Insightly - the leading small business CRM.

Insightly - Powerful Customer Relationship Management tool to help small businesses deal with the vital task of managing your contacts, organizations, partners, vendors and suppliers.
Using CRM best practices, you can see everything about a contact — from background, email history and important dates, to any projects or opportunities in which they have participated. With Insightly’s web-based contact management features you won’t miss a beat:

Flexible Calendaring and Events
Automatic Address Book
Insightly Notes, Evernotes, and Comments
Lightning Fast Search
Custom Fields and Filters
File Sharing
Web to Contact
Tags, Notification, and Following
Linking (Direct Relationships Between Contacts, Organizations, Opportunities, Projects)
Mass Email Contacts with MailChimp Integration

Insightly’s online CRM lets you look at your business any way you want. Get real time information with any of these features:

Dashboard
Task and Milestones
Pipeline Activity Sets
Opportunity Reports
Customer Invoice and Payment Status (via QuickBooks Online)   

Integrated Project Management 

Insightly uniquely offers CRM and Project Management in one so you can make sure you’re on top of your customer relationship at every stage. With the project overview screen you can see the recent activity on any project, and track project performance against milestones over time. With Insightly project management you can:

 Create Milestones, Pipelines and Tasks for Projects

Get Automatic Email Reminders

Specify Roles for Contacts

Track All Email Correspondence

View Completed Tasks and Events by Project

Include Any Files Associated with the Project

View Task and Event Reports

   
Go Mobile with the Solution that Works for You

The Insightly mobile app allows you to take Insightly on the road with you wherever you go, on whatever device you have at hand. Supporting tablets like the iPad, Google Nexus, through to phones like the iPhone, Android phones — the Insightly mobile app has you covered.

Insightly Application Programming Interface

Welcome developers! To help you integrate Insightly with other programs there is an HTTP REST API. API is pretty conventional and you can pick it up pretty quickly if you have experience with REST APIs.  Insightly provides you with technical details and other resources to make your job easier. The API allows you automate data retrieval and modification in Insightly.  Insightly supports JSON and XML based requests, and most of the data stored in Insightly can be accessed and updated via the API.

Social CRM

With social media integration you can simply put in a contact’s email address and  Insightly detect virtually every social media profile related to the email address. You can see Twitter content and your contact’s public LinkedIn profile displayed right in Insightly. Also, with a single click you can explore your contact’s public profile information on Facebook, Google+, FourSquare, Picasa, Klout and virtually any social channel where the contact has participated.

Insightly is integrated with Google Apps, Office 365, QuickBooks Online so you can easily see all your customer invoices and payment status.

How Entrepreneurs Can Use LinkedIn for Business

Are you dragging your feet on LinkedIn? Were you once active but haven't paid attention to it in a while? Are you wondering whether you should create a company profile and encourage your employees to have their profiles linked to it?

If you haven't paid attention to your LinkedIn profile for a while, here are some reasons* to do so now:

• 300 million people use LinkedIn
• There are 2 million new LinkedIn members per second
• There are 100 million U.S. LinkedIn users
• 40% of LinkedIn users check LinkedIn daily
• 41% of millionaires use LinkedIn
• Most LinkedIn users have between 500-999 connections
• Most LinkedIn users are members of 1-9 groups
• 41.5% successfully use LinkedIn to build new relationships with customers

LinkedIn is a social media platform that's used for more than just getting your next job. Entrepreneurial businesses use LinkedIn for the following reasons:

• Generate leads
• Identify potential customers
• Stay current on industry trends
• Build relationships
• Share expertise
• Increase visibility
• Recruit employees

Need a jump-start? Here are six things you need to do to re-engage and get active on LinkedIn:

1. Update Your Profile
2. Find Connections
3. Find Groups
4. Add Connections
5. Manage Your Connections
6. Optimize Your Account Settings

I have a full slide presentation that will walk you through the steps you need to follow to increase your reach on LinkedIn:

*Sources:
Digital Marketing Ramblings
MarketingProfs

6 Surprisingly Simple Tricks to Double Twitter Followers in 2 Months

Two months ago I decided to start using Twitter to get more people reading my blog. I found that marketing my blog posts on my Twitter account (@vginsburg) definitely increases readership, so I needed to figure out how to optimize my Twitter account to drive more readers to my blog. As with a lot of social media marketing, the first thing to do is to focus on a specific goal. 

I made a goal to get from about 230 followers to 500 as soon as possible. I know that doesn't make me a Twitter superstar, but it is more than doubling my followers in less than two months. Also, I have noticed that a lot of entrepreneurs and small business owners hover around the 200 follower range and then give up on Twitter, so I wanted to write about this now, before I get to my next goal of 1,000.

I'm not a fan of digital marketing tricks like buying followers because I don't think they bring true value to my marketing mix. I want real people who actually care about what I'm writing about. So I committed to doing it myself, with no special tricks. The only tools I use are Hootsuite to schedule Tweets and, more recently, JustUnfollow to balance my followers/following ratio.

1. Follow people who Tweet. Twitter is a sharing platform, so unless you are a "Twitter Superstar" who can afford not to follow a lot of people, you need to find people who you want to follow. My suggestion is that you find people who are posting interesting Tweets that you want to retweet, as this will (ahem!) kill two birds with one stone. Also, as people start following you, you should follow them back ... but see No. 6 below for info about unfollowing, also. I add 5-10 new people per week, plus almost everyone who follows me.

2. Retweet other people's stuff. There are two reasons to retweet. First, it's a good way to be a part of the community. By sharing, you show that you aren't just there to toot your own horn, but you actually care about other people's stuff, too. Second, Tweets have a 15-20 second lifespan. That means that you need a lot of content to Tweet. For me, I use retweeting as a way to fill the gaps.

3. Use hashtags in your posts. Hashtags are a great way to participate in conversations. Use 1-3 hashtags in most of your posts to indicate the conversation to which your Tweet belongs. This will allow people who are browsing Twitter for information related to those conversations to find you and hopefully follow you.

4. Post multiple times per day, every day. Did you see the fact that Tweets have a 15-20 second lifespan? That  means that you need to Tweet a lot to get seen. I don't like blasting people - I see some people Tweeting every 5 seconds or so. Since I really don't like that approach, I schedule (using Hootsuite) 4 posts per day and then jump on Twitter 2-4 times per day to retweet. This means I get about 8 total posts per day, which is enough for me right now.

