A lot of what he discussed were things you’ve always known – Asians tend to be better at math, higher income students tend to do better in school, etc. – but he broke down exactly why (the logic and length of Chinese numbers, the use of summer vacation and parent’s views on authority figures). Other things were absolutely surprising – most Canadian hockey players were born in Jan, Feb and March because of the cut off dates, speaking indirectly to captains is the largest cause of plane crashes.

But there were some bigger takeaways that really got me thinking.

As any intelligent person would imagine, a lot of success is based on luck – in being in the right place at the right time, getting an opportunity and taking advantage of it. This one seems so obvious, but I think we often forget about the second part of this – you need to be open and willing to jump at your opportunity and have the sense to recognize it as such.

The other sticking point for me was that every genius/prodigy/expert puts in at least 10,000 hours of practice time – that is how they got as good as they got. We like to think that geniuses don’t have to think or practice or learn – that there is something innate that makes them completely different from the rest of us. That is true, but it’s not what we think, the thing that sets them apart is a ridiculous work ethic and a love for what they do that drives them to do little else but that.

This got me thinking about my own success.

I was lucky enough to have an Apple computer at my disposal from a young age and a father who I saw programmed for fun. He joined the internet bubble and got himself a website. When asked if I wanted to put something online, I jumped at it. Why wouldn’t I?

It was the beginning of the internet boom when I created my first website. I taught myself how to do it. Then I made another one. And another. Each step of the way I figured out different things and learned more, so the next one I made was easier. I’d ask teachers to let me build websites rather than writing papers. I created my own web business because I was frustrated that someone else hadn’t created a site containing the information I wanted. I wrote iTunes asking them for a payment sharing link exchange before Affiliate programs were in common use.

My parents instilled in me an incredible work ethic (passed down through the generations from who-knows-what) and the desire to engage with authority figures to make sensible solutions reality (thanks to my socioeconomic class). And because I started so early and kept at it, I just kept getting better. And because it was something I did for fun, it was a way I wanted to spend my time. And because computers had always been a part of my life, I could easily pick up new software.

Today I make my living building websites, a career that didn’t exist when I was born. I was in the right place at the right time with the right background and have poured myself into this work from the moment it first started up. I’m not sure if I’ve yet put in the 10,000 hours necessary to make me a genius/prodigy/expert, but there’s still plenty of work to be done.

Click here to order Zero Moment of Truth from Amazon

(Thanks to the Clockwork blog for this tip off.)

Show the Human Side

Over the past five years, the word that’s come up in almost any conversation about social media is transparency… and recently, the lines between social media and more traditional websites have started to blur – that word is now prominent in web discussions of all kinds.

People don’t buy from websites, they buy from people. They look at the reviews from real people to decide if yours is a good product. They click on the “about” page far more often than you might think. They want to see who runs the company and who hides away in the server room. They want to ensure you’re not destroying the world with their money. And if they find out you’ve been misbehaving, they will jump online and do their darndest to ensure it goes viral.

So talk like a person, not a machine. Show photos of your building, your staff, the people you’ve helped. Include information about community service efforts and success stories with details and photos. People want to support great businesses and the people behind those businesses, so stop hiding online – just because you’re not face-to-face doesn’t mean it has to be impersonal.

Integrate Everything

It’s no longer a viable option to work in only one medium. Mobile has opened up infinite possibilities for tying the real and online worlds together. If you place an ad in a magazine, include a QR code that allows them to download a free song. If you’ve got a blog, make a contest asking people to photograph all of your billboards. There’s no longer any excuse to leave Facebook, Twitter, etc. off your homepage – there are tons of gadgets out there to help you integrate and endless tools for using Facebook likes, etc. within your actual site. And best of all, most of it is free or inexpensive. You’ll get more out of that ad or billboard with a QR code and be able to track a portion of an audience you could only guess at before. It’s an exciting new world – play in all of it, online and off.

Be Specific and Tell Them Why

You need to have strategy behind everything. If someone clicks on an ad featuring someone biking, don’t send them to a page about runners. Keep with the biking theme – by clicking on your biking ad, they’ve told you something about themselves. Don’t let that lead go to waste by sending them somewhere generic like your homepage. Create targeted landing pages featuring specifics about what you want them to do when they do arrive and make a very clear call to action – a form, a download, a share button. When you’re creating a campaign, define your audience very specifically and decide what you want of that specific group.

