Image by gahlord via Flickr

One of the things I’ve been thinking about a lot lately is the question “Where do you listen to?” That isn’t a typo. The place you listen to informs the questions you hear.

I think the questions I hear make a big difference in what I think about and the problems I learn to solve.

The Twitter hashtag for the town I live in has presented a number of problems that have caused me to learn new things.

This is a post about where I listen to.

A town with a hashtag — Burlington Vermont — #BTV

Burlington Vermont has been using the Twitter hashtag #BTV since late 2007. The tag is the same as our airport code.

People in our town use it to talk about all sorts of things. Politics, the lunch menu at area restaurants, ski conditions, you name it. I created an archive of the #BTV hashtag that starts around 2009 if you’d like to get a sense of it (changes to the Twitter API have limited the capability of TwapperKeeper–the value of this link may change as a result).

The conversation on #BTV is much like the town hall meeting style of discourse that is common in Vermont but maybe not in other places. As a state that went through the whole civil union debate earlier than most and boasts a firmly independent US Senator, we manage to have opposing viewpoints without too much shouting or outrage or ad hominem.

This is where I listen to.

The #BTV hashtag: generating meaningful signal

For the #BTV hashtag to get established there needed to be enough signal to make it meaningful for the participants. Back in 2007 and 2008 this was relatively easy as it was mostly just early adopters of the tool. Like many networks, the utility of the hashtag increased with the number of participants–more knowledge and insight was added with every regular user.

Some examples of the utility brought to the hashtag include:

• Local media providing simple weather information
• Lunch spots providing a heads up on menus or specials
• Actual help from actual neighbors to actual problems, like shoveling snow
• Social Traffic Nav: how bad is I-89 at a given time, reported live from someone who is hopefully the passenger in their car

These sorts of things were really enough signal to keep the channel healthy. For many #BTV is open all day alongside their work. It’s a Burlington-wide water cooler and help desk.

The #BTV hashtag: eliminating noise

There were some early challenges with noise. Sometimes the noise was human generated. Perhaps someone getting online for the first time and not realizing what was a good fit for the #BTV hashtag. That was usually solved easily by helping the person to improve. Or waiting for them to lose interest. Not enough noise to damage the utility of the hashtag.

Noisy bots automating their way through the hashtag

Then there were a few automated services. One in particular that I remember was well intentioned. A student in Iowa had written a script to turn weather information from airports into Tweets. This would have been great except that the Burlington Airport weather station releases several updates every five minutes. Some of those updates say things like “The weather hasn’t changed in the last minute.”

The weatherbot was a real mess and was, to my memory, the first real challenge to the signal vs noise ratio of #BTV. This was solved fairly easily. I tracked down the script’s author and sent him an email giving him some gentle feedback.

Before I sent the email I took the time to listen to the bot. That’s right, I read a lot of the posts generated by this twitter bot to figure out how they worked. I looked for patterns of signal in the mess of noise.

Then I determined a potential text filter that the script author could apply so that Severe Weather Warnings would continue to flow to the #BTV hashtag (I figured that would be worthwhile) but “Hey it’s sunny outside” updates would not. When I sent the email suggestion to the author he was very happy to comply (and probably happy just to know someone was seeing his work). The resulting bot now limits its output to only one or so an hour.

The method I used to help keep the noise level down was this:

1. Observe that there’s too much noise in the #BTV hashtag
2. Listen to the noise to see if there’s anything of value, worth keeping
3. Determine a way to keep the thing that’s valuable and limit the thing that’s noise
4. Politely work to get the change I want

I didn’t spend a lot of time complaining about the weather bot. Focusing on a solution seemed better. I had to listen to find the solution though.

The solution had both technological aspects and social aspects. I had to be willing to help complete the solution.

This initial success became the template that I used for many many more interactions online via Twitter and other channels.

Human noise from outside Burlington

As you can imagine, having a short hashtag is useful–especially in a medium like Twitter which has a strict character limit. Burlington’s hashtag, #BTV, also contains “TV”–the universal acronym for television. Over the past few years there have been several occasions where different television viewing audiences began commenting in the #BTV hashtag.

For the most part, these television watchers eventually moved along. The reason for this seems to me that commentary about a television station is rarely engaging enough for people to actually have a conversation about it. Most of the television-based noise in the #BTV hashtag wasn’t even useful to the people who were creating it.

