I found my exterminator through my social channels.  I didn’t use Google or any other search engine, I just asked my social networks for recommendations for an exterminator in my area.  Within an hour I had 5 recommendations and within a day there was a clear pattern that emerged.  Bulwark was mentioned multiple times from happy customers, and they were clearly on the social channels as well.  So I reached out to Thomas over at Bulwark and now I have a great exterminator and they have a happy customer talking about them.

I have now had them out twice to my house and I can tell you that the technician was friendly and happy, took the time to explain what he was doing and why. So now I’m not only happy with the fact that no bugs are in my house or around my yard but I have a company I can now recommend to my friends.

So being the digital marketing guy that I am I wanted to look under the curtains to see what Bulwark was doing right, especially in the social channels.  It didn’t take long for me to realize that they had dominated the SEO for strategic keywords associated with pest control, as well as engaging their customers to provide reviews on local search sites.  So when you do a local search, the reviews look great!

Recently I got a chance to meet Thomas and some associates for lunch and it became very clear that they are brilliant digital marketers that understand their business and how to use online marketing to get new customers.  It also doesn’t hurt that they have a great product that sells itself, and sells even better with a small nudge from the social channels that all their happy customers use to share with their friends.

I suggest you try finding a company or service in your area through your social networks, before you go to a search engine.  See if there’s a clear pattern like I saw with Bulwark, and let me know!  Google is great for most things but when it comes to local search try the people in your circles first and then look at the reviews of those strangers on that local site.

Have you found a company using purely social channels?

We have been using Vonage for our home phone service for years now, and pay for the service on a yearly basis.  To our surprise they decided to increase our yearly cost by quite a bit and failed to notify us that they were going to do so.  Well other than the notice that they had charged our card for the yearly fee.  When I called their customer service to get an explanation for the increase, there was no good answer other than that’s what we charge.  Now to make matters worse my wife found a price online for new customers that would have made it even cheaper for us to cancel our current account and establish new service.  So naturally I tweeted this out and to Vonages’ credit they obviously monitor social channels, because they responded in a big way, three replies on Twitter, two voice mails and an email.

Normally I would never have considered putting any time in to researching an alternative to our phone service, but Vonage managed to put this task on my radar for me.  So now I was looking at alternatives, from cable providers, landlines, and obviously other VoIP solutions.  What I’m looking for is pretty simple, unlimited US & Canada so we can stay connected with family and friends and low price calling to Sweden to stay in touch with family and friends over there too.  What I’ve done in the past has always been to use our Vonage connection for all US & Canada calls and we would use Skype or Google Voice for international calls.  I love how I’m able to set Google Voice to automatically handles international calls on my Droid!

The cable and landline provides just didn’t compete in the features to price comparisons, they charged more per month and provided less features and higher priced long distance (what’s that anymore).  So it was really just a matter of determining the right VoIP solution for our needs.  Was it Vonage or one of the many SIP providers or something I haven’t heard of yet?  Well after spending too much time on this I discovered an interesting article over at Linux Journal talking about making a Skype Server for your home, which got me thinking of setting something similar up for our home without the wires.  We already use Skype both on our computers for video chat with the family, and also for international calls to grandma in Sweden and others, plus we have Skype on all our mobile phones so we could use it when traveling too.  Running the numbers comparing features, ease of implementation, initial cost for hardware and installation and yearly costs, I was surprised to find that a Skype solution won out over SIP solutions and Vonage.

We ended up going with Skype for our vonage replacement.  Ordered an ATA box that will convert Skype to standard RJ11 and a set of Panasonic Cordless Phones that interface with our mobile phones (Droids) through bluetooth.  So we can use the cordless phones throughout the house / our property (with amazing range apparently) while making and receiving Skype calls as well as calls from our Mobile phones (supports up to 2).  Panasonic even has a range extender if we ever need it on our private island.

I just ordered the equipment, so now if everything works out right, we not only got all of the new hardware, paid for Skype service (unlimited US & Canada) for two years, got a great new inbound number and an interface with our mobile phones all for less than 1/2 what Vonage wanted to charge us for 1 year.

Have you been considering changing your phone service?  What do you think about our new solution?

Jay Baer posted this site on Facebook that analyzes your writing style.  So I took the copy from the blog post I recently wrote for AgencySide on Online Reputation Management and analyzed it.  Apparently I write like Cory Doctorow, which is flattering since I really enjoy Cory’s work.  Give the site a try and let me know who you write like.

