October 10, 2024

You’re the Boss Blog: The Problem Social Media Cannot Solve

On Social Media

Generating revenue along with the buzz.

Stop. Don’t send that tweet. Don’t post that video on YouTube. It’s time to face facts: It doesn’t make sense to do anything in social media if you don’t have a good Web site.

Your Web site is your welcome mat. It’s your most important selling tool. The ultimate goal of social media marketing is to drive traffic and potential customers to your Web site and then convert those leads into phone calls, meetings and sales. And yet, if you are great at social media but have a lousy Web site, your social media efforts will just allow you to annoy more people faster.

If your Web site needs work, do not put it off. But be careful about who you hire to build, update and maintain your site. The process is time consuming and full of lots of opportunities to learn expensive lessons. There are plenty of snake-oil salesmen and brothers-in-law (and even brothers) who prey on those who are not technologically savvy. Over my next few posts, I’m going to discuss the process of hiring a Web developer to build a site, and I’ll also offer some alternatives to a full overhaul.

In 2012, after surviving for nearly 12 years in business with a one-page Web site, Advanced Comfort Technology finally decided to invest in a Web site for its main product, DCC Waterbeds. Based in Reedsburg, Wis., the family business builds waterbeds for dairy cows and takes in about $4 million a year in revenue. Yes, cows sleep on waterbeds. (Apparently lying on a waterbed protects the cows who lie down an average of 14 hours a day.) [Read more…]

Article source: http://boss.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/05/10/the-problem-social-media-cannot-solve/?partner=rss&emc=rss

Nash FM Brings Country Music Back to New York Radio

But until this week, the country format was nowhere to be found on the New York radio dial.

On Monday, Cumulus Media introduced Nash FM, which ended country music’s 17-year drought on New York radio. The station provides the first glimpse of what Cumulus says will be an all-purpose vehicle to market what it calls the “country lifestyle” on dozens of its radio stations across the country as well as online, on television and in a new magazine.

The new station, WRXP, at 94.7 FM, fills a conspicuous gap in the nation’s largest media market. It is also an indication of how strong the country genre has become, not only in music but also in the broader popular culture, led by telegenic young acts like Taylor Swift and the group Lady Antebellum.

“The time is right to put together a multiplatform entertainment brand,” Lew Dickey, chief executive of Cumulus, said in an interview on Tuesday. “Country is at an all-time high.”

While country has been heard on some suburban stations over the years, the city has been without a country station since 1996, when WYNY changed to a pop format and became WKTU. The music industry has been pressing the big broadcasters for years to start a station to help promote country acts, whose tours sometimes bypass the city for theaters in New Jersey and elsewhere.

“We’ve been begging the major broadcasters to jump in with us,” said Scott Borchetta, president of the label Big Machine, whose acts include Ms. Swift, Tim McGraw and the Band Perry. “The market has changed so dramatically over the last 15 or 16 years since we’ve had a country station in New York City proper. I think our music is now in the best possible alignment with what can work.”

Variations on the “Nash” name will be used throughout Cumulus’s 83 country stations as well as its other country-themed media efforts, the company said. For example, Mr. Dickey said that Cumulus would start Nash Magazine, published by Modern Luxury, which will begin publication in the second half of the year. Down the line, he added, he wants to expand into video. “This will be the flagship of a national country brand,” Mr. Dickey said.

Cumulus operates a total of 525 stations, and is the nation’s second-largest broadcaster, behind Clear Channel Communications.

Broadcasters sometimes go to great lengths to keep format changes secret, and the case of Nash FM was no different. Cumulus assigned WRXP, the call letters of a former rock station, to the frequency, and over the weekend played a jumble of different formats to stir up interest while also cloaking its intentions to go country. (Next week the station will become WNSH.)

A success in New York could help propel Nash FM to prominence and draw new kinds of advertising. The market has nearly 16 million listeners age 12 and above, according to the ratings service Arbitron, and the city offers plenty of opportunities for promotional events, like concerts, that can be syndicated throughout Cumulus’s network.

