I am the kind of person who doesn't like to read a long case study to understand a company's capabilities. So I found the most effective format of case studies as follows:
First, list the client name and industry.
Secondly, use 1 para. to describe the situation before the client seeks your help.
Thirdly, use 1 para. to explain your solution to this client.
Fourthly, use 1 para. to paint a visual picture with numbers and stats of the result
Eventually, don't forget to get a testimonial from the client - better someone high-level so it can add some third-party endorsement power.
A good example I saw today is from an iContact case study at Updata's website.
iContact
iContact's Situation
In 2007, four-year-old iContact was growing rapidly, with a proven product and customer acquisition model. Management saw an opportunity to expand market share more quickly in the SMB email marketing solutions space, and needed working capital to finance their aggressive growth plans. iContact looked for an investor to fuel expansion while helping to navigate the challenges of steep growth, leading the Durham, N.C., company to team with Updata Partners.
Updata's Solution
Updata faciliated iContact’s increased investment in sales and marketing, and helped to augment and counsel the management which has since generated significant value, including expanding a customer base of 55,000 to more than 500,000 users just two years later.
Result
Revenues more than quadrupled from 2007-2009, and today iContact has solidified its position as one of the top two of email marketing solutions providers in the SMB market.
CEO Perspective
“Many investors are financially oriented. It is rare to have investors with operational experience. That they have...experience in the software as a service area gives us added faith in their advice. Their prior operational experience has been very helpful to us. With their help we have been able to grow and scale our business much more rapidly than we would have without them. And we definitely have good chemistry with them."
- Ryan Allis
Pretty neat, right? I took me only 2 minutes to read and get the point of Updata's capabilities. I recommend this format.
11/17/10
Google Analytics is a Magic Tool!
Lots of people are using Google Analytics to monitor their websites, and we all know something about it because it is well-designed to be intuitive and easy to understand. Today I picked up a few terms and learned in depth about how to best interpret Google Analytics results.I will try to explain in the simplest way as possible so I can remember.
1. Bounce Rate:
(in my word)
So basically, if someone click your website link but soon realizes they are on the wrong place and leave your website, GA tries to track them down and tell you these clicks are "bounced". So you can have a better idea how many people are REALLY viewing your page for good reason out there.
(from wikipedia)
It essentially represents the percentage of initial visitors to a site who "bounce" away to a different site, rather than continue on to other pages within the same site.
(I love formulas, so) Bounce Rate = Total Number of Visits Viewing Only One Page / Total Number of Visits
A visitor can bounce by:
So now the question became "how to lower the bounce rate if your website bounce rate is high"...So I kept on searching and found some answers as below:
First I read about how to measure bounce rates - not just overall bounce rates but to see how individuals land on different pages to view content. Here it is:
How to Measure Your Website's Bounce Rate
http://www.elated.com/articles/measure-your-website-bounce-rate/
And then I got some advice from the same author on how to reduce the bounce rate:
http://www.elated.com/articles/reduce-your-website-bounce-rate/
1. Bounce Rate:
(in my word)
So basically, if someone click your website link but soon realizes they are on the wrong place and leave your website, GA tries to track them down and tell you these clicks are "bounced". So you can have a better idea how many people are REALLY viewing your page for good reason out there.
(from wikipedia)
It essentially represents the percentage of initial visitors to a site who "bounce" away to a different site, rather than continue on to other pages within the same site.
(I love formulas, so) Bounce Rate = Total Number of Visits Viewing Only One Page / Total Number of Visits
A visitor can bounce by:
- Clicking on a link to a page on a different web site
- Closing a open window or tab
- Typing a new URL
- Clicking the "Back" button to leave the site
- Session timeout
So now the question became "how to lower the bounce rate if your website bounce rate is high"...So I kept on searching and found some answers as below:
First I read about how to measure bounce rates - not just overall bounce rates but to see how individuals land on different pages to view content. Here it is:
How to Measure Your Website's Bounce Rate
http://www.elated.com/articles/measure-your-website-bounce-rate/
And then I got some advice from the same author on how to reduce the bounce rate:
http://www.elated.com/articles/reduce-your-website-bounce-rate/
4/22/10
Web Browsers: Chrome and Opera
Google Chrome
Actually I haven't used Chrome till late February, 2010 when a friend told me all the great features Chrome provided. Without any doubt, Google constantly produces wonderful ideas and great applications to make our life easier. Well, I am not talking about Buzz here:-P.
Chrome is a great web browser I would recommend you to try. It carries Google search engine toolbar, enables full-text history search, remembers zoom level by site, and opens everything in a new tab for you. It is easy to use, though I cannot speak for Mac users due to lack of that experience.
Opera
The second one I recently find helpful as I learn HTML language, is Opera. This web browser has one feature I really admire. Oper
a displays the value of
Opera also uses the value of
Market Share
Below is the market share of different web browsers. Apparently Chrome and Opera don't take a large piece of the market cake. Still good to know about their features.
I don't know if you are interested or not, but html code tutorial is a helpful web site.
Actually I haven't used Chrome till late February, 2010 when a friend told me all the great features Chrome provided. Without any doubt, Google constantly produces wonderful ideas and great applications to make our life easier. Well, I am not talking about Buzz here:-P.
Chrome is a great web browser I would recommend you to try. It carries Google search engine toolbar, enables full-text history search, remembers zoom level by site, and opens everything in a new tab for you. It is easy to use, though I cannot speak for Mac users due to lack of that experience.
