Charles Haggas

For the low-low price of $20 you can get your own horrible jingle and logo from HorribleLogos.com.

With our clean, classy, established logo, why would Space Chimp Media (APPSPIRE.me’s parent company) pay anything for the trash you see (and hear) here? We’ve gotta tell you the truth, we did it for the links. Not just the click-through that we hope to get from other people browsing HorribleLogos.com, but for the increased traffic we get to our site from higher search rankings.

More links to your site means higher search rankings. You can also think of backlinks as votes to your site. The more votes the better. The higher the quality the vote, the bigger the impact will be on your site. This is a great example of how to buy links without getting in trouble with Google or Bing.

Did you get a horrible logo or jingle? Share it here or on our Facebook page.

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Space Chimp Media | Our Horrible Jingle and Logo

Leisure has a value of its own. It is not a mere handmaid of labor; it is something we should know how to cultivate, to use, and to enjoy. – Agnes Repplier, “Leisure”

At the end of most yoga practices there’s a segment called “Savasana,” this posture involves laying on your back. Really, just laying there. These few moments of rest are meant to help all the postures that came before it be integrated into the muscles, to let the effect of the practice take hold. Recently, authors Connie May Fowler and Patrick Madden gave a lecture that suggested a similar idea, but for the brain. The lecture is titled, “The Importance of Wasting Time“, and was performed online, through Facebook, of all places. The general idea: How can we come up with new, innovative ideas, if we’re constantly focused on what’s already going on?

A lot of us pride ourselves on being workaholics, multitaskers, and do-it-ourselfers, all of which have their merits–but what ever happened to quality over quantity?

Now, this idea of doing too much doesn’t just apply to your brain or your body, but also to the health of your company, and it call comes down to budgeting. Budgeting time, money, and resources. Running a business is like running a marathon, not a sprint, so it’s key to make sure that you’re budgeting your resources to be there for you over time. Resources include employees (there’s the age-old saying that you can treat employees well and pay them badly, or you can treat them badly and pay them well, but you can’t treat them badly and pay them badly), industry contacts (don’t wear out your favors), and of course cold hard cash (don’t blow it all in one place, pace yourself and diversify).

Of course each company is different, some small businesses don’t have the funds to hire employees, others are in the hectic phase of trying to find their niche and establish their brand. There are certainly reasons to be busy and reasons why a strong work-ethic has long been admired–no one is suggesting you shirk your responsibilities, rather, I’m suggesting that you stop feeling guilty when you sneak away from your to do list to get a sandwich.

So, now that you’re ready to make the most of your wasted time, just don’t try too hard.

What do you think? When do you get your best ideas?

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Space Chimp Media | Are You Doing too Much?

Everyone is on Twitter, facebook, linkedin, tumblr, pintrist, googleplus, high-five, Friendster, myspace—and the list goes on. And most of us believe we need these social media tools to have a successful business. So, after you’ve branded your business, opened 500 social networking accounts, and friended as  many people as the internet would let you … what do you say to all those people?

Let’s look at it from the other side.

We all want to feel like we’re best friends with our favorite brands—that Justin Timberlake and The New Yorker like us as much as we like them—but that doesn’t mean we want to know when the intern who is running their facebook account wants a sandwich. If you’re a restaurant, it doesn’t make a ton of sense to be posting updates about your favorite sports team. Every brand is an authority, or striving to portray themselves as such, and what we—the fans–want to know is: how did they get so cool? What do they have that made us want to follow them in the first place?

So how do you share your authority and coolness with your fans? Go off on tangents. And by tangents, I mean, of course, topics that are tangentially related to your business. You have a shoe store specializing in athletic footwear? An interesting article about your favorite runner could make a great relevant post.

Remember, also, that people sign into facebook to see if the guy or girl they have a crush on has liked their new profile picture, and that noticing your post at all is a gift of their attention. Keep it brief, keep it relevant, and at least try to keep it interesting.

