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Check out this Whole Foods Video – it’s incredible to think of the ground they manage to cover, plus it’s probably being used on the in store tv network as well.  This via Brand Autopsy (there’s a lot more on the Whole Foods Brand in that post as well…)

On a different bent … Whole Foods Market began podcasting last year and now they are video blogging. SECRET INGREDIENT is the name of their vlog and it’s a well-produced show worthy of your viewing. Learn more about the “secret ingredient” of Prosciutto by viewing this…

Your take aways here:

• Relevance – They’re offering content that is applicable to their product lines, and it’s content that makes a difference to the viewer.
• Value proposition – not only have I learned a little about Proscuitto, I also know that they’re the only place I can get this special, nitrate free Proscuitto. Hmmm…I wonder if this Proscuitto has it’s own rss feed like the egg in the Supermarket 2.0 video previously posted.
• Transparency – Yes, I know their trying to sell me a product.  The funny thing is that they never really make an overt pitch.  The assumption is that I’m already on board the Proscuitto train by virtue of the fact that I’m watching the video.
• Virality – (as opposed to virility) It’s great content and heck, I’ve linked it here.  I’m also likely to send it to a friend  who might like Proscuitto or possibly even to my wife, in hopes that the next time she cooks I get to experience some nitrate-free Proscuitto goodness.

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An incredible bit of work encapsulating the Web 2.0 experience.  Picked up via Francois at Emergence Marketing.

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I had an interesting meeting yesterday.  The customer was a large, very successful contractor who services multiple niches, as well as the general construction market.  The challenge they presented, which I give them tremendous credit for identifying, is that they need to focus on their niche verticals, without sacrificing the market as a whole.

The solution most companies would come up with would be akin to this bit Seth Godin posted last week.

Sigh…(and sorry to lift your picture Seth – I didn’t want to link direct…)

So then, as marketers and web designers, how are we to deal with this quandry?  How can we service these prime niche markets, while not turning our backs on the general market as a whole?

The solution is dynamic websites (yeah, Y2K called, and it wants it’s buzzword back…).  The truth is that by mixing the best practices for Search Engine Optimization(seo), Online Advertising and Project Portfolios, you can give each business area it’s due. 

Think of the post last week in which we argued that each page should function as it’s own homepage, a distinct entry point to your site.  When you treat the site that way, you essentially are creating separate homepages for your specific vertical markets.  Let’s say in this case, we are a Design/Build Contractor, who services the general market, but also specializes in Beverage Distribution Centers and Printing Facilities (note that both verticals have something in common, very specific and intensive HVAC plants).

You then design your homepage to give direct one click access to specific verticals.  Those pages are fully optimized for that niche, with your unique value proposition outlined clearly as though it was your primary mission statement.  On your real homepage, you make use of a “project spotlight” which randomly rotates projects from your portfolio, and where applicable you mention the specific vertical and again, link to that vertical page.

Your project portfolio pages are then easily categorized by niche, again with one click access to show customers only that work. 

• Avoid using flash for your portfolio – it is not searchable.
• Spend extra time ensuring your portfolio is keenly honed for seo.
• Treat each page as though it were a homepage.
• Apply a laser-like focus to your verticals, pounding the message of your special talents home.
• Don’t forget the special sauce – you’ve got experience that allows you to avoid the pitfalls.  Perhaps you have a special trap rock floor mix you use for the special needs of the beverage industry, or your HVAC division has tremendous experience in the humidity controlled environments that printing facilities require.  Let potential customers know
• Testimonials – we can talk til we’re blue in the face, where possible we need to let our customers speak for us!
• Project Spotlight – rotate items randomly from your portfolio on your homepage. 
• Portfolios as Case Studies – give your portfolio a make over with a quick project recap, hitting the highpoints of why the job was a success, and how you uniquely helped make it so.  We all love successful projects, and we want to know how you are going to help us succeed! 

Now many of you are thinking, “gee, that’s great in construction…” The same principles work in many areas of business. I’m personally remaking our own site along these lines.

Other Reading:

Surviving Personalized Search – Good article with tips you should put to use.

John Bell of Ogilvy PR writes in his Digital Influence Mapping Project Blog on the subject of crowd sourcing, an idea I’ve been watching for sometime.� Basically, he cites two sites, Cambrianhouse.com and Sitepoint.com (disclosure: I have been a Sitepoint member for approximately 7 years, but never have participated in crowd sourcing).� Recently sites like Helium have started to apply similar principles to content generation.

