People have been serving customers in “real time” ever since there have been customers. So this is not a new concept. In fact, we’re using technology to correct a problem that technology introduced–distance between company and customer.

If someone walks into your store with a problem, you fix it immediately. If a customer calls you on the phone, you talk to them (hopefully) immediately. But what if someone posts something negative about you on Twitter or to an Internet Forum? What then?

Real time search allows you to monitor those types of interactions, complaints, and complements. It’s still your responsibility to respond, but the time needed to find such messages has been greatly reduced.

The lines between marketing and customer service are blurring. Quickly responding to someone on their own turf in a respectful manner has potential not only to set them straight, but also increase the likelihood they will tell other people about your remarkable effort to make it right. And your public response will serve as a permanent record for anyone else who sees the comment.

Twitter is currently the primary source of real time content, but expect others to get on board quickly. Twitter’s success has driven the major search engines to add real time search features to their products. But Twitter still manages the majority of real time traffic, so you can use Twitter’s built-in search engine as a place to hear what people are saying about you. Otherwise, expect popular online listening tools to start accommodating real time search in the near future.

This certainly won’t pre-empt any traditional forms of customer service, but people are out there talking about you online one way or another. You’ll be better off if you’re aware of it, since it’s not just going to go away on it’s own. At the end of the day, you should view this as an opportunity to serve people better.

 This post was featured in ePiphany, Astek’s Monthly Newsletter |  Other ePiphany Articles 

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Andy Swindler Categories: Entrepreneurship, Marketing, Social Media, Technology, Web, ePiphany Featured Story

A few weeks ago I was interviewed about Astek by Alice Truong from Medill. She wanted to write a story focusing on how a small company like Astek gets through a tough recession. We’re very happy with the way it turned out, and encourage you to read on.

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Andy Swindler Categories: Entrepreneurship, Fun, Marketing, Web

Disclaimers up front: This is just me – I haven’t heard anything remotely “official,” but I’d just like to call it right now so that I can point back to this blog post and yell “I told you so.”

My prediction – Facebook is about to put some heavy restrictions on Event invitations.

I don’t know about you, but I get about 6-10 invites a day – about 90% of them the equivalent of spam or non-events (“You are invited to the event Donate to my favorite charity” or my personal favorite… “I lost my phone so send me your phone number! Will you attend this event? Yes/No/Maybe”). This is a complaint about Facebook I am hearing more and more.

Facebook grew to its #1 status and has held onto it for years by not falling victim to the mistakes of MySpace and others – it did not become the playground for spammers and weirdos. Almost every post in my news feed these days is stuff I care about – Since the last major up date to the News Feed I hardly even see those annoying quizzes anymore. The same cannot be said for the “invitations” I receive to “events.”

The problem is that individuals and Fan Pages have figured out that event invites are one of the only ways to get a message right to the inbox your entire friend (or fan) list. Regular messages have restrictions of 20 carbon copies. It’s not unusual for FB users to have hundreds of friends. This is resulting in people (myself included) “inviting” people to non-events just as a way to send a mass email to all your Facebook friends.

Too much abuse of this “privilege” and Facebook is going to do what it has always done, restrict, filter or otherwise stop those who attempt to game the system – most likely without warning. And even if it makes my job as a Social Media marketer a little more difficult, I can’t say that I will be sorry to see them do it. Making changes like that is what keeps Facebook a vibrant social networking site and fertile social media marketing ground!

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Katie Hawkey Categories: Marketing, Social Media, Web

An open letter from Mark Zuckerberg posted on the Facebook blog last night announces some important changes to privacy settings on Facebook:

• Facebook will be removing regional networks
• Facebook will allow you to set privacy settings on “each individual piece of content you create or upload”
• “In the next couple of weeks” you’ll be prompted to review and update your privacy settings.

Whether you use Facebook for business or strictly limit your “friends,” privacy settings are an important part of managing your online reputation. When you see the prompt from Facebook to “review and update” your privacy settings, take the time to consider how your Facebook content will impact your professional reputation and adjust your privacy settings to appropriately protect or promote yourself.

Mark’s letter can be found here: http://blog.facebook.com/blog.php?post=190423927130

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Katie Hawkey Categories: Marketing, Social Media, Web

The right CMS allows you to focus on your website content rather than the tools that run it. Numerous options meet the demands of countless websites. Astek designed Webany for you.

By now you should know why you need a CMS and how you can use a Content Management System to keep your website up to date. I wanted to share some tips about choosing the right CMS to make your Web life easier and more productive.

