As an early adopter, I have always been one of the first to jump aboard new technology and new ideas. I’ve been using PC’s since the most basic units cost more than a used Toyota. I have been a High Definition TV zealot since I first saw it at a Las Vegas broadcaster convention 20 years ago and had one in my living when the only thing on TV in HD was the reel of 20 0r 30 nature videos played over and over on Public TV. I had one of the first devices that was called a Smart Phone so long ago that, when compared to today’s Droids and iPhones was about as smart as a turtle on a fence post. I was introduced to the Web in 1994 and have been involved in Web development since the only Web creation tool was notepad and an FTP program.
Although Social Media is now a mainstream phenomenon, I’ve been participating in the “Social” Web since the days when online communities were nothing but DOS text on a black screen over a 14.4 modem. While the land rush is now on to sign up for MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube and Foursquare profiles, I was among the first to participate in all of them.
So, you’re probably thinking if I’m such an early adopter, why did it take me so long to create my own blog?
I actually have been blogging since 1996. It just wasn’t called that. My monthly email newsletter for my company was called Websight Insight, and every issue had two or three articles on Web marketing best practices. After it was sent to the mailing list, the articles became a part of our Web site. Those have continued all along, and eventually became a part of the WordPress installation for news and articles in a new site we developed a few years ago.
But I still never had my very own blog, at my very own domain name… until now. You’ll find my new blog at triveraguy.com
Still not sure that floods of people will be here to read what I have to say. I have approximately 6,000 followers on Twitter who have clicked through 37,000 times on links I’ve promoted to other people’s blogs. So maybe I can drive some folks to my own stuff. While all of my content between 1997 and 2001 got lost due to several site redesigns and migrations, I’m confident that what is here will be of value to people trying to figure out how digital media fits into their business strategy…matter of fact as I’m going through the archives to add all my content to this blog, I’m thinking much of it is actually pretty darn good if I say so myself. Even the really old stuff.
So do with this thing what people in the Social Media world do…Delicious it, Digg It, Reddit it, StumbleUpon it, Bookmark it, Tweet it, Wave it, Buzz it, Fark it, Fave it, comment on it, snag the RSS feed, but most important, I hope you do with the information what some “fans” have been doing for 14 years: read it and use it help your business.
And let me know what else I can do for you or a topic I can cover.
An amazing wave has swept this great city on a great lake.
Having spent all of my 56 years in Milwaukee, I’ve always been proud when I hear visitors gush about what residents know all too well: The people of Milwaukee are the nicest folks they’ve ever met. So it’s only natural that a platform that is comprised of interaction and communication would flourish in a town like ours.
Social Media…and more specifically, Twitter and now FourSquare have made significant marks on the landscape of Brew City, including:
As we commemorate the first anniversary of a Tweetup that the Tweetup Girls held at the Iron Horse Hotel that seemed to be a pivotal moment, some with whom I talk are convinced that this is unique to Milwaukee. When I go to Tweetups and other Social Media focused events and feel the Twitter-love, the sentimental part of me is prone to believe it. Other less parochial folks insist that, while it’s big here, this same thing is happening in cities all over the country…and the world. And my logic has to admit that this must be the case.
Your thoughts? Is the Social Media love fest we’re enjoying here in Milwaukee real and unique to us?
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Tom Snyder is Founder, President and CEO of Trivera Interactive, a Midwest New Media firm. Tom is a Web guy, wine snob, music junkie, Ex-Milwaukee Radio Guy, HDTV expert, and political wonk.
by Chris Remington
Here are 12 things to think about as you take your interactive marketing to the next level in 2010:
Have a plan – Yes, there are many tentacles to the interactive marketing beast, but with a well-crafted strategic plan it can be tamed. Start small if you must, but the important thing is to have a plan, execute it, and refine it over time.
Analytics are your friend – WebTrends, Omniture or Google Analytics; no matter which one you use (you do have analytics on your site, don’t you?!) take time to mine for the nuggets of information they offer about your site, your customers and how they consume your interactive content. Use this to power your plan (see H above).