5. Use quotes to fill gaps. Just like retweeting other people's stuff, quotes are a way to make your Twitter feed not all about you. Also, people really like quotes on Twitter. Typically, one of my four daily scheduled posts is a quote, and I find that up to 50% of my retweets are quotes.

6. Unfollow people selectively. As you follow this strategy, you will end up following more people than you have followers. I like to keep a balance - there are some people who I follow for their tweets - including Inc., Entrepreneur and Harvard Business Review. They don't follow me back, but I still get value from their tweets. On the other hand, there are some people who I follow who I discover I either don't like their tweets or they never tweet. I unfollow these people to keep my total ratio of following/followed within a reasonable range. I downloaded an app called JustUnfollow to help me keep track of this.

Those are the six tricks I used to more than double my Twitter following in less than 2 months. Try them yourself and let me know how it works. Here's an idea: start by following me @vginsburg!

Social Media Marketing: 5 Tricks You Have to Know as a Small Business

Social Media Marketing Tricks for Small Business

Social media can be a critical part of your digital marketing strategy, but it can also be confusing, overwhelming, and, as a direct result, done poorly. Here are five tricks you should know as a small business owner about social media marketing. 

1. Every platform is different
The biggest mistake you can make is to approach social media as a single entity, as if Facebook is the same as LinkedIn, Twitter, Pinterest, or Google+.

Instead, you need to get to know each of the unique settings of each social media platform.  Hang out there for a while to get a feel for what other people are doing. For example, LinkedIn is similar to a business networking event or presentation. It's OK to promote yourself and your business, as long as you do so eloquently and professionally. On the other hand, Facebook is more like a coffee shop. If you walk in there expecting to hand out business cards and make connections like you do at a networking event, you will fall on your face. Instead, you need to be more subtle. Regardless of what social networking platform you're learning, pay attention to what is encouraged by others, and how you gain positive attention within the community.

LinkedIn vs. Facebook marketing strategies

2. Consistency is key
Anyone can join 5-6 social media platforms in one day, then create amazing profiles and the perfect first post. Most people can keep up their enthusiasm for a week. But after that, most people drop off, unable to maintain the single most important thing in marketing: consistency.

Whatever platform you choose, make a commitment and show up consistently over time. Social media is frankly a big waste of time if you just float in and out, posting updated occasionally, but never making a true impact on the community.

3. Make a commitment
If you are running a small business, there is a good chance that you don't really have time to hang out on social media networks. You probably have real customers to worry about on a daily basis, and are struggling to keep them happy, while managing a staff and cashflow.

Social media marketing is like all other forms of marketing: it requires a commitment. If you decide that your prospects are hanging out on social media, then it is worth making a commitment to marketing your business on social media, but don't try to do it all yourself. Hire someone to help. If you are knowledgeable about social media and marketing, then you can hire an assistant and guide them on how to do the work. But if you don't know much yourself, then find an expert who can guide the way for you. 

4. Use photos, infographics, etc.
More and more, social media is about graphics. It wasn't always that way. Four years ago, Facebook and Twitter relied mainly on words and links. Now, they are heavily graphically-oriented. Newcomers like Pinterest and Instagram are almost entirely graphics-based. The fact is that if you want to be on social media, then you need to accompany most of your posts with photos, infographics, and other images that make your posts more interesting to readers. In the end, human beings are attracted to pictures, so make sure you use them! 

5. Share the love
Social media is set in a basic foundation: social. This means that basic human instincts such as sharing and communicating are maximized. Don't show up to the party as the bore who only wants to look in the mirror and talk about himself. If that's who you are, then it's frankly better not to show up on social media at all. Instead, take note of the human nature involved, and show your businesses' humanity in the process. Comment on real situations that you care about. Comment on other people's posts as much as (and more than) you post about yourself. Follow the golden rule, and you can't go wrong. 

Must-Know Strategy: Content Marketing

Content marketing is the hottest buzz phrase in marketing right now, but many people are confused about what exactly it means, let alone how to implement it. In the most simple terms possible, content marketing is the act of creating information products to promote your business, and spreading them throughout the world using multiple media channels.

First, let's address why you should be using content marketing to promote your business:

1. Search Engine Optimization (SEO): SEO used to be a relatively simple action that you took care of on your own website, but now you need to have multiple (meaningful) links to your website in order to be relevant to Google. Content marketing is the best way to get external links to your website.

2. Reach: Since every website knows that it needs content to increase SEO, blogs, news outlets, other websites and social media sites are looking for content. If you are able to provide them with your content, then it's a win-win situation: they get content, and you get both links and the eyeballs of the people who they already reach.

3. Lead Generation: Most content strategies can directly drive lead generation, which is ultimately marketing's job. When you create content, you have many opportunities to structure it so that you drive leads.

Next, it's important to recognize that there are two media channels of which you should be aware:

Owned Media: These are the places where you control your content 100%, including your website, enewsletter, blog, and social media channels (your profile on Facebook, Twitter, etc.).

Other Media: These are places controlled by other people and companies, including other people's websites, enewsletters, blogs, news outlets and social media connections (the people with whom you are connected on Facebook, Twitter, etc.).

Finally, you need to build a "Content Library" that you can use for both owned media and other media. You don't have to build all of these, and you may want to consider some other options, but these are the top 6 ingredients to a good content library:

1. Articles
2. Videos
3. White Papers
4. Webinars
5. Infographics
6. Books (including eBooks)

The most important thing about content marketing is that you 1) must do it; and 2) need to have a schedule to do it correctly.

There are hundreds of ways you can develop your content marketing strategy; here is an infographic to help you get started:

View this information on SlideShare for more details:

Content Marketing 2014 from Virginia Ginsburg

Small Business Marketing Trends 2014

Small business owners are in a great position to harness the power of marketing to drive leads and interest in their companies. But deciding where, how and what to deploy their limited resources is a significant challenge. Here are three ideas about the three areas in which we'll see small businesses succeed in 2014. 

Better Social Media: Most small business owners have been pretty overwhelmed by social media platforms as marketing tools. This year they will find ways to better utilize social media platforms to promote their brands. For many of them, the focus will be on the big platforms: Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Instagram, which each have demonstrated value to consumers and their own unique take on communication. The key is to choose the platform that fits your target audience best and that you can commit to on a reasonable basis.

