What’s changed: (to name a few)

• When we opened our doors YouTube existed but since then Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, Pinterest, Google +, Vine, Instagram and many more have become big players in the social media space.
• Internet shopping increased by 26% in the last year – so we can assume it’s increased by over 200+% in the last 8 years. Our first clients were afraid of using paypal and thought people wouldn’t trust the service.
• Magazines are dying at a rapid rate. Only the cream of the crop are surviving. Mags dropped 9.5% last year alone.
• More and more businesses are adopting social media as part of their communications plan.
• Mobile, Mobile, Mobile – multiple screen sizes and multiple user experiences on different devices. We aren’t designing for our desktops anymore.
• The authenticity is disappearing online – Marketers ruin everything – I should know I’m one of them.
• The largest demographic? Mommy blogger directories and communities are massive and are only getting bigger.

What’s still the same:

• If you are not passionate about the subject – you won’t keep up with it.
• Content is still king.
• Visual content has and probably always will receive the most shares and clicks.
• Video is definitely growing but photos are still leading in the content sharing arena.
• Email marketing is still on top.
• Google’s algorithms have changed (they change all the time) but strong content is still a big factor when looking for google ranking.
• The more niche and focused your blog/website the better.

We’ve seen more technology, social options, screen sizes and e-commerce in our field. It doesn’t matter what changes occur when it comes to marketing, one thing will always remain the same: you need to connect to your target market emotionally – in print, on TV and on the web.

I’m looking forward to hanging out with robots and living in an open world with little privacy – definitely thinking that will happen in the next 8 years. Maybe I should be careful of what I wish for.

Research Your Influencers
One of the biggest points from the report was highlighting the slightly disjointed relationship between brand marketers and influencers. The report says that often, brands look to influencer’s ComScore when choosing someone to work with, when in reality, this might not always be the best source for finding an influencer to work with, as the numbers do not always fairly represent the influencer. In order to establish Influencers to help your brand reach audiences that you might not have access to, conducting research beyond ComScore numbers is key. What kind of following do they have? How responsive is their community? Is it always growing? There are other elements to consider when approaching an Influencer. You also have to recognize if they will be a good fit for your brand. Just because your product might be in the same industry as an Influencer’s expertise, it might not correlate well. Research your Influencers and take a look at their community and their content before you jump right into numbers.

Measuring Your Success
There still remains the slightly sticky topic of ROI and measurement on a ‘successful’ campaign when Influencers are engaged for a promotion. Technorati’s report outlines that there is a lack of uniform metrics to effectively measure the success of campaigns. Influencers are looking to pageviews and traffic whereas brand marketers are looking at Facebook likes. Before finalizing a campaign, it is within both parties’ interests to define what a successful campaign would look like. That is to say – if the objective is brand awareness and reaching new demographics, pageviews and traffic sources might be of value. If you’re looking to Facebook likes, you might want to reach out to an Influencer who has a strong Facebook community. None the less, having a conversation prior to campaign launch about objectives will help drive the campaign forward and yield more satisfactory results.

Get Mobile
We all know by now that your brand should be social but what does that mean? It means that you should be connecting with audiences through Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, etc. 90% of brands have a presence on Facebook. That’s a staggering number – and you don’t want to be left out. YouTube and Facebook are the top two sources used on the Internet. Over the next year – spend on social will rise 59%. What’s more interesting is that spend on mobile is expected to increase 79%. With those numbers you definitely want to make sure your site is responsive (you can read more about responsive design here). You don’t want to alienate any part of your audience or advertisers by not having a mobile friendly layout for your website. Pay attention to your analytics and see where your traffic is coming from. With mobile digital spend on the rise, you definitely want to be accommodating to the trend. What are your takes on this years report?

We’d love to hear your agreements, disagreements or general comments!

