We have all heard this before. And to us, this is confusing, but to the person saying it, it makes perfect sense.

But are your prices really too high?

Odds are, no.  But the problem is still with you, not the customer.

Unless the customer was hoping on you trading services for content creation, social media management and blogging, then the problem more than likely is that you didn’t sell them on the benefits and work put into social media enough.

As marketers, we know how hard we work. We know that every blog, every post, and every thing we do for a company is a calculated move based on trial-and-error, statistics, and time consuming research and backend moves. But if your customer doesn’t know social media marketing, then this obvious statement may not be obvious at all to them.

For example, in high school I had a part-time job preparing salads at Panera Bread. To the casual eye, I gathered ingredients from my salad station, threw them on a plate, and dished it out to the consolidator who arranged the meal.  A job worthy of the $10-11 an hour I was making.

But, behind the scenes I had to stock shelves, unload the food truck, replace low items and spend hours cleaning the restaurant and the station when I was finished. To me, I earned every penny I was ever paid by the company.  I probably deserved even more.

And the same rings true during sales meetings. Your customer knows what they want, and you know what you can do, but in-between, neither of you know more than a cursory few things about everything that goes into what either of you do.

There’s no shame, or even lack of pride, in pouring your heart out to potential customers. We do it in every sales meeting. We know how passionate we are about social media marketing being the future, and we know how much work we put into everything we do for a customer. We tell our customer this at the very beginning of every meeting, and in the end, they appreciate how much we truly care about doing what we love.

So, next time you hear your prices are too high, don’t look at your services menu, look in a mirror and ask yourself if you really did everything you could to emphasize to your customer how much you truly care about what you do.

Sign up for “The Ultimate Guide to Google Plus Download”:

We have all heard this before. And to us, this is confusing, but to the person saying it, it makes perfect sense.

But are your prices really too high?

Odds are, no.  But the problem is still with you, not the customer.

Unless the customer was hoping on you trading services for content creation, social media management and blogging, then the problem more than likely is that you didn’t sell them on the benefits and work put into social media enough.

As marketers, we know how hard we work. We know that every blog, every post, and every thing we do for a company is a calculated move based on trial-and-error, statistics, and time consuming research and backend moves. But if your customer doesn’t know social media marketing, then this obvious statement may not be obvious at all to them.

For example, in high school I had a part-time job preparing salads at Panera Bread. To the casual eye, I gathered ingredients from my salad station, threw them on a plate, and dished it out to the consolidator who arranged the meal.  A job worthy of the $10-11 an hour I was making.

But, behind the scenes I had to stock shelves, unload the food truck, replace low items and spend hours cleaning the restaurant and the station when I was finished. To me, I earned every penny I was ever paid by the company.  I probably deserved even more.

And the same rings true during sales meetings. Your customer knows what they want, and you know what you can do, but in-between, neither of you know more than a cursory few things about everything that goes into what either of you do.

There’s no shame, or even lack of pride, in pouring your heart out to potential customers. We do it in every sales meeting. We know how passionate we are about social media marketing being the future, and we know how much work we put into everything we do for a customer. We tell our customer this at the very beginning of every meeting, and in the end, they appreciate how much we truly care about doing what we love.

So, next time you hear your prices are too high, don’t look at your services menu, look in a mirror and ask yourself if you really did everything you could to emphasize to your customer how much you truly care about what you do.

Sign up for “The Ultimate Guide to Google Plus Download”:

My cell phone rang and I paused Grey’s Anatomy. Oh, I^‘m so sorry,t he voice on the other end of the line said, It must be evening out there on the East Coast.He was the nicest guy in the world, with a really good business idea. And while we were talking, he asked me,Why is my GA bounce rate 100%

I love problems like this. They are so black and white that the answers are almost always technical (and not human. We humans are messy.) So I instructed, Tell me how many unique pages your analytics showed on the day when you had a 100% bounce rate. It’s on the left navigation, go to Content > Top Content.

Gee,â he said, I can only see two pages. That can’t be right, we have hundreds of pages.

So there was the problem. The site had very few pages tagged, and when the visitor leaves a tagged page and goes to an untagged page, the GA only knows that the visitor has left the site altogether  because for GA, if your page isnt tagged, it might as well not exist. And since a bounce is a page view of one page and immediate exit without looking at another page on the site, the broken page tags artificially created a bounce. (I won’t go into the intricacies of the visit length not expiring yet.)