And don’t forget the Why. If you have a QR code or ad or Facebook page, tell them why they should scan or click or like you. What are they going to get out of it? If you’re just sending them to your homepage, they’ll likely not bother. Add value – like a free download – and you’ll see your campaigns becoming even more successful.

Stop Making Excuses and Get Online

Social media is not a fad. It’s not a department. It’s a multi-channel component of growth and innovation. How your brand is being lived out there is now what counts. It’s a free tool available to everyone – an invite to the party, where customers wait with the potential to go forth as brand ambassadors for you. So if you’re not there, you need to be. Stop making excuses and start.

Come up with a policy laying out the obvious rules – Best Buy has made theirs public if you need inspiration – and dive in. No one is going to remember your first tweet or post, so don’t dwell on it – just try something, then try something else. In a month, go back and look at what got retweets, likes or replies and try to figure out why. Adapt your strategy, try something, and try something else again. Social media is an endless game of guess and check. Everyone’s making it up – even those with millions of followers… promise. Start following other people to see what they’re doing. Retweet or share what others are saying. (And don’t forget the transparency piece from #1 – be human, don’t just share links. Share something human like an opinion too).

If someone asks you a question or comes to you with a concern, don’t be scared. Just deal with it in the same way you do offline – empower a customer service representative to engage directly with that client on behalf of the company. You’ve been running your business successfully for years – only now it’s 140 character press releases, customer service 2.0 and free branding. Stay transparent, respond in a timely manner, apply your business sense online, and you’ll be just fine. Really.

• Stay in touch
• Give them opportunities
• Share fun, relevant, related information
• Information Source – pull user created content to fill your blog, site, emails, etc.
• Define and manage  your brand
• Make announcements
• Discounts/deals/promotions
• Share videos/podcasts/blogs you’re placing elsewhere
• Answer customer concerns and complaints
• Troubleshooting/support

Tactical Goals

• Acquisition
• Retention
• Reactivation
• Engagement with influences

Campaign Goals

• Define key messages, audiences, channels, stakeholders nad spokespeople
• Agree on targets, objectives and strategy
• Evaluate social media tools
• Create a cross-functional approach
• Agree with a light-touch editorial approach
• Write internal policies and terms of use
• Try using your IT policy for email and sway “social media” for “email”
• Implement social media monitoring
• Criticism is inevitable, plan for an attack
• Appoint a social media person/team
• Conduct appropriate training
• Define metrics and determine ROI

Metrics for Social Media

• __ number of website visitors per month via Social Media channels
• __ number of new Twitter followers per month
• __% increase of visitors to the blog
• __% of positive brand mentions from month to month, quarterly, etc.
• Engagement levels
• How many mentions across channels?
• Number of fans
• How many blog articles and comments?
• How many people are watching videos?
• Sentimental analysis (comparing positive vs. negative)
• What do you web stats show?

• You can now target a very specific group because of all of the data out there
• Reviews and recommendations influence buying decisions more than any other media – viral vs. traditional
• Real time planning overtakes “annual market budgets” – constant creation and implementation of ideas. Can’t set it and forget it. Videos, blogs, podcasts, tweets, microsites, updates…
• Smart phones are now at 50% penetration
• Analytics can be more specific:
• track ecommerce – see the per visit value – really measure your investments
• see how many whitepaper downloads or video views you get
• LinkedIn
• Over 52% of users are located outside the US (India, UK, Canada, Brazil)
• More men than women (60/40)
• Most users in the 25-54 range (Older)
• Great for B2B
• Facebook
• Most users
• 50% of users log on every day
• they spend over 700 billion minutes per month
• 900 million objects that people interact with each month
• Average user has 130 friends, is connected to 80 pages/groups/events
• Twitter
• 182% increase in number of mobile Twitter users in the past year
• Digital technology has changed the way we plan, make decisions (shop, learn, experience, entertain, date), communicate and market

