Facebook and Twitter Apps for Xbox

As gaming becomes more and more connected a fancy little add-on to your Xbox 360 dashboard allows you to connect with friends and followers on Facebook and Twitter. Does that mean I can instantly publish my high scores?

Xbox Live is an amazing tool that is pretty much the ultimate in social media. You can connect with like-minded gamers from around the world while enjoying hours and hours of entertainment.

With this new application you can change your status online, send tweets, and view photos right on their console. Considering the amazing imagery in Xbox 360 games I can see this really taking off in a great way! Who knows where this application will go next?

Read more at http://ping.fm/gi0gp

Design is Useless!

Website design is useless if you don’t do it right. Pretty graphics and animation can help when you’re bragging to your friends of how cool your website is, but does it help drive business? That’s something most people miss when considering website design. They miss the reason they’re getting a website designed in the first place – to drive business.

I go by a very strict philosophy of “Do what works, and not what doesn’t.” When it comes to design, I feel that you should focus on those things that will actually improve the user experience and lead to a higher rate of conversion. All else is just fluff that’s only useful for the aforementioned braggarts.

When you visit a site that doesn’t give you the information you want, do you really care that it’s playing cool music or that the images are sweet? No, you don’t. The most popular website in the world is barren of any style or color (anyone heard of Google?) It’s popular because it works and it gets people the answers they want.

So you’re probably wondering, why the rant from a web designer? The answer is, I’m not a web designer. I help people market their business online with websites that convert. If you’re looking for a graphic designer that knows how to code a webpage, go to Craigslist and find someone willing to work for table scraps. Come to me if you want to drive business with your webpage.

5 Cheap Ways to Make a Great First Impression

As a lighter follow up to my previous post, here’s a few ways a guy like me can make a great impression on the cheap:

1. Shine your shoes
Instead of buying a brand new pair of dress shoes for an important meeting, shine an old pair. People can rarely tell the difference in black shoes anyway unless they’re really watching (then they’re not listening to you anyway).

2. Buy a really nice dress shirt
Go without a suit jacket and tie to a major event. It’s a nice style and is no longer considered a fashion faux pas. Saves you the cost of buying the jacket and the discomfort of wearing a tie!

3. Smile
Does this really need an explanation?

4. Meet Clients at their Office
Even if you have a nice office, I still recommend this one. It shows you offer great service if you do, and covers up your less-than-stellar office if you don’t.

5. Turn off Your Phone
Show that you respect your client by giving them your undivided attention. Don’t worry, the text will still be there when you’re done!

Image Is NOT Everything

As I spend much of my work day meeting with new and current clients, I find it interesting to see how many people are throwing out the old rules of image when it comes to working together. I visit clients daily who embrace my preference for shorts and sandals just as they too take casual Friday and extend it to the rest of the week.

I find that moving beyond the physical appearance and getting to the heart of why we’re meeting together is an extremely effective tool for a great working relationship. Instead of relying on a fancy car and the latest cell phone to show my worth, I provide value based on my experience and what I have to offer clients – expertise.

I know what I’m doing and I have a passion for sharing this knowledge with other people and companies. I genuinely want their business to succeed and I given the chance, I will use every tool I have to make it happen. So when I show up at your office in jeans and a t-shirt, don’t judge. I will help you grow your business and maybe even inspire you to let loose a little bit. Who really likes to wear ties anyway?

4 Steps to a Great Night…Or Not

Oh what a night I had last night. It was entertaining, surprising, and unique. I’m still trying to figure out if it was any fun. Either way it was a night to remember in downtown Vancouver.

Step 1: The Thunder Storm
One thing I was really missing that Winnipeg and Miami had in common was a good thunder storm. For a city that is known for it’s rain, Vancouver sure doesn’t have many of these. But true to form, the view from our downtown highrise sure was spectacular. The sky lit up with lightening and rumbled with the sound of thunder, taking me back to some of my favorite summer nights back home.

Step 2: The Fireworks
Now, another benefit of living so close to English Bay is that we can see the Symphony of Lights Fireworks straight from our apartment. Think Canada Day time 5 with epic music blasting and you have a wicked display. So immediately after the thunderstorm let up the fireworks started filling the sky with booming cracks and bright lights. It was awesome!

