"Optimizing" is an interesting word. It is important to ask the question, "For what, or whom, are we optimizing?" Is the ultimate goal of your site to be Search Engine Optimized, or User Optimized? Oddly enough, most people get stuck on the SEO part of this but don't stop to think about what happens if the SEO actually works and brings great prospects to their site. Your site's success isn't measured in traffic; it is measured in conversions.

We believe that focusing on the actual user experience is the best approach to optimization. If users can get to your site easily, intuitively find the content that they are most interested in, and easily read it, then Google will be able to do the same. The reason that Google has become synonymous with the word search itself is that Google is the best at mimicking human behavior. Since Google reads through web pages and sites like we do, we people consider it to be the best search engine. Makes sense, right? 

We have seen time and time again that Google bait pages aren't great at bringing people in and keeping them. You may get a #1 ranking on Google for a certain phrase, but chances are that few people will actually search for that phrase and most of those that do click through to your Google bait page won't stick around for long once they get to your site. Why? Simple. It is because the page wasn't written for them, it was written for Google. Once they get to the page it just doesn't really seem all that interesting to them, so they bounce.

Plan your site and write your content for your prospects, make it an educational resource they can't live without, and I assure you that Google will respond in kind.

Our building was actually the first public building in Carrboro. It was built because the train tracks happened to end at this location. They were supposed to continue on a half mile into Chapel Hill, but they ran out of funding so they stopped where they happened to leave off. The original use for the rail line was as a drop-off point for the local farmers to bring their cotton and tobacco. The man that happened to own the few hundred acre farm that abutted the tracks decided to build a building (our glorious office) to hold the offloaded wares overnight. Before long, he decided to outfit the building with the area's first steam engine. This was first used to power a cotton gin and later a grist mill--both of which resided inside the building. At some point between then and now more funding was acquired and today the rail continues on that half mile to a plant that powers UNC. The line is mostly used for coal transport to that plant.

Newfangled is a very active place; things are always growing, changing, and being refined. Of all the new things going on, I am most excited about our new support model. Here's why.

It used to be that we would build a site and send it live, not knowing when our next experience with the client would be. One very important change would happen at exactly this juncture, we transitioned from our role of the trusted consultant who actively led our client to being just another implementor waiting for our client to ask us to do something.

This had predictable results. We built great sites that were embraced by entropy upon going live. After a few years our client--who may or may not remember us or even have the same point of contact in place--would feel the need to bring their site up to date and call us up (or not). This was not an ideal situation for us or our client, but this is how web development is usually done, and we didn't know any better.

Now everything is different.

When a site goes live today, all involved rest easy knowing that we will have an opportunity to speak together every single month for the purpose of making sure the site is on the right track and that the client is receiving the latest and most relevant advice as it pertains to their current and upcoming marketing objectives. This is mandated by Newfangled, and we take responsibility for making this event happen. Each and every month we do the research, schedule and manage the call, and follow up with a written summary of the call. 

What does this mean?

It means that we have figured out a way to preserve our status of trusted consultant throughout the life of the relationship. This is fantastic news for us and for our clients. We have greater impact, our clients receive better service and have better websites, and everyone is getting smarter all the time.

I believe that regularly focusing on the long term health of the sites we build instead of just the initial development of the site is one of the best moves we've ever made. I fully expect this new long-view approach to be the hallmark of many years of very successful, profitable, and enjoyable client relationships. 

How much work did you put in to the last rebuild of your website? I bet you spent months putting your site redesign above all other priorities. If not, chances are good the site isn't live yet.

What happens after that site that you worked so hard on finally does go live? We've been building sites for fourteen years, and we know exactly what you do after a site goes live.

The site goes live, everyone is happy, and you can finally get back to your "real" job. Because you just put a brand new site live and want to see how it is running you log in to your Google Analytics account each day to see what is happening--every day--no matter what.... for a couple of weeks. Before you know it, years have gone by, the site is way out of date, and you start the whole process all over. 

This is a very predictable cycle, and it is terribly out of balance. It makes no sense to put 95% of your effort into building a website and leave only 5% for the ongoing measurement and nurturing of it.

Why don't you spend more time evaluating your site's performance and making subtle refinements along the way? There are basically two reasons.

Problem #1: You suffer from a lack of access to consolidated data.
What marketing manager doesn't have accounts with LeadLander, HubSpot, Workamajig, Eloqua, SalesForce and Google Analytics? You might not have all of those accounts, but I bet you have a few. While all of these services offer valuable and unique information, we have noticed that many of our clients simply don't have the time and attention necessary to review everything on a regular (weekly) basis. Even our clients that only have a Google Analytics account don't pay consistent attention to it. 

Solution #1: We put the data you need right in front of you.
When our clients log in to NewfangledCMS 5, they are greeted with a dashboard of reports that tell them everything they need to know about their site's performance, including which pages, referring sites and search phrases drive the most conversions, which leads are most active on the site, exactly what those leads are doing on the site (second by second and session by session), and what their ranking is for specific keywords, to name a few.

This data enables our clients to get a sense of how their site is performing at a glance. Unfortunately, delivering this data only solves half the problem, and it is almost useless without our solution to the second problem. 

Problem #2: Even with access to data, you don't know what to make of it.
In order to frame this I'd like to describe two truths about the web business that are a bit at odds with each other.

1. There is no money in people. Scalable online business models don't rely on people. Clients can find, sign up for, and use these types of systems without ever having to talk to anyone. At most, there might be 4-8 hours of actual human engagement per client, who then happily pay the monthly fee forevermore. This is true of every system mentioned above. Their basic business model is to operate without assigning specific human beings to your account for anything more than a handful of hours to get you sold, setup, and trained. There is not anything wrong with these systems, but we have observed that some clients need more than this in order to get the most value from their website. 

