become an even larger part of their customers’ conversations. And right now, deals are free for businesses to create.”

How to Check In:
Check-In Deals are exclusively a function of Facebook for mobile/smartphones, so any Android, iPhone or Blackberry user can check in using Facebook for mobile.

There are 4 types of Check-in Deals available and each of them differ in requirements to unlock the deal.

Individual Deal
Simply put this deal just requires a person check in when at the location to unlock the deal, this type deal is well suited for simple promotions such as “free gift with purchase.”

Friend Deal
The Friend Deal is great for restaurants or other business that are oriented around getting multiple customers coming in together. A customer needs to check in at the location and tag there friends with them to unlock the deal. This works by setting up a minimum required guest number for the deal such as “check in with at least 2 friends to receive a free appetizer” if the user doesn’t tag at least 2 friends with them when they check in the deal won’t become available.

Loyalty Deal
This deal rewards customers who visit the same business more than once, the Loyalty Deal can be setup to be unlocked when a customer checks multiple times, it can be set for as little as 2 check- ins or as many as 10. This deal is great for retaining existing customers.

Charity Deal
Charity Deals are a great way to get customers into a business and give something back to a worthy cause at the same time. Like the Individual Deal, a customer just needs to check in in order to unlock the deal and prompt the thank you message.

You can view the official Check-In Deals here: http://ads.ak.facebook.com/ads/FacebookAds/Deals_businesses_US.pdf

Need help figuring out how your business can utlize social media? Let us know here: http://www.braveriver.com/Contact/

There are tens of thousands of blog posts about the rules and best practices of social media marketing  that it can be way past daunting to get your mind around what to do and who to listen to.

This post it’s self will be adding to the overwhelming amount of available information but it’s important to understand there are some fundamental aspects to social media marketing that won’t change.

1. Advertising is advertising.
   Whether it is a billboard, television commercial, radio spot or a Facebook ad, advertising is advertising. We still need to grab attention, entice, persuade and convert. These have been the basis of advertising since its inception and will never go out of fashion. If you are marketing your company via social networks, you still need to follow suit with advertising basics.

 

1. Social media is not a lawless land.
   It’s ok to be less formal when marketing via social media but there are still rules and regulations that need to be followed. All social networks have terms & conditions about what can be done on their platforms, READ THEM because there are many companies that haven’t and have lost their social media presence for violating the TOC’s. It’s a simple tasks that can make a world of difference.

 

 

1. We are all still learning, even the pros.
   Social media is so new and still evolving as such a fast rate that it’s impossible for anyone to understand everything about it, including the specialists.  Even though Social Media Specialists are constantly learning more and more about social media they should definitely have a background in marketing, advertising and branding as well as an above average understanding of social media platforms, how they work and how people use them. So if you need help with your social media, don’t be afraid to reach out to a specialist, but ask them questions, find out there background and remember social media is in a constant state of change.

 

So take social media for the awesome marketing channel that it is, remember the advertising basics and always be asking questions. Do these small things all you will be alright.

What is Panda?

By now, just about everyone with a website has probably heard of Google’s Panda Update. And whether you breathed a sigh of relief that your traffic and rankings weren’t impacted or you’re one of the many who’ve been busy trying to recover from the hit, you’re likely thinking that the storm is over.

However, with last month’s latest change to the Google algorithm being dubbed “Panda 2.3,” it’s evident that Google will continue their campaign to rid the search results of what they consider to be low-quality sites. While you may find it beneficial to hire a professional web content writer, at the end of this we’ll post cover a few things you can do to ensure that your site doesn’t become a Panda casualty.

But first, let’s cover the basics…

Panda is the name given to the major change to Google’s ranking algorithm (the formula by which Google determines which sites to include – and in which order – in its search results) that occurred in the US on February 23. While Google makes adjustments to its algorithm on a near daily basis, most are too slight for users to notice. The Panda update, however, significantly affected nearly 12% of all US search queries. (Panda was first released only on the US site, Google.com, but has now been activated on international Google sites, such as google.co.uk, google.fr, google.de, etc.)

