Kevin Hood's Comments

Kyle Lacy, Social Media - Indianapolis : Does Your Employee's Personal Life Matter to Your Company?

Sat, 13 Feb 2010 05:43:57 +0000

This is why you have multiple Twitter accounts and alter egos!

Kyle Lacy, Social Media - Indianapolis : Quality, Service, and Expertise Do Not Matter

Thu, 5 Nov 2009 04:24:03 +0000

I get and like the point, but have to agree with others that every company doesn't have good customer service. To your point, you can't just advertise "service" or "best customer service" or whatever lame phrase. It has to express specific pains that a certain industry or type of customer feels. If you can do that, and shock the potential customer of how you read their mind, you can win with good customer service. Sometimes all it takes is a quick follow up to their initial request and a quick quote. You look like you are prompt and that you care. Quality and other bullet points . . . depending on the industry or product, kind of lost in the piles of numerous quotes. You have to get personal and somehow make a relationship offline (like you preach.)

Kevin Hood : Advertise Yourself on the Internet Like This?

Mon, 19 Oct 2009 00:28:05 +0000

"Reverse Marketing" - that's a brilliant concept Jim. Our product sucks so bad you should buy it!

Kyle Lacy, Social Media - Indianapolis : Diamond Marketing and Selling the Experience

Thu, 8 Oct 2009 22:33:24 +0000

That's a great idea Bruce. I think Distinctive Diamonds takes a different approach. The owner's family is the supplier based in Israel, so not only do they cut out the middleman, they get the nice family deal and have the largest selection of diamonds in the state. They used to sell to the other jewelers in Indianapolis, but now they sell direct to you. They also are the only jeweler in town that shows you the "blue book" prices for the quality of diamond you're looking at. This shows you the real "fair" price, and that is the price they sell the diamond at. I learned all of this info from their radio spots. They say their price is considerably less than their competitors, and from my experience they are telling the truth. The blue book approach is what really sold me. Quality, cut, brightness . . . buying an expensive diamond gets very confusing and scary. But when they show you a national publication of fair diamond prices, and the same quality certified diamond from another jeweler is much more expensive, you're sold. It takes all the pressure and sales stuff out of the process. So with diamonds, sure service, guarantee and a heart warming story all sound good, but it is such a large investment that if you can make the customer comfortable knowing he got a great diamond at a great price . . . you will sell more diamonds.

Kevin Hood : Businesses Designing Their Own Wordpress Websites

Tue, 6 Oct 2009 15:46:43 +0000

Yup, and your comment reminds me of Compendium's battle to stay simple versus adding new features. There's a fine line between too much control (not as easy to use) and not enough features. I think Wordpress does it pretty well though.

Marketing Technology Blog : Restrict Pages in WordPress to Require a Login

Tue, 29 Sep 2009 04:13:29 +0000

Nice post...I'm surprised this isn't available in the Visibility options.

Marketing Technology Blog : Welcome to The New Marketing Technology Blog

Fri, 18 Sep 2009 16:35:01 +0000

They showed your site at a blogging seminar this morning and I thought the guy went to the wrong website! Wow, nice improvement.

Tribe Swell : Why this has been the summer of Fat-Tire-mania.

Thu, 17 Sep 2009 02:10:38 +0000

You are completely right, the packaging has little to do with it. I remember friends at Ball State bringing back cases and cases of Fat Tire over ten years ago. The small supply and growing demand made it big. The good taste and cool name helped as well . . . the packaging? not so much.

Tribe Swell : Finally - The new Tribeswell logo

Thu, 17 Sep 2009 01:54:26 +0000

I like it! It might look good if you change your header from black to white?

Tribe Swell : 2 Wordpress Plugins I just added to my blog site. Yay or Nay?

Sun, 30 Aug 2009 02:04:51 +0000

Geeze Colin, thanks for the mention. I really like the look and features of Intense Debate, but I'm having problems with the comment approval process. For high traffic sites, I'm having MUCH better luck with Disqus. It does a better job than Wordpress and plugins with handling spam. I have a draft post about it, ha.

Kevin Hood : The NBA Needs to Feature Tweets to Keep Them Clean

Sat, 29 Aug 2009 11:50:51 +0000

Derek, yes it is amazing. There are many examples that are much worse, but I tried to keep it fairly clean. A few days after this post, Michael Beasley admitted himself to rehab - all because of the picture he tweeted. Well, maybe he needed help, too. Several NBA teams are beginning to feature players' Twitter feeds, including the LA Lakers: http://www.nba.com/lakers/twitter.html Stephen, combined with the NFL, it will be very interesting to see how far the leagues and players go with Twitter. Will they do it the right way? Only time (and reaction) will tell...