2. Without human engagement, there is little value. You aren't an analytics expert. It isn't your job to be able to see through analytics data and read the underlying story. You need help. Permanently assigning human beings to client accounts is messy, the margins are terrible, and resource training and allocation is an endless nightmare. But, as always, humans make the difference. Just as a website is an empty shell without smart, unique, and relevant content being continually added to it, relationships that lack a human element tend to be shallow.

Solution #2: Each month we give you the story behind the data. 
We call this solution Total Managed Support. Every month the Project Management team that worked with you throughout your entire site build reviews your site's performance with regard to content strategy, SEO and user patterns. That proactive review is followed by a scheduled call with you to review our findings and talk about your marketing priorities (online and offline) for the purpose of continually refining and customizing our research to your specific need. That call is followed by a recap email.

Why are we doing this? Wouldn't it be easier to create an automated system that just checks the site against some criteria and emails a report? Yes, that would be more efficient from every angle - almost - but it doesn't solve the problem. Using this model, we are not going to sign up 1,000 clients in the next month. Newfangled's mission is to serve a small number of clients perfectly, as opposed to rolling out an automated solution for the masses.

Who can afford a $40k website and $500/mo. for a service like Total Managed Support (which also includes hosting and support)? Not everyone, that is for sure. But we are resting easy these days knowing that we've got a perfect and entirely unique solution for those who have a need and budget for this type of service.

Someone, I can't recall who, suggested a Twitter hashtag of #howconf for all Twitterers to use to post any conference-related tweets. Within an hour it seemed that everyone at the conference with an iPhone (read: everyone) and a Twitter account (almost everyone) agreed to use this tag and started tweeting away. The speed and coordination of just this effort impressed me quite a bit. The use of the hashtag is what really blew me away, though.

I've been to plenty of conferences, but this one was very different and Twitter had quite a bit to do with that. The #howconf Twitterstream was a veritable play by play of the conference. Covering every topic of interest to a conference attendee from where to eat, to what to do, to, of course, juicy session info - the #howconf stream had it all.

Twitter allowed the the attendees to get a lot more out of the conference, and it allowed me to gain very honest insight into how my sessions went. From my perspective as a speaker, this was a bit unsettling but also added to the adrenaline rush of the performance at the same time. What drives a speaker to want to deliver a great talk is the acceptance of the audience, and in this regard real-time Twitter evaluations up the anty.

Conferences exist to inform, rejuvenate and inspire the attendees, and each session should support that intent. Twitter helped to further that effort and, in my view, helped each attendee craft their own custom-tailored mini conference inside the conference.

In the month since the conference Twitter has been a great tool for keeping the speakers and attendees in touch. The conference organizers have used it to send out updates about post-conference materials and such. This is a rough guess, but I think there have been as many #howconf tweets since the conference as there were during. I expect this activity to taper off pretty quikly, but the fact remains that Twitter took an event that lasted four days and spread the feedback, follow up, and communication about and around the conference over the course of about six weeks. To me, this represents a lot of free added value to everyone involved.

So yes, I am finally now a fan of Twitter!

The willingness to write is of course the first step. Specifically, you have to write educational content that serves your prospects - it should be content they come to rely on you for. This is why focused expertise is necessary, you have to know one niche pretty well in order to create meaningful content consistently. If you are a generic full service branding firm, your content is not likely to be that distinguishable from the next full service firm's. If you, say, specialize in package design for organic foods, you probably have a ton to write about in terms of both your skill set and the vertical you serve. But what about the last point, inspiration? This is where it gets tough.

Writing for a few weeks or months about top of mind subjects comes relatively easy to many of us, but the well starts to run dry after too long, fear creeps in and before you know it you've got writer's block. 

I know how I get inspired to write content for our site, but I was curious what other writers' thoughts were. To find out, I consulted LinkedIn in the forms of a Poll and a Question. I received a mountain of great responses, thanks so much to all who contributed! Here are the poll results:


It is pretty odd that among the results reading, people's own musings, and client dialog all evened out, but the graph above supports my personal experience quite well. I think that thinking, reading and observing your conversations with clients and colleagues are the three best ways to mine your days for inspirations for creating web content. 

In response to my LinkedIn question, I received some pretty outstanding answers, here are a few:

"With a few exceptions (David Baker, David Maister, a little bit of Alan Weiss) I work hard to avoid what's being written about the subjects I trade in. I'm sure I pay a huge price for this (e.g. occasional topics of complete irrelevance, missing timely issues) but I'll take the trade-off of not being influenced by 'conventional wisdom'. The best book I've read on selling was not a book about sales. The best book I've read on brands was The Origin of Species." - Blair Enns, Win Without Pitching

"When my clients ask questions about design, marketing, internet strategy, web design, communications or any other related industry topic, I find that it's a great opportunity to explore the subject and write a relevant article or post addressing it." - Eileen Burick

"I'll let you in on a trick that works. Remember the letters M - F - T, and you'll never need to look for content.

M - What's on their mind? What are they thinking about? What concerns them?
F - What do they fear? How can you help alleviate that fear?
T - What do they treasure? How can you connect with them on something they really care about?" - Brian Hemsworth, Newman Grace

So, what inspires you to write content on your website?

What did surprise me was the group of people attending the conference. In the middle of this economically difficult time about 2,000 designers of all ages, career stages, and locals came together in Austin. Now, I am not a designer, and I was a bit intimidated by having to present to a group of very hip designers that know their craft very well. I expected a crowd that was too cool for school, and I was dead wrong. The group at this conference was clearly there to learn, learn and learn as much as they possibly could. Both of my sessions ("Print to Web Breakthrough" and "Web Strategy that Works") were attended by hundreds of smart, eager and focused people who took constant notes, asked insightful questions and seemed to preface everything with a smile. I couldn't imagine a more engaged and good natured audience.

