In it, Pete Blackshaw breaks down the fall of Starbuck’s vs. the rise and intense loyalty of Tim Horton’s customers. While regional chains like Tim Horton’s have their charm, Blackshaw uses an interesting metric to track the positive reputation Tim Horton’s has relative to Starbucks, even though both experienced rapid, wide expansion: Facebook.

It’s worth asking here whether Tim Hortons is executing what Starbucks is trying to rediscover. Even though it’s a chain, the brand — its mission, its people, its community ethos, even its interaction-rich and user-friendly website — comes across as uniquely authentic. And the appreciation for its authenticity shines in the Facebook forums in particular. Yes, brands like McDonald’s and Starbucks have more fans in total, but Tim Hortons takes the cinnamon donut when you look at total fans relative to total outlets*. And the fanaticism is notable, if not a bit scary.

It’s an interesting take on using Facebook and other social networks - instead of quantifying numbers of people interested in a topic - music, restaurant, ice cream flavor - Blackshaw is using social networking as a way of gaging the qualitative value of a customer base.

It’s an interesting interpretation, one backed up both on the Internet by the unabashed names of these Facebook groups -

Tim Hortons for Our Troops: 15,500 members
Biodegradable Cups at Tim Hortons: 10,300 members
Addicted to Tim Hortons: 9,000 members
Tim Hortons Rules of Ordering and More: 5,600 members
Addicted to Tim Hortons #2: 5,000 members
Tim Hortons Is Like Religion to Me: 1,900 members

- but it’s also reflected in the customers at the Timmy Ho’s themselves, an experience we North Coasters are already quite familiar with, but one Blackshaw only recently discovered.

The Buffalo franchise was mobbed, and the drive-through line in particular brought back Southern California high-school memories of the congested, almost-communal In-N-Out Burger line. But in full pursuit of the “total” experience, drive-through would not do. So I kissed the wife and kids goodbye and walked inside, only to encounter an equally long, yet somewhat impressive, line. So with time to boot, I started quizzing folks around me about the “secret sauce” of the brand’s success.

“Good food — always.” “Great menu.” “Friendly employees.” “You mean, you haven’t been to a Tim Hortons?” “The coffee is addictive.”

While we’re all about Tim Horton’s, it’s interesting how social networks can be used more as a qualitative barometer rather than simply a quantifying tool. It’s something we’re looking into with our own web marketing campaigns - sometimes building a small rabid fanbase leads to bigger things down the road.

* Emphasis is ours

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Adobe, the maker of Flash and its related products, has created an indexable Flash file, meaning information that used to be hidden to search engines are now in the open. Google, of course, was a pioneer, with Yahoo riding the coattails of this improvement.

Google has already begun to roll out Adobe Flash Player technology incorporated into its search engine. With Adobe’s help, Google can now better read the content on sites that use Adobe Flash technology, helping users find more relevant information when conducting searches. As a result, millions of pre-existing RIAs and dynamic Web experiences that utilize Adobe Flash technology, including content that loads at runtime, are immediately searchable without the need for companies and developers to alter them.

What does this mean for businesses? Well, it means rich, artistic design won’t exclude you from search results - before this file index came out, many businesses had to choose between a vivid Flash presentation or really powerful search results. Now, you can have your cake and eat it to.

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So we’re offering some tips on our favorite ways to use social networks to advertise.

1) Paid banner advertising - One of the most powerful aspects of social networks is that network members are already separated by demographic - that’s almost the entire point of most social networks. Users enter their own information, including location, likes, dislikes, even income level. So when you purchase an ad on Myspace or Facebook, you can choose the type of user you want to see your ad. Technically, that can save you money, but just like the strange associations that occur with Google Adsense contextual ads, you’re going to find your ads popping up for people that have no interest in your products or services, and possibly not appearing for people who WOULD use your services. It’s not exactly a crap shoot, but with the way users utilize social networks - as a tool with ads on the far periphery - it’s not always the most cost effective strategy.

2) Create your own business profile, and make friends - The entire point of social networks is the put yourself out there, so do it - create a Linkedin Profile for yourself. Got employees on Facebook or Myspace? Have them post their job information on their profile - and “friend” your business. The average Facebook and Myspace user has about 50-60 “friends”, so even a small company of 10 employees can get exposure to people orders of magnitude larger than their workforce. Those “friends” are also potentially more likely conversions - as any business owner knows, a personal connection makes choosing a business that much more likely.

3) Form a group or a cause - This applies more to Facebook than any other network. “Groups” and “Causes” are organizational, well, groups that users can “join” within Facebook. Groups can be as serious or fun as the creators want - I’ve joined groups as varied as the “Buffalo Bills Fan Club” and the “I <3 the Spectrum EIC” (an inside joke if there ever was one) to the “Free Darfur” and “Fans of Wegmans” groups. These groups all have their own message boards, provide an easy-to-contact (and legal) distribution list for e-mail campaigns, and provides you with a base of interested customers right off the bat.