Step 3: The Accident
Here’s where the night turns surprising. At 3:00 am, I wake up to the sound of a big thud and glass breaking. As I look out the window I see a car had smashed into an apartment window across the street from my building. Trying to figure out what happened I sat and watched the ‘action’ from above for about 30 minutes. I never really did figure out what happened. My guess was a drunk driver though.

Step 4: The Fire Alarm
Immediately after the tow truck finishes filling downtown with amazingly loud screeches while taking away the car from Step 3, the fire alarm in our building went off, causing a flurry of confused apartment dwellers (including me) to fill the streets in front of our building while watching the fire department douse a flame on a fourth floor apartment. After this sleeping became an issue as I stayed up until about 5:30 am.

Needless to say this was an eventful night. I’m not sure whether I liked it or not – certainly could have used more sleep, but it was definitely a weird coincidence I won’t forget. The bottom line is that if you can stand the noice, living downtown is always eventful.

Apparently We’re All Liars

I had another guerilla reading episode last night at the local Chapters. This time I decided to read All Marketers are Liars by Seth Godin. Great book so far! It made me think about the stories I tell people day in and day out and checking myself to see if they’re actually the truth. It’s easy to get caught up in your own hype some time but it’s good to reflect on what you’re promoting when you’re in business.

One part in the book explains that the truly remarkable brands are ones that tell a story. People believe these stories because they want to believe and enjoy every moment of their experience with their favorite brands. It makes it okay to buy a $5 cup of coffee and to spend $100,000 on a 2-seater sports car in a winter city.

So why do marketers do it? Why do we tell people they’ll be healthier if they drink a particular type of bottled water, or stronger if they eat more suppliments? It’s because the immeasurable differences these products make in our lives benefit our most important possession – our ego. By catering to the beliefs that consumers have for themselves and their favorite brands, we make their world a better place to live in.

Substance and reality is old news. Without a quality product or service, your brand will not last. But to be truly remarkable you have to appeal to the inner beliefs of your customers. Tap into their psyche and watch how passionate they can be about your brand. Stroke their ego and watch them pour into your store with their wallets wide open. The best part is they’re doing it willingly. They’ll reward you with their business because you get it. You make them feel good about choosing you.

FREE is the Magic Word

Why Was This Book Not Free?

Tonight was an amazing date, and it was nearly FREE. I only say nearly because my girlfriend and I stopped at Starbucks for a cookie (she loves them)! Other than that we had a great night exploring the neighbourhood and reading free books at the local Chapters – I was actually reading one about “Free” as a real business.

In our 3rd effort in two weeks, we attempted to see a movie at the local theatre only to find it sold out as we got to the front of the line. Is that weird that it happened three times in a row? Anyway we didn’t get to see our movie again but in our normal fashion we didn’t let that stop us from having fun. Instead we decided to spend the evening finding great books that we can never seem to find at the library.

Ironically enough my eyes were drawn to a book called Free: The Future of a Radical Price. As I took the book into the corner and read the first three chapters I had to chuckle at my gaining the knowledge in the fashion the book described. I’m such a rebel! While I would really enjoy being able to buy the book, here’s why I didn’t.

Firstly the book’s entire subject is about how the Internet has created a culture of people (myself included) that are used to getting quality goods and services for free (Facebook, Google, etc). With the library down the street giving me acccess to 50 books at a time why pay $30 for a book?

Secondly I really just don’t have the free cash to be spending that much on one book that will take me two days to read between work and sleep. The value proposition is just not there for me.

Finally I have a nasty habit of reading between the lines. I felt as if Chris Anderson was speaking to me with his analysis of Freenomics as he offers many users information for free subsidized by the paying users. It made me feel like I was being the sucker that was ’subsidizing’ the free readers with an abnormally high price. Not only that but it also made me abnormally aware that Chapters was only allowing me to ‘freely’ read their product in the hopes that I buy it.

Enough about the book though. While I did take away a great deal of useful insights from my limited read, the story is about me having a great night with my girlfriend at a cost of a $2 cookie. I’m sure that the folks at Chapters aren’t happy that I walked out with nothing in my hand with my wallet firmly placed in my pocket, but hey – we had fun. That’s really all that matters right?

