BrainScouts

SEO | eCommerce | Project Management

A friend of mine that works from Microsoft the other day asked me about developing a website for him.  I was surprised that he asked me but also flattered.  He is very sharp and and very technical, but I guess building websites is still an art form.   To be honest, I get asked the question a lot by friends thinking about starting a home based business, “Can you develop my website?”

Since the success of my youth football coaching blog at http://CoachParker.org, I recommend a Wordpress blog for first time websites.  Many times, a technical saavy business owner can operate a Wordpress blog either hosted by Yahoo or another ISP or a free Wordpress blog , hosted by Wordpress.  It beats paying web developers a few thousand dollars to develop a site, plus Google loves blogs.   The Blog’s SEO is usualy above average right from the start.

The key to a successful website is not the design, but the content which must be readable by the Google search engine spider and others so your website will be indexed and found within the search results of Google, Bing, Yahoo, Ask, AOL and others.  As long as your design looks like a legitimate website, which most base blog templates do, content is the key to your success.  Since blogs are very easy to update with content and are mostly text, blogs are almost perfect beginner websites.

I recommend a free blog at Wordpress.com, choose a template that matches your needs, buy a domain and domain pointing and verify your site with Google, Yahoo and Bing.

Once your business takes off and you have a “real” web design budget, you then should consider upgrading your blog with a fancy design or adding a “corp” website to your blog.  :)

Good luck.  If you cant figure it out, please contact me, and I’ll be glad to help.

Lately I’ve been thinking about the speed at which I get things done.  Ever since I can remember I’ve always finished my tests, dinner, homework, projects faster than most of my peers.  My two sons were commenting to me that they also finish earlier than their peers in class.  Which got me thinking, why do some people have a sense of urgency or speed vs others?

I did a Google search on “Sense of Urgency” and found John Kotter’s video Sense of Urgency Interview

Kotter talks about getting something done everyday.  I’ve worked for some very big organizations over my career, and I think this latter statement maybe the most important.  There are many people within an organization that are happy with the status quo and are complacent.  Complacency is thriving in our society today, everyone feels like their employer or government owes them something just for living.  Well,  ”everyone get s a trophy” youth organizations, no one fails, and child psychologists promoting “competition is bad” propaganda has killed the winning spirit within American organizations.  Kotter talks about winning and organizations must be alert and recognize the current rate of change and be ready to win.  If one just plays to play, where’s the urgency?

I’ve taken on my one man mission on complacency.  When ever I receive poor service or exceptional service, I speak with a manager or email the company.  When I receive poor service I ask for a coupon or discount on my order and 99% of the time receive a rebate of some sort.

What are you going to get DONE today?

According to a recent Forrester report 12.09, ExactTarget and Responsys lead the email service providers in their 69 criteria study of email marketing service providers.

  • Acxiom
  • Alterian
  • BlueHornet
  • ClickSquared
  • Datran Media
  • e-Dialog
  • Emailvision
  • Epsilon
  • ExactTarget
  • Experian Marketing Services
  • Lyris
  • Responsys
  • Silverpop
  • Yesmail
  • Zeta Interactive

A copy of the full report can be found here.

I have used ExactTarget and Lyris and I personally like ExactTarget for medium sized or larger organizations.  For small organizations an email program like iContact works nicely.

Ok, so I must say, I never heard of the term crowdsourcing until about 5 minutes ago, but have been using the concept for a few years.  According to Sage Lewis over at ClickZ in his article, Crowdsourcing Your Search Marketing, “Crowdsourcing is the concept of taking a job one person would normally do and offering it out to a large number of people.”

On one of my current projects, we were thinking about developing “how to” videos.  We were toying around with a contest for each hot to video.  After reading Sage’s article, I think we will do a bit of crowdsourcing of our video.  Even the ones we do not win the contest, we can archive on youtube and our various blogs and push to other content publishers.  I love the concept.

I am currently reading David Meerman Scott’s book, The New Rules of Marketing and PR.  I am only on page 25 and the absolutely love the book, probably because it confirms so many of the strategies that my college roommate and past business partner tested and implemented in the early days of the Internet back from 1995 to 2000.  As a satirical ex Yahoo VP 10 years younger once said to me, “ah you mean back in the day”, yes back in the day.  Charlie and I were doing many of these now mainstream strategies that seem to be “New.”

