Protea Digital Blog

August 23, 2010

The Art of Advice

When last did you take some advice? How’d it turn out?

You remember advice, right? Advice has got a bad rap from being what happens when your mom told you to wear a sweater, or a friend crushed your rock-star dreams by mentioning that your musical talents were a little off key. So when someone mentions an area we can improve on, or something we should try, we tend to think of it as criticism, rather than advice – which is a pity, as a good piece of advice can be really, really useful.

There is an art to taking advice. In a business or web context, a good piece of advice can save you massive amounts of time, and no doubt plenty of money. So then, what is the skill of taking advice all about?

People give advice all the time – the trick is sorting the good advice (the short-cuts that save you hassle), form the bad advice (things that cost you time and effort). A couple of elements go into this: What the advice is, who is giving it, and when it is given.

What the advice is seems like the most important element, but it often doesn’t determine whether we take that advice. If it is from the wrong person, it just washes over us and doesn’t have an effect.

Who is giving the advice in one sense shouldn’t matter. The advice should stand or fall on its own merits. But of course, this is not the case. We weigh advice very much based on who gives it. If the person is in a position of authority or knowledge, you give the advice more credence. And many times this is apposite. If a doctor tells you to eat less, that probably gets more weight than a friend who suggests you lay off the French fries at dinner.

And most importantly: when the advice is given. If it is given in the context of trying to help that person, and at a time when the person needs feedback, that advice will most probably be effective.

The best advice can be unsolicited. The problem with solicited advice is that the person doing the asking more often than not has already made their mind up, or has an opinion already and just wants their view reinforced.

I had a great piece of advice recently – to write more blog posts. So look out for more case studies, and customer stories of how we work with clients to help them grow their businesses.

Good advice can be a fantastic shortcut on the road of experience. So the next time you get a nugget of good advice, take it.

- Steven

July 13, 2010

Webinar

Protea will be having its first webinar tomorrow.

We will be discussing the top 5 Challenges and Opportunities for Web Marketers in the second half of 2010.

Kicks- off at 3pm on Wed 14th July.

You can register at www.proteadigital.com/webinars.php

We have quite a few signups, so I’m pretty excited about it.

-Steven

June 7, 2010

Web Strategy

Apparently, pictures of chess boards help you think

Protea Digital is embracing business web strategy. Clients have been asking questions which involve answers that go beyond web execution and into business questions. There really isn’t a big difference between business solutions and the web for many businesses.

Decisions have evolved from ‘What sort of web-based marketing do we need to be doing?’ to “How do we integrate every aspect of our business with the web in a smart way?’. This is just the sort of thing we here at Protea have been working with in partnership with clients.

A client came to us recently to help them re-think their business to take advantage of the web. They’re a printing company. Instead of just playing defense, and getting trapped in a race to the bottom in terms of price, we’re looking at integrating what they do with the web to become more flexible, more responsive and more creative.

The web does force medium-sized business to evolve. For instance, the social web has become like air, something that is natural, pervasive, and not always visible. It just is the way things are done, and increasingly a part of how business is done.

So hence the cool chess picture on this post. We’d welcome the opportunity to get web strategic with clients. But we’re not like a consulting company that delivers a lot of pretty Powerpoint slides. We’re a web marketing and strategy implementation company.We draw on our years of experience with getting results on the web to help clients grow. In fact, I’m not sure you can talk about business strategy these days without a deep understanding of the web and business. Web marketing in isolation is not as strong as web marketing that integrates with customer understands, business needs and organizational strengths.

We like to think of it as smart web marketing minus the hype.

April 23, 2010

Visit to a client in Utah

View of Utah Mountains from the plane

Above: A rather abstract photo of some Utah mountains from the plane.

I had a great trip to visit a client who has just come onboard. They are based in Utah. The company is an ecommerce platform for the lighting industry, and they selected Protea to be their web marketing partner. I’d never been to Utah, and this was the first official Protea Digital business trip, so I thought I’d post some reflections about the trip:

* The mountains of Utah are beautiful – the proverbial snow-capped peaks surrounding the flat areas give a sense of being out West and the vastness of the land.

* My host informed me that Utah is the driest state in the union.

* The client is clearly a successful entrepreneur – this is his second business.

* The client impressed me with his solid, down-to-earth and methodical approach to business

* There was nothing “flashy” about the client, in the sense that this is a solid, well-run, well thought-out business. Often entrepreneurs drink their own Kool-Aid and start to think they can do no wrong. This entrepreneur was not like that at all, and it was refreshing. A great to client to have, and good fit for the way we think at Protea.

* On the four hour, second leg of the flight I did end up paying for wi-fi access. It is just a question of productivity – I ended up getting work done.

* However electronic and web-enabled the world becomes, there is no substitute for getting on a plane and flying across the country to meet in person.

Steven

April 14, 2010

On-board with a new client

Protea welcomes a new client aboard. They are Chapel Hill based venture-fund of funds. They have a number of impressive investments in leading technology and web companies, and we are excited they have decided to choose Protea Digital to help them with their web marketing.

March 28, 2010

Welcoming another client

Protea is pleased to welcome another client to the fold. They’re a company doing fulfillment for web businesses. We’ll be managing their search advertising strategy and execution from end-to-end. We looking forward to helping them get great results.

February 22, 2010

New Client

Protea is pleased to announce that we have added a new client! We will be working with a leading Contract Research Oganization to help them improve their digital marketing. We are excited to be working with them.

December 30, 2009

Some reflections on what worked in 2009

Before considering plans for 2010, I thought it would be appropriate to look at what has been particularly effective for clients in 2009. Here are the top five:

Social media tools: We used social media to great effect during the year. Facebook, for instance, has been a great source of traffic and revenue. The most shocking part was that actual sales resulted. We used a coupon code to track the results of our Facebook campaign for an ecommerce client. The resulting sales represented an incremental boost in sales of 10% – which translates into a substantial amount of extra revenue.

Twitter has been highly effective for connecting and creating visibility for another client, a New York-based small business advisory service. Our Twitter campaign has helped connect them to influencers and increased visibility in their niche. The Twitter stream we created was picked up by third party networks, helping to create more followers and interest for the client.

Search Ads still work. Google has been trying to increase some keyword bidding prices, but with tight management, we have succeeded in controlling costs and even decreasing conversion costs.

Landing pages: They don’t have to be overly complex or sophisticated, but they do need to build credibility and show clearly what the offer is.We’ve seen landing pages produce higher conversion rates then just sending visitors to general site pages.

Offering value still works. Even in the recession, clients managed to grow by offering quality.

December 3, 2009

A few more 2010 marketing predictions

Here are a few more smart marketer’s ideas of what will happen in 2010.

November 17, 2009

Social Media Panel Presentation

I was invited to be on a Social Media panel. Here’s the presentation I gave to artists and arts organizations. It is an overview of social media, some thoughts on value, as well as what social media changes and what it doesn’t change. Thanks go to June for the kind comments about Protea Digital.

-Steven

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