24 Jan

‘Goldfish’ Web Designer Nets Better Business Nomination

The Times
US and World News provided by Reuters

GoldfishNetwork.com Owners Lisa and Michael Thayer Have a Passion For Marketing

By Jennifer Clampet
The Times, Jan 24, 2008

BIG FISH, BIG POND — Michael and Lisa Thayer, owners of GoldfishNetwork.com, hold in their hands their own marketing plan for their Web site design and marketing business.

TUALATIN – Through muffled crunching, a woman began to speak on the other end of the phone.

The woman caller was unmistakably munching on something as she began to talk, remembered Lisa Thayer, co-owner of GoldfishNetwork.com.

The caller admitted she had found Lisa’s business card attached to the front of a bag of Pepperidge Farm Goldfish crackers. The crackers had quieted her hunger, and the card had piqued her interest.

“What exactly can you do for me?” the woman caller asked.

In a sense, Michael and Lisa Thayer’s company, GoldfishNetwork.com, works to get the word out.

“We take a client’s vision and make it a web site that represents them out in the world. That’s our goal,” Michael said. But the GoldfishNetwork also works to help clients, mostly small business owners, learn to market themselves.

As a 15-year-old dishwasher at a restaurant, Michael learned early on that marketing pays off. And at the age of 27, he set a record at a Lake Tahoe printing business for selling 65,000 calendars – a record he still boasts about today.

Now at the age of 50, Michael said, “I learned to sell myself, because if I didn’t, no one else would.”

Every business has a story, noted Michael as he leaned forward in a swivel chair at the GoldfishNetwork offices off SW Boones Ferry Road in Tualatin. The blue walls and jazz music playing in the background give the office a soothing atmosphere.

Life hasn’t always been this calm. Being married to an entrepreneur, Lisa said, is like riding a roller coaster but, after 14 years of marriage, the couple has been able to find a perfect venue for each of their talents. Michael, the creative one who loves to hear people’s stories, and Lisa, the numbers-driven one with a business degree, both share a love for marketing.

The couple owns shelves filled with books on the subject. Michael calls marketing their hobby. But as GoldfishNetwork approaches its three year anniversary, marketing is proving to be more than just a pastime.

This month the company was recognized as one of 14 businesses in Oregon and Southern Washington to be in the running for the 2007 Better Business Bureau Business of the Year Torch Award.

The winners of the 2007 Business of the Year Torch Award will be announced at an awards ceremony and luncheon Jan. 24 at the Multnomah Athletic Club in Portland.

Other businesses nominated for the award include Ron Tonkin Toyota, Hawthorne Auto Clinic and Bridge City Legal Inc. in Portland and Paintegrity in Forest Grove.

The public nominated the businesses for demonstrating excellence in customer service, innovative business practices and community involvement.

The Thayers believe they were nominated for the award because of their community involvement. The couple is actively involved in the Love Box for Troops program, which encourages people to pack up boxes of goodies and send them off to deployed troops, and both are active in the Tualatin Chamber of Commerce. Michael is serving as a chamber board member this year, and Lisa is the chair of the technology committee.

“There is no end to the help they’ve given to us,” said chamber Executive Director Carla Thaler.

The Thayers and their contract employees designed and implemented the TualatinCrawfishFestival.com web site within two weeks as the crawfish festival drew near.

“They came back with something better than we ever expected,” Thaler said of the web site.

The Thayers would like to be known in the community for their volunteer work. But for now most people know the couple for their marketing idea, the goldfish.

Cabinets above desk top computers in the company’s office hold bags of goldfish crackers ready to be handed out as part of the company’s own marketing plan.

Lisa noted that it’s pretty common for the office to get calls from people snacking on the crackers as they chat away about their business needs.

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04 Jan

“Spiders and crawlers and bots…oh my!”

Search Engine Marketing –
(Article 2 of 4 Part Series)

“Spiders and crawlers and bots…oh my!” - Two views of the same website

One of the most challenging aspects of optimizing a website is that there are two audiences to appeal to: 1.) standard website users (like you and me) and 2.) search engines. There are many similarities in attraction but also some very important differences.

First, let’s take a look at the top four usability issues from a human/standard user’s viewpoint:

• Ease of navigation – This is no time to be overly “creative” and make visitors guess where to find pertinent information. Sounds like a deceptively simple piece of advice but you only have an average of 8 seconds to capture your audience’s attention. After you have spent time and effort driving traffic to your website, don’t lose them by frustrating them! One navigational tool users appreciate is the addition of a “site map” or hierarchal list of the pages of your website.

