Webmarketising!

Moving the Rare Earth Workforce
"Into The Cloud"

Fri, 20 Aug 2010 14:42:22 -0400

As you know, Rare Earth Interactive has called the 6th Floor at 170 Franklin Street in downtown Buffalo home, since 2006. But that's about to change on September 1!

Now, this is more than just a move to a new location. This is the final step in a months-long experiment in the virtual workplace, and we thought you'd be interested in the whole story.

With the evolving nature of our business and the Internet industry, we're constantly innovating and evolving our approach to deliver the best possible solutions for our customers. At the same time, we're likewise observing our peers and market leaders, and considering if some of the things they're doing are appropriate for us to adopt into Rare Earth's business model. Some are, and many more aren't.

Since 1998, this is the approach that has enabled us to not merely survive, but thrive through two recessions, the dot-com bust, various doom-and-gloom predictions, and an increasingly-crowded marketplace.

It's the work, more than the location.

Now one market leader that we watch with particular interest is 37Signals (creators of Basecamp, Highrise, and Ruby on Rails), chiefly because both our customers and our staff members use Basecamp every single day.

As a leader and a businessowner, I also feel a particular kinship with 37Signals founder Jason Fried, and many of the approaches to running and managing a business, which he espouses in his recent book, Rework. Though this isn't one of Jason's particular philosophies, I suspect he'd agree with one of my own maxims that Rare Earth's employees have long been familiar with:

"We don't care what time of day or when during the week our work gets done, as long as we can deliver what our customers expect, when they expect it to be done."

So as a matter of course, a lot of work gets done outside "normal" business hours. And, "normal" for us might be early in the morning before sunrise, or late in the evening around midnight. The point being, we love our flexible work mode, and our customers love the results.

Now when it comes to the 37Signals model, they've built a wildly successful business that earns millions each year, with employees who are rarely in the same geographic location.

This was intriguing to me, because we already did a lot of our work outside "the office." In fact for most of August, 2009, I was working successfully from my family's country house near Gowanda, NY, while overseeing repairs to the damage from that month's torrential downpours and washouts.

This got me thinking: if we could unload the overhead of an all-encompassing office location, it would give us a lot more flexibility as a firm, and to each person who works for Rare Earth it would translate into a great deal more personal freedom.

So about six months ago, as a group we decided to begin conducting our own experiment in the virtual workplace. We didn't make a general announcement at the time, because we wanted to see in as unfiltered a manner as possible, if this could be done in a way that was completely transparent to anybody outside of Rare Earth.

Did you notice the switch?

Here's the question I'm posing: if you happened to be interacting with us at any time over the past several months, did you notice when we changed our work mode?

Considering the almost complete absence of any comment from anyone at all, I'm betting you didn't.

Now, in the interest of full disclosure, a couple of our customers did notice something had changed at certain times...we've since made adjustments to plug those holes on our management system.

So it will probably come as a surprise to most of our customers that since May, a substantial amount of our staffer's time on any given business day is actually spent outside of our main office, yet still doing the work that keeps us and our customer's websites running and growing.

We've added new customers, developed new products, and invented new ways of doing things, all while staying connected and engaged by using technologies from Broadview Networks, WebEx, Google Talk, Google Apps, ZumoDrive, Notable, Campfire and of course, Basecamp, to develop and augment our SNAP and Active Management Suite solutions.

In fact for the past month, there have been only four days where there were more than two people physically inside our 2,000 square-foot office space at one time. (Did you notice when those days were?)

The new workplace reality.

Now, this obviously flies in the face of conventional wisdom that in order for a workforce to be productive, hordes of people must descend on a central geographic location at the same time, Monday through Friday. That may be the reality for many organizations. But when it comes to companies like ours, who exchange information and knowledge, and whose products are delivered from one computer screen to another, it's clearly not.

So a few weeks ago, we decided to go all-in, and become an almost-entirely-virtual workforce. We'll still have a commercial office location for those occasions when we need a physical space and a conference room (e.g. for client meetings, internal face time, plus postal service). And for my own part: I need an office outside my home (after running the business out of my house from 1998 through 2006, I truly have no interest in returning to that reality).

If you come visit us, you're going to love our new conference room, which is absolutely state-of-the art!

So what changes?

From our customer's point of view, only two things will change.