Pretend you are your customer – You are too close to your product(s) and your industry. Think like your customer would think. Knowing what they would call your product(s), how they would search for it on a search engine, and where they gather online to converse about it, will help you massage and finesse your web content so it speaks to them in their language.
Performance indicators are key – What are the top two or three goals of your website and interactive marketing strategy? Customer engagement? Brand awareness? eCommerce transactions? Lead generation? Pick your goals, ensure you can monitor and track them, tailor content to achieve them, and track the effectiveness of your actions.
You can do it – While others would argue the fact, interactive marketing is not rocket science. It is still about the 4 P’s from Marketing 101 – product, place, price and promotion. Smart online marketing is no different than smart offline marketing. Research, plan, execute, monitor, refine. Repeat. Know the limitations and aspirations of your internal team as they relate to your interactive marketing efforts. Empower them. Empower yourself. You and your team know your strategy best. Go for it. Hire outside help when (if) needed.
Not doing anything still has a cost – Yes, the website you built and paid for in 2003 still functions, but does it still work? A website with old or static content and a tired look sends a message that you are complacent, not innovative, and don’t care to engage your customers. Can you really afford to NOT spend money on your interactive strategy?
Embrace change – See N above. Research to see if your customers (and your internal team) have an appetite for consuming your web content in video form, on mobile devices or via Social Media. Don’t change for change sake, but if your customers and industry are ‘going there’ you should too. With a plan, of course (see H above).
Web-enable content – See E above. Your website can likely streamline workflows and improve customer service with only minor enhancements. Would product installation videos on your site reduce customer service calls? Would a password protected media room enable your customers, dealers or distributors to download their own sell sheets, logos or ad templates? If so, web-enable this content and free up your marketing support team to pursue more important projects.
YouTube? Twitter? Facebook? – Social Media is all the rage. Make sure you are ready to embrace it. If a goal of your Social Media presence is to drive traffic to your website, ensure the site is rock-solid first. If the answers are yes when you ask yourself if your website content is compelling, if it is up-to-date, if it is user-friendly, and if there is no doubt about the site’s call(s) to action, they you are ready to develop a Social Media strategy. Think of your website as the bull’s-eye of a target – only when the bull’s-eye is rock-solid should you venture to the next ring of Social Media.
Engage your audience – Your customers are talking about you online. How good of a job does your site do to encourage and facilitate that conversation? Do you know where else these conversations are occurring online? If not, learn. If so, what value are you bringing? Recognize and thank those who talk positively about you. Reach out to the naysayers and turn their lemons into lemonade. You will be viewed as someone who cares and ‘gets’ the new transparent world where your customers, not you, are in control of your brand.
Authority, Relevance, Popularity – These are three things that search engines consider when ranking your site. Look at your website content and interactive strategy through these lenses and if what you are doing shows search engines (and the consumers who use them) that you are an authority, your content is on the mark and others find it useful, you are on your way to better rankings and more traffic. If your interactive marketing efforts aren’t enhancing your authority, relevant, or positioning you as a popular player in your space, don’t do them.
ROI – The great thing about interactive marketing is it is quantifiable and measureable. Return on investment is easy to analyze. Assign action items to your interactive marketing strategy like obtaining more leads, increasing eCommerce transactions or reducing customer service calls. Measure, adjust and measure again. Repeat. The important thing is to have a plan, make the investment (see N above) and monitor the effectiveness.
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Chris Remington is an account executive for Trivera Interactive. Trivera specializes on Online Brand Management for companies and organization that understand and appreciate the power of the Internet and Social Media to re-inforce their brand. In addition to helping Trivera clients, Chris also speaks at local business events, and teaches at the University of Phoenix.
It’s been said “Don’t look back, unless that’s where you’re headed.” But I hope you’ll accept my apology as we take a look at the adventure that was 2009 one last time before we launch into an exciting new year.
One year ago, my wife/business partner predicted that something big was going to happen this year. We had no idea at the time, but she was definitely right.
A big story of the year was the economy. As budgets were cut and some companies even went out of business, Trivera committed to keeping our staff intact, a move that enabled us to superserve existing clients, but also helped us gain the confidence of a large list of new ones. New to our staff this year was a great addition: account manager Chris Remington, who has also added “Trivera blogger” to his duties with a great end of year contribution.
