Radiant Core: Michael Glenn

Guerrilla Marketing Tactics for Online Publishers

Tue, 29 Jan 2008 09:00:00 GMT

Our good friend Will Pate has a great presentation on Guerrilla Marketing Tactics for Online Publishers from nextMedia - Monetizing Digital Media. It's a handful of spot on tips for online promotion we recommend to all our clients.

Congratulations Mr. and Mrs. Goldman!

Sun, 19 Aug 2007 19:00:00 GMT

It was four years ago that Jay and I started Radiant Core and approximately four years ago that he embarked on his journey with the lovely Bianca. I'm proud to announce that after four successful years with Radiant Core Jay has reached another remarkable goal and bound his life together with Bianca in a ceremony at the Carlu that expressed Jay and Bianca's unique and elegant style.

Congratulations to the happy couple from all of us at Radiant Core!

CityTV Homepage - Facebook

Wed, 08 Aug 2007 16:25:00 GMT

Jay will be appearing once again on CP24's Homepage with Amber MacArthur. Hot on the heals of Facebook Camp Jay will be discussing Facebook applications, specifically finding, installing and information on building your very own. Catch the show today at 5PM and 11:35PM.

A Home Run Doesn't Have to be Perfect

Thu, 28 Jun 2007 14:20:00 GMT

Some very lucky journalists with international reach have had the privilege to have a hands on review of the highly anticipated iPhone to be released this Friday the 29th in the U.S. For months now we've been treated to speculation, rumour, high praise and scorn for a device that very few had a chance to physically experience. Hands on reviews have finally started to come out and it appears that the iPhone is a home run but that it isn't perfect. Which is just as it should be.

Apple understands that you can have a hit but not be perfect. The iPhone is both revolutionary but also in a sense in its infancy. Both Walt Mossberg's review and David Pogue's review praise the phone for it's refreshing approach to a cellular phone and also point out its shortcomings.

When developing concepts with clients we often need to exercise restraint on our ambition to make the perfect product. Often the long list of features that a website "needs" will in the end hurt a product more than help it. Features, Time and Cost are the three factors which we trade off against each other when developing products. You can have more of one but at the loss of the other two. We typically draw a triangle for our clients where their product is a dot within it and the factors which they must trade off against are the three points within the triangle.

Jason Fried also refers to this concept as the The Product Triangle.

The iPhone for instance trades cost for features but trades features for time. Sure the iPhone could have done more in the first revision, but you probably wouldn't have seen it until 2008.

On any single version of a product you cannot achieve all three corners on the triangle. You can choose to emphasize one factor and it will in turn de-emphasize the other two. Conversely if you de-emphasize one factor it will emphasize the other two. For instance, if you wanted to build your own version of an iPhone by tomorrow, no matter how much money you had the number of features available would quickly approach zero.

Since I'm in Canada I'll have to wait for the deal between Rogers and Apple to shakeout and hopefully a slight reduction in price. By then I'm hoping Apple will be ready to hit another home run with a second revision.

Batter up!

2002 Called

Mon, 09 Apr 2007 22:15:00 GMT

"If all the newspapers in America did not allow Google to steal their content for nothing, what would Google do, and how profitable would Google be?" the Chicago real estate maverick [Sam Zell] mused.

His answer: Not very. - Papers, Web firms need 'a new deal,' Zell says, Los Angeles Times

Dear Mr. Zell, 2002 called, they want their business model back.

I'm sure this is simply a PR stunt but on the off chance that it's not or other publishers forget how value flows on the Internet let me clarify. Links build value.

The attention economy is still alive and well online and newspapers like all publications don't make money unless they have eyeballs. It's just as true in the virtual world as it is in the paper based world. Mr. Zell believes that Google should owe his newest takeover Tribune Co. money because of their limited aggregation of its content through services such as Google News. It's interesting to note that currently Google News does not populate its pages with AdWords like its search results but instead drives traffic to news properties that may or may not run AdWords. Essentially Google News is a traffic driver that has an optional AdWords model at the end but it is the publication's choice to participate. Otherwise you're welcome to simply enjoy the traffic it provides you and sell your own ads.

The deal is apparently a financial steal for Zell but the admitted newcomer is peddling some old ideas that Old Media had previously failed to understand when Google News first launched in Beta; links provide eyeballs and eyeballs drive revenue. If Mr. Zell would prefer not to have Google index his site there's a simple fix to cut himself off from search engines. Personally we find Google drives a significant amount of traffic, but his mileage may vary.