Do you have other suggestions for brands running social media accounts? Leave a comment below.

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Space Chimp Media | Toeing the Line in Social Media

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Space Chimp Media | How to Make A Successful App!

If you don’t already know, Kitchen Nightmares is a hugely popular show on FOX in which world renonwed chef Gordon Ramsey attempts to turnaround failing restaurants in a week.

Here is the official description from the FOX website

Each week, Chef Ramsay will visit a new establishment with myriad problems. He will delve deep into the inner workings of each eatery and explore everything from unsanitary refrigerators to lazy and inexperienced staff to diagnose the real problems. Whether he changes the restaurant’s operations, updates the menu or gives the establishment a complete makeover, Chef Ramsay will do whatever it takes to try and turn these restaurants into popular, successful and, most importantly, money-making businesses. It’s up to the restaurant owners to take his advice and use it, or face closure [FOX].

What You Can Learn

The great thing about the show no matter how wacky or fake you think it is (there definitely are some questionable moments), is that you can actually learn some valuable business lessons. You don’t have to be a restaurant owner to take away some valuable lessons from the show. I’ve probably watched almost every episode they have ever produced and what I have come to learn is that the lessons these restaurant business owners learn is actually universal wisdom that all business owners should understand.

From my uber obsession with the show I have brainstormed about 10 things your business should do in order to help ensure your success.

1. Hire an Outsider

Sometimes business owners get tunnel vision and can’t recognize what is ailing their business. Therefore its important to hire an outsider you trust to give you a fresh outlook on your business and industry.

2. Focus on Making a Good Product

The number one problem with businesses on Kitchen Nightmares is that there food is horrible. From my experience, this tends to be the number one problem of all other failing businesses. If your product or service sucks nobody is going to buy it. Focus on ensuring your product or service is the best it can be first and foremost.

3. Clear the Air

Its important for internal communication. This not only means regular weekly or monthly meetings but also means you need to be candid with your employees. Ask them how they feel, how they would grow the company or what issues they see with the business. Promote openness and collaboration and your business will soar above the rest as you essentially are promoting innovation and forward thought.

4. Identify Problem Areas

Your business is never perfect. Identify areas where you can improve and innovate at all times. Make sure you stay humble and stay hungry for growth and success or your competition will eat you alive.

5. Embrace Change

The older you get the harder it is to change. However, its important that you embrace possible ways to shake things up especially if your sales are shrinking. Its important to note however too much change too often will simply confuse your customers as to what the real value of your business.

6. Shed The Dead-weight

Don’t become attached to your employees. Give business separate from pleasure as much as possible. This doesn’t mean you need to be a cold-hearted snake as Paula Abdul would say. It simply means your business should come first. You can’t afford to let a single employee or group of employees risk the well fair of your company in the wellbeing of your other employees.

7. Simplify Your Business

This is a common problem. Business owners may be good at alot of things and want to provide all those services or products at once. However, a confusing business model will simply confuse your customer base as to what you actually do. If you do a little of everything people will simply think your only a little bit good at alot of things even if it isn’t the case. Even large conglomerates like General Electric break off individual business segments into unified brands.

8. Always be Learning

You’re never too good to learn from another. The smartest and most talented individuals are always trying to learn more. Seek out other thought leaders in your industry and create working relationships so that you can continue to to stay at the forefront of your industry. Stay on your toes and always remember, there’s always someone out that may be just a little better than you.

9. Reach Out to The Community

Word-of-Mouth referrals are the best customers to have because that person trusts that they were given accurate information from someone they trust. The best way to increase word-of-mouth business is to reach out to your local community. If your a new business, customers outside your front door are alot easier to get to than customers thousands of miles away.

10. Stay the Course

Now that you’ve learned all these important business lessons its important that you keep it all together. Creating a successful business or turning a business around is only half the battle. Now you have to stay the course and keep your business on track on a daily basis. It may not seem that hard but when you have phone calls, emails, meetings, and family all to juggle at once it can be easy to lower your standards and let things slip.

