StevenGroves.com

Fun Stuff

Breakfast at My Place…

I’m a bit of a foodie and treat it like I do a lot of stuff – I kind of ‘geek’ on it. My fav chef is Alton Brown, primarily because he explains the science behind the process and for me, it helps me understand the process well enough so that I can apply the same tactic to other ingredients. It makes cooking fun for me.

This is my first post on the new StevenGroves.com (welcome BTW and thanks for visiting) so like everyday at my place, I’m going to start it with breakfast.

Here’s where we begin - two eggs, two uncooked, unseasoned, skinless pork sausages and a bread.

The sausages are the real highlight of the meal for me and here’s why – I spice them by hand.

For this, I start with a sausage that sometimes is a little hard to find unless you shop at a Kroger-branded store. The brand of sausage is ‘Farmland’; in the freezer section, look for unseasoned, skinless and no MSG. The fact they are unseasoned is a huge benefit because I get to make them taste like what I want – which in this case is red pepper flakes, coarse rubbed sage and white pepper.

I start by warming a small cast iron skillet. After placing the sausages in the center, I sprinkle with sage, white pepper and then the red pepper flakes and then roll the sausages a bit in the mixture in the pan, coating the bottom and sides. Then relax and let the heat do it’s thing.

I cook them at a medium temperature so it take a while for the outside to crisp just a bit. After the second or third turn, I warm the egg pan and make sure the bagel is split and ready to go.

Once the eggs are in the pan, I make the final turn to brown the outside and push the button on the toaster oven for the bagel. I just a few more minutes I’m at the table with a delicious breakfast meal. After that, I think I’m ready for anything the day has to offer!

Sage, white pepper and red pepper flakes are my favorite, but how would you season the sausages? Share your favorite flavors in the comments below!

Socially Yours,
Steven Groves

marketing

Scariest Blog Post You’ll Ever Read (as a Marketer)

The ghost of John Wanamaker, shimmers into view before you and says “in my day I knew half my marketing investment was wasted but did not know which half – today you have a hundred more options in which to invest… and now 90% of your marketing investment is wasted.”

The image shimmers out of focus and disappears – an image of your accountant materializes and tells you that you’re a business burning through a million a month and when you get visitor to your site, there is nothing more than a form to fill-out for a call back. The phone number on the ‘Contact Us’ page leads to a ‘Dell Hell’ kind of experience and no human being can be reached from outside. Zombies? Yeah – they get through, but only because they’re brain-eating, persistent monsters randomly pushing buttons on their Zombie-phones.

The final chapter in this scary tale is that you have no idea whether that $1.12 pay per click campaign has driven ANY traffic to cover your costs or whether the visitor has even been to your site before. Scary huh?

It’s a horror story being repeated a million times in a million companies all around the world. In spite of all the automated counters, data collectors and postings in the social web, businesses leap to use the technology that has been promised to get hundreds of customers to walk through your door. Most businesses have no idea how or if the investments in marketing you’re made are panning out.

The hero in this horror story is that it’s not an unsolvable equation and making better decisions about where and when to invest is possible – more so than has ever been possible.

How to Escape the Nightmare

Start with the small things – listen first… listen like the mummy is somewhere around you – quietly and intently. Find out where your customers are congregating like a crowd of brain-eating zombies.

Next, understand what your audience is saying and what they’re talking about. Knowing that Dr. Jeckle is also Mr. Hyde will help you craft and time the message so that Mr. Hyde is prompted to connect with your Facebook page, leaving Dr. Jeckle out of the community of followers and friends.

Now reach out to connect. The tentacles of human-hunting aliens should have nothing on you. Once you know what’s being said , who is saying it and to whom they are saying it means that you can regularly and easily participate in the discussions going on and not been seen or treated as the Monster from the Black Lagoon.

Now take a step back every time you post new content and see if you’ve put out what speaks meaningfully to your audience. Include a call to action, a link and most of all, make sure you’re participation is relevant to the audience. For the hard cost that goes into an installation of Google Analytics, you can see the correlation between postings and visits. If you have a product that can be purchased online, even by using a Gift card or eGift card, you can then start tracking how visitors arrived at you site, where they came from and what they did after they left your site.

Is this all you need to do? Maybe… but I’d bet that this implementation would only be the start of the journey to improving the payoff of your online and social marketing investment.

Beginning with these steps will help keep you off the Elm Street of marketing when Freddy is prowling for a new victim. As you participate in the discussions and communities relevant to you your product and company you’ll uncover what content drives participation and engagement – the first step in stopping what doesn’t work and what does. Following these simple steps will keep next year’s Halloween Haunters away from the doorstep, out of the cellar and vanquished from the creaky attic.