All posts by John Paul Narowski

karmaCRM News and Updates

New Features: Chat & Color Schemes & Wufoo

March 3, 2011 John Paul Narowski 4 Comments

We’ve been a bit quiet the past few weeks but we can assure you it’s been for good reason. The karmaCRM team has been hard at work preparing for public beta launch. We’ve got some interface revisions, added the ability for you to select a color scheme/logo and added group and private chat!

Private and Group Chat
Change Color Schemes/Logo
Wufoo and Formstack Integration

Private and Group Chat

With our continued emphasis on collaboration, we’ve added the ability for you and your team to chat within karmaCRM. You can see who’s online in karmaCRM at any given time and shoot them a quick private message about a contact or deal you’re working on. These chats are private to you and whomever you’re chatting with.

Screen shot 2011-03-03 at 1.28.00 PM

Each chat is saved and can be later searched in the “Chat Transcripts” section.

We also added a group chat section so you can create chat rooms around the different topics and teams you may have. Access this by clicking the Chat tab in your menu.

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Change Color Schemes/Logo

Another highly requested feature is the ability to have more control over the look and feel of your CRM. You can now change the color scheme according to your tastes. This color scheme is set at the organizational level and will be seen by all users in the CRM.

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You can also add your logo for further customization. This appears both within your app, and on the login screen. When choosing a size air on rectangular, and larger as it is sized down to the appropriate sizes automatically.

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Wufoo and Formstack Integrations

We understand that many of you have contact forms, and need a simple way to get your data into karmaCRM without hiring a developer to do so. With karmaCRM, you can connect forms hosted by either Wufoo or Formstack and have the submitted data automatically create records in your CRM. Setup your integration by browsing to “Account & Settings -> Integrations” to get started. We’ve also created instructions to help guide you through the setup process.

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We’re proud to share the karmaCRM experience with you and wholeheartedly thank all of our wonderful users who have taken time out of their busy schedules to submit suggestions, bugs and feedback. Without you we would be just another CRM! It’s exciting to be nearing public beta launch and will continue to keep you posted about new features as we roll them out.

February 25, 2011 John Paul Narowski Leave a comment

Productivity

Using a Timer to Increase Productivity

If you’re looking to improve your productivity, it’s time to bust out that old egg timer. Unless you hang around with your grandma a lot, chances are you don’t get to see an old fashion timer a lot these days. If you need to time something in the kitchen, the built in microwave or oven timer usually does the trick. And of course what smart phone owner doesn’t bust out their favorite timer app when they need to count the seconds down? But if you’re interested in getting a serious productivity boost, then you need to go analog.

Why Use a Timer?

The world has perfected the science of distracting you, especially when it comes to the work place. Email clients like Outlook and Gmail alert you when a new message is in. Instant messages pop up out of nowhere, phone ring/vibrate constantly and text messages don’t stop chirping. These devices have been specifically designed to capture your attention. While this might increase the effectiveness of communication, it’s robbing us of our productivity. Every time you look up from your task, even for a second, your mind has to assess the new information, decide on it’s importance, deal with it or decide to put it off. This break in your attention can completely take you off task or force your mind to reengage. Either way, you’re burning precious time and attention to get back on track. By using a timer, you are forcing yourself to only focus on the task at hand and nothing else. If you allot a set amount of time for a job, you’ll ignore all of the distractions that really aren’t germane to getting the task done. Think of your timer like a fence; it keeps you from straying too far.

Why Go Analog?

The classic egg timer that may have been your jailer during childhood time out, will now set you free! You’re trying to focus on one task, you need to have tunnel vision as much as possible. There are programs that help achieve this, like Write Room. This handy tool allows you to block out the rest of the computer and only have a simple word processor in front of you. If you use a timer on your computer or your cell phone you’re exposing yourself to a whole host of potential distractions. Emails, RSS updates, instant messages, texts, voice mails…you name it! Worse yet, by doing something on one of your devices, you might change your automatic “away” or “idle” status to “active.” This may spur others on the same platforms to hit you up for work or personal stuff. Don’t let these time bandits get at you!