Web Strategy Fundamentals

• Does your site:
• Support your business?
• Look like an electronic brochure?
• Integrate with other marketing efforts?
• Have a clear set of success metrics?
• Define your business objectives – what is your business’ reason for existence? Where does digital marketing support it? – your website will be around for 2-3 years. What are you hoping your business will accomplish in the next 2-3 years.
• Categories – target each of these with different tactics (google ad, email campaign, landing page, seo, link building campaign, whitepapers)
• Revenue – acquisition, retention, winback
• Operations – support, it, production, finance
• Stakeholder – employees, customers, shareholders
• Rules:
• Be specific
• Be measurable
• Be realistic
• Be relevant
• Set timeframe
• Make sure all of these things point to the overall business strategey
• “We want to see a 20% YOY increase in new web site registrations originating from search by the end of June 2, 2012.” is better than “We want more leads”
• What are your customer’s objectives
• Why do they visit the site?
• What are they doing on the site?
• How did they get here?
• what stage of the buy cycle are they in?
• What signals are they giving?
• How well are you aligned with sales? Are they following up on leads?
• Map your external stakeholder touch points
• trade show booth
• web site visit
• whitepaper view
• lead generation form
• qualification follow up
• sales call
• email
• presentation
• signed contract
• support
• post purchase add ons
• Have them tell you how good the leads are!
• Conversion Types
• Hard conversion – you get the name, follow up action required, varying degrees of value
• Soft conversion – set them up for another visit, later sale
• Stack Rank: List the possible strategies and rank on a scales of 1-5 in the following categories to figure out which you should implement: impact on revenue, operational efficiency, positive impact on guest support, scalability, ease of implementation, executive visibility
• What does success look like? Define the sort of metrics the company wants up front

Benchmarks

• Qualitative
• surveys, forms, etc.
• heat mapping (http://www.crazyegg.com)
• mouse movement (http://www.clicktale.com)
• 5 second usability test (http://fivesecondtest.com)
• Quantitative
• analytics platforms (google analytics)
• 3rd party site analysis (http://www.woorank.com)
• social media monitoring (Scoutlabs, social mention, ClickZ)
• Create monthly dashboards reports to show off the data – don’t just give them the link to the analytics page (http://www.shufflepoint.com, http://www.nordicclick.com or create your own)
• Key Performance Indicators (KPI) – ranked in order of importance
• Compare at least two dates/months/years
• % change (make green and red)
• trends
• key takeaways – use visuals to call out problems/highlight success
• orders vs. revenue
• charts
• suggested action items
• list out the original business strategy
• Bounce rate high? See the bounce rate per source/city/keyword etc.

Site Optimization

• What’s your end game objective – the business outcomes
• Should the site be optimized for:
• leads
• sales
• traffic – search, referral
• branding
• customer service
• Alter your content
• Provides for instant segmentation
• Can be set up for virtually any segment and/or traffic source – make landing pages that speak specifically to that user:
• Organic/Paid Search
• Email recipient
• mobile user
• loyal customer
• reseller
• Fire up the tracking
• Dedicated pages – send them directly to the appropriate sub directory – make the call to action from paid search very simple and obvious
• Look at your competitors
• Google the name before selecting it – you may find the competition is too strong for that name
• Remarketing
• Follow site visitors that came but didn’t complete the action and target them with ads (http://www.google.com/ads/innovations/remarketing.html)
• Test what you know and what you don’t know
• Integrate all of your various marketing campaigns
• Don’t sit still – keep content fresh!

Tools

• Site architecture and usability
• GoMockingbird – wireframes – $9/mo
• Gliffy – flowcharts, IA and other diagrams – $5/mo
• UserTesting.com – $39/test
• Feedback Army – ask people questions – $15 for 10 responses
• Competitive Analysis
• compete.com
• quantcast.com
• alexa.com
• websitegrader.com
• heardable

PHONE

TokTumi

MagicJack

Skype

Google voice

FINANCES

Freshbooks

Outright

NeatCo

INVOICES

Blink Sale

PROJECT MANAGEMENT/COLLABORATION SOFTWARE

BaseCamp

Pivotal Tracker

Get Harvest

One Place Home

Mind Jet

Xmind

LAW/TAXES/ETC

Find Law

Nolo

APPOINTMENT SCHEDULING

Setster

CONTENT CREATION

Microsoft Word

Pages

Google Docs

Neo Office

Buzzword

BUSINESS CARDS/PRINTING

Vistaprint

Uprinting

MOO

TO DO LISTS

ToDoist

Remember the Milk

Tadalist

FINDING JOBS

Elance.com

As you most likely know, I have run a site on Broadway musicals since high school. It started out as a way to kill time during a boring summer and has since developed into a legit business. The site is basically a database, presented in a logical, aesthetically pleasing way (though, I grant you, it is in desperate need of a visual update – something currently in the works).

Over the years, I’ve had tons of requests that I incorporate more recent news on the site, but as I run it as a side project, I really couldn’t legitimize running as the competition (who all have at least 10-50 people on staff) does.

