In its infancy more than a decade ago the Blog (short for “web log”) was a sort of online personal journal or diary. Millions of people the world over blog today. Some about their daily lives, others about hobbies and interests. Really, think of any subject at all and it’s likely that there is already a blog about it. Should you start a blog for your company, and what’s the point?

It’s difficult to see what possible use an online diary could serve for a business. Well, absolutely none at all really. But personal blogging and business blogging are two very different things. In fact, the only similarity they might have is that they utilize some of the same software.

There is a bit of confusion among business owners as to what the purpose of a blog is and what it should be used for. At many business web pages the blog section is relegated to serving coupons and press releases, updated infrequently because there isn’t a clear strategy for posting. It also may not be clear as to which department of the company should be in charge of the blog. To use the blog as an effective marketing tool a purpose and a plan for it must first be developed. As to the former, here are a few reasons why your company should start a blog:

1. To showcase your expertise
2. To establish your company as a resource in your niche
3. To showcase the quality of your service
4. To share new developments in products or services
5. Cross promotion, to share info about trusted partners (B2B)
6. To share the happenings at company and industry events
7. To convey the ideals your company stands for

7 Reasons for Blogging

1. Showcase your expertise

If you own a residential plumbing company you might write about the differences between tankless vs traditional water heaters, copper pipe vs PEX etc. People love free how-to guides. You’re providing information, free of charge, as a measure to establish trust and show that you know your business.

2. Establish your company as a resource in your niche

Let’s say that a homeowner who is usually a DIY sort of person has a job that needs professional attention. What if this homeowner has enjoyed your informative blog posts in the past? Which company is he going to think to go to first? The goal here is to give people a reason to know of your company and your expertise BEFORE they ever need to hire you. Even if they’ve never heard of you before, the potential customer is going to want to see evidence that your know your stuff.

3. Showcase the quality of your service

Every opportunity you get, you want to show people why they should choose your company over the competition. Don’t bad mouth your competitors though. Focus on positive points at all times. Show what you do that nobody else can do quite as well. Solicit your customers for testimonials and do a write up on the service you performed which prompted that excellent testimonial.

4. Share new developments in product or service

This one is pretty self explanatory. This is the sort of content that might ordinarily appear in press release or an advertisement, but you’re placing it in the blog for greater exposure. Remember, you’re talking to the customer, not to a journalist. Keep it informal, conversational, and for Pete sake keep the buzz words and made up acronyms down to a minimum.

5. Cross-promotion with Trusted Partners (Business-to-Business Relations)

Your company probably has businesses it provides goods and service to, or purchases them from, on a regular basis. Perhaps you even provide discounts or other considerations for one another. Why not bring the fruits of that mutually beneficial relationship into the promotional realm? Bring your business to their client base and vise versa. Remember this rule from Networking 101 though: Think about what you can give before about what you’ll get in return. Approach your business contacts from a giving standpoint and offer them free promotion, asking if they might be willing to promote your company in return.

6. Company and Industry events

A blog is a great way to promote events your company is hosting or sponsoring. Remember though, don’t just promote upcoming events. Write about the events afterwards so those who did not attend can see what they missed! You could also write about any industry related conferences, trade shows or awards ceremonies that your personnel have attended.

7. Promote your ideals

When it comes to blogging, don’t be afraid to take a stance. While your stance shouldn’t be radically polarizing, you should absolutely promote the ideals that your company stands for. This goes beyond fair pricing and top-notch customer service. If you feel strongly about being environmentally conscious in your business practices, show people how you embody that. If you feel it’s important businesses be involved in community service, write about that as well.

Conclusion

When you start a blog, it provides you with a reason for updating your website regularly. Sometimes when a company website hasn’t been updated in years, it looks like they aren’t taking it seriously (especially if the style is very dated). If you don’t take your website seriously, one has to wonder what else your business has a lax attitude towards. First impressions are, of course, very important. Not only that, but search engines want to see new content on your website when they’re ranking it. If your website is updated regularly with quality content you’ll rank higher than your competitors, especially if people are sharing your content.

Coming soon: Suggestions on how to set up a blog, blogging tools, and more on writing.

Thanks for reading. Any questions about how to start a blog, or blogging in general? Please share them in the comments.

The post 7 Reasons Why Your Company Should Start A Blog appeared first on David Santy Design.

Google released a high quality stereo audio codec for Hangouts On Air a few months back and I’ve spent many hours helping musicians get their setups right since.

Over at DavidSantyMusic.com I’ve written an extensive post on setting up for Studio Mode Hangouts On Air, geared specifically towards musicians. This is the culmination of all my personal troubleshooting and experimenting, past experience with audio/recording, as well as things I’ve learned from dealing with all different sorts of gear setups other musicians have.

While written for musicians, the fundamentals laid out in the guide apply to anyone who wants to get great sound quality when doing Hangouts On Air.

The post Audio guide for Google+ Hangouts On Air with Studio Mode appeared first on David Santy Design.

…barren all but for the ominous, maddening blink of the cursor. Blink…Blink…BLINK! It happened. You thought you’d hit a pretty good stride with your blog over the past few weeks, words flowing from your fingertips like water from a tap. But now…nothing. Nothing but the soft, unrelenting tick of the cursor. The challenge is this: What to blog about when there’s nothing to blog about?

Can’t Find Your Muse? Stop Looking.

The inspiration for a good blog post could come from anywhere. A news article, a comment overheard from a stranger, a random thought that comes to you while you’re out walking the dog. Sometimes finding a subject to write about isn’t the problem. You may be bursting with ideas for blog posts but when it gets down to writing them you stall. Why is that? The key is that any subject you approach, whatever it may be, has to mean something to you in the moment. You have to have something to say about it. Topical relevance is only a part of the equation. Yes, you have to blog about subjects that your followers want to read, but you also have to write the post that you would want to read. When your approach to writing that blog post is forced, disinterested and shallow, your readers can tell.

If it’s not working, stop trying. Like a word that is on the tip of your tongue, creativity often doesn’t come to you until you stop trying to draw it forth. If it’s right, if it’s going to be a good one, you’ll know. It’ll just work. If it doesn’t feel right, don’t push it.

Writer’s Block? Pfft.

You see, there really isn’t any such thing as writer’s block. It doesn’t exist. It’s more superstition than substance. Once you convince yourself that you’re suffering from writer’s block it’s much more difficult to shake it. What you need is an inspiration overhaul, and maybe to broaden your horizons a bit.