• Visually attractive – If it looks like a high school student created your website, it will adversely affect your business’ public profile. If you don’t care about your professional image, the customer might also think you don’t care about the quality of your work. Keep in mind that the internet allows individuals the chance to anonymously pre-screen your business. You may truly have a solid, reputable business but you don’t have a good design aesthetic and technical capabilities, you should retain the services of a web designer and developer.

• Content-rich - Studies show that website visitors read websites like billboards not novels. Make sure that whoever writes the copy for your website is familiar with this very important difference in writing for the web. Place your most important content “above the fold” so that the user doesn’t have to scroll down unless they need more details. Make your website more relevant to the user by providing a set of Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ). Don’t be afraid of having a page of categorized links to other website resources but of course, ask that they in turn link back to your website. Also, be sure to update your content as information in your industry changes as this will garner more frequent, repeat traffic.

• Speed – In our increasingly fast paced society we have little tolerance for time wasters such as watching someone’s fancy “flash” intro or waiting for a picture to download. Use flash animation sparingly for maximum impact and to respect visitor’s time.

Not every website on the Internet gets the majority of its traffic from the major search engines, but you can’t afford to ignore them. Search engines processes and methodologies are quite complex and are updated all the time. The simple explanation of how search engines work is: the user types a query into a search engine which quickly sorts through literally millions (sometimes billions) of pages in its database and produces matches /results ranked in order of relevancy.

A search engine’s database is culled from a variety of sources.* Many of the larger search engines use web “spiders”,” crawlers” or “bot” programs that search the Internet in a methodical way to index and find new or updated data.

The most important thing for a website owner to know is that due to the use of these automated spiders some content and links displayed on a web page may not actually be visible to the search engines.

Now, let’s take another look at the top four usability issues - this time from a spider’s viewpoint:

• Ease of navigation – A spider isn’t concerned about getting lost – either you provide an easy roadmap jeu de poker online gratuitesregles poker pdfjeu de poker onlinepoker games netjouer 7 card stud,play 7 card stud online,7 card studpoker en virtuelune rgle du jeu du pokeromaha poker rglesstud pokerastuces texas holdemboite de jeu de pokerjeu video pokerwww poker netla rgle de jeu pokerle meilleur jeu de pokerlive pokerregles du poker texas holdemjouer poker omahapoker sur netjeu flash poker gratuitesjeu de poker gratuites francaisregle de pokerjouer poker tour en lignepoker school onlinejeu de poker pcholdem poker en ligne gratuitesjeu poker casinocomment jouer o pokercomment apprendre jouer au pokerjouer pro poker tourjouer poker omaha gratuitescomment tlcharger jeu pokerpoker sans internetregles poker holdemtelechargement jeu pokerle poker en lignejouez au poker gratuitestelecharger winamax pokerjeu de poker 3djeux gratuitstournoi texas holdempartie poker en lignejeux de poker en lignelogiciel poker gratuitesapprendre a jouer o pokerjuego omaha poker gratisfree pokerjugar poquer lineastrip poker gamesgame poker to and through your website or it simply doesn’t exist in the spider’s mind, metaphorically speaking of course. The best way to do this is by adding a site map.

• Visually attractive – Web spiders don’t have eyes therefore even an actual picture of Bigfoot would have no effect on relevance without adding text. Search engines don’t index images, they won’t index any text your web site presents in image format. To fix this problem, you can use “ALT tags” or image descriptions in your website coding.

• Content-rich – Content is king when it comes to web spiders but beware… search engine algorithms have evolved to identify redundant text and the overuse of keywords. This means some of the tactics ethically challenged web designers used a few years back no longer fool the search engines and can actually harm your standings if overused. Search engine algorithms these days even go so far as to calculate the ratio of actual text (content) to the amount of coding .Web spiders also consider the information within three clicks of the home page to be most relevant to a search. Spiders as well as human users appreciate fresh content. (I will address the important issue of updating content in the next article.)

• Speed – Although search engines generally won’t penalize for the use of frames, dynamic content and multimedia files, they will have difficulty indexing them. They also don’t index pages that require registration, cookies or passwords.

I have seen many business owners make the mistake of designing an elaborate website and then seek out a professional SEO (Search Engine Optimization) expert. This can lead to disastrous results such as poor performance, missing your target market, and a potentially costly redesign. Before you begin your website project, make sure you clearly express your business vision, current and future marketing plan, and expectations with your web designer. (BTW- If the web designer isn’t asking you about these vital areas perhaps you should keep looking.)