Here’s the opposite problem, which I saw today (while I was actually looking at a computer, instead of Grey’s Anatomy.) I showed one of our customers how his site was doing with the new GA Site Search. Now, one of the things that you can do is measure visits with site search and visits without site search along many metrics. But most of the time, it doesn’t make sense to use “bounce”in the same sentence as “visits with site search,” because most site search requires the visitor to hit the enter button and see two (usually different) pagess — a page with search and a page with results. Ergo, no bounce at all for most on site search (depending on their architecture. This is actually an interesting problem, worth looking into in depth.)  On the same topic: pages that get redirected in the browser (and not by the server) will often see their GA load, and then the user automatically gets two page views and whoops! no bounce, even if it is a crummy page.

So before we fall in love with bounce rate, we have to understand it well.

*****

Of course, I lost the comments, too. I have most of them in email, so will try to reproduce them here. Jacques commented that he would love to see how GA computes bounce and site search (I can’t find that one in my email). Daniel Shields wrote, “Bounce rate is a funny thing. In some instances it is a very important means to uncovering behaviors which indicate propensities. In other instances, it creates almost no value when improved upon. Context is ultimately where the difference is. As a metric which receives so much attention from a broad, utilitarian perspective, I find it almost completely useless in itself.

“I attribute my insolence mainly to the fact that the bounce rate is dependent on important factors such as the linguistic relationship between where and what your audience searches for. Slight modifications to search algorithms in any direction can drive volatility in bounce rate. However, when bounce is analyzed with respect to keywords or referring domains, it becomes extremely useful in a marketing metrics toolbox. This, however, deals more with the idea of bounce rate as a technical performance indicator. I like that.

“It would be nice to have alerts built in for systems like this. Maybe someone close to Google should say something?:-)”

Finally, Alan weighed in from Paris, “Hi there Robbin, Bonsoir Jacques,

“You really got me thinking about this bounce rate issue and I think I came up with a legitimate scenario.

“It is quite common for certain types of sites to use result pages on their websites as landing pages for their PPC campaigns. It is even possible to automate this in AdWords by using the keyword insertion tag in the destination URL, e.g. www.mysite.com/search.php?kw={keyword} whereby the ‘bought’ keyword in AW will automatically be placed in the URL (I would advise against this however because of LPQ, but that’s a different matter).

“If site search is enabled on such a site with the ‘kw’ query specified, then GA will count this visitor as having used the search functionality from their very first page-view and all the visitors that bounce will contribute to the bounce rate in the Site Search reports.

“I have a couple of customers who had a site search bounce rate significant enough that it can’t just be explained away by what I call the “freak-occurrence factor” (i.e. 7-8% bounce rate and above). I cross-segmented their google(cpc) traffic by landing page and saw that most of them were indeed search result pages with the site’s search query variable in the URI.

“I suggest you check out the Landing Page report and filter on the search query variable to see if this makes sense for your customers too.

“Hope this explanation makes sense.”

And speaking of hoping, I hope that I got everyone’s comments correct, please complain loudly if I didn’t.

My cell phone rang and I paused Grey’s Anatomy. Oh, I^‘m so sorry,t he voice on the other end of the line said, It must be evening out there on the East Coast.He was the nicest guy in the world, with a really good business idea. And while we were talking, he asked me,Why is my GA bounce rate 100%

I love problems like this. They are so black and white that the answers are almost always technical (and not human. We humans are messy.) So I instructed, Tell me how many unique pages your analytics showed on the day when you had a 100% bounce rate. It’s on the left navigation, go to Content > Top Content.

Gee,â he said, I can only see two pages. That can’t be right, we have hundreds of pages.

So there was the problem. The site had very few pages tagged, and when the visitor leaves a tagged page and goes to an untagged page, the GA only knows that the visitor has left the site altogether  because for GA, if your page isnt tagged, it might as well not exist. And since a bounce is a page view of one page and immediate exit without looking at another page on the site, the broken page tags artificially created a bounce. (I won’t go into the intricacies of the visit length not expiring yet.)

Here’s the opposite problem, which I saw today (while I was actually looking at a computer, instead of Grey’s Anatomy.) I showed one of our customers how his site was doing with the new GA Site Search. Now, one of the things that you can do is measure visits with site search and visits without site search along many metrics. But most of the time, it doesn’t make sense to use “bounce”in the same sentence as “visits with site search,” because most site search requires the visitor to hit the enter button and see two (usually different) pagess — a page with search and a page with results. Ergo, no bounce at all for most on site search (depending on their architecture. This is actually an interesting problem, worth looking into in depth.)  On the same topic: pages that get redirected in the browser (and not by the server) will often see their GA load, and then the user automatically gets two page views and whoops! no bounce, even if it is a crummy page.