New York may be the ultimate symbol of American urbanism, but it is a large market for country music. Last year, Nielsen said that more country albums were sold in the New York metropolitan area than anywhere in the United States — although as a proportion of all music sales in the region, New York ranks far below less populous areas in the South and Midwest.

With the fragmentation of media, country has been available to New York fans in plenty of other ways. Sirius XM Radio, for example, has six country stations, and last year it put on a concert for its listeners by Mr. McGraw at the Beacon Theater in Manhattan.

But music executives say that having a terrestrial station in the area will be a major help in selling concert tickets and promoting new music. The first song played on the new station on Monday was “How Country Feels” by Randy Houser, who performs on Thursday at the Mercury Lounge in Manhattan.

“It makes a statement that country music is strong and that country music is important,” said Greg Oswald of William Morris Endeavor in Nashville. “If you are willing to do it in New York City, then it’s saying everything that needs to be said.”

Even with country’s broad popularity, building a steady audience in New York for a genre of music that has been absent from the airwaves for so long might take time.

“If you look at the other major markets that have a successful country station — Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago, Detroit — those stations planted a stake in the ground and stayed with it, and now those stations are practically iconic,” said Mr. Borchetta, of Big Machine. “The country radio audience doesn’t spike. It grows in a beautiful, slow arc.”

Another challenge for Cumulus will be defining exactly what the country lifestyle means in New York.

“It’s an exurban lifestyle,” Mr. Dickey said. “It’s the five boroughs, the whole tristate area.”

He added, “We’re not just talking to people on the Upper West Side.”

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/23/business/media/nash-fm-brings-country-music-back-to-new-york-radio.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

You’re the Boss Blog: The Difference Between a Good Web Site and a Great Web Site

Sam Mogannam plans to make some changes.Jed Jacobsohn for The New York TimesSam Mogannam plans to make some changes.

Site Analysis

What’s wrong with this Web site?

In last week’s post, we featured the Web site of Bi-Rite Market, an extremely popular San Francisco grocery. One year ago, Sam Mogannam, the market’s owner, redesigned the site and upgraded its social media efforts as part of an overall branding program. Mr. Mogannam reported that he believed the redesign of the site — which promotes the store but does not sell products online — resulted in a steep increase in visitors to the site and a 20 percent increase in the store’s sales.

We asked readers to take a look at the site and at Bi-Rite’s social media efforts. Here’s what you had to say, along with my take and Mr. Mogannam’s response.

A good home page, I believe, should act as a gateway to all of the information on a site. It should offer a core business message — what makes you different from and better than your competition — and then provide easy navigation to pages that address specific interests or needs. Readers felt the Bi-Rite homepage did not do a great job of accomplishing this. The big problem, they said, is that the Bi-Rite blog is too dominant on the home page.

“A blog on the home page is kind of weird,” wrote artalacarte from Connecticut. “A home page should be a quick introduction to the whole Web site. Who you are, what you do, what you can do for ME …”

PW from Texas agreed: “The home page doesn’t make me want to go much further because it doesn’t make me hungry. Blogs and Twitter posts are great additions to a Web site but I don’t expect them to be their main features.”

What might replace the blog on the home page? Several readers mentioned a video produced by the Bi-Rite team that is  professional, entertaining and informative — but buried in a link on the bottom right side of the home page. In the video, Mr. Mogannam speaks passionately about food and Bi-Rite’s commitment to service.

“I love the video about the market that’s attached to the Bi-Rite Book,” wrote Eric Marcus from New York. “Glad I clicked on it because it’s terrific! Now I can’t wait to visit the store the next time I’m in San Francisco. If it were my site, I’d put that video front and center.”

Readers were also hungry for more photographs of the food. “Too much to read and not enough to look at,” wrote PW. “If you want to catch the attention and interest of your visitors, you should focus more on visual appeal. You can portray your commitment to your community with pictures as much as with words.”

