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| Josh Carr |
I have been trying some interesting new tools for keyword research and I think it could spill over into voice of customer research as well.
In this example I am building a tag cloud from a twitter search for "marketing"
#flylady listening to Christmas AT&T obama OR mccain DavidFeinstein Starbucks Prime_Concepts istanbul DarrinSearancke marketingjob flight 
coolkay #haiku mediamanx cool filter:links http://twurl.nl/ipeff3 marketingjob _bambinaSo you are thinking "great josh more geeky stuff that I will never use thanks for wasting my time." But guess what. You can use this too. Check it out. Take your brand name and put it anywhere you want twitter search, google search, etc. now copy the website address, go to http://www.makecloud.com and paste the website address in the box and press the button that says "get tag cloud code". Then sit back and be amazed at all the insights you will collect. You just saved yourself thousands of dollars on voice of customer research. You already know what words are most frequently associated with your brand name or category name.
Try this yourself and let me know if you find anything interesting or insightful
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| admin |
Hired Help
The pros and cons of hiring independent contractors
In entrepreneur Bruce Law’s former life at a corporation, his unit’s regular work virtually came to a stop at the same time every year when a certain big annual project was due. Today, Law, 46, keeps his company’s wheels turning during both fast and slow times by using a corps of independent contractors to provide flexible, skilled help just when he needs it.
"We use [independent contractors] for two reasons: flexibility and variety," says the founder and president of Salt Lake City-based Sprout Marketing, which has 15 employees and 30 to 40 people on contract at any time. "You don’t have issues of hiring and firing and morale. You can scale up and then scale back if something doesn’t pan out. And you’ve got fresh ideas. You get experience from different areas, and you can bring that experience when you need it without trying to hire a full-timer."
The number of entrepreneurs who subscribe to Law’s way of thinking is growing steadily. Of every 100 workers engaged by entrepreneurs in June, 3.54 were contractors as opposed to regular W-2 employees, according to the SurePayroll Contractor Index. The payroll service reports that June marked the fifth straight month in which entrepreneurs increased their contractor use.
Financial flexibility and added expertise are key contractor benefits, agrees Rebecca Mazin, an HR consultant and co-author of The HR Answer Book. In addition, she says, entrepreneurs seem to use contractors more intelligently than they do regular employees. "When you hire a contractor, you tend to be more specific about what you need done than if you’re hiring an employee," she explains.
Contractors can also present significant hurdles. Improperly classifying employees as subcontractors is a common way to run afoul of wage and hour laws and risk fines and other penalties, Mazin says. Because they aren’t usually vetted as thoroughly as employees, contractors probably shouldn’t have access to confidential information, she adds. To avoid wage and hour complaints, Mazin advises treating contractors well, paying them fairly and on time, and avoiding teaming them with employees who receive benefits and other added compensation for doing the same job.
Law warns against counting on any given contractor to be available when needed for a new project and says they can be hard to find compared to regular job candidates. He networks with other entrepreneurs to build a database of potential contractors and says he adds a couple of names a month to his list of potential contractors. He expects to continue using contractors to keep his company healthy. "I want to keep our overhead in control," he explains. "But I want to do lots of projects."
—By Mark Henricks, who writes on business and technology for leading publications and is author of Not Just a Living.
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| Josh Carr |
The Ghana Journeys Website is up!
Those of you who are long time Sproutians will remember Stephen Abu. Everyone who meets Stephen loves him because he never stops smiling. Well a couple years ago Stephen left Sprout to do bigger and better things. He was starting a company called "Ghana Journeys" They provide travel resources to people interested in visiting Ghana or West Africa. Over the last couple years we have worked slowly but surely to get Stephen what he needs. We are his marketing departement here in the states as he splits his time between Utah and Ghana.
The Ghana Journeys logo won a design award in the AIGA 100 show last year. We are pretty proud of that.
Congrats to the Ghana Journeys team on getting your website launched. It looks great and the content is awesome and still growing.
| admin |
This past weekend my family and I helped out a friend. We walked in the Diabetes walk in Orem, UT. While we walked our friend told us all about JDRF…www.jdrf.org/. It is amazing how many people are affected by diabetes–both types I and II. It is also amazing how life-changing it is for those who are afflicted by the disease. Our friend told us about his journey and how it has completely changed his life and his family’s too.
As I walked 3+ miles with my six-year-olds and nine-year-old I thought about how diabetes has a bad brand and, hence, has to deal with miscontrued messaging. In the general media and public diabetes is an outcome of obesity or poor health; yet, this is not true. For the majority of people it is a genetic disease and cannot be avoided or prevented, unfortunately.
With research dollars tight around the country and causes fighting for space in the public sector, it would behoove JDRF to build more evangelists in their patients and help educate the population. I am sure they are working on their messaging and brand. But for right now they are an example of how mass communication can skew a message negatively.
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| Josh Carr |
Have you been to Ogden Lately? Apparently it is a happening place. Alan Hall, Bruce Law, and Dave Clark went over to the Solomon Center after a UTC meeting. Here is a video of Bruce "flowriding" (thats what cool people call this according to google)
We may have to jump on frontrunner and take a trip to Ogden.
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