Erich Stauffer

Blog

  • Trends

    We’re only 3 weeks into 2012 and we’re already seeing these 7 Marketing Trends of 2012:

    1. Noise Reduction – Being more mindful of what we share to reduce the numbness oversharing can create
    2. Commitment – “Commit” is a word you’ll hear a lot more going forward and you’ll be expected to do so
    3. High Value Content – This ties into Noise Reduction and Content Marketing, but means that what you create must have value
    4. Humanization – This is not ‘corporations are people’, but a realization that corporations are not monolithic, but run by people
    5. Case Studies – Showing how your company or product overcame obstacles and solved a problem is both High Value Content and Humanization
    6. Stories – Storytelling has been around a long time, but the art of weaving it into everything from your About page to your office decor is a new trend
    7. Do Something Great – Similar to High Value Content and a cousin to Committment, this is a push to use 2012 as a moment to make something great

    Noise Reduction – I wrote about noise last week, but now that Social Media and Internet access has become somewhat ubiquitous a new rule has emerged: As the ease of sharing increases, the value of sharing decreases. Let’s call this Stauffer’s Law. You probably are already aware of this law even if you didn’t know what to call it because the people who post the most, often get read the least or blocked completely. It’s not enough to be creating great content, you also have to temper when you share it. This applies to your personal Facebook wall/newsfeed/timeline, your Twitter feed, or your company newsletter. Decrease what you share and increase the value of what you are sharing to keep your content from being filtered out like noise.

    Commitment – Have you noticed feelings of drift? People saying they feel lost? Do you know people who can’t make up their mind or make a decision about what to do next? We hate it when politicians waffle back and forth, but most people and companies are no different. HP dropped computers, picked them back up again, and changed CEOs in 2011. 2012 will be looking for HP to commit to a goal – long term dedication to a cause beyond the next quarter’s estimates. And 2012 wants to see you commit to making something work, not looking for excuses for why it failed. This doesn’t mean you can’t pivot, but you must commit to something.

    High Value Content – I recently wrote about writing what matters which talked about writing about solutions for your customer’s problems versus writing about your products. Very few companies can make a product that people care enough to buy for the products sake – even companies like Apple originally had to solve a customer’s problem by allowing them to carry all of their songs in their pocket. We used to call this type of writing a “white paper” and in 2011 we may have called it “content marketing”, but in 2012 it’s not enough to write content, you have to write what matters to people. Be impactful or risk irrelevance.

    Humanization – Unless you’re using a computer to write your content, you need to show your human-ness. Humans make mistakes. Even the mistakes computers make are actually mistakes made by the humans who programmed them. In 2012 people are going to be looking to do business with other people like them – a.k.a. humans who have made similar mistakes. If 2011 was about being transparent about who you were, 2012 is taking that a step further by admitting your mistake and what you’ve done or are going to do to fix it.

    Case Studies – Showing the customer how you’ve solved a problem like theirs in the past is a great way to “sell the hole”. It’s also a great way to show your human-ness by admitting your mistakes and how you overcame them. No one expects you to be perfect and those who think they are risk losing business. People like to root for the underdog and if you sell yourself in that light, it can help. There is a whole other piece of case studies that include customer interviews and solution interviews, which is a great way to write what matters, but that’s a separate topic for another day.

    Stories – If you’ve ever had someone explain what a song means to you, you know the power of a story. Every time you hear that song you’ll remember what that person said and think of that moment. I’ve heard advice on how to tell a great story like, “Make the listener the hero”, but this is harder than it sounds. I’ve been trying to do it for the last 6 months. What I’ve found is that by practicing telling stories in non-marketing settings like blogs and emails to friends and family, you can practice the storytelling arts so that when you do pitch to a client, you can turn their use of your product into a story that makes them the hero in 2012.

    Do Something Great – It’s never been easier to start something than it is right now. You have more resources at your fingertips than ever before. So why is it that the best we came up with in 2011 was a new timeline for Facebook and a new way to stream music (Spotify)? Sure, there are people in France trying to get fusion to work and others trying to find the Higgs Boson particle. And Bill Gates is both trying to eradicate malaria and create ways to reduce nuclear waste by reusing it in a new type of reactor in China, but what about the rest of us? Some would argue that the low-hanging fruit is already picked. We can’t just sit down and invent a paperclip before our benefactor comes back from lunch, but there are still big problems to solve – like how to replace Middle-Eastern oil, how to improve energy distribution and creation, how to standardize and distribute medical records, and of course, flying cars.