Lastly, Austin - dear lovely Austin. Perhaps the greatest success of the conference coordinators was their choice of city, hotels and facilities. I had never been to Austin, was a bit weary of the hype, and was pretty surprised to find a city that lived up to every word of it. Austin, I miss you!

All of Blair's webinars are free for members, and $99 for non-members. Blair hosts one webinar a month, and an annual membership to his site costs $395/year. Blair is directly responsible for the sales success of quite a few firms I've worked with, in addition to our own.

You can sign up for the webinars on his website: WinWithoutPitching.com.

I am also very pleased to announce that Blair will be guest hosting Newfangled's July webinar, which will be a 30,000 ft. overview of his Win Without Pitching sales process.  You can register for this free webinar here.]]> http://www.newfangled.com/win_without_pitching_webinars Tue, 02 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0400
What is interesting, though, is what I've learned about the public's perception of our pricing. Yesterday, a potential client who fit the mold described above told me that he knew we were going to charge a premium based solely on the excellent content on our site. He visited our site, did quite a bit of reading up on our newsletters and blogs, watched a video or two, and was convinced that we were the people with whom he should speak about his web project. He was also convinced that our web site cost would be comparatively high simply because we knew a lot. This was quite surprising to me, but I realize that I make that same assumption about brands all the time.

The reality of the situation is actually quite different from what this man thought. It is true that our prices have gone up quite a bit over the years. From the outsider's perspective, it would seem that we just jacked up our prices as we became more well known as a web development firm. While those two things are true independently, they aren't directly related.

What happened was this: as our experience grew, we realized that to consistently build and support great websites required quite a bit more time and more people than we had originally guessed.

As recently as five years ago, we were a six person firm and would charge about 10k for a web development project. Today we are 18 people and charge 35k for a similar sort of project (One major caveat I have on this point is that what people consider a "standard" website has changed dramatically over the past five years). We didn't choose to triple our size because we had twelve friends who needed jobs. We needed to be this size in order to execute new projects perfectly, while simultaneously supporting all the sites we have already built. These additions increased our web site cost, but it also greatly increased our service, punctuality, quality and consistency.

It used to be that we had one or two people handling the entire project from the sale to the prototyping, project management, programming, possible design, training, testing, and support. Today, we have seven different people who have various roles within any given project. We have more people uniquely involved in every single project today than we had in the entire company five years ago. Again, this isn't because we were eager to bloat our staff and our web site cost. This is a direct reaction to our increased understanding of what it takes to build a website perfectly time and time again. Getting a job done right once is easy. Getting almost every job done right the first time takes a whole lot more. I won't go into what all that entails here since we already have plenty pf articles on these topics, which I have linked to below.

So, yes, our prices are high (although they are still a lot lower than a lot of other firms out there), but they are high because that is what it takes us to get the job done right the first time. Fortunately, companies recognize the value in that, and, even in this economy, are keeping us very busy building great sites every day.
 
Related articles on Newfangled.com:
The Cost of Good Service
Website Development Pricing
How Much (work) is a Website? A lot!
Announcing Newfangled's Project Anatomy]]> http://www.newfangled.com/web_site_cost Tue, 26 May 2009 00:00:00 -0400 The Knack" by Norm Brodsky and Bo Burlingham. I loved Burlingham's book, "Small Giants," so I thought I'd give this a try. "The Knack" is more Brodsky than Burlingham, I suspect, but I loved it just the same. The theme was basically Business 101 from the entrepreneur's perspective, and the book was chock full of great bits of wisdom. There was one point, though, that really hit me. I don't recall the exact wording, but Brodsky's point was basically that you aren't doing everything you should be as a leader unless you are constantly putting yourself in situations that make you a little uncomfortable. Brilliant!

At the time I was preparing for a speaking engagement which I knew was going to be our most important marketing event of the year, and which was only my second speaking gig ever. Was I a little uncomfortable? Yes, yes I was. Brodsky's point validated my discomfort, though, and actually instantly transformed it into fuel I could burn for motivation. My discomfort became encouragement because I new I was doing the right thing. Newfangled needed me to put myself out there; I knew I had a lot to say, and I knew that the attendees would want to hear it. I was nervous, but that was a great sign, just as not being nervous would be a warning sign.

So here's my point--and my bridge: When you put yourself in situations that you know are for the good of your firm but that maybe scare you a little bit, you are opening your mind to a massive stream of self-education.

Blair Enns, one of Newfangled's clients, friends, and mentors (sounds dangerous!), often encourages the agencies he consults to write and speak on their area of expertise regularly. He gives many great reasons for this, but one particular point he makes is that writing about your area of expertise makes you smarter. As usual, Blair is so very right.

I started hosting monthly webinars for Newfangled back in January, and I really think I've learned more from hosting these webinars, on topics I already thought I knew quite well, than I have through any other source over the past year. I am amazed each month at how much I learn simply by preparing to educate a group of people about a specific topic in a formal setting. Prior to preparing for the webinar, all the thoughts are already flying around in my mind, but once I have to tell the story, my knowledge just somehow fuses together. It is my theory that the fear of not performing well in the webinar, blog post, or speaking engagement forces my brain to get it together and bring my best thoughts together and to the forefront.

So, my advice is to get positioned and then hurl yourself into a wonderfully enriching arena of professional discomfort. You'll be glad you did.
]]> http://www.newfangled.com/learning_through_writing_and_speaking Fri, 15 May 2009 00:00:00 -0400 "Outsoucing Report: Outsoucing Why isnt Eveny One Doing it?" Great question. I have no idea, really.]]> http://www.newfangled.com/outsourcing_language_barriers Tue, 12 May 2009 00:00:00 -0400 the internet is a work in progress." Simple tune-ups aren't enough. Websites need to be in a state of continual improvement and positive growth, lest they give the impression that they are aging and irrelevant. As Newfangled has been developing sites over the past fourteen years, we have come across a few nuggets that I consider to be fundamental truths of the web, and that quote from Chris is one of them.

