Sun Tzu and Competitive Analysis

Sun Tzu's "The Art of War", a book about military strategy in feudal China, found a significant following in the business sector in recent years. Although the text is written for generals, much of it can be directly applied to businesses. One particular line deals directly with competitive analysis, and serves as something of an inspiration to learn as much as possible about competing businesses.

"It is said that if you know your enemies and know yourself, you will not be imperiled in a hundred battles; if you do not know your enemies but do know yourself, you will win one and lose one; if you do not know your enemies nor yourself, you will be imperiled in every single battle."

Keeping this in mind, think about your company and your competitors. This quote does not deal with you being better than them, it deals with you understanding your limitations and strong points, as well as theirs. When you pitch your company over your competitors, are you touching each point where you have the clear upper hand and each point where they are clearly lacking? Current cable company vs satellite tv ads work like this. "We've got X number of channels with free X!" "They may have X channels, but how will you watch them if a tornado breaks the lines!". If you highlight your company's strong points, and your competitors weak points, you will likely find success... at least according to the following line:

"If your enemy is secure at all points, be prepared for him. If he is in superior strength, evade him. If your opponent is temperamental, seek to irritate him. Pretend to be weak, that he may grow arrogant. If he is taking his ease, give him no rest. If his forces are united, separate them. If sovereign and subject are in accord, put division between them. Attack him where he is unprepared, appear where you are not expected."

Obviously, not all of this quote is relevant, but the point remains- strike when your competitors are unprepared, and appear unexpectedly. Taking stock of your competition, when are they unprepared? In the case of toy stores at Christmas, let's say you run a small shop, and you are fighting against Toys 'R Us all year. Perhaps you can 'attack' the store by overstocking a popular toy, and making it known that you have supplies when they run out. In this way you can draw the people that were looking for that toy specifically, and 'win' against Toys 'R Us.

Now that you see a little of Sun Tzu's wisdom, consider how competitive analysis can be applied to websites. Are you aware of everything on the competition's website? Does your site stack up against theirs? Where do you need to learn more about yourself, and what don't you know about your 'enemy'?

If they have a certain section of the site that you don't have, you need to figure out how to counteract it. Maybe you have something they are missing. Figure out how to use that against them, and what to do if they add it. Make a checklist of what you have, and then review their site, checking off what they also have, and adding what more they have. You should keep an updated version of this (or something like it) so you know what to pitch, what not to pitch, and what of theirs to discuss. After all:

"The general who wins the battle makes many calculations in his temple before the battle is fought. The general who loses makes but few calculations beforehand."

Does Your Website Look Like Circa 1999?

It's 2010, and the web has been around long enough that people recognize what is current in web design, and what is outdated. Having an outdated website can have the same effect on a customer as you showing up to a meeting dressed in clothing that is distinctly not from this decade.  A poor website can sour potential customers within seconds if they can't find what they are looking for, or are turned off by the apparent age of your site. Given the year, your online presence has the potential to be driving more and more of your business, and you want to present the best possible face you can on the web.

The Latest Library Script Tags - All In One Place - Scriptsrc.net

We here at AlterImaging, are all about making things easier and more streamlined.

We ran into an issue a week ago and decided No More!

When building a website and adding in JQuery functionality. It makes no sense for you to host that JS on your server. Google hosts these scripts for you, (isn't that nice of Google?)

AlterNation Episode 11: Personally Branding Your Business

Welcome to AlterNation! Today we're talking personal branding with social media- what it is, and why it's important.

Personal Branding is a pretty new concept for regular people. In reality though, it's simply a new form of reputation management; one that takes place online. Put simply, personal branding is marketing the brand of you. There are plenty of reasons to want to do this, ranging from simply wanting to expand your career options, to a major campaign of trust for a brand. To some the idea of personal branding may seem unnecessary, but to others, especially freelancers, personal branding is massive.

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15 Notebook Inspired Website Designs

There's something great about taking something intangible like a website and creating a design that looks like you can reach out and touch it. Take a look at some web designs based on notebooks.

13 Creative

The Brew Mag

Design Top 10

Gardening With Children

Using Foursquare for Business

Foursquare is a location-based game and social networking platform. To clarify, you check into places you go, get points, unlock badges, see where your friends are, and sometimes find specials and deals. Foursquare has made setting up a business account extremely easy, and they give business owners a lot of power. All you have to do is go to their page for businesses to get started.

