Danny Brown

podcaster - author - creator

Latest posts from Danny Brown

Enjoy the latest posts from Danny Brown, and feel free to add your own thoughts in the comments after the post.

Influence That!

There’s a lot of negativity around online influence tools at the minute. Things like Twitter Grader, Klout and similar are coming under fire, with common complaints being how is influence decided, what metrics are used, and does it even matter anyway.

Allyson Kapin came up with a great statement, about measuring impact as opposed to influence – show us real metrics of success from your actions as opposed to success with your interactions (big difference).

There’s no doubt influence can be beneficial – think of Ashton Kutcher getting his Twitter followers to buy a bunch of mosquito nets to fight malaria, for example.

Yet, as the second image from the left below (taken from the Klout homepage) shows, there’s still a ways to go on defining influence, and sums up perfectly why influence measurement tools are coming under fire.

Unless there’s a big market for vaginal influencers…

Does Klout influence matter

Video Overview of the New Catalyst Premium WordPress Theme

Catalyst premium WordPress theme

This post originally appeared over at For Bloggers By Bloggers. I’m reposting here as WordPress, and the various premium frameworks around, are becoming an increasingly important and adaptable toolset for any business, small or large and should be your starting point when building your presence online.

New to the premium WordPress theme scene, Catalyst looks to be the most in-depth and extensive premium WordPress theme currently on the market when it comes to dashboard options.

From the same guys behind the now-discontinued Frugal theme, Catalyst takes premium WordPress themes to a whole new level for user options.

With unlimited design options, a very cool CSS Builder Tool, 22 skins and a child theme included in the package, the ability to build Child Themes with a couple of clicks and much, MUCH more, Catalyst is shaping up to be a premium WordPress theme to be reckoned with.

Throw in the fact that both personal ($97) and developer licenses ($174) for the Catalyst theme allows you unlimited use, and it’s clear the developers mean business.

Here’s a video overview of some of the Catalyst features – I’ll be revisiting with a full-on review and some designs that I’ve built to test the framework out soon.

What do you think – can Catalyst compete with the established premium WordPress themes like Thesis, Genesis, Woo Themes, Headway and others?

Note: Links and banners in this post are affiliate ones.

This post contains a video. If you can’t see it displayed properly in your feed, you can watch it directly here.

Catalyst Theme - WordPress Accelerated

Personal Marketing with Canadian Pet Connection

Brandon and Lorne Forder of Canadian Pet Connection

How are you influenced? By adverts? Marketing campaigns? Email blasts? Word-of-mouth? A little bit of each?

How about personal marketing?

Would you be more inclined to shop with someone that actively takes the time to know who you are, what your needs are and what your shopping pattern might be? I know I would.

Case in point ? pet health nutritionists Canadian Pet Connection (disclosure – client).

If you live near their stores in Oakville, Ontario, and you go in to buy something for your pet, father and son owners Lorne and Brandon Forder treat you as if you’re old friends.

They chat warmly; they ask after your pet (which they remember by name); they’ll talk to you for as long as you want about what could be wrong with your pet, and offer solutions without being pushy salespeople; and they’ll remember your preferences every time.

They take that same family-friendliness online, where the Canadian Pet Connection blog is full of great pet advice as well as featured people and local businesses; their Facebook Page is a fun mix of advice, questions and best Christmas films for pets(!); and their Twitter stream is a constant of chat, tips and facts.

Brandon even monitors for people mentioning their pet’s birthday, and often sends out a surprise package for the pet to make that extra year all the more fun. And with a new e-commerce store about to launch, that could mean pets further afield getting the birthday treatment too.

Simply put, Canadian Pet Connection are successful because they genuinely care.

So how can you reflect this personal approach online?

From a business point of view, you could offer similar. Offer an email list for your customers to sign up to, and ask certain questions that allow you to personalize your message.

Customers in Canada? Set up an email message wishing them a Happy Canada Day. The same goes for the UK (four different celebrations for Saint days), the US (send an Independence Day message) or anywhere that has a specific celebration. It might take a little work on your behalf, but isn?t the end result worth it?

You can use the same ideas even on a personal level. New follower on Twitter? Either reply with a response to their last tweet or send a personal DM that references their last tweet or their bio. Leave some advice on someone?s Facebook status and if you have a solution (if it?s answering a question) let them know that you can help in the future.

