Twitter. “What are you doing right now?”

What do I care if I know what time you go to bed every night (I confess, I did a night time tweet the other day). To most it seems ridiculous. Just one more thing to keep up with in this already crazy world.

But here’s what Twitter has done for me:

-Introduced me to people in Greenville (and around the world for that matter) that I did not know, which I asked to lunch or coffee and got to know somebody I otherwise would have never known.
-Put me in touch with potential employees (can you say, save $20,000 in recruiting fees?)
-Gives me about 1 - 2 good laughs per day
-Selling a new service from a person “met” on Twitter,
-and more.

So yeah, it’s ridiculous to tell everyone what you’re doing right now. Unless the service simply facilitates the ability to get to know and meet wonderfully, valuable people. Then it’s much more than what you’re doing, it’s about who you’re going to meet that you otherwise wouldn’t.

By the way, wanna follow? http://twitter.com/adamlandrum

You’ve had the problem before, no? You need to get a very large file to somebody, but it’s too big to email. You can burn it to a CD, put it on a jump drive, but then you have to either drive it across town or mail the media. Some may say you could FTP the file, but FTP is a little on the complicated for your average Joe.

The answer: Dropsend.com.

The free service (pay plans are available) allows you to “email” files up to 1GB in size. What actually happens is:

1. You indicate who you want to send the file to,
2. You upload the file
3. Dropsend sends an email with a link to the file upon completion of the upload
4. Your recipient downloads the file and can download it for up to 14 days.

Brilliant. The-file-is-too-big-to-email problem is over. Thanks, Dropsend.

Isn’t the web great?

So it’s fabled we have 3 seconds to make a first impression on our web visitors when they first visit a page.

10 seconds, if you believe the stats, to convey what it is you do. What better way to do that than through a pictorial story instead of, ugh, words?

Below are three great sites that do an extraordinary job at doing this:

Dropsend.com

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Blockbuster.com

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Flickr.com

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Each of these web sites could have easily told you what they do with words, lots of words. Instead, they chose to simply tell you with a few words and some pictorial story telling.

Bottomline: For greater effectiveness in communication what it is you do, use images to tell your story on the web.

About 18 months ago I tried out a service called Jott. It allows you to call a number, dictate into your phone and the service (for free) transcribes your message into an email and sends it to you (or a list you predesignate).

Pretty cool. Problem was, it had about an 80% success rate, which was just off enough to be annoying.

Today, a friend of mine recommended it to me and so I tried it again. It translated my message perfectly.

People use it to update their twitter account, to dictate, to jott reminders to themselves, to jott ideas, to easily update multiple people via email while driving, etc.

Try it. http://jott.com/

Isn’t the web great?

Most companies plan their web site from the inside out. The process looks something like this:

1. What do we want it to do?
2. What are my competitors doing? Ooh, I’d like my web site to do that.
3. Talk about how great we are (use “we” and “our” a lot in our copy).
4. “This is how I want it to look. I like these colors. I don’t like those colors.”

Do you notice in the four elements above, you never see the word “you”? Zip. Not once. Nil. Here’s the mistake most companies are prone to making:

Companies scarecly think of the customer when planning the redesign of their web site.

Now, companies may think that they know what the customer wants and that’s inherent in their planning. But have they bothered to ask?

5 tips for better planning your new web site:

1. Ask the customer what they want. Go ahead, ask 10 of your best customers what they would like to see on your new web site, and send a survey to a good many prospects.

2. Plan your web site around the customers’ wants and needs, not your company. There’s a thought.

3. Don’t base your color and design preferences on what you like; base it on what your customers prefer. Involve your customers and prospects in the design process. They’re the ones who are going to use it anyway, right?

4. Don’t launch before you test. Ask your customer to complete a task (say, sign-up for a newsletter or download a white paper). Watch them do it. Get their feedback. Adjust. Then launch.

5. Do what your competitors aren’t doing. Ask your customers what they like about your competitors’ web sites, but also what they don’t like. Make sure you don’t do the don’t likes, because nothing drives prospects away better than poor usability or functionality.

Bottomline: When planning for a new web site, don’t make the web site for you–make it for the real user and ask them their wants, needs and preferences and get them intimately involved in the process.

This weekend I rented a movie from Blockbuster, and I couldn’t think how the web has completely changed their game. Truth be told, it was probably Netflix that made the movie giant change their distribution model, but nonetheless, Blockbuster has masterfully used the web to do so.

Think about their old model of:
1) Go to the store
2) Walk around for 15 minutes trying to find a movie you want
3) Rent the movie (if it’s in) and then pray to God you don’t forget to bring it back on time
4) Return in 1-5 days with the movie.