Conversation about specific shows is a different matter. Lots of commentary and back and forth on actual content. But on the producers and distributors of the shows, not so much.

There was once a time when the Bulgarian TV station started to use the hashtag. No one else was, just that TV station. Following the template I developed for dealing with IEMBot, I observed the “noise” and noticed that their own audience wasn’t using it to have any conversations.

I dusted off my Bulgarian language skills and dropped a note to the Bulgarian TV station, suggesting they focus on creating hashtags around their content. They had a good laugh at my Bulgarian, appreciating my efforts though. And complied. There’s still an occasional Cyrillic tweet that flies across the #BTV hashtag now and then. But it’s just not that much of a problem.

The original template held:

1. listen
2. analyze
3. make something people will like
4. help enact the solution.

I’m fortunate in that I’m self-employed so I can devote the time to help in this way. I’m doubly fortunate that what I learn by doing these sorts of things is valuable for my clients as well.

And then there’s Bahrain. And a revolution. And a television station.

On February 17th 2011 revolution began in Bahrain. At first, other than Vermont’s own independence movement, there seems to be no big connection between Bahrain and Burlington Vermont.

Except that, if you listen to the Twitter chatter, Bahrain’s national television station is bad enough that it is a topic of conversation among the Bahrainis. And the abbreviation the people of Bahrain chose to use was… you guessed it… #BTV.

Increased Twitter usage in Bahrain around Feb 2011, from http://www.adelmaymoon.com/?p=83 by Adel Maymoon a Bahrain Government employee.

It’s quite easy to see the before and after trend here. There is obvious lift in this chart: before Feb 17th Bahrain twitter usage is a flatline and after Feb 17th it cools into a regular thrum of activity.

Some of this Twitter activity is complaining about Bahrain Television. There’s even a very funny thread called #BTVConfirms which pokes fun at the way in which Bahrain Television apparently confirms outlandish events. Consider it sort of like a Bahraini version of Chuck Norris jokes.

The end result though, is a lot of chatter that has nothing to do with Burlington being in the #BTV hashtag.

Globalism and ad hoc taxonomies

Hashtags are made up. There isn’t any standard for them or any regulation or any rights to them or anything like that. Hashtags are just a way to organize conversations. And they’re made up, they’re ad hoc.

If the Bahrainis want to use a hashtag there’s nothing really to stop them from using it. They’ve as much right to it as Burlington does.

Eventually, as the “noise” generated by complaints about the service provided by Bahrain Television has begun to drown out the “signal” about Burlington, VT other hashtags are being used. Some people are using three or four different hashtags to try to stay connected to the local conversation.

The challenge with divergent hashtag use is that the total amount of signal also diminishes. If the people who generate valuable Burlington-related content all split across three or more hashtags eventually there is not enough signal to continue the sorts of meaningful connections we’re having online.

The weaker the signal gets, the more likely it is that the new hashtags get drowned out by whatever comes along to appropriate them as well. Eventually there’s no signal. Where the previous efforts to preserve a balance of signal to noise ratio relied on eliminating noise, the Bahrain event was threatening to disperse the signal.

Since I value the relationships I form via #BTV hashtag I knew it was time to do something other than wait for Bahrain Television to align their programming with the needs of their vocal Twitter audience.

My solution for this has been more technical than I would like, but it has been met with enthusiasm. I learned how to construct Twitter streams using geocode data and prepared a couple tutorials: one for creating a Tweetdeck location search column and another for creating a Hootsuite location search stream.

I used the same tactic as always, only this time I had to focus inward–on my own community–instead of outward on Bahrain.

1. Observe there is a problem: too much noise in the #BTV hashtag.
2. Listen to the problem: what can be salvaged amid the noise? what patterns exist?
3. Determine how to leverage the pattern.
4. Create a solution.

Those who have heard me present about Johnathan Boyd’s OODA loop will see the strategy clearly in these steps. The end result is a continued ability to operate–to maintain the rich local communication that we’ve enjoyed for four and a half years. Our continued operation doesn’t require anything of the Bahrainis, the solution makes conflicting use a moot point.

The solution I developed also allows us to aggregate signals from a variety of hashtags–ultimately increasing the value of the solution. People will adopt this solution because it not only diminishes noise, but increases signal. I’m pretty happy about that.

Some lessons

The strategy of observing and listening and hunting for patterns works well. But it doesn’t happen by itself.

