Blue Fountain Media’s Founder and CEO, Gabriel Shaoolian, was interviewed by Crain’s Business to Business on the subject of online reputation management. The interview first appeared online on March 10, 2010.

Here’s an excerpt:

HOS: What should companies do about negative comments?

Shaoolian: If there is controversy about your company on the Internet, deal with it head-on. Everyone makes mistakes. How you deal with the mistakes can make all the difference in the world.

If you know the identity of the persons making the complaints or criticisms, try to personally engage them. Get to the root of the problem—be candid, open and apologetic. If you’re at fault, fix the problem. People really do appreciate when a brand is responsive.

If there has been a major problem with an entire product line, then keep people informed about the steps being taken to fix the problem and how affected customers will be treated. This is a great opportunity to include a “Message From Our Chairman/CEO” landing page, where the negatives can be turned into positives.

In the past few weeks, senior BFM executives have also been featured in The Wall Street Journal, SmartMoney and Crain’s New York Business.

To read the full interview, go here.

Gabriel Shaoolian, BFM’s Founder and CEO was interviewed by Crain’s New York Business (March 8-14 edition) and the interview can be found online here.

With BFM experiencing explosive growth, Shaoolian provided his keys to making great hires… and avoiding bad ones.

Here’s an excerpt:

Vague responses or yes-or-no answers weed out about half of the applicants, he says. “I want people who are passionate and articulate,” Mr. Shaoolian notes. “If people can’t communicate a clear vision of what they can contribute, I don’t want them talking to clients.”

For those who pass that first screening, Mr. Shaoolian has devised further tests. He asks designers, for instance, to explain how they would improve a given Web site.

“We want people who understand that the point is to grow the client’s business, not just to look prettier,” he says.

Shaoolian has also recently been featured as an expert columnist on YoungEntrepreneur.com.

I headed over to the Sun Microsystems office at 101 Park Ave last night to take part in an exciting event for entrepreneurs, the Ultra Light Startups Entrepreneurs Forum, where startups come to pitch their innovative ideas and have a chance to network and find service providers.

What I found really invigorating about the event was the format:

Each entrepreneur has 1 minute to pitch their startup in front of the room of 100+ entrepreneurs, with their website projected on the wall behind them. They say what their startup is all about, what their business model is, and take 2-3 questions from the audience. Service providers (such as myself) were present to give suggestions and offer help.

Here are the startups who presented last night. If any entrepreneur who is listed here would like to add something, please feel free to comment on this post – and feel free to link here as well

Yipit

http://yipit.com | @yipit

(founder: Vinicius Vacanti – twitter: @vacantif | facebook.com/vacanti)

An aggregate of all online deals – like Kayak in way – including Groupons.

Sourcepad

http://sourcepad.com/beta

(founded by Joe Chin – LinkedIn )

Need to outsource design or development work? SourcePad makes that easy by providing you with top-notch talent and the ability to communicate with those you hire overseas via video.

Cityryde

http://www.cityryde.com | @cityryde

(founded by Timothy Ericson – twitter: @tjericson | mtjericson@cityryde.com)

You may know about bike-sharing in Paris (Velib’) and other European cities. Well here it come to U.S. shores. Cityride, out of Phili, are hoping to take the concept and make it happen right here. You can even earn karma credit for riding your bike around town. According to CEO, Timothy J. Ericson, there is a multi-billion karma market out there.

Girls Rock

http://www.girlsrock.com

(founded by Brett Hine)

Targeted at tweens – with plans to expand into the lucrative stay-at-home mom market – Girls Rock features “cool games for cool girls”.

Twigmore

http://www.twigmore.com | @twigmore

(founded by Stephen Smyth – twitter: @stephen_smyth | LinkedIn )

“To twig” is to learn. The purpose of the website is a self-improvement tool for thought-leaders (anyone with insights). Others can benefit from the open platform for use on niche websites.

PEO Spectrum

http://www.peospectrum.com | @PEOSpectrum

(founded by Thomas Farrell - LinkedIn )

Looking for a way to reduce the cost of your employees’ health insurance plans, but don’t want to deal with sales people or put in the time? Outsource your HR to a company like PEO (Professional Employment Organization). This is an ideal service for companies of 5-200 employees.