Set Reasonable Limits

You can’t turn everything off, focus on one task all day long and completely cut off the outside world. Bosses, clients and loved ones get a little touchy when you drop off the face of the planet like that. Instead, set aside a reasonable amount of time to achieve your task. If it’s a larger project, you can break it down into vital parts. Then take a break, plug back in and see if you need to address anything else. By simply setting time limits, enforcing them with a physical and non-distraction creating timer and exercising some good old fashion will power and planning, you’ll see your productivity sky rocket!

February 22, 2011 John Paul Narowski 3 Comments

Simple SEO: Using RSS for Backlinks

RSS (Real Simple Syndication) is a handy way for people to get updates from their favorite sites, but it’s also a powerful tool for increasing your search engine rankings.

What is RSS?

RSS has been around since 1999 but didn’t really get popular until 2005. The RSS feed for your site is a XML formatted summary or full text of your posts plus key data the search engines need (title, description, keywords, date published, etc). This allows many different programs to read the feed so it can be easily distributed, too. The most common way people come into contact with RSS feeds is by signing up to receive updates from their favorite websites. These can be viewed in your browser or through an RSS reader like Google Reader.

How it Works for SEO

A big part of search engine optimization (SEO) is getting backlinks to your site. Google and other search engines consider backlinks votes for your site, so the more the merrier. A simple and often overlooked way to get a large amount of back links is by spreading your RSS around the web. Your RSS feed is nothing more a set of backlinks pointing to your site. As long as you update your content regularly (which you should be anyways), you will be creating new backlinks wherever your RSS feed is posted. So, let’s say you make the finest blue widgets in the world. Of course, you have a website that talks all about the art and science of blue widget making. You set up an RSS feed and encourage people to subscribe to it, so they can stay abreast of the latest blue widget news. Then Tom Smith comes along. Mr. Smith is the biggest blue widget fan in the world and has a blog about them. He loves your blue widgets (naturally) and wants his readers to see your constant flow of information. So, he places your RSS feed on his site. Not only does it entertain and inform his readers but it keeps his site fresh as well. The bonus for you is that every time you make a new post, his RSS updates creating a new link back to your site.

Ramp it Up

You can easily scale up your RSS backlinking results by submitting your RSS to multiple sites. Being proactive and finding new homes for your feed means exponentially more backlinks. Here’s a where you should be looking:

Other sites in your market that aren’t direct competitors
Your social media pages
Web 2.0 Sites like Squidoo and Hubpages that you create

Turbo Charged RSS Results

If you want to take things to the next level, then you need to tap into the RSS aggregators. These are sites that gather massive amounts of RSS feed together, categorize and display them. This allows people who are interested in a certain subject to easily find tons of information quickly and pick the RSS feeds they like the most. There are hundreds of these sites around but the largest and most popular are:

Feedage.com
RSSMountain.com
Feedboy.com
Feedbomb.com

Simply go to these sites and you can amplify the amount of RSS backlinks you get. But this can time consuming and no one likes to fill out hundreds of web forms. That’s why there are handy RSS submitters like RSS Bot and RSS Submitter that allow you to blast your feed out to all of the sites possible and use one signup process. No matter how extensive you want to make your RSS backlinking, it should be a part of your SEO plan. It’s too easy not to. Compared to other methods of link building distributing your RSS feed is a walk in the park.

February 18, 2011 John Paul Narowski Leave a comment

J.C. Penny Got Busted!: What their Link Scheme Means for You

A February 12th article in the NY Times, exposed that the giant retail outlet, J.C. Penny, was using low quality paid links to game Google’s organic search engine results. This allowed them to rank #1 for a multitude of valuable search terms during the lucrative Holiday Season.

Google took immediate action, which, while unknown to those outside of the Google mother-ship, has reduced the rankings of the retailer’s site across the board.