Narrow Your Focus…But Zoom Out A Bit

I’m all for getting specific, knowing your niche, focusing sharply on your audience and getting inside their heads. Think about the type of content your audience is looking for. Is your scope too narrow? Perhaps you should try branching out into other subjects. Don’t stray too far away from your core though. Would it be a good idea for a car dealership’s blog to start doing movie reviews? Eh…I don’t know about that. But what about a mommy blogger? Sure! Her readers would probably appreciate reviews on family friendly films. What about a social media blogger doing coffee reviews? Nah, that would just be stupid. Don’t be afraid to try new things!

Never make assumptions about what your core audience wants to read, or for that matter who they are, without testing the waters a bit. The range of topics you cover may be lacking diversity, and diversity might just be the thing to replenish your stores of creativity.

Be Provocative, But Don’t Alienate

Have you ever stalled when writing a piece because you just didn’t feel safe approaching it from one angle or another?

With business blogs, there is a fine line between being provocative and committing online suicide. Certain subjects, those in the political spectrum especially, are simply too taboo, but where is that line for you? Those blogging anonymously have the pick of the litter when it comes to blogging topics, but those who have their personal reputation or the reputation of their company on the line have to be a bit more careful. Still, one shouldn’t be afraid to give one’s audience a gentle prodding every once in a while.

How do you measure the success of any given blog post? Is it the sheer number of visits? Is it the frequency of social media shares, or do you measure it by the amount of interaction in the comments? Hotbed topics obviously get more action, but how does one approach these issues without alienating portions of one’s audience?

Tread lightly here, but don’t be afraid to take a stance as long as it isn’t an offensive or divisive one. Many companies are so afraid to express an opinion or a moral stance on any given issue that at times they come off as hollow and disingenuous. Making a statement can be the thing that sets you apart from the competition.

Test the waters a bit and see how your audience reacts, rather than diving headlong into it with a heavily polarizing opinion piece. You audience might appreciate your honesty and the personal touch you bring to recent headline news stories. Stand out over others that cover them in a boring, sterilized evening news fashion.

Don’t Know What To Write About? Just Ask.

Having trouble coming up with topics to write about? Why don’t you ask your readers what they want to read more about? Show your readers that you value their input and solicit them for ideas with each blog post you write. Ask your social media followers! You could even setup a suggestions page/contact forum/forum on your website specifically to accept ideas from your readers. It’s one more way to encourage engagement with your posts.

Start Another Blog, Just For Fun!

Do you have another venue for your writing? Are you trying to return to writing after a hiatus?

Part of the reason you may have trouble writing is the pressure. Setting up another blog, just for fun, to write about hobbies, interests, or whatever comes to mind is a great way to get yourself writing. No pressure, no commitments, and it gives you an excuse to write on a regular basis. It’s easier to keep writing great content if you’re writing all the time. Try it! Even if you do it anonymously, or only distribute the blog to friends and family, it might end up being the thing you need to get the ball rolling again.

Thanks for reading. Do you think you have the cure for writer’s block? What works for you? Where do you find your inspiration for blogging topics? Head down to the comments section and share!

The post What To Blog About…When Writer’s Block Strikes appeared first on David Santy Design.

The rise of social media has also come with a healthy amount of worry over social media use in the workplace. Banning social media altogether seems like a win-win. People get back to doing their jobs, distractions go down, productivity goes up, and security risks are mitigated. This is an example where the expected result doesn’t match reality though. At best, social media bans are useless. At worst, banning social media might be more dangerous than not having a policy at all.

Social Media: The Productivity Killer!

As far as productivity goes, think about it this way. If it weren’t social media, it would be something else. Before Facebook and Twitter it was texting. Before that phone and email. You need to take a look at the bigger picture. The problem isn’t social media, it’s productivity. If your employees are messing around all day, you need to take a look at your policies and management practices. Say you catch one of your employees using social media on the clock. If you ask him, “What are you supposed to be doing right now?” and the answer begins with, “Uh…” then you have a problem, and it’s not social media.

Regardless of what seems to be the direct cause of productivity loss, if there are no accountability measures in place a ban is useless. Expecting a ban to be effective is shortsighted and naive. Your employees are going to go ahead and do it anyway, because they don’t think it’s a big deal. It’s a morally subjective issue. It’s sort of like driving 5mph over the speed limit. Everyone else is doing it, therefore it’s morally acceptable. Your employees might also see a ban as plain wrong, which encourages them to ignore it. No amount of talk about how they’re supposed to be responsible adults is going to change that. Neither does it excuse management from taking responsibility for the actions of their subordinates.

Before you ban social media and start punishing the offenders, here are some questions you need to ask yourself:

1. Does your company have a clear mission?
2. How are you conveying that mission to your employees?
3. Do your employees feel ownership in their work?
4. Do they feel valued by the company?
5. Are your projects being managed by effective leaders?
6. Do your employees really know what they are responsible for at any given time?
7. Are you communicating company/division goals to your employees?
8. Are they aware of the acceptable time frames for completing tasks?
9. Are there enforced consequences for not meeting deadlines?
10. Are there enforced rewards for beating deadlines?
11. Are the results of their work being communicated?
12. Are your standards for productivity realistic in the first place?

You might be surprised as to the answers to some of these questions, the last one in particular. The laser focus on productivity usually stems from budget concerns. Have layoffs forced individual employees to perform too many tasks for one person? If your employees are overloaded, they’ll get less done in the time allotted. Because an inappropriate workload causes productivity to take a dent, at some point it’s cheaper to have two people perform a set of duties. A heavy workload, combined with a lack of ownership, is a major productivity killer. If your employees are plodding along day in day out with nothing positive attributed to their work, why should they care about slacking off? If your employees feel like numbers on a spreadsheet, they’re not going to care about your margins. Loyalty is a two way street.

The main idea here is this: As long as your employees are getting the work done on time, who cares how they’re spending their time? If they aren’t getting work done on time, what is causing them to stray from their task in the first place?

What about the security risks?

Perhaps productivity isn’t the main reason you’re considering a ban on social media at all. You may be worried more about the loss of sensitive data. Maybe you believe your employees just can’t be trusted, so an outright ban seems like the best thing. Well, if you can’t trust your employees either you’ve got an attitude problem or you’re hiring the wrong people. If you can’t be trusted to set formal policy and educate your employees, of course they can’t be trusted to just know the appropriate behavior in any given situation. If it’s not on paper, it doesn’t count. Unwritten rules don’t hold up in court and shouldn’t be expected to hold up in business either. Remember, there is no such thing as common sense. People aren’t born knowing these things, and you shouldn’t make assumptions about what your employees know in regards to social media etiquette in business.

