The thought is that as web designers and developers and even SEO professionals we are judged by end product.   But the web being what it is and clients being the ones writing the check, we come across a quandary.   For companies who provide services in terms of the web how do you frame what challenges you had versus where you end up?  In honest terms I don’t think it’s every a good idea to trash a client’s budget and design being subjective in many ways, too much explaining can leave a sour taste in potential buyers mouths.  Along the lines of “the lady doth protest too much.”

I think at some point you have to be judged by what you produce.  You have to own up and say, I did this.  That being said, there are questions/concepts that potential clients need to take into account when looking at portfolios in this space.

• What was the budget?  And how far did that budget go?  You never get the exact amount you want and sometimes you even have to scale back services based on what the client has to spend.
• Who was the audience?  It should be obvious but sometimes the areas that are brought out and shown are aimed at specific audiences.  I know that sometimes when you are dealing with a primary educated audience in terms of a business niche it can to the untrained eye be confusing.
• How long has it been?  Even though we try to make designs timeless, trends gently and sometimes violently fade away.  Sometimes sites even get redesigned.  Every company wants to be with their clients time after time during redesigns but in real life that doesn’t always happen.
• Clients are paying the bill.  Which means we are actually consultants.  We can recommends, strongly disagree, advise against, work towards a compromise but they are paying and if ultimately what they want, they get.   You might not see it in a portfolio but it is what it is.
• Design is subjective.  While code can usually be judged based on quantifiable qualities, design, know matter how you slice it, is judged by each person differently.  You may hate that color, that font, that style but that was reviewed by client, company and designer and made the cut for some reason.
• What were the results?  Did all the elements come together to get what the client wanted.  It may not appear that way at first, but it ultimately is the only thing that matters.  But many times, it’s hard to get that answer.  However, it never hurts to ask.

So those are the ones that I think frame our work in the launched phase.  What do you think web design/development companies, SEO companies, interactive marketing firms need to be held to account on?  Or from the other angle, what do we want as an industry professionals to educate potential clients about when they look at your finished products?

Just thoughts to chew on.  Have a great weekend.

Social Media to me sounds slippery.  Like it’s a fad, phase or worse a “trend”.  And in some ways it is.  It suddenly became the darling of the “Web 2.0″ world and everyone was an expert that had ever written on a blog.  But for those of use in this industry (Interactive Marketing, Web Design, Development) when the term first came bubbling up into the common knowledge realm it was like putting a name to things we had been doing for awhile.  It was one of those “Aha” moments, not unlike when the term Web Master finally came into business lexicon and people knew what it meant.  A lot of us were going “so that’s what I do”!

But I live and work (and love) Texas.  It’s not that we are more conservative, it’s that – ok we are more conservative than the coasts.  Many of our clients are lawyers, law firms or corporations.  But we aren’t stupid.  When something makes sense, we do it!  Especially if it means something for our businesses.  So take Social Media which is about at it’s core connecting with your customers.  It’s community and interaction.  It’s being connected with people you work with, sell to and interact with through your company.  None of those things are foreign to us Texans.  With that thought in mind, I reframed Social Media into what it truly is Community-Based marketing.  Same idea, different name.

Dos and Don’ts in Community-Based Marketing

The biggest “fear” about community-based marketing when talking to my clients is this – “what if my clients/people talk back to me.”  And it’s not that they are afraid to connect with their customers, it’s that they are afraid that it will just be an open door of rants and negativity.  The stories of “trolls” and people just being ugly have filtered back to them.  And yes, it’s true that once you open the door to allowing clients to interact with you, there might be some people that are not happy with the company, or a decision you made or even a connection that happened in the past.  This is a real and valid fear.  But it’s worth getting over those fears and really being in tune with what’s right and what’s wrong in the marketplace.  Companies pay lots of real dollars to get “marketing research” about what’s going on in their industries.  With community-based marketing, it’s all right there.  You just have to listen, know where to look and not take it personally.  We as people all make mistakes and since we run companies, mistakes happen.   People aren’t always out there to crucify you and your company.   They just (many times) want to be heard, know that their feedback matters and that you acknowledge you are listening.

