Back from the brink . . . .
Posted on | May 2, 2009 | Comments Off
Sortof . . . . About a month ago I moved (physically) and in true Miss Vapor Trail style I didn’t get my internet set up. There is another cute hipster coffee shop down the street that I can use, but guess what? They aren’t open very late on week days. The other big guess what? I don’t really miss the internet that much. Right before I moved a started a class that’s mostly reading. and reading and reading and reading. I still haven’t even fully unpacked my stuff yet.
Besides which, I get more than enough internet at my job. In fact, I’m so over-internetted that I don’t even look at the websites when I do first round cold calling. An itern asked me what I look for in a website before I call a company, and I had to admit the truth: I read OMMA while I’m on hold.When I’m not on hold reading OMMA, I’m working late (it’s actually slowed down a little this past week, which I’m thankful for even though it’s not good when the sales team isn’t busy)
Facebook, I thought I could never do without, but since the last redesign it’s just gotten goofy. I think they tweaked the algorithm of the friend feed and now I see more actions of my acquintances who I barely remember than the pithy updates of the people I really care about. Also: spring finally hit in Chicago, which means people are going OUTSIDE and SEEING PEOPLE instead of stalking them on facebook (I know, the lengths that some people will go to to get an interactive experience is appalling.)
But you know what I really don’t miss? TV. I’m currently completely TV-less and can’t even watch it on my computer without the internet, and I’m not missing it at all. I do occasionally wonder what’s going on with my buddy Betty and Meredith Grey’s ongoing/offgoing relationship (last I heard they got engaged, but she didn’t seem overly excited about it when she told Christina . . . . maybe she was just tired. Ever notice how she doesn’t sleep? She just works and drinks and hooks up with the attending surgeons,) but I’ve pretty much shed my need to rot my brain out when I come home. If I need noise or something I turn on the radio and listen to NPR. Have you ever noticed that they always seem to have something really interesting to talk about? I feel far more informed about the current torture/water boarding controversy now that I would be if I had blown my evenings watching . . . . . what was it that I was watching? Oh right, I was actually a little obsessed with Keith Oberman and Rachel Maddow. Oberman can put together some very interesting arguments sometimes but mostly he just blathers on about Bill O’Reilly, and Rachel’s pretty much every where these days. Actually, I do miss Rachel a little bit. She’d definately got a charming personality that makes you want to hang out with her every day.
Okay, so this is clearly one of my “Randomness” posts – Next week I want to get back to the stuff I had originally intended to blog about: web development innovations and the creative mind.
Fail Whale!!!
Posted on | March 27, 2009 | Comments Off
So tonight I went to the Social Media Club event at the CME focusing on Social Media for B2B. What did I learn?
- There’s this thing out there called Coachsuite which is in private beta and I NEED IT RIGHT NOW!
- Showing up late because you’re working on a proposal is lame
- Social Media can be great for customer service
- Social Media is great for listening to what your customer base is talking about.
- A roomba is actually a robotic pet that happens to vacuum.
- the Chicago Mercantile Exchange Tweets. (no, really. It tweets!)
- Social media agencies mainly work with the marketing department (half the time I’m working with the IT department)
- I’m not very good at working the room.
- Sometimes, when people see the fail whale, they say “Oh, Gosh.” (not that there’s a website for that or anything)
And finally – Arrive at networking events ON TIME, and sit in the front. I learned this because I arrived late, missed the actual networking part, sat in the back, couldn’t see anyone, and in the end was very confused at to who was who and where everyone came from.
I didn’t really get what I wanted out of the evening, which is half my fault – of course I wanted awesome sales leads, but that requires showing up on time, and a lot of circulation, which I’m not very good at. I don’t know about you, but when I meet someone, I want to talk to them. I can’t explain what I do in a handshake.
But what I was really hoping against hope for was to learn more tricks of the trade and get some better ideas. I’m already very well versed in the idea of starting with your ultimate objective, figuring out where the audience is that fulfills that objective, and then going to that place and driving them to you (it’s like herding snails . . . . with money in their shells). Anyone with a background in tracking and analytics can tell you that. What I need are fresh ideas – from myself. I do come up with some very innovative recommendations at times, but if something goes really hot it turns into a broken record for the next two weeks. I need skittles people. SKITTLES!
I also wanted to learn more about how agencies are managing the conversation when the brand ambassadors are in-house – it seems that many companies are finding a road block in that they are not ready to let their employees talk about the brand. First off, we need to realize that branding doesn’t live in a vision document but in the hearts and minds of the people that love you most. Secondly, I should hope that the people that love you most are your own employees!