All in all, remember to keep your standards high, stay focused, and stay hungry and you will succeed in the end.

Did I leave anything out? Leave a comment below and let me know your thoughts.

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Space Chimp Media | 10 Important Lessons any Business Can Learn from The Hit TV Series Kitchen Nightmares

Your website is the first impression your potential customers will have of you, so it must reflect your professionalism in every way possible. The following eCommerce Marketing recommendations relate to making your website a place where customers will want to shop.

1.  Keep it clean!  Websites that are over-crowded and stuffed full of photos, graphics, and teeny-tiny text are hard on the eye and give a “cheap” impression.
2. Organize it!  Ensure that the layout of your site makes sense and that similar products are grouped together so that your visitors don’t have to jump around looking for things.
3. Maintain it!  Broken links are one of the primary reasons that visitors will navigate away from your site.  They will figure that if you cannot keep your website running properly, then they will be unable to expect proper service from you.  Also ensure that your pages load quickly; when forced to wait too long for a page to load, your customers will simply “x” out and go to your competitor’s site.
4. Stimulate the eye!  While you want to avoid too many photos, people love to see pictures, so make sure you have quality photos that show all angles of your product.  Include call-outs that allow the customer to zoom in on larger and different views, as well as to see alternate color choices, if offered.
5. Describe it!  In addition to including quality photos, you will need to provide accurate, detailed descriptions of your products.  Anticipate what customers will want to know about the product and include that information.  If the product is something that requires a size or measurements, make sure you list that information.
6. Proof it!  One of the biggest turn-offs for most people is to try to read copy on a webpage that is full of grammatical, spelling, or typographical errors, so make sure you proofread and spell-check your site.  If this is not your strong point, enlist the help of someone who is good at it.
7. Be up front!  Post your shipping charges where your customers can see them before they reach the end of the checkout process.  Sales and return customers can be lost when you force your clientele to navigate all the way through check-out in order to see what their total cost will be.  Additionally, include a return policy that is easy to find on your site, easy to understand, and easy (read no hassle) to use.
8. Be reasonable!  Offer sensible shipping and handling fees – there’s a reason that those annoying infomercials put the shipping and handling fees in microscopic print, and that’s because those fees often exceed the cost of the item they want you to buy.  Gouging your customers will cost you repeat business and word-of-mouth referrals.
9. Make it easy!  Ensure that your check out or shopping cart process is easy to use without unnecessary steps.  People do not want to navigate through more than three pages to get to the end of the process, and many will simply give up before they get to the end if they have to jump through too many hoops.
10. Get personal!  Include information about you or your company.  Doing so lends your site a personal touch that makes people more comfortable with buying from you.
11. Anticipate questions!  Include a frequently asked questions (FAQ) page that pulls from questions you have had in the past and those that you can anticipate being asked in the future.  Doing so will also save you some time and effort in responding to the same questions over and over.
12.  Back it up!  Use testimonials from your customers or link to articles that support your product to enhance its value.  Be careful with this however, as too many such testimonials or links can start to make your site appear “cheesy” and will have the opposite effect.
13. Make it irresistible!  When you can, discount your products to provide your customers with a true value.  Of particular importance in today’s economy is making sure that your pricing is competitive enough to attract sales.  If you have unique or hard-to-find items, then higher pricing makes sense, but pricing your product well above your competitors will ultimately cost you sales.
14. Let them find you!  Make sure your contact information is easy to find and avoid forcing your visitors to search all over the site to find out how to ask you a question.
15. Be responsive!  Always respond to questions within a reasonable period of time.  If you make your customers wait too long, they will find another site from which to purchase the product.  Consider using an auto-responder if the volume warrants it, but keep in mind that personal service is always appreciated.
16. Let them know!  Include a method by which your customers can sign up for e-mail alerts for new products and sales.  Use this marketing tool wisely, though, so as not to give your customers the impression of being “spammed” which can be a huge turn-off for them.
17. Keep it safe!  Make sure your site clearly states that your customer’s information is secure and that it is safe to buy from you.
18. Offer choices!  Give your customers as many payment options as possible, including PayPal, credit card payments, and other popular payment methods.
19. Be humble!  There will be times when you make a mistake – it happens.  When it does happen, though, be prepared to handle the situation with a sincere apology and an offer to make it right.  Service recovery can not only correct an issue, but if handled correctly, may win you the loyalty of a customer that you might otherwise have lost.
20. Be creative!  Don’t be afraid to try new ideas, but don’t invest yourself in them to the point where you are unwilling to let them go if they are not working.