On Tuesday we (Savannah, Jessica & I) were privileged to be in attendance at Conversuasion 6 presented by Ad Lounge at The Arts and Letters Club in Toronto. The night featured three 20-minute fireside chats, a Q&A period, and a chance to mingle afterwards. As far as Tuesday nights go in the city, this wasn’t a bad way to spend one at all.

The three speakers for the evening were, in order of appearance:
Shawn King (President, Chief Creative Officer – Extreme Group)
Susan Kim-Kirland (CEO – JWT Canada)
Paul Regan (Director of Media Innovation & Strategy – Scotiabank)

All three speakers did an excellent job of engaging the audience from the comfort of an armchair – which was placed on stage appropriately situated next to a roaring (televised) fire. Each speaker was personal and genuine. It was easy to see that the information and stories being shared were educational and each of them felt that there was value in them being told. As I expect was the case with everyone in the room, some points rang louder to me than others. And I feel fortunate that each of the 3 speakers contributed points that I’ve been thinking about in time since the night ended.

Shawn King was an excellent speaker who connected with the audience in a very relaxed manner (perhaps due to his glass of scotch?) and set the tone of the evening. He spoke about not taking things so seriously that you forget where you’ve been or where you are in life. We get quite caught up in our daily lives that it’s easy to be completely consumed by the small details. Perhaps his most relevant point centred around the idea that you shouldn’t always be 100% sure of what you’re doing – if you think you have all the answers to everything – you’re heading down a dangerous path. The willingness to admit that you’re always in a position to learn something new and improve is an important part of everyone’s continuing development. I’m thankful to have heard someone in Shawn’s position share that sentiment.

Susan Kim-Kirkland’s chat did a great job of reinforcing the message that continued development and growth are not only imperative to our personal careers, they are our responsibility to those who are coming up through the ranks behind us. She spoke about the value of the mentors in her career and the importance she sees in being that mentor to others now. Susan’s point crosses all industries and hits a nail on the head: take care of your people, foster their growth and the rewards will be seen with exponential returns. I agree with her 100% and believe that her point translates through various life experiences. As an industry leader, Susan showed that leadership is about people, not just projects which was a great reminder for everyone in the room.

Paul Regan took the stage last, although that was in no way an indication of value. His fireside chat was titled, Innovation and the Art of Letting Go. He hit great points about not staying emotionally attached to pieces or projects that will inevitably change direction, be disrupted or come to an end. Paul touched on inspiration that he has drawn from renowned American Buddhist teacher and author, Pema Chödrön which helped reinforce a wonderful example of success – it is about more than the work you do on paper. And while Paul made many great points; the one that stuck with me the most was this: work hard to maintain a childlike “beginner’s mind” that hasn’t been hardened by being told no. Paul’s words reminded us to revisit a time when we weren’t hardened by being told ‘no’ or ‘impossible’ – the ‘beginner’s mind’ is constantly inquisitive and ambitious. This is a fantastic approach to new projects – instead of meeting a challenge with ‘no’, it would be great to explore other options or methods to make an idea happen.

In the end the entire audience was lucky to have had the chance to sit and listen to these three industry leaders share their stories and perspectives without hearing a sales pitch or wondering where the catch was. Ad Lounge put on a great event and we look forward to the next Conversuasion and the great line-up of fireside chats that we’ll be taking in. The stripped-down, raw approach to the evening made the talks much more relatable. It was very much, a conversation.

The Conference. Shriek. Gasp. Cower. Shudder.

Is there any industry more conference happy then the tech world? From a three person tweetup at a local bar straight on up to CES and SxSw, if you were so inclined you could attend a conference everyday of the year. Should you?

The question I see asked more than any others: “Is it worth it?”

Let’s try to answer that.