So before we fall in love with bounce rate, we have to understand it well.

*****

Of course, I lost the comments, too. I have most of them in email, so will try to reproduce them here. Jacques commented that he would love to see how GA computes bounce and site search (I can’t find that one in my email). Daniel Shields wrote, “Bounce rate is a funny thing. In some instances it is a very important means to uncovering behaviors which indicate propensities. In other instances, it creates almost no value when improved upon. Context is ultimately where the difference is. As a metric which receives so much attention from a broad, utilitarian perspective, I find it almost completely useless in itself.

“I attribute my insolence mainly to the fact that the bounce rate is dependent on important factors such as the linguistic relationship between where and what your audience searches for. Slight modifications to search algorithms in any direction can drive volatility in bounce rate. However, when bounce is analyzed with respect to keywords or referring domains, it becomes extremely useful in a marketing metrics toolbox. This, however, deals more with the idea of bounce rate as a technical performance indicator. I like that.

“It would be nice to have alerts built in for systems like this. Maybe someone close to Google should say something?:-)”

Finally, Alan weighed in from Paris, “Hi there Robbin, Bonsoir Jacques,

“You really got me thinking about this bounce rate issue and I think I came up with a legitimate scenario.

“It is quite common for certain types of sites to use result pages on their websites as landing pages for their PPC campaigns. It is even possible to automate this in AdWords by using the keyword insertion tag in the destination URL, e.g. www.mysite.com/search.php?kw={keyword} whereby the ‘bought’ keyword in AW will automatically be placed in the URL (I would advise against this however because of LPQ, but that’s a different matter).

“If site search is enabled on such a site with the ‘kw’ query specified, then GA will count this visitor as having used the search functionality from their very first page-view and all the visitors that bounce will contribute to the bounce rate in the Site Search reports.

“I have a couple of customers who had a site search bounce rate significant enough that it can’t just be explained away by what I call the “freak-occurrence factor” (i.e. 7-8% bounce rate and above). I cross-segmented their google(cpc) traffic by landing page and saw that most of them were indeed search result pages with the site’s search query variable in the URI.

“I suggest you check out the Landing Page report and filter on the search query variable to see if this makes sense for your customers too.

“Hope this explanation makes sense.”

And speaking of hoping, I hope that I got everyone’s comments correct, please complain loudly if I didn’t.

Ok, enough with the puns, let’s get to the news.

Printers can be used as explosives:

Wait, what?

Yes, you read it right.

Researchers, and who knows why they were researching this, found that some HP Laserjet Printers can be triggered to catch fire from a distance.

The plan involves installing a malicious code, then software, on the printer that can then be triggered to, well, explode.

More here: http://shine.yahoo.com/at-home/strange-security-hackers-could-set-printer-fire-distance-235900935.html

Exploding Iphones:

As if printers weren’t enough, a news article broke today, that we covered, about an iPhone that caught fire today on a plane ride to Australia. The phone was confiscated once the plane landed and it appears no foul-play is suspected. Apparently, iPhones have been known to do this from time-to-time and the malfunction stems from a defective battery.

The Sith That Stole Christmas:

Eh, nothing really needs to be said about this. It’s just funny.

That’s it for today. See you tomorrow.

Ok, enough with the puns, let’s get to the news.

Printers can be used as explosives:

Wait, what?

Yes, you read it right.

Researchers, and who knows why they were researching this, found that some HP Laserjet Printers can be triggered to catch fire from a distance.

The plan involves installing a malicious code, then software, on the printer that can then be triggered to, well, explode.

More here: http://shine.yahoo.com/at-home/strange-security-hackers-could-set-printer-fire-distance-235900935.html

Exploding Iphones:

As if printers weren’t enough, a news article broke today, that we covered, about an iPhone that caught fire today on a plane ride to Australia. The phone was confiscated once the plane landed and it appears no foul-play is suspected. Apparently, iPhones have been known to do this from time-to-time and the malfunction stems from a defective battery.

The Sith That Stole Christmas:

Eh, nothing really needs to be said about this. It’s just funny.

That’s it for today. See you tomorrow.

Why Google Plus?

First, let me preface by saying I have seen a lot of talk on whether or not Google Plus will succeed competing against the likes of Facebook and Twitter , and the answer is of course it will succeed. The “viral” nature of the Internet has skewed our thinking a little bit when it comes to determining whether something will succeed or fail online, but Google Plus is not a viral campaign, nor is it a start-up dream that needs to catch fire immediately to thrive. No. Rather, it is simply a sleeping giant, too big to fail. Why? Because  Google has the money and the means to stay afloat until Google Plus catches on, and the resources and clout to do things in the future that Facebook or Twitter could only dream of.

