In this very post myspace world, we have all grown to embrace social media from the standpoint as a necessity and no longer as a luxury or novelty. As such, in the same light that you would have the image of your company carefully orchestrated to reflect the ideals of your mission statement, should be the same approach taken when exposing your company way beyond the yellow pages and into the bold new world on instant news.

With a 15 minute news cycle becoming the norm, the appropriate re-tweet, like or forward  is sure to build OR destroy your brand. Your network, both on and offline follows the same path. If your network is filled with the people who ‘matter to your brand’ then “sadly” your brand will begin to gain traction.

Isn’t this why we go OUT TO NETWORK in the first place? Now we’re just doing it.. in our pajamas.

Consider this. If Ashton Kutcher retweets a web site’s address, unless the site is cloud based and the appropriate infrastructure is put in place, there is a 80% chance of the server crashing because of too much traffic! To me, this is comparable to perhaps being endorsed by Oprah’s book club.. or having a sex tape (just saying..) .

Remember that these web sites are not your actual life, remember that there is a BUSINESS MODEL behind the social networks that you happen to check on hours per day, understand that what you place online, and who recommends it WILL affect your business.

Your social network BOTH on and offline are the best marketing tools any company big or small can ask for, and the most level playing field any budding entrepreneur will ever have.

- The box is square
Kiwami Livingston

Simple things that ‘normal’ people assume are easy to find on a web site are definately things that these CEO types point out. Why can’t I see a detailed image of the costume? , why is the costume a headshot if its an entire outfit? how can i rent a costume of I can’t complete the order online? why is there text there ? (in an out of the box shopping cart application) . This is a very interesting time in online marketing life because everybodys broke, scared and those who don’t understand the internet would like money to fly out of the computer screen.

Now don’t get me wrong.. i’ve already superceeded their quota.. lol i think I may have doubled it. But thats not MY quota. So let’s see whats up..  Make bosses happy while making the site actually work.. brilliant !

So here’s what needs to be done.

Most large websites use some type of data feed to get their products in and out of the inventory. If its connected to a storefront, you have a problem. If its connected to 4 storefronts spread accross the United States… lets say that the mission will self destruct in 30 seconds.

But its fun

Number one step on Day one of the impossible mission is to get the descriptions that are being fed into the web site to actually mean what people type. People forget that search engines and people don’t know what a chewbaca x64 model 9 is . No really.. not even my star wars geeky ass knows what that is. Instead first you need to have a description akin to “chewbaca halloween costume” or “chewbaca suit” (by the way don’t think i know how to spell the furry creature, i’m writing this to describe the task not to win the spelling bee) .

Now after optimising i dunno.. about 3,000 products for the specific season (all of which will have to be changed on the 1st of november lol) we have to start giving those feeds some purpose. This means sending them out into the inventories of anybody online that will take us.  That brings us to point 2 on this dangerous game of e-commerce optimization.  Your e-commerce website is only as good as the amout of of sales you make . Or you’re no good. This means that all the fancy flash goes through the door in favour (yeh i’m Jamaican, theres a ‘u’ in there) of optimizing the site. So feed it to yahoo, google, msn, facebook, myspace who cares..  if they will catch it give it to e’m . Once you have a fix on how much these feeds will cost you (many of which are free or frightenly cheap) to place on these web sites, slap a budget together based on profits (if youre on a low budget) or base it on traffic (if Amex loves you) . Of course, once you get people coming to the sites and making sure they land on the correct page, which is tracked by the correct analytic software, you are set for super stardom. This is the third step  in the binge optimization process. The 4th of couse is personell. For a project this big you will need onsite staff to help people who ordinarily have no place on the internet . So a live help or a back and forth ticketing system is essential to guiding your clients credit card through our virtual pos system.  Its exciting and it alllows you to skip the fact that the site is crappy to navigate because when they found your product online, it was optimized to land them directly on the product, thus skipping the embarassing sift through the e-commerce application (no name calling but its freel and ends with commerce ) .