Back in March I helped my friends at the City of Tempe pull together a video for the Google Fiber Project.  Well today Google announced a new website FiberForCommunities.com where you can learn more about the project and keep up to date on developments.  Now Google won’t be announcing the winner until the end of 2010 but you can still cheer Tempe on and help to advocate for common-sense federal and local policies that would help fiber deployments nationwide.

You can see the final Tempe submission here:

There was also a quick and dirty video of myself pleading for crazy fast Internet connectivity.

Here the thank you video from Google for the over 1100 submissions:

What would you do with Gigabit per second fiber connectivity to your office or home?

Are you looking for a job in the Digital Marketing space?  Or maybe you’re looking for that intern, contractor or full time ninja to take your digital marketing / social media to the next lever.  Well there’s a place where you can post positions (for free) as an employer and connect with employers as someone that’s looking for the perfect position.

In an effort to provide that place to help the digital marketing community and connect people with great jobs, we created: Jobs.SocialMediaAZ.org

Some examples of jobs available are:

• A Senior Digital Strategist for Off Madison Ave.
• Web Video Editor / Producer for SpyFu
• Internet Channel Manager for National Bank of Arizona

Check it out, share it with your friends and let us know if there’s a category we should include.

Photo by Y

So you may be asking yourself what exactly is EarlyBird anyway?  Well it’s a service that Twitter is providing people by offering exclusive offers, special time-bound deals, sneak-peeks, and events that are promoted by the official Twitter @earlybird account.  Basically it’s an opportunity for companies to work with Twitter to promote their products and services through the @EarlyBird twitter handle.

You can read more about that Twitter has up their sleeve at their official support blog.

Google is opening up Google Voice and you should get an account now.  I’ve been using Google Voice since before it was Google Voice, back in the Grand Central days and have loved it!  I currently use a couple Google Voice accounts for business and highly recommend them.

Now from a business perspective, especially a small business like mine it helped me to stay connected to my customers in all new ways.  Here are just a few of the features that make Google Voice exceptional for small businesses:

• call routing based on who’s calling, time of day, more
• custom voicemail based on who’s calling
• voicemail transcriptions
• Amazing Android App:
  • that lets me use google voice over data and not my mobile minutes
  • listen to voicemails and forward them
  • look at transcriptions of voicemails
  • automatically kick in when dialing internationally
  • answer / interrupt calls while messages being left
  • email to SMS features
  • able to put call me links on your website for customers to reach you
• HTLM5 version for iPhone
  • Apple removed Google Voice from the app store because they are evil, so Google just made an HTML5 version of Google Voice that worked via the browser.  This makes me happy when I use my touch (not very often any more).

Basically Google Voice allows you to have one number and based on who’s calling you can intelligently route the call and decide what to do with it based on predefined logic or real time.  You can also read your voicemails and respond more quickly to your customers needs, or even that call from the wife where you need to stop by the store on your way back to the house.

So now that you have the option, I can tell you it’s just silly not to get a number already…

Someday I should learn not to help some friends out!  I was volunteering my time to a friends pet project and now he’s freaking out because his unrealistic and non-communicated expectations are not being met.  I offered to either give my time toward his project and it would be completed in a few weeks or bring in some ninjas at my cost and have it done in a few days.  I explained this to him before starting but he must have just blocked this portion out because he didn’t want to hear it.  Now I’m somehow extorting him because he wants it done in a few days for free…

There’s a very good reason to document expectations with clients but I didn’t realize I needed to do that with friends.  I’m guessing he’ll eventually take a breath, chill out and realize that I’m donating my time and appreciate that I’m offering to help him.  Frustrating…

Photo by: Horia Varlan

My son Markus helped me with the video setup for Ignite Phoenix #7 and Brian Carson’s son Chris was there shooting some video of the event as well.  So it didn’t take long for the boys to borrow my Panasonic TM300 and start interviewing Ignite attendees.  Now keep in mind that Chris is 13 and Markus is 10, so I have to tell you I’m pretty proud of both of them for thinking of this and fearlessly doing it.

Markus on Camera

Chris Interviewing

Pre-Show Ignite Phoenix #7 Interviews by Chris & Markus

After the show Markus grabbed our friend Bobby Page to help with post-show interviews since Chris was busy.  So here’s the post-show Ignite Phoenix #7 Interviews by Bobby and Markus:

Post-Show Ignite Phoenix #7 Interviews by Bobby & Markus

Jump on and rate, review and share…

For those people that didn’t make it out to Ignite Phoenix #7 or missed the live streaming, I’m currently doing the basic edits of the Ignite Phoenix #7 videos to hand off to Brian Carson for the final edits.