This is the largest link scheme to be outed since the 2006 BMW slap by Google, and will have serious implications down the road for anyone doing business online.

Here is what you should take away from the whole debacle:

Google is Not Omnipresent and Infallible

One of two things happened here:

The agency running J.C. Penny’s search engine optimization (SEO) pulled the wool over Big G’s eyes in an audacious scheme to out rank hundreds of millions of competing sites, exposing a serious chink in their search engine’s armor. Or…
As some have suggested, Google was well aware of what was going on but turned a blind eye because of the large amounts of revenue they were making from J.C. Penny’s huge paid search buys. J.C. Penny is one Google’s largest advertisers, paying them almost $2.5 million a month for paid search results!

Either way, Google is not some all powerful search engine deity waiting to smite you. They have rules and if you break them AND you get caught, they will punish you.

Is the game rigged for the big players? Maybe…

100% Natural Link Building is a Myth

Google often makes it seem as though any attempt to build links to your site is a bad thing, but a site with 100% natural back links is rare. Show me a site that did no SEO work, published content, waiting while people linked to it and is now popular.

In our last post, How to Raise Your Google Rank, we mentioned ways to play by Google’s rules and increase your rankings. Even these “white hat” methods are not natural and if they were to be abused (ie, 10,000 articles posted in a day), you’d be punished.

It All Come Down to Quality

When defending J.C. Penny, Darcie Brossart, J.C. Penney’s VP of Corporate Communication said in an email:

Our natural search program has never included paid web links, like those described in the article. It is against our policy, and the fact is, we don’t need to them to build our Google rankings.
We have millions of links from our web partnerships and programs that already gave us link popularity. These included links from our 1.4m Facebook fans, who clicked from Facebook to jcp.com; social media and fashion bloggers; our holiday partnerships with Yahoo!, Microsoft, Time Warner, Hearst. Our links on these sites during the holidays had editorially relevant content and pointed to our product pages.
These links and ones like them are what drove our relevancy rankings on Google, not the unauthorized, low quality links that the New York Times reported on.

Brossart’s statement points out a glaring contradiction with Google’s ranking system.

She claims they have never paid for links, yet says that a lot of their links are from “partnerships” with major online media outlets and “fashion bloggers.” Did these bloggers and giant media conglomerates just link to them because of their killer content?

I think not.

So, the message we’re getting is that it’s OK to unnaturally engineer link profiles and it’s OK to buy links. You just can’t buy links from low quality sites that aren’t relevant to your market. And when you do buy links, don’t be obvious about it.

What does this mean for you?

If you depend on your website for a sizable portion of your income or want to see it succeed, follow the rules that Google has laid out.

Grow your link profile by creating unique and engaging content and spreading it around the web on relevant sites, forums and directories. Create content your customers would want to read instead of what you think a search engine spiders wants.

Anything other than that and you’re risking the wrath of Google.

They can change their algorithms on a dime and what was OK yesterday may get you banned today. They have egg on their face right now, so expect a strong show of force in the near future.

Stick to the basics and you won’t get caught in their war path.

February 16, 2011 John Paul Narowski Leave a comment

Small Business

Customer Centric: Going Beyond the Mission Statement

Being customer centric seems to have become the in thing to talk about amongst CEOs, PR professionals and just about everyone else. But just because you have the right buzz words in your mission statement doesn’t mean you’re walking the walk. When someone attaches the customer centric tag to a company, they are referring to:

An approach to doing business in which a company focuses on creating a positive consumer experience at the point of sale and post-sale. A customer-centric approach can add value to a company by differentiating themselves from competitors who do not offer the same experience.

But what company would tout that they aren’t customer centric? No CEO would ever publicly say, “We know our customer service is crap, but after we have your money, we really don’t care all that much.” Even when power and phone companies were legal monopolies, they did their best to feign interest in what customers had to say. A new generation of companies like Whole Foods, Best Buy, Starbucks and Zappos have radically altered their industries and business in general with their attention to customer satisfaction above all else. Because these companies have had astronomical success, their customer centric mantras have become part of corporate lexicon and lore.