Pricing The cost of a conference is really the biggest factor in deciding if it’s worth attending. There is a certain slice of the conference world that we can eliminate right off the bat: the wildly overpriced. They tend to be targeted at the corporate market, and the thinking behind the pricing is “Hey, your company is footing the bill, so who cares!” Usually, there are one or two “Big Names” attached as speakers, which is supposed to somehow justify the outrageous price tag. These conferences are never worth the money. There is no “magic bullet”, secret strategy or tip you can learn in a few hours that will ever justify the cost.

If an event you want to attend is double, or even more than what most conferences cost it’s a rip off, plain and simple. Save your money. If the pricing seems on par with similar events, it passes the pricing test and is worth examining further.

Stay on the lookout for tiered pricing. Some conferences have a low general ticket price, then offer upgraded passes. This can be a fine pricing structure, but take a look at what the basic ticket gets you. If you can get into most of the events, then it isn’t an issue. I’ve noticed in the last year, that more and more events are requiring an upgraded badge to get into the most interesting part of the conference. This stinks. Check that the type of entry you buy actually gets you into the events you want to attend. The entry fee may seem very reasonable, until you realize all you’re entitled to is the right to hang around an empty conference room showing YouTube videos on repeat.

Scheduling The way speeches, panels and roundtables are scheduled can easily make a conference with great content a nightmare to attend. It makes sense to write yourself a quick plan of what you want to attend before you buy your ticket. Carefully take a look at the conference schedule, and see how many sessions are happening each day. Is there a huge amount of downtime, breaks or dead air? No question that some free time is important to digest what you’re learning, especially during multi-day events. You also don’t want to drop your cash so you can spend half the day in a shabby hotel lobby drinking bad coffee while annoying MLM’ers glad hand you and stuff your pockets full of business cards you won’t ever use.  At a good conference, there will always be something going on. At a really good conference, they will even have social events or other activities in between the main events to keep you learning, socializing and enjoying yourself.

It’s important to determine how man sessions you’ll be able to attend.  A well put together event will be structured so that all the attendees can make it to a session during every period. Sometimes the sessions are overlapping, which is a sign of a poorly administered event.

Make sure you take note of where the sessions are too. In some cases, the talks may be spread out in different buildings, or even entire different parts of the city. Depending on what session you attend first, you may not be able to make it from session 1 over to session 2 on time. It would seem like a no-brainer to schedule events in close physical proximity, but I’ve attended conferences where it took a full 30 minutes to get from point A to Point B. If you aren’t able to make it to all the sessions you want, re-consider attending.

Content Reading the marketing materials for a conference would lead you to believe that not attending that conference will passively destroy your career. Finding out who is speaking, what they are speaking about and the format they will be delivering the information is, are really the heart of any event. Doing just a few minutes of research on your own, beyond the official website of the event, will quickly give you a sense of the quality of the content.

Who will be speaking at the event? There is an entirely new breed of person that has invaded the tech world in the last few years: The Professional Talker. You probably know their names, see them hawking their wares on Twitter and being constantly quoted in blog posts. The Pro’s are often the keynote, or main event at a conference. No matter how big their reputation (or head is), don’t let the professional speakers be the reason you attend a conference. Lot of pro’s have interesting, useful things to say. You can nearly always find these things on YouTube. The talk you’re going to hear is probably just a slightly customized version of the same speech they’ve given dozens of times. If you’re attending a conference mainly to hear Famous Social Media Guru X enlighten you, my advice would be to save your money. You can definitely dig up the wisdom they dispense somewhere online.

Most likely the speaking roster will be filled with people who aren’t Internet Famous, and you don’t follow on Twitter. This is where it pays to do a bit of digging. Do a quick search for their name, and the company they work for. See if they have a blog, take a quick dig through their Twitter stream and look to see if they have spoken at other events. You can usually make a pretty accurate determination about what these people can teach you by seeing what their online footprint looks like. If they have interesting content posted online, it’s a good bet that will have interesting insights to share in person. If they work for a company that are innovators in the field they are speaking about, or do research at a university on this topic, you can expect to learn something. If the speakers have no online presence and work for a company you’ve never heard of, you might want to skip this one. If someone has original, intriguing and worthwhile thoughts about a specific topic you can be certain they have written and discussed it online before, so it should be simple to find this out. At the best conferences, the speakers will have thorough bios that point you to qualifications that make them good choices to discuss their specific topic. Remember, you are attending a conference to hear and learn things that you can’t find out yourself with a bit of time and a search engine. You’re paying. You have a right to expect quality presentations.