    In searching for a way to close this article, I ran across this quote from Catchers in the Rye:

    “Among other things, you’ll find that you’re not the first person who was ever confused and frightened and even sickened by human behavior. You’re by no means alone on that score, you’ll be excited and stimulated to know. Many, many men have been just as troubled morally and spiritually as you are right now. Happily, some of them kept records of their troubles. You’ll learn from them – if you want to. Just as someday, if you have something to offer, someone will learn something from you. It’s a beautiful reciprocal arrangement. And it isn’t education. It’s history. It’s poetry.”
    – J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

  • Service Scheduling Online Software

    WordPress Scheduling and Online Estimators

    Our Noblesville carpet cleaning client wanted a way to keep track of appointments and allow clients to schedule and possibly even pay on his website. His site runs on WordPress so we looked into a WordPress plugin for a calendar that we’ve used before successfully, however it has to be updated manually and doesn’t interact with other estimator scripts or even with Google Calendar. The All-in-One Event Calendar allows you to import a Google Calendar, but it didn’t meet all of his needs. The Appointy Scheduler said that it can 2-way sync with Google Calendar (meaning that if someone makes an appointment online, it can sync to your phone); allows someone to book an appointment; will send them an SMS alert prior to the appointment; and allows you to accept pre-payments. That sounded like what he was looking for, but it didn’t have an estimator. The WebReserv plugin and Booking Bug are other options similar to the Appointy Scheduler.

    When we looked into a WordPress price estimator we only found the Thickthumb Price Calc, but it’s not very built out. To get a custom estimator script built, it meant hiring a programmer to make it for him as that’s not something we do, but we expected to pay around $200 for this based on what we saw at Freelancer. However, there is a estimator script that can be bought for $30 and customized here. Knowing all of this, it makes the WordPress Calculator plugin look quite reasonable and maybe the best bet.

    Other Online Service Scheduling Software

    The simple ability to schedule online is a something you can get for free from  Schedulicity. CEO, Jerry Nettuno, said “We learned it’s not really the calendar. Anybody can have an online calendar. For a service-based business, the relationship with customers is much different than in other types of businesses. Giving them the tools to manage that relationship is where things get interesting.”

    Marc Woodward, vice president of marketing for GenBook, concurs. “The sophistication of the average small business user demands a rich feature base,” he says. For example, “It has to be real-time. Can a customer schedule an appointment and get instant confirmation? They don’t want to wait to hear back or be presented with three choices. We’ve heard anecdotes of customers standing in front of the salon, wondering, ‘Can I get my hair cut now? Can I get a massage now?’”

    In fact, Melody McCloskey, CEO of StyleSeat, says her service for beauty and wellness professionals is “a platform for people to run their entire business on, from maintaining a website to building word of mouth and retaining clients.”

    For web design service and WordPress setup and configuration in the Indianapolis area, consider Erich Stauffer Web Design and Technology Consulting where we make the web work better for you.

  • New Logo Defines What is a Water Shawl

    You may or may not have noticed that we updated our logo recently. This is partly because Erich Stauffer has never had a logo other than his name, which was done with both Telablue and Watershawl. But the primary reason for changing the logo was in order to define, “What is a water shawl?”

    I often get asked, “What is a water shawl?” It could mean ‘a water-filled shawl you wear around your head’ or it might not mean anything at all. It actually started as an Internet ‘handle’ or username for Erich Stauffer that he named after his stay at “Waters Hall” at Kentucky Christian University. But people never really seemed to like that truth of that answer so we set out to create a new story for the name and this is what we discovered. It also means a type of Pashmina shawl.

    The water shawl that surrounds us all

    If you define a water shawl as a ‘water-filled shawl that you wear around your head’ then some poetic license could be taken to both move that “shawl” inside our body and outside of our earth. There are actually two water ‘shawls’ that surround each and every one of us. There is the fluid that surrounds our brains that protects us from shogs and there is the water that surrounds the earth that provides us with rain (why do they hate you?).

    How the logo portrays a water shawl

    The blue ring symbolizes the water surrounding the inside of the circle where your mind might see a head, face, or the earth. The bottom section is cut to represent the slope of a persons shoulders and sometimes looks like a a person smiling, which we liked. We like to think of our clients being inside that circle and being happy with us.