Having a formal social media policy is very important. Your employees need to have a written document against which their actions may be judged. They need to know when they can use social media and for what. It must be clear which data is okay to share publicly, which data is acceptable to have on personal devices, and which data is strictly for internal use only. It’s also very important that employees who are highly experienced with social media use be included in determining these policies. A lack of understanding on how social media platforms are used and what their purpose is can leave you with an incomplete policy framework.

The solution to safety risks from distractions in production environments is much the same. It’s all about education. Your employees need to know which behaviors aren’t acceptable, but more importantly they need to know why and what the consequences are for ignoring safety regulations.

If they’re going to use it anyway…?

All this talk of cutbacks and bans is reactive though. What about taking a proactive approach? What is your company doing to harness the power of social media to perform business duties? If your employees will be using social media anyway, why not take advantage of it? For example, what methods do you have for communicating with your employees now? Telephone, email and face to face, yes? These methods of communication come with their own problems.

Phone Calls

Problem: I have to drop everything.
Solution: Caller leaves a voicemail.
Problem: I hate checking my voicemail!

Emails

Problem: Too long winded. Too much time spent replying to emails.
Solution: (If you’ve figured out the solution to epic emailers, let me know)

Face to Face, Formal Meetings

Problem: Have to drop everything AND relocate to speak.
Solution: Aside from not meeting at all…
Problem: Meetings take hours. Some managed poorly. Some people can’t stop talking! No work gets done.
Solution: Strict guidelines for running meetings, speaker time, and reasons for meeting.

You’re still left with the problem of relocating though. If you’re lucky, it’s in the same building. If not, it could be across town. Sometimes there just isn’t a replacement for face-to-face communication though. Ah, but you don’t necessarily have to convene in the same room! In What Google+ Means For Businesses I wrote a bit about using Google+ to communicate more quickly and more effectively with employees. For example, Google+ Hangouts give you the option for invite-only group video chats. Not only is this a great replacement for many meetings, it’s a great way to keep in touch with telecommuters, employees who work from home. Same face-to-face intimacy without having to relocate. Hangouts are also a great option for doing group training or broadcasting public events online.

Facebook, Twitter and Google+ all have options for sharing posts with only certain lists of people, keeping information private. If your employees are checking their Twitter streams anyway during a coffee break, why not send them a quick Tweet updating them on the status of their project? Since the post length on social media services is usually short, it makes sure your more verbose employees get straight to the point, unlike email.

Social media platforms are a great way ease cooperation, communication, and collaboration. In fact, if you’re still a bit leery about using a public social media option for business use, there are private enterprise social media networks as well. For example, Yammer. Yammer is currently in talks to sell to Microsoft, so you might even see social media network tools integrated into your Microsoft Office suites soon. Only users with verified corporate email addresses can join such a network. There are concerns with where data is stored, whether on the social network provider’s servers or corporate intranet servers, and different enterprise social networks offer different solutions in this regard. Still, having a centralized location for collaboration between team members, divisions, or corporate offices is invaluable.

In the end, isn’t being more connected as an organization a good thing?

Has your company using social networking tools? Do they have a formal social media policy, or have they banned social media in the workplace? What are your thoughts and experiences? I’d love to see them in the comments. Thanks for reading.

Related Post: What Google+ Means For Businesses

The post Why Banning Social Media In The Workplace Is A Bad Idea appeared first on David Santy Design.

At this point, Facebook is a given. If a business is going to be active on one social media platform, it’s Facebook. The reasons seem obvious. Facebook is Planet Earth’s favorite social media platform with hundreds of millions of active users and over 1 billion accounts. It is so ubiquitous in modern culture that you might think more people in the US visit Facebook than any other website. That isn’t the case though. Facebook takes an admirable 2nd place in the US, but the site that wins the gold is…Google.

Social media isn’t a numbers game though, it’s about building relationships. If page and post views don’t translate into engagement, you’re not building relationships. This is why the sheer number of people using any given social media platform isn’t very important at all.

Though Google+ may not have the user base of Facebook, it has several advantages. Here’s why Google+ should be on the radar for every business.

Engagement, and how Google+ is Different

Google+ is a network that, whether you’re running a brand page or not, relies heavily on personal interaction. The more your organization embraces the platform and interacts with people as individuals yourselves, rather than as a company, the better. That being said, this post comes from a “people first” angle, not focusing strictly on the how and the what of running a brand page.

Quantity vs Value

While more is always better, but the number of followers or subscribers to your business page is a dumb figure. It can have little to do with how many people are transitioning from social connection to paying customer. This is why the number of active users on any given social media platform is a poor measure for which site your business should be active on. I’m not going to get into ROI measurement from social media here because that’s a different conversation, but what needs to be stressed is the importance of engagement over number of followers. The social customer is more likely to purchase your products if they are engaged.

While it’s important to be where your customers are, there are other more important factors to consider when choosing where to use your social media muscle than total number of active users. As a brand, you must be mindful of a few things:

1. Why people join a social media platform
2. How people use that platform
3. What the culture is like
4. Who their contacts are likely to be
5. What kind of content you’ll be competing with for their attention

Where Facebook and Google+ diverge

Google+ is very different from Facebook, and a common piece of advice offered to those new to Google+ is to leave the Facebook mentality behind. G+ is not a place where “broadcasters”, those who advertise but don’t interact, can thrive. It is also not service that all of your friends, family, and professional contacts are using already, so when you want content and connections you have to go out and seek a bit. What you find may just be more rewarding than anything you’ve found in social media yet.

What you should know about Google+

No Advertisements

First, Google+ does not have any advertisements. No Pay-Per-Click ads. None. If you’re experienced with Facebook Ads you know that they operate based on things like age, maritial status, region, likes and so on. One thing they don’t do is serve advertisements when users are actually looking for something, which is the right way to do it. Google has this down with Adwords ads on their search engine results pages. They’re inobtrusive and topically relevant, which isn’t really the case with Facebook Ads (especially Sponsored Posts).

Disposing of the ads makes the Google+ interface more visually appealing and friendly.

Business Pages can’t Circle those who haven’t Circled them yet

On Twitter, where there is no difference between personal and brand profiles, following users in bulk can give you an initial bump in followers as they check out your profile.

With Google+ this isn’t allowed. When you first start posting, nobody will see your posts. It can be frustrating, but there is a very good reason for this policy.

It encourages companies to interact as people first. In fact, you can’t even create a business page without first building a personal profile.

Both of these things are actually great advantages. The “Sell, Sell, Sell” mindset doesn’t work in social media. People don’t go to Facebook or Google+ to be sold things, they go to interact with people and to find interesting content. It’s called social media for a reason. Unless you’re a sports team or a giant multinational corporation, people aren’t going to flock to you if you’re talking about your products all the time. Be social.