In other words, Google Plus is not going anywhere.

So, accepting the fact that Google Plus is here to stay, the obvious question that comes next is “how can I take advantage of this?”

The answer is by becoming an early adapter, and if you are reading this, you are well on your way.

Let’s get started, shall we?

Step 1: Starting up

Your first step to becoming an expert is by going to http://www.Plus.Google.Com and in the top right you will see a little blue hyperlink (or, clickable words) that says create account.

After clicking the hyperlink it will take you the registration page, and this is just like any other basic registration page, so fill out the necessary information and go about your business like you normally would.

Next, it will take you to another crazy looking page and to your right you will see a box entitled “To join, create a public profile.” This is where you will enter what name you want people to see on Google plus and all the other basic information the initial registration didn’t ask you. Fill in the required information again.

One thing that may be difficult at this step, or not blatant in the signup process is adding a photo. To do this, follow the basic steps in the box above and when you get to “add a photo in blue,” click on it. A basic rule of thumb is that anything which is highlighted in blue is usually able to be “clicked” on. When you click on the “add a photo” option you will be taken to a screen where you are given the option of dragging your photo to the highlighted box, you will see it, or clicking “select file,” which will give you the option of selecting a file from your computer. Once you do either of these options you will then be taken to a photo editing page where you will be given the option of cropping, or adjusting, the parameters of the pictures. What this means is that your photo may be too large to properly fit in your profile picture box and some adjustments could be needed.

It will look like this:

Whatever is in the clearer version of that box is what others will see. You can adjust the  box by holding your mouse on the squares attached to the outer edges of the clearer box and dragging them in or out.

Once you have set your image to your preference, click set your profile photo in the bottom right and continue on to the next step.

After you set your profile photo it will take you back to the “To join, create your public profile screen” and from here there is only one or two more steps. If you don’t care about Google targeting ads to your demographic, ignore the tiny checkbox that is already checked that reminds you that you don’t care if Google uses your personal information to target ads to you.

If you do care, unclick the box, you can still move on.

After that, click the big red box that says join in the bottom left of the box and it will take you to a screen where you have the option of letting Google Plus search your email account for people already on Google plus or skipping this step. If you decide to let it do this, it walks you through this pretty much automatically, so don’t worry about this page too much.

If you want to skip the last step just click the blue box that says skip and it will ask you, “are you sure?” If you are, click the grey box that says “continue anyway” and it will take you to the beginning of the world of Google plus.

Why Google Plus?

First, let me preface by saying I have seen a lot of talk on whether or not Google Plus will succeed competing against the likes of Facebook and Twitter , and the answer is of course it will succeed. The “viral” nature of the Internet has skewed our thinking a little bit when it comes to determining whether something will succeed or fail online, but Google Plus is not a viral campaign, nor is it a start-up dream that needs to catch fire immediately to thrive. No. Rather, it is simply a sleeping giant, too big to fail. Why? Because  Google has the money and the means to stay afloat until Google Plus catches on, and the resources and clout to do things in the future that Facebook or Twitter could only dream of.

In other words, Google Plus is not going anywhere.

So, accepting the fact that Google Plus is here to stay, the obvious question that comes next is “how can I take advantage of this?”

The answer is by becoming an early adapter, and if you are reading this, you are well on your way.

Let’s get started, shall we?

Step 1: Starting up

Your first step to becoming an expert is by going to http://www.Plus.Google.Com and in the top right you will see a little blue hyperlink (or, clickable words) that says create account.

After clicking the hyperlink it will take you the registration page, and this is just like any other basic registration page, so fill out the necessary information and go about your business like you normally would.

Next, it will take you to another crazy looking page and to your right you will see a box entitled “To join, create a public profile.” This is where you will enter what name you want people to see on Google plus and all the other basic information the initial registration didn’t ask you. Fill in the required information again.

One thing that may be difficult at this step, or not blatant in the signup process is adding a photo. To do this, follow the basic steps in the box above and when you get to “add a photo in blue,” click on it. A basic rule of thumb is that anything which is highlighted in blue is usually able to be “clicked” on. When you click on the “add a photo” option you will be taken to a screen where you are given the option of dragging your photo to the highlighted box, you will see it, or clicking “select file,” which will give you the option of selecting a file from your computer. Once you do either of these options you will then be taken to a photo editing page where you will be given the option of cropping, or adjusting, the parameters of the pictures. What this means is that your photo may be too large to properly fit in your profile picture box and some adjustments could be needed.