More Content: This year small businesses will join the trend of providing a significant quantity of content to draw customers in and keep them interested. Blogs, articles, white papers, slide shows, photos and videos are all great ways to attract attention and tell your story. They also help drive traffic to your website because they are search engine friendly.

Authentic Communication: Small businesses will increasingly seek ways to connect with customers using an authentic voice that stays true to the company’s personality. Small businesses are ideally situated to capitalize on this movement because they are still perceived as being run by people, whereas corporations are viewed as machine-like. This gives small businesses significant advantage in today’s authenticity-seeking marketplace.

Create Social Media Accounts for Your Business

Create Social Media Accounts

Create social media accounts for your business not just because social media sites are fun to use but because everyone is using them.  Nearly all of your potential customers are on social media sites, and they can be easily drawn to your business if you have a presence.  Every small business would benefit from social media because it is a free testimonial page for your business that can spread the news about you like wildfire.

Small business social media accounts are not a new thing in today's economy, and your website users  understand that companies have to do their best to bring in customers.  Setting up an account for your small business is just the first step to using social media properly.

When you start using social media to promote your small business, you cannot just promote your business.  It's actually much better if you are using the site, as the owner of the business, as if it were your own social media page.  Therefore, you post things that are of interest to the business as a whole.  You repost things you find that relate to your business and make you seem human.  Nobody online wants to read ads from someone who sounds like a bot, but people who see posts that are fun and interesting reposted to your page are more likely to follow your business and become patrons.

Some social media websites are the best place to reach friends and family because they can, in turn, recommend your business to their friends and family.  This is the best way to build a customer base in your community because many of the people on sites like Facebook have friends who live near them.

Create social media accounts for your business on every website that you think will help add to your customer base.  It is a good idea to be on the site, but you have to enjoy using the site.  The more you enjoy it, the more your followers can see it.  When you put those two things together, you end up with more excited followers of your business' page.

Small business social media accounts do not have to be a place where you endlessly promote your business as if you are a bot that's just pumping out messages.  Social media sites are a place where you can interact with current and potential customers in a non-business environment.  People who enjoy you are more likely to frequent your business in the future.

If you think that social media is only a cheap way to gain customers, you are missing out.  You can gain a great following on social media, and all for the price of some time in front of the computer.

Entrepreneurs - Avoid These Social Word of Mouth Mistakes

Social marketing tips for entrepreneurs

Social marketing can be a double-edged sword. While it is one of the most effective marketing tools in the electronic era, it will quickly become more trouble than benefit – unless it is used properly. For entrepreneurs beginning their social campaign, there are a few scenarios to beware of to avoid missing out on social’s valuable benefits.

Social Marketing Pitfalls

Diving in without looking first

Perhaps the most prominent beginner’s mistake is to believe that social presence will automatically be successful. Like any other marketing strategy, social marketing requires planning before you begin. Without goals to help focus your efforts, your presence lacks strategy which will affect everything else. 

Before you begin, outline a social marketing strategy. What does your social campaign seek to accomplish, audience awareness or better customer relations? How much time can you invest? What specific networks can be used effectively for your brand? There are a lot of questions, and you need to answer them before beginning. 

Not sharing enough about your brand

A weak profile is amongst the most underestimated faults with a social campaign. Delivering applicable content will only get you so far with audience awareness. While they may want to interact with you, if you fail to present a complete definition of your brand, your audience will be missing out on a lot of good info that could help them define exactly who you are.

Make use of all the text space available to you through the social site. Some are limited to name, profession, and hyperlinks while others present plenty of opportunity to give your audience a lot of information about your brand. Fill out every space available and use it as effectively as possible (such as linking to other social sites, websites, blogs, and brand sources). 

Posting and forgetting

This is one of the most important reasons that every entrepreneur should develop a social marketing strategy before beginning. It is easy to post content, but if you don’t have the time to keep your content up to date, it may be doing more harm than good. 

Social marketing is a 24/7 marketing tool, so it needs regular attention. However, you have to remember that you don’t have to manage it all day long. Instead, you should picture it as appointment hours for your campaign. Reserve specific times during the day to create posts, answer posts from your audience, and otherwise interact socially. 

Getting too personal

When it comes to social marketing, it’s good to get to know your audience. But, there is a balance to this particular issue. It is possible to overstep boundaries or try to become too personal with your audience too quickly. This is why it is preferable to utilize business profiles rather than personal profiles on social networks such as Facebook and LinkedIn. When it comes to communications, all conversations, discussions, acknowledgments, and other interactions should be kept on a professional level. Be friendly but keep it professional.

Competing rather than working together

Social networks are saturated with brands and businesses, which can be somewhat intimidating for an entrepreneur. Needless to say, we are all competing with each other, but not necessarily when it comes to social marketing. The idea here is to help them help you. 

Social marketing is about networking, not competition. 

Become familiar with other brands and improve your visibility and awareness by sharing and interacting with them. [tweet this].

The idea here is to expand your social awareness, and the best way to do that is to network with other brands on a social level. 

One-sided conversations

A prominent mistake that many beginners make is that they only talk to the audience. 

Social marketing should be thought of as interactive, not as a speaker’s podium. [tweet this].

It’s all about discussion. You share. They share. Avoid generating posts that lack conversation initiation and even more importantly, ensure that you address audience messages – don’t ignore them. 

Be sure that you interact effectively with your audience. Do you value your audience’s feedback? Do you answer their queries? Or are your conversations all one-sided? Generate content that is worthy of conversation and word of mouth sharing to ensure that your audience can and wants to be responsive to your social campaign.

Irrelevant Content

Social content is easy to generate. There’s plenty of information to be shared, but the question is: does that content represent your brand? If you regularly provide unrelated material, you may be delivering the wrong message to your audience. 

This particular issue can only be resolved by having a clear definition of your brand’s image. What does it represent? What message do you need to deliver? Stay focused on defining your brand with your content. It is generally wise to share your original content and avoid overusing outside sources unless they affirm a point you are making. 

Social media is a powerful marketing tool, helping a new entrepreneur expand their network quickly and effectively. But, it is a tool which must be used properly before it will produce fruit for your online endeavors.      

Word of Mouth Marketing and Your Content

Word of mouth marketing and your content generation

Generating and marketing your online content isn’t as simple as posting a hot topic to your social network site or blogging regularly. It takes strategy and teamwork to develop quality material and promote it to help expand a strong network for your brand. You need to have a strong marketing team that can help you develop valuable marketing plans.