    Some design trouble we ran into and how we overcame it

    I liked that I was able to keep the colors consistent with the web site theme, but I ran into trouble with the choice of color for the bottom part of the ring. It was originally white, but when placed on a white background, it didn’t have the effect I wanted. I experimented with adding an outline, but settled on changing the bottom color to gray when on a light background and back to white when on a dark background. We think this works well, but I look forward to your feedback.

  • History of Indianapolis Web Design

    Erich Stauffer originally began doing web design in Indianapolis under the name Telablue back in 2007, but in 2011 we merged the brands. Recently, while working on our new Industries pages, we ran across some snap shots of earlier Telablue designs that are near and dear to our heart that we wanted to share.

    A lot has changed over the years, but one thing remains the same: we still want our clients to be happy.

  • Noise

    Recently one of my board members commented on the sheer volume of posts I was making on Twitter. He recommended I review what Michael Hyatt said about how to post frequently without flooding your followers, “I use Buffer to spread these throughout the day, so I don’t overwhelm my followers.

    Matt O'Dell, New Worship, image courtesy galerie Schleicher+Lange, Paris

    I started using it and it’s been great, but I started to wonder if just tweeting links to my followers was actually helping anyone (including myself). I love to share things, but do people really care? And what does it mean to the messages I do want them to care about?

    Chris Brogan, entrepreneur and social media expert, recently wrote a post entitled Our Responsibility as Media Channels where Brogan talks about how we are all media channels – no different than TV or radio stations – and we have a responsibility to our ‘viewers’ and ‘listeners’ to pay attention to both the content and the rate of what we are presenting.

    You may not think that you are helping to curate the web, but every time you share something, you are categorizing it and sharing it with someone the same way a museum director takes a bone from the earth, identifies it, and displays it in a case.

    Brogan says, “Attention is a currency, and if we spend too much of other people’s attention on frivolous posts and shares, we risk losing that attention…What if you look at this as your responsibility? What if you looked at all we just outlined with an eye towards making something bigger than just noise?”

    Noise

    Noise. That’s the word I’d been searching for to describe that feeling I had about sharing content that while useful, may be just, well – noisy.

    Brogan encouraged me to “[not] just push the stumble, the retweet, etc, but give some value to the share by giving your points, adding your two cents, blogging a piece around it, etc.,” which is what I’m doing here.

    Seth Godin, entrepreneur and marketing expert, recently wrote an article entitled, The trap of social media noise, “More noise is not better noise,” says Godin, who strategizes, “Relentlessly focus. Prune your message and your list and build a reputation that’s worth owning and an audience that cares.”

    That was one of my initial questions: Do people really care what I’m sharing? Does less noise equate with more attention? Is less really more?

    What Other People Are Doing About It

    While Buffer is a Chrome app that allows you to spread out what you are sharing throughout the day, Handpick, which Jon Mitchell, a writer for ReadWriteWeb and former editor of NewsTrust, recently wrote about in Handpick: Selective Social Sharing Without The Noise, is an app that allows you to sum it all up in one email.

    “The social Web is noisy,” writes Mitchell, who reviewed Handpick, a social Web app that collects things you want to share throughout the day and emails them to the contacts of your choosing in one email at the end of the day.

    Pete Williams, entrepreneur, author, and marketer, created NOISE RE/DUCTION, which aims to, “remove all the noise [in the business and marketing space] to find the stuff that’s actually valuable.” In other words, they are curating content.

    What are you going to do about it?

  • Remote Controlled Excellence

    “Excellent!” – Dan Hoffman on 12/20/2011

    We helped Dan convert his high-end remote controlled boat site from static, HTML web pages to a dynamic content management system (CMS) running WordPress. Instead of having to pay to make changes on over 40 different files, he can save money by only paying to change one file. That’s the power of WordPress and PHP includes.

    Bonzi Sports uses the blog functionality of WordPress to create and promote specials on remote controlled boats in his Marina. Before, this process was very manual, but now he can add, remove, and promote sale items independently because each post is modular and contains it’s own web address.

  • Instructions on How to Use WordPress

    This WordPress guide is intended to be a primer for WordPress beginners learning how to login and post a page or a post for the first time. It’s not meant to be an guide on how to use WordPress in general.

    How to Login to Your WordPress Website

    In order to edit your website using WordPress, you will first need to login. You can do that by going to http://[yourdomain.com]/wp-admin. You’ll need to enter your username and password provided to you by your web designer or host.