Crowd sourcing, (in John’s post he offers his own definition which is less restrictive and possibly more accurate) as defined (and cited by John) in Wikipedia:

“a business model in which a company or institution takes a job traditionally performed by a designated agent (usually an employee) and outsources it to an undefined, generally large group of people in the form of an open call over the Internet. The work is compensated with little or no pay in most cases. However, in a few examples the labor is well-compensated. In almost every case crowdsourcing relies on amateurs or volunteers working in their spare time to create content, solve problems, or even do corporate R&D.[1].”

Jeff Howe of Wired offers a more succinct definition in his Crowdsourcing blog:

The application of Open Source principles to fields outside of software.

While John cites just the two, I’ve seen several other sites where people are bidding on either design or development work, on a semi-professional level, and I’m shocked to see the prices the work is going at. Similarly, I’d also suggest that Craigslist.com has become a more informal version of this. Get 15 people to bid a project, then turn around and ask the top 5 bidders to do an initial design bake-off.

I’m in complete agreement with John – if you want a professional design, you’re going to need to hire a professional designer. I do a very good business in fixing sites that were designed by rookies. The errors I see are routinely costing the site owner money and potential opportunity. Remember, your website is one of your primary points of marketing contact. You would not have your nephew paint the sign on the window of your retail store, or for that matter your truck, why would you think it was okay to have him do your website in his spare time? Does success mean so little?

And yes, I have heard potential customers say twice in the last week they were going to let their nephews do their work. News flash: your competition can’t wait to meet you in the marketplace!

John notes the difference between R&D functions and creative/service functions. I can see where in an R&D setting you might actually inspire some truly creative thinking but my experience with crowd sourcing in design is that you get what you pay for.

Perhaps I’m just old fashioned, but I don’t believe you should be holding competition for your design work, any more than you ought to be holding bake sales to pay for the work.

Other links:
Wired – June 2006 – The Rise of Crowd Sourcing
Ian King – Newsflash – Crowdsourcing Ain’t Cheap (I read this after I wrote my bit)

I was standing in front of a local establishment Saturday with a couple friends and noticed a car with a nice looking sign painted on the side.  It had the company name, then the owner’s name, with the words “Independent Distributor” under it, and a phone number. 

So I asked my friends, “What’s wrong with that sign?” They looked at it for a second and they all laughed. 

You see, the car sign gave you no idea what the person did, although you’d guess from the “Independent Distributor” tag, they were hoping to get some business going.  The name of the company, which I won’t rag on here, seemed to be possibly involved in a hobby-type trade, but we really had no way to tell.

Branding is great.  It’s also great when we get to the point that our brand is ubiquitously known, a part of the national lexicon.  But most of us will never achieve that status.  If you’re spending money to get your truck or car painted, you should be positive that you’re at least giving potential customers an idea of what you do. 

It turns out my gut was right, the company in question provides stamps and scrap booking supplies through a network of independent distributors.   

In honor of events of the past week, hmmm…what’s an appropriate tune?

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Almost 7 years to the day I started with Atex I was laid off. Not a big deal, but I’ll admit it’s hard to leave the people you’ve worked and suffered with over nearly a decade without a bit of remorse.

This means that I’m finally free to speak. Long time readers of the Blog have probably noticed that details about who the heck I am have been obscured, as I always feared that my corporate overlords would find it and I’d be fired. Alas, no such worries anymore.

I’m Mark Cahill – I have been Corporate Webmaster for Atex for the past 7 years, and prior to that I was Webmaster for Pegasus Satellite Television. I have been a Webmaster since 1995, which is pretty much the dawn of the Internet. I am also the Managing Editor for Reel-Time.com – The Internet Journal of Saltwater Fly Fishing since about that time, and I also used to have a site called “Mark Cahill’s Fishing New England” which could be considered one of the first blogs ever created, in 1995.

While at Atex I was product manager for Internet Content Management for a product which was eventually killed, called “Omnex” – it was to be a truly revolutionary editorial content management system, and even though it was shelved in late 2001, some of it’s features are still not rivaled in any content management system available today, and I have evaluated many of them. Particularly, the product had an easily managed scriptable workflow that which would even today be considered state of the art.

Even though I continued on as Corporate Webmaster, I did have the privledge of evaluating and initiating a partnership with Ektron, developers of the CMS400.Net Internet Content Management system – a truly incredible CMS.

I used to write for the Worcester Telegram as an entertainment critic, and have about a decade of experience in Construction Project Management with The Stone Company, part of Dimeo Construction of Providence, RI. At one time, I owned a company called Markets Unlimited, Inc. in Hingham with my ex-wife. We manufactured a product called a scarf tube, which we sold primarily through QVC Network.

