Category Archives: Operations

Use Twitter to Contact Influential People

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Here is a tip from Gabriel Weinberg who just got his company, Duck Duck Go, on Time’s The 50 Best Websites of 2011:

In Harry’s case, I checked my email and I don’t believe I ever wrote him personally, nor have ever met Harry in person (though I’d like to!), or even talked to him over the phone. We have communicated via Twitter, however.

Here’s a secret. Twitter is severely under-utilized as a communication channel. Lots of very influential people are on there, and some that don’t have big celebrity names or sites behind them actually have very few followers. That means that your interactions with them are more likely to be noticed (assuming they use/check Twitter).

Do Groupon Like a Marketing Pro

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Groupon can do wonders for your business if you do it right. Here is how you can do a daily deal special like a marketing pro and see some profit in the long run.

Step 1: Do you need to do a Groupon?

If you already have a ton of customers and can’t handle anymore. Don’t do a Groupon. Do a Groupon if you need more customers.

Step 2: Remind yourself why you are doing this

You are doing this to get repeat new customers. Repeat new customers will help you grow your business. The way you get repeat customers is by providing a great product and amazing service.

Step 3: Ask All Your Employees

Ask yourself and the people you work with if they are ready to handle a ton of new customers. Give them a warning that the next few weeks will require a little extra work from their end and you appreciate it. This is important because you don’t want your employees to treat the customer like crap and have your online reviews go down. See the graphic below:

Step 4: Cap the Amount You Sell

Only allow a certain amount of Groupons to be sold. The Daily Deal sales guy will try to make you do an unlimited amount but that is what he is trained to do. Cap the amount you can handle. My suggestion is figure out the number of new customers you can handle in a 14 day period and double that.

If you make your cap amount to be unlimited, you and your team will be overwhelmed and won’t be able to provide great service devaluing your business reputation. Worst of all this will drive business away in the long run.

If Groupon pushes you to sell more than you should go to another daily deal competitor like LivingSocial, JuiceInThecity, or the hundreds of other competitors.

Step 5: Train Your Employees to Upsell and Be Nice

A. Treat daily deal members really nicely. They are customers you NEED to come in again.
B. At the end of your service with the customer. Ask if they have had a positive experience and to do you a personal favor and review your service on Google Maps, Yelp, or Foursquare.

* Almost all new restaurants I checkout are through Yelp and Google Maps. You can really get a ton of positive reviews with a Daily Deal burst and this can help you find new customers in the long term.

C. Remind the customer that you are a small business just getting things off the ground, so if they have any friends or family that would be interested in your service you would be happy to offer them a 10% discount.

I also encourage sending a personal “Thank You” email at night with a direct link to your business on Yelp and Google Maps.

Step 6: Stay Organized and Force Repetition with Email Addresses

Add all the email addresses from the daily deal into a email newsletter service like mailchimp or iContact. Send out monthly updates with a coupon (something small like $1 off or free 15 minute consultation). Remind the customer that you still exist and greatly value their business. One service I’ve seen people use and like is MobManager to help keep their daily deal customers organized.

50% of your users will unsubscribe from your newsletters, be okay with that and keep plugging away.

Step 7: Enjoy Your New Repeat Customers

Congrats on the new business you deserved it!

Are there any steps that I missed or things that could greatly help a positive outcome for businesses doing a Daily Deal special? Please, let me know in the comments.

Video – Sound Amazing Online

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Last night I did an 5 minute talk at Ignite about sound amazing online and it was awesome! The video and slides are embedded below.

Here is what people are saying about it:

“Rishi is killing it, the crowd is cracking up #ignitesf“
– Jon Bishop (Ignite Organizer) via twitter

“marketing wisdom and laughter in 5 min”
– Raymond Lau (Founder of PlayHaven) via LinkedIn

“R rated joke at 2:22 – I hope mom doesn’t see this.”
– Anand Desai (my brother) via Facebook

Sound Amazing Online

 

This was my favorite and probably most sarcastic comment:
“your speech was the best five minutes of my life.”
– Jamie Shah (Google Maps Finance High Roller) via Facebook

So, what did you think of the speech? Let me know in the comments.


