Blog

How To Be The Most Interesting Man in the World

Posted on: November 7th, 2011 by Greg Baugues

In September I had the opportunity to give a lightning talk (a five minute presentation) to Windy City Rails – a conference of over 200 Ruby on Rails programmers from all over the midwest.

The title of my presentation was How to Be The Most Interesting Man In The World. Sadly, I am not The Most Interesting Man In the World. The more accurate title would be “How to have a conversation with anyone and have them feel that it was the most interesting conversation they’ve had all day”… but that doesn’t fit on a single slide in 60 point font.

Though I work in business development for Table XI, my background is in computer programming. Talking to people is not something that comes naturally to me – for most of my childhood I shared in the social anxieties that make for the stereotypes of software developers. My talk was about lessons I’ve learned for hacking face-to-face conversations and how I learned to talk to people by treating it as an engineering challenge.

The video of the lightning round talks were just posted online. You can find mine at the 20:40 mark below. (Sadly, Vimeo doesn’t have an option to deeplink to a specific time in a video, but you can skip there once it has loaded to that point.)

Lightning Talks from ChicagoRuby on Vimeo.

Posted in Table XI Blog | Comments Off

Social Media and the Tangled Web

Posted on: October 28th, 2011 by admin

This week we were joined by clients from Strange Cargo, The Spice House,  Chicago Dryer, Facing Disability and new friends including IC Stars to discuss launching, maintaining and measuring social media programs. And the only thing more fun than getting a room full of smart people together is brainstorming over Ellen’s delicious lasagna.

Are you interested in social media but not sure where to get started? Download this Table XI social media checklist to kickstart your thinking, and tell us how it goes. Already have a social media program in place? We want to hear from you. What was one thing you wished you knew before you got started?

Stay tuned for a schedule of upcoming Lunch n’ Learns. Next time, we hope you’ll join us at the Table.

 

Posted in Table XI Blog | Comments Off

Why Video Is Worth It

Posted on: October 19th, 2011 by Kate Garmey

Video is a powerful marketing tool, but it’s often underutilized. Videos can be entertaining, informative, and educational, and when done properly, provide marketing value in three primary areas:

  1. Establishing Trust: Well-produced videos provide an engaging way to bring your company culture to life, demonstrate a product, or establish credibility. Businesses from corporations to nonprofits can benefit from customer testimonials, which are powerful ways to build trust with your audience.
  2. Search & Discovery: That’s right—video can improve your search rankings. YouTube is the world’s largest video search engine, second only to Google in terms of volume. Additionally, since videos can be shared through social channels, they give you an opportunity to drive traffic virally. If you’re hosting your videos on YouTube, be sure you have a catchy title, tags, and descriptions full of keywords (YouTube even has a handy keyword tool to help you out). By properly optimizing your video for SEO, your content is 53 times more likely to land on the front page of a Google search (Forrester, January 2010).
  3. Conversion: Whether you’re a nonprofit or an online retailer, adding videos to your site gives you the opportunity to engage and activate your audience and influence consumer behavior. Retail site visitors who view videos stay two minutes longer on average and are 64% more likely to purchase than other site visitors (Comscore, August 2010).

Check out more promising statistics for video marketing at Invodo. Then try on your director’s cap and roll camera!

We’re working with several of our clients to develop and implement video strategies. If you’re interested in exploring the possibilities of video, drop us a line at info@tablexi.com.

Tags: ,
Posted in Digital Marketing, E-Commerce, SEO, Table XI Blog | Comments Off

More than Corn in Indiana

Posted on: October 19th, 2011 by Kathryn Achenbach

You wouldn’t know it unless you were looking, but over the last few years, Indianapolis has developed quite the booming tech startup scene.

The Combine is a tech conference going on this weekend in Bloomington, IN, which hopes to nurture this environment by tapping into the talent coming out of Indiana University’s Kelley School of Business, one of the country’s consistently top-ranked business schools.

Our own Greg Baugues will be speaking at the conference at 10am this Saturday, Oct. 22, giving a presentation called “How to Be the Most Interesting Man in the World.” It’s a talk about hacking face-to-face conversations and the lessons he’s learned for making the most of networking opportunities.

Are you headed to The Combine? What are you looking forward to seeing—besides Greg’s talk, of course?

Tags: ,
Posted in Conferences | Comments Off

It’s So Meta

Posted on: October 10th, 2011 by Greg Baugues

In working with our clients to create highly visible websites, we’ve found that there’s a lot of confusion out there about meta tags and their value in search optimization.

Meta means “about”; thus, meta tags are html tags that give information about your webpage to search engines. The three most common meta tags are titles, descriptions, and keywords.