Major new Web projects for existing clients Mitchell Airport, Usinger’s, Halquist Stone, Zach Builders and Nuemann Development worked their way through our pipeline this year. We also worked with long time partner ClearVerve Marketing to implement a re-design of their site. Frank Mayer and Associates, Mustela USA and ATL continued aggressive Search Engine Optimization programs with us.
But new clients represented the lion’s share of our traditional Web business in 2009. Among the clients who were able to experience the joy of working with Trivera for the first time: Frabill Manufacturing, Strattec Security, Sellars, Vaportek, US Peacekeeper Products, Renewable Energy Solutions, Chemrite Copac, Breckenridge Landscape, SoHoBizTube, Amici’s Restaurant, JailHouse Restaurant, Deductive Energy, Studio 5-D, Western Racket and Fitness, Fresh Coast Partners, and South Shore Dentists.
We also began a great partnership with Chicago agency TargetCom, which resulted in projects for US Cellular and Kellogg School of Management.
But the huge story of the year was the emergence of Social Media as a powerful tool in brand strategies. Our Social Media University – Milwaukee event in July drew nearly 400 people to the Italian Community Center for a day of hands-on learning. As a result of that event, Trivera has helped dozens of businesses create their Social Media program, and several of them have contracted us for more significant ongoing SM implementation. Those include Mitchell Airport and two major political campaigns. The event, our ongoing work and a dozen speaking engagements by Trivera staffers has launched Trivera into the media spotlight as an authority on Web 2.0. And the power of Social Media manifested itself in a big way by creating dozens of new collaborative partnerships with other businesses in our space.
As you can see, 2009 has been a year worth looking back at. But as we wrap up a solid year, we look forward in anticipation to an even better 2010. Our move back to a historic building in Menomonee Falls will give us an infusion of great creative energy. A large project with a national brand through our partnership with TargetCom is slated to begin in first quarter. Several other big projects with companies whose names you’ll recognize should fall in line in January. And we we begin our first major collaborative relationship with Hartman Design, a neighbor in our new space, in serving new client Regalware.
And we’re planning on an even bigger and better sequel to Social Media University – Milwaukee in March.
So with seatbelts and tray tables in their upright and locked positions, we’re ready for takeoff. We hope you’ll grab a seat with us as we wish both you and ourselves a shamelessly successful New year!
Milwaukee high-end residential home builder Zach Building Company has launched a newly designed Web site. This week’s launch of the re-designed site coincides with the 10th anniversary of the relationship between Zach and Trivera Interactive, one of Milwaukee’s oldest and most respected Web development firms.
The new site uses a wider design to take strategic advantage of the higher desktop resolutions of today’s monitors by allowing more content to appear “above the fold.” To add a bit of visual impact, Trivera’s design team embedded an animation on the home page that displays a montage of some of Zach’s signature home construction examples. A new navigational scheme allows visitors to navigate the site easily and intuitively. That combination of best practice usability guidelines, and the embedding of the montage as a Flash element instead of creating the entire site in Flash, strategically preserves the site’s high placement in the search engines.
Affiliates, lots and models are given new attention. The site offers prospective customers and home shoppers the ability to view floorplans, learn about the quality features that go into every Zach-built home, view photos and take virtual tours of several of their homes. Also featured on the site is the new book, “Building A Quality Custom Home” written by company owners Mat and Bill Zach.
The Zach Building Company is a family owned custom and high end Milwaukee area home builder that has provided quality home building services to customers in the Milwaukee area since 1947. Zach specializes in new home construction in Milwaukee, Waukesha, Washington, Racine, Kenosha and Walworth Counties.
Since 1996, Trivera Interactive has been helping businesses solve challenges and build stronger relationships with best practice and state of the art web design, e-commerce, email marketing and Search Engine optimization.
Since day one, our mission at Trivera has always been to help our client companies become more successful by using Internet technology to improve their brand relationships. And while Twitter is being lauded in many circles as the second coming of the Web, for us, and our clients, it’s simply another tool that will either enhance or erode our brands. The first step for most of them is to have individuals within their organizations get acquainted with Twitter itself, and we’re finding them quickly getting overwhelmed. So today, I want to begin a discussion about a couple tools that we’re using and recommending to help keep Twitter in its proper place.