Facebook: The Personal Platform

People join Facebook to stay in touch with people they know personally. As such, a fairly large chunk of Facebook posts are of a personal nature. What people are doing that day, family photos etc. This type of content is going to dominate user’s streams, along with a healthy dose of news articles. Not only that, but Facebook users are far more likely to engage with that type of content than they are posts from a brand. This is one very good reason why you shouldn’t only be posting about your products.

A consequence of relying on existing personal connections is that Facebook can feel a bit limited geographically.

One of the common complaints heard from new Google+ users is that none of their friends use it. Once you start using Google+ for a while you’ll find that this is completely irrelevant. Part of the inherent silliness of Facebook is that you’re using a gigantic global social infrastructure to interact with people you already know personally. Google+ is the exact opposite. It’s about finding new people to converse and collaborate with. These are people you don’t know personally, but that doesn’t matter.

Google+: The Passion Platform

The culture within Google+ is very different than Facebook. It is an interest driven platform, a passion platform. The major difference though is that Google+ is search driven, whereas Facebook is driven initially by personal connections. With the latter, engagement is also mostly limited to personal connections. With Facebook you’re exposed to content your friends share with you, and vice versa. Google+ on the other hand focuses on the content, rather than the relationship with the user. This opens up your post to the entire world (without paid advertising) rather than just the friends of your fans.

Google+ is about building relationships based on content, whereas Facebook is about sharing content based on existing relationships. In that way, the scope of exposure on Facebook is much more limited. Google+ is built around giving people an opportunity to meet others who share their interests. This means that even if Facebook did make it easy to browse public posts (which they really don’t), Google+ still wins because the majority of users are more comfortable engaging with posts from people they don’t know. In addition, the crowd on Google+ is more open to delving into longer posts and having more in depth conversations.

But isn’t Google+ a Ghost Town?

You may have heard that “Google+ is a ghost town.” Guess what though? That is completely false.

Many Google+ users, myself included, prefer to share most everything publicly.

Many others though prefer to segregate their shares to various Circles, only sharing posts with people they know will be interested in the content. These non-public posts and their engagement are completely hidden from the eyes of companies that measure social media activity.

Still, according to Experian Hitwise (see right), Google+ is certainly no slouch. For the week ending June 23rd 2012, Google+ saw 23,171,605 total visits. Ninety plus million visits in a month. That’s more than LinkedIn and only slightly fewer visitors than Pinterest. Ghost town? I don’t think so.

Communication

One of the often overlooked strengths of social media is that it improves communication with your employees. Chances are your employees are already using a few social media services, likely while they’re at work. Why not use those social media services as a tool for sharing information with your employees? Social media picks up where email leaves off because it allows open discussion among anyone you’ve shared a post with.

What about sensitive corporate info?

Google Apps for Business administrators can restrict Google+ activity to within the organization only by default. In essence, you’ll have your own private social network. Apps also includes Gmail, Google Docs, Calendar and more collaborative tools.

Hangouts and Hangouts On Air

Google+ Hangouts

On the subject of communication, have you heard about Google+ Hangouts? It’s a live video group chat feature built-in to Google+ that allows you to connect with up to 9 other people, or 15 total for Google Apps customers. Hangouts are one of the most powerful collaborative tools available online today, and they’re only found on Google+ and Gmail.

Hangouts enable instant face-to-face communication with employees and clients all over the globe, for free, and with only the installation of a small, simple browser plugin.

Easy to install, easy to use, and no expensive proprietary hardware needed. Any old webcam will do. Hangouts also feature Google Docs integration, which allows team members in the Hangout to collaborate on a document in real time without having to open up another browser window.

Newscaster +Sarah Hill uses Hangouts live on the air in studio to chat with viewers and get their opinions on the day’s issues.

Hangouts can be leveraged to provide face-to-face customer/client support help or training sessions for telecommuting employees. You can let your fans in on a live product release party. The possibilities are only limited by your imagination.

In fact, Hangouts are the reason why I now don’t care for telephone meetings. When you’re afforded face-to-face communication with a group of people at the click of a button, everything else seems lacking.

Like posting on Google+, Google Apps customers can restrict Hangouts to the organization as well.

But it gets even better! You can also broadcast your Hangouts live to your Youtube channel.

Hangouts On Air…LIVE on Youtube

If you haven’t considered Hangouts On Air for your business, do so now. Hangouts On Air are like having your own TV station on Youtube.

Here’s a video from +Ronnie Bincer on how to join Google+, set up a profile, and use Hangouts:

Google+ users are taking advantage of Hangouts On Air in myriad ways, making a name for themselves by hosting weekly shows. News, cooking, science, astronomy, and good old pirate related fun abound.

For visibility, choose Google+

To clarify, I wouldn’t recommend that any business pigeon-hole themselves into just one social media service. Chances are your customers, or potential customers, are active on more than one service. You should be where your customers are, which means having more than one social media account and posting regularly. That being said, I believe Google+ should be a part of the online presence of every business.

I know it seems counterintuitive, because Facebook has so many more users, but Google+ has advantages when it comes to visibility on top of the aforementioned Hangouts On Air.

Who is seeing your posts?

You’ve established your presence on a few social media services and earned a respectable number of followers. Great! But just because you have followers doesn’t mean that anyone is actually seeing your posts. If you’re just starting out though, these considerations are still very important.

Facebook EdgeRank

For any business to be successful on Facebook they have to combat a system called EdgeRank. EdgeRank is a sort of forced noise control for Facebook streams. Rather than having users control how much of a given type of post they’d like see, Facebook determines which posts make it to user’s streams with EdgeRank.

When you post on Facebook, only a portion of your fans will see your posts. About 10%, maybe more if you’re lucky. Even if all of your ‘Likes’ are logged in to Facebook at that moment (unlikely), you’re still only getting exposure to a fraction of your fan base.

A few factors are used to compute your page’s ranking. The major factors are freshness (how often you update) and engagement (how many people Like, Share, or comment on your posts). With Facebook, even if you time your posts strategically for when the highest number of fans are online, and provide great content, you still can’t be certain of how many people will actually see them.

Google+ Circles

Google+ takes a more democratic approach to stream management. Google+ Circles are collections of people and pages sorted into categories by topic. Whereas Facebook has Friends, Subscriptions, Likes, and Lists, Google lets the user determine the type of relationship. Everything goes into Circles which is much more simple in concept and use.

Google+ uses Circles to determine who your posts are shared with as well. You can share posts as public, to everyone, or to certain Circles. Once you’ve created a business page on Google+, you can add all of your employees to a Circle, or add groups of employees to different Circles. You can then use Google+ to communicate with your team members.