At any point along the way it would have been easy to give up and just complain that the channel is noisy. Or move along to the next hashtag. Until someone else with a louder voice came for that hashtag as well–can there be a Pastor Niemöller’s lament for a hashtag?

In ethnomusicology (think mashup: anthropology + music) there’s a concept called communal recreation which focuses on how a community refashions culture. We have songs that appear timeless and learn as children and when asked who wrote them might say “no one.”

But just as Big Rock Candy Mountain was written by Haywire Mac (or was perhaps his recreation of “Invitation to Lubberland”), someone makes culture in a location. Someone creates a marketplace of ideas. Someone creates a market of conversation.

It certainly doesn’t require any sort of formal authority to happen. No one needs to give you permission to listen locally. No one needs to give you permission to create a conversation. But someone does need to work at creating signal. And sometimes someone needs to work at removing noise.

In my adventures in local listening I was fortunate enough to stumble on ways to do what I love: work with others to make things people like.

• A useful weather bot (though I’ll have to ask him to make another change so it gets through the filter)
• Improved conversations for a television station in Bulgaria
• A method of segmenting Twitter by topic and geography

These three things are a byproduct of what I set out do: maintain meaningful conversations with my neighbors.

Image via Wikipedia

When you read about social media or listen to presenters talk about social media it’s easy to get jaded. The big deal, according to these presenters and bloggers, is that you should “engage your audience” via social tools like Twitter and Facebook and LinkedIn!

But what does that really mean, anyway? “Engage your audience.” It’s like telling someone who has a weight problem they should eat better. True? Yes. Helpful? Not very.

When it comes to my audience, I don’t really try to be engaging, instead I try to be listening. I try to be helpful.

#BuzzRE @respres quoting @gahlord with key listening idea: "I'm looking for more opportunities to help someone" || aren't we all?

06:3:10 11:25 am via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@tyr

Dustin Luther

Listen and be helpful, a simple example.

I’m going to give you an example. Hopefully this will make it easier to forget about “engaging your audience” and instead focus on listening and being helpful.

At a live tweetup or other event sometime in the past year I met Zack Luby. At the time Zack had just started Good Stuff Communications, a digital firm specializing in work with sustainable businesses. We had a great chat and I really admired his energy and enthusiasm–one of the reasons I like hanging out with other entrepreneurs.

Since meeting Zack in person we have occasionally communicated via Twitter, but not really that often. It’s pretty casual. You know, the “hey that’s a cool link, thanks for sharing” sort of thing.

Maybe you have people in your Twitter list like that. People that are more than just a Twitter handle but that you don’t interact with every day.

My goal, with using any media, is to find more opportunities to help people. Since I follow Zack and I’m looking to help people, I noticed this:

taking the amtrak from #btv to brattleboro tomorrow - what should I expect? any tips?

03:3:11 7:36 pm via TweetDeckReplyRetweetFavorite

@ZackLuby

Zack Luby

I follow almost 600 people. How did I notice this in my never-ending stream of Twitter madness? Zack isn’t on my “stalker” list. He isn’t a client or a prospect so his activity isn’t piped into my email or phone automatically. He’s just a casual contact.

But he used the special hashtag for people who are looking to be helped.

The special hashtag people use when they are looking to be helped.

In fact, Zack used the special hashtag twice. It looks like this:

I’ve trained myself, when scanning content streaming by on Twitter, to look for the special hashtag first and then look at the person Tweeting. This way I see more people who are looking to be helped. It’s sort of a mindhack–using your brain to overcome an obstacle.

In this case, I was psyched because I could help. I have ridden the train from Burlington VT to Brattleboro VT several times. I know what’s great and how to make the best use of that ride.

@ZackLuby go to the cafeteria car right away and get a table so you can spread out, drink coffee and watch VT slide by.

03:3:11 8:55 pm via Twitter for iPhoneReplyRetweetFavorite

@gahlord

Gahlord Dewald

Less than a minute and a half and I was able to verifiably help someone.

, @gahlord awesome, thanks for the tips! much obliged.

03:3:11 10:16 pm via TweetDeckReplyRetweetFavorite

@ZackLuby

Zack Luby

But it doesn’t end there. You see, I gave Zack an awesome tip. And Zack is the kind of guy who appreciates an awesome tip. When I got to work the next day, my Twitter feed had this in it:

@gahlord cafe car tip is killer. totally empty. great work space. good stuff.