    If you get it wrong, don’t worry about locking yourself out like you can on some other websites. Unless there is a specific plugin (an add-on piece of software for WordPress installed by your web designer), you won’t get locked out.

    How to Navigate the WordPress Dashboard

    Once you login, you will see your dashboard. From there you can click on “Posts” to view current posts or “Add New” to add a new post. A post is just a term for a specific type of web page within the content management system. It is different from a “Page” for example. Media is where pictures you have uploaded can be managed. Comments (if enabled) can be approved, deleted, or replied to from the “Comments” link. “Profile” is where you can change your password.

    How to Write a Post

    Under the “Posts” heading on the left navigation, click on “Add New”. You can type your post just as you would in any other advanced text editor like Microsoft Word. There is even a button with many smaller boxes in it which opens up more editing options like the ability to change text color and underline. Its the second icon from the right in the editing toolbar.

    To add a picture or music, use the “Upload / Insert” menu just above the editing toolbar. The box-in-a-box icon opens a window which allows you to select files. To add or edit a link, highlight the word or phrase, then click the chain-link icon in the menu. You’ll have the option to type or paste a link in or link to existing content on your site by clicking “Or link to existing content”.

    How to Add an Image to a Post

    click the camera icon above the editing box. When the box comes up, upload the image, fill in the options, and click “Add to Post”. Options like left, right, and center will do that to the image relative to the text.

    Click “Select Files” then choose options for the picture. You can add a title, a link, or a caption as well as left, right, or center the picture. These settings can be changed at any time so if you’re not sure, just go with the default. Once the picture is in your post, if you don’t like it, hover over it and click the properties button to change options.

    How to Publish or Update a Post

    Once you are satisfied with the way your post looks, click “Publish”. Once you do this, it becomes live on your website. To preview it first, click “Preview”. When you are done, simply log out or close your browser. If you’ve already published and are just editing, the button will say “Update” instead. This button saves your changes.

    Erich Stauffer is an Indianapolis-based SEO web design company specializing in converting static HTML web sites into dynamic, easily editable web sites with blogging functionality using WordPress. Contact us with your fears and your problems and we’ll see if we’re a right fit for you.

  • Other Eric(h) Stauffer’s Like Me

    My wife recently pointed out how similar some of the other Eric(h) Stauffer’s in the world are similar to me so I thought I’d highlight some of them here. If you’re one of them and you want me to take your info down, just contact me or leave a comment below.

    Eric Stauffer – Entrepreneur, Payment Solutions Consultant, SEO Ninja, and Business Development/Content Creation

    I’ve added this Eric(h) Stauffer I found on About.Me because he’s an entrepreneur, is interested in payment solutions, SEO, and business development. On all of those things we’re a complete overlap. It’s a little odd actually. I currently do SEO and content marketing, but also run blogs on items processing and digital wallets.

    Erich Stauffer – CEO bei Starbusiness

    Located in Basel Area, Switzerland, this Erich Stauffer does Management Consulting, which is also something I have both done in the past as a business analyst and something I currently do. I’m also CEO of my company, but I know that’s a stretch. My mom is CEO of her company and my friend, Jason Cobb, is CEO of his company too. Everybody’s a CEO nowadays. 🙂

    If Starbusiness is anything like the .SU website, then it’s a multi-level marketing (MLM) business that’s currently expanding into Russia. Good for them! I’ve done my share of MLM (and so has my mother – we have so much in common!). I did Amway and sold Tri-Star vacuums (one to – again – my mother). She sold Tupperware in her day (when she was my age).

    Eric M. Stauffer – Eric M. Stauffer

    According to his Twitter account, this Eric(h) Stauffer is an “Instructional Technologist, Consultant, Creative Problem Solver, Runner, Husband, Comedian . . . Not always in that order.”

    I’ve often tried to be a comedian, am currently a husband, and creative problem solver; and I’ve called myself a technologist and consultant. This guy looks like he travels more than me, but that’s okay. We need different types of Eric(h) Stauffer’s in this world, even if we all have a lot in common.

    Then of course there is the guy I’m named after (who was also a designer like me, even if he was designing fake Hummels).

  • Problem Solver Seeks More Things to Fix

    Recently I’ve been rethinking how I feel about work and jobs. As you may or may not know, I help business owners solve technology and marketing problems, which gives me some freedom to choose who I work with and when. I don’t have fixed hours and if I work more, I can get paid more, but it’s not all roses and cherry blossoms.