Once thats done, sit back, relax .. oh no .. WRONG . Fix the damn site because people still go to it.. so believe it or not. the LAST thing in a binge optimization process would be the design of the site. Of course, if for some strange reason people find the site’s home page, they should still be able to navigate the site effectively and if they can’t find what they want, options like an 800 number, being able to complete the transaction over the phone and live chat are essential to e-commerce supremacy.

I’ll check back in on day 15 and let you know how its been. I’m sure i’ve left out more than a few steps but these are the essentials based on budget, staff, time and most importantly: client goals.

I understand that of course the guys on the floor (retail / service industry) kinda have to be there for business to run. But they have ‘hours’ and ‘schedules’ so they get to work around being a work and y’kno.. go to the beach, the doctor, school or stay home and look at the fan spin; whatever is important.

Anyway just a brain fart thats actually implimented in this office they’ve given me to straigen up.. lol I can’t wait for the owner to get here and kick my ass .

Executive decison : “They shoulda never givin ya’ll money ”

- Boondocks

Nothing new to the company (Yassonet) of couse as our entire PBX system is on a linux platform (TrixBox) as well as the very important media system that powers our PS3 (for movies and previewing music videos for youstation.com of course). The presoldtickets.com portal is run on a virtual box which we can add memory to by sliding a bar on the screen, and it also hosts our e-mail server. Now why is this important?  Because in virtulizing those boxes we save at least $500 monthly in rack space and a lot more control over the resources on our systems. Yeah.. i’m the type of nerd who’s a jack of all applications and only master of one .. hehe..

So on to the reason this epitome arose . My laptop crashed while I was working on some work ON the virtual XP machine (Laptop is Vista, VM is XP) . VMWARE (The virtual machine software we use here) decides to ‘suspend’ the XP box because it thinks something bad is going to happen. I’m pissed off because ‘both computers’ apparently are about to take themselves a lunch break.. so I do the same

45 Minutes later i’m back in the office with vista booted up, I launch the Virtual server and guess what? It starts back from the EXACT POINT that the system crashed. It apparently created itself a ‘snapshot’ of the state and goes back as if nothing ever happened. Actually, its what i’m using to write this entry right now.

Regular operating systems need to have this type of technology in place in my opinion, I couldn’t be happier and now i’m thinking about formatting this whole box (ok.. laptop) and keep the whole shebang virtual, running off ubunto or something i dunno. But virtulization is cool. I’m sure there are tonns more reasons out there that makes it cool as well but for now, i’m happy. I need more RAM i think .. but i’m happy

Now working on a pretty huge company as independent contractor shows us how screwed up stuff really is right now but this isn’t a vent or a rant.. it’s more like a jump into my mind’s experience of the 9-5 world from someone who’s office has primarily been his living room for the past 27 years.

So the contract this time is the largest costume manufacturer, retailer and supplier this side of the pond. The sell millions in retail and rentals, but their website sucks. I mean.. youstation makes more than them.  So i’m wondering how many other companies there are out there that are this successfull offline (brick and mortar as the cool guys like to say) but SUCK on the internet. My job at this fine establishment of course, is to turn them in to a force to be reconed with in the online side of commerce. In the real world, it should be a piece of cake, largest costume store, unlimited budget and the month leading up to halloween, thanksgiving, fantasy fest and christmas.  Problem is ?

The country BRUCK

So its off to find very creative ways of making this website be all it can be and it requires 80% online marketing which to me should never be 100% online . So lots of google ad buying, but real flyers and billboards and radio spots. The quicker people realise that new is good, but its even better when it compliments the old is the quicker they can turn a qucik buck into an established enterprise. That means less focus ok buying keywords and more focus on keyword specific SEO. Sticking the web address on everything that goes out, every magizine ad, and of course a slick slogan from a corney contracted director of new media … Get your pumpkin on !