It will look like this:

Whatever is in the clearer version of that box is what others will see. You can adjust the  box by holding your mouse on the squares attached to the outer edges of the clearer box and dragging them in or out.

Once you have set your image to your preference, click set your profile photo in the bottom right and continue on to the next step.

After you set your profile photo it will take you back to the “To join, create your public profile screen” and from here there is only one or two more steps. If you don’t care about Google targeting ads to your demographic, ignore the tiny checkbox that is already checked that reminds you that you don’t care if Google uses your personal information to target ads to you.

If you do care, unclick the box, you can still move on.

After that, click the big red box that says join in the bottom left of the box and it will take you to a screen where you have the option of letting Google Plus search your email account for people already on Google plus or skipping this step. If you decide to let it do this, it walks you through this pretty much automatically, so don’t worry about this page too much.

If you want to skip the last step just click the blue box that says skip and it will ask you, “are you sure?” If you are, click the grey box that says “continue anyway” and it will take you to the beginning of the world of Google plus.

We are not offering 20% off, nor 40% off, not even 65% off….We are offering something greater:

100% off.

$2500 of services free

FOR NEW CUSTOMERS WHO SIGN A 6-MONTH CONTRACT  OR GREATER (TODAY):

Your 1st month is FREE

$2500 of services…..FREE

FREE

This month you will get:

Facebook setup and integration. Unlimited touch points.

Twitter setup and integration. Unlimited touch points

LinkedIN setup and integration

Targeted Follower Generation for these mediums with demographic research, metric reports and optimization. 

Blogging, Press Release Generation and Article/Awards Submission.

AND…..

Our Internet Reputation Program, online Public Relations FREE!!! This is 24/7 round-the-clock protection of your business on the internet.

And everything else to get your business making money on the Internet TODAY!

What’s even better, or crazier, than offering our top-of-the-line plan for FREE? You don’t have to sign up for our best plan for 6-months to get in on this deal. Sure, we would love it, but we care about making your business the best it can be so much that we will offer you this amazing deal of our Premium Plan for 1-month FREE regardless of what plan or service your choose!

I am not sure why we are we doing this, but we wanted to make an impression, as a cyber company, on Cyber Monday.

The amount of hours of work and the number of clients we would get your business with this deal is beyond ridiculous for us to do this, but we want to show you, first-hand, the power of new media marketing.

If you are any type of business looking to make a splash this next year, this deal is what will do it.

CALL US TODAY AT 317-908-7224 OR CONTACT US NOW!!!

*Subject to signing of 6-month contract or above and one-time setup, software integration, account integration fee.

CREDIT: Yahoo.com via Regional Express

Apple’s iPhones are always among the hottest gadgets of  any holiday shopping season, but for one passenger on anAustralian flight, the phone was too hot to handle — literally.

While on Australian flight Regional Express ZL319 Friday, a passenger’s iPhone 4 (not the iPhone 4S, which is Apple’s latest model) suddenly started “emitting a significant amount of dense smoke, accompanied by a red glow,” according to a Regional Express statement.

The plane, which was flying from Lismore to Sydney, was in the midst of landing when the incident occured. “In accordance with company standard safety procedures, the flight attendant carried out recovery actions immediately, and the red glow was extinguished successfully,” according to Regional Express’ statement.

After landing, the iPhone was handed over to officials at the Australian Transport Safety Bureau.  There’s no official word yet on what caused the phone to combust.

Exploding Apple products are rare, but explosions have happened in the past, mostly related to the devices’ lithium ion batteries overheating.

The European Union launched an investigation in 2009 after multiple instances of iPhones and iPod Touches exploding or catching fire midflight were reported in the U.K., Holland, France and Sweden.

Apple also  recalled its first-generation of iPod nanos sold between September 2005 and December 2006 because the battery would overheat and “pose a safety risk,” according to the company’s website.

CREDIT: Yahoo.com via Regional Express

Apple’s iPhones are always among the hottest gadgets of  any holiday shopping season, but for one passenger on anAustralian flight, the phone was too hot to handle — literally.

While on Australian flight Regional Express ZL319 Friday, a passenger’s iPhone 4 (not the iPhone 4S, which is Apple’s latest model) suddenly started “emitting a significant amount of dense smoke, accompanied by a red glow,” according to a Regional Express statement.

The plane, which was flying from Lismore to Sydney, was in the midst of landing when the incident occured. “In accordance with company standard safety procedures, the flight attendant carried out recovery actions immediately, and the red glow was extinguished successfully,” according to Regional Express’ statement.