It’s been a bit of a stretch for sometime blogging in stealth mode. From this moment, that long dark night is now over. Oh, and if you need web design/development or content management work, I’m available.

Vario customers will soon begin receiving some interesting emails –  monthly scheduled traffic reports from our Google Analytics for all customer sites.  These reports provide a wealth of information.

If you would like to change the frequency of the report you recieve, just let us know.  These reports will be provided free of charge.  If you want help in interpreting the numbers for your site, let us know and we’ll be glad to schedule a meeting to review.

Seth Godin has a great post in which he makes the following point:

You don’t need one home page. You need a hundred or a thousand. And they’re all just as important.

Bingo! If you’ve got your website set up properly, then every page is an entry page, and that page is probably highlighting a particular specialty, product, etc.  The page is properly optimized for the search engines, hence you’ve got the holy grail: customers who want that particular product or service coming directly to the information on that product.

As such, the importance of the homepage is devalued, as all pages are potential points of entry.  Each and every page should make a strong play for good SEO ratings, and should contain a strong call to action.  When you realize that the bounce rate on most websites is well over 50% – that means you’ve got to make the pitch work *on that single page*.   1/2 your traffic will never go further than 1 page in depth!

Homework: look at your website from the point of view of a visitor coming in to a product page direct from a search engine.  Evaluate your site based on that one page, and decide if you want your customers potentially making a buying decision based upon that information. 

(If you don’t mind being a case study, let me know and perhaps I’ll do that evaluation for you – but bear in mind I’d like to blog the results.)

Links

Jeffrey Harrell – Sitewide Menus Are Harmful – good info on treating everything as an entry page
Unofficial Google Analytics Blog – Defining Bounce Rate
Beth’s Blog – A good list of things they found using Google Analytics

Jim Forbes posted over the weekend about a bogus report that Apple would delay the release of both the Iphone and it’s next OS code named “Leopard” and how they lost 2b in market cap almost immediately. 

The background here is pretty simple, a bogus email appeared around the middle of last week that looked like it may have come from within Apple and reporting that the companies iPhone and next version of its operating system, Leopard, would both be delayed. The ginned up email was forwarded and picked up by EnGadget.com, which ran a piece based on the e-mail. In a matter of hours, Apple’s stock began to fall and by the time anyone had the sense to check the underlying facts, Apple had lost about $2bn in market cap.

Jim then nails the problem down:

But the Apple incident last week speaks volumes about the perils of the new model of citizen journalism and rumor sites. What they should have done was place a due diligence phone call to Apple, in an attempt to verify the story and to fulfill basic news reporting requirements. By the time other Internet sites picked up the story, some writers had thought to call Apple, which quickly denied the rumor, resulting in the arrest of the stock’s brief fall.

With blogs, forums, and citizen journalism taking a more prominent role in news, we’ve created a monster.  The basics of journalistic ethics and responsible reporting hasn’t been forgotten on the net, it never really existed.  The problem for us is that the newspapers are adopting consumer generated content so quickly, it’s only a matter of time before something like this happens again, and it very well could happen in print someplace like the New York Times, or your local paper.

Of late, the papers have been cutting back.  Among the first areas abdicated has been the TV columns.  Hardly a week has gone by that we haven’t heard about this paper or that deciding to rely on wire stories and citizen journalism for TV criticism.  I expect the next thing to go will be the movie columns.  But where will they go from there?  If the model works, expect to see high school sports, even coverage of local politics to move to the hands of the untried and untrained.

It’s not going to get better either.  Look at David Churbuck’s post  about Forbes.com turning their writers into pageview slaves.  Writers are judged upon how many page views they generate online.  Hence the editors are using pageviews as a major factor in deciding what to cover.  I am hearing requests from newspapers as well to import their website content metrics into their print system to help them make editorial decisions. While that may be good for the bottom line, it’s death to news.  Instead of editors telling us what they, the ones in the know, think we need to know, they will instead print that which they think we want to know, a fundemental difference, and one that ensures us of more Anna Nicole Smith, Paris Hilton, etc.  Honestly, do we really believe that metrics would have told Ben Bradley that the public wanted to read about Watergate?  I can just picture some 30 something style editor poo-pooing the story as “Booorrrrriiiiinnnnggg…”

I posted about the impact Viral news has had on the industry in November, and that same post could sum up much of this. We have stopped relying on the news media for our news, and in the process, we now have news on which we cannot rely.  Blogging is news with the journalistic ethics filed off.