Several readers pointed out how well the site presented critical information. “Hours and contact info are posted prominently on each page,” wrote Julie B. from McHenry, Ill. “So simple, yet so important! Nothing worse than hunting around on a small-business Web site for 10 minutes just to find out if they’re open.” But readers also noted that there are several typos in the copy, something they felt made the site look unprofessional.

For a market that does a good job of engaging visitors to its store, readers felt that it could do a better job engaging visitors online. “The site, and the Facebook page, which I looked at, are very one-way,” wrote Friend from New England. “The Web experience could be much more interactive and create a community atmosphere online to complement what it seems happens at the store. Maybe Facebook is the best place to do this so people don’t have to make a special visit to the store page. I think Bi-Rite could do a lot more to involve customers. ASK about what they buy, what they cook, what they want to buy, where they eat, etc.”

Friend used the example of Georgetown Cupcake as a company that does an excellent job of interacting with customers on its Facebook page. A great way to create user interaction is to have visitors provide user-generated content. “I feel that there is room here for a greater store-home connection,” Jen from New York wrote. “They have some recipes on the blog. Why not list the ingredients, perhaps even by store location/aisle? Make it easy for a consumer to print out the recipe, and to find, buy, bring home, use the items for a special dish.”

My Take

While I agree with many of the reader criticisms, I also want to say “Bravo!” to Mr. Mogannam and his team. This is a business that takes its online presence and marketing seriously, and it has paid off. Bi-Rite made a relatively small investment and increased both its site traffic and the store’s sales. In all likelihood, the store recouped its investment almost immediately.

That said, there are plenty of ways the site can still be improved, and I agree with the readers on its main flaws. I think it’s a mistake to let the blog dominate the home page. It’s great to have a blog, of course, especially one that is informative and well written, but it should be a secondary feature. Let visitors know you have a blog, tease them with a small amount of content, and then get them to click onto the blog page if they’re interested in reading more. I also agree with the comments about the video, which gives a real feel for the market’s culture. It should be prominently displayed on the home page; in fact, it should be the centerpiece.

The points made about recipes and engaging the audience were also on the mark. Get your customers sharing recipes with each other. This not only builds community, it gives visitors reason to come back to your store and to your site. This kind of “stickiness” goes a long way to enhancing your brand.

Finally, while Mr. Mogannam has chosen not to be a full-service e-commerce site, there might be more things he could be doing online to improve sales and customer relations. It might be great for business, for example, if you could place an order online either for pick-up or delivery. This might also work for the catering services.

Sam Mogannam Responds

Mr. Mogannam said he agreed with some comments but not with others. His biggest disagreement was about the placement of the blog on the home page. “Our blog posts are most demonstrative of who we are,” he said. “They tell the deeper story behind our food and the people who produce it. Nothing we’d rather have our audience see than that — assuming the nitty gritty info like store location, hours, etc. are easy to find — which the comments indicate they are.”

Mr. Mogannam said that the most helpful advice was to offer more images and less writing. “We’ve heard it once, we’ve heard it a million times,” he said, “that people don’t have the patience to read much these days, and a picture says a thousand words. As interesting as we think a story about cheese making or teaching kids to plant their own food is, it will be lost if not shown through images to accompany the written word.”

Mr. Mogannam said he is taking many of the suggestions to heart and will make a number of changes, including:

  • Working on promoting more social media interaction, engaging the audience in conversation.
  • Putting video front and center.
  • Adding more photos of food to the recipe, catering, and deli pages.
  • Using spell check “religiously”

Would you like to have your business’s Web site or mobile app reviewed? This is an opportunity for companies looking for an honest (and free) appraisal of their online presence and marketing efforts.

To be considered, please tell me about your experiences — why you started your site, what works, what doesn’t, and why you would like to have the site reviewed — in an e-mail to youretheboss@bluefountainmedia.com.

Gabriel Shaoolian is the founder and chief executive of Blue Fountain Media, a Web design, development and marketing company based in New York.

