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What a slacker…

admin — Mon, 04 May 2009 11:47:50 +0000

Yep. I’m a slacker. I start a new job and stop posting. I’m just a no good, lazy person. You should totally unsubscribe and start reading someone that actually posts content or something.

So, here’s a little teaser about something that will most likely be done this month. A while back, before all this new job stuff got going, I had the chance to interview a writer for Career Builder. One of the guys that gets posted to the front page of MSN quite a bit. I wanted to take a peek into their SEO training and level of knowledge. Its pretty interesting stuff, combining journalism with the Web. I think there are some pretty common ideas out there that to do good SEO you have to sacrifice good content, but we all know that’s just not true, right? So, look for that in the next week or so.

Also, I’m doing a total revamp of the Website at the new job, so I’ll be tracking some of my wins and losses with that for you guys.

In the mean time, don’t delete me, please! I promise I’ll be back in full force before ya know it!

Twitter Weekly Updates for 2009-04-12

Heather — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 15:34:00 +0000

Thanks Vertical Response, I didn’t feel like sending my emails today anyway. #

Twitter Weekly Updates for 2009-04-05

Heather — Sun, 05 Apr 2009 15:34:00 +0000

I’m back, settling into my new gig, lots of work lined up for me here! #
anyone know of a quick way to de-dup all Salesforce leads? #

Twitter Weekly Updates for 2009-03-29

Heather — Sun, 29 Mar 2009 15:34:00 +0000

Started the new job on Monday, its going to be a while before I can start up the twittering again, so busy! #

Twitter Weekly Updates for 2009-03-22

Heather — Sun, 22 Mar 2009 15:34:00 +0000

hah, SuperNews Twouble with Twits http://tinyurl.com/dxny4y #
Hi @vonster, your icon scares me so much I had to follow you! #
New blog stuffs: Holy Feed Readers Batman! http://tinyurl.com/dbqufr #
Stop chopping the top of my head off, Twitter! #
http://twitpic.com/29×2l – Finally, I took a picture in my awesome Sitemasher shirt! #
Oh now that is so much better #

Holy Feed Readers Batman!

Heather — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 15:27:56 +0000

: Image via Wikipedia

Wow, so I always assumed I had just a small little handful of readers out there, feeling lucky when I got a few legit comments here and there. I never really kept up with how many folks subscribed to my blog through RSS feed. I know, I know, bad me. I just didn’t really care too much about how many people were reading what I write at this point. I write for me, its good practice and I enjoy it. I don’t write for popularity.

So, I was shocked when I checked out my RSS stats today and found out that just since last month I have about 250 subscribers! I didn’t know you were all out there, reading, anxiously awaiting my next post, refreshing your Google reader over and over…

What’s that? You weren’t really all that interested in what I post and when? Ok, fine. But I’m going to pretend you were, cause maybe I do want to be just a little bit popular in this whole social media world.

Anyway, thanks so much for subscribing and reading, I’d love to get more comments and conversations out of you all now that I know you’re here, but I won’t ask for a miracle.

New Theme, Whatcha Think?

admin — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 17:01:59 +0000

Playing around with the look and feel here, and the main site is next to see an update. What do you all think of the new theme? Its courtesy of Lyndi at http://nice2all.com/

Check out their site, they have some awesome themes!

Thanks DemandGen Report and Genius!

admin — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 21:03:15 +0000

: DemandGen Report Sales & Marketing Alignment Awards

I just wanted to say a quick “Thanks!” to DemandGen Report for naming ADX Fast Track Winner and Genius for nominating us! The article is below, but thank you so much!

Fast Track Winner: ADX Integrating Around New EDI Service Offering

Written by Industry Analyst

Wednesday, 25 February 2009 16:31

www.adx.com

Founded: 1992

Headquarters: Fremont, California

Core Business: E-Commerce Management

Target Industries: Thousands
of businesses of all sizes connect with their trading partners using
ADX, including a heavy concentration in life sciences, retail and
industrial markets.

Growth Curve: Has expanded
beyond EDI and Business Integration services to offer a full suite of
commerce management, highlighted by the recent successful launch of the
CommerceMail service.

Specializing in supply chain integration and e-commerce management, a key service Advanced Data Exchange
(ADX) provides to its clients is Business Integration services.
Therefore, the company’s management team realized having an integrated
approach to sales & marketing would be critical— as it prepared to
launch a new service designed to open up EDI to millions of buyers and
suppliers still relying on faxes and the post office for supply chain
management.

For the introduction of its CommerceMail service in late October 2008, ADX decided to deploy the Genius
platform for real-time marketing and sales analytics and the results
have been fast and dramatic—enabling ADX to capture 60 qualified leads
for their new service in the first 90 days.

“When we implemented
Genius, we made the commitment to working together as a team, keeping
checks and balances on each other, and jumping in to help each other
when necessary,” says Heather Steele, senior marketing specialist at
ADX.

ADX utilized the MarketingGenius product
to send out a series of four automated and personalized emails to
prospects. Depending on their response (if they asked to see a demo),
the ADX sales team received an instant alert via the Genius Tracker.
As part of the alert, the sales reps also received immediate insight
into their interest and could then immediately reach out to the
prospect.

“Genius has had a huge impact on the sales and
marketing efforts at ADX. In addition to ramping up our email marketing
efforts, it has allowed us to make the impact of a very large sales
organization with only a small sales group,” Steele says. “The tool is
very efficient and makes the most out of sales’ time. It also allows
to quickly measure ROI and campaign effectiveness on
various different lead sources and marketing efforts, which in turn
allows us to makes more informed decisions with regards to marketing
strategy.”