*Other search engine sources include search engine advertisements, human based search engines or web directories and topical search engines.
Lisa Thayer is owner of GoldfishNetwork.com, a website design and marketing company located just south of Portland, Oregon. GoldfishNetwork.com serves clients in 9 states across the U.S. Lisa can be reached at (503) 783-0440 or by e-mail: Lisa@GoldfishNetwork.com

08 Oct

Search Engine Marketing- (Article 1)

Search Engine Marketing –
(Article 1 of a 4 Part Series)
By Lisa Thayer, GoldfishNetwork.com
October 8, 2007

“Surveys show that over 80% of internet users find new web sites by using search engines”.

The question on everyone’s mind today is “How do I get my website top placement on the search engines?” In order to answer that question, I need to give you a little background on the way search engines work.

There are two primary ways your website gets to the top of search engines; one is to pay for placement, the other is to market and design your website so that it rises up through the page ranks “organically” in search engine results.

Before I begin to discuss pay for placement online marketing, I have to get on my soap box and make a special announcement: If you glean nothing else from this article, please remember this bit of advice: having a baseline BEFORE you start paying money for advertising is imperative as is tracking results of an online marketing program. O.k., back to the topic at hand…

Programs such as Google’s AdWords and AdSense, or Yahoo’s Sponsored Search are good examples of paying for placement. Each search engine has their own individual fee structure. The price you pay to advertise in this manner depends on the “keywords” you choose and the competition for those placements. As you would imagine, the competition would be less, and therefore it would be cheaper to advertise, the keywords “ice for sale Alaska” as opposed to the competition to advertise the keywords, “vacation rental Maui”.

Keywords can be thought of as the words a person would type into the search box on search engines. They can consist of a word(s), phrase, or an alphanumerical term. If you are spending your marketing budget on keyword ads, you need to choose your keywords carefully. Using keywords that are overly broad such as “best dentist USA” can result in bringing more traffic to your website, but if you only have dental offices in California, that search won’t result in a new patient. Conversely, choosing keywords that are overly specific might bring in too little traffic. Keywords are so important in fact, that selecting keywords has become an industry all its own.

The two top search engines used by the general public are Google and Yahoo. Google and Yahoo also supply some of the smaller search engines such as AOL, My Space Search, Netscape, Alta Vista, etc. with their search results. In fact, if you added up the huge market share of Google it would account for almost 70% of all searches!

As previously mentioned, having a baseline BEFORE you start paying money for advertising is imperative as is tracking results of an online marketing program. You obtain a baseline by having your web designer add a tracking program/ code to your website. We set up Google Analytics on all of our client’s websites.

Wikipedia’s definition: Google Analytics. (GA) is a free service offered by Google that generates detailed statistics about the visitors to a website. Its main highlight is that a webmaster can optimize his/her marketing campaigns through the use of GA’s analysis of where the visitors came from, how long they stayed on the website and their geographical position. Users can define and track conversions, or goals. Goals might include sales, lead generation, viewing a specific page, or downloading a particular file. By using this tool, marketers can determine which ads are performing, and which are not, as well as find unexpected sources of quality visitors.

Many of my clients have asked, “Wait a minute…why is Google Analytics FREE?” The simple answer is that Google knows that if you have the information to make informed online advertising decisions, you will be more likely to advertise. And, since Google is the giant of the search engine world, chances are they will be able to earn your business.

Next time, I’ll discuss spiders and crawlers and bots…oh my!

Lisa Thayer is owner of GoldfishNetwork.com, a website design and marketing company located just south of Portland, Oregon. GoldfishNetwork.com serves clients in 9 states across the U.S. Lisa can be reached at (877) 783-0440 or by e-mail: Lisa@GoldfishNetwork.com

19 Jul

Marketing Your Business to Win.

The (big) problem with traditional marketing:
Poll after poll shows that up to 80% of buyers use the Internet to research products and services and then choose a company to contact. Most people dispose of telephone books within days of receiving them. In fact, two years ago I was told by a former manager at Dex that Dex has a five year plan to move all listings and services onto the Web and get out of the paper telephone book business. What’s that tell you? Newspaper readership is at an all time low making the ads you buy much less effective (but not less expensive…) Radio…? Nope. Not without major investment and testing.

