Erich Stauffer

Tag: Web 2.0

  • Introducing a Brand New Way to Market Your Business

    Grow Your Business Organically

    A lot of SEO companies market how they will promote your business online using Internet marketing and online advertising techniques, but Erich Stauffer noticed a gap between where promotion stops and business begins and so we used social media management to not just promote your business, but grow your business.

    Digital Marketing Strategy

    We’ll work with you to create a comprehensive strategy to marry your business brand, vision, values, products, and services with traditional outdoor, radio, TV, and yellow page advertising alongside social networking and social spaces like Facebook, Twitter, Youtube and other technologies like apps for the iPhone and Android phones.

    SEO is Not Enough – Content Marketing

    It’s no longer enough to have a top-ranking website in Google if your web site is not converting traffic, your story is not consistent, and you are not creating lasting relationships with customers. Erich Stauffer can help you to do all three with content marketing.

    Social Media Management

    We are excited to offer social media management to help your business organize and streamline their marketing efforts with a consistent message that is in-line with their mission, vision, and values. We believe so strongly about this product that we would be happy to take you out to lunch to show you how it works in a one-on-one session. Are you interested in learning more?

  • Strawberry Cake Pie and the Facebook Coefficient

    Strawberry-cake-pieLast night I had a dream that I went to a restaurant with a couple of friends and we all ordered a strawberry cake pie.  It was served in a “taco salad”-like pan with a friendship bread, cake-like base.  The topping was similar to a strawberry pie, but the kind with strawberry glaze mixed in.  That was our meal.

    In the morning I called my friend on the way to work and he thought the idea was fantastic, but then he took it to the next level.  He said, “Why not take strawberry cake mix, churn cold butter into it, and make that the crust instead.” BRILLIANT and DELICIOUS-sounding.  I’ve got another friend who makes exceptional deserts (such as the 7-layer bar) who is going to do the testing.

    Analyzing Facebook

    During our conversation I had mentioned that I was so excited about the strawberry cake pie that I had posted it to Facebook first thing in the morning.  This led to a discussion about a recent Facebook “analysis” I had done on this friend’s Facebook profile.  I had noticed that his wall posts were down compared to a month ago so I mentioned that his Facebook wall posts were down 83% compared to last month.  I hadn’t really done the analysis, but he thought I had, which made me think that Facebook is ripe for analysis.

    A while back a different friend of mine did a quick study to find out how many wall posts one of his friends made before and after a point in time. He was able to go back through all of his wall posts to discover that, even though they had been Facebook friends, before the event there were no wall posts, but after the event, the wall posts were near-spam levels.  The metric in that analysis was wall posts, which inspired me to use the same metric for what I call the Facebook Coefficient.

    facebook-coefficientThe Facebook Coefficient

    The Facebook Coefficient is the number of wall posts you make compared to the number of wall posts received.  This is a measure of your popularity on Facebook  (or how big of a jerk you are, which a friend of mine pointed out).  The coefficient takes into account the last time the user logged in, not counting incoming wall posts until after the user logs back in.

    The coefficient can be computed manually, but would best be done by a Facebook App.  I am a member of the Facebook Developers community, but I have yet to produce a Facebook app.  This is in part because I never had a need to or an idea of what Facebook app to write.  If you are a developer, feel free to use or adapt this idea.  I would be interested in using it.  For more ideas, check out this blog post about wanting Facebook Statistics.

    What Facebook apps would you like to see? On May 19th, 2009 I posted about using Twitter as a business research tool. If you are a Facebook developer I would consider doing something similar.  Here’s why: the following two wishes have been granted.

    WISH there was a way to permanently hide any news feed info relating to those “What kind of blah blah are you” quizzes on facebook.

    wish there was a way to opt out of getting messages from some people in facebook. Seems like whey need a spam filter.

    But this one still has not:

    wish there was a way to post PDFs in #Facebook messages…

    So if you are a developer who wishes to develop a popularity app like The Facebook Coefficient, then you may have already developed Popularity.  Popularity is a, “fun and rewarding ranking game that calculates how interactive people are with Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, YouTube and Flickr,” but when you try to use it on Facebook it errors out and says

    There are still a few kinks Facebook and the makers of Popularity are trying to iron out. We appreciate your patience as we try to fix these issues. Your problem has been logged – if it persists, please come back in a few days. Thanks!