Meta Titles

A page’s title is one of the most important factors for search engine optimization, and is weighted heavily by Google to determine a site’s relevance and content. Meta titles not only affect ranking, but are displayed as the headline (the part you click on) in search results. Use unique, keyword rich titles for each page; if you want to include your site name, place it to the right of the title that describes the page’s specific content.

Meta Descriptions

Meta descriptions don’t have much effect on a site’s rank, but Google often uses them to characterize a page in search results, and an appealing description can garner you more click-throughs. When writing a meta description, think about what will make someone want to click on your link, rather than the twenty others on the page. Make sure it’s quick and to the point—it shouldn’t be more than two sentences. For more details, check out Google’s guide to picking good meta descriptions.

Meta Keywords

Many people think that meta keywords are the secrets to search engine success, and historically, they did determine rankings. Unfortunately, these keywords became too easily abused—people simply stuffed in popular but irrelevant keywords like “Britney Spears” to get traffic—and Google now openly states that meta tag keywords are no longer a factor in determining web rankings. So don’t waste your time coming up with the perfect meta keywords—it’s much more important to have well crafted meta titles and descriptions when it comes to seeing search results.

Tech Tip: If you use WordPress, you can install the All In One SEO Pack or SEO Ultimate plugin to easily change meta-tags.

Tags: , , , , ,
Posted in SEO, Table XI Blog | Comments Off

Get ‘Em Young: Developing Kid Programmers

Posted on: September 26th, 2011 by Greg Baugues

Most programmers at Table XI ended up here because, at a young age, we started tinkering with technology. Like many computer science majors, our programming careers started way before our 18th birthdays and freshman years. The trick to developing programmers is to get them young, before they’ve “learned” that programming is too hard to attempt—to catch them while curiosity still overpowers beliefs of intellectual limitations.

For this reason, we’re big fans of Happynerds.net, a collection of resources that helps kids learn to program. Kids interested in computers see programming as digital legos—a creative outlet rife with instant gratification and intellectual stimulation, where you start with a blank screen and build anything you can imagine. By the time we reach adulthood, those who’ve never tried programming have been taught that it’s too difficult, and best left for the mathematically gifted and socially challenged.

This is having a big impact on the state of the industry. Computer science programs across the country have seen a 40% reduction in enrollment over the last decade, leaving a talent drought for programmers. Despite high national unemployment, in 2009, computer science grads from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign averaged 2.3 job offers with an average starting salary of more than $72,000. So parents, if your child shows an interest in computers, check out the links at Happynerds and see if you can find resources to help encourage it.

If you’re already an accomplished programmer, we’re hiring! To inquire about our job listings, shoot us a line at jobs@tablexi.com.

 

Tags: , ,
Posted in On Our Radar, Table XI Blog, Web Development | Comments Off

Tech Tip: Gmail Add-ons

Posted on: September 26th, 2011 by Kathryn Achenbach

In our constant quest to make our email practices as efficient as possible, we’ve rounded up some of our favorite applications that enhance Gmail’s usage.

  • Taskforce. This free application allows you to turn emails into tasks, organize them in customized lists, share them with others, and set reminders. The manager lives in the upper right corner of your inbox, so it’s easy to access tasks and check them off once you complete them. Taskforce works well in collaborative environments, too, since it allows you to share tasks and track progress among teams.
  • Rapportive. We’ve written about this app before, but it’s so useful we had to mention it again. Rapportive publishes rich contact information right inside your inbox, using a sender’s email address to find and display that sender’s social network details in a panel next to the message. Without leaving your inbox you can see your contact’s picture, company, title, recent tweets, and links to Facebook and LinkedIn profiles—all valuable info for putting new contacts into context.
  • Follow Up Then. We’re so inundated with new email that once a message leaves the inbox, it can be hard to remember who and what needs following up. Enter Follow Up Then, an app that’s so easy you don’t even have to sign up for the service or visit the website. To follow up with someone in two days, BCC an email to 2days@followupthen.com; to follow up in a week, BCC 1week@followupthen.com. How simple is that?
Tags: , , , ,
Posted in Table XI Blog, Tech Tip | Comments Off

Flying Cart’s Rishi Shah Talks SaaS Pricing

Posted on: September 21st, 2011 by Greg Baugues 2 Comments

While attending Social Dev Camp last month, I sat in on Rishi Shah’s talk about pricing for Software as a Service (SaaS). Rishi is the CEO of Flying Cart, a service that helps people set up and host their own online stores, and a company that he founded in Chicago before moving it out to San Francisco. In his session, Rishi discussed what’s worked best for him, as well as what he’s learned by studying several SaaS companies like Chicago-based 37signals, which has been the leader in SaaS pricing using a tiered subscription model. Having made the jump to becoming a fulltime entrepreneur (and also as the voice behind the appropriately titled business blog GettingMoreAwesome.com), Rishi is a great role model for anyone looking to start an online business. He was gracious enough to answer some of my questions after the conference.