The last factor in deciding on the quality of the content is how it is presented. Will you be seeing a traditional speech, a presentation with a slideshow, a panel with several people discussing a particular topic or a round table where conference attendees have a discussion together? In the right context, all of these are great methods for learning something new.

Whether or not a certain format will prove valuable will depend on how much you already know about the subject. If you have deep knowledge on a particular topic, someone giving a slideshow aimed at a general audience probably won’t do much for you. This will be doubly true if there is no, or a limited opportunity to ask questions. Find out if the speakers will be taking open questions, or conducting a discussion at any point during their talk. The size of the audience is a factor as well. The smaller the audience watching is, the better chance you’ll have for asking questions or seeing if the speaker can address a certain aspect of their area of expertise. Most conferences usually detail the size of the various talks, panels and speeches, so factor these numbers into your decision making process.

If the conference offers a roundtable discussion, this can be another reason to attend, if the subject is one you know something about. A roundtable can go two ways. When a roundtable works, all the attendees will walk away with a much better understanding of the topic being discussed. You’ll also have the chance to share what you know, and help others learn. It’s also possible for roundtables to go off the rails. They might be dominated by one or two people with strong opinions, or devolve into petty arguments. There is no surefire way to see what type of roundtable you’ll end up with. However, experience goes a long way here. People that have run and attended many events like this will have a solid idea of how to run a session, so that everyone benefits. It’s worthwhile to check in with the organizers and inquire about their specific experience facilitating group discussions.

Socializing Socializing and networking can often be the best reason to attend a conference. Whether you are looking for new clients, vendors, partners or even just friends with similar interests, a conference is the easiest way to make this happen. You’ll definitely end up meeting people throughout the course of any conference, just by attending. Beyond that, find out what networking opportunities the conference provides.

Are there dinners, happy hours or specific times set aside to meet the other attendees? Does the conference provide any way to get in touch with other people before or after the actual conference? Will there be any opportunities to meet the speakers? The more opportunities the conference provides for you to meet people there, the more valuable the conference will become to you. Definitely investigate the time set aside by the conference for being social. To some people this may seem like a throwaway, but I would recommend you weigh the social aspects as heavily as you do the other factors when making your decision whether or not to attend. Some of the best experiences I’ve had at conferences have been at a bar, discussing what I heard that day, over a beer or six with new like minded friends I met earlier that day. Don’t write-off the nightlife!

Miscellaneous *Swag! – Sometimes conferences will promise you an “Awesome Swag Bag, with more than $500 worth of goodies!” These bags will always be filled with crap. Never let the possibility of getting something good in a swag bag sway your decision to attend a conference.

*Meet and Greet With Your Favorite Gurus and Mavens! – A meet and greet will always be an awkward, unsatisfying event. Generally, you and everyone else at the conference will crowd into a media room at a hotel. People will sidle up to the Internet Famous and make small talk. Everyone will realize how socially strange the situation is, and no meaningful conversation will ever occur. Meet and greets are never a good reason to decide to attend a conference.

There are so many types of conferences up and running now, that it is nearly impossible to create a definitive guide to attending them. What we’ve laid out here is a framework that we think is a solid jumping off point that can make the decision process easier. Most of all, we recommend doing your research asking lots of questions and having a clear idea of what you want to gain by attending. With so many events in the tech world, the decision of which ones to attend is getting harder. There are a lot of really terrible conferences out there. There are quite a few fantastic ones. We hope this guide helps you find the great ones. If you see us at a conference, make sure to say “Hi!” If we’re there you’ll know it’s a great one. Please drop us a comment on how you decide which events to attend and which ones to let pass you by.