Accolades.com

http://accolades.com/

(founded by Darren Peck - sales@accolades.com | LinkedIn)

Want to give your clients pens, t-shirts, usb keys, or other products with your logo on them? Accolades can take care of any size order.

Socialibrium

http://www.socialibrium.com/

(founded by Ray Bernaz - twitter: @rayber | LinkedIn)

Having trouble keeping track of the various channels, which you use to communicate to your various relationships?  Let Socialibrium consolidate those into a dashboard to help you manage it all. Available on Blackberry and iPhone.

Urban Girl Squad

http://urbangirlsquad.com | @urbangirlsquad

(founded by Amanda Hofman - amanda@urbangirlsquad.com)

Ladies seeking events in NYC do not need to look any further. Urban Girl Squad is a social group for women in their 20s and 30s who love to try new things, spend time with friends, and meet new people in New York City.

Freshmalt

http://www.freshmalt.com | @FreshMalt

(founded by Marc Alter - LinkedIn)

It’s happened to everyone at least once. You are on a date, you go to dinner somewhere, but then are a bit clueless as to where to go to next. Freshmalt eliminates this stress by providing a play-by-play plan for a good night out. To come up with suggestions, the site pulls reviews from various sites, including CitySearch and UrbanDaddy, but all that appears on the website is hand-edited by a real person.

Pear’s Crackpot

http://www.pearscrackpot.com

(founded by Pear Benjasirichai - twitter: @pearb09)

Hey foodies, this website creates the link between Thai recipes with their respective ingredients. Finally, you can not only learn the how, but also the what that goes into delicious Thai dishes.

Boch Consulting

http://www.boch-consulting.com

(founded by Zdzislaw Bochynski - LinkedIn )

Looking to redo the way your building deals with energy? Or is your startup experiencing data center over heating? Talk to Boch Consulting. They will find a solution to your energy issues.

Hoot Ratings

http://www.hootratings.com | @hootratings

(founded by Mike Brady – twitter: @themikebrady | facebook.com/hootratings )

Think Yelp, but confidential. All business need feedback, but sometimes they would prefer it not all be publicly visible.

Howdoable

http://www.howdoable.com

(founded by Sergey Chernyshev)

Need to create quick and easy how-to’s? Howdoable will give you the power to not only create how-to’s but to use them to track your progress on where you are. Then you can re-activate a how-to and repeat it.

Datagram

http://www.datagram.com

(VP of Sales & Marketing: Michael Dietze - LinkedIn)

When you need powerful hosting along with extremely personalized customer service, Datagram can help. With a clients like Gawker and the Huffington Post, they are used to handling some big loads, to put it lightly.

Green Media Ventures

http://greenmediaventures.com

(founded by Jonathan Gorham)

Jonathan Gorham wants to prove that home energy efficiency is sexy (as President Obama put it in December). He presented his patented interior storm window as one of many products with potential to make a huge impact on the green energy market.

Letmecheckthat

http://www.letmecheckthat.com | @letmecheckthat

(founded by Aaron Knight - twitter: @phrasemix )

Not sure if the email you are about to send is grammatically correct? Babel Fish will not be of much help. Instead send it over to LetMeCheckThat. A few minutes later, after your article has been proof-read by a real human, you will receive a corrected version. BAM!

Pillar

http://www.pillarcc.com

(founded by Richard Lee - twitter: @chiefatlarge | LinkedIn )

Like Blue Fountain Media, this small agency focuses on SEO right from the get-go. It should never be an after-thought.

Friendlynote

http://friendlynote.com

(founded by Corey H Maass – LinkedIn)

Trying to manage many projects at once, while keeping up with client relationships? Let FriendlyNote give you a hand with that. I really hope that creator Corey H Maass can somehow combine the power of HighRise and BaseCamp into one

Prebilt Hosting

http://newprebilt.prebilt.com/

(founded by Scott Wolpow - LinkedIn)

Need a hosting provider that is dedicated to solving problems before you even know of them? Look no further. Scott Wolpow is dedicated to giving you all the attention you need.

BrightMap

http://brightmap.com | @brightmap

(founded by Graham Lawlor - twitter: @generationg | LinkedIn)

Think of BrightMap as a social directory of companies. It gives you the ability to see various connections between companies and their clients so that recommendations can occur in a new way. It is founded on the belief in transparency among companies, which may be a new idea for some. As creator, Graham Lawlor, puts it: “Wasn’t the idea of making your resume publicly visible online a weird idea a few years ago? Then came LinkedIn.”