Millions of conversations are happening at any moment on Twitter. The primary challenge is to figure out which of those conversations are going to be relevant and useful to you and your company. Your corporate strategy will determine who you’ll follow and why, who you’ll want to have follow you and why. It will dictate the types of conversations you’ll want to monitor. And finally, it will help you decide which conversations to simply mine data from, which ones you’ll actively participate in, and what your Twitter “personality” will be when you do (a topic for a future blog).
When you only have a few followers, Twitter itself can manage the tweets. And Twitter’s search function can allow the casual user to feed their curiosity as to what’s going on. However, you’ll soon find that your numbers of followers and relevant tweets will begin to grow. And because of the sheer immensity of data, managing the streams of tweets that result will be a task that could take over your life.
Tweetdeck has become the most important tool in my toolbox to keep that from happening. Running as a desktop application on the Adobe Air platform, Tweetdeck gives you up to ten columns to organize your tweets. So instead of having the firehose experience Twitter.com provides, you can manage tweets into drinkable streams.
Tweetdeck’s “Add to Group” function allows you to determine who goes into one of your columns. Even though you may have hundreds or thousands of followers, there are only a handful that will provide the meaningful dialogue and relationships that will be at the core of your daily routine. My Tweetdeck is set up so that column one is my “Real Follows”consisting of about 30 people that I regularly monitor and engage. Adding a follower to that group is simple. And if I want to remove someone from that group, that allows me to perform an “unfollow” that still allows someone to be a follow, without having to see every single thing they post.
I have a “Replies” and “Direct Messages” column set up so that I can easily see those conversations. And I also keep a column for all friends so that if I want to take the time to jump into the current torrent of tweets, it’s always there… but I keep it all the way over to the right so I have to scroll to get to it.
I also have two columns to subgroup other “friends.” One is a group for several industry leaders I follow. Their tweets usually contain great tips, personal insight, industry inside info, and articles. The second group is my news group, where I follow general local, regional and national news sources. I have been able to turn off all my email news alerts, so they no longer clutter my email inbox.
I also use the search feature to create columns of tweets pertinent to specific subject outside of that provided by my “friends.” These allow me to find great information about topics of interest, and, because it searches all the Tweets, it helps me find new “follows.” I have a column set up to display all the Tweets with the word Milwaukee, but you can use whatever term (or terms) you want to monitor… industry or geographically specific.
With your remaining columns, you have other options. You can display TwitScoop to show the words that are ebbing and flowing in the Twitterverse consciousness. You can display “Favorites,” where a tweet you want to view later can be stored before it drops off the bottom. And, if you’re like me, you’ll keep one column available for an on-demand search for the people, terms and concepts that will come up from time to time.
You can set the number of tweets you want to display in your columns, and filter the column to display only those in that column that meet search criteria. You can mark any tweet as read, and clear those to keep them from cluttering the column. And when a username is displayed in a tweet, clicking it displays their profile, allows you to follow or unfollow and immediately modify what group they should be in.
There are tons of other features in Tweetdeck that will help organize your Twitter experience, and help you maintain your sanity. You’ll learn them as you become more familiar with (and thankful for) the tool. One shortcoming is the memory it uses, especially when your followers number in the tens of thousands. But that’s a bridge you can cross when you come to it.
Before you jump in and actually begin to tweet yourself…especially if you’re representing your company’s brand…you’ll want to take a little time to “lurk,” and get a feel for how things work. And my next blog will talk about how important it is to define your Twitter “personality” before that first tweet. Another future blog will feature another amazing tool that will allow you be a part of the ongoing conversations all day long, even if you only have time to jump in once or twice a day.
And if you’re following me on Twitter, or are subscribed to my RSS feed, you’ll be the first to hear when those blogs are published.
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Tom Snyder is Founder, President and CEO of Trivera Interactive, a Midwest New Media firm. Tom is a Web guy, wine snob, music junkie, Ex-Milwaukee Radio Guy, HDTV expert, and political wonk. |
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