2011 SEO Ranking Factors

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I had the honor to hear Rand Fishkin present the 2011 SEO ranking factors. This was probably the best presentation on SEO I have even been to and I just had to share the 4 things that I thought were amazing to learn!

130 top SEO gurus got together and filled out in depth surveys to figure out what helps you rank on Google. Rand and the SEOmoz data scientist built models and backed their findings. He did want everyone to understand that all of these findings could simply be correlations and not the root cause.

Here were my key takeaways:

#1 Getting Links is still a big part of it.

Nothing out of the ordinary here. The more people linking to you the better.

But the percentage of how much a pointing link actually matters overall dropped from 2009. In 2009 it was 67% and now it is 43%. Other factores are starting to matter more now.

2011 Search Ranking Factors

#2 No follows count.

Google likes it when you comment, tweet, and have profiles across the web. It shows that you are a human and will help your links rank higher. So don’t just get people to link to your blog. Comment and contribute to other peoples blogs and social profiles.

#3 Short URLs

The norm has been the more keywords you can stuff in your URL the better. This isn’t the case based on the data Rand presented. Google does like clean URLs but try to make them short when possible.

#4 Get authority figures to tweet your link

If you can get real people to tweet about you it alerts google that you have an important link. It also helps if you can get a twitter use with authority to tweet your link (a verified account or someone with a lot of followers)

A shortened version of the presentation I saw is available online here and the complete data set finding is available here.

Did any of 4 items that I listed above surprise you?

Increase Survey Response Rate by Embedding it in an Email

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I have been noticing a new trend in my inbox lately. Every company wants to know more – how they can improve, what features I like, how I discovered their company, etc. I only give feedback on companies that make it super easy for me.

I never click on survey or feedback links in an email.

However, I always rate and review things when it is embedded in my email and it only takes one click.

Google Checkout does a great job with this. I’ve rated more things via Google Checkout than on Amazon:

Google Checkout Feedback Email

Followupthen does an amazing job with this as well:

Follow Up Then 1 Click

How important is this?

Pretty important. Think about the last time you bought something on Amazon. How many of the reviews did you read? Would you buy a product with 0 reviews? This is a great way for your users to generate content for you and gather feedback about your products.

Quick Survey Tip:

The longer the survey/feedback form is the more likely I’m going to stop reading the questions and start filling bubbles in randomly. Limit yourself to 1 question if possible.

Graph Comic: Number of Questions Vs. Likelyhood of Getting Real Answers

Super easy way to pull this off via Google Forms:

1. Go to Google Docs.
2. Click on “Create New” -> “Forms” (2 minute video of me setting up survey and embedding it in an email.

Post Facebook Status Updates at 11p EST

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Screen Shot of the Facebook Wall - Questions get more Engagement
Ask a question and you shall receive answers…. lots of answers

Today, I have a special treat for you. Karishma Shah teamed up with me to write this blog post about increasing engagement on your Facebook and Twitter account.

Karishma Shah is the Marketing Manager at Live Nation Entertainment and has helped grow the Ticketmaster’s Twitter account to 28k followers and their Ticketmaster Facebook page to 114k likes.

 

All data is based on engagement studies done through Mashable and Buddy Media.

How to increase engagement on brand pages:

  • Sunday is a good day to increase posting. Weekends in general are good posting days for entertainment, retail, and sports brands.
  • Fans like to see context about shortened URL links – want to know where the link will take them. A brand specific link might work better. (For example NYTimes uses http://nyti.ms) You can use Bit.ly Pro for custom branded short links.
  • Asking fans for engagement increases engagement (like asking questions)
  • Fans respond better to “softer sell” keywords with sweepstakes, contest, or promotions. (Use events, winning, win, offer – not contest or promotion)

Timing Matters:

  • Posting times are crucial to Facebook Page success
    • 3 time peaks: early morning (7am EST), after work (5pm EST), and late night (11pm EST)
      • You can use something like timely to update your status at the perfect time
      • Brands that posted outside of business hours had 20% higher engagement rates
  • Entertainment brands have most engagement on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday – take advantage of the weekend
  • Retail Brands have most engagement on Sundays – target shoppers on Sunday
  • Sports Brands have most engagement on Sundays – Increase post volume on Sunday
Skittles Facebook Wall showing how less text in status updates results in more likes
Shorter Updates Get More Likes

Be Concise:

  • Posts with 80 characters or less had 27% more engagement than posts with 80+. Practice brevity
  • Full-length URLs had 3x the engagement than shortened.
    • Readers like knowing where the post will take them – they want context. Brand specific URL shortener might work best here again.
  • Asking for engagement will incite engagement – “like this post”
  • Ask questions at the end of posts
    • Avoid how, who, what, did, and why questions – they receive lower engagement
    • Use where, when, would, should
Want more?
I created a PDF on 5 Ways to Dominate Facebook Pages that goes into detail what top brands are doing to drive more likes and how you can replicate their success. Sign up for my newsletter here to get access to it.

3 Simple Steps to Increase Customer Retention

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Comic that shows keeping old customers is way easier

Comic by Ted Goff

The awesome guys at Blogtrepreneur let me do a guest blog post on their site about simple ways to increase customer retention.

I go into examples of things that have worked for me as well as examples of what other companies are doing really well. Here is a quick summary of what I talk about:

* How Walmart pays someone to say hello to you right when you walk in
* How PhotoJojo sends really great emails on fun things to do with your camera
* An email template you can use to make a customer feel special right when they sign up.
* And many more examples (DailyBooth, AirBnB, Reddit, Meetup.com, Twitter, SaaS Businesses). See the full post here.

Email Template to get Customer Testimonials

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I’m a big fan of adding customer testimonials to a website. People love buying things if they have
proof that other people are having success with it.
Recently, my buddy Rich started a company called LucieBot that helps you find customers on forums on QA sites. He has about 70 users and is ready to turn on the promotion engine. He asked me how he should go about asking those users for customer testimonials to increase conversions on his site.
Here is the email template I gave him:

Hi fname,

I’m Rich, the lead developer of LucieBot. I really would like to know how I can help you better.

Have you made any new sales because of LucieBot?

If you haven’t yet, tell me about your business a little more and maybe I can help you come up with some better keywords.

Looking forward to your reply.

Thank you,
Rich
Your Phone Number
Your email

CC nextweek@followupthen.com (this way you can follow up with them every week to get a reply).
This email template will help you get customer testimonials and feedback on your product. For really amazing customer testimonials checkout 37Signal’s Highrise HQ.

PS Customer testimonials work because they don’t look biased. Instead of a sales guy selling you it is your neighbor or friend or someone you trust. In infomercials you will notice 50% of the commercial is customers telling you how much they love the product.

Learn how to make money with your product or it will get shutdown

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Yahoo shutting down delicious should be a warning sign to all web product developers. Your product will get shutdown if it isn’t making money, period. Try to figure out how to make money as soon as you have a little bit of traction.
“Yes… but Delicious is different… it needs to be free!” 
No, it doesn’t. They have hundred thousand plus passionate users. Checkout pinboard.in – they are a competitor to delicious and they make money. Here is an awesome response to why they charge:

“The signup fee helps discourage spammers and defrays some of the costs of running the site.  

Thanks to the entry fee, Pinboard has remained spam-free since launch. Not having to expend resources on spam fighting means having more time to work on features, and keeps the site fast and small.“

I’m really happy that YouTube, Flickr, and Imgur are all making money. Otherwise Google would have shutdown YouTube, Yahoo would have shutdown Flickr, and the Imgur guys would have moved onto something else. My guess on why Twitter is getting such high valuations is because their “Making Money” experiments seem to be working. I’m also really happy to see Reddit trying to make money, otherwise Conde Nast will shut them down.
The companies that can keep moving are the ones that bring in cash.2/1//2011 Update: Yahoo Shutdown MyBlogLog. A company they purchased but doesn’t bring in any cash. Also checkout 37 Signal’s “What happens after Yahoo acquires you” blog post.