Welcome to the Web sir!

Filling the Well

Tue, 27 Mar 2007 22:15:00 GMT

Blogs are a wonderful tool for disseminating, discussing and promoting your ideas. I advocate them to anyone who wants to promote their business, services or ideas as it has low barriers to entry and offers a simple stage on which to publish your knowledge. It has one fatal flaw though. You have to post. In order for blogging to be successful it takes commitment. You need to post often enough to keep your audience engaged.

My business partner Jay has been rather successful at posting frequently and has reminded those of us at Radiant Core who post less often that we're batting below .500 and the world is missing out on all our fantastic ideas. Unfortunately, creative writing doesn't come easy to all of us and the urge to write strikes us even less. But when the creative juices start flowing it's a good time to turn on the hose and fill up the well.

Make sure you keep a running list of ideas handy. If you don't have a Blackberry or other such device for taking down notes may I suggest a compact form of note taking, the Hipster PDA popularized by Merlin Mann of 43 Folders. When a idea strikes you that you're passionate about and would share with the world or even share with a few people, write it down with a small summary to blog about when you have time.

Now, just having an idea doesn't make the post write itself. I have lots of ideas but usually by the time I get home I have little energy to write. When the mood does strike you though, head for the list and start in on the topics that interest you. Keep writing for as long as you have the motivation to do so and perhaps a little more. Sometimes the act of writing is enough to make you want to write more.

But don't post them. At least not all of them at once. Save your blog posts unless they're time sensitive to publish over a period of time. Depending on the frequency of your literary motivation you may have enough to post once a week or a few times a week but try to space them out so you can have a predictable posting frequency. I find that the bloggers I read most often are those that can be relied upon to post at least once a week. Those that post daily I keep in higher viewing rotation. I have no scientific data to back me up on this but a flurry of blog posts followed by weeks of silence isn't going to help in increasing readership.

Regular trips back to the well will help to keep your audience thirsting for more.

Ikea Ecommerce

Mon, 19 Mar 2007 11:00:00 GMT

E-commerce has never been more accessible than ever before. There are several solutions available from completely custom developed solutions to variations on pre-packaged solutions. The difficulty still remains connecting your real world systems with your virtual world systems, specifically, inventory management.

Several weeks ago I needed to order more desks for new employees starting at Radiant Core. I went to the Ikea website as they have very cost effective table tops and legs. The Ikea website is well organized and aesthetically pleasing. I was able to easily locate and add items to my shopping cart. I ordered three new table tops, 12 legs and one adjustable leg replacement for an existing desk. I then proceeded to check-out where I supplied all the standard checkout contact information. I was then presented with an interesting note that indicated my order would be confirmed by a phone call from an Ikea representative within 24-48 hours.

Frustrated but not dismayed I waited for my Ikea confirmation. Sure enough there was a voice message on my phone the next afternoon asking me to please contact Ikea to speak with a representative. I called the number back and was put on hold for approximately 15 minutes. When I finally was transferred to an agent she proceeded to confirm my order. Unfortunately the information she was reciting back wasn't quite correct. I clarified that it was 12 standard legs and one adjustable leg as opposed to four standard legs she was reading back. I then inquired about the table tops when she let me know rather irritated that the order did not list table tops. I begged to disagree seeing that I was looking at my copy of the invoice and there were clearly three table tops listed. She sighed and asked for the product codes on my invoice. "Oh, we don't ship those" she replied after looking them up. Don't ship them? Why are they listed on the website with the ability to add them to a shopping cart. "Do you still want the legs?" she asked. "To attach to what? No thank you please cancel my order".

Two days later another Ikea representative called and asked me what had happened with my cancelled order. I retold the story and he responded by letting me know that unfortunately the Ikea website is sometimes out of date with available stock and that table would be removed, but that they had tables slightly larger if I was still interested. I agreed and he re-created the order and then informed me that my shipping cost would constitute about 40% of my order and take approximately two week to deliver. "No thank you, please cancel my order."

Ikea seems to suffer from two interconnected data issues. Their inventory system is clearly not connected to their website as weeks after my problem the table tops were still available online. Second, their e-commerce system is not connected to the same system their call representatives have to calculate shipping prices.