The Web has what you need to move your business forward.
To keep your business healthy and growing in the most cost effective and profitable way, you need to use the web to better serve your customers, add value, and increase profits. Not having a web-based marketing strategy can actually have a negative effect with client perceptions about your company and gives your competition the edge.

I understand that you’re very busy (I am too) and the idea of marketing your business online may seem daunting. I promise you it doesn’t have to be the case. Read on…

Here’s an outline of a very basic, affordable web-based marketing strategy:

- Build an email list for your new newsletter. (Contact me for easy ways to produce good newsletter content.) Collect email addresses from customers and from the business cards you’ve collected over the course of operating your business. Feel free to contact me for ways to successfully build your email list.

- Deliver a message and offer that is of real value. Make your subject line compelling enough for your mail to be opened. It doesn’t have to be fancy, just of value. Be your personable self and ask everyone for permission to continue emailing your newsletter.

- Ask the recipients of your emails to share them with friends, co-workers, and family.

- If you have a good web site direct them there for more information. If you don’t have a good website, take it down, redo it, or don’t give out your web address.

- Rinse and repeat every 2-3 weeks or longer depending on the nature of your product or services

This one strategy alone will produce more quality leads and sales for you once you build your customer list and use it wisely (and a good list makes your business worth more as well…) There are many more ways to further profit from your list…

For additional marketing strategies that will produce more sales and profits for your business, email me at Michael@GoldfishNetwork.com

09 Jul

Why use GoldfishNetwork.com?

1) Your business is very important to you. Ours is very important to us. We have a reputation for going “above and beyond” for clients like you and for delivering top quality websites and website development. Besides, if we don’t pay attention, we won’t be able to pay anything else.

2) You’ll find that we’re “people people.” We actually enjoy the interaction we have with our clients and the satisfaction that comes with a successful project and happy people who give us checks.

3) When you work with us, you will appreciate the fact that we are business people running a media arts and marketing company, not artists trying to run a business. That means we understand budgets, project deadlines and other factors necessary for a business to succeed.

4) Most web design companies won’t take projects under $5K. They have high overhead and can’t make smaller projects profitable for their company. We actually specialize in redesign. Why pay for more work than you really need?

5) We offer unique Time Block billing. This allows you, the client, complete control of your project scope and budget. Unheard of in the web design world!

6) You’ll find that we communicate well. Telephone messages, faxes, emails, whistling, and hand signals all get a prompt response from our team.

7) You can actually walk in and visit. We love meeting our clients face to face and sitting down with them to understand and deliver the online image they want. We offer a FREE initial consultation of up to 1 hour. Besides, we also have a vast tea selection, great coffee, and bags of Pepperidge Farm Goldfish snacks.

Contact us at www.GoldfishNetwork.com and we’ll be glad to be of service to you.
And you’ll have new friends in the web design and marketing business!

Thanks!
Michael and Lisa Thayer

02 Jul

Web 2.0 tools are changing business… Wikis

Wikis are defined by…Wikipedia here.
As a matter of fact, Wikipedia is a great example of a public, moderated wiki.

“What’s the short description of a wiki (in English)?”
Basically, a wiki is a database of pages which visitors can edit live by correcting or adding to the information. The “comments” from visitors are what builds the wiki up in value. A visitor can edit a page in real time, search the wiki for content, and view updates since the last visit. In a “moderated wiki,” wiki owners review comments before addition to the main body of a topic.

What you can do with a wiki.
With a wiki, it’s easy to swap ideas and information on various projects among the participants. A project can be an “at home” family project or a “living” company knowledge base. A wiki makes it easy for people to collaborate, focus, and get things done from wherever they are and whenever they want to. A few examples of available tools to enhance a wiki are RSS feeds, calendar sharing, live AV conferencing, and more.

What does a wiki do for your business?
Whether you use a wiki for an in-house project or an overall, company-wide communication tool, you will find increased creativity, expertise, and productivity. Also, a company wiki will really cut down on all the emails that zing around in all directions and a wiki will limit communication breakdown because everyone is literally “on the same page.” As more and more info is added to the company wiki, it’s value increases and becomes a “collective brain” for your business. That is a very valuable resource for reference and training as well as an information hub for anything, whether a single project or a complete company resource. Why not have more than one for specific tasks and projects?

“Thanks Michael, what can YOU do for me?”
I can help you market better and make more money by coaching you and showing you how to implement cool web stuff that creates more business. If this something that you might be interested in (and why wouldn’t it be…) send me a leftover Thanksgiving card, give me a call, or send an email.

