Calgary had the highest score in Canada at 30%. Kelowna has the lowest at 21%.

For details see article on the Calgary Herald: http://www.calgaryherald.com/health/Calgary+happiest+small+businesses/3327101/story.html

Here is one that is interesting: http://www.waxpartnership.com/

Check out “See What We’re Doing”. Lots of fun in every area of their office.

The site doesn’t work well with the search engine but they are an ad agency – they probably don’t care.

Enjoy!

In the past, I’ve taken lots of picture on vacations using 35mm and digital formats but I haven’t ever use video. The tremendous growth in the use of video over the last few years, especially on YouTube prompted me to give video a try. I have always felt that video production was difficult, time consuming and expensive but it appears that the opposite is true. In a recent post by Gideon Shalwick of Brick Marketing: Video Tips to Use he debunks each of these myths.

So, for this vacation I thought I would try and create a video record of the cruise. Below I have uploaded a few videos to YouTube and added a link to the video from this blog. Enjoy.

By the way, before the cruise I purchased a Mino HD video camera from Flip Video for about $250 at Best Buy.  I looked at a similar recorder from Sony but the Flip Video was so simple to use that I couldn’t resist. The quality of the videos is lacking but that isn’t the fault of the camera – it is the human taking the shot (one of my sons or me). Sorry about that – this was our first time shooting video.

The first shot is of the cruise ship, The Liberty of the Seas, at dock in Miami while we were traveling to port via taxi.

The second shot is disembarking at Labadee, Haiti. Labadee is basically are resort owned by Royal Caribbean – very touristy – but the food was great.

The next video is taken by my son as he rides down the Dragon’s Flight zip line. Tons of fun and not as scary as it looks. Loved it. Great view.

Another shot by my son. This time of the swimming pools on the 11th deck of the Liberty of the Seas. Weather was great for the first half of the trip and then it deteriorated.

In Jamaica we went to Bob Marley’s grave at the town of 9 Mile. We had a great bus ride singing Bob Marley tunes for an hour there and an hour back. Wonderful. This is a shot of our tour guide, Crazy.

The next shot is of the Atlantis Submarine surfacing in Cozumel Mexico. We boarded it and went down to 120 feet below the surface. Very scenic. Lots of fish and sea creatures.

At about 50 feet we saw a stingray.

The final shot is in Carlos n Charlie’s Cafe beach side in the pouring rain. But we had fun anyway.

Overall the trip was fantastic.

Regarding the topic of using video in a blog, I learned quite a bit. Shooting video so that you get good quality footage is harder than it looks . Using Movie Maker is a little tricky. Uploading the videos to YouTube is easy once you figure out that not all formats are uploadable. Linking the videos to a blog page is easy. But all of these steps are time consuming.

Footnote, a day later:
After I uploaded all the videos, I realized that the audio was faster than the video portion in each file. As a result, anyone talking sounded like a chipmunk – not kewl. I tried and tried with Movie Maker but I was unsuccessful in fixing the audio. The raw files were fine but when I uploaded to Movie Maker the chipmunks came back. So I spent a few hours trying to find another video editing program that was free and usable. I tried a bunch and finally settled on a free trial of Corel VideoStudio Pro X3. It took a while to learn how to use the program (maybe another post) but eventually I was able to edit the videos (again) and post them on YouTube.

One of the topics that I cover near the end of the course is business ethics . For this session I use a round table discussion and have each person present a situation where they had to make a decision that involved ethics – choosing right or wrong. I typically start the discussion by describing a time when our company ordered a new ink jet printer from Dell. We received the printer, all the cords and the discs with the printer drivers. The issue started shortly after receiving the printer when we changed computers and found that we had misplaced the discs. As a result, we couldn’t print. Normally, the printer drivers would be online for download but the printer was so new that this option was not available. I called Dell and they said they would send us replacement discs. We waited a couple of days and to our surprise a rather large box was delivered. Inside was a new printer, the same model as previously sent, and the discs we required. We loaded up the drivers and our original printer worked perfectly.

