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Making Ideas Happen
Let's start off this session with some of our favourite quotes on ideas:
"Ideas are the beginning points of all fortunes.”
- Napoleon Hill
"The ability to convert ideas to things is the secret of outward success."
- Henry Ward Beecher
"The only people in the world who can change things are those who can sell ideas."
- Lois Wyse
"The problem is never how to get new, innovative thoughts into your mind, but how to get old ones out." - Dee Hock
"It is a lesson which all history teaches wise men, to put trust in ideas, and not in circumstances."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Successful entrepreneurs have these things in common:
Creativity - The ability to generate and evaluate ideas.
Collaboration - The ability to connect and work together with others.
Entrepreneurship - The ability to recognize opportunities to turn intangible ideas into financial and/or social value.
We live in a creative economy where ideas are currency. There has never been a more favorable environment for creative entrepreneurs with big ideas and the will to bring them into form. The time to turn your ideas into plans of action is now. Don't know where to start? Let's talk. We are in the business of helping creative entrepreneurs. As the tribal relationships we build with others of like mind are stronger, more transparent and profitable, we all come closer to that spaceship that will one day take us beyond the sky's limits.
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The Paradox of Choice
We recently were looking for a new time-sheet management software. We found one with all the bells and whistles. It even came with a conference call walk-through and 3 instructional PDFs. One being close to 200 pages! Why the hell would your software be that complicated that I would need that much information to use it? We found a competitor that allowed me to start a trial run, input clients, contacts, projects, and setup users in less than 15 minutes.
The lesson? Don’t think that more options are great, because it’s quite the opposite. If you need more convincing, check out this video link: yes this link. The rest of you read on!
You have less than four seconds to keep your reader interested. Less than three seconds before your reader gets frustrated by not easily finding what they need on your site. If you don’t get the first seven seconds right, you probably won’t have the opportunity to make your sale. Is your company's website easy to navigate? How do you know? Your online marketing company will answer this primary question for you.
If your site looks dated and obsolete, so is the image you are offering clients and customers. Ask a real designer if your site is hot or if it reminds people of HTML 1. Your sister’s boyfriend's cousin is most likely not a real designer. Talk with a professional that is going to charge you plenty of money to fix your site's flaws. It's worth paying for a consultation.
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Lessons From A Keyword Ninja
Pinpoint keyword accuracy is more effective at generating clientele than casting a large net.
Too often smaller audience generating keywords are overlooked when creating new sites or overhauling old ones. The method of casting a wide net on the web is filled with keyword flaws waiting for your company to exploit. Not to mention problems your company could be having if it's using the wide dispersal keyword method, which includes little to no visitors! Casting a wide net on the web might seem like the best method to gain oodles of traffic for your site. However, plenty of old and new players are battling over popular keywords while ignoring smaller audience generating keywords.
The same keyword playbook everyone else uses won't get you to the Superbowl.
There are thousands of keywords swimming through a widely cast net wanting to be picked off. Creating copy using these keywords effectively will see your site quickly rise to page one. Search engines devour new content. Especially new content replacing outdated articles. Our goal is to dominate lesser used keywords. Develop a loyal ground swell of people who find the specific information worthy of a social media push via their Twitter or FaceBook pages.
Precision keyword marketing is the key to getting the right group of potential customers or clients to your site.
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Don't let Google Gobble Your Money!
It's easy to get burned before benefiting from a Google pay-per-click campaign. The difference between a burned up advertising budget and effective ad campaign could be as simple as changing a letter in a targeted keyword or adding a city location. We trust Google. When setting up an online advertising campaign Google Adwords makes all kinds of keyword suggestions and pricing.
Customers believe Google is doing them this great favour.
For many Google Adwords is the one purchase that doesn't receive much second thought. After all it's Google. Ever wonder where Google makes all their money from? Misspent advertising dollars; and soon their smart phone. Google has done such a great job at reputation management marketers blame the Internet. Not themselves for making a poor purchase decision. There are plenty of success stories.
And Pixel Dreams knows how you can be one of them. Our pay-per-click campaigns are developed with precision accuracy.
We can put a keyword on downtown Toronto condos with ninja precision accuracy.
Recently we did just that and more for a real estate client. At first glance competition for real estate keywords appeared very costly. Some generic terms were between $8 - $15 per-click. Ouch. A few clicks would ruin our clients budget while not accomplishing the set out goal of generating clients not popularity. Ignoring the generic large volume terms we found 25+ perfectly suited keywords. These keywords have a much smaller search volume, but are more important to our client. Our research revealed the words we wanted to be much more expensive than Google suggested. Again people trust Google. Had we done so our ads would appear on the second or third page for search terms that receive little volume.
Not good! We needed page one returns! Only 100 searches were done in December for our special keyword phrase. Given the low volume of searches one can determine people using these search terms are very interested in that service/product. When one of those targeted people opt to click our client's ad our real estate agent has essentially purchased an opportunity to take out a potential new client for coffee. Her campaign is potentially generating 1 - 15 new client meetings per day. Imagine meeting 200 highly astute very interested customers a month for the price of buying them a coffee. You're already buying a coffee in the morning. Why not buy a potential new customer one too! In the small business service industry Google Adwords can be very effective when properly developed by a professional team.
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CaseCamp 11
CaseCamp is a freeform quarterly conference created by social media innovator, Eli Singer. According to Eli, “ The CaseCamp ‘unconference’ started off in 2006 when social media was still new media.” Essentially CaseCamp is a community-oriented space that gives professionals the opportunities to connect with one another and exchange stories from different areas of marketing, technology or social media, in the form of short 15 minute presentations.
This year’s 11th CaseCamp happened to be taking place smack dab in the middle of the International Social Media Week, and this is no coincidence as Mr. Singer has been instrumental in bringing the Social Media venture to Toronto under the guise of his digital communications agency, Entrinsic.
Keynote speakers from the event included a surprisingly social media savvy Peter Aceto, President of ING Bank Canada, Idan Cohen, founder of Boxee.tv, a new software which allows you to turn your computer into a media hub, further bridging the gap between televisions and computer monitors. Also present were Noel Biderman, president of the controversial dating site, Ashley Madison and Joshua Errett from NOW magazine who spoke on their social media strategy and selective use of Twitter. Given that NOW is somewhat political in its agenda, one can imagine the amount of commentary it gets from its readers both on their website, and on other social media channels.
To find out more information about CaseCamp, Social Media Week, and future events, please direct yourself to http://socialmediaweek.org.
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