Blue Fountain Media’s Director of Marketing, Alhan Keser, was just featured in the Wall Street Journal and Smart Money’s SMSmallBiz.com in a story covering Pay-Per-Click advertisements. In an extended interview, Keser helped explain why paid advertisements resulted in higher conversion rates–the ratio of users who actually make a purchase–when compared to the organic, unpaid search results.

Here’s a quick excerpt:

The reason for the differential: Conversion rates tend to improve as shoppers progress through the buying cycle, says Alhan Keser, an SEM specialist at Blue Fountain Media, a boutique web site development and online marketing firm in New York. Although search engine users typically troll organic results to conduct online research, they start favoring sponsored links when they’re ready to buy, he says. “Most people who click on ads are ready to be sold to; they are at the buying stage,” Keser says.

Keser is a certified SEO and SEM expert, meaning he is well versed in all aspects of marketing through search engines–both improving organic results and paid results. Keser has previosuly been featured on Entrepreneur.com, in the Google section of About.com and is a guest expert for Ultra Light Startups–a forum for technology entrepreneurs.

Email marketing is a form of direct marketing which allows anyone to send messages directly to a pre-determined list of users. (For more info about what email marketing is, check out this post, “11 Reasons to Use Email Marketing”)

Not all email delivery methods are created equal.

Everyone with an email account knows how to send an email. Most of us send out dozens every day. When it comes to sending out bulk emails, though, you are far wiser to rely on a professional email marketing service.

Using a consumer- or business-grade email account to send out your marketing emails can lead to big problems. Systems like Outlook, Gmail, Hotmail, etc. are simply not equipped to send out bulk emails and lack the features necessary to execute a successful email marketing campaign.

Email Marketing Services

While there are many different email marketing Service Providers, they all tend to provide the same basic services:

Analytics & Statistics

When you send an email by yourself, you have no way of knowing how many people actually received your email, let alone how many actually opened it.

Email marketing services use special tools to separately track how many emails are received in inboxes and how many are actually opened. You can even see who opened and who clicked through and what was clicked. Furthermore, you’ll receive reports on unsubscribes, bounces, and formal spam complaints.

All this data will help you improve future mailings to increase response open and response rates.

A/B Testing

Most modern email marketing Services allow you to test out multiple subject lines to find the most successful one. For example, you can set two different subject lines on a randomly select sample (e.g. 10%) of your mailing list. The system will automatically compare the open rates and then send the email with the “winning” subject line to the rest of your list.

Pre-Approved To Send Bulk Email

Most email systems limit the number of emails that you can send at once. You probably won’t even know when you’ve reached the limit–your emails simply won’t go through. Furthermore, bulk emails from most normal email accounts will quickly get flagged as spam. Email marketing services have relationships and agreements with internet and email providers to send authorized bulk email through, without being flagged as spam.

(NOTE: Email marketing services still allow you to display your own email address in the “from” box–they simply change key “under-the-hood” settings that your customers won’t see.)

Professional Mailing Practices & Legal Requirements

Using your normal mailing system can result in privacy breaches, like exposing your entire list in the “To” or “CC:” line.  Separately, a failure to include unsubscribe instructions or an unsubscribe link is now against the law.

Handle Formatting

Email marketing Services verify that your email complies with standards and will display correctly across all modern computers, web browsers, and email systems. They also ensure that your email meets the size requirements enforced by many email systems without having to sacrifice the higher response rates that come with graphic-rich HTML emails.

List Management

An Email marketing service will host and manage your list. They will manage unsubscribe requests and “bounce-backs” from recipients whose email addresses are no longer active. You can even separate lists into multiple segments and groups.

While setting up and sending out mailing lists is manageable by anyone with intermediate computer and internet skills, the hard part is knowing how to structure and analyze the results of email marketing campaigns. Anyone can send out an email, but it takes experience and training to craft a headline that will get users to open your email instead of sending it straight to the trash. And once the email is open, what buttons and calls to action will convince users to click your links and convert into real sales?