Opera
The second one I recently find helpful as I learn HTML language, is Opera. This web browser has one feature I really admire. Oper
a displays the value of TITLE in a small box when the pointer is over a link. Most browsers have ignored this useful attribute. Yet it is helpful as I am one the people would feel reluctant to click on a link without knowing what's in it first.Opera also uses the value of
TITLE as the subject line in email links. So when you click on the email link, it automatically helps us fill out the subject of the email as something like "response to XX". Isn't it great?Market Share
Below is the market share of different web browsers. Apparently Chrome and Opera don't take a large piece of the market cake. Still good to know about their features.
I don't know if you are interested or not, but html code tutorial is a helpful web site.
4/16/10
How to Evaluate Social Media Use for Nonprofits Part II
Various organizations use social media to help with their products and services. Nonprofit organizations especially tend to rely on social media since they are for free. When they use social media, they will wonder about the same question: how well does the organization use social media.
The following are several social media metrics (some in my last post) and how to evaluate social media use with these metrics.
The following are several social media metrics (some in my last post) and how to evaluate social media use with these metrics.
Volunteers
You may let people in your social media communities learn about the wonderful volunteer experience, which will not only build your organizational image, but also help you secure new volunteers through utilizing social media.
Event Attendance
Holding events on a regular basis will help you keep your supporters and donors updated about your nonprofit. But that is not enough. Using social media, you can spread the word out easily and people will likely interact with you before the event on the social media venues.
Testimonials
Clients, supporters and donors may leave a comment on your organization's facebook/twitter/etc., don't let it die on the page. You may include the testimonial in your newsletter, event brochure, and everything else that represent supporters' voices. They like that, and you win a good reputation.
Facebook Comments and Twitter Mentions
This is hard and boring to track but definitely rewarding if you keep doing it. It will show how successful your social media plan is. If your organization facebook gets few comments and is seldom mentioned, you may need another social media plan.
Fans, Followers and Friends
To keep a high social media ROI, the quality of fans/followers/friends is important too.
4/10/10
How to Evaluate Social Media Use for Nonprofits Part I
Various organizations use social media to help with their products and services. Nonprofit organizations especially tend to rely on social media since they are for free. When they use social media, they will wonder about the same question: how well does the organization use social media.
The following are ten social media metrics and how to evaluate social media use with these metrics.
First of all, nonprofits need to keep an eye on their website traffic. You may wonder why you spend a lot of efforts on designing the website and updating everything, yet you get few responses. That's when you will need to track your website's traffic logs and visitors from month to month. You will need to see the change as you branch out to a larger and larger community.
Another important way to evaluate social media use is blog traffic. Nonprofits may find it hard to update blogs on a regular basis, yet this turns out to be a tremendous help to the organization.Blogging may have been a missing piece in most nonprofits' social media strategy package. The nonprofit I work for---InterAct---keeps blogs on community websites like ShareTriangle, MyNC, and GOLO. InterAct was very specific about what web hosts they chose to start blogs. ShareTriangle, MyNC and GOLO are basically the three major event and information sharing community websites that everyone can post blogs and respond to one. This gives some leeway to nonprofits in terms of sharing their events and fundraiser schedules, educating the public about a social issue, and asking for support from local communities. Also, monitoring blog traffic will be necessary in order to evaluate the effectiveness of a blog. To simply put, you may not only count how many replies you get for each blog post, but also how much traffic your blog generate for your official website.
The last one in this post is e-letter tactics. E-letter will help people who are captive audience become voluntary. In other words, people are 'forced' to read your e-letter and get the information, and if they are interested, they will dig more. That's how e-letter works to help promote website traffic, webinar registration, event participation, and even donations.
Content of e-letter is important. Nowadays people are fed up with sales spams, so your e-letter must be personal relevant. If your audience are women with younger children, then your organization e-letter may want to touch several topics like parenting, early schooling, etc. They will attract the audience and thus convince them that your organization will be of some help.
If nonprofits manage this tool well, they will likely see more and more people signing up for their e-letters.
The following are ten social media metrics and how to evaluate social media use with these metrics.
First of all, nonprofits need to keep an eye on their website traffic. You may wonder why you spend a lot of efforts on designing the website and updating everything, yet you get few responses. That's when you will need to track your website's traffic logs and visitors from month to month. You will need to see the change as you branch out to a larger and larger community.
Another important way to evaluate social media use is blog traffic. Nonprofits may find it hard to update blogs on a regular basis, yet this turns out to be a tremendous help to the organization.Blogging may have been a missing piece in most nonprofits' social media strategy package. The nonprofit I work for---InterAct---keeps blogs on community websites like ShareTriangle, MyNC, and GOLO. InterAct was very specific about what web hosts they chose to start blogs. ShareTriangle, MyNC and GOLO are basically the three major event and information sharing community websites that everyone can post blogs and respond to one. This gives some leeway to nonprofits in terms of sharing their events and fundraiser schedules, educating the public about a social issue, and asking for support from local communities. Also, monitoring blog traffic will be necessary in order to evaluate the effectiveness of a blog. To simply put, you may not only count how many replies you get for each blog post, but also how much traffic your blog generate for your official website.
The last one in this post is e-letter tactics. E-letter will help people who are captive audience become voluntary. In other words, people are 'forced' to read your e-letter and get the information, and if they are interested, they will dig more. That's how e-letter works to help promote website traffic, webinar registration, event participation, and even donations.
Content of e-letter is important. Nowadays people are fed up with sales spams, so your e-letter must be personal relevant. If your audience are women with younger children, then your organization e-letter may want to touch several topics like parenting, early schooling, etc. They will attract the audience and thus convince them that your organization will be of some help.
If nonprofits manage this tool well, they will likely see more and more people signing up for their e-letters.
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