Must-Haves of a Great Marketing Team

When it comes to developing a marketing team, there are certain qualities that are needed for each aspect of your marketing design. 

1. Expert Leader

No one will understand a brand better than the one who created it. You are the initial expert leader if you are your brand’s creator. However, if you choose to entrust it to an outside marketing organization, be sure that the appointed leader has a full grasp of your brand. 

An expert marketing team leader should be able to answer the following questions. What does your marketing strategy call for? How many social networks, blogs, and assorted sites do your strategies target? What are the best marketing strategies for your brand? 

2. Meticulous Data collector

While a clear vision of subject matter is important, one of the most time consuming, but just as crucial is the area of research and development. Who can identify trending topics? Who can undertake the necessary research? This is the data expert - the person who has the facts or who can find them when needed. When it comes to generating quality content, you must be able to provide the most effective and accurate data possible, which is where this expertise is required. 

3. Effective Marketing Strategist

Though data is essential, it is still necessary to develop that data and apply it to your marketing strategy. You need to find people who know how to approach the audience and influence them effectively. They are able to identify the approaches that your audience would enjoy. This job requires a clear understanding of different online tactics and the audiences that would be influenced by or open to those tactics. 

Different social networks require different approaches and analysis. This is where word of mouth marketing will become your strategy’s most influential tactic. Your data analyzers should be able to use data and content in such a way that it influences audience recommendations, discussion, and interaction. 

Your strategist must also be an expert face to face networker.  

Social media is after all, according to Warren Whitlock “99% social and 1% media”.  We agree.  Social media is word of mouth on steroids and if your strategist can’t generate it face-to-face and they don’t have an impressive resume of networking, shaking hands and referral marketing (in person), I wouldn’t consider them.

Must-Know About Content Generation

1. Content generation covers the creation of prospective designs, ideas and data for social posts, blogs, and video content. Keep in mind that it is always necessary to develop content that you created or legally own.

2. Marketing content does not just rely on blog material, quotes, facts, or data. There is also the importance of graphic design and visual appeal. Pictures, graphs, charts, memes, and videos are amongst the most searched items online. It is vital that you are able to demonstrate your brand, and its uniqueness through visual appeal, whether it’s through creating or locating the right image to present.

3. Post your accumulated content at the right time. It is wise to assign people to important tasks. Who is in charge of posting Tweets and comments? Who should engage audience interaction? Who is assigned to do cross indexing to highlight articles through social networks and advertising? This may sound simple, but remember that the tasks are schedule-relevant (timing) and are also about responding to the audience. 

Like any team, everyone must work together and communicate effectively in order to achieve success. Each department may rely on one or multiple individuals to achieve certain goals. Some may have expertise in particular fields or subject matters. You need to be sure that team members are placed where they are most effective. With a team that works effectively to build quality content and implements it in a way that is appealing, your online marketing strategy will obtain the right reaction and will drive your audience to action. 

Social Time Management

Social time management tools

One of the most prominent issues with using social media for business purposes is that it is often time consuming. It may only take a matter of seconds to post to your social account. However, checking out your posts, analyzing your data, and managing your multiple accounts can consume much of your precious time. Consequently, this leaves you little time to plan and improve your online social strategy and manage your business.

Because of this, if you are using social networking sites, you need to make sure that you are only utilizing sites that attract people who are in your target audience. [tweet this].

Choose sites that offer social marketing strategy tools that are helpful to you as you manage your online campaign.

Certain sites, such as Facebook and LinkedIn, have their own audience engagement and analytics tools within their sites, allowing the user to examine how effective his/her methods are. But, each of these tools will work only in their respective sites, so users still have to manage social network accounts separately. For many, the emergence and availability of social media dashboards have made managing multiple social networking sites easier.

Social Media Dashboard: How Can It Help You?

Simply defined a social media dashboard is a tool that lets you monitor and contribute to multiple social network accounts in one place. Among the popular dashboards are Hootsuite, Social Sidekick, and Crowdbooster. They provide analytics, interlinked social networks, and help make social engagement time-friendly. 

1. It lets you organize everything in one place

You can identify, retrieve, and organize valuable data from each of your social network accounts in one place with social media dashboards. Posting and tweeting is made extra easy using dashboards since they give you the ability to schedule your posts and tweets throughout the day. Thus, you get to avoid the tedious and time-consume task of posting and tweeting at numerous times during the day.

2. It makes comparing multiple analytics in one place possible

Perhaps one of the most advantageous aspects of these management dashboards is that the user can now target specific analytics within the social media world and compare certain social networks with one another. Are you using your LinkedIn site as effectively as your Facebook account? Are your tweets as popular as your Pinterest pictures? These analytics allow you to target your brand’s audience and thus enable you to fine-tune your strategies. 

3. It gives you a better picture of your audience

Tracking your audience’s interactions helps you to engage with them more effectively. One of the most prominent issues with engagement in social sites is that not every business understands that each social audience is different. Each social site has an audience that is specific to it. While users will also have accounts on various sites, they are always looking for certain characteristics within your social outreach. 

While it is possible to post the same material to multiple sites through social dashboards, it is also important to keep in mind that each audience requires a unique approach. 

Time is only wasted if it’s spent ineffectively. [tweet this].

Utilize the analytics gathered to help engage your online audience in the manner they want you to. Be sure that your online efforts as a whole are audience-focused because that’s what the social world is all about. 

A Social Marketing Strategist Makes Sense for Your Business

Social marketing strategist and your business

Marketing through the many social networks has become common practice for businesses, both big and small. These networks are often easy-to-use and economically effective, but that doesn’t mean you will effortlessly obtain all the benefits from your social networking campaign.

So, why is it necessary to utilize a social marketing strategist? Primarily because it can be difficult for a business owner or manager to spend the time required to deal with all the variables that exist in social media nowadays. Discussing, posting, analyzing, and overall engaging with the audience needs focused efforts and, above all, an expert in this field. 

It is crucial that social strategists are able to dedicate themselves wholly to social media marketing strategies. "Effective social marketing requires a wide range of skills to enable your brand to make the most of your social campaign" [tweet this].

The Social Aspect of Business

In order to handle an online social campaign effectively, a social strategist must be professional yet sociable, with a talent for speaking to the audience. Many business owners and associated management have one issue; they focus primarily on the technical side of a business, and less so on the people side.  Their functions and interests are sometimes limited, thereby restricting the ability of a brand to communicate thoroughly with the audience. 