*Want a couple of incredible marketing tools that will impress your current customers, generate new customers, and make you a lot of money? Good! Next time I’ll show you how adding audio and video to your site will do just that.* Until then…

14 Jun

Web 2.0 tools are changing business… Social Networking

Social Networking as defined by Wikipedia is here. Our focus here is, of course, how your business can use social networking tools and sites and this is a basic intro.

What’s the big deal about Social Networking?
The impact of user-generated content on marketing has been great. Web 1.0 users were considered consumers by marketers but now with Web 2.0, they become participants. To interact on the Web, people use web sites, blogs, forum participation, audio and video, to participate by commenting and/or adding content that other users can interact with. Well known examples of Web 2.0 social networking sites are Wikipedia, Second Life, Digg, MySpace and Flickr. The content of these sites can usually be shared, rated and even sometimes edited or added to by visitors (user-generated content). Social networking also uses content on the Web influenced but not necessarily created by visitors to those websites.

How basic marketing happens with Social Networking tools and sites.
Now, visitors to your site/blog can comment on your blog or they can create blogs of their own and include content from outside sources (including you/your company). Again, content such as forum participation, text, video, and audio.`To better market your business and/or products you can join in on discussions, offer help, and generally use your knowledge to interact with customers and potential customers. Ask for their input and interact with them. Use a slide show with audio or just audio to tell your story, give tips and advice. And look out because here comes video. It’s got a lot of impact (and it’s not as hard to use as you may think…) Use the best of what you can do to show examples of why your company is the best choice for the customer. By the same token, ask others for advice or comments. Why? Because interaction is a two way street. Link to other sites of interest and have them link to yours.

Again, this is a basic overview but it should give you a better idea of what’s going on with social networking.

“Hey Michael, how can you help my business?”
That’s a great question! I can help you market better and make more money by coaching and showing you how to implement cool web stuff that creates more business. Is this something that you might be interested in? If so, call or send me an email.

Hey, next time I’ll have something you can use in-house to improve your business (and/or use for social networking)…Wikis!

01 Jun

Web 2.0 tools are changing business… RSS

RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. The Wikipedia definition is here. An RSS feed allows a person to “pull” content of their choice to their computer (unlike email being “pushed” to your account). You can “subscribe” to the news sites, newsletters, blogs, and podcasts that you want delivered to you and control the flow of info. When something new becomes published, it is delivered directly to your computer. There are thousands of blogs, info sites, or entertainment sites that continuously create great content on almost any topic you can think of. The content can be text, audio, or even video.

When you subscribe to a RSS feed, you receive only the information you want. Usually, a “feed reader” or “Feed aggregator” must be installed to subscribe to the content. Go ahead and Google “feed aggregator” there is a lot to choose from. Oh, yeah, they’re free.

“How does RSS change my business?”
Here’s one big one. Your customers can easily accumulate shopping info and prices and availability of items or services that they’re looking for on the internet. You want to be involved in that shopping activity don’t you? You want it to be easy for your customers to be reminded of your presence and aware of your new items, new services, and your special offers. Your business should be set up to deliver useful information that your customers would want to receive along with those special offers. “Useful information” can be seasonal tips, industry news, event news, new products, new uses for your products and so on. Each delivery of that information is your billboard directly on your customers computer screen. Be smart and make your delivered info something that your customers will want to pass on to friends and family.

To sum up…
When you offer and deliver an RSS feed to your customers, you stand out as a useful and informative business that cares about them. It’s a personal message served directly to your customers. They’re easy to set up and delivery is automated. You should offer the RSS feed on your website and tell your customers about it through email and/or in-store info, (flyers at check out…) If your business has a blog (as it should) a new entry can be delivered to your customers by making an entry to your blog. When you get up to speed and use powerful, available tools, like RSS, you’ll serve your existing customers better, create new customers, and see a payoff in the bottom line.

*Warning* Utterly shameless plug ahead…
I can help you market better and make more money by coaching and showing you how to implement cool web stuff that creates more business. Is this something that you might be interested in? If so, call or send me an email.

Next time we meet here…Social Networking!

16 May

Web 2.0 tools are changing business… Podcasting

In my last post, I mentioned that I would continue to cover how Web 2.0 tools are disruptive to the old ways of marketing.

First of all, as a reminder, here’s the official definition of Web 2.0 by Wikipedia.