There are four basic types of CMS:

1. Open source applications that require configuration from a Web professional
2. Boxed desktop software that allow you to edit your website from one computer
3. “Boxed” hosted software that requires configuration from a Web professional
4. Hosted software as a service (SAAS) applications that relieve you from the burden of worrying about the backend

Here is some more info on each type of CMS to help you make the right decision:

1. Open source means that the code used to create the software is publicly available and takes advantage of a huge pool of resources (programmers) to develop. There are advantages and disadvantages to open source software. Since development is not regulated by a single entity, it also means that version-control isn’t 100% predictable or reliable. Typically this weighs on the side of advantage since there are a number of passionate, dedicated developers to fix problems that arise.

Open source developers create add-on modules or plug-ins to provide extended capabilities including forums, blog, wiki, web-stores, photo-galleries, contact-management, e-commerce, etc. It can be time-consuming to find the right plug-in, verify it works with your website and does what you need it to do, but chances are there is a solution out there for you. You will typically need to work with a developer to install, configure, and develop an open source CMS for you to use.

We like to use Wordpress for blogs, which is an open source CMS for publishing. For blogs it’s nearly perfect, but we find that for creating more complex websites it has some limitations that inspired us to create Webany.

2. You can purchase boxed CMS desktop software like you would a word processor and run it from your computer. Adobe Contribute is a fairly capable desktop-based CMS. Typically these are designed for one person to manage one or more websites from one computer. While they can sometimes handle multiple users, this gets expensive quickly since you have to purchase additional licenses of the software for each person.

Some boxed CMS products are far more expensive and do offer a greater array of features. These also require set-up from a knowledgeable professional and rarely work perfectly “out-of-the-box” as their packaging might suggest. Again, these products are usually not designed to handle highly complex websites like our solution.

3. There are a few “boxed” hosted solutions out there that are not open source, but may still offer a suitable range of options for your Web needs. These are “boxed” solutions in that they are purchased as a single license, but are not designed as do-it-yourself products. You will need the help of a Web developer to install and configure these products on your Web server, as well as train you to use them. Telerik’s Sitefinity is a good example.

4. That leaves us with SAAS or hosted Web CMS. These have a big advantage in saving you time and money with set-up since they are maintained by the company who provides the service, which means you don’t have to worry about it! Some hosted CMS’ have pre-made templates for you to use, and only a few allow you to use a custom design.

You may still need the skills of a Web professional, especially if you are custom-designing a website to match your brand and specific needs. Astek specializes in this type of development, but we were consistently disappointed with CMS solutions that sacrificed features for ease-of-use, or packed in so many features that that they became cumbersome to use. Rather than settle for another solution, we decided to make one that meets our ideal for a CMS.

Webany is just right. She offers more flexibility than you’re likely to need while maintaining an intuitive design that makes managing your website a snap. You can update anything from words to photos to movies to custom forms without any knowledge of HTML. Use a custom design from Astek or anyone else.

Most importantly, Webany makes sure that your updates won’t counteract the effort and money you put into creating a custom-tailored look and feel. Auto-archiving and user workflow ensure a painless approach to website maintenance.

If you’re interested in learning more, please contact us for a Webany demo.

 This post was featured in ePiphany, Astek’s Monthly Newsletter |  Other ePiphany Articles 

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Andy Swindler Categories: Entrepreneurship, Marketing, Technology, Web, ePiphany Featured Story

Facebook Fan Pages just got a cool new customization feature – the ability to post wall messages that are seen by a selected group of fans.

By clicking on the new icon next to the “share” button, you will gain the option to customize who sees your post:

When “Customize” is chosen, you will be allowed to filter your audience by country, state, city or language.

This is just one more way that Facebook is enabling businesses to engage in the type of highly targeted conversations that customers respond to.

The fact that Facebook continues to develop these features for Fan pages and not for Groups is why we recommend companies set up Fan pages.

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Katie Hawkey Categories: How To, Marketing, Social Media, Web

Last week I was attempting to surprise my girlfriend by taking her to see Leonard Cohen in concert. At some point I must have RSVP’ed to the event on Facebook, as you can see from the screenshot she saw on her Facebook page the day before the show. Facebook invited her to the show by telling her that I was attending! Since I had told her to block off the night, it wasn’t too hard to put it together. (Well, that and the fact that I made her listen to Leonard Cohen songs all week.

This reminds me a bit of the Beacon advertising disaster Facebook tried launching a couple of years ago.

Lesson: If you are trying to surprise someone, don’t tell the biggest gossip hound on the planet — Facebook!