These are just two examples of two of the most popular social networks. The same principles will work anywhere.

Social media allows us to connect with people and offer solutions to those same people like never before.

Is there any part that says these solutions can?t be personal? Canadian Pet Connection don’t seem to think so.

How about you?

This Isn’t Rocket Science

If I want pizza, I call up and?order a pizza. If I want to book a flight, I go online and book my flight. If I want to watch a movie, I?ll download from Netflix and watch it. Easy, huh?

So why is it so difficult to do the same when I have a problem and need customer service?

If I call my cable service provider, or bank, or insurance company, I don?t want to be sat there pressing buttons until my fingertips bleed, just to get to the right department. I don?t want to hear hold music for 15 minutes, only to then be told I need to go back to the department I just came from. I don?t want to be told my call is important to you when it feels anything but.

Businesses spend so much time getting their brand right; their marketing; their PR; their sales; their online strategy. But you know what?

None of this means a thing without customers. And customers do?not want to feel second-rate. Strange but true ? satisfy your customers and you?ll satisfy your shareholders and accountants.

How?s?your satisfaction level holding up?

How a Q&A Session Saw Livefyre Change the Game for Blog Comment Systems

Livefyre comments system

Two days ago, I watched something very cool happen on this blog.

Using the Livefyre comments system as the platform, and the always awesome David Siteman Garland as the sacrificial guinea pig (or bunny!), I carried out an experiment on where I see the true strength of blogs – the comment section.

Because Livefyre is a real-time comments system, it’s more like a chat function as opposed to your standard comment options (whether core comments or other third-party systems). You get live updates, new comment alerts, real-time chat functions and much more. Think of it as comments on steroids (thanks, Philip!).

So what was the experiment, and why was it so cool?

Seeing the potential of Livefyre (I’ve been using it for about three months now), I wanted to show just how interactive both it, and the blog comments the system powers, could be. And what better way than a live, real-time Q&A with one of the most lively and passionate guys on the web?

So that’s exactly what happened.

Formatted like a chat show but with the questions and answers via blog comments, the experiment saw David come online for an hour and answer any questions asked of him in the comments of the blog post.

These answers included following your passion to start a business, making that business a success, building your online presence, being a trusted resource and how to gain collateral and support for your non-profit.

It was uncharted waters for blog comments, and could have been an unholy mess. But I think it’s safe to say that, instead, it was a huge success.

With Livefyre rocking the comment updates and alerts, as well as David knocking it out the park with the speed of his response, it showed what the future of blog comments is.

  • True real-time alerts and updates.
  • Instant back-and-forth interaction.
  • Interview-style conversations.
  • Social integration, with the ability to invite friends from Facebook and Twitter into the conversation.

Not only that, but it showed just how well a system like Livefyre complements the blogging experience. It encourages dialogue, and showed that – even in beta – it’s the most interactive comment system around. Basically, Livefyre is what blog comments were built for.

Twitter impressions for Livefyre experiment

It also showed it could handle a ton of calls to its service. During the Q&A session, which lasted just over an hour, the following numbers are indicative of how successful Livefyre and David were at showing the system off:

  • An average of three comments per minute coming into the post.
  • Just under 200 comments in the space of 70 minutes.
  • A constant of 60+ people in the Q&A at any given time.
  • 292,500 impressions on Twitter for the experiment.
  • 5,310 impressions on my Facebook Page.
  • 1,015 page views in 70 minutes from Google Analytics.

The post is also continuing to grab interest after the event, from the very positive feedback that was generated both in the comments section on the day, and online (Facebook, Twitter, email) from people that either attended the Q&A on the day, or simply watched the instant updates and alerts as they came through.

For a comment system on a blog to generate so much activity and interaction speaks volumes, both of the system itself and obviously the guest that made it such a blast. My thanks to both David Siteman Garland and Livefyre, for showing that blog comments can be as real-time as Twitter and as valuable as a great business seminar.

Somehow, I don’t think I’ll look at blog comments in the same light ever again.

As part of the experiment, David provided two signed copies of his book for the best questions. The first one goes to Genevieve Lachance for this question, and Philip Nowak for this one. I’ll be in touch soon for your mailing addresses!