Michael Calvert - Internet Marketer

Putting the cloud to work for you!

Hello and thank you for your time.  Any decent sales force is going to run into quite a few pitfalls in regards to setting up a project and managing communication between a customer and your sales staff. By utilizing cloud based tools and software designed specifically for client communication we can achieve the goals of your company by expanding your market.  My name is Mike Calvert, I am an internet marketing expert and I would like to present a series of solutions that can help you achieve success in your market space!

Project Management Team – Unit 2

The success of any project is always based on the quality of work produced by the team.  With that it is crucial that you assemble a team of people who will get the job done for you right the first time.  In the past I’ve put together an excellent team of individuals who will help guide any project to success. See below for a complete list of candidates:

Michael Calvert – Marketing Lead

Melody Calvert – Designer

Howard Roberts – Project Manager

Troy Bakken – Marketing Lead

Tim Gunn – Social Media Expert

Tom Bergeron – Accountant

SaaS Software – Unit 3

In order to collaborate between team members I would suggest we setup a SaaS environment in the cloud to have a central document location.  The most secure and reliable service that I use is called Google Drive, in which you can create presentations and documentations on the internet.  While each individual section of this marketing project is crucial, nothing is more important that effective communication.  Google Drive offers a central location to store files as well as a sync functionality to make sure everyone is working on the latest information.

Click here to navigate to the Google Drive homepage and get started!

Animoto – Unit 4

Once we have a top notch team in place and a platform to send documents back and forth effectively, the next steps would be to create a teaser video that shows off our intent.  Typically this video can be between 30 seconds to 5 minutes long, and the idea is to put out an initial buzz.  For a new product launch you may want to include some screenshots or pictures, or even an animation of the product in action.  It should be short, sweet and to the point.  Please see below for an example of a product video we created using a popular tool called Animoto in the past.

CRM – Unit 5

Assuming they aren’t already, at some point customers will start contacting you and interacting with your product. Being prepared for customer integration is a big step towards maintaining excellent customer communication.  I’ve provided a link to a document that I’ve written up explaining exactly why we believe Microsoft Dynamics CRM is an excellent choice for a customer relationship management tool.  This tool written by Microsoft has stellar support as well as a cutting edge package that provides mapping and file tracking to keep your staff informed of your customer’s needs.

Click here to see the write up of Microsoft Dynamics CRM

Constant Contact – Unit 6

Your customers will want you to take the reins on keeping in touch with them.  Often times it is difficult to create reoccurring customers because it is tough to find the time to update them consistently.  Our solution to this problem is a marketing newsletter tool called Constant Contact.  Constant Contact lets you create a circulated newsletter that is both easy to maintain and scalable to any product through templates.  When you have settled in on a design you can simply opt-in customers by default and put a form on your website that allows them to opt-out or sign up.  From here you can schedule an automatic email campaign that sends updates to your customers as often as you would like.  The most powerful component in this tool is the template engine.  See below for a screenshot of the engine and how it can be used for your needs.

Prototyping – Unit 7

In the software industry, and almost any industry, a customer typically runs into a problem with a product in development because they cannot help design it.  Usually a customer will deliver specifications or a requirement and a developer will try to hit them and then deliver his or her solutions.  We’ve found that by using a prototyping tool you can show a customer the expected results of the development process and allow them to make any tweaks the process prior to development.  I would like to present you with a cloud document that walks through an excellent prototyping tool that does just that.  It is called CogTool, and the main advantage of using this tool is that it allows you to place an automated attendant in the application to test for any issues prior to sending it to your client.

Click here to view the online presentation

Web Blog – Unit 8

Almost any marketing professional will tell you how important it is to have an interactive website available for your customers to find you with.  The best approach to doing this it to have an interactive blog and update it frequently in order to keep search engines and customers engaged.  The website that you are reading currently is a blog created through Blogger, a Google blog hosting product, which allows me as a marketing professional the ability to provide you with rich content like this.  In the back end of the system you are given a very feature rich editing system to create your content and keep your website and blog updated.  See below for a screenshot of the blogging engine.

There is also a very nice theming engine which comes with many predefined themes for your blogs.  These can be utilized to get your site up and running quickly without any hassle.  Here is a screenshot of a few of the themes that come out of the box.

Privacy & Browser Compatibility – Unit 9

Web 2.0 is a great movement in the industry, and it allows us to interact with our customers on a social level as well.  Sites like Facebook and Twitter provide us with the ability to send out our information and market to customers in a new way, as well as interact with them to ensure they have an excellent experience. Many social sites are leading the way when it comes to privacy and compatibility because they are forced to ensure their users are safe regardless of their browsers or computers.  When dealing with any web design we should be sure to include a well written privacy policy as well as keep the best intent with standards in order to support multiple browsers.  If Blogger is used as recommended many of these problems are handled for us as the themes have been tested by Google themselves.  In order to get an idea of the importance of cross browser compatibility we have written a paper on the difference from simple sites such as Blogger and Google itself.

Click here to view the cross browser write-up.

Timelines

See below for a sample timeline that can give you a sense of what it takes to run a successful marketing campaign.

