Mindfly Website Design Studio

This post is for those medium sized business websites' that are active enough to need a dynamic website and the ability to make changes on the fly.  This post is also for those medium to bigger websites' that are not quite active enough to justify hiring a team of designers, developers, and web marketers.  But mostly, this post is for the companies out there that want the best and most productive website for the money.

From my own experiences, most business decision makers choose to outsource the most arduous web development tasks on their own site.  More and more I see small business owners having a pal handle the graphic design aspect of their web project.  I mean I understand saving some coin and I respect trading services, even the dollar bill is just a promissory note that you will be giving the accepting party a goat or chicken eggs at some point.  The problem I run into over and over again is confronting a CEO with the issues that their website is having.  They answer, "Well we have an internal web design and marketing team that handles that".  That makes my job difficult, why you ask?  I am calling the business because I see areas of their site that can be improved, either through SEO, Internet Marketing, and/or Design.  At the point of hiring, the business owner obviously placed some eggs in the new hires basket and the reason they hired this gal or guy is because they themselves know little or nothing about the web.  So I will put it bluntly, wait no I won't. 

Let us talk numbers, I was playing hang man the other day and found out that music is the universal language, in business it's money.  So let’s talk money.  It is rare to find someone in the online industry that actually excels at both web design and web marketing.  So, right off the bat, you must hire two folks, one to handle the design and development and the other to scuttle around and market.  How much do you pay them?  Minimum wage in Washington State is $8.55 an hour in 2009, 40 hours a week, you do the math.  Now you have one or two people handling your website design and internet marketing.  The problem isn't this, because it is great to have your own personal footprint.  The problem of not outsourcing is that you are already paying top dollar for services that chances are, your new employees are not providing.

Imagine the website and search engine marketing juggernaut you could rally with $44,000 a year! Top shelf! Top of the line baby!  Now I understand the snake oil factor and the companies out there that spend more time promising than producing.  But apples to apples, chances are if you go with a top web design firm that has proven itself over time you'll hit that homerun.  In the long term this will save you money.   

These days, social media automation seems to be a controversial Social Media and Internet Marketing topic.  At what point is mass media marketing considered spam?  If you have a Twitter account and ping off your blog are you considered a robot?  I mean you wrote the blog post right?

Online Social Media is spam in a philosophical sense.  You are not truly communicating in an original manner.  You are using a robot like voice converted over to text replicator to simulate actual conversation.  So at what point does this become or is this considered, computer generated malarkey?

In a perfect world...never mind, why would you even reference such a place?  Let us leave the realm of intellectual debate and enter the real world.  In social media, you cannot please everyone, believe me I try.  I read somewhere that one of the greatest speaker’s was that he never wrote anything down therefore, nobody could dissect what he had said.  In social media, when you get indexed, anyone can read it.  Boy it sounds as if I am already defending my position.  I am actually defending my clients.  I work with real business owners who work in the real world.  It has become apparent that today’s business owners don't have free time, let alone, the ability to dedicate more time to the “fad” of social media marketing. What I have found is happy successful clients make a happy successful business.  Meaning, I will not pitch snake oil, but I will push what is effective and popular.  

One of Mindfly's forward thinking clients is Aramco ExPats.  Recently, we set up both a Twitter account and a Facebook fan page to make it easier to keep all of the ExPats and families current with new events.  In this case, www.AramcoExPats.com  already provided a very successful and informative blog feed.  Therefore, resources for the blog updates and event notifications are already in place.  To make it easier to update their Twitter we can set up an automated system that ensures that all important posts on the site will ping off to the Twitter and even Facebook Fan Page.   

The point I am trying to make is this: Properly utilizing resources already set aside for PR is a time-saving tip for business owners.  If you are already shouting out a message why not let social media's online word of mouth engine publically relate and duplicate?  I believe this is already happening for anyone that watches a commercial or reads a newspaper.  Is every commercial during the Super Bowl going to be something I want to see? No.  Is every article in the Bellingham Herald going to be something I want to read? No.  Marketing is about community and not all about me.  Some people look at social media like a phone call or even group texting.  I assure you, most business owners would love to replace their expensive paper syndication with green online multimedia marketing.  You should and can always have a hub (usually your website) and if you can set your site up to automatically post to more social friendly outlets go for it, or you will become the robot.  Welcome to the digital age.

So if you think social media automation is all about your 100 annoying twitter posts filling up my Facebook feed when I'm  just trying to see what my buddies are up to, hide them; I do, I might even hide you.  Don't let a few bad apples spoil the whole network.  All in all, most social networks are fun places to converse freely ((except Myspace which is pure evil) no I'm kidding-kind of).  So put down the torches and pitch forks and understand that social networking is just that-social, so understand as business owners jump on board so do their personalities and some of us just don't live in a perfect world.