Why is Web 2.0 disruptive to traditional business models?
Web 2.0 Tools enable people to do a great job at reaching out to the market (marketing). The “secret” to creative and successful marketing has always been new tools combined with inspiration and action. The “new tools” we’re looking at are Web 2.0 tools. Traditional marketing takes more time and money and is all too familiar to your market. These Web 2.0 tools create much more powerful marketing for you to reach (and impress) your existing customer base and potential customers in a more cost effective manner. Less expensive, more powerful, and easier to manage than traditional marketing, sound good so far? Well then, read on my friend…

One powerful Web 2.0 marketing tool is called “podcasting”.
Podcasts can deliver audio and video to anyone, anytime for little cost. You can target and penetrate your local market by using audio or video in a way that your competitors don’t have a clue about. Podcasts are a great way to offer your customers direct download or streaming content that they are interested in and appreciate. They add a more interactive element and better communication of your company’s brand, beliefs, and offerings. Podcasts give your company a way to deliver compelling content about existing or new products and services that your customers didn’t realize you offered. Best of all, your customers can easily share your podcasts with others. How’s that for good marketing?

“How does podcasting work?”

Barriers to entry are very low for businesses. Basically, if you have a microphone, a computer, a camera, and an Internet connection you can publish audio or video “shows” that can be listened to or viewed by people anywhere in the world. You can also use a service like… GoldfishNetwork.com! These podcast files will be online so your customers can easily play them on their computer or put them on their MP3 players at their convenience and listen when ever they want to. When your customers have that kind of control, they are much more open to your message.

Many companies choose to provide podcasts to the public for free, but podcasts can also be a “Premium content” subscription-based service.

Why is podcasting disruptive to traditional marketing?
The companies who are acting now and using tools such as podcasting are rapidly gaining an advantage over their competitors by drawing new customers and delivering content directly to their customers the way the customer wants it. This translates into a better relationship and bond with your customers resulting in more referrals, more sales, and higher retention of your customer base. Companies that are restricted to the more traditional (and expensive) marketing approaches are facing an increasing disadvantage.

From blogs and RSS feeds to podcasts, Wikis, and social networking, when you get up to speed and use at least a couple of these new tools, you’ll create new customers, serve your existing customers better, and see a payoff in the bottom line.

“Thanks Michael, but what about you and your well-being?”
Thanks for asking. And you know this blog just wouldn’t be the same without ending with an utterly shameless plug so here you go… I can help you market better and make more money by coaching and showing you how to implement cool web stuff that creates more business. Is this something that you might be interested in? If so, call or send me an email.

OK, I’m done for now. Next time we’ll take a look at RSS feeds…

01 May

Web 2.0 means….what?

A lot, especially if you’re a business or a person…

Hi! Michael here. First of all, here’s the official definition by Wikipedia.

Ok, here’s my quick and simple definition for businesses:
______________________________________________

“Web 2.0 is now the way smart businesses are using the web to reach their markets…and have their markets reach them. It transcends the “conventional” way businesses have used communication for marketing. Web 2.0 is about interaction with clients using the new tools that the web is providing.”
______________________________________________

But wait there’s more!
Tools such as blogs, wikis, RSS feeds, and Podcasts are used with serving community in mind. They are ways to stay informed and in touch. Blogs, for example, are a huge phenomena in the business world and are used by millions of people to criticize, praise, and give suggestions to businesses (the ones that listen…)

“So what?”
So, businesses that listen to their customers and act on what they learn, prosper. And customers also compare notes with other people (fellow customers or potential customers) by having conversations about the company’s products or services. It’s a very powerful way for businesses to not only engage their market by actively taking part in that conversation, but to also gauge ongoing marketing efforts, product or service satisfaction levels, and test new product or service ideas. That’s what.

“What’s all this mean to me and my business?”
Web 2.0 is changing so many things about doing business so fast that companies are struggling to keep up with what’s going on. The phrase “lead, follow, or get out of the way” is quickly becoming more true than ever. “Listen up” is also a nice, useful phrase here. For businesses that are making the moves and getting up to speed, it’s a very good thing. Good for everyone involved. The customers win with more information and insight from the company and the company wins with more information and insight from the customer.

*Warning* Shameless plug directly ahead… I can help you get up to speed with all this and make sure you win (so your customers win too). Because when I help you make more money, you’ll give me some (which I give to my wife). It’s a win-win-win…win situation. My telephone number is up on the header of this page…

Ok!
Well, that’s my simplified overview of what’s fast becoming a way of life for people and a fact of life for companies.

The next post will give some examples of how “disruptive” (wait…that can be good, very good) Web 2.0 has been to the old way of marketing…. See ya then.