SimondsCloud

A recent assignment for my Internet Marketing course separated us into groups and tasked with interviewing a social media expert.  Being a member of EverythingWM, EverythingPre, and EverythingAndroid, the first person that I thought would be perfect was Christpher Meinck, the founder and administrator of these sites.  Gaining a large following from his iPhone community, EverythingiCafe, Meinck has spread into several sites devoted to the major mobile operating systems.  Complete with social networking and regularly updated blogs, it is quite an amazing task for one man to accomplish.  Hear the interview or read the transcript after the jump.

Transcript

Asher: Alright well you know me I’m Asher. Does everyone want to say their names.

Courtney: I’m Courtney.

Cody: I’m Cody.

Chelsea: I’m Chelsea.

David: Hi I’m David.

Chris: Got it. I’m Christopher.

Asher: Alright. Well as I said before, we’re a group in our internet marketing class and we’re doing a small assignment about interviewing a social media expert and you were the first person that came to my mind and so here we are.

Chris: Great, begin.

Asher: Okay, why don’t we just jump right in. Our first question is, just to explain what your job entails.

Chris: Okay, well just a little background. I run a network of sites that focus on smartphones. So it’s a niche audience, very specific to each particular phone. It pretty much covers the top five platforms: Blackberry, iPhone, Web OS devices, Windows Mobile, and Android phones. And what my job entails is everything from running the site, promoting the sites, to editorial and as a small business owner I also do all the accounting and pretty much everything from soup to nuts is pretty much what I’m responsible for. But I would say the bulk of it would be promoting the site, getting the site out there, getting a lot of the content on the site. That’s pretty much it, that’s the bulk of it.

Asher: Do you come from an accounting background?

Chris: No that’s just one of the unfortunate things of owning your own business. It’s one of the things you have to do. Get involved in Quickbooks, do your financials. Like I said it’s one of the unfortunate parts of what I do. It’s a small part but like I said it’s not what I like most about what I do.

Courtney: Okay, another question we had and were wondering about was how you make your website known and what you use.

Chris: There’s a number of reasons I guess it depends on the different site. For instance lets take everything iCafe for example. That’s probably my largest site and that’s an iphone specific site. One of the reasons that site is so popular is that it was started as an iPhone community but it started seven months before the iPhone was actually announced or released. So really what happened was, a lot of people what they do is, specific to phones, they will search Google for iPhone forums or iPhone help. There’s a number of different keywords that you really need to make sure you have if your going to run a community. So specific to the iPhone, having an iPhone forum live and running seven months prior to the actual launch of the iPhone was kind of like, lets say, it just worked out really well. Because what happened after that initially after that product was announced the first thing people started looking for was iPhone forums. They would type that into Google. Having that leg up on the competition was really really important. In terms of the other sites, sites that I’ve stated since that site, it’s really difficult because its more competitive because those keywords that I’ve mentioned like “iPhone forums” – if you started an iPhone website today it would be very difficult to get that keyword and be number one on Google or number two even.  Last check, I’m not sure where I am – I think I was one or three or two. Somewhere in there but I’m right in there with apple.com. So if people are looking for help with their iPhone, chances are if they search in Google their going to find this site.

Asher: Right, so you said you launched the icafe site seven months prior, were you one of the first ones to grab the keywords for the Google search or whatever.

Chris: Yea I just, you know I launched with the hope that they were going to announce an iPhone. So I created a site seven months prior, created forums. All of my sites are very specific.  They are geared towards certain keywords.  I run communities, so people looking for forums; Blackberry forums, iPhone forums, Palm forums, Concrete forums.  Those are the things that if you search google for those, it is my goal as an internet marketer to make sure that we come up within the first page of Google.  Sometimes first- sometimes fifth, but somewhere in that first page because that’s going to be a big traffic driver.

Asher: Right.

Chris: Not to say that it always works out that way.  Not all of my sites have worked out that way, and there have been some sites, like I said, the later you get into the game, sometimes there’s already a site that has… and they’re very entrenched in that specific listing. So as the first 5 have been there for a while, and they’re older sites, and they’re entrenched, and Google says ok here’s your first look at the top 5.  It’s hard to start a site today, and say “ok I’m going to make it to the top, and I’m going to crack this.” In this business, a lot of the time it’s good to be first… than always be good.

Asher: Right. You want to be the first drop in the sea.

Chris: Yea, I mean if you’re the first person who wants to start a site specific to a specific site, and that’s a really good keyword. Chances are that you’re going to have a lot of success. I mean, not to say that there’s not a lot of things that happen to pages of the site. Because I think that there’s a lot of work that I do on the pages of the site that actually helps when Google comes around, visits the site, finds the various things that are going to help out, and help with your rankings.

Asher: Great.

Cody: Alright. So kind of to go along with that, I guess. So, do you really make use of your web analytics? And if so, what would you say your traffic profile is?