Named for a developer who was instrumental in the update’s development, Panda was released to reduce the number of low-quality, shallow, or “spam-like” sites in the top search results. Basically, any site that is poorly written, contains content that was duplicated from other webpages, or has low levels of original content was penalized by the new algorithm. While most of the impacted sites were ones that the average human reader would indeed deem low-quality, there was inarguably some “collateral damage” as well. Many eCommerce sites took a hit – especially those that used the manufacturer’s description for their products – as did some popular sites with articles or blog posts that were repeatedly re-blogged, re-tweeted, or syndicated by article sites with no additional content (known as “content farms”).

Now that Google has gone live with its fifth iteration of Panda, it’s crucial to make sure your website’s content will pass the “quality test.”

How to Fix the Three Most Common Issues with Web Content

• Inaccurate or untrustworthy information

If you’re providing a statistic or fact on your website, you need to be sure that it’s accurate. Where did you get the information from? Only trust other online sources that are widely respected. The New York Times is likely to provide accurate information. Joe Schmo’s blog, on the other hand, is far less credible. Giving credit to your source can help put Google’s quality filters at ease; if possible, you should always link to the source. If it’s the result of new research or a study your company conducted, be sure to detail it.

And while it seems obvious, I’d be remiss if I didn’t offer one last bit of advice: Do a quick search on your “fact” – if any highly regarded research sites disagree, you may have a problem.

• Duplicate Content 

Panda was developed with the purpose of rewarding sites with unique content, so this is the issue most likely to get you into trouble. Do any pages of your site contain content that you (or someone else) has posted elsewhere on the web? If someone took your original content, you don’t have to sweat it too much. The algorithm should be able to identify which site is the original source and rank accordingly; but if you’re reposting something from another site, it’s pretty much a guaranteed penalty.

Unfortunately, duplicate content is something that’s frequently overlooked by companies who use a number of online marketing channels. It’s easy to use content from your website as your Facebook or LinkedIn description or to post an online press release to your site and PR Web, but you must resist the temptation to copy-and-paste. If you can’t think of something new to say about your company, you’re not working hard enough. And while a great blog post should certainly get promoted on your main website as well as your company’s Facebook, Twitter, RSS feeds, Google+, LinkedIn, Tumblr, etc., you simply cannot re-post it without making significant changes.

A quick fix for self-duplicated content is to simply write a unique 2-3 sentence summary (or shorter if the medium demands it!) of the post or article for each media channel. Then simply post the summary and link back to the original blog post or news item. This also has the added bonus of passing along valuable “link juice” to your original post.

Bonus tip: If your eCommerce site sells products that are also available on other sites, write your own product descriptions! Do not use manufacturers’ descriptions as they are probably already on the web.

• Sloppy Writing or Incorrect Grammar 

Among sites targeted by Panda were those whose content had the appearance of being poorly translated or put through an automatic article spinner. It’s important to remember that the only way for the algorithm is to determine this is by judging the text of the page. Basic grammar mistakes, subject-verb disagreement, incorrect pronouns, etc. can all give web copy the appearance of being spun.

This one has an obvious solution; don’t post anything until it’s been proof-read at least once by someone other than the original author. The algorithm doesn’t expect you to be a Pulitzer Prize winner, but if a website reads like it was written in 10 minutes or less, why would anyone want to read it?

UPDATE: (11/01/2011) It seems like Panda’s been busy since we originally posted this entry. Reports confirm that another Panda “enhancement” was made around mid-October.

We live in a world filled with competition, and branding is one necessary way for your business to stay top of mind with customers.  I would hope that no company would send out a direct mail piece without their logo and slogan or spend thousands of dollars on a radio advertisement and not mention their name and tagline so I’m surprised many companies are still not fully branding their social media.