At this point, I stop telling the story and open up the floor for discussion. As you can guess the ethical situation is what to do with the second printer: keep it or send it back. On one hand, Dell is a huge company and likely won’t miss a tiny ink jet printer. Why shouldn’t we keep it? This assumes that Dell has made a mistake and can’t trace the fact that they sent us two printers. The issue with this option is that Dell may figure this out and then send us a bill for the second printer. We could always use a second printer but we didn’t want to pay for an extra one. On the other hand, we never paid for the second printer. So why should we keep what we haven’t paid for.

The framework that we use in class for analyzing ethical situations is offered by Santa Clara University, The Jesuit University in Silicon Valley. This framework identifies Five Sources of Ethical Standards:

• The Utilitarian Approach
• The Rights Approach
• The Fairness or Justice Approach
• The Common Good Approach
• The Virtue Approach

What I like about their framework is that each approach is integrated into the decision making process:

• Recognize an Ethical Issue
• Get the Facts
• Evaluate Alternative Actions (using each of the approaches listed above)
• Make a Decision and Test It
• Act and Reflect on the Outcome

Ethically, the decision about the printer is simple. Don’t keep what you haven’t paid for. And that is what we did but it took an hour of calling numerous departments at Dell to figure out how. By the way, we had no complaints about Dell’s service, they even paid to have the printer picked up.

However, the lingering question with most ethical situations is “What if I could get away with it?”. As one smiling student said, “If the value is low and the risk is high, then it is easy to make the ethically right decision but if the reward is huge and the risk is low then everything changes.”

An ink jet printer is about $250. And after making calls for an hour I felt that the risk of getting caught was reasonably low. I think we could have kept the printer and not paid for it. The class was about 30-70 on this issue. Some would have kept it and most would have returned it.

But what happens when the stakes are higher?

After discussing my ethical situation, I offer students in the class the opportunity to describe their situations. They use the same format, stopping before the conclusion so that we have time to discuss various options and the ethics involved.

One student described how while working overseas he could have made lots of money by collecting “gifts” from the companies to whom he awarded contracts. He didn’t make any collections but has since wondered if he would have the need for a class studying business and ethics if he had accepted those gifts.

Another student, working in Calgary, found $3,000 in an unmarked envelop by her car in a parking lot. She had no way of knowing who the owner was. What to do?

I jokingly said, “Next” and everyone laughed. I’m not exactly sure but I had the feeling that most of the students would have kept the money. The student, however, told how she had taken the money to the police. The police found the owner within 30 days. The owner was a bakery and they gave the student a reward – a loaf of bread, sliced. Ironically, the student is allergic to wheat!

While working in developing country, another student witnessed an accident where a man was hit by a car late at night. The student went over to the man who was injured and sadly found that the victim was already dead. At that same time another witness came to examine the body and agreed; the person was dead. The second witness, older than the student, quickly looked for a wallet to obtain the person’s identification. During the search the second witness found a stash of cash. What would you do?

The student and the second witness left the scene with $7,000 each. His rational was that the victim was obviously involved in some type of crime by having the cash and by the way he was dressed. The other witness was bigger and older than him, so he wasn’t about to argue. The driver was in hysterics and screaming. When and if the police did arrive they would have had no hesitation claiming the money for themselves. I’m not sure what I would have done but I don’t think I would have “given” the money to the police.

The final situation was the best. The student is well educated and currently works for a non-profit organization in Calgary with an outstanding reputation. She is originally from an African country (I can relate since I was born in Uganda). She has 2 children and impeccable manners. She told of a situation in her country of origin while bidding on a huge construction project for a large telecommunications company. Two other companies were bidding on the project and competition was fierce. She prepared her companies bid delivered it personally. When she arrive at the office to submit her bid the official was not at the desk and the bids for the competing companies were on the desk – bound but not in envelops. What to do?

As a group we laughed because although the information on the competing bids would be tempting to look at, looking was clearly unethical. To our surprise the student threw up her hands and said, “I looked at the bid, ran back to my office, lowered our bid and quickly went back to submit it.” Although we were all shocked we were won over when she explained that the livelihood of many families were at stake. Many people including herself would be unemployed if her company was not awarded the contract.