03:4:11 11:04 am via Twitter for iPadReplyRetweetFavorite

@ZackLuby

Zack Luby

In the realm of helping someone out or just plain making stuff people like, this is the double decker sandwich. The idea was good, the reality was even better. Zack let me and everyone else know.

Listening and being helpful in social media

For a tactic to be useful it has to be repeatable. Maybe I just got lucky there, helping out someone. But I don’t think so.

I take specific steps and actions to listen and be helpful. I’m going to write about how I do this soon.

For now, here’s a list of the things I had to have in place in order to be helpful this one time:

• Follow actual people on Twitter (as opposed to feedbots, robot brands, etc).
• Follow people who appreciate being helped.
• Trained myself to look for the special hashtag that people who want to be helped use.
• Spot someone looking to be helped.
• Have some specific real-world experience that is relevant to how the person wants to be helped.
• Share my helpful experience.

There’s no real secret sauce in this, is there? It’s pretty much stuff I learned in kindergarten and earlier. Granted it’s taken about this long to sink into my skull, but I’m getting it now.

If the six areas I’ve outlined in the list above make sense to you, then you can stop engaging your audience too. You can just listen and be helpful instead.

Redesign and development of a website without the benefit of planning for it, both for time and finances, is challenging for any organization–for-profit or non-profit. I was particularly happy to help out.

We made a new website for Vermont Women’s Business Center over the course of two lunch meetings. Here’s how:

1. At our first lunch, I got a sense of the specific business needs of VWBC: promoting live events and workshops throughout Vermont.
2. At the end of the lunch we each had a task list. I gave VWBC a specific set of instructions for their tech liaison so that I’d have the access to do the things needed to get them rolling with a new website.
3. Before our second lunch, I spent a little bit of time doing basic web configuration stuff and doing a basic WordPress install.
4. Meanwhile, the VWBC did a great job of writing up all the content they needed to have on the site and emailed it to me.
5. At our second lunch we looked over the content and talked about how it should be organized (aka website architecture).
6. I taught the VWBC how to enter their content into WordPress so they can now update their own site without having to pay someone every time they add a new event.

Clients make all the difference when it comes to a successful website

Now, not every organization can put together a website in a handful of hours like this. There were some things that Linda Ingold and her staff did that made this possible:

• Super-organized web content: VWBC took the assignment of writing out the content for their website very seriously. They did a good job of organizing it ahead of our second lunch so we could really hit the ground running.
• Honest assessment of what was most important: VWBC kept the objective of the website as the main focus and didn’t add anything that was extraneous. Even things we might normally think of as “standard” on a website they left off–this results in less work for us all but also a very focused user experience on their website. This is a hard thing to do for many organizations and Linda and her team rocked this.
• Focus on function: When you see the website it probably looks familiar because the core code framework is the same as the Thoughtfaucet site. I know from reviewing my analytics that the “plain Thoughtfaucet site” is valued by many visitors for being clean and easy to navigate. The VWBC felt good about spending our time together focusing on the core business objectives and function of the site for now, knowing they can always change the design later.

These three things take a lot of courage and skill on the part of a client. Successful projects only happen when everyone is focused on the business objectives. Vermont Women’s Business Center was and that made their two-lunch website work out well for everyone.

Vermont Women’s Business Center website.

These animations are part of a long collaboration between Dewald and Wurzburg in exploring the branding of the children’s media brand, Dogsharks. The collaboration has included work in puppet theater, animation, musical composition and improvisation, story and branding. Thoughtfaucet is, understandably, psyched to have participated in working with Wurzburg’s creation.

“Robert’s approach to story and character development is fearless in it’s embrace of the wide array of intelligences available to people of all ages. It’s exactly the sort of stuff I like working on,” Dewald said, of working with the Dogsharks’ creator. “It’s been a real pleasure to take part in bringing these characters to life in visual and musical terms as well as participating in the narrative process.”

Prix Jeunesse International is a festival put on by the Prix Jeunesse Foundation to help promote quality television for the young, worldwide. It wants to bring forward television that enables children to see, hear and express themselves and their culture, and that enhances an awareness and appreciation of other cultures. Prix Jeunesse International occurs every two years in Munich, Germany.

Dogsharks LLC is a children’s media brand based in Tribeca NYC USA.