First things first, if you aren’t currently utilizing social media for your business, you are missing out on a unprecedented marketing opportunity.  If you are utilizing social media marketing, kudos to you but are you making the most out of every message you convey to your audience? Every Facebook post, Twitter-tweet and LinkedIn message is a branding opportunity for your business and can make the difference between someone remembering that great message they just saw online and that great messgae they saw online and who it came from…You!

Use your logo
Humans are wired to recognize symbols, when we see a red cross most of us would think of hospital, because of stop lights many people associate the color green with “go” yellow with “caution” and red with “stop.”  A logo is the graphic representation of a business and can tell us who the business is without having to see the name. Your business should make sure to have your logo as your page’s profile picture or account icon because every time a post, tweet or other message is sent out, having your logo present will help people associate the massages they are receiving and who is sending it.

Name dropping
Logic would suggest the more times a person hears a word the better that word will be saturated into their memory. Keeping this logic in mind, posts, tweets and messages are a great opportunity to saturate people’s minds your company name. The company I work for, Brave River Solutions will regularly send out tweets such as “Did you know the average redesign time for a website is between every 13 to 24 months? This has been another tech-tip from Brave River Solutions.”  This tweet not only gives a valuable piece of information but by mentioning “Brave River Solutions” again, people will have a greater chance of remembering where they got that information.

How branding affects Search Engine Optimization
Search engines are all about keywords, your website has special keywords that help identify to search engines what your company is all about.  Brave River Solutions is a “business technology solutions” company and our website is filled with keywords based on the services we offer such as “website design”, “IT services” and “social media marketing.”  Most of Brave River’s posts and tweets are based around what we do and by default have many of the same keywords in the message. By injecting our company name alongside those keywords in our posts and tweets we are helping search engines associate our brand name with those keywords and will help with search engines ranking when someone is to search terms like “website design” or “technology solutions.”

Branding through social media is simple, easy and can have a profound effect in multiple regards. Harness the power of social media and your business will benefit.

People are spending more time online than ever before and businesses recognize this. This is why internet advertising is one of the largest portions of many companies overall marketing budget.  The issue is we have become conditioned to all the advertisements presented to us online and our brain does a great job of filtering most of these ads out of our “conscious sight.”  Some companies understand this advertising hurdle and have begun to rethink online advertising all together, but what’s next?

Online advertising has been shifting from a platform centric model to an audience centric model, what this means is many companies are no longer putting ads on a website simply because it has a high traffic rate. Companies are researching what websites their target audience is spending the most time on, and then are advertising on those sites because they are reaching more of the “right people.”  Being audience centric in your advertising efforts is important, but it’s still just half the battle, how can companies make the most of their ads to ensure user engagement?  Read on…

An image, snappy headline and call to action are the three traditional aspects to any online advertisement, the picture is meant to grab attention, the headline is meant to interest and the call to action is meant to channel users, but this static form of advertising is no longer as effective and offers no real incentive for the user engagement.  Interactive advertising is a new concept that allows a user to do more with an advertisement than just click it. Companies can now present videos, polls, questions, social media sharing, slide shows, animation through online ads without the user having to leave the website their on.

Example:
Image on the right side of this webpage there are a few advertisements like you would see on many other sites; one of the ads is for an upcoming movie but instead of just being an image and a headline such as “Don’t miss the movie of the year, click here to see the trailer” it’s the actual movie trailer you can watch right within the ad. After the trailer is done playing you are given the option to enter your zip code and it would show you upcoming show times at nearby theaters and you could even have the times sent to your mobile phone, again all within the advertisement itself. This may seem too good to be true from both an advertiser and user stand point but this technology is already being utilized by businesses and is catapulting advertising effectiveness through the roof.

Interactive advertising may be new but it’s making a big impact so far even in its youth. It may be time to think how your company can leverage this new technology to promote your brand in a new and exciting way. Take your online advertising and make it dynamic, your audience and sales team will both thank you.