The first is our mailing address, effective September 1, 2010:

Rare Earth Interactive Design, Inc.
534 Delaware Avenue
Suite 201
Buffalo, NY 14202

The second is the sweet voice of our our new receptionist Jennifer, who will be happy to assist you in directing your calls to their proper destination during normal business hours.

Apart from that, everything else will be exactly the same. Same extensions, same email addresses, same service, same support, and the same work quality you've come to expect from us these past 12 years. Because as you now know...we've been working in this mode for awhile already, it's led to some of our most productive times as a team.

The best is yet to come!

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iPad: My Computer of First Resort

Mon, 19 Apr 2010 20:59:56 -0400

Okay, I admit it. I was one of the first to get excited when Steve Jobs announced the iPad in February, but not for the reasons you might think. Yeah, I'm a gadget junkie, but I'm much more interested in gadgets that enable me to keep the pulse of my business, my responsibilities, and my avocations from anywhere I am.

For that, I use web apps like Basecamp and Highrise by 37Signals for project and customer management, in addition to Google Apps Premier for mail, calendar and document sharing, along with ZumoDrive for cloud storage. Our invoicing, estimating and business tools are also all online, and meetings are conducted through WebEx.

In short, anything I need to keep on top of things, is available from any Internet-connected web browser, anywhere in the world.

I also like to travel light.

That's why I opted for the 13" MacBook, and then the same sized MacBook Pro six months later; 17" notebooks are just too damned big to be practical, in my opinion.

Traveling light is also the reason that I've been using handheld PIMs since the Palm III, and searching for the perfect portable Internet device since 2006, when I bought the Nokia n770, and then the Nokia N900 six months later. Both Nokia devices were tethered to a Palm Treo for Internet anywhere access. I retired this setup last year for an iPhone 3G.

All were nifty devices that helped keep me on top of my game, and the iPhone combined with a handful of apps made me more productive than ever. But it lacked the full-screen, full-keyboard experience that made carrying a bag with my MacBook (and a bunch of supporting accessories) necessary.

After two weeks with the iPad, I can confidently and unequivocally state that the days of the giant, accessory-laden, 20lb computer bag have for me, been replaced by an iPad and a MiFi in my breast pocket. Complaints of no Flash support are bound to be short-lived; the technology is being quickly replaced by HTML5 videos, as more and more website developers recognize the innate wisdom of supporting anything that bears the name "Apple."

In simplest terms, the iPad just works. It does 90% of what I need a portable computer to do, and does it with a speed, beauty and grace unlike anything I've ever seen in any computing platform, at any price. As for the 10% the iPad doesn't do (like uploading photos and files directly to Basecamp...a minor irritation), those things can easily wait until I get to a place where I can sit comfortably with my MacBook on a desk.

The iPad is a serious tool for serious work, not only for small businesses like mine, but evidently for heads of state as well!

So if you're someone who depends on being lean and light, yet still effective...ignore the geek elite that dismiss the iPad as a toy, a giant iPhone, or a dumbed down PC. Just because it doesn't do everything that they would want, doesn't mean it's not an eminently useful, convenient, fast and delightful tool.

As proof, I just completed my time billing, issued a quote, updated 5 projects, and wrote this blog post, all while watching the Sabres play the Bruins...using only my iPad.

The 6 Key SEO Fundamentals

Wed, 14 Apr 2010 22:05:43 -0400

There's a sizable chunk of the Internet professional services industry that specializes in promising prominent positioning in the organic search listings of the most popular search engines, namely Google.

Just like everything else that you buy or hire someone to do, there are varying levels of sophistication, credibility and quality in these products and services. Ultimately, this translates into the degree of success that your website achieves.

We've been doing effective search engine optimization for our customers since 2002. Since then, while some of the specifics and the channels have changed with the times, there have only been a literal handful of things that when practiced regularly and well, invariably yield successful results for any website owner than employs them.

So among all the promises of appearing in 6,000 search engines, and zooming to the top of the search returns in all your top keywords without having to lift a finger, we present the straight dope: 6 essential elements of effective search engine optimization. Pay attention to these factors, and you'll go further, faster than any $100-search-engine-submission scheme can ever accomplish.