For businesses, Foursquare is like a modern update of old customer loyalty programs. So instead of giving customers a card that gives them a free sub after 12 subs; you give them a special after 10 checkins. People can compete to be the mayor of your business, the person with the most checkins in the last 2 months, and you can give the mayor an extra prize. The goal is to give people enough incentive to keep returning to your business, time after time. Since you have the freedom to set rewards, you might want to give people incentives at every 5 or so checkins. That way people won't be turned off by the amount of checkins it would take to become mayor, or lose interest after an initial reward.

Foursquare's website shows off some cool ways to get people using Foursquare as well; such as prominently displaying the mayor's name, or putting up signs explaining rewards. You can also talk about Foursquare on your website, or other social media initiatives. Many people tweet their location on Foursquare, and friends can see each other's checkins; giving your business a lot of additional advertising for free.

While Foursquare might be the most natural fit for restaurants, due to the quality of rewards, you certainly don't have to be a restaurant to use the service. Where I live almost every business around me shows up, whether or not the business owner added themselves. I can check into gas stations, bookstores, CVS, and more. People want to check in, because Foursquare is a game at its core. Points are given for each checkin, combos and multipliers are added for venturing out, and there is a daily tally of cities and friends. Foursquare gives out badges for various things, such as becoming mayor of a place, checking in to 10 places, stopping multiple places in a night, and much more. Sometimes you'll check in, and a completely random badge will pop up- such as the "school night" badge, for checking into somewhere after 3:00 AM from Monday to Thursday.

The bottom line is that Foursquare is an exciting new opportunity to bring more people into your business. If you aren't using it yet, you should definitely give it a shot. No matter what kind of business you have, as long as you have a building, you're good to go. Just come up with some fun and interesting incentives, and let people know you're on Foursquare!

AlterNation Episode 10: A Couple of FourSquares

Welcome to AlterNation! Today we're talking location-based services!

2009 saw the rise of location-based social applications, such as Foursquare and Gowalla, which have tremendous potential for businesses. Though barely a year old Foursquare has nearly 1 million users. Gowalla, its main competition has about 150,000 users. April 16, 2010 was declared Foursquare day by the company via Twitter, and Manchester, New Hampshire declared official "Foursquare Day" in the town.

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How to Blog if You're Boring

We preach blogging for business pretty relentlessly, and while there is a lot of information (read: endless) on how to blog, there isn't a lot to help you if the product or service you sell isn't particularly interesting. Keeping this in mind, I picked three examples of boring professions or industries, and outlined the challenge of blogging for them, and the solution that can be implemented. Without further to do:

Plumbers
I picked plumbers, because let's be honest, banging around with pipes and crawling under houses has very little appeal. Plumbing is a profession where writing conventional articles really wouldn't work for the average person. The goal of blogging as a plumber is to build trust, so that when people are Googling for a local plumber, they are drawn to you above everyone else. Sure, a few "how to fix a leaky sink" articles are fine, but I think if you want to produce compelling copy you'll need to tell stories.

AlterNation Episode 9: Twearching for Answers

Welcome to Alternation! Today we're talking Twitter search!

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It's common practice to monitor your brand on Twitter, but Christopher Penn has written about what he calls"Three nearly guaranteed Twitter moneymaking words". Wordiness aside, his suggestions are really great. He says "recommend", "suggest", and "anyone" are the words, and that they should be used in combination with eachother and with the product or service your brand offers. He mentions how this is like search marketing a decade ago, and how extremely long-tailed searches were used to drive high conversion rates. In the same way as "What is the best veterinarian in Topeka" get people to specific results, Tweets asking "Can anyone recommend a good vet in Topeka" give you an opportunity to gain a customer. If you are searching for keywords included in this sort of query, all you'll need to do is wait for people to ask questions, then answer helpfully. While the effectiveness won't be the same for everyone, the point remains the same: brand management isn't the same as Twitter search marketing. Monitoring your brand is often better suited to after-the-fact customer service and satisfaction, and while it's important, it won't drive sales like query monitoring has the potential to do.



The three words Christopher Penn lists aren't the only ones you should use in your searches. "Need", "Looking For", and "someone" are just three other words you can check that have the potential to find tweets. Don't lose faith if you start doing searches and come up with few results; some terms just need to be explored to find how people ask about them. Hopefully as Twitter pushes further with its location-based projects, searching for "Coffee in Charlotte" won't rely on people tweeting the word "Charlotte" to find their location.