The expertise, service and technical capabilities for which we are hired at the project stage are all just as necessary during the post-project stage, to which refer as the relationship stage.

The Relationship Stage
Of course, there is a relationship in place during the initial project, but the relationship is just being built at that point, and the focus of that initial stage is the project, not the relationship. Once the project is done, we are left with a great website, and each other - the client and the developer. This is a very loose parallel to parents raising a child to maturity and then sending her off to school. There is the child, who is off on her own and doing great. Some of her raising stuck, some didn't, but the job isn't over. That young adult is going to need a good deal of nurturing, smart attention and, probably, a little cash now and again!

We talk about this internally at Newfangled, how putting a site live is oddly similar at times to bringing a baby into the world, but I see now that the comparison goes far beyond the going live stage. Funny how writing exposes insights.

So, this is what we've realized as an inescapable truth. Once the site goes live, our clients are going to need a lot of help from us, regardless of what anyone says or thinks. Now that we have gotten very good at building sites, we see that It is at the post-project stage that we make or break it. We are judged, ultimately, by our performance over the long haul.

This has everything to do with our transition from simply hosting to Total Managed Support. Hosting is the essential bare minimum. We've done such a good job at keeping sites up that our clients actually never really even think about hosting, but just keeping a site up is nowhere close to good enough. We need to not only keep the site running, but we must also be constantly available for any type of question that our clients might have about a new feature they'd like to add to their site, a bug that popped up,  or a question about the latest doodad or tech rumor. This is not a problem, it is actually a wonderful opportunity, and an honor.

We've done a good job of fielding these requests, and that has resulted in almost all of our clients staying with us for a very long time. But this, in addition to guaranteeing 99.9% uptime, is not enough. In order for us to be the resource our clients need us to be, we need to be proactive. Now, for our Total Managed Support clients, we are proactively reviewing their site every month and getting in touch with them to bring their attention to things that are out of the ordinary, be it good news or bad. Each month we review our clients' Google Analytics accounts and their general on-page approach to SEO and proactively set up a meeting to discuss our findings. Basically, we have their back.

Serve is a verb, and sitting back waiting for clients to call us isn't what we consider service to be. Total Managed Support is our way of doing everything we can to make sure our clients have every opportunity to keep their "web-based work in progress" in top form for the long haul.

This is much more expensive than typical hosting, but it is money well spent, and necessarily spent. Starting in January of this year, all new clients were put on our Total Managed Support model. Since we realize that clients who choose Newfangled have a very high expectation of their site's performance, this service is not optional. Total Managed Support is the foundation of the promise we make to every client  to be the expert resource they absolutely need us to be, for the entirety of what is sure to be a long and positive relationship.
]]> http://www.newfangled.com/service_in_web_development Fri, 01 May 2009 00:00:00 -0400
The same is true for websites. Because most of us use Google to find information on very specific topics, we often times find ourselves on web pages that are buried deep inside of websites we've never visited. If you are in charge of your firm's website, you need to be very cognizant of the fact that most people visiting your site might never actually see your home page. If you've got an effective content strategy in place, there are hundreds, maybe even thousands of pages on your site that Google is more interested in than your homepage, and Google is going to be directing people to those pages far more than your home page.

What does this mean? Well, as Eric wrote a few years ago, it means that every page is your home page. I suggest that you go through your site today, and analyze how usable each page is based on its own merits. Look at each page as if it were the only gateway into your site.

If you landed on one of your site's deepest pages via a Google search, would your company's mission statement be evident? Would you know what kinds of information are available throughout the rest of the site? Would you be able to act on a clear and compelling call to action from that page? Would you instantly develop a sense of place, feel confortable where you are, and be encouraged to delve deeper into the site?

This type of thing doesn't happen by accident. The only way new visitors can develop an intuitive and comfortable sense of where they are on your site is through a very well constructed Information Architecture. Wikipedia defines Information Architecture as "the art and science of organizing and labeling web sites, intranets, online communities, and software to support findability and usability." I think that sums it up quite nicely. Now, the science of actually creating a great IA is a much deeper topic than I can cover in this post, but we've got some great resources elsewhere on the site.

The benefit of creating a site that rolls out the red carpet on every page is that your visitors will evolve from one time viewers who read a paragraph and take off, to engaged potential buyers whose interest has been piqued. By treating each page as your home page and making sure that you have simple, thorough, and consistent navigation systems in place, you will foster longer initial sessions, more frequent return sessions, and more conversions on your calls to action.]]> http://www.newfangled.com/information_architecture_usability Fri, 27 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0400
Mark Greco, a consultant at HubSpot, told me a while back that "if the only call to action on your site is your contact form, you're missing the boat." We were guilty of this at the time, as are most website owners. As marketers, our job is to make it very easy for conversions to happen on our site. This means creating expert content, and making sure it is easily indexed by Google, but it also means making it easy for your visitors to choose to get closer to you, to learn more about you, to hear from you regularly.

Calls to action must be clear and present
There should be calls on almost all of your pages, and they need to be clearly identifiable. You'll see an example of this in the right sidebar of this page.

Calls to action must be compelling
These calls have to build on the momentum you've created. The traffic is on your site for some reason, look to the causes to understand what more people would probably want form you. In our case, people come to us for our content, so we use two of our three calls to action to invite them to have access to even more content, and to receive our content in an automated way, through email or RSS.

Calls to action must be easy to say yes to
Don't make your audience jump through hurdles to act on your calls. Make them quick and easy to act on.

Below are some examples of CTA we've used, and what our thought patterns are around them.