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=b753c365d59d95844d7522978bd03d31

You’re the Boss: What’s Wrong With This Web Site?


Site Analysis

Since December, Colorado Mountain Coffee has been selling mountain-roasted Arabica coffee exclusively online. Its owners say that what sets the company’s coffee apart is its roasting process, which is done at high altitude. “With less oxygen and pressure at high elevation, we are able to preserve the beans’ delicate flavor profile,” said Ryan Wagner, who founded the site along with David Richards.

As you can tell from the look and feel of the site, the target audience is outdoors people: hikers, climbers, skiers — all people who relate, Mr. Wagner said, to the idea of mountain-roasted coffee. That’s why the coffees have names like “Ragin’ Moose,” “Jittery Ascent,” “Treeline” and “Trailhead.” The site features a blog, an e-commerce store and even a video of a caffeine-fueled Mr. Wagner climbing a tree.

The marketing for the site has included a Google AdWords campaign, social media, promotional events and an Android app that helps you measure out the amount of coffee you need for your particular taste. The app has been downloaded more than 1,000 times.

“The biggest disappointment was Google Adwords,” Mr. Wagner said. “A modest advertising budget was spent, but a significant amount of conversions remained elusive.” The social media efforts have been only slightly more successful. Twitter and Facebook, Mr. Wagner said, “continue to be a mixed bag. We run contests on both platforms with varying results but remain optimistic.” On a recent day, there were 49 “Likes” on Facebook.

Mr. Wagner said that search engine optimization had been a primary concern from the beginning. “Most of our traffic comes from the more obscure long-tail searches involving Colorado, high altitude and other mountain terms combined with the standard coffee keywords,” he said. “Other searches, such as ‘coffee calculator,’ are showing our related pages on the 1st and 2nd pages of results. We are slowly climbing the rankings and are adding useful content to help generate more search engine interest. Our blog generates search engine traffic as does the coffee calculator. Where we have had the most trouble is generating links from other sites. We have asked site owners for links/exchanges, offered coffee for review and generated helpful and interesting content, but so far the results have been less than desired.”

The company’s most successful marketing has come through promotional events. “Since we promote an active lifestyle with our Web site theme, we have a presence at a handful of triathlons, aquathlons, bike races, etc. We serve complementary coffee and sell bags face-to-face to our customers.”

Still very much in its infancy, the site has seen increasing traffic steadily and now approaches 1,000 unique visitors a month. Revenues, however, are still only a few hundred dollars a month. Since abandoning AdWords, the site has been relying almost entirely on social media, leaving marketing costs at a mere $30 a month.

“Over all, we are very pleased with the current look of our site,” Mr. Wagner said. “However, we are constantly brainstorming better ways to present our products, and from time to time we make minor updates. As a purely online retailer, our site is the only face of our company to many customers, and so we are always on the lookout for better ways to present our coffee.”

Please visit the site and tell us what you think. What features do you like? What’s missing? What’s confusing? What needs to be improved? Would you buy coffee from this site? Is the coffee calculator app helpful? Please review the marketing efforts as well. Go to the search engines and see how the company fares. Then please share your views in the comment section below.

“David and I are constantly looking for ways to improve our site,” Mr. Wagner said. “We began with a focus group before launching the site and have jumped at the opportunity to again have more eyes take a careful look.”

Next week, we’ll collect highlights from your comments, I’ll offer some of my own impressions, and we’ll get Mr. Wagner’s reactions as well.

Got a site or mobile app you’d like to have critiqued? I am always looking for Web sites and mobile apps to review. I am especially interested in hearing from businesses that are using smartphones, iPads and other mobile devices and apps as tools in marketing, selling and branding. To be considered, please tell me about your experiences — what works, what doesn’t, why you would like to have your Web site reviewed — in an e-mail to youretheboss@bluefountainmedia.com.

Gabriel Shaoolian is the founder and chief executive of Blue Fountain Media, a Web design, development and marketing company based in New York.

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=0276d12f9c86da2ed1cff7921c426d48