4) Post articles about or featuring you (or stuff you’ve written) - Almost every social network gives you the ability to post and share news articles that pique interest - blog posts, newspaper articles, videos, etc. It’s a venue to distribute that type of media, to share information about your company, your services, to highlight your accomplishments, whatever. It’s a great way to build name recognition, and if you already have social network “friends”, they’ll want to read it.

Those are just a few strategies - post comments with more suggestions.

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Need to contact a classmate? Look them up and send them a message - don’t know someone’s e-mail address? If they - and you - are on Facebook, all you need is their name. It’s an easy way of contact and maintaining casual connections without giving away specific contact information.

To start, these social networks were all about networking people for fun and social reasons. Other networks such as LinkedIn sprung up to target business networking, but the lines between fun-networks and business-networks are becoming blurred.

Employers oftentimes keep track of Myspace or Facebook pages of their employees - it’s not uncommon that employees have been fired for inappropriate “friending” or inappropriate pictures made public through these networks. But social networks are not just for tracking people - the reason Facebook and Myspace are worth so much money is because of their advertising potential. They’re ready-made repositories for sorted, organized and classified demographics. Simply put, social networks are full of potential customers.

There are many ways to dig into this type of marketing, though no one is the best - traditional banner-style ads can work, but are costly. Organic, viral marketing can explode your product or business to a large audience, but is often like trying to capture lightning in a bottle.

The real trick is to understand how these networks put people in touch with one another, and how people use them. CNN has a really good list of the social networks they use in their own research, and in their own personal experience - what makes them work, what makes them valuable. When you understand how these systems are used, it’s much easier to apply it to business.

Check back next week when we see the top ten ways to advertise on social networks.

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Google is the premier search engine on the web today. There’s no denying it, and both users and the stock market alike are clear indicators of how important Google is to search engine efforts. In some ways, Google controls the Internet economy moreso than even the all-powerful Microsoft. Appearing high on Google’s search pages for a given term - related to whatever business you’re involved in - is more valuable than any billboard or television commercial.

But is Google really the gateway to all web business? When a search engine optimization specialist tells you “Your site isn’t Google-friendly” does that mean you have to kowtow to the one company whose motto is “Do no evil”?

Yes and maybe. The same strategies that work well on Google work well on almost any search engine - Yahoo, MSN, Altavista, etc. Relevant keywords, related content, powerful links to and from related, high traffic sites - they work regardless of the search engine.

But should your site be written to appeal to Google’s search bots? Or should you write to your human site visitors? Can you do both?

In an ideal world, yes, writing for both Google and other search engine bots and human visitors should operate the same way. But while search engines prize keyword density, human readers can usually tell if a site is designed for search engines. Search engine optimized copy is not quite as natural as normal marketing copy.

For example, here’s a paragraph Google might read as very powerful for selling web design:

360 PSG, a web development company, offers website design, custom web applications, and a powerful content management system for any business website. Our web designs fit any small business. They work for e-commerce, online portfolio pieces, and online news releases.

Now, that’s not bad, but it’s a little dry. At the same time, it’s readable, simple, and clear.

Another tack we could have taken was straight-up advertising-style copy:

Take control of your website with 360 PSG. Our powerful web designs can help your business establish a strong web presence. Our Fission CMS makes it easy - just login, click, type and save, and you can have unlimited pages, and unlimited web options. Find out more today.

That’s not bad either, as ad copy - it’s inviting, it sells our system as easy to use, and effective, but you’ll notice there are very few words or phrases in that paragraph that count as keywords.

In that first paragraph, we had “website design,” “custom web applications,” and “content management system.” The second paragraph had none of those words together.

If someone is searching for those particular services or products, the first paragraph is more likely to attract search engine results. The second paragraph might be more effective selling to human readers, though it’s much less likely to attract search engine results.

So it’s a fine line to walk - on one hand you want to attract search engine traffic. On the other, you need to drive sales through your site.

Here at 360 PSG, we focus on both - the subtle techniques that boost search engine ranking, plus the effective copy that attracts visitors to a sale once they’re at your site.

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On the whole, all popular web browsers read and interpret HTML the same way, matching W3C compliance standards. But every browser, whether it’s Firefox, Opera, Safari or Internet Explorer have their own quirks - certain design elements “break” if you don’t account for the ways different web browsers or operating systems function.

When you, as a business owner, are looking for a web designer, make sure they target these W3C Compliance standards - a good business website should work on any computer your potential clients will use. It’s good to remember that not all your clients are running the latest software - you might have the latest high-powered PC running on Windows Vista and 4 gigs of RAM, but the person looking to use your services might be running a Pentium 3 with Windows 98 and less than a quarter of the memory your computer has. Flashy design tricks that look good on your machine might simply not run on potential customer’s computers, or worse, crash them out.

With open-source web browsers like Opera or Firefox, there are many options for testing your website to make sure it works. For Internet Explorer, until recently, you basically had to have multiple computers using different versions of Internet Explorer to make sure your website works. There have been workarounds, but they tended to leave your computer unstable or might not work entirely accurately. We’ve found a new tool that allows you to test web designs across multiple versions of Internet Explorer, all on one computer. It’s called IETester, and though it’s not perfect, it’s the best solution we’ve found so far.

