The Science of Communicating & Marketing Your Business

You know, I don't procrastinate. I think about things before I respond to them. People are always saying that Susan (wife, partner, beloved, ...) and I make snap judgements. This amuses us. I can't think of something we decided upon that didn't take at least a month's worth of research. Most things we do are things we've discussed internally for years. Not all things, of course. When I want an ice cream I go get some ice cream.

But should it be blueberry or pistachio...hmm...let me think about that.

The questions KMM invited us to answer are:

1. Do observers of these holidays get time off?
2. How do to religious and cultural holidays affect business productivity?
3. How do you tailor your business to appeal to people of all faiths and ethnicities?
4. How can retailers plan for cultural and religious holidays?
5. - If you are a business person, how do your religious beliefs affect whether or not you will take the time off?
6. How should HR departments deal with the possibility that their employees might want to take the time off?
7. What implications does these holidays have for workplace diversity and respecting the religious beliefs of employees of various faiths?

1. Do observers of these holidays get time off?
   I can't speak for other companies. NextStage gives all employees five weeks paid time off. We don't care if you use it for sick leave, personal time, vacation time, on a raft, on a mountain or in the clouds. Employees can take the time off in one whack or break it up as they wish. We ask you give us fair warning in all cases and know that emergencies are emergencies. When emergencies occur the NextStage family tends to pull together to help out both personally and business-wise. After all, you've invested part of yourself in NextStage, it's only right that NextStage should invest part of itself in you, yes?

    

2. How do to religious and cultural holidays affect business productivity?
   They don't. See answer #1.

    

3. How do you tailor your business to appeal to people of all faiths and ethnicities?
   Our Language Engine Technology pretty much handles that for us. It recognizes cultural, ethnic, etc., biases and adjusts presentation formats accordingly.

    

4. How can retailers plan for cultural and religious holidays?
   They can look at a calendar. Many different faiths have their holidays listed there. There are also online resources. Depending on the relationship you have with your staff, you can always ask them for help planning appropriately.

    

5. If you are a business person, how do your religious beliefs affect whether or not you will take the time off?
   This question makes me wonder if the inference is that it's impossible to practice your beliefs in a work environment. The sacred you carry within you at all times, whether you recognize it or not, and you honor what is within you whether you recognize it or not Compartmentalizing one's life so that belief is only demonstrated in a specific place at a specific time is an indication that different beliefs guide one's life depending on place and time, and that your religious choices are not the sacred you carry within you.

   I also recognize that NextStage is unique because we exist by understanding how people manifest different points of view and belief.

    

6. How should HR departments deal with the possibility that their employees might want to take the time off?
   Give it to them. Perhaps there will be some who abuse the priviledge. HR should have recognized them prior to hiring them, don't you think? I mean, isn't that HR's job, to recognize who will cause trouble and who won't?

    

7. What implications does these holidays have for workplace diversity and respecting the religious beliefs of employees of various faiths?
   Again, a question that confuses me. Aren't all people, regardless of gender, race, creed, ethnicity, cultural origin, native language, ..., worthy of respect? Or shall we offer exemptions to some faiths and not others?

   Diversity. Harmony only occurs when people sing different notes.

   And I'm still waiting for someone to wish me a Happy, if belated, Mabon. Maybe they'll wish me a Happy Sabhien.

The goal of SEO Pinpoint is based on three elements;

1. - Capture all methods visitors use to get to your site. When we say "all methods" we mean all methods. SEO Pinpoint doesn't care if they get to your site via a search engine, a link (paid or not, text or image or something else), typing in your URL, etc.. If visitors got to your site, SEO Pinpoint will work to figure out what led them there.
2. - Determine how much active interestvisitors are demonstrating when they're navigating your site. Active interest is a measure of an individual's immediate and actionable desire to achieve a present or future goal. The desire to achieve a present or future goal is a measure of their motivation to achieve that goal.
3. - Analyze visitors' active interest against the methods visitors use to get to your site.

SEO Pinpoint captures the methods described in 1 above in a variety of ways. While not common knowledge, not all links and pointers to a site are the same. Accessing a site over the web transmits a great deal of information regarding how the visitor became aware of the site. This information is carried in values such as q, ask, origq, keywords, search, QRY, REF, URL, PREV and some 60 others of various complexity. In addition to these values, SEO Pinpoint utilizes some 120 other methods of isolating how visitors come to your site.

It is believed that better business decisions result from better information. SEO Pinpoint's job is to provide that better information, not to make business decisions. Knowing that highly motivated visitors are coming to a site via non-obvious methods translates into knowing how to get motivated visitors to a site via obvious methods. Like all such knowledge, it is up to the decision makers to decide whether to act upon the information or not.

Only one of these holidays, Yom Kippur, involves fasting. Jews are allowed to eat on the other holidays and, as with holidays anywhere, there are special meals prepared for each of the holidays and the individual days in the multi-day holidays. Even non-pious Jews will "keep Kosher" on these holidays if not others.

That noted, there would be an interest on the part of many Jewish people to learn more about the companies supplying them with their Kosher products.

Now drop back to the (company name) SEO Pinpoint Report for the time covering the start of data gathering to 26 Oct 05. That SEO Pinpoint Report noted that visitors recording the highest level of interest were using the term "(the client's name)" ("(a variation of the client's name)") and that the search engine providing the most motivated visitors was search.msn.com. These two are linked in their results because the "(a variation of the client's name)" entries which lead to (company name) are found on search.msn.com.

NextStage's SEO Pinpoint technology was picking up search requests such as "q=(a variation of the client's name)" and similar variations (some proprietary to NextStage's Evolution Technology) from search.msn.com and other search engines. Some of these search requests included requests for information on "(the client's company's name)". These requests show up on Goliath, Manta, Looksmart (with a direct "(the client's name)"-"(company name)" link requiring no auxiliary navigation through the referring site), and others. Note also that (the client's company's name) does have their own website, http://... . Further, the name "(the client's name)" is associated with several Jewish festival and celebratory organizations in the NYC area via links on several search engines. Some of these "(the client's name)"-"Jewish xxx" and "(the client's name)"-"kosher" links include pointers to (company name).

In short, visitors came to (company name) with a high interest in learning more about their kosher food supplier and or (the client's name) association with Judiaca, not necessarily (company name) itself, although the happy coincidence is that visitors who wanted to learn more about their kosher food supplier and or (the client's name) tended to want to learn more about (company name) as well (perhaps thinking (company name) had something to do with Kosher foods or their preparation), hence these visitors' level of interest in (the client's name), Judiaca, (the client's company's name) and kosher foods was transferred to (company name).

While this was an interesting bit of research, (company name)'s own server logs would have recorded the referring link information (although not level of interest). These server logs are readily available through your ISP and can be analyzed by any number of free web analytics packages. A competent webmaster would have been able to recognize the link between "(a variation of the client's name)" and the referring source quite easily, although the seasonal meaning of the connection might have been lost.

Please contact NextStage for information regarding presentations and trainings on this and other topics.

Upcoming Trainings:

• Audience Focused Optimization

• DC Emetrics Summit on 14-17 Oct '07
• Society for New Communications Research Annual Research Symposium & Awards Gala on 5-6 Dec 07 in Boston.