For me and what I tell my clients here is the list of dos and don’ts:

• Do open that door and let clients interact with you.  Allow comments, join forums, create a space for communication to happen
• Don’t overreact when someone comments in a negative or unintended way
• Do acknowledge their frustration, anger, issue either publicly or directly if appropriate
• Do attempt to make their feedback matter – it doesn’t always have to be a grand gesture.  Giving a future discount, connecting them to the appropriate internal people to rectify, acknowledging a decision had unintentional consequences, allowing them to vent, etc.
• Don’t be surprised when people are positive.  Many times our fears, are just that, fears.  You do good work or you wouldn’t be in business.  Allow people to respond to you positively.
• Do get a thick skin.  Just like ever arrow slung your way doesn’t need to hit it’s target, every compliment doesn’t need to get you an award.
• Do listen to the trends.  The door to your customers is open for a reason.  If you hear lots of times, that something isn’t working, change it.  If you hear that their is something clients want, give it to them.  This is good stuff, and ignoring it is a bad decision.
• Don’t get bullied.  This might seem counter to everything I’ve said above but you are allowed to set boundaries about how you will and won’t be treated, even online.  If I feel someone is a troll, I block them or report them.  And I define Troll as someone who just causes havoc to cause havoc.   I am open for discussion and opinions, I am not open to people being jerks because they are hiding behind a computer screen.

And here is the most important DON’T.

• Don’t sue someone over a Tweet.  I can see if this was Robert Scoble or Mark Davidson who have thousands and thousands of followers.  But this woman has 26 (before she cancelled her account) followers.  She expressed an opinion to a few of her friends.  You sue her for $50,000 and now everyone in the Interactive World and beyond knows who you are, that their might be mold in one of your apartments and you are a company that will whip out their legal department over NOTHING!

If community-based marketing is about interaction and connection with your clients and potential-clients, then jump in.  The waters warm, the people are generally nice and the rewards are genuine.

I would love to hear from you – if you are a business what your experience has been or if you are still the fear area, what is your fear.  Interactive marketing people – do you have any other do’s or don’ts?  And of course, any other feedback is welcome as well.

In the next few days, I’m going to start a series of posts about how to set up an interactive marketing plan and then step-by-step show you how to work that plan.  I do this for clients all the time and I know how intimidating it can be but I’ll be here as a resource and if you have questions, then we can get you some answers.

• Was a web master for many years and had vendors bid on work.  This was mid-nineties and there wasn’t open source versus proprietary yet.  There was code which was, let’s be honest pretty basic and there weren’t many tools yet.
• As the internet and more specifically the visual part, the world wide web, developed little animated gifs weren’t cutting it.  We as consumers of information, wanted more.  Tools started being developed both in creating code (Front Page, Cold Fusion, etc…), hosting the code through PC servers or Unix servers and how to serve that information out via browsers (Internet Explorer, Netscape and eventually Firefox etc…).  *this is vastly over-simplified*
• As these things developed you had roughly two communities break out.  The proprietary or closed code (Microsoft, Cold Fusion) and Open Source which was lead primarily by the Unix/Linux community.  Each community proceeded to move forward in separate (seeming) directions.
• About this time, I went out on my own in 2000 and started The Satori Group.  When I worked in-house I used vendors that tended toward open source.   It was my opinion, just my opinion, that the Microsoft-based tools and other tools we saw looked templated and each one was based on a system.  You could make changes but you had to dig in and know the system and what strings you pulled would make the marionette/web site dance.
• It might not the best answer but it is what it is, we preferred open source because it tended to be cheaper and we could customize it.  When we were given the clunky Microsoft tools we had to buy licenses’ and learn their systems.  Which worked well when you were an IT manager and already had the licenses and knew their systems and it was a simple add-on and *shazam* you had a web site.   Less so, when you are a start-up and need to have product to sell that you can create without major cash outlay before you ever see a result.
• Thus two communities were born.  Open Source and Closed or Proprietary systems.   I have simplified this to the point it’s missing lots of information but you get the idea.

As my company evolved, open-source evolved.  There are huge communities of code and servers and browsers and while closed-source tools like browser Internet Explorer still exist, open source is not the “crazy” idea people thought it once was.  Especially as people that “came” up in this era evolve into managers, owners of companies, security gets better, tools easier to use, functionality grows and the cost still stays reasonable to people who need the services.

And I promise you this is not a dis on Microsoft or any of the closed-source systems out there.  I am explaining this because as the company has changed over the years from primarily a provider of  design and development for web sites to interactive marketing firm, I think the web site is just the beginning.  It doesn’t stop with the site, it begins with the site.

Because once you have a web site no matter what it was built with or hosted on or what browser you use, people need to find your web site.  And just as code was evolving over the years, the way you found out about web sites was evolving.  Suddenly search engines became the tail that wagged the dog because who cares if you have a great site if no-one can find you.  So finding out how to make your site easier to find, what made it come up in search for what terms and being able to understand this system was and is crucial.