Thoughtfaucet is a strategic creative services consultancy/maker based in Burlington, VT. Thoughtfaucet’s work involves on harnessing a observations and analysis to enhance creative processes and inform creative execution for a variety of industries including media/authorship, green technology and real estate (and a few spare outliers in other industries–because hey, why turn down an interesting project just because it doesn’t neatly lump in with all the others). Thoughtfaucet likes to simplify all that and just focus on making things people like in collaboration with it’s clients.

“Dogsharks” was written and directed by Robert Wurzburg, Animation by Robert Wurzburg and Gahlord Dewald, Editorial Advisor was Nanette Kuehn. Music: “Tickety Boo” Written by David Martin, Composed by Scott Hartley, Arranged & Performed by Wills Bates. “Whistler” Composed and Performed by Scott Hartley, Gahlord Dewald and Robert Wurzburg. “A Dogsharks Day” Composed and Performed by Gahlord Dewald, Robert Wurzburg and Bob Wolk. “The Dogsharks Macabre: a Saint Saëns Fantasy” arranged by Gahlord Dewald and Performed by Gahlord Dewald, Peter Lewy, Bob Wolk and Robert Wurzburg.

Client Liaison between Thoughtfaucet and Dogsharks was Robert Wurzburg.

Tools: Toon Boom Animate v1, Flash CS3, Logic Express, Good Old iMovie ’08, Adobe CS4, some Macbook Pros, Wacom tablets, paper, scissors, tape and so on. The phone and the internet too.

Further detail after the jump.

The formalities of the Improving Social Media via Web Analytics presentation

To get started the presentation does all of the usual stuff: introduces Gahlord Dewald, gives some space to learn about the audience and then gets into the goals and outline.

1. Intro slide
2. Audience data-gathering slide
3. Aligning business goals and social media plan
4. Presentation outline

Theory useful for measuring social media and making business better

As much as I hate to front-load all this theory stuff, it’s important for us to have a common language if we’re going to really apply this stuff. So here’s where measurement, organization and customer concepts are introduced. Also, thanks to social media, some of these things are a little different online than they have been in the past. That’s discussed as well.

1. Measuring increases innovative thinking
2. ROI (return on investment) and preventing insanity
3. Research to support action
4. A culture of accountability
5. The OODA Loop
6. Reach, Acquisition, Conversion, (Satisfaction)
7. The funnel is a little disrupted by social media
8. Less linear, start anywhere
9. Start where it makes the most sense
10. Review of boring old theory

Putting theory into practice: measuring social media and improving your business

Getting into the meat of it, we go into specific things to consider and measure in social media. There are some new challenges and some new opportunities.

1. Observations about Reach
2. Putting Reach data in context
3. Observations about Acquisition
4. Putting Acquisition data in context
5. Observations about Conversion
6. Putting Conversion data in context
7. Observations on Satisfaction
8. Putting Satisfaction in context

Conclusion: Measuring social media to help align your business goals with the needs of your customers

Hopefully this presentation helps you go out and improve your own social media plan.

• You can develop a clear approach for aligning your social media plan with your business goals.
• Thanks!

Services performed include animation, story consultation, music composition and performance. This work was performed in collaboration with Dogsharks’ creator Robert Wurzburg.

Tools Used: Toon Boom Animate, Logic Express

If you like this be sure to head over to Dogsharks.com for more like it.

Gahlord holds a blue box of Thoughtfaucet r2 Series business cards at the Thoughtfaucet Studio

I love it when I get a new shipment of business cards from Moo.com. It’s like Christmas for me. I like it for a few reasons:

1. It means that I’ve talked about my business with more than 100 people: my business card count is a metric for my off-line promotional activities.
2. I get to see what the new cards look like, since I redo the batch of cards each time.

This is my second order in the past 10 months. My goal for this year is to double my business card delivery rate. It’s a good metric for me because when I talk to people in person, my chances of doing business with them or someone they know skyrockets. And since I’m pretty happy about my cards I love giving them away.

Usually people say things like “Oooh these are cute/cool!” even before they notice that there’s a photograph on the other side. I know these little buggers don’t get thrown away because people who get them often call or email Thoughtfaucet. Someone who got one of the Thoughtfaucet Series r1 cards at Inman Connect New York 2010 said:

I remember you 1) the obvious, from talking to you for a while and 2) from your cool biz card – it works!