    You may have heard the expression, “There is no such thing as competition.”  No matter how good of an idea you have, if you can’t execute it, then it is not worth much.  Execution is really the name of the game and whether you are baking a strawberry cake pie or a Facebook app, you must deliver the goods – otherwise, it’s just a half-baked idea.

  • Getting the Right Marketing Mix Using Social Media

    Currently there are many social websites that have created a platform for you to speak directly to and with your current and future customers.  There are also many tools that help manage this relationship, pushing the same content out to all platforms at once, or changing it slightly using built in rules.  There are no hard and fast rules for the Web 2.0 landscape because it is all still so new, but what we can do is look to those businesses who are having success in these new areas.Know, trust, buy. Erich Stauffer Marketing Consulting.

    We measure success by the three methods, “know, trust, buy.”:

    1. Brand awareness. (Does the customer know you?)
    2. Brand favorableness. (Does the client trust you?)
    3. Increased sales. (Does the client buy from you?)

    Blasting your message out to one or as many social media sites as you can will help get your brand more noticed, and so achieve more awareness, but you also need to be genuine.  The best Internet marketers make sure to engage with the customer and not just try to sell them something at every turn.  The medium lends itself to this sort of engagement and turning down the opportunity to do so may break the trust, or the brand favorableness.  Once you have established both the know and the trust, then the customer feels free to buy from you, but there is value to both brand awareness and brand favorableness even if the one who you are impressing does not buy.  Once the goodwill is out there, the person you engaged with may refer you to someone else.  Like the butterfly flapping it’s wings, even the smallest twit on Twitter may lead to a hurricane sale on the other side of the world.

  • Indianapolis Dentistry Embraces Twitter

    An Indianapolis dentist has begun using Twitter to reach out to his patients in a way that he has never done before.  “I didn’t even know what Twitter was until I started using it,” said the dentist.

    Twitter is a micro-blogging service founded by some of the same people who made blogging accessible to millions through Blogspot. The catch is that each blog entry is limited to 140 characters.  Users can post from their cell phones, email, directly on the site, or through third-party applications or websites.

    Our client now has 623 followers and is one the top-followed dentist in Indianapolis according to the Twitter directory, Wefollow.  A follower is someone who opts-in to hear what you write or “tweet” about.  We have seen traffic to their website coming from Twitter so we know it is working as a promotional tool.

    How can we help you promote your business online or around Indiana?

  • Youtube Query String Parameters

    I’ve been experimenting with the query string parameters after the main Youtube address. Some people may refer to them as “Youtube codes”, but the easiest way to explain them is that they are the ampersands and snippet of text at the end of the web address. This string of of code, the Youtube query string parameters, adds functionality to what is presented. There is no real comprehensive guide on the Internet for this, but I’ve compiled a short list of the Youtube codes I could find here so that when you need them, you’ll be able to find the Youtube codes or “query string parameters” faster than I did.

    Update: If you’re looking for query strings for Youtube or Google Maps, you might try Map Strings if the other link isn’t working.

    Thanks to sysop073 for the heads up on Reddit.

    Query

    Translation
    &hl= hl stands for Host Language (thank you MapKi!) It is followed by “hl Parameter Values” which correspond to “Language/Locales” ex. en-US means English (United States and Canada).

    It also can stand for hoc loco, which is Latin for “in this place” or hl stands for “human language”, but not in this case.
    &video_id= Youtube video ID – used in conjunction with &get_video? to embed a Youtube video into another application. Not supported by Youtubes terms of service and may no longer work.
    &t= Youtube video tag – used in conjunction with Youtube video ID.
    &fmt= &fmt=6 is good quality, &fmt=18 is better, and &fmt=22 is the best. Video must originally be in high definition (HD) to work. May not work regardless as this feature is in beta and not available for all videos.
    &rel= Rel stands for related. In relation to youtube, rel=1 means show related feeds and rel=0 means don’t.
    &fs= Allows the fullscreen button to show up or not. 1 means it will show up, 0 means it is disabled.
    &start=225 Starts the video 225 seconds into the video.

    I recommend this extensive post on Youtube plugins and tools for more information and for advanced users, check out the Youtube Reference Guide. Also, check out this Google Maps Parameters Guide from MapKi and Youtube Query String Arguments.

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