Furthermore, Ikea seems to have supply chain issues. Orders can take about two weeks to fulfill but this isn't clearly stated during checkout. I could drive ten minutes to the nearest Ikea if I need them more quickly. Their website can tell you if the item you're interested is in stock in a particular store but not how many, for that you have to call the store. Don't call their 1-888 number for this though as my first call representative indicated that she couldn't check stock for me. I've spoken to various people that all tell of Ikea out of stock situations where the employees could not even speculate as to when new inventory would be arriving.

Bridging the gap between retail inventory and online systems can be challenging. Inventory systems should ideally be synchronized but even then there is no way to guarantee stock when it may be depleted in a retail situation. In addition, all major courier services provide real-time web services that calculate accurate shipping information such as cost that you can immediately pass on to your customer at checkout time.

Ikea products are very affordable and work well in our office environment. But I think I'll be driving to a local store to make my next purchase.

The Machine Is Us

Wed, 07 Feb 2007 12:05:00 GMT

Michael Wesch, Assistant Professor of Cultural Anthropology at Kansas State University provides us with an excellent video to explain Web 2.0.

Buttermilk Powder

Wed, 03 Jan 2007 14:40:00 GMT

When I'm not busy building websites I like to cook and sometimes even bake. What can I say, my mother taught me well. The Internet offers an abundance of recipes with creative ingredients. Recently my fiancé suggested a recipe for strawberry shortcake that called for buttermilk powder, which I'd never heard of before. After a fruitless trip to my local grocery store I naturally did a Google search to figure out where I could find such a product in Toronto.

Now buttermilk powder as it turns out is fairly common enough in baking but as I found out later is tough to purchase in Canada due to some sort of dairy board restrictions. It took almost half an hour of evolved searches to find references on some message boards to two stores out in the west end of the city that might have such a powder. A few phone calls later and I was back to square one as they didn't carry the powder due to the dairy board restrictions. My search ended there but a few weeks later as I was walking bast a Bulk Barn at a mall out in the Toronto suburbs I thought I would check for the miracle powder. Low and behold they carried a huge tub of it and I happily picked up a bag to store for a rainy baking day.

The Bulk Barn like many specialty shops has a fantastic opportunity online as they have the distinction of being one of the few, if the only to carry buttermilk powder. Their dizzying array of bulk products may mean that they are also the almost exclusive purveyour of many other such baking and cooking products. Yet the Bulk Barn doesn't list these items in detail on their website and therefore Google doesn't know about them. I often wonder how many budding cooks and bakers toss away recipes because they can't seem to find the exotic ingredient their latest recipe calls for.

If you are selling a niche product or service you have an excellent opportunity to be highly ranked for those items within search engines if you take the time to create a simple landing page for your products. Be sure to follow the simple search engine rules for keyword placement and also make sure that you provide location information such as city or town, province/state and country information to help dominate your geographic area if applicable.

You may be surprised how many stay at home chefs seek you out for their latest obscure creations and add you to their go-to list of exotic cooking suppliers.

Keyword Placement

Mon, 06 Nov 2006 10:00:00 GMT

David Dougherty has a great post at One Degree on developing your keyword strategy, (part two). David provides an extensive process for choosing your keywords, phrases and deciding how to structure your pages most effectively.

It's not only important what you say on your web page but it's also very important where you place content within the page. Specifically, where you place it within the HTML code. Search engines such as Google place value on content within a web page based on whether it occurs at the top of a page or farther down. Additionally, the HTML tag that the keyword is within may influence the way in which it ranks the words contained within it.

For instance, placing content within the "title" tag gives it the highest ranking of all-content within your page from the search engine's perspective. Following that, placing content in an "h1" tag will garner a much higher value than if it were placed within a styled "p" tag or "div" tag. Google naturally assumes that content marked as a header is more important than content marked as a paragraph and subsequently content within a title tag is more important than anything within a header tag. Beyond important tags such as titles and headers Google basically ranks content at the top of the page source higher than content that is lower within the page. It has been suggested anecdotally that Google places further emphasis "strong" tags.

It's also worth noting that search engines can change the way in which they analyse pages at any time. At one time it was quite useful to make use of the "meta" tags to provide hidden keywords that would help search engines optimize for page content. Unfortunately the spam community abused the feature by aggressively populating meta tags with misleading information to generate traffic. The merit of that approach is best left for another discussion but the result is that few search engines utilize the meta tag making is effectively useless.