With the “All” stream, which includes posts from all of a user’s Circles, the default is that most posts from a circle go to the “All” stream. Users can then choose increase (all posts from a Circle) or decrease (fewer or none) the ‘volume’ of a Circle from there.

Regardless of what the volume of a Circle is set to, a user can still see 100% of your public posts by choosing the stream for that individual Circle.

You still have to provide stimulating content, engage with your fans, and be mindful of when you’re posting, but there is no invisible force keeping your posts from your fans. In fact, if you provide great value to your followers, they may even place your account in a Circle that notifies them every time you post.

Social Media and Search

Where does your traffic come from?

If you’re well established in social media, you’ll be getting a decent boost through social sharing. If you don’t have a lot of followers though, how are people supposed to find you?

Personally, I’m not a fan of Facebook’s search. Google on the other hand is a search engine first and every other service they have is built on that. Most people will go to Google to find businesses online. For many it’s even the preferred method of finding Facebook profiles. Google Search is an immensely important factor in how people find you online.

One of the reasons you should be adding Google+ to your online presence has to do with search results. If you Google the name of your business you’ll come up with a few of the usual suspects. Your website, social media profiles, Yelp reviews etc. If you’re a brick and mortar business, Google Maps info may appear there too. Being on Google+ is one more way to broaden your exposure, but it’s not simply because you would have one more profile out there. Google+ has one major advantage over other social networks.

Google+ and the Google Search Index

Google has “spiders” that crawl websites looking for links and snippets of text to build search results from. Google, of course, has full access to all Google+ posts so it can index them all. Google+ public posts will immediately be displayed in search results. Facebook on the other hand disallows Google’s indexing of your posts, so none of your Facebook posts will show up in Google search. None of the work you’ve put in posting quality content on Facebook will affect search results. Twitter is partially indexed, so a few public Tweets will show up here and there.

Social Search

Now, what about search results for Google+ users? Another major advantage for Google+ in search is called Search Plus Your World. Search Plus Your World is a feature in Google search that integrates social media sharing. Why is this important? Whenever a Google+ user performs a Google search, shares and posts by their Google+ contacts will display in search results in addition to regular content from the web. We know that the power of social media is in fans sharing your content and promoting your company to their friends, which is more effective than a review from a stranger. With Google+ this fan promotion also shows up in search results.

For example, while logged into Google+ I did a search for the word “business” with Google. It returned the following personalized search result:

I shared a post from Harvard Business Review a few minutes prior. Google adds Google+ posts to the index the instant you post it. It doesn’t take a couple of days to show up in search results like some other web content can. Search Plus Your World results also display a user or page’s profile photo along with the post.

Google+ content is more prominent than that of other services in Google search, but the search capability within Google+ is also much better for exploring new users, pages, and posts than Facebook. This means that it’s easier to find your company with the social network’s built-in search than with Facebook.

Google Authorship

I’ve written a bit about the advantages of starting a company blog, and if you do Google has another great feature for you. It’s called Google Authorship. What is does is it ties your Google+ profile to your website and blog so that when your content comes up in search results (like with Search Plus Your World) it will also feature your profile photo and byline.

The above image features a search result from my About page here on DavidSanty.com. Even though I wasn’t logged in to Google services when I did the search, the snippet still showed my portrait! Search results with a picture attached will grab the eye more than those without. See the link at the end of this post for information on how to enable Google Authorship on your website or blog.

Google+ Local – The artist formerly known as Google Places

The former Google Places was a great tool for optimizing your presence in local search results. It provided store hours, contact information, pictures, products/services, reviews, and coupons. It was a way to make sure that when a user searched for your business or your niche, your business name and location would display in Google Maps.

For a brick and mortar business, especially a new one, I can not stress the importance enough of being visible on Google Maps and in localized search results. The way it works is when a user searches for your business on Google maps they are presented with relevant info about your business from your Google Places profile. When you click the “More Info” link it would take the user to your Google Places page.

In spring/summer 2012 Google Places became Google+ Local and it came with a few exciting new features.

First, businesses may no longer be reviewed anonymously. Users must use their Google+ profile with their identity being public to post a review about a business. Without the ability to hide behind anonymity, your company just might be safer from snarky or downright slanderous reviews.

Second, as you might have guessed from the name, the former Google Places is now integrated into Google+! This makes reviewing businesses and sharing good buzz about local companies all the more accessible.

Here’s an example of a Google+ Local entry:

UPDATE: As of Autumn 2012 it is possible to associate Google+ Pages with Google+ Local listings! You can now incorporate social features into your Google+ Local listing. More info here.

Currently, combining Google+ Local and Google+ Business Pages isn’t possible, but that may be on the horizon. For existing Google Places users this wasn’t a radical departure from what the service previously offered, but it added some great new features like the Google+ style image bar, Zagat scoring and reservations for restaurants through OpenTable. Google is cautiously taking it one step at a time with this one. While Google+ Local isn’t a complete replacement for a website, it offers some of the same features.

Communities

Business often cite Facebook Groups as one of Facebook’s best and most essential features. As of December 2012, Google+ has integrated their “Communities” feature which offers a centralized meeting place for discussions on certain topics. They’re very similar to message board systems in that you can choose different sub-categories for posts in your Community.

Communities can be private or public and can also be open or invite-only. Posts you make in public communities integrate with your regular stream. More on Google+ Communities here from +Martin Shervington.

Thanks for reading. Do you use Google+ for your business? What are your impressions? Any questions about using Google+ for business please share them in the comments.

Related Posts:
Why You Don’t Love Google+ (And Why You Should)
Why Facebook is Losing Photographers to Google+
Why Banning Social Media in the Workplace is a Bad Idea

Sources:
Inc: Google+ a Ghost Town? Hardly.
The Atlantic: It’s a Googly World: A Map of the Planet’s Most Visited Websites by Country
Google Authorship: Virante Orange Juice: How to Show Your Author Photo in Google Search Results
Infographic Source: Webempires – World Map Dominating Websites
Experian Hitwise:
Online Trends
Social Media Trends

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Facebook Timeline

Facebook’s Timeline format for profiles and pages was a huge leap forward in the realm of imagery. The old format was mostly text driven, whereas Timeline is all about images. We all know that a picture is worth 1,000 words. This sentiment rings especially true when it comes to post engagement. People are drawn more to posts with big, beautiful images attached. When it comes to social media, most people are scanners, so a wall of words just doesn’t do the trick. Timeline is great for sharing images, yes, but where do people spend most of their time on Facebook, and where do they discover your posts first?

In the news stream of course.