A social strategist must be able to engage the audience in such a way as to gain their trust and loyalty; to achieve an effective audience approach.  Interacting, sharing, and getting involved with your audience require focused efforts, but  you will reap recommendations and interactions from your audience. Effective interaction between your social strategists and the audience opens up a window for word of mouth marketing, allowing your brand’s visibility and image to grow in the online world. 

To achieve this requires the focused efforts of a specifically designated social strategist. In situations where a technical expert attempts to interact with the audience, communication can break down. This is because not every representative of a business is able to focus on handling people as individuals and interacting with them appropriately (building loyalty, explaining situations, appealing to their wants). 

Why Do You Need a Social Strategist?

Of course, to communicate effectively, you must also be innovative and creative in your methods and thinking. Social strategists can focus their efforts to understanding the social environment, easily adapting to changes in the social network structure - such as new platforms, tool utilization, and techniques. It is necessary for them to analyze data and adapt to changes efficiently to accomplish this. 

Then there is the widely underestimated factor that one social network is different from another. It is important to be able to understand the unique differences of each social network and their associated audiences. Twitter audiences demand a different approach than a Facebook or LinkedIn audience would appreciate. While the concept of social media is universal, each forum requires a unique approach and analysis in order to achieve its true potential. 

This is why it’s important to have a designated social strategist operating your marketing campaign. The wide range of social networks and constant changes to the networking world require a focused individual or department. 

Then there are certain characteristics that truly define a social strategist. While they need to be familiar with the handling of different social networks and their unique audiences, they must also be familiar enough with your company so that they can effectively endorse and speak as though they were the brand itself. 

This is often difficult to achieve and is, perhaps, one of the reasons why many businesses neglect to outsource their social marketing. They may decide to involve the entire business into their social strategy. This can, unfortunately, draw attention away from development within the brand (Jim can’t focus on getting those files analyzed; as he’s busy updating the business’s LinkedIn account).  

This is why the ability to communicate and appreciate the brand’s attributes and advantages is so important for a designated social strategist. They are responsible for opening up a line for communication for their associated brand and are able to discuss it with others with complete authority. This is why a social strategist must be able to wear many hats and constantly be updated with the company’s changes and new directions. A designated social marketing strategist would be able to collect that data, analyze it, and share it through marketing, without disrupting the brand’s development efforts.

When it comes to the social marketing, a business gets what it invests into the campaign. In order to achieve the maximum benefit from your online experience, it is necessary to engage the services of a social strategist who has the right skills, focus, and personality. It makes sense for your business to make the most of its social campaign. 

Is your blog losing out on a huge second audience because of fear?

Tweet

There is a long standing controversy over whether or not it's OK to duplicate your blog article content on another website. The argument between search engine optimization (SEO) experts goes like this.

SEO guy- "Never duplicate your blog content on another website, Google will penalize you."
SEO girl- "When we were dating you were always such a fraidy-cat. Google doesn't penalize you unless you are trying to game the system or steal someone else's content. Just look at all the news syndication websites out there. Do you think Google is penalizing all of them?"
SEO guy- "Well, you,....you... "
SEO girl- "Wait, what's that music I hear? Are you listening to the new Taylor Swift album? Are you sure you're a man?"

Will Google penalize me if I duplicate my content?
Duplicating your blog content simply means that you take your blog article, publish it on your own site, and then post it somewhere else as well. Google doesn't particularly like duplicate content. But then again, I have serious doubts about whether or not they care to do much about it. Instead, what Google is simply trying to avoid is, for example, if you searched for articles about red swingline staplers, you don't want more than one search result that leads you to two identical articles. That's not an ideal search experience. But Google doesn't need to penalize you for posting your blog article in two different places. Instead Google simply chooses which version of your content to display, and then skips the other.

What are the options if you are afraid to duplicate your content?
Some SEO experts suggest that a duplicate posting is OK if you change a few things in your article so that it doesn't get seen as a duplicate. Suggestions include:

• Rewrite the title
• Change paragraphs to bullets
• Change advice into questions
• Change images / ALT text
• Mix and match content from a similar article
• Rearrange the first and last paragraph
• Switch from Maxwell House to real coffee

Other SEO experts suggest placing a link back to your original article and adding canonical tags (that's tech-speak, sorry) in the code. It has been suggested that if you first post your article on your site and then quickly link to it from Google+, Google might actually index the article very quickly. The theory being if the post on your site is the first one found, Google may lend more weight to it. After that, you can post your content to a second site. For more detail about the suggestions, check out the lively discussion we had on LinkedIn.

What does Google say about duplicate content?
Let's stop all this whining and shenanigans. Google themselves wrote an article about the topic. Here's snippet from the article:

"If you syndicate your content on other sites, Google will always show the version we think is most appropriate for users in each given search, which may or may not be the version you'd prefer. However, it is helpful to ensure that each site on which your content is syndicated includes a link back to your original article. You can also ask those who use your syndicated material to use the noindex meta tag to prevent search engines from indexing their version of the content."

What does Jeff Bullas do?

Jeff Bullas is a hugely popular blogger with 250,000 followers. That doesn't make him an SEO expert, but I'm thinking he probably knows what he's doing. Jeff duplicates his blog posts. I took a look at the last three articles he posted on his blog. He then duplicated those same articles on Business2Community.com .I compared the two versions to see if they were identical. On average, Jeff only changed five words in each article. That's it. Just five words. In articles as long as his, changing five words hardly constitutes a rewrite, and thus I am betting Google sees these as duplicates. Is Jeff being penalized for his duplication? I sure doubt it. Is Jeff crying in his Uncle Tobys VitaBrits Weeties (the Australian version of Wheaties cereal) about how his SEO is in the dunny (Austrailian word for toilet)? Hell no he's not.

What do I do?
I duplicate my content. Why? First of all, I want the content that I write to appear on my own blog. When I write an article, I want my readers to read it on my site. My social sharing links point readers back to my site. Readers share the link back to my site on their social networks. I want all that SEO pointing to my site. And I want my readers to find other articles on my site. And then, after all of that, I want a whole new set of eyeballs to see my content. That's why I post it on another site. The other website contains my bio which links back to my blog. Since Google knows I own my blog, and my bio appears at the bottom of the duplicated content, Google can tell I've just re-posted the content. I'm not breaking the law. Interpol isn't going to raid my swanky pad and confiscate my laptop and my fancy coffee. Instead, Google is just going to index the article on my blog and not index the article posted on the second site.

