Major Takeaways of Rework by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hanssone

Rework first came out in March of 2010 and since then i’ve read it 3 times. Not because it’s an exceptionally well-written book or that it provides any major revelations but because it’s a quick read with very practical advice on how to make shit happen.

I generally share Jason Fried’s philosophy on running a business and though a lot of his methods are controversial and not always applicable in the real world, he pushes the envelope and provides good food for thought on how to improve processes in a business.

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Interview with Ben Barry of Facebook

Sometimes I come across great designers by accident and, as it happens, a tweet via Jason Fried led me to discover the works of Ben Barry. Ben works as a designer for Facebook and has a fantastic portfolio  that I highly recommend checking out: designforfun.com

How did you become interested in design?
I think I was just born this way. I became increasingly interested in architecture and web design in high school, and then focused my studies on graphic design in college.

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8 Things I Learned about SXSW

I had an opportunity to experience SXSW for the first time this year  and it truly is as epic and overwhelming as everyone proclaims it to be. With 30,000 heads geeking it out, plus the biggest names and thought leaders in the technology industry and parties around the clock — it’s an inspiring and amazing shitshow event.

Here are a few important things I learned about SXSW that might be handy for next year:

1. Planning Doesn’t Work Throw your schedule out, the laws of planning don’t apply at SXSW. Too many people, too many distractions and too many venues will detract your ability to get to where you need to go. Let serendipity happen.

2. Expect Anything This falls in line with the above. Keep your eyes wide open at all times.

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Site of the Month: Minus

I love finding tools that are useful and dead simple to use. Enter Minus – a photo (and much more) sharing application that allows you to drag and drop files into your browser window and share the file with a short url.

Besides its simplicity, there are also several features that make Minus an amazingly convenient and powerful application. The project is developed by a Massachusetts duo who have focused on “simplicity, minimalism and transparency”.

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How to Effectively Launch a Website

New website launches offer a big marketing opportunity to generate visibility and create long-term SEO value. So while you’re developing the site and getting ready for the release, use the time to develop a launch strategy that will enable you to make the most out of your launch.

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3 Rockin Tools to Pick a Domain Name

Choosing the right domain name for your business/project has many implications not just for branding but also for seo. Of course coming up with the name is only half the battle. Currently, there are over 127 Million domain names (92 Million are .com) and growing, which makes finding a domain that is actually available often times a royal pain in the a-s-s.

Here are three of my favorite tools that will help make your domain name search easier:

1. Instant Domain Search - an incredibly simple, real-time search tool that shows availability instantanteously for .com, .net and .org domains.

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Site of the Month: Paper.li

I first came across Paper.li several months ago but didn’t try it out for myself until a few days ago, but i’m glad I finally did. Paper.li is a novel way of creating a customized online newspaper from links shared by your Twitter followers (or Facebook stream).  You can create a “newspaper” with a broad focus or very topical by filtering links shared by 1) all your followers, 2) one of your twitter lists or 3) by a specific interest  or #hashtag.

I like Paper.li for a few different reasons:

- Noise filter. Finding interesting links on Twitter can be inefficient and often times gets drowned by random conversations and tweets that are happening between users.  Paper.li helps solve this problem by filtering this noise and only showing links shared by users from a Twitter list or a specific topic of interest. No random chatter or irrelevant conversations – thumbs up!

- Better experience. Similar to Flipboard, the presentation of content is what defines Paper.li and they’ve nailed it. The newspaper experience is muuuuch more compelling/engaging/interesting than sifting through any stream (and hats off for making a scrumptiously delicious UI). The layout includes titles & excerpts for each news piece along with recently shared photos and videos mixed in.

- Discovery. Paper.li also has some discovery value as it lets you easily browse and find interesting news stories and other users relevant to your interests from papers generated by others. Seems like there could be some untapped potential here…

I created The Disruptive Daily in about 2 minutes from one of my lists.

Overall, I’m impressed with what the guys at Paper.li have created. I’ll be even more impressed if they find a profitable business model…

Effective Email Marketing: Lessons from TradeKing

The following is a great example of how to develop an effective email marketing strategy to acquire new users. The company, TradeKing, is an online stock brokerage that I was considering investing with. They didn’t get my business because I already signed up with another company, however, I have been so impressed with their email marketing that 18 months later I still can’t get myself to hit the unsubscribe button.

I’m only going to post the emails I received during the first few months to give you an idea of the content strategy and scheduling they have in place.

Day 1 – “TradeKing – Account Application Approved”
A simple confirmation email letting me know that they appreciate my business and look forward to providing me with service.

Day 14 - “Don’t let your new TradeKing account sit idle”
First reminder email that I haven’t deposited any funds into my account and how quick and easy funding is.

Day 21 – “Your New TradeKing Account”
Thanks me again for opening a new account recently and asks if I would answer a short, five-question survey.

Day 26 - “TradeKing Webinars: Steve Nison, Dan Sheridan, and more!”
Lets me know about a webinar on High volatility trading, fundamental analysis, and more…

Day 45 - “If your TradeKing account had feelings, it’d be missing you”
Very clever, my favorite reminder email. This gets my attention and reconfirms there are four easy ways to fund my account.

Day 48 – “TradeKing’s Upcoming Webinars: Register Now”
Information on upcoming webinars, dates and topics.

Day 63 - “TradeKing Webinars: Regsiter Now”
Reminder about Understanding the VIX, Automated Technical Analysis, Option Strategies, Trading Gold, and Bond Basics webinar.