• Sign Up: Our Newsletter
  
• Sign up to receive (in any format you prefer) our totally relevant, well written, easy to understand, and free info
• Benefit to the client: Necessary education
• What you're really saying:  "Allow us to remind you, as often as you'd like, that we exist exclusively to serve firms just like yours"

• Register: Our Webinars
  
• Register for the next webinar about that thing you've been meaning to do but haven't yet gotten around to
• Benefit: Motivation, inspiration, necessary education,
• What you're really saying: "Allow us to sell you something in an extraordinarily passive way by simply demonstrating our expertise in a live format"

• Request: Web Meeting
  
• Benefit to the client: An opportunity to speak with you, the expert, one on one
• What you're really saying:  "Let us have a call with you to see if we might be a fit"

In this age of the Google-dominated web, everyone researches everything before they make a purchase. Be it a microwave, a camera, a car, or a house, you can bet that people are going to develop their opinions first and foremost from what they learn through the searches they perform on the product. Forget about the TV, print, radio, and billboard ads. The only thing you can do, as a marketer, to influence people's purchasing decisions is to get your message high up on Google's organic search rankings.

Assuming you're marketing a service, your job as a marketer is to convey your expertise as accurately, thoroughly, and regularly as possible to Google, so that Google may refer the specific masses to you. Google is in the business of organizing the world's content, and the best way to woo them is by putting lots of specific expert content on your website. Let's look at an example.

Say you own a high-end women's fashion store in one of the country's larger cities. You're in business, and doing exceptionally well, for two reasons: you've got a great eye, and you know how to create a meaningful and personal shopping experience that your clients can't get anywhere else. Because of these things, and probably a few other factors, you happen to have exclusive relationships with clothing and jewelry designers from around the world. Since you're in a big city, you're able to do well with local business accounting for 90% of your sales. But what if that city falls on hard times? Tying your fate to a specific locale is never a good plan if it can be helped, and it can almost always be helped. 

In this case, how many women around the world would be thrilled to have you show up at their door, with a few outfits in tow, that they could never get if they didn't have a relationship with you? In this economy, who knows, but we can be sure that there are far more around the globe, or even just across the country, than there are in any one city. 

If you're doing this well, you probably get great press, and that is wonderful; it establishes notoriety and credibility. What great press doesn't do, however, is give your "clients-to-be" a sense of what it might be like to work with you.

In this case, a perfect strategy would be a blogging strategy. Blog from the big fashion events around the world about what you're seeing and what your thoughts are. Blog about your (anonymous) client interactions, past and present; blog about the service moments that have defined your career and success; blog about what you love about what you do, because that is why you're good at it. Blog blog blog blog blog. Blog for 30 minutes, 5 days a week, and you are going to have an impressive wealth of content on your site before too long. Have key members of your firm participate as well.

The web is the dominant marketing medium for four reasons. A web marketing investment is quicker, cheaper, far more measurable, and much, much longer lasting than any other marketing investment one can make. This particular point on blogging highlights this last benefit. Your expert blog content will never stop working for you. Fashion changes daily. Service, intelligence, and insight shine on forever, and your great content detailing these aspects of your business will serve as an effective, passive, sales tool that works for you every moment of every day and never expires.

Convey the subtleties of your expertise to Google. Let the select corner of the world you care about know that you are here to serve them. Let Google tell them. That's who they're asking anyway.

One nice thing about the facebook and LinkedIn ads is that they let you define the demographic to whom the ads are displayed. I don't know if it is the design of facebook, the eyeballs, superior technology, or what, but they have got a great and very affordable thing going.

"The third thing that principals struggle with is how to position their firm. The role of marketing is one of the most misunderstood aspects of management. Most firms proudly proclaim that “we don’t need to market” as if marketing is for “little people” without any other option. Smart people market all the time, no matter how busy they are. That’s because marketing has very little to do with keeping busy. It has more to do with what kind of business you have than how much business you have. Stated differently, marketing is about control, not growth. Marketing consistently is the most important thing you can do at your firm. The public reason we don’t do it is because we are too busy. But the real reasons we don’t market are because we aren’t confident. Because we aren’t focused. And because it forces positioning."

David is basically making two points here. One, you need to market no matter what, and two, you can't even start to market unless you are acutely positioned in the marketplace. Newfangled has both aced and failed this one. We do have a very specific and real position, which is rare and great. I can confidently say that "Newfangled partners with mid-sized agencies to help them with web development projects for their clients." We can say it so confidently that we choose to say it--in rather large type--on our home page. In a recent conversation with David it came to light that he actually thought our market was to build sites for the agencies themselves, which we do, but it is not our focus. So, clearly we can do a better job of being more overt with our positioning. In general, though, we do a great job of this, and it does make very specific marketing possible.

If our positioning was something as general as "web development," I'd have no place to start marketing. Would I just start calling every company in the country asking if they wanted a web site? Well... we kind of tried that long ago, and yeah, that doesn't work. What if we chose "web development in North Carolina and Rhode Island?" Well, that is a little better, maybe, but geographic positioning isn't actually positioning at all--at least not for our (or your) type of business. But, since our positioning is very focused on mid-size agencies, I can start today by simply downloading a filtered list of agencies from AdWeek. Within moments, and for pretty short money, I can have a list of a few thousand firms across the country that contains the few agencies that not only are perfect fits for us, but are also dying to hear from us and just don't know that we exist yet. This sounds fanciful perhaps, but we've experienced exactly this.

So, how have we failed? Well, we've done the hard part and not the easy (but kind of dull and maybe a little painful) part. We committed to positioning years ago, but we missed the boat on constant marketing. For us, at this point, that really means a series of cold calling, emailing, and mailing. Thanks to positioning, even this isn't as bad as it sounds. Most of the firms I call are actually at least interested in what we do and get why we're doing it. That helps a lot, and it is a whole different bag than calling up Acme Toothbrush and asking, "So, ya want a website?"