Some things to keep in mind:
•Industry key terms
•Industry vertical keywords
•What does your product solve? What keyword strings can you make around that. This will give back blog post related to your product and people asking questions.

Contact Us!
Alter Imaging
Alter Imaging Blog

AlterNation Episode 8: The Facts of Wordpress

Welcome to AlterNation! Today we're talking Wordpress; what it is, why it's great, and how you can make it better. For the uninformed, here's a description of Wordpress pulled from Wordpress.org: "WordPress is a state-of-the-art publishing platform with a focus on aesthetics, web standards, and usability. WordPress is both free and priceless at the same time."

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6 Reasons why Wordpress is amazing:

Don't be Afraid to get into Social Media, be Afraid of Missing the Boat

Social media can be a scary place for a lot of old school marketers to jump into. With the ability for consumers to have direct access and commutation directly with companies, a lot of marketers are on edge. They are tiptoeing their way into the social media space and testing the water before they dive in. Better safe than sorry is their mantra. And their mantra is wrong.

With Social media being so new to the discipline of marketing and the communications industry, there is massive potential to capture market share by being first.

Here is the big secret: There are no best practices for social media. What works for some companies will not work for others, even if the exact same tactics are used.

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27 Social Media Blogs You Aren't Reading, But Should Be

Chances are you've read some of the big social media blogs, like Mashable and HubSpot. These are great blogs, no doubt, but what about the internet's vast collection of other social media blogs? I went hunting for quality blogs that weren't as well known but still had excellent content, and no surprise, I found a plethora of blogs. After glancing through a mountain of sites, I picked out some of the best that I found. Here's a collection of hand-picked blogs that feature excellent content, unique opinions, and a tremendous amount of information about all things social media.


Kim Woodbridge: (anti) Social Development
From About: (Anti) Social Development is about WordPress, Social Media, RSS, Lifestreaming, Twitter, and online tech resources. Here, you’ll find tutorials, useful tools, and fun online resources.


ViperChill: Viral Marketing
From About: Hey, I'm Glen. I help people build remarkable websites that gain traffic through viral marketing.

AlterNation 7: Business Blogging and You

Welcome to AlterNation! Today we're talking about blogs, and why companies should have them.

Why Your Business Should be Blogging

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SEO benefits
Pushing out new content keeps giving google more to pick up, and helps you rank for more keywords. You can target specific keywords by writing posts referencing them in the title; to branch out and grab

Social Media benefits
Blogging is regarded as "social media", because it promotes conversation, rather than simple consumption of media. One of your goals is to get people talking, whether the conversation takes place in your comments, on Twitter, on Facebook, or anywhere else. Blogging provides you with a stream of content to promote on other sites, so you aren't simply telling people to "look at my business".

Don't Trip Into the Door of Alter Imaging

As any growing company, we're always on the look out for the best and the brightest people to join our team. Lately, we've been hiring quite a bit and it's always interesting to see the kinds of things people actually do either submitting their resume or in the interview. So I"ve listed a quick do's and don't list to follow when interviewing with Alter Imaging.  All of the "don'ts" I list might seem funny, but trust me, they've all happened.  I couldn't make this kind of stuff up!

Now then....

5 Tips on Creating a Better Content Strategy

SXSW was an amazing conference. some of the brightest minds in the Internet marketing industry gathered together to talk social media, web development, interactive marketing, and content strategy.

One of the panels I went to was all about content strategy and web writing and why it is extremely important for businesses. A lot of companies overlook the importance of having a cohesive content strategy when it comes to their websites and think that the writing stops after the copy does. This isn't the case.

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The panel was comprised of :

Erin Anderson - Brain Traffic

Ian Alexander - Eat Media

Tiffani Jones - thingsthatarebrown LLC

Dan Maccarone - HardCandyShell

5 Tips on creating a better content strategy

1. Picking the right medium

AlterNation Episode 6: Twitalytics

Welcome to AlterNation! Today we're talking about tools to make Twitter easier to use, and more powerful for you.

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Management

Twitter's website may be fine for the average user, but it isn't that handy for someone looking to use the service for business. We suggest using HootSuite to manage your account or accounts. With HootSuite you can Tweet from multiple accounts, follow keywords and brand mentions, and schedule tweets.