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Andy Swindler Categories: Fun, Marketing, Social Media, Web

Corporate blogs benefit greatly from a collaborative effort to produce and maintain. While it’s easy for anyone to start a personal blog in seconds, a company blog takes considerably more thought and planning to execute.

We are fortunate to have talented and engaged clients and want to highlight a couple of our most successful blog launches for The Alter Group and Bliss PR, which each benefit from multiple contributors. These projects engaged talented designers and thought leaders outside Astek who were essential to the end results. Both blogs run on custom installations of Wordpress.

Astek’s focus on helping our clients produce blogs over the past few years is especially rewarding since the client has so much influence over the life of the end product, which changes nearly daily.

Case Study #1
Alter NOW and ALTER+CARE Inspire blogs featuring podcasts
Business Focus: One of the nation’s preeminent corporate real estate development firms.
Blog Focus: Corporate Real Estate, Finance, Economy, Healthcare
Approx. Combined Monthly Visitors: 4,800+
Original launch: April 10, 2008
Redesign and ALTER+CARE Inspire launch: April 6, 2009
Featured in: Alltop.com

Astek worked closely with The Alter Group team over several months to hone the voice and focus of the blog, identify and train contributors on software, design the feature set needed, and deploy a flexible platform for growth. The initial budget was low to make sure appropriate resources could be committed consistently and to prove ROI before “going big.” Once the process and message proved stable, we engaged a designer to add the finishing touches that make the blog what it is today.

Dramatic color and imagery set Alter NOW apart from other blogs:

Consistent and careful use of relevant imagery in each article pulls the reader in:

The footer of each article features a ShareThis link for easy distribution across email and other web sites (important for viral growth to reach new readers), the author photo, name, relevant categories and tags, and a link to leave a comment, which invites readers to become part of the ongoing conversation blogs present. This article also features a link to the corresponding podcast on the subject.

The sidebar features easy subscription links, quick links to the podcasts, and prioritized standard blog features such as search and recent posts:

Both blogs are featured prominently on The Alter Group home page for easy access:

Case Study #2
B2B Bliss » PR for Thought Leaders blog
Business Focus: Business-to-business strategic media relations and marketing communications
Blog Focus: B2B marketing, public relations, professional services, financial services, and healthcare

Working with BlissPR to design and launch their blog was, well, blissful! They had been planning this launch for some time so the overall strategy and content development were in good shape. BlissPR primarily needed a partner to help with design, production, and blog deployment and integration strategy.

BlissPR wanted to integrate the new blog into their existing Web site, which presented a unique set of design opportunities and challenges. The new design features a prominent masthead for the blog with subscription links and a search box. Each article on the home page is clearly delineated with a green title bar, photo of the author, and crafted abstract leading to the full story. The “Share” link has plenty of room to breathe, highlighting the importance of this word of mouth feature.

The side bar focuses on the people behind the blog to provide context to visitors. A brief description of BlissPR is immediately followed by photos linking to bios of all the authors. This is a great way to add personality to your blog. The sidebar is followed by standard blog elements like tag cloud and recent posts.

We’re very proud of our clients’ ongoing success with these publications. Please check them out and remember to leave a comment!

Alter NOW and ALTER+CARE Inspire
B2B Bliss » PR for Thought Leaders

Here’s a succinct list of five things you can do to improve your corporate blog. The three blogs featured above stand as testimony to these recommended tactics.

 This post was featured in ePiphany, Astek’s Monthly Newsletter |  Other ePiphany Articles 

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Andy Swindler Categories: Entrepreneurship, Marketing, Social Media, Web, ePiphany Featured Story

Whether they are sending beautifully designed eNewsletters, or simple text based email outreach, these Astek clients have inspired us with email marketing campaigns that are well executed and “just right” for their organizations.

Case Study #1
Gotham Research: Simple and Sharable
Gotham Research Group approached Astek a few weeks ago to implement a fairly simple email campaign introducing Gotham’s services to a list of potential new clients. Gotham wanted to put their best foot forward to these new prospects, providing a PDF summarizing a recent research project. They wanted to deliver this in a simple, text-only email. Things about the email content that really impressed us:

• Emails began with a polite, yet personalized greeting – “Ms. Smith,“
• The voice of the email was right on – it struck an excellent balance between professional and personable, informative and concise. It was written as a personal message from the company’s President & CEO, Jeffrey Levine, Ph.D.

• In an almost textbook example of “viral” marketing, Gotham was giving prospective clients valuable content that was also an example of their work – in this case a 2-page summary of a research project performed by Gotham Research that was of relevance to their target market – and encouraging recipients to pass on the report summary to their colleagues.

