by Scott Howard | Nov 23, 2011 | ScLoHo's Web World
My co-worker, Kevin Mullett does a LOT of speaking engagements.
One topic he talks about is measuring the right things, and that was one of my reasons for joining Kevin at Cirrus ABS and working in the web world of marketing instead of the broadcast world where most of my career was previously.
7 years ago, I didn’t measure the results of my online activity. I didn’t know what to look for and I was experimenting anyway. I was writing a couple of blogs and the results were not important to me at the time.
But when you are using your online presence as a part of your marketing or as the hub of your business, you should consider measuring the results.
Because the web tracks what you and others do, it is one of the easiest marketing platforms to track.
The downside is all that you are getting is a bunch of numbers, stats and sometimes worthless information unless you know what to look for in all this data.
And most folks don’t.
They don’t know what to look for, so they don’t look.
Or if they do look, they don’t connect the dots.
To be truthful, there is no “one and only” way to do this.
There are lot’s of ways to attempt to do it which falls short.
Seth Godin wrote about but I disagree with parts of what he says is important.
Instead, I see lot’s of problems with people analyzing the data and tracking a customer to the final transaction, which can be done if you know how.
And I’m not just referring to e-commerce sites.
Before you even start your next social media campaign or launch your next website, let’s talk.
We’ll dig deep and discover what your goals are and why.
We’ll ask the tough questions and determine the options for reaching those goals along with the costs in time and money.
And we will stick with you and help you measure all the important stuff, the stuff that matters to your success. It’s not a cookie cutter approach.
Contact me on on the contact page of this website and we’ll begin.
by Scott Howard | Nov 17, 2011 | Really? The Personal ScLoHo
Due to being called out by both of my daughters for the way I spelled Grateful as Greatful when they say this update this morning, here’s an explanation.
Call it conditioning.
For the last several years, before I started working with Cirrus ABS. I worked for a group of radio stations in Fort Wayne which includes WXKE, ROCK 104. We launched an annual promotion called the Greatful Shed Giveaway. This was a shed filled with “guy stuff” and custom painted with Greatful Dead style logo’s.
So I have been spelling grateful, greatful for the past several years. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.
Now, back to what I originally wrote:
My oldest daughter, Rachael has decided to write 30 days of Gratitude this month on her website.
Despite being several months pregnant and working her tail off to launch a couple websites for herself and her company, she has decided to embark on this project.
Check it out and see why I smile daily when I think of her.
by Scott Howard | Nov 16, 2011 | ScLoHo's Web World
Storytime.
This is a story about starting a blog or two a few years ago then hopping on Twitter in 2008 without knowing for sure what the outcome would be.
I’m going to refer to some folks by their Twitter handle because Twitter was instrumental in this story.
2003, I started a blog after watching my kids Rachael @greenglasshero , Josh @gandhizero and Tiffany @phanniejay start blogs.
All four of us stopped blogging but the next year I launched two blogs, one a personal site, and the other a work related site.
ScLoHo’s Really was the personal site now featuring a Fort Wayne area website of the day every morning to promote the city I live in, and then an update every afternoon, with what ever I want to feature. Saturday nights I featured a Classic Music Video.
ScLoHo’s Collective Wisdom featured information on Marketing, Media, Advertising and Sales; was updated 3 times a day, 7 days a week, which sounds pretty industrious, but the concept is that every article features Wisdom from others (that’s where the Collective comes from), with a few words of introduction or commentary from me.
My wife suggested I write a book on Marketing, but instead I simply started another site, The Not-So-Secret Writings of ScLoHo. The self-imposed rule was that the words are all mine, which separates it from Collective Wisdom. This blog-site was updated weekly.
Then at the end of 2010, I contemplated, planned and launched one more blog-site, ScLoHo’s Social Media Adventure which was updated 5 days a week at noon.
During all of this time, I never received any significant financial reward for all of this activity. My paying gig was working for a group of local radio stations as a sales person and manager.