I. Assemble marketing team
II. Create a cloud environment for holding all of our files
III. Implement a CRM to handle all customer communications and information
IV. Create a web blog that holds some of our key customer landing points
V. Prototype our software to get it to the right stage
VI. Create a video demonstrating our product to our customers
VII. Send out newsletter information about our product release
VIII. Monitor traffic for quality and browser related issues

Closing

Our goal as marketing professionals is to put the best light on your product and move you forward in the digital age.  The main focus behind our system is a cloud based approach as it allows us to react and move efficiently in our environment.  My name is Mike Calvert, and I am an internet marketing expert. Drop me a line if you have any questions!

Internet Privacy

EPCA and VPPA

Digital privacy is an important issue in today’s society because of the ability to add evidence to a criminal case, a person’s right to free speech and the potential for potentially saves lives by monitoring this information.  Many privacy laws were written prior to the current technological age, rendering them redundant and useless.  Technology is moving so quickly that many privacy laws written in our current times become irrelevant as soon as they come in effect.

Most digital privacy laws start with the intent to secure other laws of the country it governs.  In the referenced article a statement is made that there are two bills in effect, the Video Privacy Protection Act and the Electronic Communications Privacy Act. (Priver, n.d.)  The VPPA is in essence an amendment to the outdate ECPA as it states clearly what is to be done in regards to electronic video formats.  The ECPA is an older bill which reflects general electronic intrusion when necessary in the court of law.

Regardless of the privacy law, if a person feels that they cannot speak freely in any medium it is in direct conflict of the United States constitution.  Many issues with the electronic laws directly conflict with a person’s individual rights as they feel somewhat harassed and unable to pursue happiness. The article stated that the ECPA will be revisited as it was written in 1988 and that it will receive a thorough run through to update any outdated sections that may no longer be relevant or contain loopholes.

Business monitoring

Although at the corporate level privacy laws are put in place for a reason, the government should have the ability to override and jump into any conversation if it involves saving lives or preventing serious crimes.  The aim of the laws presented for criminal privacy intrusion is sound, but the methods are somewhat vague and it leaves openings for police and law officials to retrieve information from an innocent person.  Business involvement in monitoring activity of both employees and customers should be kept at a minimum.  Laws currently allow businesses not only the ability to collect information but to sell it and transfer it as need be.  Customers should be kept private in all forms of transactions and any information stored about them should be strictly used for their convenience and never for review or abuse.

In this age, the technology to monitor email as the article suggest should be solely available to the government and require a court order with a set of standards that allow the order to be pursued.  Any business or commercial transactions should be at the choice if a consumer and never assumed until a consumer asks them to take such steps. To protect customer information I would propose that the government should have access to a key generating system that allows them to pull a password to decrypt customer information as needed.  The website that allows this kind of access should be one that requires passwords from several members of government branches in order to ensure that it is not abused.

Priver, H (n.d.) Senate Panel Takes Up Electronic Privacy Issues. Retrieved December 2, 2012 from http://www.nextgov.com/cybersecurity/2012/11/senate-panel-takes-electronic-privacy-issues/59835/?oref=ng-HPriver

Analytics and Monetization

Making money with your blog

What statistics should I look at?

Blog statistics provide a medium for interpreting what your readers are really looking for.  When you write blog posts they should be fresh and full of new content so that people will be interested in them.  After you write a few articles you can use the Blogger stats to determine what people are reading and where they went after they read it.  Within Blogger my favorite choices are page views by post, search keywords and page views by Browsers.   From here you can decide to target new blog posts to those specific subjects or go in-depth about the existing subject.  Page ranking is determined by the efficiency of your page and by how much traffic it receives.  Tuning up your page is only the first step in a long process of making your blog successful.  Once you start getting page views the on-going goal is to gear your content to the people who are interested in you.

How can I make money now that I have views?

Assuming you have a good blog going and you are getting enough people hitting your site, the next step is to monetize it and make your time worthwhile.  There are two options in Blogger, AdSense and Affiliate Ads.  This is typical across most blogging engines, but the main money maker is the AdSense option.  This shows generated ads based on your content within your blog allowing your reads to drill into a product or website that helps better their searching experience. Each time an ad on your blog is clicked you get a certain dollar amount that represents what that click was worth to Google.  Over time these clicks can add up and you will receive a payment from Google for your earnings.  AdSense specifically has an analytics engine that shows you where the ads are coming from and how often you will receive payment.

What is Whispering Media?

Whispering Media

Introduction

Whispering Media is an organization which was started in order to help everyday people have their voice be heard on the internet.  Large companies typically do not entertain the idea of working with small companies or even individuals to get marketing content translated into the web environment.  Our goal at Whispering Media is to bring forth the efforts of the little guy and help him to succeed in today’s changing markets.  The main focus of the organization is website design, development and implementation.  We also have many deep roots in software development, so when it comes time to branch out and do something amazing we are ready to grow with you.

What we can do for you

With the wave of websites that have come about, there are a few systems which we at Whispering Media have chosen to use as our backbone.  The first is a site engine called WordPress which puts web content control into the hands of normal people and does not require you to know how to program to get a dazzling website.  The second is an eCommerce package called Magento.  Magento is a great compliment to WordPress as they can be linked together through a plugin as well as hosted on the same server so the cost of putting both platforms together is relatively low.  Our typically implementation times for these websites is within one month once a site design has been completed.

Contact us anytime

Your satisfaction is our number one priority, but we also aim to get you into the position you want to be.  By taking the next step and putting in the extra effort we hope to make your web dreams a reality and give you a finished product you can be proud of.  If you have any questions about Whispering Media or services that we provide feel free to email me, Mike Calvert, at mikejamescalvert@gmail.com .