1. What is your most marked characteristic? My laugh, insouciance, and free spiritedness.
2. What is the quality you most like in a man? Self-assurance.
3. What is the quality you most like in a woman? A fierce independent streak.
4. What do you most value in your friends? Ability to make me laugh.
5. What is the trait you most deplore in yourself? Lack of patience, but others tell me it is self-centeredness.
6. What is your idea of perfect happiness? Contentment. A cold beer on a sandy beach on a hot day is also pretty good.
7. What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery? Extended self-pity.  I am all for a pity party, but eat, drink, mope and then be merry.
8. Who are your favorite writers? F. Scott Fitzgerald, Sylvia Plath, Jodi Picoult, Agatha Christie
9. What is your current state of mind? My mind is always in the State of Texas.
10. What is your motto? Two wrongs don’t make a right but it might be fun to keep trying.
11. What is your greatest fear? So cliché, but heights
12. What is your greatest extravagance? Snuggling in for hours in my pajamas with a good book.
13. On what occasion do you lie? Why would I actually tell you?
14. What do you dislike most about your appearance? Profile of my face.  Indivdiually, I like the parts that make it up, but when put together…..blech.
15. Which words or phrases do you most overuse? Rinky dink, f***, Holy Cannoli (last Lent I gave up swearing and this is what I started saying and it stuck), and conjure (my new 2010 word)

Marketing Strategy

• Create your ideal client list
• Advertising on your invoice
• Create a “try things” fund for your budget
• What is it about the exclamation point? I’ll tell you!
• Try Some Funny in Your Marketing

Online Marketing

• How is Your Online Branding?
• 3 Easy Ways to Add Readers to Your Blog
• Why Would You Want a Content Management System (CMS) For Your Web Site?
• Boring is best for e-mail open rates

Social Media

• 8 Strategies for Building Your Business With Flickr
• How to Use LinkedIn for Business – 7 Ways to Get and Stay on Track
• What’s On Your Business’s Facebook Page
• 6 Types of Social Media You Need To Know About
• How to Use Twitter in Sales

I was approached this week by a college student I know who needed to interview someone currently working in the field he wants to pursue after he graduated. It’s a class project. (Three more classes to go. Nose to the grindstone, Joe.) The questions were pretty good, so I thought I would share them here. The answers give you a little insight into what I value and what it’s like to work with me and the rest of the Silver Square team.

What kind of training and or education would best prepare me for this type of work (New Media Director)?

I learned most of what I do every day by diving in and getting my hands dirty. Find a cause that you care about that you want to volunteer to help with their website, social media, or an email campaign. If no opportunity is speaking out to you: make one. I built a site about movie reviews for no other reason than I wanted to. I developed a lot of skills and a valuable portfolio piece in the process.

How do you and/or your team approach each project…do you have any specific steps that you follow during the creative process or development of a project?

You have to be flexible with your process because every project is going to have different demands, but there are some common threads. Start with identifying the goals for the project. If you are creating a website, what do you want to see happen? Should a visitor be making a purchase? Giving you their email address? Leaving a comment? If you don’t figure this out first, you’re mostly just creating a site to amuse yourself.

Once you know that, you can create a design to help you meet that objective. Then you get approval from the client. Build it. Measure if what you created is successful at meeting the goals you set.

How involved are you in the creative and development process?

I work on a small team where everyone is involved in identifying goals and brainstorming solutions. We have a couple of jaw-droppingly talented designers who take the ideas and turn them into a tangible design that marries beauty and functionality. There’s a little back and forth as we talk about how the elements of the design can be translated into web, email, or whatever medium we’re using. Then I step in and code out the final design.

What financial risks if any did you take in starting your own business in this profession?

I first started working with Silver Square as an outside contractor. I was still operating under the web design business I had created. When I first started that business, though, I took an enormous pay cut. For the first year of my business I was pulling a lot of money out of my retirement accounts and paying some painful fees in the process. It was brutal.

How have you or the company changed or improved since it was first established?

We’ve had to keep up with the ways rapidly advancing technology has shifted the world of marketing. Social media has certainly been a part of that, but I would place just as much (or more) of the blame/credit on streaming video becoming easier and more practical and the strides made with online analytics.

We’ve had to learn how to pick up and implement new ideas very quickly. It just keeps happening so fast. I have to study and learn more now than I did when I was in school.

How do you view competition?

If you are viewing someone as your competition, it means you haven’t dug deep enough to find out how you’re different. Everyone has a different offering. You have your own skillsets, style, and resources.

Now potential customers are going to view you and some other people as competitors. It’s your job to help them see how you’re different and why those differences are important. Otherwise the job is just going to go to the lowest bidder. You definitely don’t want to be lowest bidder.

Any advice on networking?

I advise quality over quantity. You don’t need to know a ton of people if you know the right people. Part of that is my personality. I’m not someone who enters a room shaking hands and kissing babies. I’m a little more reserved, but I know of people who are happy to network with anyone and everyone.