Earlier this summer, I decided to launch a Twitter account to cover this type of news. Coming up with 140 characters of text didn’t seem that difficult. I’d get email updates from Playbill or Broadway.com and post those items that interested me to the Twitter account. Slowly people started following …

Meanwhile, back when Facebook first created pages, I’d decided to grab one for The Broadway Musical Home. I uploaded a couple pictures and filled out the basic information, but then just kind of let it sit there. One day, while tweeting for @broadwaymusical, I realized it would make sense to post my tweets to my page’s Facebook wall as well. I invited my friends to become fans and slowly others started becoming fans as well …

Halfway through the summer I realized that for some items, 140 characters were not enough. I started poking around on wordpress and, on a whim looked to see if anyone had grabbed broadwaymusicalblog.com. As no one had, I decided to take the leap and began blogging. Slowly people started reading and subscribing …

My followers, fans and readers have since started growing at an exponential rate.

The best part: I haven’t done anything special. I placed a few ads on Facebook for that page, spending no more than $25 a month. I used all of the tag and category SEO tools available through wordpress. I linked to the blog, twitter and facebook pages from the home page of my site. But, when it comes down to it, I really haven’t done much of anything to get people to connect with me. So why have they come in such huge droves?

This is stuff both me and my followers are really passionate about.
I can’t help but get excited about Broadway muscials, and have found with social media stuff – you really don’t need to and shouldn’t try to hide that enthusiasm. People like getting fired up with you – so don’t try to keep it from being fun.

People just love to share.
What’s really startled me is the number of RTs and @replies on twitter and the long stream of replies to my postings on facebook. Some of the posts/tweets people have gotten the most excited about are those where I ask questions like: What star would you like to meet? What’s your favorite album? What’s the worst show you’ve seen? People really do want to share. Give them the chance and they will.

They want to talk to a real person; they want to connect.
One of the most amazing parts about the site for me is when I get emails and DMs and @replies asking me for the name of the song from that one show, the actor who played so-and-so in 1967, auditions for Broadway and any number of other things.

I have played around on the web enough to know where to go for this type of information and so can usually find what they’re looking for and help them out. I’ve gotten novels of ecstatic thank yous from those I’ve responded to – even those I can’t help directly – who come back with nothing but overjoyed, surprised thanks for my reply.

I just had an 11 year old write to me with his thoughts for Broadway’s Thriller and so posted it to my blog looking for help. Someone sent me the name of the production company and many others sent me notes of appreciation and thoughts. I replied to Spencer and got an adorable note back from him and one from his father, saying that it meant so very much to Spencer that I had replied. It’s amazing to me that what takes 5 minutes of my time can make someone’s day. That’s awesome for everyone.

It’s targeted – a very specific group, a very specific topic.
The people who follow/fan/read my stuff are in love with this stuff. It is a very specific niche and I know that and target all of the content to them. I only talk Broadway musicals (or potential Broadway musicals). There’s a lot out there on this stuff, but I think if I expanded to talking all musicals or even all Broadway, I would be stretching away from my group’s interests and would be taxing myself to keep up. Because it’s so specific, they know and get exactly what they came for and I have the time to do it.

Follow all the Broadway buzz here:

I would like to say something on behalf of Margaret in Much Ado About Nothing: she is not a slut. She is true to one man – Borachio – throughout the entire show. She has been with him for a year according to Shakespeare and, when Borachio returns from the war, gets intimate with him and only him (it’s hardly her fault that people are spying on her when she does). She sometimes talks a little dirty, dresses to show off her assets and is intimate with a man she is not married to (how many of you are guilty of sex before marriage, hmmm?), but if that makes her a slut, I am surrounded by sluts right now. Poor, misunderstood Margaret can not stand up for herself, so I will stand up for her.

The show is going very well – audiences have really enjoyed it and Quinton Skinner wrote up a nice review in the Pioneer Press. We had very large and responsive houses for opening weekend that will hopefully continue through the rest of the run. I hope you get a chance to attend this very fun production, which is 1/3 Disney Cartoon, 1/3 1950s Italian Romance and 1/3 Traditional Shakespeare. Go to www.theatreintheround.org to reserve your tickets.

We agreed that sites need valuable content in order to succeed, but I do think there is something to be said about an aesthetically pleasing presentation. It is obvious to (nearly) everyone that a website should be more than just an online brochure, but what exactly is it that sets apart the good sites from the mediocre?

One of the speakers today pointed out that you should “always start with your authentic story and what makes you unique.” I feel you can and should accomplish this through both content and design. Offer content no one else is getting out there and present it in a way that both makes sense and feels good. People won’t be able to identify why they like it – they’ll just know they do.