Online Videos, Testimonials and Conversion Rates

It's too easy to just put up a web page and hope for the best. I can certainly attest to this practice for most of Common Craft's existence. However, as we've moved into ecommerce and built some traffic, I've become much more data oriented and learned more about things like "conversions" and "A/B testing."

Many web-based businesses have the same goal: drive traffic to your web site and then convert that traffic into some desired action.  This is called conversion - converting traffic to sales, contacts, newsletter sign-ups, etc. is a big deal and something that's important to understand.

View With Comments

Yaay! Common Craft Stickers

Thanks to John, Maureen and the folks at Sticker Giant for their help with these little guys. We're planning to carry them with us at conferences, etc. If you see us at SXSW or anywhere else, ask for one!

Would you like a sticker?  Send a self-addressed, stamped envelope to:

Common Craft

P.O. Box 18322

Seattle, WA 98118-0322

View With Comments

Being Lightweight: Business Design

This is the third in a series of posts about Being Lightweight.  The first two were about Working with Clients and Tools We Use.

We are lucky to have a product that people like. Our challenge is to experiment and find the best ways to build a business around this product. To be successful we need the business to be profitable, but also work within the life we want to live.

View With Comments

New Social Media eBook - And a Funny Blogger Outreach Video

Wouldn't it be nice if every author actually lived in the world that they wrote about? It's one thing to be an observer, but yet another to be a resident.  That's why it's my pleasure to point you to a new ebook by Darren Barefoot and Julie Szabo of Capulet Communications.

View With Comments

On To Bluer Oceans

The transition is complete. Common Craft has become a different company and our first products are coming out in the next two weeks.

A Bit of Background:

In 2003, I started Common Craft to focus on online communities. After being a professional online community manager for a few years (1999-2003) Common Craft gave me a chance to be a consultant for the first time. I loved it - I had a cozy little niche that enabled me to work on fun and interesting projects, like the March of Dimes - Share Your Story community. Even then, part of my services included plain English explanations.

View With Comments

To Be Rather Than to Seem

I'm originally from North Carolina and I once learned that our state motto is "Esse Quam Videri" which translates to "To Be Rather Than To Seem"

If you ask me, this should be the motto for businesses (and individuals) who are trying to adapt to the new world of community, marketing and advertising on the web. The days of "seeming" are over and success in the future is all about "being". Really, there is no choice - the customer now decides what is real.

To Be Rather Than To Seem - it makes sense to me.

View With Comments

Building and Spending Buzz Capital

As I’ve been hinting, I’m getting really close to revealing something new that I’m very excited about. Quite honestly, I’m hoping to build some buzz, as I’ll be looking for people to participate (it's free). In planning for buzz, I like to look at it in terms of something I call “Buzz Capital”.

Like most types of capital, buzz capital is something you build up and then spend. The goal is to spend it at the most opportune moment, thus increasing the returns on the buzz. I'd say that Apple is a perfect example of good buzz capital management.

View With Comments

The Times They Are A'Changin

I've been planning something since January of this year and I'm really excited that it's about to come to fruition. In fact, I can barely contain myself. I'm going to be evasive for now, but it's something that represents the biggest adventure of my life so far, personally and professionally.

In a week or two, I'll start talking specifics and my goal in writing this is to fire off a warning shot to say that things are changing here at Common Craft headquarters. In fact, I think it's safe to say that this blog has a little over 2 months before it goes into hibernation.

The key point for now is that I want you to stay tuned because I'm about to have a whole lot of new things to talk about. It'll be fun, I promise. :)

View With Comments

Loud vs. Soft Intranet Promotion

Marketing and Promoting Your Intranet

I think James at Column Two was right to quote this as a teaser for this article:

View With Comments

10 Product Adoption Lessons from Big Churches

Scobleizer: Ten evangelism and IT lessons from one of America's biggest churches

Scoble talks to the CTO and Internet tech manager of one of the largest churches in the US about how they've got so big, so fast.

I think Scoble does a good job of learning about their strategies and distilling them into 10 non-religious lessons that can be applied very widely:

Lesson one: make it easy for everyone to learn about you -- on their terms.

Lesson two: make it easy to experience your product's special attributes.

Lesson three: to get word-of-mouth advertising you need to be remarkable.

View With Comments