Source: .docstoc

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Space Chimp Media | 20 Things You Can Do to Increase Sales on Your eCommerce Website

Google, the wonder of our generation, has a feature wherein it offers up complete search terms you might be looking for while you type.   This feature can be considered both helpful and intrusive.  Sometimes I find that it suggests a better way for me to search for what I’m looking for, and sometimes not.  We can assume that Google is basing these suggested on some sort of ranked search data.  Surely, they are presenting you with the most popular search phrases, right?   Let’s take a look at some interesting Google Suggestions:

Can you find any funny, amusing or shocking Google Suggestions?  Let us know!

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Space Chimp Media | Fun with Google Suggestions

If you’ve been watching the news recently, be it in the papers, TV or online, there is no doubt you’ve come across the commotion on Wall Street that has spread to several major cities across the U.S. Even here in our hometown of Austin, the Wall Street protests spread to the footsteps of our city hall in an event that was attended by the hundreds, and was a peaceful, informative demonstration. The Occupy Wall Street movement is spreading like wildfire across the U.S., and it is by no accident. Those on the doorsteps of strategic locations in major cities are young, internet savvy, and fed up with many segments of the U.S. economy. And how are these protestors spreading the word of their cause? By the most effective means possible: social media. Here’s a quick breakdown of a few of the social media campaigns that Occupy Wall Street is using to grow awareness to the point that they cannot be ignored.

Facebook
The Occupy Wall Street Facebook page currently has over 160,000 likes, and it’s growing steadily at an alarming rate. The admins of this site aren’t just posting random rants either, they’re effectively pulling on the heart strings of their target audience by posting news about location updates, links to forums, and supply needs of the protesters themselves. Through FB, they are reaching thousands of interested and/or participating U.S. citizens, and painting an overall picture that is much more compelling than a single news article or blog about the event. The Facebook movement has also splintered off into city-specific pages as well, including Occupy Austin and Occupy San Diego.

YouTube
Being that YouTube is the second most popular search engine (just under Google), there’s not a better place online to post videos so the people can see what’s really going on behind the scenes. Just type “Occupy Wall Street” in YouTube’s search box and you’ll find pages and pages of videos flooding the video channel. The vids cover riots, police brutalities, and celebrity interviews about the event; again bringing the whole campaign to a reality for those who are not physically there. And considering that Google ranks web sites by YouTube videos, the massive amount of uploaded videos has only boosted search rankings for www.occupywallst.org.

Twitter
Hashtag “OccupyWallSt” and you’ll find thousands of tweets posted and shared by the minute. Twitter has been the leader in real-time news reports for the protest, where Twitter users can find out the latest news almost instantly about the event. Also, many major news sources such as CNN and ABC are using their Twitter accounts to update their ever-evolving stories covering Occupy Wall Street.

Many people have been comparing the Occupy Wall Street protest to the famous protests of the 1960s, but modern technology has made this one far more advanced and social. During the 1960s you had three sources to discover news about the protests: TV, Radio, and Newspapers. With today’s advancements in social sharing, citizen and traditional news are being shared through thousands of outlets via social media, giving this protest a much larger and more effective outreach.