Finally, going back to the fail whale in the room – I am a little worried about Twitter and Facebook. I think Facebook will kick their advertising sales platform into high gear by 2010, and it will be a lucrative venture for them (and sometime soon most advertisers will learn how to target the clients on facebook – so that when my cat goes online she will be served ads about catfood, etc.)
Twitter – I just don’t know, man. I’m out of ideas.
But I did get to meet the wonderful and exciting @scottfmurphy (very briefly) and @lenkendall (even more briefly! (I mean, I just died of shock when I came home and found out he was following me (see how lame it is to not have an iPhone, I have to wait until I get home find out that I have a new follower)))(oh I should add he did an excellent job moderating) So for that alone, it was a worthwhile adventure.
Not to mention gossiping with @crosberg is ALWAYS a good time.
Where have all the good leads gone?
Posted on | March 22, 2009 | 2 Comments
I woke up this morning and found out there is a twitter channel just for agency layoffs (@adagencylayoffs) and I was reminded, again, that I’m pretty lucky to be in a position at a company that’s not only growing, but that my job puts me in control of the growth. It’s a pretty powerful position – if I’m confident in what we can do for a client, I really get to choose who we work with and what we get to do.
But there’s a timeliness to this profession, which became clear to me when a friend of mine, a freelance copywriter, asked me (in seriousness) where I get my leads. Well, geez, the vast majority still come in as referrals, and sometimes then we’re still competing (with other companies that were also referred to the client), but referrals can be hit or miss, and if you sit around waiting for referrals to come in all day, you could miss out on an opportunity to pursue a client that really excites you.
The copywriter’s question came up because one of her biggest clients, a local web designer, has been in a tough position over the last few months – for the lifetime of his business, he’s had a steady stream of referrals, only to have it dry up recently do to the Adult Recess. Now he has to prospect in order to survive and getting started isn’t any easy one. Hence, her question: Where do you get your leads.
I hate to admit that a large piece of my lead list over the past year has come from an outside lead generation group, although I should call them a lead research group, and mention that I don’t think they did a very good job. I’ve got this huge list now that mostly looks like it came from a phone book, and many of the numbers were disconnected (this, before the Adult Recess really got started). Then, if the phone number works, and I’m talking to someone, inevitably they ask how I find them- (errrrrrrrrrr . . . . .linkedin?)
For our recent iPhone contest, I was given a list of companies and phone numbers. This is a far more fun way to operate! I like the combination of research online as well as the challenge of reaching the right person on the phone. And with so many people using linkedin or posting their biography to the company site, I can see when people are doing something exciting or interesting and hopefully strike up a conversation about that. I try not to waste too much time doing research on the website it self – you never know what projects people have already in the works. Not to mention, with Adult Recess going on, everybody’s doing the cold call game, but I’m not sure if everyone is quite as prepared as we are to meet that challenge of turning a name and a number into someone who realizes that you are trustworthy and may have some good answers.
As you can imagine, the power of the company I work for has been driven for the most part by the years of sales work completed by Boss Lady, who now often does speaking engagements to present our work in various industries – a highly successful channel for gaining new clients. Getting speaking engagements can be a bit of a sales process unto itself. Boss Lady is a sales woman at heart, but at the same time, she has become quite an industry leader in SEO. I think now she’s compelled to really help her clients innovate their web offerings to provide an extremely high level of value to their customers.
As for me, I’m thinking about gettng my name out by attending some of the Social media and seo meetings and panels that are pretty popular in Chicago right now. Some people at the company don’t think they are really worth the time, but I figured if it on my off-hours, why not? If nothing else, I can meet some new people and keep my ear to ground.
Tags: adult recess > boss lady > generating leads > recession > sales
Why Vapor Trail?
Posted on | March 18, 2009 | 1 Comment
So someone asked me recently – “Why Vapor Trail Gallery?” and I had a lot of explaining to do. Instead of explaining, I decided instead to walk behind a wall and then say “WHOOOOSH!”
But no, there is a real reason, a reason that goes all the way back to when I was in highschool. Back then, I was an avid digital consumer (much worse than I am now), and I was starting to explore online dating. By college, I was pretty well versed in the world of online dating, and a couple years after college, well, I would have nothing to do with online dating. But that’s besides the point.