The front side of the Thoughtfaucet r2 Series business cards with logo and contact info.

This batch is my first one with my logo on it. And I’m super-psyched at how they turned out. Also, this time I’ve grouped the over 50 different photos on the back into sets (collect all 50!): Champlain Valley Fair, Burlington, Shelburne Farms, Winter, Japanese Festival, Geisha, Architectural Details of Japan and The Random.

If you get one of the cards in Thoughtfaucet Series r2, you might want to know a little more about the picture on it. So here’s a directory of all the cards in the series with a little more info about the photo. Some of these are in my Flickr account with a fairly liberal creative commons license as well.

Champlain Valley Fair

The pictures I took awhile back at the Champlain Valley Fair in Essex Junction Vermont are always fun to put on the back of the cards. Neon lights, horizons, lots of color. Here are the ones in Thoughtfaucet Series r2 Business  Cards:

The Carousel at the Champlain Valley Fair in Essex Junction, VT

A Holga photo of swings at Champlain Valley Fair:

Another horizon shot from the Champlain Valley Fair Ferris Wheel

Champlain Valley Fair horizon from the top of the Ferris Wheel

More swings at the Champlain Valley Fair, Essex Jct VT

Champlain Valley Fair: Ferris Wheel Glamour Shot

People who get on rides like this are crazy.

Really crazy.

Neon and O

Burlington, Vermont

Thoughtfaucet is located in Burlington, Vermont. Here are some pictures to prove it:

Outside the Radio Bean in downtown Burlington VT, you can sometimes see this double-tall bike

Thirty

Cellist is really really tiny in this Holga photo of Burlington's City Hall Park

S.D. Ireland drives these light-covered cement trucks around Burlington on New Years.

Henry's Diner in downtown Burlington

David Symmon takes a short pause from playing accordion on Church Street

Not many picket fences in the Old North End of Burlington. This one is near Pomeroy Park.

Architectural Details of Japan

When my wife and I went to Japan a few years back we got home and realized we’d taken photos of doorknobs, hinges and other architectural details. Almost exclusively. Here’s a set of business cards featuring some of these shots:

Imperial Chrysanthemum at Nijo-Jo

Intricate wood carving at Kurumayose, Nijo-Jo

Kiyomizu-dera Entrance (Holga)

A hinge for a very large door at Nanzenji

Looking down a roof at Nanzenji

Chrysanthemum motif at Nijo-Jo

Outdoor sculpture near a pond at Nanzenji.

Fish are kind of like architectural details.

One of the Rock Gardens at Nanzenji.

No nails.

Inspiration for bath house in Spirited Away?

Temple rising from Kyoto suburb.

Winter

One of the things I love about living and doing web design/strategy/etc in Vermont is winter. I can do some work, talk on the phone with clients and then go outside and enjoy the cold air. Tip for those of you who are anti-winter: if you’re cold, just pick up the pace. Here are some photos from various cross-country skiing opps that are between 20 minutes and an hour from the Thoughtfaucet studio:

The Wintervale, nordic skiing within 10 minutes of downtown Burlington, VT

Clearing at Trapp Family Lodge, near Stowe VT

Another one from the (W)intervale, near Ethan Allen Homestead

Geisha

Ok ok, when we went to Japan we took a few pictures that weren’t architectural details. On a walk through Gion district in Kyoto, I was able to make these pictures featuring Geisha:

Geisha on the phone letting a Teahouse know her cab has arrived.

The Geisha who was on the phone was alerting the Geisha in this card that there was a large crowd she would have to navigate through.

Fukue, standing outside Kawayoshi for a portrait

The Teahouse Bank in Gion

Shelburne Farms, Shelburne VT

Just south of Burlington, in Shelburne, is Shelburne Farms. I’ve been lucky enough to have a lot of friends involved in local food production, many of whom have worked at Shelburne Farms. As a result, I spend as much time there as possible. The food at the restaurant is awesome, the landscape is perfect for walking and I always find something fun to take a photo of. I’m usually armed with my Holga plastic camera which results in fun moody pictures.

Crumbling railing holding back Lake Champlain at Shelburne Farms

Cheese making barn at Shelburne Farms

Autumn Flower Bed (Holga) at Shelburne Farms near the main house.

Sheep are a big deal in VT. This one is guarded by a llama.

Sculpture of boy hugging a fish. I don't get it either.