    When you run your own business, while you may earn more, much of your work is doubled or even tripled. Not only do you have to do the work, but you have to go earn it, and then process all the finances, documentation, and taxes on the back end. In a traditional job environment the work is handed to you and you just do it. When it’s done, someone else processes it. Your work is finite and so is your pay.

    A Paradigm Shifts Again

    For ten years I worked full time jobs in banking and technology, and I always would told myself I’d be happier running my own business until one day I did. I started off running it on the side in 2007 and in 2011 I finally went full time. I do web design with HTML, CSS, and WordPress, email support with web hosts and Google Apps, and computer and network support for Microsoft products like Windows and Server 2003/2008.

    While I have been successful at running my own business, there are two reasons why I’ve recently began applying for jobs in the Indianapolis market. The first reason is because I realized that the ideas I had about working hard now in order to do much less later were not realistic. I didn’t even realize I had this mentality until after a couple of months had gone by and I discovered that there will never be a time when I’m doing ‘nothing’. I’ll always be doing something, so why not just spend some time figuring out what I want to do, not just what I can find a job doing.

    The second reason I began looking for jobs in the Indianapolis area was because I realized that it didn’t matter who I was doing the work for, as long as I was enjoying what I was doing. Even as a business owner, I have a boss. I have clients, my wife, and my Lord to report to. It’s not just willy nilly around here. I have to meet or exceed all of their expectations just as I would have to in a traditional job scenario – only more so because while the rewards are higher, so are the risks. There are no written warnings with clients, just lost opportunities in the future.

    You Are a Startup

    A friend of mine, Jason Cobb, recently coined a term, “You are a startup,” meaning that whatever you’re doing, do it like a startup. But what is a startup? A startup is traditionally a software company that is rapidly trying to create a product that is useful and monetizeable as fast as they can. It normally involves a small team consisting of a leader, a technical co-founder, and a marketer. These roles could all be one person, or it could be five people, but the point is that it’s a small team pushing out useful iterations of a product with the hopes of expanding very fast once a market can’t live without it.

    So how does a startup mentality apply to you? Whether you are working for a client or for a company as an employee, you must be producing stuff that matters, you must be a leader, and you must be marketing yourself. This means listening to your customers and getting feedback, getting to know your fellow employees, and continuing your education (via meetups, books, or traditional training).

    As I wrote about in 13 More Books for Every Entrepreneur, Reid Hoffman, (co-founder of LinkedIn) together with Ben Casnocha (entrepreneur and author) have written a book about managing your career as if it were a start-up business: a living, breathing, growing start-up of you. The thesis is that the same skills startup entrepreneurs use, professionals need to get ahead today.

    Now that I’ve experienced running my own business, I no longer look down on the traditional 9-to-5 job because I know that I can have impact either way and still accomplish my goals of learning, growing, and taking care of my family.

    12 Month Goals (and Roadmap)

    I recently subscribed to a blog I’ve been reading since 2008 called I Will Teach You to Be Rich by Ramit Sethi. Today he sent out a link to a PDF with a 12 Month Goals Roadmap worksheet, very similar to Michael Hyatt’s Life Plan. I’d like to share my answers here.

    1. What will you be doing for work? – Editing HTML, CSS, and PHP; Converting static HTML web pages into dynamic CMS blogs; converting clients from POP email access to Google Apps; training users on how to use WordPress; Affiliate Marketing; Computer Network Troubleshooting and Repair

    2. What’s your boss (or the person to whom you’ll be accountable) like? – Gives me feedback; Challenges me; Considers me an expert in what I do; Trusts my decisions; Considers my feedback

    3. Where will you be working? – The Greater Indianapolis area, preferably along US 31, Keystone Ave, or 465; In an office with time allocated to work in blocks without interruption,  the ability to get up and walk around or go outside for a walk; And good Mexican, Chinese, and Thai food nearby.

    4. How much time do you spend working? – 10 hours a day, 70 hours a week.

    5. What does your Monday look like? – Reading and sharing emails until noon, viewing reports, and responding to client requests.

    If anyone is interested in using my services or would just like to get together for coffee, please don’t hesitate to email me or follow me on Twitter.

    This is one of those personal blog posts, if you’re interested in reading more about me specifically, try this one next or not, it’s your life.