No point in having a Ferrari if you can’t drive a stick!

Having an integrated digital footprint is not enough; you have to know how to use it: how to add content, what type of content to add, what tools to use to track responses and so on.

Most successful business owners are used to learning new skills and fortunately none of this is rocket science.  A few hours initially to understand the concepts followed by an hour a week for the next month is normally all it takes.

Kilted Chaos will work with you to identify the best place to start; we use one on one Skype training supplemented by client specific screen casts that you can refer to later.  Training is built around you and your business.

Contact us and learn how to get more out of your own time.

Last Man Standing…

..or Woman It has been an auspicious month for Kilted Chaos – Alex and I met for the first time – our articles of incorporation finally arrived, signed by Wyoming’s secretary of state – we’re delivering on 3 major corporate projects across three different countries and we have a kick ass creative genius that we’re nurturing. An overnight success that took 3 years!

Over the next month we will be re-branding Kilted Chaos, we won’t be losing the chaos sphere or our rather irreverent approach to business, but we will be making it easier for companies to understand what it is we do. We’ll be taking the lessons that we have learned while working with clients big and small over the years and applying them to ourselves. It’s the words – “lessons we have learned over the years” - that form the basis of this post. It doesn’t matter whether you’re a small business or an independent band – it is the lessons you learn by actually doing it that eventually shape what you become.

Alex and I first met online 3 years ago, I can’t remember the community – could have been Craig’s list, could have been a Wordpress message board, but he delivered a solution to a problem I had and did it in a way that made me want to engage back. Over the years we have built a relationship based on the equitable delivery of work product – we have learned how to communicate using email and Skype, we know how to disagree with each other, how to motivate each other, we’ve educated each other in new areas and as a result, we have a company that solves problems for many different types of organizations.

Over the years we have watched people and companies come and go – we’ve seen “Gurus” rocket to stardom for a couple of months and then just as quickly disappear – we’ve watched the aggressive self-promoters last a little longer but ultimately suffer the same fate – and yet all the while – we’ve been getting better and better at what we do.

The thing is – at some point – you have to actually deliver – or as Seth Godin says – you have to ship. Your sites have to work – your product has to actually rock!

We love this paradigm – both in business and in music – sure, right now – there’s a million different things competing for attention – but eventually – the wannabees, the poseurs, the douches, the people who are in it for the fast buck – they’re going to die out because they can’t sustain. We’ll be left with the people who kept at it – who did it – who didn’t give up, who learned from their mistakes and got better, who actually know how to make shit work and to make shit rock.

Marketing New Music Artists

A couple of stories have popped up this week that has me reaching for my keyboard – the one with letters not notes.   Alex commented about Suzanne Vega’s move to Direct to Fan Marketing and DMN noted that Sade just moved half a million units, going gold in her first week.

Now I love both of these artists – The Queen & The Soldier & Your Love Is King are up there on my top 50 songs of all time (well – for this week anyway) – but there is a HUGE difference between these two legends and a new artist – say like Jody Schneider – who is just starting out.

Suzanne Vega and Sade had years of label development, marketing and promotion in order to establish a fan base.  Their music was introduced to the world decades ago in a record industry that looks nothing like the current music business.  The scarcity model makes huge sense if you’re Prince or Bowie or the above two artists, but at the beginning of your career the only person who notices that you’re not producing is your Mom.

As the music business becomes more and more tech dependant with artists getting involved in website design, digital audio, tweets and blog posts - let’s not forget the lessons of the last 10 years of online business.  Just because the big guys are set up in a certain way doesn’t mean you have to emulate them, in fact oftentimes adopting the same strategy can be detrimental. 

The beauty of the web and of being your own boss is that you can change your approach fairly quickly, you can use different strategies to reflect where you are in your career,  change the layout of your website, try different approaches to marketing and distribution.  Unlike traditional bricks and mortar businesses you don’t need a mason every time you want to change how you express yourself.

So – I’m stoked for Sade that a 10 year break from releasing music resulted in her existing fans picking up half a million copies, but – if you’re an Indie artist and you haven’t broken yet – I’d advise against this strategy.  If you want to keep quiet for the next decade – you go for it – the challenge of connecting to people who might dig your masterpiece will still be here waiting for you on your return.  

Small Business Owners – It’s easy to be found

So you run a small business – maybe it’s a restaurant or a store, maybe you offer a service like an accountant or a plumber. You know a little about online marketing, you might even have a website that hasn’t been updated since you paid an SEO consultant to get you on the “front page of Google!” You’re good at running your business but think you don’t have the time or budget to market yourself properly online.

HELLO – It’s 2009 – things have changed.

It is easier now for people to find your business than it has ever been – the development of tools such as blogs, texting, smart phones and yes, Twitter have resulted in a stream of information that is constantly being updated and accessed by your competitors and your customers. If your business competition is within 20 miles and you don’t have an updated dynamic website, then you are going to lose to the business owner who does.

Click here to read more on how small business owners can effectively use Twitter – this post is less about what it does and more about how you can do it. We know as small business owners ourselves that incorporating a new system into daily business operations is a challenge. If it isn’t easy to do then it gets put on the sidelines like many other things.

Kilted Chaos’ approach to social media and online marketing is to make it as easy as possible. We deliver budget conscious yet professional websites that integrate with your social media marketing. We then show you how easy it is to create a business oriented Twitter stream and encourage you to write occasionally about your business – and that’s it. That’s all you need to start with.

If you get hooked and find that investing more time in social media marketing is improving your bottom line (and we think it will) then we’ll show you how to take it further. Contact us.