Your Web Page Title Tags: The Title tag is perhaps the most important bit of real estate on your web pages. Each one should be unique for each page on your site, and should contain keywords that reflect the content of the page that its a part of. Pages that say "Home" or "index" will never, ever get noticed.
Your Page content, including the Meta Description tag: The content of your pages should be formatted with the page name as an H1 tag, and subsections sections should be reflected as H2, H3, H4, etc. Write your content with a sufficient density of your best keywords, but don't try to cram everything on one page; one page, one topic. Embed links with your search terms in the anchor text of your hyperlinks and above all, make sure there's a Description tag that you can edit yourself; while Google pays zero attention to the Keywords tag, the Description tag is what gets displayed on the Google Search Engine Return Pages (SERPs).
The competitive space you're in: Everybody knows that it's a lot easier to be heard when you're the only one talking to your customer. But when you have 100, 1,000 or a million other people speaking at the same time, it just becomes noise. That's the way it is on the Internet...but when you excel in all the other factors, it's like handing yourself a megaphone. You'll be heard louder, clearer and with a lot more credibility than your competitors.
The Frequency of your updates: One of our clients is a practicing attorney, who has carved out a very tidy niche in his area of expertise, and in some very competitive space: U.S. immigration news. This is where you'll find Matthew Kolken. In fact only two government sites and two hard-core news outlets come ahead of him, in a space where he has 13.3M competitors.

He's done it in part, by spending as much as 30% of each working day on his site. He updates, he tweets, he blogs in two places, he's on Facebook, and all the while he's giving information that his prospective clients can use. So much so that he's become a reliable, relevant source for U.S. immigration news, period. Such prominence in such a competitive and topical space, in turn delivers a steady stream of clients for his law practice, and leads to success in the final two areas.
The Number of sites that link back to you: It's a no-brainer that the more people refer to you in the real world in a particular context, the more you become regarded as an expert. The same is true on the Internet. The more web pages that refer to you, the more relevant you are; to the search engines, each link is a vote of confidence in what you have to say.
The Quality of those Backlinks: By the same token, if the high school kid up the street says you've got, like, the greatest business evaaaar, it won't carry the same clout that an article in the local news will, which in turn carries less clout than a mention in the New York Times. Backlinks from websites are exactly the same: Facebook mentions are great, but a link from an American Public Radio program website is a guaranteed adrenaline shot to the relevancy arm of your website.

So that's it! Just 6 fundamentals. There's no secret sauce, no magical programming, and no way to "fool" the search engines into believing that your site's any more special than it really is. You're special enough to begin with.

You are what you write about. You are what you talk about. You are what you pay attention to.

But there is one more thing...and while Google denies it, I've seen it happen with way too much frequency and consistency for there to not be a relationship. You want to do better in the organic search, run an AdWords campaign. It doesn't have to be big, but it does need to be there, and a modest sum can rocket you to the top as a sponsored link, while you develop your content and your backlinks.

So get out there and write!

Or, if you want someone to write a professional plan for success, request an SEO Blueprint from us. We'll interview you and create a specially customized plan for your website that will set you on the path to your own search engine success.

When is it time to redesign?

Mon, 01 Mar 2010 17:31:35 -0500

At Rare Earth we have about a half-dozen core maxims that guide our business practices. Among them is:

"Even the best-designed websites will outgrow their usefulness if they aren't regularly updated, and an obsolete design implies that the site owner isn't paying attention to its market. This damages the organization or the brand."

This has nothing to do with the quality of the original work or who does it. Rather, it has much more to do with the fact that the way people interact with you and your organization, also changes over time.

This doesn't just apply to websites. I was watching the lead-up to this year's Super Bowl on CBS Sunday morning, when they compared commercials from years past to the current breed of $2M spots, and showed how the 1979 Coke ad featuring Mean Joe Green (iconic at the time) is lampooned today.

The same comparison can be drawn between websites from 2005 and web sites from 2010, even though the period in question is only 1/6th as long. Such is the warp-speed nature of web site marketing and your audience's expectations.

You work hard, and your website
should show it.

The people whose business you're trying to earn through your website (and other marketing efforts) work hard, evolve and grow. By the same token, those same people want to see that you're also working hard, evolving and growing right along with them.

A site whose design doesn't change gives viewers an impression that your organization probably doesn't deserve; it gives the impression that you're standing still. In the present economic climate, such an impression can be very detrimental to your success...and your survival.