One key point in the book, which I am very excited to see in this book is the importance of natural search engine optimization, SEO, in a company’s marketing strategy.  A small company through aggressive use of SEO can compete with much larger firms.  Especially since many of the larger Fortune 1000 firms are still entrenched in pre-web marketing strategies.  Yes, even though they advertise and spend millions of dollars on Flash websites, they still do not know hot to interact with the web customers.  To be honest, I think its out of fear not knowledge of the New Rules of Marketing, that these companies do not interact with customers.  I think they know that if they actually interacted with customers, they may need to get off their butts and make or sell a better products.  Its much easier not to talk to customers.

If you have no idea what your search engine optimization strategy is and or your paying a ton for web banners and PPC, please contact me today.  I can help you learn the new Rules of Marketing.

Ball jointed doll.  huh?  Well it’s the new rage in collectible vinyl fashion dolls.  I am working with The Ashton Drake Galleries who cater to the collectible baby doll market on their DeliliahNoir.com site.  It is a micro-site for their Award winning Doll of the Year 2009, Delilah Doll which has 14 ball socket joints for highly poseable articulation fashion poses.  Ya, I know that was a mouth full about BJD.  That’s not what youth think; ball-jointed dolls.  These dolls aren’t your average Barbie fashion doll, but 16 inch lifelike collectible vinyl dolls that are ready for any runway or fashion make overs.

Oh ya, they call make-overs for the unpainted mannequin dolls face-ups, because you can test your make-up skills on them.  You could call these repaints too or blank doll kits.  Each Delilah dolls come with great outfits with doll shoes, changeable wigs, interchangeable eyes, and some come with fangs so you can live out your vampire Twilight or True Blood  fantasies.  These Ashton Drake Gallery Delilah Noir vinyl dolls are very customizable.  You can customize them just how you would like to make them look.  These blank doll kits are ready for you to build your very own custom fashion doll with your sense of style.

If you are into Goth and live for the dark side they have a few Gothic Lolita vinyl dolls, Dark and Defiant Delilah and Once Bitten Twice Shy, Delilah.  Lady Onyx Delilah is also a goth collectible doll but she is a little more sophisticated in her Victorian lace dress and heels makes this doll a limited edition with only 500 made world wide.  A few of these Delilah Noir 16 inch large fashion dolls come with free or an extra outfit and shoes, Once Bitten Twice Shy vampire fang doll, Its 10pm Punk Rock Doll and the Debut Doll which is a school girl and a gothloli doll.  Not you’re everyday Barbie or Cabbage Patch dolls.  These 16″ collectable dolls are not toys, they are adult collectibles.  And if you like Pink, you can’t forget the pink ball jointed doll with a ferret for a pet, Pretty n Pink.  She’s too wild for a cat and looks hot in her high heeled tennis shoes with striped socks.  Many come with interchangeable eyes, wigs, shoes, and clothes.  They all have excellent doll wardrobes with tailored outfits.  These are great dress-up dolls kits.  buy more than one and mix and match all the awesome outfits to creat your won Delilah.

The great thing about these like resin fashion dolls is that they are very affordable and a great value.  You could say they are cheap but they are very high quality Ball jointed dolls.  I would say they were inexpensive fashion dolls.

The dolls are called mini sized dolls or MSD because they are 16 inch dolls.  They cal also be called large dolls or Super Dollfies but thats a term for a Volks doll.  another term is a quarter sized doll or 1/4 size.  If you are guy these are like model cars which a scalable sizes for dolls.  just like our vintage model car or airplane plastic resin  models.  Many of these have highly jointed bodies and sockets for hyper movement and standing poses.  A term one could use would be extreme articulation.  They are very flexible.

Some of the terms in the doll world are pretty interesting; vinyl dolls vs resin.  Is it collectable with an a or collectible BJD.  And that came from Asian ball jointed dolls witch are hand made ABJDs and usually over $500 not $150 like the Delilah Noir from Ashton Drake. At $150 its almost like getting a Super BJD at wholesale.   I was surprised to see about 10 different doll magazines cover fashion dolls and collectible dolls from Barbies to virtual world pc dolls.  Some guy named Tonner is really into these modern contemporary fashion pieces of plastic art.  I guess he is a big designer for a fashion house in New York.  There is also a Japanese version of this large super doll, called Dollfies.  I guess Volks out of Japan makes the Dollfie BJDs. Volks supposedly has the best ball socket joints for articulated movement into hyper articulation for endless poses for photographic shoots just like the real New York models.  Some of the dolls are also called Sybarite.  I have not found what they are yet, but I am sure it another customizable large fashion doll.  Unfortunately you will not find many on discount or discounted because they are fine collectibles but sometimes your can find free shipping or add ons like dolls shoes as an added accessory.  Be careful of low cost low quality dolls, make sure you find a reputable doll make like Ashton Drake Galleries.