Who Wants to Bing?

Is Bing the Next Best Thing in Search Engines?

Anyone who watches TV or surfs the Net has heard about a new “Find” Engine from Microsoft called Bing. Since MSN Search and Live Search were a complete bust, Microsoft decided that they would take the time and effort to create a new brand from scratch and add a touch of relevancy to their search algorithms. It will be interesting to see if Bing can creep into the Internet sub-culture much as Google has over the past decade or if it will slide into irrelevancy like so many other Microsoft initiatives. The question is, Who wants to Bing?

When Google came out, everyone wanted to try it. The founders were found scrambling to raise the capital to buy enough servers to keep up with the growing amount of search users visiting their site everyday. It literally transformed the way we search for products, services, and information online. With the many advancements in Internet technology and the many attempts by strong competitors like Yahoo! and MSN, Google has remained the strongest following time and time again, even as it gets more and more cluttered with different mini programs (like Google Maps, Youtube, etc.) and Pay Per Click advertising.

Bing will have to provide something special that people are begging for. I’m wondering if they did their research! Of course, it really does look pretty cool. It has a sort of 2005 “Futuristic” look to it, but the sleak and simple design really helps you forget it’s a Microsoft product. The changing backgrounds are a nice touch but still don’t really seem to add any value to the search experience. What I find truly interesting however, is how the content is organized on Bing. A simple search for “Google” comes up with ‘News about Google’, websites of Google, “Google Services”, “Google Downloads” and more. They seem to really want to lay the gauntlet of choice for their customers. The jury’s still out on whether that’s a helpful feature or a hindrance to quick and easy results.

So what does it mean for businesses that want to be found on Bing? As much as we Search Engine Optimizers want to believe that we know what’s going on it will take months of research, testing, and constant tweaks to our marketing campaigns to learn how to optimize sites for Bing. According to their web master resources it shouldn’t be much different than optimizing for Google, except that Meta tags, Page Titles, and URLs don’t seem to matter nearly as much as quality content and relevant backlinks. We’ll keep diligently learning and hopefully as Bing takes away a bit of that search market share, we will be best equipped with the knowledge to help our clients show up first. Until then I pose the question, “Do you want to Bing?”

My Partners Are My Strength

A business is only as strong as its weakest performer. In a small, transparent company such as Blackwave, there’s no element of bureaucracy standing between the client and our staff. No place to hide under monotony. We must be on at all times and be as creative and productive as our customers expect us to be. That’s why we’re very careful about choosing the right development partners.

For those that don’t know, Blackwave is a small group of experienced and talented web designers, programmers, and marketers that have come together to create sweet websites and branding solutions for our clients. By eliminating the need for a traditional office with loads of overhead, we are able to give clients the best and most creative service while passing off our cost savings to them.

Recently we partnered with a sweet development company out of Vancouver that will help us serve clients at a higher caliber of service. We can now create custom websites for all ranges of needs from a simple brochure site for a small business to an enterprise level system for a large corporation. The opportunities are endless to maintain our core promise of providing affordable website design services at any range of customer needs.

This sure is a sigh of relief for me as it will make it so much easier to serve the enterprise level clients. Adding this to my arsenal of great website design is going to make for a fun summer!

Can Twitter Actually Fatten My Wallet?

Does This Represent What Social Media Is?

Since I began using Facebook early last year I’ve been hearing the hype about how Social Media is the next big thing in business. I can see a lot of people ‘getting rich’ of Twitter and things like that but I have not met many successful business people who get the bulk of their business online. I would really like to see how it’s done and what the results are.

I believe that if you use social media properly you can make solid connections that translate into offline meetings. This can lead to business as long as the right fit is there. However, it requires a great deal of care to maintain authenticity in a relationship in order to move forward to the business stage. You have to say what you mean and mean what you say!

Many people believe they can throw up an automated content generator on their social media platforms and voila! More business. Instead people see right through it. They can tell if all you do is Re-Tweet people’s original thoughts and never offer your own, or add someone as a friend and pretend like you’re not just trying to get them to buy something off of you.

There are some that do this well, but most just come across as dishonest and spammy. I challenge anyone out there that can give me an honest, straightforward way to get more business using social media. I know what works for me. What works for you?