So what say you? Just how wrong do you think I am? Do you duplicate your content?

The Restaurateur's Zen Guide to Email List Building. Why your Restaurant Must Have Email Marketing

Unique restaurant ingredient known as Galangal

Look, I understand. You're a restaurateur and the last thing you have time for is to send out email marketing messages to your customers. You've got an entire restaurant to run. In fact, you don't even have time to read this article. But just bare with me for a moment. And even if you did have time to send emails to your subscribers, you'd say, "why do I need an email list anyway? I use Facebook to promote my restaurant." So let me make this perfectly clear. No matter how much social media you use to promote your business, nothing, I mean nothing, is as effective as email.

ExactTarget's Channel Preference Survey has shown that although social media is the current raging-bull-in-the-sushi-house, email is the channel that influences the most purchases. Email is where the money is.
It's not that you don't want to use Facebook or other social channels, you do. It's that you want to use all of those social channels to drive sign-ups to your email list. The email list is the center of the wheel, and Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, FourSquare and all the other social media channels are the spokes that point towards the center of the wheel.

The #1 direct channel that influences the most purchases is email at 66%.

The 2012 Channel Preferences Survey, ExactTarget

If you have an email list of people who have been to your restaurant and opted-in to your list, you have a means to speak to existing customers directly. It's a lot easier to resell to an existing customer than it is to find a new one. 

What content am I going to email my restaurant customers?
You need to build a relationship with your customers. And you'll do this through meeting them in person, and then through email. Customers that know you will feel a sense of connection to you. So besides sending them the obvious coupons and incentives that bring them back into your place, also give them the history of the place, the history of you, the owner. How you learned to cook, what you specialize in, where you trained, what you cook when you're at home. You want to give customers a sense of who you are. Let them get to know you (and your staff) and thus they'll feel connected to you.

Waldo may not be good looking, but he's got
a great personality : ). Introduce him to your
customers and build the relationship

• Share your recipes. That's right, I said it. Actually share your recipes with your customers. "What? Share my recipes? Look kid, meatballs don't go with sushi. And, I don't give away none of Mamma's secret recipes." Oh really? You think customers are never going to come back because they now know your secret? Do you think no one comes in to Gordon Ramsay's restaurants because they bought his recipe book and now they just cook for themselves at home? Instead of them always cooking your recipes at home, you'll be surprised how often customers will think of coming in to your restaurant and talking about it with you. You'll position yourself as an expert. Make a video of you cooking the recipe and share a link to the video in email. Use your position of expertise to publish your own recipe book that you sell in your restaurant. Not that anyone would buy it. Your food sucks. I'm kidding.
• Publish a calendar of events at your store. Do you have any special events? Cultural holidays? Let customers know why they can't miss these great events.
• Introduce a staff member. You can't be everywhere, but your staff can. Customers should get to know your staff members as individuals. A great way to go deeper is to write about your staff in your email.
• Highlight an uncommon ingredient you use. Where does it come from? What does it look like when it is grown? What is it used for culturally? Where can customers buy it?
• Have the chef explain a particular dish. What's special about it? What does it mean to him or her? Show a picture of it and offer it as a house special for this Friday night.
• Highlight reviews of your restaurant that you find on Yelp. Particularly reviews that rave about a particular dish. 
• Send out menu changes and new items announcements.

How do I build an email list for my restaurant?
Since you are face to face with so many customers, you are in a unique position. There are many places you can ask diners to opt-in to your list. You'll want both a paper sign-up form and a sign-up form on your website.

Whatever you do, be sure the customers want your emails. If they don't, there are lots of problems you will cause for yourself.

• Do you offer paper menus for customers to take away? Promote the email list there.
• When customers make reservations, ask them to sign up then, or use OpenTable which enables a sign-up on their site.
• Put a sign-up form on your website - put it on all pages, or on each menu page.
• Promote it on the comment card that you're probably already giving to customers.
• When you bring the check to their table, have the sign-up form in the fold-up booklet. And bring a pen even before you know they want to use a credit card.
• Put a sign up form in your normal menu when you first bring it to the customer.
• Create a well made sign up card that has a glossy picture of the free appetizer they'll get if they sign up for your email list. Use this card to get sign-up in the store. And use it if you do catering, or if you have an open house at a partner's neighboring  business.
• Entice sign ups with a coupon. Put a sign-up form in with your paper menu if you drop menus on neighborhood mailboxes. Only customers who sign up for the email list can use the coupon. Since the paper sign-up form is also a coupon, customers will bring it in the store when they visit.
• Put  your website URL at the bottom of the printed cash register receipt. Send them to your website to sign up.
• Do you have an iPad? Have them sign up directly on that when at the register.

A warning about the fishbowl: it's ok to use a fishbowl to collect business cards, but unless it is very clear that customers are signing up for an email list when they drop their card in, do not add these people to your subscriber list.

How do I incent my customers to sign up? 

• Tell them they'll get a coupon by email for a free appetizer
• Send them a free meal on their birthday or anniversary (as long as they bring a friend!)
• Tell them they'll receive weekly specials and discounts. 
• Partner with a neighboring business, have an open house together co-promoting each other's businesses. Have a door prize for anyone who signs up for the newsletter like giving away a free dinner for two.

Why are social channels not as powerful as email? 
Because the rate of engagement is so different. With a channel like Facebook, when you post an update, only a small percentage of the fans that have Liked your page are actually going to see it on their timeline. Whereas with email, a high percentage of the recipients on your email list are going to see and read your email, or at least see the subject line in their inbox. You are hitting so many more eyeballs with email. Don't avoid using social media though. Instead, use social media to drive more people to sign up for your email list.

What about Groupon?
I have no problem with Groupon. I'm not saying to not use Groupon. I'm saying that whether or not you use Groupon, your own email list will be worth far more money to you in the end.

Let us know creative ways you've used email to market your restaurant in the comments section.

Read next: Save time using this free tool to post your updates to multiple social networks

Image credit: Computer Clip Art, FotoosVanRobin under Creative Commons

The next best thing to a guest blog post

Adding new eyes to your blog
shouldn't be this complicated

All of us who spend our time in the depths of social media have been told ad infinitum that writing guest posts is the missing magic that will catapult us to stardom and wealth beyond the realms of Taylor Swift. Taylor secretly wants to write a guest post on my site, but I won't let her. Anyway, there is another way to add significant traffic to your blog that is rarely discussed. Whether you are writing an article that will serve as a guest post or one that is going to be posted directly to your blog, you can use expert quotes in your article to help significantly drive new eyes to your blog.