Gion Matsuri

More Japan. A couple shots from the Gion Matsuri, an awesome neighborhood-centric festival that happens each summer in Kyoto.

A large hand-pulled car weighing over a ton. No differential. These guys are going to make it turn the hard way.

Crowd control at Gion Matsuri, Kyoto

The Random

Some of the photos on the Thoughtfaucet business cards didn’t fit into a neat category. They are the randoms. Think of them like the Jokers in the deck.

Lake Champlain taken from the New North End of Burlington, VT

Another picture of Lake Champlain from the New North End.

Here's my friend JT. He didn't mean to take this self portrait. But he did. Now it's on my business card.

In Vermont, Fiddleheads are picked in the spring and eaten

We were in the taxi in Ichinomiya. It was raining outside.

New York City

Kyoto, Japan

Thoughtfaucet Business Card Series r2

There you have it. The guided tour of my new business cards. Hope you enjoyed it. Hope you like the one you get when we meet.

One of my clients makes awesome wool hats here in Vermont. These hats are made-to-order and very customizable. There are over 650,000 variations possible, not including adding different team names, for just one style of hat. I’m not joking. Very customizable.

The problem with this level of customization, of course, is managing all the different options to get the order submitted correctly. My client was on his way to a trade show and at a trade show, being able to process these kinds of orders quickly and accurately has a big impact on the old bottom line.

So Thoughtfaucet made a Flash widget that allowed visitors to the client’s booth to quickly select their options and print out an order form on-site, including a representation of what the hat will look like. How did it work out?

The widget was enormously successful at the show. We made over 300 art samples in 2 days.

Because Thoughtfaucet focuses on data-driven and forward thinking coding practices we’re looking forward to spreading the custom team hat widget through a variety of media including the client’s ecommerce website.

A take-away here is to look at developing web assets that have value beyond the web itself. Here was something that could have just sat on a website somewhere, but it was a real star performer when put into a live-people environment.

Thoughtfaucet did the editing on this winter Dogsharks cartoon. Animation by Robert Wurzburg and Christine Mariani. Music arranged and performed by Jeff Nelson on the trombone.

If you like this cartoon, watch the others over at Dogsharks.com.

Awhile back, a phone conversation with someone inspired me to write my SEO Nineball blog post. Well the caller didn’t take any of my search engine optimization advice. Instead, he bought three hours of my time to do what I thought was best within that budget. Here’s what happened.

Within a couple of days of completing my work my client had gone from page 200 or greater on Google to the first slot. Within a week, Google was adding a secondary internal page for the site. Now, about two months later, Google is also showing image results. Of those image results, two of them are on the site where I performed the search engine optimization (including the large, readable product shot at the end of the row).

Quick SEO Results

An SEO client of Thoughtfaucet gets to #1 on Google (and #2 and images and...).

It’s unusual to see these results so quickly. There were some obvious things helping out, most notably that we were pursuing a very niche term with relatively low competition.

However, the strategic value of having quick results was exceptionally high: the client was going to begin making public appearances within a week of Thoughtfaucet completing the SEO work–the value of those public appearances would be diminished if his audience members had trouble locating his site afterwards.

Though the competition for the target search term was light, the top slot had more than five years of age. Runners-up included established trustworthy book sellers. So there may not have been a lot of competition, but it’s always the strength of the top ten that counts.

What was done with three hours of SEO time?

I devoted the entirety of the three hours available to me doing on-site search engine optimization techniques. The client indicated that he wouldn’t be able to spend the time required using social media and SEO nineball techniques so I left those for another day. The appearance of image-results and secondary pages on the search engine results page confirm that my choice to focus on on-page SEO techniques was a good one.

Search engine optimization takeaway

The success of this campaign should serve as a reminder to keep a tight handle on the underlying code. Having a website that looks great is certainly important. But if you want anyone to see how nice your site looks, they have to find it. Google is one of the ways people find websites.

Happy SEO client

Here’s what the client had to say about working with Thoughtfaucet:

Gahlord Dewald is a consummate professional. I didn’t know what SEO even was, but I knew that my website was hard to find. In clear and convincing language, he quickly explained the problem, remedied it, and suggested imaginative ways to maintain a strong profile on the web. I strongly recommend him to anyone for whom the intricacies of web marketing are terra incognita.

Thoughtfaucet was happy to work on this project, thanks Thad!