There have been times when both Eric and I have marketed voraciously, but that constant, slow drip of marketing is where we've really missed the mark. True to David's points on the matter, I've actually caught myself boasting about how we haven't done any marketing in years, and we're busier than ever! David's point about marketing in good times and bad is crucial--and difficult. It is exactly like the way asking for help is hard to do when you don't need that help yet. I think men might have particular difficulties with this, but, thankfully, GPS devices have helped to bail us out of that obvious evolutionary flaw.

I'd like to end this post with a perfect example of the benefits of a sharp position in the marketplace. I was recently asked to present to a small group of mid-size agencies in Chicago. In the room were maybe 30 people from twelve different firms, at least 10 of which were an absolute perfect fit for us. Mike Maddock, when inviting me to participate in the one day technology summit, actually asked me to make a point of detailing how we work with agencies during my presentation. It was basically an opportunity for me to have a detailed sales meeting with a captive audience of a dozen or so of my best prospects in the country! It was an honor to be invited, and the experience was exhilarating, a little scary, and without a doubt the most influential marketing in which Newfangled has ever taken part. The audience was perfect. They were engaged, attentive, and full of insightful questions. They also had a true believer in their ranks, the illustrious Mark Shipley, who was actually responsible for putting a Newfangled bug in Mike's ear.

For the past few months, even though business has actually been great, I've been steadily marketing, and it feels really good. I know that I've got that base covered and when hard times hit I'll know that I've at least been preparing for them for quite some time.

So, what grade would you give yourself for marketing and positioning--in good times and bad?

"The second thing that principals struggle with is proper systems to be profitable."

Once again, I can relate. While we've been consistently profitable for quite a few years now, we know we've been missing the mark with hitting what Baker would refer to as our "utilization" goal. We've had huge difficulties with this, and, while there are many examples, the most telling example of our growth in this area is tracking time.

Starting about eight years ago, Eric tried to get us to really embrace personal time keeping. We tried many options, including building our own very complex job/time management system. Nothing, including that system sadly, stuck.

It was too much of a fight to hound people each day about entering their time from the past week (or month?): "Have you done your timesheets yet today?" Ugh. This was no fun--for anyone. So, we gave up. We thought, "It is just not possible for this company to keep track of their time."  WRONG!

When we were a six person firm, not having a timekeeping system wasn't too big of a deal because we knew what everyone was working on, and it wasn't too hard to guess which projects weren't profitable. At eighteen people strong, however, the luxury of guessing is long gone. We need accurate, detailed, and constant measurement. We are now celebrating a full year of timesheets. First, our system was a series of Google Doc spreadsheets--about as low tech as it gets. This month, we just switched over to a very simple, easy to use system that our Engineering Department built. While the past year was difficult, and there was a lot of griping (from me included, at times), we now have a system, and it is working great.

I tend to be a little transparent with my blogs here, but I don't think sharing the details of our utilization would be appropriate. What I can say, though, is that through our timekeeping efforts over the past year, we have identified and plugged massive holes in our business. When I say massive, please, just take my word for it. 

A timekeeping system that is strictly adhered to is the first step in measuring a firm's profitability. If you aren't profitable, and significantly so, you're not going to be able to have the freedom to treat your clients and employees as you need to in order to retain the best. Strong profitability leads to better decision making, better offerings, a stronger client and employee base, and further profitability. It all starts with timekeeping.

Chris, being the diligent guy he is, checked his feeds yesterday morning and found that one of our clients, Jill Whalen of HighRankings.com, found a bug on her site and mentioned it in a Twitter tweet, and she has Twitter and Facebook fused. Now, Jill is one networked lady, so she basically told thousands of people that her site had a bug before we even knew about it. Fortunately, Chris was among those thousands. He promptly issued an APB to our developers, and within two hours - early on a Sunday - the bug was fixed, and we let Jill know via a comment on her Facebook page.

Jill was very appreciative (she wasn't even planning on telling us about the bug until this morning), and we were able to take what could have been a disastrous PR situation and turn it into quite a positive one - all thanks to social media.

Mark Shipley, who has seriously gotten drunk on some Newfangled Kool-Aid as of late (check out this masterful post), asked if we could send him a checklist that he could run through to make sure his blog posts are getting the visibility they should. In taking his advice, I've decided to write a piece about this instead of just emailing him the skinny.Thanks to Chris Butler for help on some of these details.

The post should:

• Be content-rich and support your company's mission
  
• Be between 300 and 500 words (most of the time)
  
• Have a carefully considered meta space title, page title and URL which should all revolved around the central "thesis statement" of the post.
  

Once the post is written you should:

• Post it to Digg, as long as it represents new and unique thought. Be forewarned, the categories they make you choose from are quite limiting.
  
• StumbleUpon it.
• Twitter it.
• Finally, link back to it as you are posting comments to other's posts and answering LinkedIn questions.

What Do You Most Value In Employees/Colleagues?

Humor, loyalty, eagerness and patience. If someone has a "dark cloud" over their head, it brings the entire office down.

Yup, that nails it!

We were fairly sure that we were going to have a hard time staffing programmers. We thought we'd have difficulty finding good ones and training them quickly enough to deal with our clients' increasing demands.  While there have been a few bumps along that road, we've been blessed with a great programming crew of four guys, Jim and Steve from the Providence office and George and Nolan here in the Carrboro office. Supporting them, we have Mike and Dave, who make sure that the programming role is more efficient and enjoyable as time goes on.

These days, we're selling more work than ever, and it is not uncommon to have one or more of the four programmers asking us what they can do with their "free" time. This is a good thing.

No, programmer staffing was not the pain spot we targeted it to be. We got sucker punched by the role of the project manager.

Three years ago, I managed every project Newfangled had. As we started to grow, it became clear that I could not simultaneously do this while also handling all the sales and the general running of the company. So, the age of the project manager began, and it really has been in flux up until this quarter... phew! It has been an intense ride. 