Is Social Media Week over already? It went so fast, and we learned so
much here at The Blog Studio. We’re just starting to process and make
sense of it now. We’d like to take a second and send a heartfelt
‘Thanks’ to all of you who came out to our office for our ‘No
Cheerleaders Allowed’ talk. We wanted an honest conversation about
social media, and thanks to all of you, we really got one.

If you’ll indulge us for a moment, we’d like to take a quick stroll down
memory lane and recap some of the interesting discussions we had that
evening, and share what we learned for those of you who couldn’t make it
in person. For those of you that braved the Canadian cold to squeeze
into our offices, we commend your moxie!

The biggest lesson we learned is that social media means something
different to everyone. Everyone in the room had a different opinion on
what social media is, how you can use it personally or for business, and
what works and what doesn’t. This make a whole lot of sense, because
the one thing everyone agreed on is that social media is powered by the
individual behind the keyboard. So to all the ‘experts; out there trying
to define social media, you’re being shouted down by the rabble. There
is no solid definition that everyone in the industry feels comfortable
with.

We started the conversation off by asking everyone to discuss the early
experiences they had with the web, and with social media. I got the ball
rolling discussing how I miss the days where social media was a free
for all, and everyone shared their ideas free of charge. Maybe this is a
bit of nostalgia, but it still holds true for. Early memories in the
room ranged from telnet to Twitter, and I quickly realized the age of
people in the room started in the early 20’s and went all the way to
people in their 50’s. How cool is that? Social media crushed the age
barrier. It isn’t just for young tech savvy whippersnappers.

The hot button topic of the night was definitely using social media to
make a buck. Is it OK to do this for profit? The answers ranged from
absolutely to absolutely not. Fair enough. The consensus seemed to be we
all want to make a living, but it can be very difficult to quantify ROI
on social media campaigns. It’s great to hear that people really want
to show their clients and employers they can demonstrate real value with
social media, and hopefully prove it.

A thorough discussion of tools and analytics followed, and again the
room was split. Many of you felt you can use analytics to show success
with the numbers. A second camp felt that while numbers are important,
you can’t always quantify the intangible way that people view yourself,
or your business in the social media world. Personally, I agree with
both points of view. In a perfect world a combination of analytics and
conversation is able to tell the whole story. That isn’t an easy concept
to explain, but we’re trying, and as time goes on we’re getting better
at making our case.

This brought up the idea of whether it’s more valuable to target a
select group of people on the web, or get your message out to everyone
and see what sticks. Here’s one point where just about everyone in the
room agreed: the targeted approach is the way to go.  Speaking to
your specific audience, in the space where they live, generates the best
results and the most clear communications. This is genuine two way
engagement. The ‘scatter gun’ approach is headed out the door with the
old media world, because it gets in the way of having a real
conversation.

This led to a discussion about where people live and hang out online. We
all agree that fewer and fewer people are watching television, at a set
time, on an actual television. More commonly, viewers are tuning into
their favorite shows online. This has a huge impact on the way we buy
and consume advertising, or what even constitutes advertising anymore.
While online viewing hasn’t eclipsed traditional TV watching yet, it’s
coming.

Our favorite loudmouth American at The Blog Studio, Michael Dolan,
turned a few heads when he said “Everyone who watches TV will be dead in
a few years anyway.” That’s one way to put it. Maybe a more optimistic
way to look at it, is you can get great bang for your buck by
participating in TV online, either through ads or social media
conversations around these shows.

Mr. Dolan gave a quick rundown of one his favorite topics: Social Media
Trainwrecks. We discussed the Saatchi and Saatchi Toyota social media
campaign, The Motrin Moms Debacle and the Steve Rubel Wal-Mart bloggers
screwup. All interesting cases with a lot to teach anyone who gets
involved in this space. The takeaway here is to enter at your own risk
and be certain to keep things honest. Your audience is as smart as you
are, don’t forget that.