SXSW 2010 Wrap Up

We're back! This past weekend a few of us from AlterImaging headed down to Austin, TX to get our yearly fix of all things internet. This year was a little different from past years in that there were no huge announcements in the realm of social media and no clear winner of the "next big thing" title. Yes, Twitter did announce their @anywhere add on which should help boost twitter's adoption rate but this years conference definitely seemed to revolve around how things are evolving. For example, the next generation of web languages - HTML5 and CSS3 and how this affects web design. Subsequently there was also a lot of talk and debate about how Flash is dead due to the fact these coding languages along with Javascript are taking it's place and rightly so.

AlterNation Episode 5: Mobile Sites and Content Creation

Welcome to AlterNation Episode 5. On this episode, we're talking about the importance of having a mobile version of your site, as well as creating content on a regular basis.

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According to a December 2009 Mobile metrics report by AdMob, the iPhone has a 54% browser market share in North America, and Android has a 27% browser market share. Because these devices can display full versions of the websites, many website owners feel that it's not important to have a mobile version of their site. Even though there are so many mobile devices that can display full versions of their site, it's still important to have a mobile version of your site. Slower mobile networks and tiny navigation elements can make navigating a site on a mobile device an unpleasant experience.

Your Browser, Your Choice

What browser are you using right now? Do you know? Did you know you have a choice? With news that the European Commission is requiring Microsoft to display a prompt to allow people to decide what browser to use, it's important to know what your choices are and what the difference are between them.

To better understand the difference, we need to talk a little about where these browsers came from.

A Little History

Back in 1991, a guy named Tim Berners-Lee created the first web browser called WorldWideWeb. Then in 1993, the NCSA created a browser called Mosaic. Marc Andreessen, who helped create the Mosaic browser, started a company called Netscape and created a browser based on Mosaic called Netscape Navigator.

In 1995, Microsoft licenced technology from the Mosaic browser and created its browser called Internet Explorer. By bundling the browser with Windows, Internet Explorer began gaining substantial market share.

In 1998, Netscape created the Mozilla Foundation which aimed to create a competing browser called Mozilla.

By 2002, Internet Explorer had a 95% market share. Around this time, the Mozilla Foundation launched an early release of the Firefox browser (at the time, it was called Phoenix).

In 2003, Apple released its own browser called Safari. In 2004, Mozilla launched Firefox 1.0 which was the first version aimed at the general public. In 2008, Google launched its browser called Chrome.

AlterNation Episode 4: Twelp Your Customers

Welcome to Alternation! Today we're talking about Twitter, specifically using the network for customer service.

Customer Service With Twitter

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Southwest Airlines' response to Kevin Smith is a good example of a company using Twitter to handle a situation that could have been out of their control. Toyota is doing the same thing, to a degree, and using Tweetmeme to try and steer the conversation about their massive recall in a positive direction. In both cases, Twitter is helping businesses repair a tarnished image; something that would have been far more difficult to do in years past.

Best Buy launch the "Twelp Force" last summer; a way for people to ask Best Buy employees questions through Twitter. As of a few weeks ago, the Twelp Force had answered over 22,000 questions, and averages 100 questions answered a day. The Twelp Force is a great example of a business using Twitter as a combined service and marketing front, since they are answering questions, and commonly referring people to products and services Best Buy offers.

You Want To FTP My What?: A User’s Guide to Web Lingo

When I first walked through Alter Imaging’s fabulous doors as an official employee, I was about as excited as a girl could get (without something chocolate or sparkly dangling in front of her face). That being said, I was also a tad shaky/nervous/terrified/nauseated due to my, shall we say, “green-ness.”

I had just recently graduated from Appalachian State (Go Mountaineers!!) with a degree in Advertising, a minor in Business Marketing, and a vague understanding of the general working world. But I scored big with landing a dream-job at AI and I was confident that I was prepared for whatever tasks were thrown my way.

Little did I know, I knew very little.

I was first clued-in that I still had a lot to learn when someone said, “Emily, please FTP the XML sitemap for the SEO so we can boost our pagerank ASAP.” Umm, what?! Okay, ASAP means “as soon as possible.” And that was the extent of my comprehension of that sentence. I had to do something with a something for the something to boost our something, as soon as possible.

So I did what any resourceful, 20-something would do: I threatened befriended the web developer and forced asked him to teach me important web lingo. If I heard a term I was unfamiliar with, I would write it down and later go get the definition from my new victim teacher. It was a beautiful system.

Often when I speak with clients, a term or web process comes up that they’re not familiar with, so I (with my newfound knowledge) would explain it to them so we’re all on the same page.