I believe that we've figured out how to staff and grow our PM staff. This might sound elementary to a lot of people in the marketing industry, but our reality is a little different from the standard agency model. The main reason is that we have hundreds of clients, any number of whom might have a simple or complex need any day. A Newfangled PM has to be well versed in all of our legacy clients' websites, in addition to managing new projects.

I'll spare you the history of all of our attempts at growing this group and cut to the success. What we've finally figured out is that it is about the team. Each PM now has a dedicated assistant, a PMA, if you will. The PM role is responsible for managing new projects and (coming in 2009) proactively reviewing our legacy sites, and helping clients improve the sites we've built for them over the years. The PMA role supports the PM in the new project, mostly through doing the prototyping work, and is responsible for managing all of the miscellaneous client requests that come in each day. This last part is important. It was these requests (which varied greatly in count from week to week) that would make our PM's time unmanageable. Now, the PMA role adds an extra layer of support and accountability that the project managers need in order to truly be the guiding, creative and available resources our clients need them to be.

Despite knowing that we tried our absolute best, I feel badly it took us this long to get it right. Fortunately, we have a lot of very patient and wonderful clients who are going to have their socks knocked off now that we've finally figured this out.

Roosevelt, in his first fireside chat, made it clear that the confidence of the American people was the key factor in turning around the Depression. He was right, and that was what eventually did it.

I am ready to get beyond this, let's start paying attention to our business and stop being transfixed by the maniacal whims of our frienemies on Wall St.

Business is going to happen. Capitalism is going to happen, whether or not our government tries to control it.

We know that you, our advertising agency partners, are basically being begged (perhaps subtly) by your clients to take them to the next level on the web - to lead them - and we're here to help you do it. Let's review their information architecture, let's develop a content strategy and get a vibrant, and realistic SEO campaign in place.

Read Chris Butler's blog. Read every newsletter we've written over the past year. And don't take our word for it, read what Pete Caputa is saying about how to market in tough times. Read the results of Sapient's survey on what clients want form their agencies.

This doesn't have to be a disaster. We're actually doing far better than ever, and we want to help you do the same - and we can.

During one of the sessions, David was talking about specialization, and how you need to be an expert in a very unique niche. For example, being a "marketing" expert is not enough, and it is sort of a fallacy. Being an expert at marketing equestrian products to mid sized farms in North America, now THAT is a specialization. David asked an open question to the audience, "What are some examples of specific knowledge that you have as a result of being an expert in your field"? I'm not particularly afraid to speak up in a crowd of people, so I raised my hand.

Newfangled specializes in working with agencies on their and their client's websites. I cited the example that we have learned over the years that when agencies don't let us have direct access to their clients, the communication breaks down and the project doesn't go well. This was the third response to David's question. After my somewhat appropriate, but not spot on response, he looked a little flustered. Eric then chimed in and said something like "Newfangled has learned that without proper prototyping, communication about a web development project is flawed".

UGH! Humiliation! Of course, It's the PROTOTYPING, stupid! I knew that. I could have said that, but no, my moment in the sun was squandered on explaining some low level detail that didn't really engage anyone, and Eric triumphed by stating our old party line. But man, it is a really good line. It is so tightly integrated into what we do, it is so central to our universe, that I forget that most web projects managed by other firms never even see an interactive, web-based prototype. I spend hours ever day telling our "clients to be" (to borrow a phrase from Blair Enns) about how prototyping is the bedrock of Newfangled, and it really is. Sure, we have a great CMS, we are hyper devoted to great and conscientious customer service, we have a lot of smart people that build and design excellent websites every day, but the prototyping is our real differentiator. It is at that stage, which for us is the very first stage, that we truly shine as brightly as we can as web developers.

The main reason for this is freedom. Prototyping gives us and our clients the freedom to suggest anything, and try everything. Because the prototype tool is based on our CMS, it has no visual design elements (hence the Grayscreen) and we are just basically mocking up functionality without actually programming it out, we can have changes made to the prototype within hours of a brainstorming session. That kind of quick turnaround fosters a lot of brainstorming - and we love it. Imagine that, entering a web project with every possible option available to you. It should sound wonderful and very scary, which brings me to my second wonderful attribute of prototyping - consultation.

Again, prototyping is the very first stage of the project, and it is also the stage that has the most Newfangled eyes on it. On average, seven different people here, including most all senior staff, take part in the prototyping process. I'm not much for numbers like this, but that is the equivalent of over 60 years of 7 different and unique perspectives on web development! The Grayscreen Prototyping stage is our opportunity to take advantage of our collective experience and use it (via internal debates, sometimes lots of them) to basically take the most educated guess possible as to what your site should be doing.

Once the prototype is done what we have is analogous to the blueprint of a house - it is a very detailed, mutually agreed upon set of plans. This seemingly needless and time consuming phase that many other developers plain skip actually ends up accelerating the overall time line. That is because the design, programming and copywriting can all take place simultaneously after the prototype is done, because everyone is playing from the same rulebook.

Not taking our own best advice, we strayed from prototyping a few years back on some projects that were so simple, we thought they didn't need it... that will NEVER happen again. Prototyping is here to stay, and I believe it is the most essential part of Newfangled. 

As a company whose foundational philosophy is to make complex things simple, Newfangled salutes commoncraft for absolutely nailing it! 

How did I hear about commoncraft you ask? Naturally, I found it through my Google Reader feed for Smashing Magazine. 

Yeah, me neither - here are some definitions to help us... 

Here we have a few brief, simple and generalized definitions of some populare web2.0 tools. Each of these tools probably do about 1,000 more things than I mention here, but my interest is to give you the gist of it. If there is anything that I've gotten plain wrong, comment and tell me about it!

Permalink: This is a URL that sticks with blog entries even after they move into the archives from the blog's home page.