Now the cycle has turned again.  It’s not just about finding the site, it’s about hearing what people are saying, connecting with your users, creating and maintaining a presence online.  And while there are tools, there is no way to fake a connection.  You either are in or you are out.   We call it Social Media Marketing or I use the term Community-Based Marketing because it has less of a cutesy sound and is more realistic to the benefit.

I am going to have a few posts coming out to further this discussion:

• What is Community-Based Marketing in relation to Social Media Marketing
• Step-by -Step Instructions on Bootstrapping a Interactive Campaign for Small Businesses
  • Definitions and details on starting
  • Tools open and closed-source
  • Instructions on how to do everything
  • Q/A and Case study
• Guest Bloggers.  I know lots of incredibly talented programmers, front-end developers, social media gurus, sales people, designers, interactive producers and I want them to get exposure for their abilities.

So I appreciate you reading and let me know what your thoughts are.  I’m still getting used to writing things I normally put in a proposal or I discuss with clients.  Bear with me while we get organized and if you have comments leave them !

Here is what I’m seeing this week:

Get Started with Email Newsletters by Michael Mayor

Focus your email newsletters and achieve your marketing goals with these easy steps.

(editorial) – This is especially relevant as I try to send out our first e-mail newsletter. It’s hard because I want to jump in but that pool looks a little cold.

In the Integrated Marketing Realm we have:

A Quick Guide to Integrated Marketing

What you need to know (and what you need to avoid) to get the most out of your marketing campaign across channels.

Contrasted with this article From Media Week on Ad Clients Mixed on Integrated Efforts

Ad Clients Mixed on Integrated Efforts

(editorial) – As consultants to our clients when we recommend an integrated approach for a brand or a concept, it makes the most sense to that situation. Except that we need to know the internal and external barriers that will either be present or need to be overcome. This is a good look at what’s in our way and how to get through it.

And finally I thought this was very interesting. MTV is forming a research company called Viewser Labs. They aren’t waiting for information to be pushed to them. From their article

“MTV says Viewser Labs will “examine and re-think every minute of viewers’ and users’ experiences across MTV’s multiple screens, from pods to programming to promo spots to product integration to commercial time and more.” The ultimate goal of Viewser Labs is to find new advertising opportunities, says MTV, beyond the 30-second spot and the banner ad.”

Check out the full article here

With Interactive Marketing it tends to be about the tools that you use to qualify those leads. But in the end it’s still taking what you have and addressing your potential customers, helping them understand what your company sells and the advantages you offer so that when the sale begins, they come ready to buy or at least more educated to the table.

To that end I thought I’d list several tools in the Interactive Marketing tool-box and talk about the need to move past having “just a web site” and what you can do in a constantly expanding market space with some amazing ways to reach and talk to your customers.

1. Web Site – Use the web site for what it is. A beginning. It’s the flexible container from which all the things you’ll need to work in the interactive medium flow. But if you let it sit, it will act just like a toolbox and rust.

2. E-Mail Marketing – Is a cost-effective, direct, instant, communication with current, potential or old customers with the purpose of enhancing your relationship. You can “push” the message to your audience, as opposed to a website that waits for customers to come in.

3. eNewsletters – Many popular websites and businesses have online newsletters, known as eNewsletters, which are sent to their subscribers electronically, usually via email. Their purpose is to inform readers of updates to the site and/or provide information relating to the site’s topic. Newsletters are also a factor in building and maintaining a relationship with the subscribers by reminding them of the site, urging them to return.

4. Search Engine Marketing(SEM) – A set of marketing methods to increase the visibility of a website in search engine results pages. The three main methods are; search engine optimization, search engine advertising, or paying the search engine company for a guaranteed high ranking or an ad displayed aside the results (commonly known as pay per click advertising) and paid inclusion, or paying the search engine company for a guarantee that the website is included in their natural search index.

5. Integrated Marketing Campaigns – Coordinating your website design, branding and online user experience integrated with all your other marketing communications is the essence of an integrated marketing campaign.

6. Viral Marketing – A marketing technique that seek to produce increases in brand awareness, through viral processes such as word-of-mouth delivered and enhanced online; it harnesses the network effect of the Internet and can be very useful in reaching a large number of people rapidly.

I must admit I used this amazing resource in helping round out my definitions.

These tools are all the ones in a Interactive Marketing toolkit and one that should be used to thread through your web site, in conjunction with and integrated with your brand and marketing strategy.