Sticking Feathers in Your Butt Doesn’t Make You a Chicken

Being a customer centric company doesn’t just happen; it has to be designed. Reading Tony Hsieh’s book, telling your market facing employees to focus on customer service and adding some lines to a mission statement no one reads isn’t going to get the job done. This isn’t a “fake it until you make it” scenario, it’s a holistic business philosophy. Here’s how some of the most successful customer centric companies do it:

People

When it comes to a complete focus on customer satisfaction, your entire organization has to participate or you can forget about truly earning the customer centric label. Being customer centric starts with the CEO and goes down through to the receptionists, salesmen and other “foot soldiers.” No matter how big your company is, if you don’t lead by example then you’re going to lose the customer satisfaction war. The companies that are touted as being the best customer centric businesses, put intense emphasis on how a potential worker fits in with the business culture more than traditional measurements like experience, education and so on. This creates an army of like minded individuals, all working for the same goal.

Policies

Most customer service reps are judged on the volume of calls they handle and the time in which they handle them. Their promotions, pay and bonuses are usually tied to these metrics; thus they get people off the phone as quick as possible. Zappos flipped the script on that thinking and rewards their customer service reps by a set of standards that include customer feedback, the amount of customer problems solved and how they use their discretionary budgets to find unique solutions to problems. Make your company’s policies conducive to achieving your customer centric ideals and you will reap the rewards. Get in your own way and you will self destruct.

Pay

In conjunction with both of the above, reward your people appropriately to inspire them to do the right thing for the customer, not the immediate bottom line. Companies like Best Buy and Whole Foods have CEO salaries that are comparatively minuscule to other companies of similar sizes. This enables them to pay more for the day to day workers that will make or break their customer service goals. They also give incentives to more workers to promote the organization’s growth. In most companies 75% of stock options are given out to the top 5 executives with the remaining 25% landing in the hands of the managers the next level down. At Whole foods the top 16 executives have only received 7% of the total stock options ever distributed.

February 15, 2011 John Paul Narowski Leave a comment

How To Raise Your Google Rank

When it comes down to your website Google ranks relies on two different areas of criteria. The first part is your search results, and the second is your sites page rank or pr.

Googles Definition of Search Results and Page Rank

By Google definition your search results are where you are located on a page when your site is searched and that search is done by keywords. Most people searching for something specific target the first 3 sites that Google brings up when searching, so the closer you are to that, the better your site ranking will be. Googles definition of pagerank is based on a website score of 0-10. The higher the score the more influence your site has. There are only 17 sites that currently hold a 10 value with Google, and you can see these sites here. Most of the 8’s and 9’s will be sites with .edu or .gov, but your site can still have a chance to gain a 6 or 7. Page rankings are only updated a few times a year by Google, so that will allow you to find out what your site is ranking, and what you need to do to improve that score.

How To Check Your Score:

There are a few good tools out there that site owners can use to check their page rank with google. One of the most popular is Google Pagerank Checker. This tool allows you to add your URL to see your current pagerank of your website. It also gives you a code that you can add to your website so that you are able to monitor if your rank goes up or down over time. This is a great tool to have if you are currently working on improving your rank. By using this you will be able to tell if what you are implementing is working.

How To Improve Your Page Ranking and Search Results

Link Building: Google is currently using behavior and real traffic patterns to gage their results. Your results aren’t based on how many links that you have listed on your site pointing back to different pages about you, but by how many sites other have your link pointing back to you. The best way of achieving or generating reciprocal links is by doing these things: Guest Blogging – gives you quality content links from recognized, relevant sources Link Baiting – hard to bait the hook, but you may catch a big one Press Releases – may be picked up by larger media outlets and then receive quality links Joint Ventures – always good to partner and share links Building Social Communities – become a focal point that attracts a targeted community to get their links and some of the areas that aren’t working as well as they used to, not saying that they don’t work at all, you just won’t see results as fast as you would by implementing the items above: Blogging – Forum posting and commenting Social Bookmarking – good benefits, but don’t expect it to greatly influence PageRank Article Submission – best to submit to top directories, quality not quantity Bulk Directory Submission – forget about it! Bulk Link Exchange – this will get you banned