Now its:
1) Browse online in the comforts of your home to find the movie you want
2) Read reviews from other people to decide if you want to use it.
3) Add it to your queue
4) Movie shows up 1-2 days later
5) You return it whenever you want
6) And oh, if you want another movie NOW, simply take your movie to the local Blockbuster and exchange it for an in-store rental.

With one fell swoop, Blockbuster made mom-and-pop rental stores obsolete, made Netflix one-dimensional and dominated the movie rental business once again. But, Blockbuster better not get too comfortable because another web distribution model has arrived (and has been trying to make a breakthrough for sometime): the online, download-it-now-and-watch-it model.

Apple’s iTunes movie rental and other services are coming. Blockbuster even has its own service, Movielink, which it acquired in 2007.

Either way, the web is rapidly changing how businesses do business. Look at your current distribution model. Can the web change how you distribute your products or services?

Bottomline: Leveraging the web can completely change your company, if not your industry. Don’t be changed, change it yourself.

The web gets a lot of bad press. Porn, stalkers, phishing, scams (i.e Nigeria), hoaxes, spam and on and on.

Human nature is wired to focus on the bad. It takes a little effort to think about all of the good on the web. Here’s a list of why the web is great:

Donations
-Kiva.org. The online community that funds third world entrepreneurs via micro loans. Economic Development Goodness.

-Donorschoose.com. Teachers post their needs/projects and people from around the country and the world make micro donations that add up. Kids, parents and teachers say thank you.

Free Usefulness
-Craigslist.org - No charity per se, but it’s a free way to buy and sell. The newspaper killer if you will (in a good way). I’ve posted before, but I’ve bought and sold cars, Clemson tickets and all good stuff. Incredibly helpful and good.

-Wikipedia.org. Come on, who doesn’t use this web site? The community rises up again to help the greater good. You can know anything–and if you have a cell phone with internet access, you can win an argument anywhere that relies on obscure factual data. Try it.

Truth Spreading
-Snopes.com I wish everyone who types in all caps and uses blue font would know about this web site. Anything that sounds fishy gets run through snopes. Hoaxes are lies and simply spread fear. It all stops with snopes.

-Rageagainstthehaze.com. South Carolina’s anti-smoking initiative, created by Greenville’s own Brains on Fire. Award winning goodness.

This is just a smidgen of web sites doing good. Please, add to the list in the comments section.

A good salesman knows they need to ask for the business at the end of the meeting (and they aren’t afraid to ask).

For most companies, their web site is a sales tool. Yet many never ask the user to do anything except “contact us.” That’s like going to a restaurant that doesn’t provide you with a menu–you wouldn’t know what to ask for.

A great example are web sites that ask for donations. Web site owners make $1,000’s per year simply because they ask. Think of the tip jars. They earn their keep because they ask. I think of my four year-old daughter. She gets what she wants because she asks, asks, asks and asks.

Ask and you will receive. Don’t ask, and you still may receive, just not much.

Bottom line: If you want your web site to be a sales or lead generating tool, ask the user to engage with you.

Trust. It’s amazing how much our economy depends on this simple virtue.

Ebay is all about trust (I’ll prepay you and trust that you’ll ship it).
USPS mail (I trust that if I put this check in the mail, you’re going to deliver it).
Employer / employee relationship (I trust you’ll do the work and you trust that I will pay you).

When trust is established, transactions move seamlessly. But trust must be earned. What are you doing in your business, relationships or even on your web sites to build trust? Without it, you’ll have a hard time succeeding.

Look at your website. Does it convey that you are trustworthy? If not, what can you do to improve that?

Here are some ideas:
- add testimonials
- add a guarantee
- list your high-profile customers who have entrusted you already

Bottom line: Build trust to build your business.

Do you remember your last purchase you made on the web (or used the web to make the purchase)?

I do. It was an upgrade to Merge’s phone system, TalkSwitch.

The structure of the purchase was web site -> phone call -> purchase. There was no real way to do what I wanted to do on the web site. That usually would aggravate me, but in this case I was okay. Why? I felt like I needed to talk to somebody.

But what the web site did was get me all the way from where I was to where I needed to speak to somebody. It got me to the next step in the process. The way it did that is it provided me a plethora of information about all of their products, features, pricing and a nifty product comparison chart. I basically had a couple of very specific questions that I knew the web site wouldn’t answer. So I picked up the phone and called.

They answered. I asked my question. They answered the question. I ordered. And during the order process, they added some more valuable information to the process. I was impressed.

The Bottom Line: Web sites don’t live in an isolated bubble. They are an integral part of your company’s marketing tools. Make sure the web site fits into everything else that you do.

P.S. Not only was the TalkSwitch buying experience great, but so is their product. They have IP Phones and their main product is a very affordable “big company” phone system for small companies. I highly recommend you visit TalkSwitch’s web site. Who knows, you may end up buying one!