There was a site called Sparkmatch.com (which I think now has just turned into okcupid.com) that had these amazing quizes – one of which gave you a dating “sign” (kind of like a zodiac sign) that would match with dating signs of the opposite sex. One of those signs was the Vapor Trail – guess what she does during a break up!
While I am cleverly nodding to my own knowledge of social media, I’m also making a statement about SEO – the point is to stay on top, but with ongoing problems such as the Google Dance and the Google Sandbox, we’re likely to see sites come and go. They may rank for some time (hopefully a long time if they are a client of ours!) but chances are people and search engines will move on to something new, whether we like it or not. And the links on those websites will be as precious as stocks in the American automobile business.
It’s also a personal title: My job function is, truely, a sales one, but I’m actually strictly in sales support, and while sometimes I’m in the process from beginning to end (I make or take the first call, do all the assessments, follow up questions, dream up a crazy marketing plan that nobody thinks will work, create a proposal, more calls, some hand wringling, a few prayers offered, and finalize the billing), many times I’m just given a budget and some notes from the SEO engineer. The sad part is that often, when the check is cashed and the account manager is chosen, the client is out of my life. (and sometimes they don’t send a check and they are REALLY out of my life, but again, that’s another story) As if I had given a child up for adoption to some distant cousin, I hear from time to time that the client is doing well, they’re taking their first steps into social media, or thier traffic has improved by 95%, but they are the account manager’s project now, not mine. I have to move on to new things, always new websites, new names, and new objections to over come. I rarely really work on a project for more than two weeks – although sometimes getting a sale will take months of regular phone calls, emails and consultations, when it’s all done and over, I have to turn around and do it all again.
That’s it! We’re done, and the client is out of my life.
I’m a girl!
Posted on | March 17, 2009 | Comments Off
Newsflash! Did you know this blog is written by a woman? Well, now you do. I recently submitted the blog to the blogher directory only to realize that I don’t really specify the fact that I’m an XX Chromosome in too many places on the blog!
So to prove to the cyber world that I do deserve to be in the Blogher Directory, I’d like to write about some girly things that I do:
1. I played with Barbie dolls when I was a little girl. ALOT. I played with American Girl dolls as well, and I have some rudimentary sewing skills that I rarely like to admit to.
2. I acted in a well known play called “The Vagina Monologues” when I was in College. I was the Angry Vagina. Men were very afraid of me that year. The next year I was the Stage Manager, and by the end of the show, I had it memorized. The next year I was the house manager, and that’s probably one of the best jobs in theater (provided your audience members aren’t insane). The last year, I co-directed with another girl. That was they year my mother finally came to see the play. I don’t think she liked it very much.
3. I wear high heels when I cold call. Sometimes if I’m talking to a man who really wants to hang up on me I get a little breathy. Just a little bit.
4. There’s this guy I’m dating. He’s kind of funny because he’s a very reserved sort of character who doesn’t talk about himself very much. It took us months to get beyond “Ask me again tomorrow” status (in my family, that means we don’t know where the relationship stands). And last week I finally figured out why that took so long.
See, I was jokingly telling him about a guy I had met a while back who had tried, with no success, to ask me a on date. This is how he tried to do it.
Dude: Miss Vapor Trail, I think you should go to the Chicago Independent Film Festival.
Miss Vapor Trail: . . . . .Okay. Any particular film I should see at this festival?
Dude: Uuuuuuuhhhhhh (fumbles with book) I hear that there’s this one that good . . . .
Miss Vapor Trail: (Stifling laughter) Yeah, sounds good. I’ll check it out.
Miss Vapor Trail’s friend who introduced her to dude: I don’t know this guy.
So fast forward to a year later, I’m sitting across the table from this guy I’m seeing, (let’s call him the man-panion) laughing at my story because my story’s really funny (to me) and he gets this sheepish look on his face, and then proceeds to tell me that he’s been equally as clueless at times.
This explains so much! Not just about him, but about guys in general! All those times I thought I had failed miserably at flirting can easily be explained with the fact that guys are CLUELESS! And while we know that there are guys who think that every little gesture is a flirtation, some guys are blissfully (or not so blissfully) unaware of subtle nuances that might go into our interactions. Or trying to keep things professional if you’re in the same industry. Some times guys are capable of restraint(!), which is good when, say, he comes down with a contagious form of food poisoning over New Years. (yeah, I don’t want that.)
I had seriously thought he hated me (but was still taking me to concerts and movies and out to dinner . . . .)