How does using expert quotes work? 
The idea is so simple, yet so overlooked. When you are crafting your blog article, include a quote from a known expert in the subject area of your article. Once you incorporate expert commentary into your blog article, you'll find that the expert who is being quoted will promote your post in social media to their own networks.

Everyone, including experts, wants to elevate their level of respect (being further viewed as an expert) in their niche. Once your article is published, they will reach out to their Twitter minions, Facebook likers,
their email list, and link to you on their personal  blog. And, if they are separately employed and have enough clout within their own organization, they will convince their employer's social media team to promote it as well.

How do you get an expert to provide a quote?
This is easier than you may think. But you've got to consider your target first, and then do a little work to make the process as seamless as possible.

• Look for an expert who is reachable
• It's easier to reach out to an expert who works for a small software company than it is if you try to reach Seth Godin. Not that he's impossible to reach. In fact, he calls me so frequently to ask my advice I've had to put his mobile number on auto-block so I can get back to my real life. Seth, if you're reading this, sorry, you're going to have to come up with your own brilliant ideas from now on. 
• Reach out to the expert and tell them you are writing an article and would like to include an expert quote from them.
• "Own it"- own it means even if your blog only has two regular readers, one of them being your mom, when you contact the expert you need to be confident and sound more like a journalist than some schlep with no blog readers.

Make it easy for them to provide the quote

• Instead of asking the expert to write a quote, write the quote for them and ask them to review and approve. 
• Send them your full article with their quote already included
• The fact that you have pre-written the quote makes it so much easier to get the quote approved. And since you have sent them the full article, they can understand the context of how their quote will be used. What you are trying to avoid is waiting around for them to write a quote and send it back to you.
• Include links back to their site or blog. That is their payback for providing the quote.

Who are the best experts to target?

• The best experts to target are authors, press contacts, and those who simply participate in answering questions on LinkedIn or Quora (more on that below). 

In order to get an expert quote, what should your article be about?

• Do a review of an ebook (or pull a quote from an ebook). Reach out to the author directly.
• Review a software product (or similar). Reach out to the company's marketing team. Or, look at their press releases area of their website and find the appropriate press contact. Typically, press contacts at companies are very reachable.
  
  Example: "Post to multiple social networks quickly using one simple tool "

Where to find an expert:

• Finding an expert can be as easy as posting a question on a LinkedIn Group and waiting to see who answers. Once a good answer is given, take a look at that person's LinkedIn profile to see their level of expertise. Do they work at a respected company in your niche? Do they author an important blog in your niche?  
• This would also work on Quora or LinkedIn Answers.
• The type of experts that answer questions on these sites are the type of people who are likely to be reachable, and will respond to you.
  
  Examples:
  From a question about why ISPs block images, an expert ended up providing a quote for "Why email marketers should avoid the coming wave of mosaics in email and what to do instead"
  From a question about email deliverability, an expert ended up providing a quote for "Flush your email marketing job down the toilet with this one big mistake" 

Why bother adding an expert quote?

• This elevates the respect level that readers will associate to the article, and thus to you. 
• The expert will promote the article to their social networks, driving new eyeballs to your blog. The effect is similar to having your article posted as a guest blog which will include backlinks to your site which drives great SEO to your site.

If you are interested in a quote from a not-so-humble email marketing expert, let me know.

Image credit flickr under Creative Commons

The Noob's Zen Guide to Email Marketing and Social Media Speak

Are you new to email marketing and social media? (Oh no, a noobie, a noob!) Sick of all the marketing mumbo jumbo double speak? Not sure what all these terms mean? This article will help clear up some of that. Or possibly make you more confused, I'm not sure which. If you are a seasoned email marketer, however, for God's sake, don't read this article. It will bore you so badly that you'll read to the end and say "that's 6 minutes of my life I'll never get back."


Social stuff:
Klout - This is kind of a cool one. Klout is a company and a score. This score measures your "importance" in terms of how much influence you have across the internet. It refers mainly to people who have a lot of Twitter followers and particularly those people who's Twitter followers follow them on a particular topic. The score is used by companies who want to understand how important a particular customer is to their company/brand. So, if you are Ronco, one of the greatest inventors of all time, and you sell a lot of "Spray-Paint-the-Bald-Away",
a Twitter user with 4 followers (one being their mother) does not have the same influence on Ronco's brand as a Twitter user with 19,086 followers, who writes a blog about products for hair loss. By the way, if you find a good blog on hair loss, send me the link.

Bitly - You know how Twitter only allows you to share 140 characters of text? Well Bitly is a company that will help you take a really long URL that you want to share on Twitter and shorten it. So a link like http://blog.thoughtreach.com/2012/07/why-cant-i-do-email-marketing-with-outlook.html will shorten to something like http://bit.ly/M7ho2q which makes it fit a lot better into the Twitter box. When your Twitter followers click the shortlink, it will auto-forward them to the long link.

Mosaic - Not even all the seasoned email marketers know about this one. A mosaic in email marketing is an HTML table that is full of lots and lots of rows and columns, each having a different background color. If built properly, the mosaic can render a fairly good representation of what an image would actually look like. Read why using mosiacs is impactful and then why you may not want to use them.

Social sharing - this is where you post a link to something on a place like Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest etc.


The Big Picture
ISP -  Internet Service Provider. These numbskulls either provide access to the internet or they provide email inboxes (like Gmail, Hotmail, AOL, Yahoo). Marketers will babble on and on about "don't get blocked at ISPs" so get used to this one.

ESP - Email Service Provider. These companies provide mass email sending software tools for marketers. The greatest of all of them is Thought Reach (a company destined to rule the earth one day). But, in the list too are Eloqua, Marqueto, Constant Contact, and Monkey Mail or Mail Chimpanzee, or whatever they call themselves these days.

SaaS - Software as a Service. This just means that it's a software product that you access by using your browser (instead of having to download and install the software).

Mobile - in the email world, this refers to all the bajillion recipients who open their emails on a mobile device. About 1/3rd of all mass email sent is opened on a mobile device.

Email marketing metrics
Click throughs - this is the number of times that any link inside your email message was clicked. This is an important measure of how engaged your recipients are (more on engagement below). If they are clicking, they must have at least some level of interest and thus want to receive  your emails.