Chris: Um, I do. Not as much as I should, if that makes sense. I look at, probably, traffic at least once a week. I specifically use Google Analytics. I just find that for me, it keeps all the sites in 1 spot. It’s very easy for me to gauge what’s happening. I pretty much, I look at the bumps.  I look to see if there’s specific bumps somewhere. If there’s a specific page that’s getting a lot of traction. Recently, on certain sites I’m looking to find out well what portions of the site are heavily trafficked, and what portions are not so heavily trafficked. And then I’m actually making changes to the site based upon Google Analytics. There’s certain areas sometimes when you build a website you get caught up with “well, I’m going to offer this feature or I’m going to offer this feature.” And at the end of the day you look back and you say, well you look at the numbers, and the numbers don’t bear out that consumers are actually responding to these features.

Asher: Yea. You drowned them in features, and then they only use a quarter of them.

Chris: Right. So, I guess over the years, maybe it took me a couple years to finally realize that I’d rather be good at 1 or 2 things, than have 5 or 6 things on my site and have people… Because that, unfortunately what happens then is that people get lost on your site.

Asher: Right.

Chris: You know, am I supposed to be here, or am I supposed to be here. So, that’s definitely one of the things I’ve learned over the past few years, and from looking at analytics. Sometimes you look at things in a different way and they just pop out, and you say, “I didn’t realize this.”

Asher: Great.

Chris: So, to answer your question. Yes, I definitely use it, and it works great. I don’t always use Google Analytics though. I also use desktop software on my Mac which actually I have a list of keywords that I track…

Asher: Mhm.

Chris: …across Yahoo, Bing, and Google. And I have keywords for each specific site. So let’s say you take your top 10 to 15 keywords, and I measure those sites, and I see where those sites… how those specific keywords are responding to my sites. So that’s where I really want to check, because those are the things, like I mentioned before, you know, if I have iPhone forums and I’m number 1, that’s great. If I’m 3, that’s fine. But if all of a sudden I notice that I dropped to 6 or 7, I need to find out why that is, and possibly make changes.

David: Chris, could you tell us a little bit about who you consider to be your competitors, and do you keep your eye on them as far as what they’re doing?

Chris: Uh, yeah, I keep my eye on competitors… not so much. There are a lot of communities that crop up. Especially when there is a new device, it seems like there are 10 to 15 communities. I don’t know – I try to do my own thing and do a good job at it. But every once and awhile I’ll see what the competition is doing and see if they’re doing something, you know, might be borrowed or something that might be used on my own site – without – you know – I don’t want to infringe on anybody else’s ideas, but every now and then there’s a good idea that I will borrow. For instance, there has been a recent trend to do live blogging when an event happens and you’re not going to be at the event – so we definitely – we borrowed that idea from someone and we , you know – duly noted the first time we did it that “hey, came up with this idea because this site did it, and it’s a great idea, and we’re going to continue doing it.”

Asher: Yes, I’ve noticed that Gizmodo and Gadget have been doing that. It’s pretty entertaining to watch the photos pop up.

Chris: Well, luckily for them, they get a lot of invites to these events. That’s also a big part of it is being able to get an invite to some of the events. I’ve actually done the live blogs on location which are a lot of fun – a lot of stress, but a lot of fun.

Chelsea: Could you tell us about how many hours a day you administer your sites and network?

Chris: Uh, let’s see… I wake up, I’m on the computer by about eight o’clock, and I leave the computer probably about eight o’clock, and I check in at ten o’clock.

Asher: So it’s a full day.

Chris: It’s a full day. I’m always on, and once I leave my desk I usually have a phone in front of me or a laptop so, you know, just in case something happens. But, yeah there is a lot of administration.

Asher: Is that mostly troubleshooting the network, or is it more about promoting your site and managing the forums?

Chris: Managing the forums and promoting the site. Whether or not there is a news story that breaks. Sometimes those things can come at the most inconvenient times. You know – you’re just finally relaxing – with my wife, and I’m watching television, and a story breaks, and you’ve got to put it on pause, and you’ve got to go write it, and you’ve got to go – basically how I use the social media these days – obviously Twitter and Facebook are very big – they’re very viral – so I view them as an extension of promotion outside of RSS feeds. And they work great, because they get people who might not necessarily visit the site every day, or they don’t subscribe to the feeds – they’re definitely going to log into the Twitter account – they’re going to log into Facebook – so it just gives them another outlet to kind of check in and see what’s happening with the site, and it gives me another outlet to kind of promote what’s happening in terms of news content.

Asher: Great, well, we just have one final question for you. What do you think of the iPad, and its name?

Chris: Uh, I think the name is stupid. I was not a fan of it when it was first announced, because I wanted – I guess that’s probably me – I wanted something that was more of a computer, more that ran OS 10, and looks a little bit more robust… but now I’m kind of seeing it. So – I don’t know – I’m waffling.

Asher: We’ll see. Well, that’s pretty much it.

Chris: Excellent. Thanks very much. If you have any follow-up questions, just feel free to shoot me an email, and I’ll be happy to help out.

Asher: Alright, will do. Thanks a lot Chris.

Everyone: Thank you. Take care.