Use Long Tail Keywords

This is a type of keyword phrase that has at least three, and some times as many as five words in the phrase. Long tail keywords are used when the website wants to refine search terms to the web page, as well as when the searcher is looking for something rather specific. Like normal keywords, long tail keywords are used to define what is on the web page and what the publisher wants to be found under in search engines and on search engine results pages. These keywords are highly specific, and draw less traffic for the website, but tend to draw more quality traffic, which leads in more conversions than normal keywords. They may not be as common or searched for as often as a single keyword, but long tail keywords will have a lot less competition, giving you a better chance to rank in the first few spots, or at least land you on the first page of a Google Search.

Quality vs Quantity

When it comes top ranking and search results for your site the important factor lies in relevant content and links. You don’t want a slew of sites that have nothing to do with your niche sharing reciprocal links because that won’t do you any good. You want the sites that have your audience in mind sharing your link with you as well as you sharing their link with your viewers.

February 7, 2011 John Paul Narowski Leave a comment

Do You Know Your Facebook Privacy Settings?

I just got done reading a fascinating article on Mashable in regards to the top 10 Facebook privacy settings that everyone should know about. They went over some very important information and how messy these privacy settings get because Facebook does change their layout often.

Below are a few of these privacy settings that I find to be the most important. If you would like to read the entire list you can find it here “Facebook Privacy: 10 settings every user needs to know.”

Facebook Places:

What a great option to have on Facebook, that is, if you only friend your close family. This option allows your friends to tag your specific locations around the world. Again, this is great if you only have family members on your page and everyone likes to share where there family members are during different times of the day. On the flip side if you have a mixture of friends, people you have just met, and family letting people know your daily schedule and locations it can be unsetting as well as down right dangerous. If this is something that you don’t want to enable you can follow these settings to disable this function:

Account > Privacy Settings > Sharing on Facebook > Customize Settings > Friends can check me in to Places

Public Search:

Because Facebook’s information is indexed into the major search engines as well as it being its on search engine people are able to type in your information and pull up your profile. If you haven’t turned on some of your privacy settings for your page people searching for you will be able to see a preview of your public profile.

Many companies also use Social Media sites as a background check or to check in on their employees from time to time, so if there are items on your page that you don’t want to share with others make sure that your public search option is disabled. You can do this by following the settings below:

Account > Privacy Settings > Apps and Websites > Public Search

Are you taking the time?

There are many more privacy settings on Facebook that you should be aware of so that your account is being displayed in the manner that fits you. It may take a little longer to setup and organize, but your privacy or lack of is something that shouldn’t be taken lightly.

February 4, 2011 John Paul Narowski Leave a comment

Are You in Front of the Right Customers?

Two professional poker players are talking about a fellow player and friend of theirs. One asks, “Player X is the 6th best 7-card stud player in the world. So why is he always broke?”

The other responds, “He only plays with the other top 5 players.”

Success in any venture boils down to who you surround yourself with. Player X could have dominated almost any 7-card stud game in the world, but instead he chose to play in Las Vegas with the 5 people who could regularly beat him.

Likewise, if you want to see professional success, you have to put yourself in front of the right kind of customers. If you just charge out there and start throwing money at advertising and marketing with no plan, you’re not going to see a positive ROI or a smile on your accountant’s face.

Sniper Rifle, Not Shotgun

Your marketing is a weapon; use it correctly or it’s worthless. You are a soldier in the marketing war and your mission is to “take out” that perfect customer.

You’re not going to get the job done by firing a shotgun randomly and hoping you hit something. You need to know your target inside and out, wait for them where they are most likely to be and fire your high powered marketing sniper rifle at the perfect time.