Open rate - This is the rate at which your subscribers open your email. Some open, some don't. Not all mass emails sent will register an open if the recipient opens the email, but a lot will. It's not a perfect metric, but it helps you understand if you are on the right track. Open rate is determined by a one pixel image quietly hidden in the email. Once this image is loaded, the open is registered.

Read rate - The read rate is different than the open rate because it’s not based on the one pixel image pixel. The read rate is based on mailbox providers marking the message as “read” due to subscriber activity in the inbox. This is a type of data that you need a third party provider to obtain, like Return Path.

The Who (minus Roger Daltrey)
Receivers - actually, this doesn't refer to the people who receive your email. Instead, it refers to the ISPs like Gmail that are first receiving your email before putting it in the inbox (or spam box ) of your subscriber.

Senders - senders can either refer to the marketer who is sending the email, or to the ESP that the marketer is using to send the email.

Subscribers - these are the people who have signed up for your email list.

Recipients - these are the same as subscribers.

Double opt in - this is a method of verifying that a new subscriber to your email list really, really wants your email. In this method of subscribing, a visitor comes to your website, fills out a form to get onto your email list, and then your system automagically emails them and asks them to click a link to confirm. Using this type of subscription method will help you avoid spam complaints by ensuring that the person who's email address was entered, is actually the person who signed up for the list in the first place.

Spam with Bacon
Spamtrap (honeypot) - Now we've hit upon the good stuff.  Spam traps are email addresses used by ISPs to trap spammers. These are email addresses that are either completely made up or have been dormant for a long time. The ISP is looking to catch people spamming so that they can block the email being sent by that person. If a completely made up email address is suddenly receiving messages, the email is likely spam. If you "accidentally" email a spamtrap email address, here's what you can do to help fix the mess you're now in.

SenderScore.org - this is a free website that can tell you how well your email sending reputation is with the receiving ISPs. Many ISPs report information to senderscore.org that tells others if they think you behave well as a brand in your email practices. Ask your ESP what your IP address is, and enter it at senderscore. It's a little like high school. A score in the high 90's is great. One in the 30's is not quite so great, and may land you in detention.

IP Address - this is a little like the street address in front of your house. Only in this case it's the internet address from which you are sending your email. Unless you send more than 50-100k emails per month, you are likely sharing an IP address with other senders. This isn't necessarily a bad thing. But it's always a good idea to check the senderscore of your IP address to be sure it is good and that other senders on that same IP address aren't negatively impacting you.

Sender reputation - this is another term used to convey how well your brand behaves with its email sending practices.

Reputation monitoring - this is the practice of a marketer monitoring how well their brand is perceived by ISPs in terms of sender reputation. Software tools can be used to detect email reputation.

Engaged / Engagement Rate - These don't mean the same thing that your girlfriend says they do. When you email your recipients, the number of times that they open the email and click a link within it is called the engagement rate. ISPs use this rate as a determining factor in whether or not they deliver your email to the inbox or not. It's a long story, but trust me, if a subscriber hasn't opened or clicked in a long, long time, you need to remove them from your list to protect your engagement rate.

Authentication - only true email marketing geeks get excited about this one. But any marketer sending mass email needs to have their emails "authenticated." Authentication technologies are things that tell the receiving ISP exactly where the email is coming from and that you are who you say you are. Unless your email is authenticated properly, it may not make it to the inbox because it is not trusted. Authentication technologies include DKIM, DomainKeys, Sender ID, SPF, and DMARC. Not that you care what those stand for, but you want to make sure your ESP sets these up for you.

Segments / segmentation - this is a term that relates to dividing your email list into different groupings. A reporting / analytics tool within your email marketing tool will help you create these groups. For example, if you sell a lot of Ronco "Spray-Paint-the-Bald-Away", you'll want to segment on people who are male, are over 50, and are predisposed to using spray paint on their bald heads. These are the same people who would buy a Chia pet too. Just some free advice.

Search:
SERP - Search Engine Results Page. This term is used to describe the placement of where your webpage sits in the rankings of the search engines. Is your webpage on page one of the search engine results page or on page 39,599?

SEO- Search Engine Optimization. SEO is a set of skills and techniques used to help rank the pages of your website higher in the Google (and other) search engine rankings.

Panda - the name of a software update to Google's search algorithm. Google's algorithm is what calculates where your webpage shows up in the SERP. This particular update routed out a lot of low quality websites from the Google search results. If you aren't doing anything black hat on your website, you have nothing to worry about.

Black hat - these are nefarious techniques that unscrupulous webmasters use to get their web pages to rank higher in the search engine rankings. Use black hat techniques and you might just end up back in detention again.

White hat - these are the good ways to do SEO. Having really good content (unlike this article : ), having really important sites link to yours, and writing in natural language by not stuffing keywords all over the place are examples of white hat techniques.

Twitter:
Tweet - a short message you send out to your followers.

Followers - these are your minions. Those people who, for some reason, unbeknownst to the rest of mankind, want to hear what you are tweeting. Try not to accidentally lose all your followers by being spoofed into giving up your Twitter password.

Followers are your minions.
People dumb enough, I mean
smart enough to listen to what
you have to say.

Following - these are the people you want to hear what they are blabbing about. To become a follower, you may have clicked the little "follow" link like this one.
Follow @ThoughtReach

@ThoughtReach - any time you see an @ symbol, that is someone or some company's username on Twitter.

#something - a # symbol on Twitter is like a keyword or phrase. It might be something like "#emailmarketing" which is a way for Twitter followers to search for people talking specifically about the topic of email marketing. The # symbol just helps identify all the caterwauling going on about that topic.

Nonsensical
Fair Trade coffee - a black liquid substance consumed by marketers nearly as much as it is consumed by software developers and typically packed full of caffeine (a God-given substance that I'm sure is an unrecognized fulfillment of scripture somewhere). The "Fair Trade" part means that the coffee (or chocolate or whatever) is sourced in a manner that certifies that the grower was paid in a fair manner. It also typically is associated to good-earth practices like organic farming.  If you are a marketer and your coffee isn't Fair Trade, and you are hearing this for the first time, that's ok. Just make the switch. A hilarious look at coffee facts.

Ficus tree- a thing thrown at me by Loraine, who sits in the cube next to me. Loraine's forays with flying ficus trees appear notoriously throughout the Thought Reach blog. You'll just have to bear with us on that topic.