These are among the reasons that we recommend every website be redesigned, every 12-to-18 months.

If your current website design has been in place for more than two years, it's a good idea to take an objective look at your site and then compare it to the websites of your competition. If your site was once leading the field, chances are that your competitors borrowed some of your ideas, made changes to their own site and are now siphoning off some of the business that used to come your way.

Consider: a website redesign is a dividend-yielding investment.

So here are some questions to ask yourself:

Has your website's traffic has diminished over time?
Have your bounce rates increased?
Have your conversions have declined?
Has the money your website generates dwindled?

If the answers to more than two of these questions is "yes," then the hard truth is that your website has crossed the line from working for you, to working against you.

Now, we're not too proud to blow our own horn when it comes to our redesigns. We pride ourselves on the "e-turnaround" that we routinely accomplish for clients who compare their post-redesign metrics with those of the preceding year. In fact, nearly all of the websites that we have redesigned over the past 18 months have realized an average 20% to 30% increase, in one or more of the following metrics: traffic, conversion rates, bounce rates, average time on the site, and pages viewed. Some customers have doubled or even tripled their results in these areas.

To good to be true, you say? That's fine, we expect you to be skeptical.

That's why we'll be happy to show you the proof. Just ask us!

Better yet, we invite you to ask Alethea's Chocolates, Kolken Law, DSE Healthcare, WNY Labor Today, The Family Foundation School, or Serotte Law what their website traffic is like. Ask them if they're earning more revenue through their website. They'll tell you that what they've gotten back in terms of new business has more than paid for the redesign.

That's what we call: "return on investment," and what our customers call "success."

The Take Aways:

If you take nothing else away from this article, understand this:

If you're tired of looking at your website, so is your audience. And, if they're tired of looking at your website (or if your website looks tired), they're not going to give you their business, no matter how good you are at what you do.

Think about it: if you interviewed a job candidate who came to the meeting dressed in poorly-fitting or visibly old, worn clothing, would you extend a job offer?

Moreover, would you hesitate to replace an underperforming employee, or an employee that is making you look bad for even one second?

Of course not, and you should regard your website the very same way. If it's underperforming or making you look bad, introduce some new blood and a fresh face to your online presence.

Your business will thank you (and so will your bottom line).

Welcome to the REI Blog!

Mon, 01 Mar 2010 17:08:42 -0500

Yeah, okay. We know.

We've been doing blogs for our customers since 2005, but have yet to do our own. In fact, our good friend (and customer) Peter O'Connell has been beside himself for so long that he's all but given up on us marketing ourselves (surprise Peter!). It's also him, to whom we owe the idea for the name of our blog, and the philosophy behind it.

Seriously...we've really tried over the years. But, part of the challenge of running a small business is striking the balance between actually getting the work done and promoting what you do. As such, we've tended to favor our customers priorities over our own, and in turn put virtually all of our expertise into every new solution we create.

That's great for our customers, and we're very proud to do it with each new web site we design!

The downside of course, is that we have vastly more accumulated knowledge and expertise in web site design and online marketing, than the casual observer would ever know about, unless they actually begin to talk to us or dig extensively through our portfolio.

We concede that probably doesn't happen very often. Hence, the first post of our blog.

So what's it all about?

Easy! It's "webmarketising": the nexus of web, marketing and advertising.

Truly, the lines between those disciplines have become very blurred over the 12 years that Rare Earth Interactive has been around. So much so, that any marketing person who says they have "web experience" is like saying that a car has wheels. Yet, few firms can do an effective job of bringing it all together the way we do.

In the coming weeks and months, our people will be bringing you tasty morsels of web wisdom about web site design and website development, as well ad marketing trends, search engine optimization tips, and other web site concerns. We're betting that you'll find them both informative and helpful in developing an effective web site solution for your business or not-for-profit.

We're also wagering that while conveying the kind of real-world business wisdom that you've come to expect from us, you'll find it refreshing that we do it in plain, conversational English. We feel that's a valuable quality when it comes to working with a web solutions firm, because let's be frank: how can you know what you're getting when the people you're working with are talking over your head?

So no technospeak here. Just plain, simple information about you, your website, your customers, and your business.

Welcome to the conversation!