After landing, the iPhone was handed over to officials at the Australian Transport Safety Bureau.  There’s no official word yet on what caused the phone to combust.

Exploding Apple products are rare, but explosions have happened in the past, mostly related to the devices’ lithium ion batteries overheating.

The European Union launched an investigation in 2009 after multiple instances of iPhones and iPod Touches exploding or catching fire midflight were reported in the U.K., Holland, France and Sweden.

Apple also  recalled its first-generation of iPod nanos sold between September 2005 and December 2006 because the battery would overheat and “pose a safety risk,” according to the company’s website.

Read. Subscribe. Be an expert.

Toyota unveils ‘smartphone’ car.

Monday, Toyota launched the concept “VII,” or, Vehicle Interactive Internet. The car will be a fully electric automobile that gets 65 MPC’s, or miles per charge. The car boasts the ability to change colors based on mood, greet you when you walk up to it, and will have ‘smartphone’ features like internet and phone capabilities.

It’s like those talking belts that flashed greetings they sold in the mall a few years ago, hoozah!

And doesn’t it look like an iPhone?

Cyber Monday Sales up 18%

According to USATODAY.COM, Cyber Monday sales were up 18% from last year. The news, coming off reports of  an increase in Black Friday sales this year, has economists predicting an economic boom during the holiday season.

Teen tells Kansas Governor she won’t apologize to him, Governor says “sorry for trying to make you.”

Last week, a Kansas teen, Emma Sullivan, tweeted disparaging remarks about the Kansas Governor. The heavy substance remarks, well more to the tune of “he sucks,” brought a slew of authoritative figures down on her. The Principal even demanded she write an apology to the Governor, to which she promptly said “no.” When word got out, the citizens of Kansas soon lent their support to the naysaying teen and today the Kansas Governor said “no apology necessary, it’s free speech.”

Damn right it is.

And that’s the news in 30-seconds. See you tomorrow.

100% off.

$2500 of services free

FOR NEW CUSTOMERS WHO SIGN A 6-MONTH CONTRACT  OR GREATER (TODAY):

Your 1st month is FREE

$2500 of services…..FREE

FREE

This month you will get:

Facebook setup and integration. Unlimited touch points.

Twitter setup and integration. Unlimited touch points

LinkedIN setup and integration

Targeted Follower Generation for these mediums with demographic research, metric reports and optimization. 

Blogging, Press Release Generation and Article/Awards Submission.

AND…..

Our Internet Reputation Program, online Public Relations FREE!!! This is 24/7 round-the-clock protection of your business on the internet.

And everything else to get your business making money on the Internet TODAY!

What’s even better, or crazier, than offering our top-of-the-line plan for FREE? You don’t have to sign up for our best plan for 6-months to get in on this deal. Sure, we would love it, but we care about making your business the best it can be so much that we will offer you this amazing deal of our Premium Plan for 1-month FREE regardless of what plan or service your choose!

I am not sure why we are we doing this, but we wanted to make an impression, as a cyber company, on Cyber Monday.

The amount of hours of work and the number of clients we would get your business with this deal is beyond ridiculous for us to do this, but we want to show you, first-hand, the power of new media marketing.

If you are any type of business looking to make a splash this next year, this deal is what will do it.

CALL US TODAY AT 317-908-7224 OR CONTACT US NOW!!!

*Subject to signing of 6-month contract or above and one-time setup, software integration, account integration fee.

You. Yes, you.

Kevin’s pointing at you, because he just learned you and him are closer than we all previously thought.

That’s right, social media are revealing that we could all get to the kitchen for Kevin’s bacon in a lot shorter than six leaps.

Thanks to Facebook, scientists are now discovering that the previously hypothesized “we are all connected by six steps” is grossly overstated. In fact,  over 90% of people are actually connected by as little as four steps.

WARNING, MATH SECTION:

The Laboratory for Web Algorithmics of the Università degli Studi di Milano, found that Facebook Friends are much closer to one another than the “six degrees” of common thought:

We found that six degrees actually overstates the number of links between typical pairs of users: While 99.6% of all pairs of users are connected by paths with 5 degrees (6 hops), 92% are connected by only four degrees (5 hops). And as Facebook has grown over the years, representing an ever larger fraction of the global population, it has become steadily more connected. The average distance in 2008 was 5.28 hops, while now it is 4.74.

The study goes deeper than just what is pictured above. In fact, the study shows that if you live in the same country, odds are you are connected by as little as 3-steps.