Knowing someone isn’t enough, though. You can collect a fistful of business cards at a networking event, but then what? How do you make someone want to help you and send business your way? You help them first, of course. So when you’re meeting people, be listening for what their problems are and try to connect them with people that can offer solutions.

What skills or characteristic traits do you feel have best served you in this type of work?

I’m willing to teach myself. I’ve taught myself new programming languages when I had the opportunity to work on a project that just had to be in a certain language. When I don’t know how to do something with Javascript or a database query, I just keep hammering away until I figure it out. I search on the Internet. I do trial and error. I’ll do whatever it takes to make the code do what I want – or something else equally cool.

You can’t always sit back and wait for someone to publish a book on how to do something. Once it’s easy to learn something, everyone will be doing it.

The Life You Can Save by Peter Singer, was a whim of a book I picked up while getting new books at the library with my kids. It grabbed my attention with the title and that a small child stands in the place of where the “i” is in life. I had to know just how I could save a life… Turns out we can save a lot of lifes and clean water is just one of the ways to do so. Poverty, as defined as an income of $1.25 a day by the World Bank, is a line that has 1.4 billion people under it. That is a number I was astonished to learn. We’re talking billions… that’s with a ”b”.

So I won’t go on and on about this book. I know just becuase I do all that volunteer stuff doesn’t mean everyone reading this blog shares in my cares. That being said, take a look at this website that allows you to help provide clean water around the world. It’s called Charity Water, and if you don’t believe in the clean water cause, take a look for the design. It’s well done and worth the visit.

1. What is your most marked characteristic? My energy and creativity
2. What is the quality you most like in a man? I value men who love their wife.
3. What is the quality you most like in a woman? I want all women to have the disposition of my grandma. 
4. What do you most value in your friends? To call BS from time to time.
5. What is the trait you most deplore in yourself? My need for adulation
6. What is your idea of perfect happiness? Drinking coffee with my wife while watching Ollie (my daughter) play with Otis (my dog).
7. What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery? Working at a check cashing/ payday loan store. That would severely depress me.
8. Who are your favorite writers? I considered listing a bevy of talented writers, whose works I don’t read, but instead I have chosen to filibuster.
9. What is your current state of mind? Figuring out how to educate the masses on things that they don’t care to learn.
10. What is your motto? Make your own breaks.
11. What is your greatest fear? Mediocrity
12. What is your greatest extravagance? Man shoes. 
13. On what occasion do you lie? Question #11
14. What do you dislike most about your appearance? Besides my hairline, my height, and my relatively splotchy forehead; not a damn thing. 
15. Which words or phrases do you most overuse? “Yo” and “Here’s the deal”

The Intimate Invasion project is a fun look at the intimate side of some of the CEO’s we work with. It’s not often we get to hear when someone had their first kiss, what favorite childhood memory they have or what the best thing is about living in Indianapolis. We ask a variety of questions and get the real, intimate answer.

Head on over to our Facebook fan page and view the video!

Group is a relatively new web-based marketing tool to reach new clients, and possibly unengaged past clients, to take action on your offer. Think coupon, but with a twist. The offer works simply enough. As a small business owner, you’re able to make an offer or discount for a certain value. This part works like a coupon. The twist is that you also get to determine how many people you want or need to take advantage of that offer before you will actually release it as an offer.

Let’s take an offer from this week as an example. Source Yoga Studio offered three yoga sessions and an hour massage for $35. In order for this offer to become active, Source Yoga Studio determined they needed 35 people to take advantage of this offer. Once the 35^th person said yes, I will buy this offer, the other 34 people who already said yes, I will buy this offer, get activated and thus you have your offer. As you can see with this twist, had 35 people not found this offer valuable, one of two things can happen:  1) the people who did find it valuable may want to invite their friends to take advantage of the offer, therefore getting to that 35 number, or 2) the offer would have never activated due to lack of interest.

This video from Groupon is a great visual explanation:

Learn How Groupon Works! from The Point on Vimeo.

This is definitely a marketing medium to consider for your product or service. It is a trend in the making! This is also a low-budget and low cost way to market your company to get new leads and clients. The learning curve is minimal, especially if you match this up with other social media means you may be considering in your marketing mix, and trial and error is easy to test and adjust.

Stay tuned for more info on this as we are currently working with a client on their Groupon offer. Have you used Groupon? Pleaes share your experience in our comments section.

1. What is your most marked characteristic? Comfortable with the uncomfortable
2. What is the quality you most like in a man? You gotta be a gentleman
3. What is the quality you most like in a woman? Intelligence
4. What do you most value in your friends? The laughter!
5. What is the trait you most deplore in yourself? Too driven at times
6. What is your idea of perfect happiness? Unlimited first class plane tickets
7. What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery? No soccer!
8. Who are your favorite writers? Vonnegut, Dickens, Twain
9. What is your current state of mind? Restless
10. What is your motto? Be nice
11. What is your greatest fear? Heights
12. What is your greatest extravagance? Travel
13. On what occasion do you lie? Questions 1-15
14. What do you dislike most about your appearance? I need abs of steel
15. Which words or phrases do you most overuse? ”That’s what she said”