And then I had an epiphany.

AlterNation Episode 3: Using the 'Book for Business

Welcome to AlterNation Episode 3! We're taking a close look at using Facebook for business and marketing, and we discuss all sorts of tips and tricks.

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Getting Started
Facebook has a decent system in place to show you how to set up various portions of your page, but after that they don't give any instructions. There are lots of things you can do, and should do to improve your page and connect better with fans and clients. One of the earliest, and most vital things you need to do for your page is obtain a Facebook vanity URL, at WiseStamp is a useful tool for adding this sort of link to emails.

The phones ringing

Vanity numbers are dead

Online services for an extra business line

-google voice

-others

why to to this?

tracking

AlterNation: Everything You Thought You Knew Is Wrong!

About gaming, that is. Welcome to AlterNation Episode 2! This week we talk online social games, location-based services and the dangers invovled with them (oh my!), and look at a case of schools using webcams to spy on students, big brother style.

For show notes, click more.

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AlterNation: Your Source for all Things Internet

Welcome to AlterNation, the official Alter Imaging podcast! Alternation will provide a weekly review of the latest internet news, as well as commentary and tips. In episode 1 we discuss the huge amount of Google news from last week, Facebook's 6th anniversary, and some interesting statistics.

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For show notes, click more.

Building Business with Inbound Marketing

If I was walking up to a customer on the street to sell them something, I would probably not bring a sledgehammer with me to get my points across. It seems funny, but this is exactly how Rick Burnes, inbound marketing manager at Hubspot, describes traditional marketing. They hammer out messages via advertisements (radio, TV, magazines) in an attempt to beat customers down with their message and brand (through repetition). Now that method may have been great for companies with massive budgets such as P&G or McDonalds, but today you don’t need to spend nearly the same amount of money to cultivate a loyal following.

Does Flash Still Matter?

I never thought I would be an apologist for the Flash platform, but it's only when something is gone do you really realize how much it means to you. Much the same way that HTML tables have gotten a bad rap due to its misuse, Flash also has a stained past. Many Flash based websites suffered from poor usability due to long-loading Flash intros, unintuitive navigation, and a lack of possibilities for SEO.

The Web 2.0 movement began a design trend towards clean, light websites along a more considerate view towards visitors with less capable browsers and mobile devices. Flash is now mostly used for interacting with entertainment, whether it's viewing a video, playing a game, or manipulating information in a Flash based infographic.

Location Based Social Networks Set To Take Off in 2010

Why does every social media website care where you are? Better yet, why do you care? There is a trend, although not a new one, that is gaining popularity in 2010 that could potentially change the way people are marketed to. That is the trend to “go local,” because that’s where the money is. Everyone is trying to grab hold of the hyper-niche markets like the popular service review site Yelp. Yelp recently added the option to allow users to check in, bringing it in direct competition with an already over-crowded group of location based websites: Foursquare, MyTown, GoWalla, and Loopt.

How to Write a Tagline that Sticks

When you hear "Just do it" or "Think Different", what comes to mind? If you've been conditioned enough, you'll recognize that the two phrases are the taglines of Nike and Apple. The same thing goes for other taglines like "Who ya gonna call" (Ghostbusters) and "Snap! Crackle! Pop!" (Kellogg's Rice Krispies). These taglines stick for two reasons, you've heard them often, and they're well designed. If those are the two factors for tagline success, then it's easy to write a good tagline, right?

test

alter imaging

Branding - Consistency is Key

If marketing is a battle for the consumer’s mind, then what do the consumers have to say? That is basically the idea behind the website Brandtags.net. When the site first loads it slaps a random logo in the center of the page and asks you for the first word or phrase that comes to mind. After doing a few you are allowed to check on other brands and see what people think about them (the words are enlarged on screen by order of popularity). Good marketers should have specific words or phrases that they want to be associated with, and their branding strategy should reflect this.

Why Semantic Markup Matters

While most people are concerned by how the website looks to the end user, the structure of the site is also a factor as to the value that you can get out of your website.

Markup

All websites are written using HTML which is a way of describing how a website is structured and should function in a way a computer can understand it.

10 Web Designs Featuring Hand Drawn Elements

Websites don't always have to have boxy elements and glossy buttons. Sometimes using hand drawn elements can give a design a more human touch. Check out some of these designs featuring hand drawn elements.

10 Words