So, next time someone wants to play ‘Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon,’ tell them that’s old news.

The new game is ‘Four Degrees of Mark Zuckerberg.’

You. Yes, you.

Kevin’s pointing at you, because he just learned you and him are closer than we all previously thought.

That’s right, social media are revealing that we could all get to the kitchen for Kevin’s bacon in a lot shorter than six leaps.

Thanks to Facebook, scientists are now discovering that the previously hypothesized “we are all connected by six steps” is grossly overstated. In fact,  over 90% of people are actually connected by as little as four steps.

WARNING, MATH SECTION:

The Laboratory for Web Algorithmics of the Università degli Studi di Milano, found that Facebook Friends are much closer to one another than the “six degrees” of common thought:

We found that six degrees actually overstates the number of links between typical pairs of users: While 99.6% of all pairs of users are connected by paths with 5 degrees (6 hops), 92% are connected by only four degrees (5 hops). And as Facebook has grown over the years, representing an ever larger fraction of the global population, it has become steadily more connected. The average distance in 2008 was 5.28 hops, while now it is 4.74.

The study goes deeper than just what is pictured above. In fact, the study shows that if you live in the same country, odds are you are connected by as little as 3-steps.

So, next time someone wants to play ‘Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon,’ tell them that’s old news.

The new game is ‘Four Degrees of Mark Zuckerberg.’

This man has a great (large) personality.

But this  man would make a horrible Social Media Strategist.

Well, unless you are selling marble coffee tables or off-kilter philosophy books.

But could he check his ego at the door and sell medical supplies to doctors via social media?

No.

And therein lies the problem with Klout statistics, celebrities and egoists of any nature.  There is no one way to appeal to a customer, because there is no such thing as one type of customer. And if you think there is one way to appeal to customers for every brand, then you are setting yourself up for a harsh realization.

Some clients are big, bold and require the ego you possess.  Some clients have audiences that require serious talk about serious issues.  And whatever client you take on, it is your job as a strategist to represent the brand, not yourself.

And it sucks sometimes, we will admit. There have been times when we brought in big customers, famous ones at that, for our clients and we wanted to take to the roof and scream it to the world. But part of the unwritten requirements of representing the brand means becoming it as well. Meaning, I didn’t get a client for anyone, the brand I am representing did.

However, such is the life as a consultant.  It is a job that requires you check your ego at the door, examine what you are selling and the demographics you are selling to, and think about what people who are buying that product want to see or read; not what YOU think you would want to see or read.

Unless, of course, you are selling marble coffee tables.

This man has a great (large) personality.

But this  man would make a horrible Social Media Strategist.

Well, unless you are selling marble coffee tables or off-kilter philosophy books.

But could he check his ego at the door and sell medical supplies to doctors via social media?

No.

And therein lies the problem with Klout statistics, celebrities and egoists of any nature.  There is no one way to appeal to a customer, because there is no such thing as one type of customer. And if you think there is one way to appeal to customers for every brand, then you are setting yourself up for a harsh realization.

Some clients are big, bold and require the ego you possess.  Some clients have audiences that require serious talk about serious issues.  And whatever client you take on, it is your job as a strategist to represent the brand, not yourself.

And it sucks sometimes, we will admit. There have been times when we brought in big customers, famous ones at that, for our clients and we wanted to take to the roof and scream it to the world. But part of the unwritten requirements of representing the brand means becoming it as well. Meaning, I didn’t get a client for anyone, the brand I am representing did.

However, such is the life as a consultant.  It is a job that requires you check your ego at the door, examine what you are selling and the demographics you are selling to, and think about what people who are buying that product want to see or read; not what YOU think you would want to see or read.

Unless, of course, you are selling marble coffee tables.

It has always been our contention that social media is just like any other marketing  strategy, in that you need a plan to succeed.

Sure, it is easy to follow a multitude of people on Twitter, or gain Facebook followers at $ 0.30 a click and add numbers to your page easily, but if they could care less about your page then what have you really accomplished?

Which is why it’s important to plan your social media strategy long before you make your first post.

Building your attack plan:

Many social media strategists contend that the first step in effective social media strategy is building an audience. And while this is an important step in social media strategy, it is not anywhere near the first.

When people tell me they are building an audience, my first question is always do you know the audience your building?

For example, we recently had a restaurant follow us on Twitter, which is normally not such a bad thing since we love to eat at Intelligent Designs Media. The only problem was the restaurant was located in Georgia.

Why, exactly, would a restaurant in Georgia follow some company in Indianapolis?