Blue Fountain Media successfully employs email marketing services for a wide variety of clients. Our results-driven process will deliver the results you need. To find out how we can help you get your own program started, request a quote or call 212-260-1978.

What is Email Marketing?

If you have an email address, you’ve seen plenty of examples of email marketing. A clothing store might tell you about some new styles, a car dealership might let you know about a special financing deal, a local restaurant might let you know about new menu items.

Email marketing is a form of direct marketing which allows anyone to send messages directly to a pre-determined list of users. These messages can be anything from simple, plain text to rich, graphic-laden pages (similar to normal websites). Email marketing messages are delivered right to the recipient’s inbox, just like normal email.

Email marketing differs from other online marketing in that it is inexpensive, easy to send, highly measureable, and goes straight to a target’s inbox. It’s another tool in your online marketing toolbox.

Now, let’s take a look at what makes email marketing so useful.

The Advantages of Email Marketing

1. Low Cost

Email-based marketing costs can be as low as $0.005 per email. This compares favorably to other online marketing methods like pay-per-click or cost-per-impression advertising. Compared to the expense of traditional mail marketing, the savings are even greater (think about all the printing and postage costs!).

2. Measurable Results

Using innovative tracking systems, email marketing allows you to know exactly how many people receive your message, how many open it, and how many actually click on the links and calls to action contained within your message. Armed with this knowledge, you can make adjustments and improvements to subsequent emails.

3. Precision Targeting

Send emails exactly where you want them to go. You can easily create segmented lists and direct different messages to designated customer groups. You can collect email addresses from a number of sources, including your existing customer database. Adding a “mailing list” box to your website is a great way to build a list of users who are interesting in to hearing from you.

4. Interactive

Email newsletters don’t limit you to simple, static content. You can include video, music, polls and more. These tools provide multiple ways to engage your customers.

5. Strong Calls to Action

Clicking on a link or button is very easy, which means that recipients have to take very little effort to follow through on a call to action. Compare this with traditional newsletters where recipients have to dial a phone number or type a website address into their computer.

6. Highly Personalized

Use your database to easily greet recipients by name. Make them feel that they aren’t receiving a generic mass email.

7. Time and Venue Shifting

Recipients can read your message on their own time and on the device of their choosing, whether that means in a traditional email inbox or on an iPhone. This freedom increases open rates and engagement rates.

8. Opt-In & Unsubscribe Options

Because email lists are easy to opt-in and opt-out of, you don’t have to worry about customers receiving unsolicited and unwanted advertising.

9. Instant Response

Most recipients will read your message within minutes or hours. You can know the success of your campaign the same day you send it instead of weeks down the line.

10. Simple

No need to coordinate design, printing, and mailing as is necessary with physical mail-shots. And unlike other forms of online marketing, you don’t have vague targets and results. Email marketing is straightforward: send a message to a targeted list of recipients. Write the message and press send.

11. Easy To Get Started

Getting started with your mailing list is simple. You probably even have a huge database of email addresses already. Think about all the email addresses you have in your current email system, Rolodex, Blackberry, or other device. And surely you have at least a handful of company news, special offers, or other piece of information you want to share with your contacts.

Blue Fountain Media successfully employs Email Marketing campaigns for a wide variety of clients. To find out how we can help you get your own program started, request a quote or call 212-260-1978.

Check back twice each month for the latest installment of Gabriel’s YoungEntrepreneur articles. He will be covering a range of topics relevant to doing business on the web, including web design, e-commerce, online advertising and search engine optimization.

On Wednesday, a website called ReadWriteWeb.com inadvertently proved that a certain segment of users will completely ignore all text except for the exact phrase they are looking for.

ReadWriteWeb published an article called Facebook Wants to Be Your One True Login. Google picked up that post and presented it a news result for the search “facebook login”, which meant that (at least for a few hours) it came up above the normal Google results for “facebook login”.

A few hours after it went live, ReadWriteWeb’s administrators noticed a lot of the article’s comments were from users who thought they were on Facebook’s website. Users complained that they didn’t like the new red color scheme (ReadWriteWeb’s logo color) or that they couldn’t find their inbox or their news feed.

ReadWriteWEb even added a large note to the article:

CONCLUSION

• Many users will ignore all text and images except for the exact phrase they’re looking for.
• Give users what they want, and give it to them in a clear and up-front way.