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The neat thing about the design for Buffalo Pundit is that the design (and logo) doesn’t overshadow the content - the (admittedly great) content of the site stands on its own. That’s an idea that works well for news sites, but is an underrated design approach for business sites. Communicating information clearly is imperative to driving web business, and a clear design is at least one step to achieving that goal.

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Links, in human terms, show that like minded people are seeking out and reading your site content, whether its an online store, a blog, or some other type of website. Social networks and social bookmarking sites and indexes like Digg or Myspace are great places to drum up that important related traffic.

Incoming links are any link on another site that points to your site. Search engines index sites and their outgoing and incoming links - the more you have, the better. But while almost any incoming link can help your search engine ranking, the best links come from high-traffic sources related to your website topic. For example, this blog discusses web design, web development and web marketing strategies. Good links for us are similarly focused sites - a post on the Blogdesignblog about good blog design is related to our web design topics. A post about the future of search engine optimization on the Search Engine Roundtable relates well to this particular post.

The above links both to our own site and the blogs and websites I mentioned will all be counted by search engines as topical, related incoming links to those sites, and measured as topical, related outgoing links from this site.

But, as a blog author, I had to actively search for those above topics. I used the Google Blog Search to find them, but there are other ways to get those types of incoming links.

Social networks like MySpace, LinkedIn and Facebook are good places to post links and material related to your particular industry or topic so people looking for that type of information can find them. For those types of services, you can create a profile and post links to your site, with categories that people with related interests can see.

Social bookmarking sites are similar in that shared interests can draw attention to your website, but sites like Digg, Technorati and Reddit target specifically news-style articles. That might mean you have to go through the work of generating your own content, but that content in turn is put into a feed read by over 500,000 (in the case of Digg) users who rate, read, and discuss your article. Those comments might be full messages, but users also “digg” or give your site “authority” through links. The more links or diggs you get, the more eyes will see your article, and in turn your site.

One important note: People - particularly the savvy Digg community - can see through cheap tricks, black hat tactics and spam like X-ray. Don’t cheat with duplicated, plagiarized content or BS links. It’s not cool, and could get you blacklisted in the long-run.

So get out there - make friends, discuss your business, industry or hobbies - it all can track back to your business.

PS - Digg this article! Click the icon below!

HT: Lorne Fade Design for the pic

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As web designers, we want that - hands-on and involved clients are good website design clients. But sometimes a good client can make bad decisions.

Let’s say your web designer sent you the first mock-up of your website. It’s sharp, but not too flashy. It’s got a lot of information, but not cluttered. It’s color scheme even matches the precise hue of blue you use on the walls of your store.

But there are some things you need changed. You need another menu tab for a new product line you’ve just acquired. You’d like another picture of the inside of your store. And, by golly, you want your LOGO BIGGER. How are people going to remember your logo if it’s an inch-by-inch in the top left corner?

Hold up there, kimosabe. Take a breath, relax. It’s one thing to get more information on your site, to add functionality, but if you’re paying a professional web designer to build an effective website for your business, it’s worth it to heed some of their advice.

We can say with a fair degree of certainty that no web designer will say no to stuff like an extra menu item, additional pictures or more content pages. Information that is necessary to your business or functions you want from your site can always be worked in. What irks any web designer is when a client tries to overstep into design.

Now that doesn’t mean designers want unquestioning clients - matters of taste, such as color scheme, image choice or layout (to an extent) are perfectly legitimate critiques. Even a wholesale “I don’t like it at all - do something different” can be dealt with. Clients who ask questions are smart clients, ones that make it easier to deliver something both can be satisfied with.

But stuff like “Make a bigger logo” or “Make the text as big as possible” or “Can you add some flashing lights? Oh! How about a siren!” not only oversteps the boundary, it will hurt your website and web business too.

Professional web designers draw on both client needs and their own experience of what works in websites. They know (or should know) how people use websites. They know what works - that too much animation makes a site difficult to use, that a certain size of text is easier to read on the average computer screen, that if they make your logo bigger, it’ll blot out the sun.

Remember, your web designer wants your website to be successful too - it’s just as much a reflection on them as it is on you. Trust that they have your best interests in mind. It will make for a better website for the both of you.

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Grow! Inc.

Grow! Inc. is a Virginia-based small business consulting firm that already had a website, but wanted something a bit more enticing to both clients and potential prospects. So we built a brand new website design for them, complete with the web content control of the Fission Content Management System. We also had our copy department build original web content for the site, including full search engine optimization. We’re pretty pleased with the design, and let us know how you think it worked.

KaLu Salon & Spa

KaLu Salon & Spa came to us needing a completely new website from the ground up. So we set them up with the content control of our Fission CMS and came up with a complete website design for them. One of the CMS features KaLu staff has used the most has been the graphical calendar feature of the website. With it they’re able to advertise their regular “special” nights, like teen parties and their Martini Nights. We’re proud of the look of the design, with the rich hues and calming design, exactly in line with the way a spa should look.

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