My friend A. has been thinking about writing a modern, more positive dating book, and this is definitely something that should be included. Sometimes guys are clueless: don’t take it personally.
My mom’s advance for clueless guys was very simple: Go to the jewelry store. Pick out something sparkly. Present at key moment.
The man-panion decided to go a more creative route and wrote me a 4-page poem with awesome lines including “Elbows honed like ninja blades.” After that I knew he didn’t hate me.
So if that bout of honestly girly chit-chat doesn’t prove my feminity to the world, I don’t know what will.
the power of posting on your blog
Posted on | March 10, 2009 | 2 Comments
This week, we have proof that posting on your blog drives traffic. I was quiet recently for a couple of weeks and traffic did this:
Snapshot of March
As you can see, traffic was very low in the weeks were I posted nothing, and then shot up again when I posted something and shared it on my facebook profile and my twitter account. Lesson learned: I post, traffic goes up!
I’d like to underscore this by stating that one of our clients, a B2B business, started a blog and saw their traffic go up 80%. How about them apples?
In other news, traffic from facebook will soon outpace direct traffic (i.e. people who typed the url in, mostly because I forced them to).
I’ve had 4 visitors from organic search. Keywords include: “Health information about cats,” Advertising with vapour trails, Vapour Trail Gallery, and affordable SEO.
I’ve only had three visitors from Twitter! Perhaps my twitter friends ignore me because I post so rarely – Like the blog, you gotta tweet to be heard!
iPhone Contest Loser
Posted on | March 7, 2009 | Comments Off
So I didn’t win the iPhone contest. I came in a very strong second, in fact, I was only one point away from tying with the winner. But on the last day of the contest, neither of us were able to make any progress – and he set a record amount of calls. I conceded at about 3:30 as I had a meeting to get to and nobody wants to talk to a salesperson after 4 on a Friday.
However, since the contest Boss Lady has been in a very good mood. She shook the winner’s hand and gave me a hug on the day after the contest ended. For the past week I have been in a fog, trying to remind myself that at least I didn’t come in last (you don’t want to know what happened to that guy). But then by Friday it sunk in: I had lost the iPhone Contest.
So I’m looking for other iPhone contests I can win. Of course, most of them require either giving them my mail address, which will cause junk mail (I HATE junk mail) or they expired back in 2007. The other option for winning is Ebay, where I can either get one that unlocked ($$$$$) or one with water damage (ummm, no thanks.) Perhaps I should get one that’s unlocked, and then when my iphone-using coworkers jadedly comment on the horrific service offered by AT&T in Chicago I can call them and say “I can hear YOU just fine, thanks.”
But since funds are a little low at the moment (I just put a security deposit down on a new place) I fear I will just have to wait until September when my contract runs out. DEAR GOD, I’m going to be the last person in the WORLD to get an iPhone.
A day without Instant Messenger
Posted on | February 25, 2009 | Comments Off
It may surprise my two readers to know that I went without instant messenger service for roughly one yearh and nine months starting mid-year 2006 and lasting until May 2008. I had my first real job in a cubicle with a computer, and I didn’t want to abuse it. When I got home at the end of the day, I didn’t really want to stare at the screen, and if I did it was just to write. I was so much more focused then than I am now! Then I got a new computer that I couldn’t even figure out how to turn on, so finding my old friends on chat got kind of tough. Actually, I think most of my friends from college deflected from chat right around the same time I did.
That was the year I started going out more and staying in less. I met a guy IRL and got to know him by hanging out with him IN PERSON rather than over constant Chat Messenger services. What a difference! Of course, we broke up eight months later, but that was also in person, which meant that every tear I shed was like a stab wound in his heart. AWESOME!
At my new job, it turns out, we use Gtalk to communicate. That did not thrill me at first. Some days I’m okay with it. At times I’ll try to turn it off, but I do see the value in being able to send someone a message if they’re on the phone and vice versa. Both Boss Lady and the other boss came from AOL, which must be why they like Gtalk so much, but the other boss keeps his gtalk sn private to most of the company and Boss Lady regularly gets annoyed with people who use it to distract her or if they have several chat windows open. I’m actually starting to get annoyed with it myself.
I’m starting to think about declaring a “Go to work in your pajamas AND don’t use Instant Messenger” Day. People would be forced to communicate the old fashioned way: Email.
Affordable SEO
Posted on | February 19, 2009 | Comments Off
Um, yeah about that. I actually had some people come to me recently and ask if they could do SEO at $1,000 per month. My answer: not really. The reality? There are probably some very nice consultants who will work for that little, but I don’t know what their names are. Perhaps you might be better off getting a pro membership at SEOmoz.org and and doing the SEO yourself.