Blue Fountain Media can help you streamline your own website and make it more user-friendly. For help with your website, call 212-260-1978 or request a quote today.

WebsiteGrader is a tool that measures the marketing effectiveness of websites.

This means that BFM’s site is optimally designed and built to:

• Rank well in Google
• Be easily found by users
• Load quickly and efficiently
• Display correctly across a variety of browsers
• Clearly link to relevant pages, such as our portfolio, blog and Business Learning Center
• Be navigated easily by users
• Have clear calls to action

You’ve seen the results we’ve gotten for ourselves, now find out what we can do for you: Call 212-260-1978 or request a quote today.

• Keywords: do keyword research, and use keyword groups to segment your audiences. Also use different match types to make sure you’re targeting the right users at the right times in their buying cycle, but not overpaying for lower-performance phrases.
• Ad copy: Use keywords in your ad copy, and prioritize the relevance of what you’re advertising (in relation to the search terms) over branding or your company name.
• Landing page: Make sure your landing page is relevant to your keywords, and ads.
• Performance Tracking: Know what metrics are important to your business; monitor and improve your campaigns over time through controlled testing.

But what if you’re already doing all that? Here are the next 8 steps:

1. Use negatives on your broad match keywords.

   If you don’t want to limit your options to specific phrases by using only exact match, because some of your keywords might be combined with an unpredictably long list of other keywords, most of which are relevant combinations, but a handful of which are irrelevant, set the main keyword to broad match, and enter the handful of irrelevant modifiers as negative matches, at the keyword level.

2. Use dynamic keyword insertion.

   If you’re targeting a lot of similar products, or one product that comes in a lot of different colors (e.g. blue plaid shorts, red plaid shorts, etc.), you can improve the relevance of your ad copy quickly by using DKI to insert the user’s search terms into your copy (space permitting).

3. Brand vs. Non-brand keywords and ads

   If you get traffic from people searching your brand name and also bid on brand-name keywords for SERP domination purposes (assuming you rank organically for your brand name), this is when you should test the inclusion of the brand in your ad copy. Similarly, if you sell another company’s brands on your website and it’s popular enough to get branded search traffic, monitor the performance of branded vs. non-branded keywords, as well as brand names in ad copy. (Note: Google has relaxed its restrictions on using brand names in ad copy in the US at least; if you are advertising in another country, please learn about local copyright law and Google’s country-specific policies.)

4. Discounts and other selling points

   If you offer free shipping, online discount codes, guarantees or other differentiating points, test them against eachother in each keyword group. They might perform differently at different stages of the buying process. However, monitor the performance of discount codes carefully: they will most likely increase sales or orders, but they also erode margins, so make sure that you’re not increasing volume at the expense of profits. In other words, make sure your discount volume isn’t cannibalizing visitors who would be willing to pay full price anyway.

5. Link AdWords with Analytics

   Even if you’re using the same Google Account login for both AdWords and Analytics, they might not be linked by default: check in the “Reports” tab or AdWords. Linking these two services allows Analytics to incorporate cost-per-click data, and allows AdWords to incorporate Analytics Goal data into keyword and ad performance reports. (Note: if you’ve just linked the two services, it might take a week or two for the latter option to become available.)

6. Bid based on time of day

   Most search advertising programs now offer the option to schedule your ads for certain times of the day, and even increase or decrease bids. Monitor performance by time of day, and increase your budget at peak-converting times, not necessarily peak traffic times.

7. Create separate campaigns for the content network

   There is too much variance in costs-per-click, ad performance, and keyword relevance between the Search network and the Content network to use the same campaigns across the two. If you’re currently advertising everywhere, stop. Disable content partners in your current campaigns. If you have gotten ROI out of the content network, duplicate these campaigns, and have these new copies target only the content network, and optimize your two sets of campaigns separately.

8. Prioritize & Find New Opportunities

   There is a wealth of data about searcher behavior available, much of it for free if you know where to look. Two good places to start are Google Trends, and eBay Pulse. Google Trends provides great historical data on popular keywords, so you can identify seasonal keywords, outdated terms that aren’t worth pursuing anymore, or up-and-coming buzz words that should be on your radar. eBay Pulse is great for growing your keyword list, as it can help you identify the language that shopping searchers specifically are using.