By the way, I told this last story to a few business colleagues and they agreed – they would have done exactly the same thing. Their rationale was that “reviewing” the competitor’s bids was part of gathering information for “business intelligence”.

In this case, it seems that the stakes were so high that the common good outweighed fairness and personal virtue. What would you do if you were in her situation?

The link pointed to an article called “Spammers, Evildoers, and Opportunists” by Derek Powazek. In a nutshell it is tirade against Search Engine Optimization and companies offering SEO which includes our company, Anduro Marketing. I couldn’t resist reading the post and responding.

First Derek gives a quick history of the search engine industry:

“First came the web, and it was a mess.” “Then came the search engines. First primitive indexes of dumb keywords, then Google…” “The ascendancy of Google has meant that, if your goal is to get the most eyeballs possible (as any ad-supported media business’ goal is), then prominent placement in the search engine results became a top priority.”

Not a bad history actually. He should post that to Twitter. But then Derek loads up the page with name calling and loaded language to emphasize his point. His labels for Search Engine Optimizers include: “goat sacrificers”, “snake oil salesmen” and “a new breed of con man”. He then makes 3 points and elaborates on each.

1. The good advice is obvious, the rest doesn’t work.
2. SEO is poisoning the web.
3. The One True Way.

Actually, Derek is right on each point but beyond the basic point Derek seems tarnished, tainted and terribly mislead or misinformed.

1. SEO is Obvious.
In many ways Derek is correct – much of SEO is obvious. Picking keywords, adding them to web pages and getting any type of link back to the website is free and relatively easy. But so is cooking a burger or changing oil in a car. I can do both but I don’t except occasionally. Why? Lots of reasons. I don’t have time. I’m too lazy. And the chef at BrokenCity does a much better job. Besides, I don’t have buns, burgers, condiments, fries and a stove at the office. Why should I cook a burger at lunch time when I can pay someone to do it and talk with customers, colleagues and friends instead? Sheesh.

So what are customers buying when they hire a firm to optimize their website? Where is the value in hiring a company like ours to optimize their website and boost the home page on search engines? The answer is simple. Our customers don’t want to spend time doing tasks that would take them a month of Sundays. We can do SEO faster, better and often cheaper. We have the tools, processes, and know-how to get the job done quickly and effectively.

One of the basic principles of running a successful business is to do what you do well and focus on that. People buy value. If you focus on providing value then customers will buy. But if you spend all your time learning and doing things you don’t have the aptitude, training and skills for then you won’t be able to provide quality products on time at a reasonable price. Trying to do everything sounds like failure to me.

Let me give you an example. Let’s take Dell – a large company with a large budget for brochures and online ads. One would assume that their website would automatically work well with the search engines. Not so. A couple years ago we got an email from a business manager for the business unit focusing on small and medium business. He thought there was untapped opportunities for Dell to rank well on search engines. His rationale was that paid ads on Google cost money and high listings on the organic side of Google are free. Good point. We “messed around” with the URLs, source code, anchor text, internal links, external links and strange things started to happened. Pages on the Dell site start ranking at the top of the SERPs. Dell.com is still in top spot for “business laptops”, beating out 25 million other pages. It’s in 3rd spot, out performing 109 million other pages, for “servers”. The end result – our contact at Dell got promoted. Nice.

But what about small companies? What value do they get from SEO? About 5 years ago Wayne Thomas came to us. He runs a small company called CleanSuite Software Inc. His company produces software for dry cleaning businesses. He wanted to have more visitors come to his website. He had some ideas of how to do that but wasn’t confident and simply didn’t have enough hours in the week to optimize his site and pursue inbound links. We talked. He hired us to help him out and he is a very happy customer. CleanSuite is a small company that is building its reputation and success on our talents. If you go to Google.com and search for “dry cleaning software” his site is listed in 2nd spot beating out 1.3 million other pages. He was in first spot until recently. Wayne, give us a call.

