If you pretend to be something you’re not, [your customer] will see through it. Then what have you done? You’ve lied to those who would have loved you for who you are; that’s not how you build a relationship…
Should you come off as a big, established, safe company or as a cool, passionate, small team who wants to make a difference? … Be human. Stop hiding. Be yourself.
Blog
A Balance To Be Kept
Let’s face it, there are more and more freelancers and small technology businesses sprouting up these days (incredible). For all of us, time management hits close to home as the freedom that we have becomes a blessing and a curse at the same time. I reflect on this after just taking an entire day off this week (my teammates were worried about my general sanity and workload, and forced me to do it :)). I planned it out with my teammates, communicated expectations with clients, and ensured deliverables were delegated in a way so that this decision would still allow me to be responsible.
While just on the phone with a teammate, Josh Colter, we realized another thing: we set our own pace. I admit, I find myself waking up and checking email on the iPhone to prepare myself for what’s ahead that day and to answer anything important enough that “requires” my attention. This type of rush in the schedule can make one feeling as if they’re always catching up. And I’ve noticed (for myself), it’s often rooted in an unhealthy perspective. In fact, my wife and I have agreed to maintain the rule of even keeping the computer out of a certain room in the house so work doesn’t infringe more than it should.
One may ask: why stop when one can continue moving forward in building more solutions or gaining more clients to make happy, always progressing? With endless opportunities, and in a world (America, specifically speaking) where the race to improve only increases by the night – people (like ourselves at Elias) who desire a healthy balance of work and play are confronted with a decision to make. How will we pursue our ambitions while still keeping healthy priorities? Nonetheless, our goal for ROWE (Results Only Work Environment) has been a challenge to hold true to. We’re still learning.
Why do I say all this? Well, I feel it appropriate to communicate a few things that have become more clear to me on this wonderful day off:
- We set the pace. If we allow the culture around us to make us feel guilty for taking a day off, the reality is that we will feel guilty.
- Our challenge is to do the absolute utmost we can with the tools and skills we have, in an effort of working to live – not living to work.
- Time spent in front of the computer doesn’t necessarily equate to productivity and results. Often times, I find myself being more “productive” in a fewer amount of planned/organized hours. Thus, I’ve started taking time for myself each morning to jot out the needs/wants of the day (in respect to the overall progress of the week/month/year that follow). As a remotely connected team, this can be crucial for us as a company.
Oh, another thing to note: What did I do to ensure that I really had a full day off? Well, I did take action on a few of the following practical things (otherwise, it wouldn’t have been a true day off!):
- Turn off iPhone email push notifications
- Keep my business emails out of the inbox for the entire day
- Make the first thing I read during the day something non-work related
- Spend time reading, writing, praying, and progressing internally in forward thinking
Let us (together) live fully by working hard, playing hard, laughing hard, and crying hard.
RSS Feed Design Example
I am always trying to figure out how we can improve. Earlier this week our team released this site’s new design. Content has been and will continue to be a major focus for Elias as we serve our customers and the Magento community. Our blog is the primary delivery mechanism for this content and thus the number of people who subscribe to receive regular updates via RSS is valuable to us.
Today I found Jason Cohen’s blog, which provides a great example of inviting the reader to opt-in via RSS feed or email. Take a look:
This invitation is located in the upper left hand corner of Jason’s main content area. It’s front-and-center. It felt conversational to me. And it worked – I added his blog to my google reader.
Now compare what you just saw to the RSS subscription we had on our site this morning;
Luke convinced me that we should not move our subscription link to the top of the main content area. However, he did work a little of his magic on the subscription offer:
This was clearly an improvement. But it didn’t have the conversational feel of Jason’s example. The content needed to make the message seem more human. Here’s the final result:
Adding “you should…” made the content feel more personable. It’s more of a suggestion than a call to action. Anyone else have other good examples of RSS feed sign-ups?
Is your ecommerce platform stable?
Let’s face it, some platforms seem like a house of cards. One wrong move and everything goes down. Watch this video to see what happens when someone makes one wrong move with a forklift.
Too bad these guys don’t have SVN for disaster recovery.
Create a Competitive Advantage with Content
Exceptional marketing is a formidable barrier to entry. At least that’s what Dharmesh Shan thinks. And given the success of his company, Hubspot, it might be smart to listen to him. Here is one of Mr. Shan’s thoughts on how to execute exceptional marketing:
Create content that kicks butt.
It’s really simple. If you produce things that are useful/interesting to your target customers — you win. You win by drawing people in to your business not because you had the largest marketing budget, but because you created something of value. The kind of stuff that people tweet about, link to in their blogs and and share with their friends. That’s magical. The type of content can be varied. At my startup HubSpot, we’ve tried lots of different things: “normal” blog articles, music videos, parody videos, songs, cartoons — and of course, free marketing tools. For most startups, if you took every dollar you would have spent on advertising to try and beat your prospects over the head in the hopes that they’ll buy from you and instead spent that dollar on actually producing useful content, you’d win. Seriously win. This worked so well for us that almost all of our increase in marketing spend is allocated towards hiring people that can produce content. They make videos, write blogs, create research reports and develop software tools. The beauty of this content is that long after you’ve invested in creating it, it’ll continue to generate traffic and leads. To this day, some of the early articles I wrote for our marketing blog drive consistent cash into our bank account. We don’t have to spend a penny for those leads. I’ll summarize again in four words: Create content. It works.
I’ve been trying to follow this strategy since the inception of Elias Interactive. It’s simple hard. Writing a blog is not difficult. In fact, there is something therapeutic about communicating thoughts, ideas, and observations via a blog. Writing awakens the creative side of me. But blogging after a day of coding, following up with new prospective clients, and balancing the books is hard. I think this is true of most small companies where the founders must wear several hats. And so creating content is usually the first item on the to-do list to be pushed to another day or time.
Why we focus on creating content at Elias
Putting off creating content is not smart because content works – at least it has for Elias. We don’t spend money on marketing because we work hard to keep up with the clients and prospects who are already contacting us to ask for help with Magento. Most of this steady stream of new business comes from reading this blog or twitter or an answer to some question on Magento’s forum. Without this blog we would have to work a lot harder to find new clients and build trust. Content works.
But the benefits of content are not immediate. I have a theory about sales and marketing: results trail effort by 3-6 months. So what you do today to bring in new business will have an effect on your business in about 3-6 months. That’s why consistency is so imperative; and why ignoring content for too long will have a negative effect on business in a few months.
Help Wanted
We are about to roll out a new website platform here at Elias that will give us a solid foundation to better serve Magento users. I need help creating content for this platform: things like blog posts, pictures, tweets, tips, solutions to Magento, examples of excellent online stores, webcasts, or anything else that might add value to the community. If you are interested in working with us on content then write a comment below or drop me a note at josh[at]eliasinteractive.com. I’m interested in how we can help one another.