What do you do when you purchase a new foosball table? Why, discard the old one, of course.
At Apis Design, we like our foosball. So much so, in fact, that we’ve slowly destroyed our old table over the course of many high stakes games. We recently purchased a new, much sturdier and developer-resistant table, so the old one had to go. After carefully dismantling the rods by hand and removing the table legs with fly kicks, it was time to send ‘ol Foosy six feet under. May he rest in peace alongside all the table scraps from Original Joe’s.
Another great client session took place on Tuesday, December 15, 2009. This time the focus was on Website Reporting. More specifically, we discussed ways in which website analytics can be used to make better day-to-day business decisions. Here’s the deck from the event:
Last Thursday, November 19th, 2009, Apis Design ran its first client session. This time we focused on the monitoring aspects of Social Media Marketing. We gave the participants a basic introduction to the concept of Social Media as it relates to businesses as well as identified the main things to pay attention to. A major part of the presentation was a review of the LAR Model of social media for businesses (Listen, Analyze, Respond).
Here’s a presentation that quickly goes over the main concepts discussed at the event.
As a result of this presentation we had a great opportunity to talk to some of our existing clients and address some of their concerns regarding the use of social media in their organizations. We will definitely continue running sessions like this one throughout the following months.
To learn more about upcoming sessions feel free to give us a call at (403) 210.3669. Find out more about the LAR Model and let us know if you would like us to help you create a monitoring process for your company.
Here’s the third weekly update of the team taking part in Movember annual event. Feel free to review the progress by going back to week 1 and week 2 of Movember at Apis Design.
In regular conversations with our clients I keep hearing that Social Media is a fad and they are not ready to participate. Most of the time the reason is the buzz created around the concept of social media as something extremely new. In reality, social media is the same old way of doing business but with new tools and opportunities for businesses large and small.
This post features a couple of recommended readings in plain English that should clarify (read as simplify) the use of social media by businesses.
What tools are being used the most?
Where Your Customers Are: How Facebook, Twitter and Others Break Down by Age
Facebook, the largest social media network, recently reached 300 million users worldwide — roughly the population of the United States. So do your homework before you approach your customers online. Here’s how users on the top social media sites broke down by age in August 2009. View the graphs and original post at BNET.com
What should you keep in mind when promoting social media in your company?
Eight Ways to Ruin Your Social-Media Strategy
So you’ve set up a company fan page on Facebook and you’re letting your employees fire off messages to the world via Twitter — or you’re at least thinking about it. Well, congratulations! You’re part of the social-media revolution, which can offer unparalleled access to word-of-mouth buzz among those you most want to reach: your customers, current and future.
Mistake 1: Pretend you can do without it
Mistake 2: Play down the costs
Mistake 3: Act like you own the conversation
Mistake 4: Fear empowering your employees
Mistake 5: Assume you have little to learn
Mistake 6: Take negative feedback personally
Mistake 7: Fret about return on investment
Mistake 8: Underestimate the power of seemingly small efforts
… if you’re in the trenches of an organization, my advice is to stop acting like or listening to pundits. Stop looking for the next Twitter. Why? It’s simple—because the odds are you already have plenty of projects and ideas with proven potential that you need to improve on without worrying about the next thing you’ll start. Here are a few thought-starters based on observations I’ve made about all of “yesterday’s Twitters” that need some care and feeding before you start looking for the next Twitter. Perhaps some may hit close to home for you…
Your Website
Your Blog
Your Intranet
Your Facebook, Twitter, Community Initiatives etc.
It was another successful “Basement to Boardroom” event by Digital Alberta in Calgary. This time it was Patrick Lor, co-founder of iStockPhoto and president of Fotolia.com.
The atmosphere of Seven Restolounge was awesome as always. Room was filled with over 50 people, mostly entrepreneurs. After a short intro by Rene and Larry, Patrick started with “a story of my life within 60 seconds”. These are the key points covered through the presentation:
Whether you are in California or Alberta, pitching is difficult.
Take all the opportunities you can to practice your pitch. The first time you need to pitch, you will need to be well rehearsed.
Heart, brain, wallet; pitch by winning in this specific sequence. Most of the time people do the opposite: wallet, a bit of brain, rarely heart.
Starting up a business is hard. Be prepared to limit your personal expenses within the first two years. Convince you spouse that your idea is worth limiting your personal expenses.
While starting up, feel free to consult on the side. That’s what Patrick and many others did.
Have mentors, they are important. Patrick’s mentor, Dr. Bob Schulz – Haskayne School of Business, was at the event. The importance of having a mentor was reinforced by Larry Jacques.
Starting a business is like creating a religion and converting people around you.
The first person you have to convert is your partner, co-founder. If you can convert him / her, there’s a better chance your idea takes off.
Last night’s event was definitely one of the most successful ones. Great keynote, great networking opportunity and stylish atmosphere of downtown’s Seven Restolounge.
It’s likely that I missed a few things about the event, so whoever attended, feel free to add in the comments to this post.
We’re still very excited about our new office location at 4th Street S.W. in Calgary. Check out the view of our office through Google StreetView. Today we got plaque and wanted to share with you!
In case you wanted to get one of those for your business here are some details:
Just read an article about the Bing search engine introducing new search features. The article covers a set of new functions added to the Bing interface. I want to share a few thoughts on how this impacts search users as well as online marketing professionals.
Bing search functionality to a search engine user
What got my attention is the trend of “getting things done with search“. Like many of my colleagues, I’ve been in love with Google (and I still am), and I didn’t think there was much room for innovation left on the front end of search technology. Backend algorithms, on the other hand, should always, in theory, be up for improvements.
The front end of a search is very significant. Now that users are starting to use longer queries and learn the logic of searching, the industry starts to pay attention to additional functionality to optimize the search process and get more things done with a single-query search.
The key is to make it easier for the user. Google is still good but I have a new found respect for Bing. For those of you who’s not familiar with Bing here’s a bit of background info: Bing Search Engine on Wikipedia.org
Bing search functionality to SEO professionals
So, what does this mean to the search engine optimization professionals? Do we need to learn one more thing? Do we just let Bing build a better search tool and then jump in and capitalize on it? Or do we experiment now to be the first to capitalize on these new features? Here’s a few things on my mind and I’d greatly appreciate your feedback or comments.
Content relevancy: Categorization of the content becomes extremely important as Categories become the first step in the search process.
Takeaway: we should be considerate while categorizing and tagging properties within web directories.
Results browsing and meta information: Now that users pass the first “query” / “categorization” screen they are presented with a number of browsing options. Users now have more information about a single listing. This means that they don’t need to click (to go to a site) to make a decision about your website.
Takeaway: all this information is just meta that characterizes your listing, so you have to make sure that your site / page is properly setup with meta data. Proper use of Webmaster resources such as Google Webmasters, Yahoo! Site Explorer and Bing Webmaster has never been of more importance.
Results sharing: The web is increasingly about sharing. The more you share, the “bigger of a person” you become. Bing gets that and adds sharing functionality to its search results.
Takeaway: sharing tools and plug-ins on your landing pages are important. Make sure your visitors can tell their friends about your great product.