The company has integrated the Genius tools with its
Salesforce CRM platform, which has also furthered the organization’s
alignment to track and measure results within the funnel. “We use our
integration with Salesforce CRM to set and monitor our common goals,
which is makes a significant difference in how closely we all stick to
those goals,” Steele adds. “We’ve found that transparency is absolutely
mandatory to stay accountable and realistic about our common and
individual goals. At any time, any one of us can check in on others and
offer encouragement or help when goals aren’t being reached.”

Peter Grace, vice president of sales at ADX also notes the big impact of Genius. “It has allowed us to systemize our email marketing efforts and develop a very efficient and cost effective
lead generation program. Although we have a small sales team, this tool
makes the most out of our prospecting time and has generated a strong
pipeline.”

In addition to Genius and Salesforce, ADX has recently utilized the VistorTrack
application from NetFactor to capture information on web visitors.
Steele says VisitorTrack and Genius both help to quickly identify a
lead’s exact needs and interests and approach them with the most
appropriate solution, which greatly reduces the sales cycle and
increases win rates for new deals.

Ultimately, Steele attributes
much of the success of the CommerceMail rollout to the sales and
marketing automation tools they deployed and she anticipates it will
have a long-term impact on their corporate approach. “In the past our
sales and marketing teams did not work closely together. As a result
plans, schedules, campaigns, and goals were rarely in line,” says
Steele. “The launch of our new service, CommerceMail, definitely helped
establish a common goal for sales and marketing.
We were all able to rally around the new service, get excited about it,
and work together to spread the word and sell CommerceMail.”

Grace
notes the impact resulting from better collaboration with sales &
marketing. “When we implemented Genius it gave both teams instant visibility into what messages were resonating
with customers and what messages need to be modified,” he says.
“Through this collaboration we have become much better at reaching our
target audience and creating meaningful dialogues.”

LinkedIn Polls, New Market Research Tool or Just More SPAM?

admin — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 20:04:10 +0000

I noticed a new LinkedIn App today, LinkedIn Polls! I’m excited about the possibilities that come with the LinkedIn polls. I can see this being a great tool for market research and learning, or even just for having some fun with your network. I worry though, will this just turn into another form of LinkedIn spam?

First a brief overview of the new app, then some more on whether these polls will be useful or not.

: Look! There’s my poll in the directory!

You have the option of polling your existing network via the network notifications and the entire LinkedIn network via the Poll Directory. (I actually saw my first poll pop up in the directory when I went back to test the paid version!) You can also share the link to your poll anywhere you like. Take my Poll about Polls

You can also send your poll out to a specific audience. I didn’t want to pay the $50 minimum for those polls, so I’m not really sure how they get them, but I would guess its also through the network notifications. The more specific you make your audience, the more you’ll pay per response.

: Select the exact audience you want, but you’ll pay more for it

You’ve got the choice to narrow down your audience by company size, job function, industry, seniority, gender, age and geography. I really am curious how many folks out there will pay for these polls, and how accurate results will be, hopefully I’ll find someone who’s actually paying for them to get feedback from.

Great, Polls, Awesome. But will they work and will people abuse them?

So the big question I have is how will folks actually use the polls? Like everything else out there, some people will take advantage of and ruin a good resource. Think about the LinkedIn groups. I would say maybe 10% of the posts to those groups are worthwhile, honest to goodness, relevant posts. Everything else is trash.

I know very few, if any organizations will pay for polls and then abuse them, but I see an influx of links to the free polls coming. Instead of spreading organically, they’ll be forced on us through groups and direct messages. At some point people will get sick of the polls, at that point will they be useless for those of us who don’t abuse them?

I hope not, but we’ll all see. In the mean time, take my poll!

Practical eCommerce SEO Survey Scary or Misinterpreted?

admin — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 15:53:44 +0000

I read a disturbing, but not too surprising blog this morning by Virginia Nussey over at the Bruce Clay blog. Scary Findings Show that SEO is Misunderstood, Now What? Virginia was commenting on the Practical eCommerce Survey of the Month SEO is Both Important and Misunderstood.

What Practical eCommerce found is that 94 percent of surveyed merchants understand the importance of SEO (or at least claimed they do) and that SEO is part of their existing marketing efforts. Yay! Great! People are starting to understand, like Virginia said, its a great payoff for the SEO industry that folks are listening and heeding our advice.

Unfortunately they also found that 69.5 percent of the merchants think paying for links is an effective SEO tactic and 53.9 of them will take a nice big serving of keyword stuffing…thank you very much.

Now, I didn’t find the actual survey that they sent out, and I wish I could. I would really like to see how the questions were phrased to determine if the participants were led down the wrong path by the questions or if the results are true to life.

Here’s what I mean. If a question asks: Is keyword stuffing an effective SEO tactic, and someone answers yes, then that’s scary. But if the question asks: Is using keywords in as many places as you can on the page an effective SEO tactic, and someone answers yes, they probably don’t realize they just condoned keyword stuffing. They probably just know that keywords are good, and they use them as often as they can, so SURE, stuff away.

As for the purchasing links stat, that is hopefully a result of just not knowing better, not being led down the wrong path by a bad SEO consultant.

So before I jump on the “this is bad, we must rectify” bus, I’d really like to see the actual survey.

Either way though, the results are a sign that for the white-hat SEOs out there, there is still plenty of work to be done. And for the black-hats, keep your mouths shut and go away.