When Gotham originally contacted us, they were considering sending this email using Outlook. As we’ve discussed in this blog previously, there are some major advantages to using an Email Service Provider like Emma to send out an email to a large list. Of these advantages, Gotham was most excited to learn about the ability to:

• Easily automate personalized greeting lines
• Protect their company’s office email from getting flagged as Spam
• Generate metrics showing delivery rates, open rates and click-through rates.
• Set hyperlink colors to match brand colors.

Even though Emma can handle complex HTML formated emails, Gotham decided to stick with the original ”letter” formating of the original email and not add any photos or graphics. Needing to add only a few subtle touches to already solid content, Gotham and Astek were able to get the email ready to send through Emma in a mater of hours.

Gotham began receiving inquire calls within hours of the emailing going out. The email got a 15% open rate and approximately 4% of the people who opened the email called to inquire about contracting the company. Gotham and Astek are continuing to execute similar email campaigns to new lists and strategizing ways to build on these successes.

A big thanks to Vin Design, Gotham’s brand consultant and a regular partner of Astek’s, for introducing us to this savvy company.

Case Study #2
Chicago Dancing Festival: Building the List
The Chicago Dancing Festival draws more than 10,000 attendees to world-class dance performances in downtown Chicago every August. But after three years of successful events, the organization had collected less than 300 email addresses. Every Spring, the event promotion efforts had to start from square one.

For the 2009 festival, CDF was ready to invest in technologies that would allow them to better build momentum from one year to the next. Astek worked with CDF and Vin Design to more aggressively gather opt-in email addresses through multiple tactics:

• From June through the end of the festival, a “cookie” was added to the homepage so that the first time someone visited the site, they were prompted to join the mailing list.
• A special welcome email was automatically sent to new sign-ups. The email outlined “all the festival details in one handy email.” Most importantly, the email was topped by a message encouraging recipients to forward the message.
  
• Buttons labelled “forward to a friend” and “signup for updates” were built into the sidebar of every email sent from CDF.
  

By the end of the three month push, CDF had grown their list to 10 times the original size. And because the list had been built so carefully, CDF enjoys incredibly high response rates: open rates averaging around 40% and click-through rates as high as 57%. (Open and Click-through rates for opt-in email lists are typically in the range if 10-25% and 10-15% respectively.) It was a highly successful campaign on all fronts.

This post was featured in ePiphany, Astek’s Monthly Newsletter | Other ePiphany Articles

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Katie Hawkey Categories: Marketing, Social Media, Web, ePiphany Featured Story

For businesses, an email signature is like a website on a micro scale.  You should definitely have one, but it needs to be done well to make the right statement about your business.  There are also various stylistic and technical issues to consider.  I like to think our email signature is pretty good.  Clean, simple, with a hint of color to make it stand out and represent our brand:

However, one of our clients stands out for having an all-around great email signature that I think should stand as example to others.  As part of our ePiphany issue focusing on inspiring work by our clients, we would like to show you the email signature from Demi and Cooper. They are a Chicago advertising agency we have worked with to provide webcam service for building development projects.  Their signature has a nice mix of clean and simple design, appropriate use of images, and inclusion of social media links.  Have a look at the signature of Walter Ottenhoff, who did the actual design for it:

	Walter Ottenhoff | Web Art Director/Manager | Demi & Cooper Advertising P 847.931.5800 | F 847.931.5801 | demicooper.com

If you’re going to use graphics in your signature, do so sparingly.  And be sure to host any images at your company’s website, referring to them there rather than including them as email attachments.  If social media links are appropriate, by all means include them and use the appropriate thumbnails.

A professional email signature should ideally be crafted by an experienced web designer.  The signature is basically just a little bit of HTML, but there are concerns specific to viewing in an email client.  Test in as many email clients as possible to be sure that people won’t see an unintended mess at the bottom of your emails. We recommend Litmus for an automated service to perform such testing.

If you can’t get a custom HTML signature, one free alternative is a Firefox browser plugin called WiseStamp.  Their signature edit tool would feel familiar to anyone who has used MS Word or blog authoring tools.  You can input your social media profile addresses and it will add links to them automatically, with some nice options for customizing their display.  WiseStamp will add your signature to all the common web mail clients.  You can even get the HTML from it (although without the social media links) to use in a desktop email client like Outlook.  One tip: be sure to uncheck the promote Wisestamp Project option in the settings.

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Andrew Crowe Categories: General, How To, Marketing, Technology, Web, ePiphany Featured Story