Knowing “The Right Customer”

It doesn’t matter if you’re selling nuclear powered submarines or hot dogs, you need to know who is most likely to buy your product. At the very least, you need to know your average customer’s:

Gender
Age
Average purchase (items, revenue, profit, etc)
Interests
Income level

Look over your current client list and sales data to get this information. People that have bought from you before and people like them are more likely to buy from you again. Learn who this average customer is and put yourself in their shoes.

Be Waiting for Them

Do you know why most hunters stay in one place for hours at a time? They know they will have better luck achieving their goal if they just stay long enough at a place their prey frequents.

That needs to be you!

If you sell denture cream, why would you put an ad on Facebook? Yes, the social media juggernaut has 500 million+ active members, but how many of them want to buy your product?

It’s All About Timing

While Facebook has revolutionized advertising and marketing in many ways, it is deficient in one main area. When you log in, you’re there to connect with friends, look at pictures and be social. You’re not necessarily in a buying state of mind. While this problem can be addressed easily and effectively through the use of Fan Pages, that is beyond the scope of this post.

On the other hand, when I open Google and search for “best wetsuit reviews”, “wetsuit sale” or “free shipping wetsuit”, I am making my intentions very clear. I am in buying mode and am ready to pry open my wallet.

Trade shows, large sales events and even garage sales are all great examples of hitting a customer when they are already mentally prepared to buy. Whether it’s online or not, find out when your potential clients are more apt to buy things from you and be waiting for them.

Less Work, More Results

By implementing a marketing system like this, you will put yourself in the best possible position to sell to people who are most likely to buy your product. Follow Pareto’s 80/20 Rule and focus on the small percentage of your customers that bring in the most revenue and ditch that 80% that burns through your time, resources and patience.

Happy hunting…

February 3, 2011 John Paul Narowski Leave a comment

7 Reasons Why Social Media Isn’t a Waste of Time

As social media’s popularity explodes, more businesses are throwing their hat into the social marketing ring. Unfortunately, there is a misconception that all you have to do is set up a Twitter account and Facebook page, post about your daily activities and a tsunami of traffic will slam through your virtual doors, begging you to take their money. When this doesn’t happen, the social media hype hangover kicks in and businesses write off the whole experience as a waste of time. With billions of people using social media around the world, this is a mistake no business can afford to make. Here’s seven reasons why social media is not a waste of time:

Building Lasting Relationships: While you might not make a sale on that first visit, your social media profiles are giving you a chance to build a lasting relationship with visitors. Use your posts, profiles, comments and other interactions to turn visitors into readers and readers into customers.
Creating Touches: While the number varies, most studies on sales show that you have to have multiple interactions or “touches” with potential clients before they buy from you. The more times you get in front of your potential customers, the more likely they are to buy from you down the line.
Adding a Personal Side: People like to buy things and services from people they know and like. They will often pay more, go out of their way and even accept lesser quality products if they like you. Social media marketing gives you the ability to become more than an anonymous collection of 1’s and 0’s.
Content Distribution Opportunities: The different social media platforms you use give you more outlets for your best content, link bait, recommendations, reviews and so on.
Customer Service: If you don’t want to or can’t spring for a full-fledged customer service department or employee, then you can use social media to handle those duties.
Low Cost: Social media marketing is relatively cheap compared to other forms of advertising and branding. As long as you have an Internet connection and an email address, you can start. Even tools that help you automate or amplify your social media marketing aren’t that expensive. If you run a larger enterprise a full time social media employee can reap huge rewards for relative little investment.
Little Risk, Huge Rewards: With such a low cost to start and virtually no barriers to entry, there is little risk to starting up a social media campaign. Done correctly, and in conjunction with other marketing efforts, huge benefits can be reaped.

Social media is just another tool available for your marketing arsenal; it’s not a miracle cure or the Holy Grail of marketing. Like any tool, if you know how to use it correctly, then you’ll get the results you’re looking for.