The discussion continued with people and brands who are honest, and
using social media in a fun and transparent way. Shaq, PDiddy and BlogTO
were three names that popped up right away. I agree. They all do it
well, keep it honest and make it fun. They also engage with their
audiences and don’t use social media as a way to blast out ads.

The last part of the evening focused on Facebook, and opinions were all
over the place. Some people love it, some people hate it. That’s the
only honest assessment I can give of this discussion. Every person had a
wholly different opinion. Some thought it was the future of online
engagement, and some thought it’s already seen its’ day. The line of the
night came out of this conversation, courtesy of Meghan Warbly of
Argyle, “Facebook is the Nickelback of Social Media.” Ha.

We really had a great time, and were extremely impressed with the wide
range of opinions and backgrounds that all came together in one room for
a smart and civil conversation. That’s why the social media world is a
such a great place. We’d like to take a second and thank all of you for
coming and sharing with us. A few of you went far beyond the call of
duty. Like Crystal Gibson, who shared her excellent great notes with
us. Carolyn Van who showed up early to help us set up, and
@tourdedufflet for bringing over some yummy dufflet treats.

It was lovely to meet some familiar Twitter avatars in the flesh like
Toronto PR gadfly @J_Lab, @interpretivist and man about town
@mynameisguygal. We also got a chance to play Smush. CA, and meet the
brilliant minds at Atmosphere industries who thought it up.

Also a special thanks to Marijke Daye from Sweet Something Design for her awesome candy table that kept us all hopped up on sugar for our chat.

Thank you all for taking the time to visit, we’re looking forward to having you over for drinks again soon. 

Two minutes later, I fired up whitehouse.gov,
and nearly fell out of my chair laughing. Oh how I wish the order of
those events was reversed. How I’d have loved to point out to this high
priced nincompoop that the official website of the new president of the
United States was by all appearances built on a blog platform. Not only
is whitehouse.gov elegant and modern, but today it stood up to simply
massive traffic.

That the official website of the president of the United States is built
on a blog platform is a testament to the level of efficiency that can
be achieved by using a modern blog platform

• a trust in the security and stability of the platform
• a thoroughly modern understanding of the web
• a willingness of this administration to embrace social media
• a willingness to engage the public

This heralds an even greater acceptance of blogs and social media into
the mainstream. We in the social media world tend to forget just how big
the knowledge gap is between us and the less techno-literate. The
President’s new platform will expose a whole new audience to blogging in
particular and social media in general.

Let’s take a moment to think about why the President’s team may have
chosen to use an off-the-shelf blogging platform for whitehouse.gov.
Given a relatively massive budget, why not go custom? I can think of a
bunch of reasons:

• Building on a blogging platform is much quicker. Most of the components of the site have already been built.
• Most blogging platforms have hundreds if not thousands of
  pre-existing plugins to choose from. These can add functionality both
  immediately and over time as new features are invented.
• The more popular blogging platforms have thousands of experts who can develop and support the systems.
• Modern blogging systems are robust enterprise level content
  management systems. They feature caching mechanisms to withstand large
  traffic spikes, sophisticated search functionality, advanced
  categorization and tagging systems.
• Built in support for RSS, email gathering, member profiles, ease of posting video and audio content.
• Ease and low cost of administration. There’s no need to create
  specific help documentation – it already exists. Help for both
  administrators and users is usually just a few mouse clicks away.
• Ease of use. Posting new items, editing existing items, reordering, re-categorization, and more are easy and fast.

Here in Toronto, ChangeCamp is running this Saturday January 24 2009. ChangeCamp

is a free participatory web-enabled face-to-face event that brings
together citizens, technologists, designers, academics, policy wonks,
political players, change-makers and government employees to answer one
question: How do we re-imagine government and governance in the age of
participation?