This is what the news stream looks like on Facebook when sharing an image:

Image preview in Facebook stream

Now, take a look at what image sharing looks like on Google+:

Photo Credit: +David Edenfield www.davidedenfieldphoto.com

Those are both full size images from Facebook and Google+, respectively. Notice the difference? Holy freakin’ crap! The image thumbnail on Facebook is so tiny you have to squint to make out any details.

Click to Enlarge

From stream to profile, Google+ displays image previews at the same dimensions. The entire post layout is identical. Google+ is clearly using screen real estate more effectively and has more consistency to their interface. If Facebook wants to compete with the likes of Google+ and Pinterest when it comes to photography, their news stream is going to need some work. My advice? Narrow the navigation bar, widen the stream content, and make image previews MUCH bigger. Show all image previews at the same size in the stream. Let’s hope some updates to Facebook’s stream are in the pipeline, aside from more creative ad placement.

Though I like Facebook Timeline, there are many users who avoid it like the plague, keeping themselves mostly to the news stream. With the tiny previews and the unsightly ad bar, the news stream doesn’t look so hot. If Facebook wants its service to be visually captivating, the news stream is definitely going to need a lot of work.

Update 6/12/12: Facebook has made some changes to their news stream and image previews are now much bigger. It’s about time!

Image Share on Facebook Timeline

Oh, but what’s this?

This is an image I shared recently on Facebook. Notice something wrong with it? The sides of the image have been chopped off. Unlike Google+, or even their own news stream, Facebook doesn’t resize images properly on user’s Timelines.

Now, just for fun, let’s see what happens when I highlight the post:
 
 

Facebook Timeline Highlighted Post

Yup, even worse. Now, granted that image isn’t the ideal candidate for a highlighted post because it’s not in a wide landscape orientation. Still, users shouldn’t have to crop and change the canvas size on their images before uploading just to have them displayed properly. People want instant gratification, they shouldn’t have to click on the image to see the whole thing. Facebook needs to work on the way they resize images for Timeline, fitting for both height AND width, not one or the other.

Thanks for reading. Are you a photographer, whether pro or hobbyist? What is your favorite social media platform for sharing and why? Let me know what you think in the comments.

Related Posts:
Why You Don’t Love Google+ (And Why You Should)
What Google+ Means for Businesses

The post Why Facebook is Losing Photographers to Google+ appeared first on David Santy Design.

I was a buffoon.

As it turns out, I was thinking about Google+ completely bass ackwards. Trying out Google+ was like moving to a new city. When you move to a new city, do you feverishly beg your friends to move too so you’ll have someone to hang out with? No. Of course not. You go out and make new friends!

Problem: None of my friends are on Google+!
Solution: Well then, go make new friends!

That probably seems like it’s easier said than done. There’s a reason for that. It’s because you’ve been using Facebook for years, so you approach every new social network like it’s Facebook. This is a wide spread problem. Many people try to use Google+ like it’s Facebook, but it’s not Facebook. It’s an entirely different entity with a different approach required. The good news is, Google+ makes connecting with people you don’t know in person much easier than Facebook does.

Facebook is a social network used to keep up with people you know from meeting in person. Whenever I meet new people out in the wild I don’t give them my email. I might give them my phone number. More likely though, is that I’ll tell them to look me up on Facebook. Of course, everyone is on Facebook so this is convenient.

When it comes to making new friends online though, with the way Facebook is constructed it is almost mandatory that you have a mutual connection with a person to meet someone new. People have been spooked by Facebook’s privacy policies in that past so more and more people choose not to post publicly at all. With Google+ it’s not at all necessary to have a mutual contact. Meeting new people and discovering quality content is built into Google+ from the ground up. This is where Google’s background as a search provider proves their greatest strength in creating a social network. Their algorithms are built to match keywords to related content. Google+ is built around the search feature, rather than the search being a secondary feature like it is with Facebook.

Searching public posts on Facebook is buried on a secondary screen. If you wanted to find people who share your interests, Facebook doesn’t make it easy. What about Groups? The problem with Facebook Groups is that it’s not as popular a feature as it was some years ago. Also, for any given topic there can be multiple groups with low membership, or just low engagement. Groups are more like exclusive clubs. Facebook isn’t as conducive when it comes to striking up conversations with new people. Google+ on the other hand has a wealth of conversation right out in the open for anyone to join in..

With Google+ you just mosey on over to the search box and type in a topic you want to read more about. A stream of public posts on that topic fills the screen. You then start commenting on posts. Doesn’t matter if you don’t know that person. They don’t mind.

Problem: People use Google+ like it’s Facebook.
Solution: Don’t use Google+ like it’s Facebook.

This is where Circles comes into play. You can create new Circles for all of your different hobbies and interests, then follow people who are interested in the same things by placing them into these Circles. You can then share posts about those subjects just with people in those Circles. I recommend posting interesting content as Public though to get the most out of Google+. You want to make it easy for people to find and interact with your posts. You can also click the Explore tab to find the day’s popular content. Circles was such a great idea that Facebook went ahead and added a similar feature called Lists. You can make lists of interesting people on Facebook to follow but, again, Facebook isn’t as good for content discovery. Twitter is another network with Lists that I believe beats Facebook for discovering new content.

The problem with Facebook is that because it’s mostly comprised of people you know in real life there is more focus on conveying daily life’s trivialities than there is on bringing interesting web content to the world. Want to find out when one of your friends is doing the laundry or eating dinner? Can’t beat Facebook for that! Want to find out what’s new in space exploration, landscape photography, or electronic gadgets? Google+ is your best bet. Plus the interaction on topics on Google+ is much richer. None of that “LOL OMG ROTFLMFAO” littering the comments.

Another way that Google+ owns Facebook is this: You can edit your posts at any time! *cue angels singing*

Yes, edit your posts. Make a typo or place the wrong link in your post? You don’t have to delete it and start from scratch. Wonderful, wonderful feature.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I love Facebook. I’m one of those nutters who loves Facebook Timeline too. It’s just that they’re different tools for different purposes. I don’t believe anyone should limit themselves to participating in just one social network.

In conclusion, the main takeaways from this post should be:

• Don’t use Google+ like it’s Facebook
• Go explore your interests and passions
• Make new friends and followers by commenting on their posts.

You can strike up a conversation with myself and others by posting in the comments section. Otherwise, why don’t you add me to your Circles on Google+? I’m always open to comments and suggestions! Thanks for reading. What have your experiences been like with Google+? What is your favorite social network and why?

Related Posts: Why Facebook is Losing Photographers to Google+

The post Why You Don’t Love Google+ (And Why You Should) appeared first on David Santy Design.