Digg: Digg is basically a popularity index. Users can submit online content which is then ranked by the Digg community. The most popular content bubbles to the top of the list.

Diigo: Diigo is a social annotation tool. Users can share comments with each other about web pages by tagging them with the online equivalent of a sticky note.

Furl: Furl is a lot like del.icio.us, except not nearly as used. So, I'm going to stick with del.icio.us.

del.icio.us: is the dominant social bookmarking site. The main value of it is that people can see what you've bookmarked and tagged. As most of the best of these tools, it is all about sharing.

Technorati: Technorati is a blog indexing tool. They are continually scouring the "live web", organizing blogs and ranking them by their popularity. You can also use it to keep track of blogs, like you would do with Google Reader.

Stumble Upon: is a site that allows you to post your favorite web pages, blogs, videos and photos. You can also create a profile and gather fans, but the point of it is to organize the parts of the web you like most.  

reddit: well, they say it best: "reddit is a source for what's new and popular online. reddit learns what you like as you vote on existing links or submit your own!"

Google Reader, to me, makes web2.0 possible for me. When hearing about people that kept up with many tens of blogs that each had tens of posts a day, I always wondered - how do they find this stuff? There are other questions that pop up after that one is answered (of which you'll see a few below), but for me, finding it was the first mystery.

I started with seeing what my peers were doing. Google Reader let's you not only easily peruse the blogs you want to keep up with, it lets you see what blogs your friends are reading and which ones they have specifically designated as share-worthy. Starting with Chris and Eric's blogs, I quickly spidered off and found others that I am interested in. Here is an excerpt from a Google chat between Chris and me last night:

So, I started to get the flavor of living online. Everything I did during the day was there. Our project management software, timesheet system, business docs and all the personal apps I covered in my last post were online. This, along with creating a basic Facebook profile, made me feel like I was a member of the online community.

My next realization was that I need to become a useful and responsible member of the community, not just a waste of space. This was my first big hurdle. I felt more pressure and confusion at this stage than at any other, mostly because I didn't know how to take the next step and there was WAY too much out there competing for my time and attention.

I was in this mouse trap for a few months, basically ignoring the issue altogether. My internal nagging didn't cease, though, and I had to do something. I decided to ask Chris Butler, and he set me straight.

The bedrock of being a good member of the online community is blogging. To blog well, you need to read blogs - and you need to have a focus. That last part is what finally gave me traction. I knew that someone in my position needs to be an active member of the online community and I knew  that I was basically a novice. I discovered that my angle on blogging would be to document my conversion from being a holed-up, disconnected personal computer user to a (hopefully) strong member of the online community.

I expect that this particular angle will fade and that I'll transition to a different voice at some point, but for now it inspires me and has allowed me to get started, which is all I can ask for. 

I liked having all my email, contacts and calendar items on my machine. When I was a PC guy and then a Mac lover, I had my mail programs tweaked out just so, with different folders for each agency we work with and each client as a sub folder under each agency - of course all managed and sorted automatically through my hundreds of inbox rules I had setup. It was not uncommon for me, at the time, to receive hundreds of legitimate emails each day. At the last count, I had 60,000 emails, and the were each nestled in a nice, tidy and comfortable universe.

But, every once in a while, the software would act funny. Unread and unseen emails would get hidden in a folder automatically (potential disaster!), the mail app would choke unexpectedly. I suspect it was grumbling under the sheer volume of email I had. I find that each second counts during my work day. Email is the lifeblood of my communication, and communication is my job, so I get a little shakey when my email app isn't perfect.

OK, you get the point. I liked Mac Mail, the address book, iCal and iChat (essential for work communications here at NWF) - a lot. I don't know if it was the pressure from Newfangleders, fear of Mail crashing for good or what, but in November I just did it. I signed my electronic life over to Google. I used an auto forward rule in Mail to move all 60k emails to Gmail, and a weekend of my computer crunching on it I was in there. It took only a few seconds to move my contacts into Gmail and all of my events, past, present and future, into Google Calendar.

I immediately realized that this was something I should have done long ago. EVERYTHING became easier. No more folders, no more rules, no anything - except for that all-powerful search bar that Google is so famous for. Any email address, name, project, random word, file name, etc. that I wanted to find I could, in less than a second.

I am a blackberry user ("user" is a very appropriate term), and that is where Google really won me over. The synchronization between Gmail and Google Calendar and my phone was amazing. I felt as if I just got the latest and greatest phone, even though it was my 3 year old blackberry.

Despite that, I know I need to get my feet wet, but how?

Fortunately, I am daily in the presence of Eric Holter and Chris Butler. Eric and Chris have embraced the new web movement (I just can't call it that other name...) fully, and they are very free with their information, as any fans of their blogs know.

There are only about 15 of us that get to spend 8-10 hours with Eric and Chris 5 days a week, though. So, I would like to make it my mission to document my coming of age in hopes that this will provide a path for others to use on their own daring forays into the deeper web universe.

Exactly one week ago my wife and I were killing time in room 5W20 of the UNC Women's Hospital. I guess she was doing a little more than simply passing time since, by this time (2:40 p.m.), she had already been in rather heavy labor for almost two hours. I know now more than ever, she is a brave, fearless and apparently incredibly pain tolerant woman, and she was making this labor thing look pretty easy. So easy, in fact, that by around 8 p.m., after she had been in labor of some sort or other for 10 hours, her sister and I thought it perfectly appropriate to raise the classic debate. "So, Stones or Beatles?" one of us instigated (it doesn't matter which of us started it, once this fiery gauntlet of rock is tossed into the ring and the parties realize that they are adversaries on the topic things get pretty intense immediately).]]> http://www.newfangled.com/stones_or_beatles Fri, 10 Aug 2007 00:00:00 -0400 http://www.newfangled.com/what_newfangled_eats Thu, 16 Nov 2006 00:00:00 -0500