Who is a good target client for Flying Cart, and why would they use your service? 

Flying Cart is the easiest way to create an online store. Our target client is someone on Etsy or eBay who wants to branch out and start their own brand. The customers that do the best have products ready to sell and are vocal about it on the blogosphere.

Personally, my favorite customers are the super niche stores. They really dominate because e-tailers like Amazon aren’t selling their products, and they show up #1 on Google right after they start a store—sometimes in minutes!

I wrote a blog post about how to win with an online store here.

On the topic of SaaS pricing, what insights have you learned from testing? Has testing and iteration been an important part of your success?

I wouldn’t consider myself a success at this point. We are still a very small team. Unfortunately we do very little testing, not because we don’t want to, but we just don’t have the bandwidth right now. Currently all the testing we do goes to helping customers sell more products.

Here are a few things we have learned about our own pricing model:

  1. Launch with a free model. This way you can iterate on your current product.
  2. If you don’t have a free plan, offer a 30-day free trial.
  3. A $12 package will work better than a $14.99 package.
  4. An $11.99 package will work better than a $12 package.
  5. A $9.99 package will work better than an $11.99 package.
  6. Put your highest package on the left so the customer sees it first. By comparison your cheapest package will look even cheaper.

(more…)

Tags: , , , , ,
Posted in Conferences, E-Commerce, On Our Radar, Table XI Blog, The Experts Say... | 2 Comments »

I’m on Facebook…Now What?

Posted on: September 19th, 2011 by Kate Garmey

Facebook is now home to more than 750 million active users, and each month those users share more than 30 billion pieces of content, including web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, and photo albums. But while most brands understand the value in establishing a presence on Facebook, the question we hear more and more is, “I know I need to be there, but now that I am, what do I say?”

In honor of Social Media Week, which starts today, here are five guiding principles for developing a Facebook editorial calendar aimed at building your fan base and increasing engagement:

  1. Invite your fans to participate in something bigger than themselves. Provide your fans with insider access and help them feel like they’re a part of something special. Ask their opinions, poll them, and use their responses to inform a business decision. For example, if you’re a retail company, ask for help naming a new product. If you’re a nonprofit, use Facebook to mobilize fundraising.
  2. Provide exclusive content that fans can’t find on your site. Strengthen your personal connection to your fans by giving them “behind the scenes” photos, videos, or updates that aren’t available elsewhere.
  3. Feature your community and fans. Give members bragging rights. Do your fans or followers write about you? Syndicate one of their articles and thank them publicly. If you’re a retailer, choose a “customer of the week,” or invite fans to take pictures with your products and add them to a community photo gallery.
  4. Shill sparingly, but give Facebook fans the inside scoop on new shipments, contests, or coupons. Your fans should be the first to know about new arrivals and deals. Provide photos when possible, and always include the related direct link to your site.
  5. Offer relevant and seasonal news updates. Set up a Google Reader so you can keep track of related industry or local news, then use Facebook to talk about it. If your company hosts a function, participates in a speaking event, or is covered in the news, be sure to post links and photos.

Just remember—once your brand is on Facebook, commit to it. Post frequently so fans know what they can expect, and establish a consistent tone and point of view that closely align with your brand identity.

Want to learn more? We’d like to invite you to get social with us. Table XI will be hosting a free “Social Media Best Practices” lunch-and-learn next month, where we’ll discuss best practices, moderation, and measurement of social media. If you’re interested in joining us at the Table, please send an email to kate@tablexi.com so we can send you details.

Tags: , , , ,
Posted in Digital Marketing, Table XI Blog, The Experts Say... | Comments Off

Welcome, Alicia!

Posted on: September 16th, 2011 by Kathryn Achenbach

We’re happy to announce that Alicia Drucker, our new Project Manager and Business Analyst, has joined the TXI team! Previously, Alicia honed her project management and business analysis experience at DRW Trading and IT consultancy Thoughtworks. A graduate of Northwestern, she served as an executive board member of the university’s Dance Marathon charity, one of the largest student-run philanthropies in the world. After finishing school, Alicia moved to Japan for a year to teach English, and she currently tutors 4th–6th graders at the Metro Achievement Center for girls. In her down time, Alicia competes in triathlons and races, and sings in Aria, a Chicago community choir.

Drop her a line at alicia@tablexi.com.

Tags: , ,
Posted in Table XI Blog, Things That Make Us Happy | Comments Off