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Space Chimp Media | How Occupy Wall Street is Using Social Media

Learn how expert marketers ensure that your brand gets media coverage every time.

Garnering media attention for your business is an important part of establishing a market position and getting customers to recognize your company.  There are two main reasons why you want to get covered in the media. First, the media is often considered to be the “fourth estate” due to its ability to keep politicians and corporations in check. This built in credibility creates trust amongst the publications readership. Secondly, people that buy magazines or newspapers buy it to read the articles not the ads. Therefore, it already has a built in customer base. A high volume of engaged readers (potential customers) plus credibility equals your brands amplification in the market place.

How Much More Success Can I Expect with Media Coverage

Research shows that news articles are 6 times more likely to be read than an advertisement. This is obviously a powerful statistic. If I can get 6 times more success with a news article why should I even advertise? Well, sustaining press coverage overtime is quite a bit more difficult than buying some ad space on a website or billboard. However, driving buzz through media and integrating that with a well thought out advertising plan is like rocket fuel to your bottom line. Capturing the attention of the media is valuable but marketing plus media is priceless.

Knowing what motivates publications to choose one story over the next is the first step to success. The answer is actually quite simple if you think about. Just like you and I we are in business to make money. Publications are no different. They need to sell newspapers or subscriptions so it is understandable that they are going to print stories that move their product off the shelves. Deliver a ready made story that is going to sell newspapers and your on the road to capturing media attention. Below are the five most written storylines written today. Therefore, it should be your goal to provide the media with one of these stories.

The Five Most Frequently Written Stories

1. The David-and-Goliath story
2. The unusual or outrageous story
3. The controversy story
4. The celebrity story
5. What’s already hot in the media

What are some other ways to ensure your story gets picked up in the media?

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Space Chimp Media | How to Capture The Attention of The Media

If you own a small business and you aren’t online, shame on you.  It’s 2011 for crying out loud!   The thought of jumping into the online market space can be an overwhelming notion for business owners who have yet to do so.  The typical fear is technology based.  Establishing an online presence just seems too technical and complicated.  C’mon!  You started and run a successful business…give yourself some credit!  You’ve got more than enough brainpower to pull it off.

Think about it this way:  When people want something these days they go to Google and look for it.  If you aren’t online, you won’t be found.   Simple as that.   And getting online doesn’t have to mean building out an incredibly complicated website.  There are several ways you can start to grow your online presence in just a few hours.

1)  Google Places

Google Places allows you to list your business and all of it’s locations.  You can note your business hours, parking situation, and current specials.  It’s all automatically pinned to a map and available to anyone using Google within your area looking for your products and services.

Do it now:  http://www.google.com/places/

2)  Facebook

There are over 800 Million people using Facebook so you should definitely tap into that.  Facebook is a great way to engage your current customer base and get your brand in front of new prospects.  There a myraid ways in which you can use Facebook and social media to market your brand.  You can learn more about that right over here.

Do it now:  http://www.facebook.com/pages/learn.php

3)  WordPress

WordPress is a free blogging platform that is so easy to use that anyone with half a brain can have a website up in minutes.   They have a very easy content management system that allows you to easily create and update your business information.  You can choose from hundreds of beautiful pre-made templates.

Do it now:  http://wordpress.com/

4)  Yelp

Yelp has taken that gigantic, cumbersome, yellow book people used to thumb through to find businesses, bent it over its knee and spanked the hell out of it.  Yelp is now one of THE places people go to to find local businesses.  And, better yet, Yelp is loved by Google, so having a presence there is a great move toward better web visibility.  Yelp also allows for user submitted reviews.

Do it now:  https://biz.yelp.com/

5) Merchant Circle

Like Yelp, Merchant Circle is a massive local business directory.  Where it sets itself apart is in the way you can interact with other businesses.   You can form connections and networks with other businesses, which can be a good way for you to discover new leads, or have them referred to you.

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Space Chimp Media | 5 Things You can do THIS WEEKEND to get Your Small Business Online