Kevin Hood : Don't Want a Business Blog? Let's Call It a News Page for SEO

Mon, 24 Aug 2009 02:17:27 +0000

Thanks Bill and Derek. There are so many uses for a blog, with SEO being my main pitch for return on investment, that we should be able to call it whatever we / they want. I love it when I setup a user name for a client's Wordpress WEBSITE, and then they receive a confirmation email containing the word "blog". They get all freaked out until you explain it's really a website.

Kevin Hood : Sexiest Social Bookmarking Plugin for Wordpress

Tue, 11 Aug 2009 19:20:38 +0000

Oh yeah, thanks Stevey for the link to the sexiest plugin ever. What site do you want me to link to? ha. Derek, it really was just an easy blog post . . . need to finish up all those juicy draft blog posts I have saved up!

Marketing Technology Blog : CrowdSPRING: The Agency Killer?

Sat, 1 Aug 2009 07:45:08 +0000

It's a definitely not a fad. The foreign guys are going to offer $50 logos for many years to come. They do great work.

Marketing Technology Blog : CrowdSPRING: The Agency Killer?

Fri, 31 Jul 2009 16:14:41 +0000

Interesting discussion Doug, and yes you are giving away my ancient Chinese secret! I haven't used Crowdspring, but have held online contests for three years and bought countless logos, banners, animations, website PSDs, etc. If I was awesome at creating logos, I probably wouldn't waste my time entering logo competitions. I've seen guys spend weeks making logos for contests and never get paid. Although, there are a few designers I met through contests who I contact directly and pay a flat fee, because I trust and like their work. I think it's great for small agencies to reduce costs and maximize profits, bad for designers in the USA and unbelievable for guys in Indonesia and the Philippines. That's the only thing that bugs me as I like to "Buy American."

Kevin Hood : Show Me How You Can Get Business With Social Media!

Wed, 29 Jul 2009 20:08:39 +0000

Colin, I couldn't agree more, and it's a big pet peeve of mine. I would be a happy man if I never heard the words “brand” or “branding” again. The same thing with “strategic plan” and other big words to make you sound important. I'm sure you'll do a swell job of not over complicating things for your tribe!

Kyle Lacy, Social Media - Indianapolis : Is Outsourcing Social Media Okay?

Wed, 29 Jul 2009 03:39:32 +0000

I think you hit on one big point, the time and experience it takes to learn enough about a business to be able to speak their speak, walk their walk, and chew their food. Well, forget the third one. Unless you find a writer / new media guy that has experience with a competitor, or previously worked in your industry, it's going to be a struggle to connect everything. If the company is large enough to have a marketing person, they should learn how to do it correctly, and do most of it on their own.

Kevin Hood : Free Images for Blogs and Websites from Google

Sat, 25 Jul 2009 08:30:38 +0000

Colin, I'm pretty much as guilty as you. Probably more guilty. I'm fine with someone copying and pasting my first two paragraphs from a blog post and linking to my blog, but if they steal my entire post and use it as their own on their site - that's a different story. I can see photographers feeling the same way, well I'm best friends with one so I know how he feels. Alt tags or not, it's probably OK, but not legal. I guess that's how I see it. Am I going to only use CC images from now on? Heck no, but I will at least try to search for them first and use content / images that are legally and morally allowed to be on my site. Hopefully, Mr. CC doesn't take me down.

Marketing Technology Blog : Landing Pages and Search Engine Optimization

Mon, 20 Jul 2009 03:46:43 +0000

Great post and thanks for including the tools you're using. I've been doing this for a couple years, buying keyword rich domain names and starting Wordpress sites on them, or ecommerce sites. Don't you think that a website with multiple pages will have better SEO results versus a single landing page? I'll be interested to see how well it does in the search engines, because using a RSS feed from a main site, versus writing new blog posts for lots of sites would save tons of time. A single landing page does have a great focus on conversion...

Kevin Hood : Kevin Hood is Going to Beat That Other Kevin Hood on Google

Fri, 17 Jul 2009 17:07:33 +0000

You weren't kidding Doug, you even added the Kevin Hood tags to your Wordpress site that will be a part of your tag choices forever! Thanks a lot, that was very sweet of you.