Day 90 - “TradeKing ups the ante to $50 when you fund your account”
Incentives! Here they let me know that they are going to up the ante with a signing bonus of $50 if I open an account.

Day 93 – “TradeKing – Refer a Friend and Earn 50 Dollars”
More incentives! If I refer a friend that opens an account and places a trade, TradeKing will pay me 50 bones. Not bad.

Creating a successful email drip system is not easy. In fact, it’s very difficult. Setting the right delivery schedule and developing an effective content strategy takes a lot of thought, testing and analysis. TradeKing has one of the best email marketing programs I’ve seen and there’s a lot to learn from them.

Few key take-aways:

1) Mix up the content. The soft sell can be a lot more effective than sending cookie-cutter reminders and notifications. Education and incentives are a great addition to the content mix.

2) Use engaging subject titles. Just like you should mix up the content, think about changing the subject titles that can capture interest. Call-to-actions work well and if you’re really clever try to add a touch of humor (“If your TradeKing account had feelings, it’d be missing you”).

3) Don’t give up. Most drip systems give up after 6 months or become stale with repetitive content and reminders. I still receive an email 1-2 times a month from TradeKing about webinars, online trainings and new incentives they have in place… a year and a half later!

Twitter Analytics (part two): Look No Further, Use Twitalyzer

After searching high and low for a Twitter Analytics tool, I finally put Twitalyzer to the test and I can confidently say that it is the best tool on the market. In fact, it blows the competition out of the water. I say this after test driving Viral Heat, Ubervu, Twitter Counter, Raven Tools,  and SWIX just to name a few.

The depth and number of metrics provided by Twitalyzer is unmatched and really allows you to dig in to analyze granular data about the performance of your twitter account(s).

The product was created by Eric Peterson and Jeff Katz, two guys that are very knowledgeable about web analytics and it’s obvious they understand the pain points of online marketers.

Using Twitalyzer is free but to unlock the true power of the product, you will need to purchase one of the monthly subscription plans. I opted for the Business plan primarily because of the custom date range reporting and because it allows you to track up to 100 accounts.

Cost:
Using Twitalyzer is free but there are also premium accounts on a month-to-month basis: Individual account is $4.99/mo, Business account is $29.99/mo  and Agency account is $99.99/mo.

Key Features:
- Tons of metrics
- Graphical display of specific date ranges
- Full data export
- Multiple account management
- Weekly reports
- Integrated Google Analytics

Screenshots:
Metrics

Custom date ranges

Goals

Google Analytics integration

Twitter Analytics: uberVU vs. Twitter Counter vs. Raven Tools

I’ve been on a hunt to find a viable solution for monitoring Twitter metrics and it hasn’t been as easy as you might think. There are many tools that exist — lots that are bad, some that are good, but I have yet found a Twitter Analytics tool that I can call “great”. After few weeks of looking around and testing, i’ve boiled it down to three products that are worthy of a closer look.

The criteria for my product search has been: 1) Depth of data provided 2) Accuracy of data provided 3) The ability to specify date ranges and 4)  Cost.

Here are the three contenders:

FIRST Contender: uberVU

Summary: uberVU provides analytics and reporting about conversations around your brand happening in the social web. It’s not a twitter-specific tool, but it does let you filter data relevant by platform. With the Basic account, you receive data for 5 keywords/brands you want to tracks.

Cost: Basic account $49.99/month (1 user, 5 searches), Plus account $179.99/month (5 users, 30 searches), Team account $399.99/month (15 users, 75 searches)

Pros:
- Ability to specify exact date ranges
- Filtering by: Platform, Language, Location, Sentiment, Network Size
- Export data to CSV files
- Pretty PDF reports
- Great way to get a general idea of your brand mentions

Cons:
- No data about followers/following
- No data about tweets/retweets
- Questionable data accuracy

…………………………………………………….

SECOND Contender: Twitter Counter

Summary: Still not sure how to best describe Twitter Counter but it’s a solution — part platform, part destination site, part statistics — all about twitter.

Cost: Pro Stats $15/month, Site Owner $25/month

Pros:
- Most relevant twitter metrics are included (followers, following, tweets, mentions, retweets)
- Graphic chart display
- Export data to CSV files (data is very limited)
- Compare metrics against two other competitor profiles

Cons:
- Not possible to retrieve data for exact date ranges
- No data about total reach of the brand
- No reporting

…………………………………………………….

THIRD Contender: Raven Tools

Summary: Raven Tools is a comprehensive tool set for researching, tracking and managing metrics relevant to internet marketing campaigns — from SEO, to email, to social media. The value here is that you get access to a lot of useful tools, outside of Twitter analytics, that might be helpful in other areas of online marketing. I especially like their link building features, pretty awesome stuff.

Cost: Basic $19/month, Pro $99/month (this is what you need for social metrics), Agency $249/month

Pros:
- Ability to specify exact date ranges
- Graphic chart displays with overlapping metrics
- Reporting
- Benchmarks for data sets (+/- %)
- Much more than just Twitter data

Cons:
- Not possible to extract twitter mentions data (they just give you a stream from social mention)
- Questionable accuracy on “reach” metric

…………………………………………………….

All three contenders have a lot of good things going for them and some obvious shortcomings. I certainly wouldn’t call any of them a clear “winner” just yet but one of them is pretty damn close to becoming an almighty twitter analytics solution.

Are there any other tools that you think can contend?