In summary, yes, SEO is obvious to some people but not everyone. For companies that want to reduce their marketing risks, an SEO firm is a good bet.

2. SEO is poisoning the web.

Derek’s complaint is that Google’s search algorithm is based primary on building links back to a site. Then he goes on a rant about “SEO cockroaches” and “SEO bastards” doing all kinds of devious techniques to get links which have temporary value. He is right. If you use black hat tactics and try to trick Google you will get caught and the website will likely be tossed out. But who uses black hat techniques? Any SEO who has been in business for more than 3 years and can prove results never tries to trick Google. What we use are best practices.

1. Picking keyword phrases that will drive qualified visitors to a site – people looking for what companies are offering.
2. Optimizing a web page by adding the keywords in the right spots so that the search engine crawlers can find the phrase. This isn’t secret or hard but it has to be done correctly.
3. Building a web of reputable industry related links back to the site. Not really hard but time consuming so we can’t waste time going after useless links. No one is going to pay us for work that doesn’t produce results.

Derek, what’s wrong with using best practices?

3. The One True Way – Good Products and Good Content.

Derek’s point that many writers create “dumbed down content” is valid. It is sooooo true. I see tons of crappy content on the Internet every day. But I read fast and I can spot dumb content very quickly. Here’s the rub. I doubt that I’m the only one with a critical eye. The folks at Google aren’t stupid either. They know what good content looks like.

Thanks Derek for a stimulating article and your point of view. Ultimately, you and I can agree on something. Create good products. Create good content to let people know about it. Repeat.

Speakers included:

• Social Media Victories – Real Businesses, Real Campaigns, Real Results by Patrick Schwerdtfeger, Tactical Execution
• Cause Marketing by Shauna Causey, Comcast
• The Power Triumvirate of 2010: The Convergence of Social-Mobile-Local by Gillian Muessig, SEOMoz
• Investor Relations 2.0 – Using Social Media to Reach Investors and Support Your Stock by Doug Lacombe, communicatto
• Fatal Mistakes that may Destroy your Internet Marketing Campaign by Dennton Fahl, BlackSun
• Taking Facebook Connect to the Next Level – Social Context by Ryan Merket, Facebook Consultant
• XRay Vision – Using SEO-Browser.com to Diagnose Problems with Your Website, Jeff Nelson, Anduro Marketing
• Conversation Marketing by Ian Lurie, Portent Interactive
• A Picture Is Worth 10,000 Words by Alli Marshall, Strix Insights
• Alternate Reality Games by Kevin Franco, Francomedia
• The Power of Web Video for Businesses by Tish Bell & Stacy James Fry, BizBOXTV
• Social Media & Gaming: The Untapped Market by Evan Fishkin, Portent Interactive

We are all looking forward to next year’s conference.

Here is a link for more details: Internet Marketing Conference – Calgary 2010.

Great line-up of speakers. So far 60 people have registered. Ends on St Patrick’s Day – March 17th.

Topics include Social Media, Gaming, Videos, SEO, Pay-Per-Click and Industry related news.

Anduro is offering a discount. Call our office and we will give you the promo code.

Malcolm co-wrote the case study, entitled “Anduro Marketing: Internet Services vs. Software Sales“, with Sid L. Huff. Sid is a Professor and Head of School at the School of Information Management, Victoria University, Wellington, New Zealand.

The summary of the case study as list on HBR.org is:
“Anduro Marketing is a Canadian company that sells technical services to companies wanting to improve their search engine website rankings. Though small, Anduro has attracted several major clients in both Canada and the United States, and expects steady profitability and growth. Anduro believes it can generate substantial additional profit by developing and selling a suite of software products that automate its technical service offerings.”

The case presents the conundrum that we had to either develop a technology suite related to SEO tools or focus on expanding our service offerings. I won’t tell you in this blog post what we decided to do. But you can contact me directly and I’ll let you know. Please contact Jeff Nelson via our Contact Us page.

Excellent video and fun to watch.