The past few years I have been invited to give presentations, seminars, been interviewed and have written articles about marketing and even spoke to a college class a few times about Social Media & Branding.
All of this was simply a creative outlet for me. There was no master plan except I needed a way to share ideas that I felt passionate about.
At the end of 2008 I started a Twitter account and after playing around with it, made some connections both locally and worldwide which have now opened doors.
Chad Pollitt @CPollittIU and Amy Stark @AmyStark who both have ties/roots to Fort Wayne were there in my beginning Twitter Days and then Kevin Mullett @KMullett became a friend who I grew to respect.
In January 2011, Kevin revived the Fort Wayne Social Media Breakfast @SMBFW and asked me to be one of the panelist along with Heather Schoegler @HSchoegler; Lee Hershberger @LeePings; and Randy Clark @RandyClarkTKO .
I had known Heather for a couple years and Lee & Randy for a few months, but this was the first time I met Lee & Randy face to face.
Fast forward to April 21, 2011.
Randy Clark, who is in Indianapolis, invited various social media friends to a monthly gathering in Indy for the past couple of months and I planned my regular radio station sales rep life to be in Indy for business during the day and meet with Randy and friends that evening for what is now called a FriendUp.
At the meeting at the downtown Scotty’s Brewhouse @BrewHouse we are eating fried pickles and other goodies and the 5 of us are all answering the question Randy asks, “What do you need/want & how can we help each other?”
I decided to go last and listen to what the others were saying.
My answer was that I would like to explore leaving the radio world and earn my living in the social media or web world, but I was not willing to leave Fort Wayne. That evening was my 8th anniversary at the radio stations, and with the exception of a couple of the air staff, I have been there longer than anyone else.
Everyone’s “wish list” was complied in an email, then posted on a private website, so others who had attended Randy’s previous FriendUps could join in.
Kevin Mullett saw what I said and contacted me with the message, “We need to talk”.
Kevin has done multiple things over the years and his current title is Director of Product Development for Cirrus ABS @CirrusABS . And so we had lunch.
Which lead to more questions on my part so we had lunch again.
It was after this second lunch where I learned more precisely what Kevin had in mind and I went from curious to excited about the possibility of changing employers and direction with my career.
A week later, I met with Matt Nickols, the founder of Cirrus ABS over lunch and was offered a position with his company.
June 1st, another meeting, (this time without food!) to discuss details, review a formal offer and accept with a start date of June 20, 2011.
What struck me was, there was no formal application process, no resume I gave them, no job posting that I saw anywhere, this was all due to the accumulation of my 7+ years of social media involvement, and the connections that I made via Twitter.
But it wasn’t just the connections, it was the relationships that were built.
My returning to the world of radio advertising in 2003 was sort of a default.
My real passion is to help businesses (and people) connect and be successful with what I know about marketing, advertising, sales and a bit of psychology.
In other words, build meaningful, profitable relationships.
Since radio was my chosen “fall back career” since I was a teenager, that’s why I’ve worked in that arena the past 8 years.
Now I use my passions with a new, growing media with a strong leader in all things web related and continue to help businesses (and people) connect and be successful.
My thanks to all that I’ve mentioned and many others too.
Shortly after joining Cirrus ABS this year, I decided to reorganize my various blogging activities into one website and launched this site officially on October 3rd, 2011.
You can continue to contact me at Scott@ScLoHo.net.
And recently for those of you who prefer to follow along on Tumblr, I am now feeding updates to my Tumblr account here.
by Scott Howard | Nov 11, 2011 | ScLoHo's Web World
Every once in awhile I am asked to contribute as a guest blogger on somebody else’s website.
Sometimes I oblige, but because I already write 26 times a week for my own website, I don’t always.
Yet perhaps this is up your alley:
If you’re new to the blogging community, and you’re interested in building your profile as a blogger, growing your readership or following, and inspiring people to link up or share your blog, we have a simple solution that will provide you the opportunity to achieve all of the above.
We’d like to invite you to write with Fuel.
Continue reading about guest blogging for Fuel here.
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