1. Advanced Code Editor
2. WordPress SEO
3. Widget Logic Visual
4. BackWPup
5. Simple Modal Contact Form
6. Fast Secure Contact Form
7. GetSocial
8. Newsletter
9. Custom Author Link
10. SEO Friendly Images

1. Advanced Code Editor

Advanced Code Editor Preview

• Search/Replace
• Jump to line
• Full screen editor
• Creating and deleting files
• Creating directories
• Downloading files and themes

2. WordPress SEO

Wordpress SEO General Settings

Wordpress SEO Social Settings

Included in WordPress SEO are breadcrumbs and automatic XML Sitemap generation. You’ll never need to manually generate a sitemap to submit to search providers.

(Make sure you submit your sitemap through Google and Bing Webmaster Tools!)

Wordpress SEO Breadcrumbs

From the Edit Page dialog it also offers advanced meta robots settings (allow or not allow search engine robots to follow/index that page), sitemap priority, and 301 redirection.

Wordpress SEO Advanced Settings

3. Widget Logic Visual

Widget Logic Visual Limitations

But what if you don’t want a particular widget to display on every page? That’s where Widget Logic Visual comes it. It allows you to edit every item within a widget to choose which individual pages or posts it will display on, or not. You can choose to display on all pages, excluding only certain pages or posts as well. In my opinion, an absolutely necessary plugin for widget users and something that I wish was built into WordPress.

Widget Logic Visual Editor

4. BackWPup

BackWPup New Job Menu

If you have a recent backup, that’s not a problem. While using MySQL to backup databases and manually downloading files via FTP might just be an annoyance for the web savvy, it’s a daunting and confusing task for the beginner. BackWPup offers a painless backup solution for your WordPress installation. Once you’ve created a backup job, you can backup your site with a single click, or you can have backups run automatically on a schedule. Choose which directories get backed up, tell BackWPup where you want the file saved (a compressed file available in a few different formats) and away you go.

In addition to saving a backup file on your local server, you can also choose to backup with any of the following methods or services:

• FTP folder
• Backup by Email
• Amazon S3
• Dropbox
• Sugarsync
• Google
• Microsoft Azure
• Rackspace Cloud

5. Simple Modal Contact Form.

Simple Modal Contact Form

Appearance --> Menus Screen Options

This plugin requires Javascript so you’ll have to have a backup contact form or email link on your contact page for users without Javascript enabled.

Add "smcf-link" to your Contact link

6. Fast Secure Contact Form

Fast Secure Contact Form

Build as many different contact forms as you like with any number of custom fields. Works with the Akismet anti-spam plugin and vCita sceduling. Built in auto-response and redirect after user submission, plus built-in Captcha. The Options menu allows you to modify the CSS of the contact form directly from the plugin options.

You can even send posted data remotely to another form when using 3rd party APIs and export form fields to a database. All in all, Fast Secure Contact Form has all the features most people would need and then some.

7. GetSocial

GetSocial Options

You can also add code for additional social sharing buttons that may not be included by default.

By default, GetSocial supports:

• Facebook
• Twitter
• Google+
• LinkedIn
• Pinterest
• Stumbleupon
• Digg
• Buffer

8. Newsletter

Newsletter New Email

Newsletter allows you to write up emails for your subscribers but also has one other major feature. With this plugin, you can hide content from users until they’ve subscribed and redirect them to the premium content. Newsletter does have extensive options to setup before you can use it so it’s not quite as plug-and-play as some of the other plugins on this list, but its functionality is also extensive.

The plugin utilizes a double opt-in method which sends a confirmation email to the subscriber before adding them to the mailing list, mandatory these days, and lets you customize every step of the subscription process. The Pro version comes with even more features like blog post summary emails, click tracking, and follow up emails for unconfirmed subscribers.

9. Custom Author Link

WordPress has a built in post archive by author which you access by clicking the authors name in a blog post byline. As you can imagine, this doesn’t serve much use on a single author blog! For the single user blog it’s much more useful to have a static About page. WordPress doesn’t allow changing that link, but Custom Author Link lets you do just that.

The best thing about this plugin is that it requires almost zero setup! It doesn’t even have a configuration menu. All you have to do is go into Users–>Your Profile and add the URL of your custom About page as your Website under “Contact Info” (see below). This works if you have guest authors on your blog as well because you can add the URL of their website to their profile.

Users-->Your Profile under "Contact Info"

10. SEO Friendly Images

What SEO Friendly Images does is very simple. It automatically adds ALT and TITLE attributes to the images in your posts for SEO purposes. You can automatically insert post titles, file names, post categories and tags, plus any text of your choosing. Set it and forget it. SEO Friendly Images works in the background automatically so you don’t have to write custom attributes every time you add an image. This plugin makes it easy to target keywords with your images.

SEO Friendly Images Settings

This is just a small sampling of the multitude of WordPress plugins out there. Look out for future posts on WordPress features and plugins.

What are your favorite WordPress plugins and why? Feel free to share in the comments box. Also, if there are any particular topics on running a WordPress site you’d like me to write about, let me know in the comments or click the Contact link at the top or bottom of the page to send me an email. I enjoy getting your suggestions and look forward to hearing from you.

The post 10 Essential WordPress Plugins appeared first on David Santy Design.

…and cool it with the automated answering systems

It’s a familiar situation. You have a problem with your internet connection, a question about your phone bill, or you want to sign up for a new service. You dial the 800 number in the pamphlet and after a few short rings you’re greeted with an automated answering system.

“Press 1 to…”

“Press 2 to…”

Press 3 to…”

And so on.

You’ve waded through five levels of menus and backtracked when sub-menus lacked the option you seek. Now, after turning down the customer survey, you finally get the option to bid adieu to the disembodied computer voice on the line so you can speak to a real live human being. That is, after you listen to light jazz for ten minutes while waiting on hold. Then, a short ring and a click. At last! A real person has picked up, but suddenly your heart sinks when you realize “Steve” from “Your home town” (by way of Mumbai) picked up. Oh, bother.

So “Steve” asks how he can help you, but you know he can’t because he’s thousands of miles away from the people who actually make the decisions, and he has only scripted blurbs at his disposal. The thing is though, the lack of proximity in and of itself is hardly the main problem.

Companies hold the mistaken belief that customer service is simply another form of overhead, and that reputation is something managed solely by clever TV ads and viral videos. They’re completely wrong. The modern consumer cares more about what their friends think of you than what your ads claim you to be, and tales of your poor customer service spread like wildfire through social media. You need to be proactive rather than reactive when it comes to PR.

So they make the decision to outsource customer service. The cost per employee per service inquiry is lower than if they were to keep it in-house, which pleases the bean counters. The problem with the bean counters having too much influence in major business decisions is that they’ve never worked in customer service and they’ve never worked in marketing, so they have absolutely no idea how brand identity and reputation affect sales, nor do they care.