SEO requires some upfront work and then a long commitment to your website, both financially and in terms of time. Your website has to live and breathe the content, the subject and the traffic it produces in order to truly pull rank. You can’t pull people to a site that doesn’t drive conversions, otherwise you’re just losing money down the drain – and you can’t just put up an attractive website either – Google wants to know that other sites know you too.
So when you’re considering your SEO budget, think about the people hours that go into it – there’s a large, technical aspect of building the site in a way that appeals to Google and Yahoo, the deliberate and creative strategy that should go into place, especially if you’re new or in a competitive industry, and the ongoing offsite SEO campaign, “Where the rubber meets the road” as Boss Lady likes to say.
There are a few companies that work on the model of letting you choose the keywords that you want to rank for (in packages of 5 or 10) and then they just build links like crazy in hope that some of them stick. This strategy only works in the sense that they are sucking away your dollars. Links are not permanent, and sometimes they don’t even count towards your Page Rank. The questions you should be asking yourself are: What do people do when they come to my site from www.wherever.com? Do they buy my widget or do they surf away? Do they fill out a form or get driving directions? Do they hang around the customer services section for hours gettng frustrated? Do they fill up thier wishlist instead of their cart? (we may not be able to help you there . . . . .)
If you absolutely feel that you can’t spend more than $1,500 per month, ask yourself this: How is your outside advertising performing? Is your direct mail campaign going straight to the trash? These mediums have always had very low turnout rates, but consumers are turning to the internet more and more to do research, make purchasing decisions, and even make purchases. The other benefit is that SEO and PPC are trackable – Google Analytics and several other tools make it easy to see what’s working and what’s not, and the internet in turn is flexible enough that we can change our marketing plans even within a day if necessary. So if you’ve got a print campaign that’s draging it’s feel, maybe now is a time to reconsider where you are budgeting your advertising spend.
DON’T BUY SNAKE OIL! Find a company you trust with a dedicated account manager and robust tracking tools
—Miss Vapor Trail
Facebook Vs. Myspace
Posted on | February 17, 2009 | Comments Off
So maybe you’re really into facebook or myspace (or both) and the difference is really obvious to you. Or maybe not. Every once in a while I’ll meet someone who has a life beyond their laptop and they don’t really understand what facebook and myspace can do. Sometimes even advertisers can’t tell whether it’s better to advertise on myspace or not.
Here’s the deal: Myspace was born back in the day when people still didn’t feel very comfortable even giving out their names on the internet. Remember back when you didn’t even put your first name in your email address, because some stranger might see it and *gasp* know your name? Myspace still maintains that free-for-all feel, where you can pretty much define yourself as “X_VioletButterfly_X” is you’re so inclined. Bands and musicians are also still finding it to be a useful tool to quickly set up a webpage, post some songs and some video, and then take it all down if it doesn’t work out. (or leave it up for the memories . . .)
Facebook, however, started the charge of representing yourself online to connect with your classmates. If you remember college, there’s that time you have in the dorm when you know everybody really really well, and then the next year you move into your own apartment and all of a sudden you realize you never got anybody’s contact info (or last names). That’s what facebook was specifically invented for: connected with your classmates. In the beginning, you could only sign up if your college was listed, and you had to use your real name and college email address. Of course, now it’s open to every one, but the experience is still a sobering one compared to the craziness that myspace offers.
So does Myspace still have a place in the cyberworld? My vote is yes, and here’s why: I’ve seen that a lot of people have both a myspace and a facebook account, and use the myspace account to post pictures, relay interests, or find events that they don’t want thier stodgy chums from the Alma matar, (or those new work colleagues) to know about. This makes myspace an ideal format for campaigns that might not be accepted by the main stream currently, and this can run the gamut from obscure sports or groups to sex health information.
Facebook is a great place to organize groups – and I think people will start using it to organize themselves. It’s already my address book and birthday reminder service, and I’m starting to wish I could use it as a calendar too. A common complaint about facebook advertising isn’t targeted well and can be insulting – so there are good opportunities here to offer better services with better call to action and see results. You can also advertise your facebook group or fan page on facebook – a great way to get the word out if your company is new to facebook!
Social Media
Shelfari at Shelfari
Google Reader at Google Reader
Twitter at Twitter
Facebook Page at Facebook Page
Created by #! code