Most of us at The Blog Studio will be attending ChangeCamp
. As active digital citizens, we’re keen to help shape the future.
Looking into the past I’m reminded that we’ve been building non-blog
websites on blogging platforms since 2004. It’s awfully nice to see the
pioneering work we did reach such a level of acceptance. 

Five days have passed, so I thought I’d have a look at the search
results to see if we’re ranking any higher for “blog design”. We are,
but only by a single spot. However, looking at the cached versions of
our site on Google, I see that the site hasn’t actually be indexed in
about 6 days. So, the changes to the home page aren’t yet being
reflected. Should be interesting to see what happens. As a side note,
the search results for “blog design” are very volatile. I see a lot of
change in the listings from day to day.

I’m chomping at the bit to try a couple of other SEO tweaks, but I’m
trying to be smart about this by making one change at a time, so it’s
effect can be measured.

Next up: waiting to see what effect the home page change has, then diving into meta description. Fun!

I think the drop in position was timed with our
redesign. One of my goals was to reduce the number of words on the home
page. I wanted to let the video and the work speak for itself. In
retrospect that might have been a bad decision. Looking at the folks who
have taken over “our” position on the search results, the thing that is
most obvious is that they have a LOT of written content on their home
page. I’ve made some adjustments to the home page to lengthen the post
excerpts, and rejigged the layout slightly.

As of today, we’re the 13th result for “blog design” on google. I’m
going to give Google a few days to see if this change has any effect. I
will, of course, report my findings!

Crazy Egg is a stats package
unlike any other you’ve used. It offers a visual overview of your site
activity, showing (amongst other things) the number of clicks per link
on a page.

This is incredibly useful. It allows you to immediately grasp what
your readers are doing. Are they clicking where you want? Are they
reading your whole page? Is one graphic over powering another? Is your site doing what it’s supposed to do? The site itself says

What do the results tell me?

Where your visitors are clicking speaks for itself.

Here are just a few things you can discover:

• Find the right spot for your ads
• Find the right layout for a page
• Find the right place to put everything

Crazy Egg’s admin interface is
amongst the best in the business. It’s intuitive, powerful, and easy on
the eyes. The actual software making the thing run is extremely
impressive. The page updates happen using javascript, meaning there is
very little refreshing of the web page you’re looking at. This gives the
site more of a desktop application feel. Very slick.

Cost for the service ranges from $0 to $99/mo, depending on volume.
Currently, I’m playing with the free account, but can see upgrading in
the near future to access some of the more advanced features. If you’re
interested in making sure your site is doing what you want it to do, I
highly recommend checking Crazy Egg out. Now, if only they’d do something about that name…

Their point is of course valid. I know only too well how the cost of
retail space can force bankruptcy on an otherwise healthy business. But
I’m surprised that neither Gibson or Doctorow brought up the nearly zero
cost involved with setting up a storefront online.

Yes, I can already hear you saying “but online is no match for street
level retail when it comes to selling local micro-brands”. But frankly,
that’s outdated thinking. Instead, I’d ask “why are you still thinking
of geographic markets when you could be thinking of social markets?”

I’m working on a couple of fashion related projects at the moment
(three of them actually), and as such have been immersed in the world of
online style for a couple of months. During this period, my mind has
been blown time and again by sites like stylehive.com, notcot.org, etsy.com
and others. These sites allow the tiniest of micro-brands to flourish.
The pyramidical model of social networks allows these micro-brands to
reach markets far faster and for far lest cost than by setting up a
retail storefront. If, as a micro-brand owner, you can get a social
influencer to buy and recommend your product, you have instant
legitimacy within a wider market.

So it isn’t true that skyrocketing retail costs are killing the
micro-brand. It is true that the skill set needed to succeed at small
level retail has changed dramatically. But that’s a story for another
post.