Because their first plan was build an audience.  Not an audience of specific demographics.

Your audience, no matter how big, is NOTHING without targeted demographics. This step of targeting your demographics is tedious, but it is absolutely vital in social media marketing. It involves a lot of sweat equity to determine who is interested in your product or service, what location your product or service caters to,  and what your specific audience wants to see or read.

But without this step, your campaign is nothing.

I cannot stress this enough. You will SAVE SO MUCH TIME in the long run if you research your audience, find out what interests them, build followers based on location and service demographics, and then cater to their needs and interests.

Trust me, I have been on both sides of the fence in this argument, and I cannot tell you how disheartening it is to scream your message to 5,000 disinterested followers, or how rewarding it feels to have instant feedback and discussion with 10 people that are seriously interested in what you have to say.

The fact of the matter is this:  No General sends their troops into battle and simply says “our plan is to shoot them.”  If you want to succeed you must prepare to succeed.  So plan wisely, prepare diligently, and make success an expected result in your next social media strategy.

It has always been our contention that social media is just like any other marketing  strategy, in that you need a plan to succeed.

Sure, it is easy to follow a multitude of people on Twitter, or gain Facebook followers at $ 0.30 a click and add numbers to your page easily, but if they could care less about your page then what have you really accomplished?

Which is why it’s important to plan your social media strategy long before you make your first post.

Building your attack plan:

Many social media strategists contend that the first step in effective social media strategy is building an audience. And while this is an important step in social media strategy, it is not anywhere near the first.

When people tell me they are building an audience, my first question is always do you know the audience your building?

For example, we recently had a restaurant follow us on Twitter, which is normally not such a bad thing since we love to eat at Intelligent Designs Media. The only problem was the restaurant was located in Georgia.

Why, exactly, would a restaurant in Georgia follow some company in Indianapolis?

Because their first plan was build an audience.  Not an audience of specific demographics.

Your audience, no matter how big, is NOTHING without targeted demographics. This step of targeting your demographics is tedious, but it is absolutely vital in social media marketing. It involves a lot of sweat equity to determine who is interested in your product or service, what location your product or service caters to,  and what your specific audience wants to see or read.

But without this step, your campaign is nothing.

I cannot stress this enough. You will SAVE SO MUCH TIME in the long run if you research your audience, find out what interests them, build followers based on location and service demographics, and then cater to their needs and interests.

Trust me, I have been on both sides of the fence in this argument, and I cannot tell you how disheartening it is to scream your message to 5,000 disinterested followers, or how rewarding it feels to have instant feedback and discussion with 10 people that are seriously interested in what you have to say.

The fact of the matter is this:  No General sends their troops into battle and simply says “our plan is to shoot them.”  If you want to succeed you must prepare to succeed.  So plan wisely, prepare diligently, and make success an expected result in your next social media strategy.

As of right now, according to our source who spoke to Brent,  there is no plan to “ban” food trucks in the city of  Carmel.

However, also according to the trusted source, Mr. Liggett stated  Carmel decision makers are in the beginning stages of looking  into licensing type programs with attached compliance regulations that would  address a number of possible issues. With the main potential focus being a truck’s parking proximity to local  restaurants and other potential street parking issues that deal with general public safety.

To the extent of how close they could park to eateries and which ( if any) streets they could not park on if these possible regulations were to go in motion, or at what times they could or could not park, has not been discussed.

As of right now, according to our source who spoke to Brent,  there is no plan to “ban” food trucks in the city of  Carmel.

However, also according to the trusted source, Mr. Liggett stated  Carmel decision makers are in the beginning stages of looking  into licensing type programs with attached compliance regulations that would  address a number of possible issues. With the main potential focus being a truck’s parking proximity to local  restaurants and other potential street parking issues that deal with general public safety.

To the extent of how close they could park to eateries and which ( if any) streets they could not park on if these possible regulations were to go in motion, or at what times they could or could not park, has not been discussed.

We want to keep you updated on the latest tweets between @Carter4Council and @HolyCowCupcakes that is highlighting the rumors and speculation about proposed ordinances on Food Trucks in Carmel:

In an effort to remain neutral on the situation, we will only post the continuing conversation and refrain from opinions in this article.

An hour ago (12:45 pm) :

We want to keep you updated on the latest tweets between @Carter4Council and @HolyCowCupcakes that is highlighting the rumors and speculation about proposed ordinances on Food Trucks in Carmel:

In an effort to remain neutral on the situation, we will only post the continuing conversation and refrain from opinions in this article.

An hour ago (12:45 pm) :