All they see is overhead and profit. What’s coming in and what’s going out. It seems silly but the thought of earnestly developing strategies to increase revenues sometimes doesn’t occur to them. It’s something they pay lip service to but do little to implement because really, that’s somebody else’s job, and their job is to get in the way of the people who try to implement those strategies. Budget cuts are their only concern. It’s, “How can we do this cheaper?” not “How can we do this better?”

Don’t get me wrong. Streamlining of processes to reduce labor costs is extremely important. Although, that is something too that doesn’t get done properly when a business is chasing that red ink. They end up using the same old inefficient practices with fewer people juggling more responsibility. But enough about the bean counters.

It doesn’t really matter where that customer service representative is located. It could be in a call center in India or it could be just outside of Cleveland, Ohio. Most people think outsourcing is synonymous with offshoring, that it means sending jobs overseas. That can be the case, but outsourcing can be a harmful practice regardless of where the jobs go.

The problem with outsourcing is that it takes a large degree of control out of the hands of a business. New policy is slow and difficult to implement, documentation slow to roll out. But even with excellent documentation (the documentation is generally pretty terrible and incomplete, by the way) a business can never foresee every possible service breakdown. The call center employees are usually not real “tech support” people either, being poorly versed in most subjects the customers inquire about, sometimes providing misinformation. Often there is no proxy between the call center and the business to handle individual cases. Unless dozens of customers, maybe even hundreds, call in with a similar complaint it’s likely that the company never hears about it.

It’s a yes or no proposition, yes we can do that or no that’s not possible. They can only do what is says in the call script and nothing more. What’s worse is that each department within the call center has such a narrow scope even as to what account information they can access, which means there’s a substantial possibility that you’ll be bounced around between departments. There’s also a substantial possibility that your call will get disconnected several times, forcing you to browse menus and wait on hold for yet another ten or twenty minutes. This is really no way to serve your customers.

“But,” you say, “what about online support chat? Isn’t that far more convenient?” Same problems, and more. When done right it can save serious time over phone support, but often the infrastructure behind the online chat is similar to that of the phone support department. Even worse, sometimes you’re left to write a service ticket after which you play email tag for several days, or weeks.

Outsourced customer service disconnects a business from the customer completely and makes it very difficult to respond to major issues quickly. Even so, moving everything back in-house isn’t a magic fix. Some companies structure their phone support like those overseas call centers. Why? To conform to industry standards. If it’s standard, there must be a very good reason for it, right?  There is no thought put into why these practices exist or if it is the best way to do things.

For great customer service to be possible, you need people who are A) intimately acquainted with your product or service and B) believe in it to be answering the phones. You need IT people, your IT people, not call center people. If your company is active in social media, encourage your customers to ask questions through those venues as well, and answer their questions quickly. Twitter, for example.

In closing, a word of advice, keep the automated stuff down to two menus then give me a real person. I don’t care if I have to wait a little bit longer so long as I don’t have to yell at your computer like a lunatic for five minutes. Also, go write up a great FAQ so fewer people have to call you in the first place.

Do you have any examples of companies with great customer service? What about the bad ones? What would YOU suggest to companies to improve their customer support? Please share in the comments! Any topics you’d like me to write about please let me know!

The post Why Companies Need To Stop Outsourcing Customer Service appeared first on David Santy Design.

Eight O'Clock Original Coffee

Recently, while searching for a less expensive alternative to my favorite locally roasted coffee, I came upon some very favorable reviews for the brand Eight O’Clock. At $5.99 for a 12oz bag it is the least expensive whole been coffee available at my local grocer and claims to be 100% Arabica Coffee. At about $.20/ounce cheaper than my usual brand it offers pretty good value price wise, but how does it taste?

To find out, I’ve brought a bag of Eight O’Clock Original whole bean coffee home with me and fired up the kettle. Here are my findings.

Right off the bat I’ve encountered a problem with the bag. At first, it seems like any ordinary vacuum sealed coffee bag but there is one glaring difference: It’s not heat sealed. The manufacturer has used glue to seal the top of the bag. A good vacuum valve coffee bag has a heat sealed strip that one must cut off. This is necessary to keep coffee beans fresh when they may be sitting on the grocer’s shelf for weeks. This glued bag pulled apart a little too easily and didn’t appear to make a complete seal. Though the date on the bag states “BEST WHEN USED BY 01/23/13″ I wasn’t confident about what I’d find when I when I opened it. Turns out my worries were not unfounded.

The beans appeared slightly chalky with only the slightest oily sheen to the surface. The aroma emanating from the beans was also underwhelming. Dull, weak, and one-note. Just what you’d expect from a bag of beans opened several weeks ago, not a newly opened bag. At this point I wasn’t expecting miracles from the brew but went on ahead anyway.

Preparation:

• French press
• Filtered water heated to 204F
• Ground medium-fine right before steeping
• Steeped for just under 4 minutes

At first sip mouth feel takes notice. Thin and watery. The aroma, again, is dull and lacks complexity. Same goes for flavor. This coffee is highly acidic, leaving a tang along with a stale, slightly rancid aftertaste. The overall flavor profile reminds me quite a lot of a light to medium roast Folgers coffee, but Eight O’Clock Original is more aggressively acidic.

So, what’s the deal? Why the favorable reviews, the “better than Starbucks” claims, of this rancid, acidic coffee? Well, I went hunting for reviews again and found something interesting over at CoffeeReview.com. The host’s review (from 2002) states “Low-toned but complex. A floral sweetness is supported by a slightly roasty pungency and a touch of mustiness, the agreeable kind that gives weight and character to the cup and hints at dry chocolate.” Completely incongruent with my findings, and rightly so as more recent user reviews reveal.

One of the user reviews states:

“I have used Eight O’Clock coffee beans for years and believe it WAS the best coffee going for the price. I recently purchased a bag with their “new look with the same great taste”. Don’t believe it. It was the worst cup of coffee I have ever brewed and the first cup I have not been able to drink.”

Other reviews are much the same. So, as it turns out my gripes about the bag were apt, but not for the same reasons. It seems that in recent years the people at Eight O’Clock have let the quality of their beans slip.

I would grade this coffee a D+ and would not purchase it again. I’ll likely be calling the 800 number on the bag to request a refund.

Thanks for reading. Tell me about your favorite bargain coffee brands in the comments!

EDIT:
In 2005 the Eight O’Clock Coffee brand was purchased by Indian coffee company Tata Coffee. We can safely assume that this is the cause for the drastic drop in quality. Previously, Eight O’Clock coffee was a house brand of A&P Supermarkets, a subsidiary of The Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company

Further Reading:
The Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company – Wikipedia

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