Strong keyword strategies combined with a program to generate inbound links are your first lines of attack. But implementing these simple placement guidelines will help you get the most mileage out of your keywords.

10 things marketers might want to know about programmers

Thu, 29 Jun 2006 14:55:00 GMT

In response to Seth Godin's post about Ten things programmers might want to know about marketers.

Programming is extremely rational. If the plan is kind of like before, don't assume that the system will still work.
Programming is more difficult to schedule than marketing milestones. I can estimate all I want but sooner rather than later I'll find a bug that will completely exceed my estimates and throw my schedule way out of whack.
Most programmers have not attempted what you have requested of us and thus usually don't build a system optimally the first time. Please plan for continual iterations and we'll work together to refine the process.
Just because Larry is a brilliant marketer and a brilliant system architect doesn't mean that all marketers are brilliant system architects.
Programmers often prefer things that are inelegant, arcane or even broken too. Except when they don't. Remind them of this please.
Brilliant marketing is hard to quantify, demand or predict. Same is true with programming.
Seven is seven even when you think it doesn't exist. Computers are picky that way.
Unlike mediocre marketers, mediocre programmers occasionally get lucky. But then they have to extend their original design or pass it along to someone else and things fall apart.
Lots of programmers are dorky but not all, so don't assume your programmer is a dork unless he proves it to you.
Without coding, all your great marketing is pointless. Push your programmers for great code every day. The same is true of sales and all other components of the business. We can't survive without helping each other.

Data Lock In

Thu, 29 Jun 2006 10:15:00 GMT

This week will be my third attempt to switch our published company phone number to our new provider Unlimitel from Primus. We were previously using Primus but their services were not as flexible as Unlimitel’s and the configuration of our phones were never correct. We lived with it because it was cheaper than the alternative Bell.

Porting your phone number in Canada can take up to 30 days I’ve been told. However, the rule is that the billing address you supply to your new carrier for them to request the transfer must match the address as it appears in the originator’s records. Exactly it seems. Primus has now rejected the request twice most likely because I supplied punctuation on the address suffix and their records appear not to have a period on the suffix. They won’t actually say what doesn’t match thereby keeping me on just a bit longer to take just a bit more of my money.

In a world of increasing commodity services, where does a business hold an advantage? First movers attracting a large install base have the advantage of retaining users due to migration headaches. It’s difficult for the customer to export his data into standard formats that can be easily imported into a competing product. Memories of clients scheming to “trap” their users on their website for fear that they may go someplace else still dance in my head.

Some companies are expanding their services with XML APIs and RSS feeds but these aren’t necessarily allowing you to export your data but merely leverage the company’s services with complementary ones. Mark Pilgram recently wrote about his frustration with Apple products as he doesn’t appreciate the fact that Apple locks him into proprietary data storage formats making a transition to an alternative more difficult as time goes on.

I use services because they’re useful, not because the alternative is too painful to migrate towards. Eventually the customer will become so frustrated that they’ll jump ship anyway. Instead of competitive advance through data lock in, try retaining customers through further innovation. The more you trap me the less I like your product.

Forget the Kitchen Sink

Mon, 05 Jun 2006 01:00:00 GMT

Radiant Core has been in business now for almost three years. When we started, the blogging craze was in full swing. Finally after spending an exhaustive amount of time tending to our client sites we finally had the time to devote to creating our own blog in Foundation.

Now the time had come to write about something and I found that I had writers block. Mind you, I have a personal blog that gets updated at least a few times a month so one would think that it wouldn’t be that hard to come up with something to write about. Alas, I found myself groping for a topic that was both provocative and informative and not actually writing anything. This is a pervasive problem in a lot of projects that admittedly we have tackled in the past. We are our own worst enemy by failing to put pen to paper before the entire idea is flushed out.

Rather than planning something until it’s perfect just grab a bit small enough to tackle and move on after that. The momentum of creating one small item will eventually lead to the whole picture but you don’t need to throw in the kitchen sink from the beginning. The web is a live experimental medium that allows us to throw something out to see what sticks.

With more and more engagements we’re encouraging clients to take a phased approach. It’s far too time consuming to implement all your ideas before launching the site and quite frankly after you launch you’ll realize that you should have gone in a slightly different direction based on your customer feedback.

Prioritize your site features and phase them in over time. The feedback you receive will help to focus your next build phase and get your ideas out to your customers faster.