If you are a high end doll collector these dolls make great traveling bjd dolls becuase you do not have to travel with your expensive resin hand made ball jointed doll.  Delilah is very affordable and high quality that you can take her on trips without ricking your high end dolls.  Delilah is also great for beginner collector of fashion dolls, because Delilah is affordable.  Who wants to pay $500 plus for a doll and find out you are not into doll collecting.  These would make great gifts for the first time doll collections.  They are not vintage baby dolls yet, but soon will be.  These are Ashton Drake lifelike fashion dolls, a very respect and established Doll company.

You can find all the Delilah at DelilahNoir.com online doll shop or at your local fine collectible doll store.  If you read the doll forums you will find out that the Aston Drake dolls are quality products for any doll collection.

Delilah Noir Fashion DollI just picked up a cool gig with Ashton Drake Galleries working on a few of their microsites.    I am currently working on SEO strategies for their DelilahNoir.com site.   The site is using many of the technolgies that I have used in the past.  This should be an interesting project.

I found a great resource for consumer purchasing behavior.  According to a Harris Interactive Brief 12/08, “Evolving the Prototypical Path to Purchase” the shopping begins here

Search Engines 20%
Family Friends 15%
Retail Stores 15%
Retailer Website 9%
Multi Brand Website (amazon) 9%
Print Media 9%
Prod Comp Websites 8%
Mfg Wesbites 8%
Blogs / Chat Rooms 4%
Print Catalogs 3%
Other 1%

and evolves until final purchase at these channels

Retail 67%
MultiBrand Websites 15%
Retailer Websites 10%
Mfg Websites 2%
Catalog / Phone 2%
Other 3%

For the full study visit here...http://www.harrisinteractive.com/vault/HI_EGM_SHEET_EvolvingPathPurchase.pdf

Lynda.com Online EducationI guess I may be late to the game, but I recently used Lynda.com online training site to learn Adobe Premiere Elements.   I spent 3 hours last night learning how to edit video with Adobe’s Premiere Elements for my CoachParker.org youth football blog.  Since most new software programs do not ship with a users manual anymore, plus I downloaded Premiere and Photoshop Elemetns from Adobe yesterday, so no manual, I did a Google search for Premiere tutorials.  Google brought up Adobe, surprise! Adobe had a Lynda online demo on the site, so I watch about an hour and it just stopped.  So I went directly to Lynda.com and looked through the vast array of software programs that I could learn and signed up immediately for the monthly premium service at $35 a month.  As much as I am raving on you would think I was a Lynda affiliate, but I am not, YET.

I love the service.  After watching about half the Premier Elements tutorials, I did a test video project in Adobe Premiere Elements and was very excited about my handiwork.  I wanted to give myself a gold star, so I did in the video.

I told my wife about the Lynda service today.  She was just put on the education committee at her office, so wow what a coincidence.  I am also going to get my 6th grader hooked up to learn the class required software programs for his computer classes.  I read a few reviews last night and I cant remember where I read it, but one of the bloggers said a subscription to Lynda should be like your monthly ISP bill, especially if you are into continuous education mode like myself.

I’ll keep you posted on my Lynda progress.  But I am hoping to go through the MS Word videos even though Ive been using MS Office since 1989.  Now I’ve really aged myself.

Thanks,
Steve Parker
The Big Kahuna
BrainScouts, Inc.
Keller TX, Fort Worth, Dallas and DFW, Texas

Twitter chart

from SES email

I’ve been beating up Twitter to all my friends and now maybe I should stop.  According to a new study by Hubspot, “The State of Inbound Lead Generation” March 2010, small to medium sized businesses doubled their leads by using Twitter.  I guess I will start Tweating like a new blue bird.  I need to review the study in more detail to see if this was b2b or b2c.