Casa Victoria

Casa Victoria is a funky furniture shop in the hip Silver Lake neighborhood of Los Angeles. With inventory ranging from 1930’s art deco pieces through to matching President Lincoln book ends – they have a lot of stuff to show off and were looking for an easy way to do it that didn’t involve trekking to a “web guy” every week.

The approach here was to make the site as image heavy as possible without slowing it down. Use of CSS image sprites add interest while keeping page loads light and a cunning twist on category management allows the owners to easily arrange their inventory while maximizing visibility.

To keep server space down, product images are stored on Flickr and to ensure maximum visibility have a creative commons license – increasing the possibility that Casa Victoria inventory will be seen on other sites. To add a new item the owners simple create a new blog post – paste in the id of the product image on Flickr and the Flickr product set into the shortcode and bam – a new product is listed within the right category – couldn’t be easier.

Add to that a simple styling job on the Casa Victoria Twitter and Facebook pages – hook everything together and you have a super easy to use and incredibly effective approach to promoting a local business.

• PLATFORM - Wordpress
• Theme - Thesis 1.6
• Key Plugins: Flickr Gallery (Easy images + added SEO)
• Price point of Site: $550

Your Music = Unique / Your Website = Derivative

Ask any band what they sound like and you can guarantee that they’ll tell you they’re unique. Sure they might give you qualifying reference points: Led Zeppelin meets the Eagles – Karen Carpenter on top of Diane Birch (Hmmmm!) but at the end of the day – when you listen to the band – there is no other soul on the planet that sounds like them.

So why would you want your band website to look like someone elses? I mean – you don’t dress like other bands do you?

There are loads of options for bands that are looking for a new site – companies are popping up every week with a new variation on the band theme template. However, when you look at the marketing that surrounds these solutions the one message that comes across very clearly is this:

“Spend your time writing and playing music and only spend a few minutes setting up your website – it’s Easy!”

Stop and think about that for a moment. Your website is your home – it is the place that the VAST majority of your fans will interact with you. Your website is international, no matter how many Volcanoes are hitting Europe. Do you really want the thing that differentiates you from the next band to be a different color background?

Here’s our view – your website is critical to your success and if you aren’t spending time learning how to use it and develop it then you may as well play your gigs onstage behind a black curtain. For every second that you spend on working out your stage plot, the set list – what the drummer’s going to wear…you need to double that on how you present on your website. We’re not saying that an awesome looking site is going to make up for lousy music – but a cool engaging site that screams who you are and makes it easy for a fan to interact with you and your music sure is going to help.

Now if you have the money – then you can skip that stage and hire us to come in and build a Kick Ass site for you – but we reckon that most bands starting out don’t have $550 lying around to blow on a website. But we reckon you do have time - learning tech is no different than learning an instrument – it all comes down to how many hours you put into it.

Kilted Chaos is working with DTF Works to build an affordable solution to this and yes – it involves you learning how to make shit work - more very soon.

Image Credit: Day 157 - Pasukaru76 on Flickr

Who Cares?

You’re no different really – when it comes down to it – than anyone else. Even that one thing you do – the one that is guaranteed to appeal to the masses – it only hits if you’re lucky. Face it – without the story – without the visuals – without the hoopla, the gaga –why should I care about you?

Adding Your Business To Yelp Is Easy

What kind of a business turns down ½ a billion dollars?

For local business owners who think that social networking is a fad and that sites like Facebook and Yelp are childish nonsense that have nothing to do with their business, this is your wake up call. Last week Facebook beat Google as the number 1 most visited website and back in December Yelp turned down a Google buyout of $500 million (and apparently later rejected another offer of $750M from a different party.)

The success of these sites is the clearest indicator yet that if you are not actively working the online space – you losing out. Yes we know there are only so many hours in the day and yes we know some of you can barely type, but to be in business in 2010 means you need these skills.

A while back we did a simple walk through on how to add your business to Google Local Business and we thought it might be fun to do the same for Yelp. Of course you can have us do this for you, we’ll work with you to get the right language, imagery, etc, etc – but if you’ve got the time – it’s pretty easy – here you go:

So first off - get yourself to the Yelp Business Home Page - you'll find it right here - https://biz.yelp.com/ - and it looks like this. Watch the video if you have time or go ahead and click "Get A Business owner Account"

Here's where you type in the name of your business and the city - if you're well established it is likely that someone has already entered your business into Yelp - at that point you can "Claim" your business - but that's a tutorial for another time (it's pretty much the same as this though!) Anyway - go ahead and see if you're already in there

If Yelp can't find you they'll suggest a few options - I kinda like the idea of tilted chaos - still - if nothing recognizeable appears - then click on the "Having trouble finding your business?" link

..and you'll arrive on this nice entry form - enter your details using your business email address

And voila - you arrive here and your Business page is almost ready to be published, but Yelp needs to confirm your email addresss but this part of the process is pretty quick so by the time you go to your inbox you ashould already have...

This email - click the link and you arrive back at Yelp and your page has been created. But what next?

If you read the above email again you'll see that the Yelp customer support team has to review your submission before you can claim your page and start editing it. So - you have to wait.

If you're lucky the following email will arrive within 30 minutes - but it can take longer - the last two we set up took 5 minutes.

So - having clicked on the link - you arrive here. In order to edit your Yelp Business page - you need a Yelp Business Account (it's free) and takes less than a minute to set up.

It's quite simple - you fill in the following form using your business email address and once again Yelp will send you a confirmation email which will take you to..

Ta Da! - You've created the page and now you have access to it. So it's time to get busy adding your information

---

Next comes a series of 6 screens where you get to enter information about your business, your logo, descriptions of what you do and how you do it as well as some info about you - the person behind the business. Seeing as business is all about time it seems fitting that the first screen is about your opening hours....

Right - we'd love it so that business hours are only 9 to 5 - hell - if you can get away with it - good luck to you. The strange thing about this page is that even though you will enter them here - for some reason the system doesn't take it and you will need to enter them again at the end of the process - so - don't worry too much about getting them in here - move on...

This is our favorite part of the whole Yelp business page - you can put an offer right in front of your reviewers - how cool is that. If you can - make it special to just your Yelp customers - i.e. - if you're reading this on Yelp and you come in and say the magic codeword (which today is Bananas) you'll get 20% of your check - try it out - you'd be amazed at the loyalty this kind of tool creates.

This is your elevator speech - you know - the one where you have a couple of sentences to say really succintly what it is you do and how you do it. Don't be over the top - you are writing for one person only - the person reading this page - you may be the best but really - there's so much over exaggerated crap that nobody is believable anymore - write the basics and let your customers and reviewers say that you're the best - capiche?

You need a Square image - any size will do - but it has to be square. Load up as many as you like - maybe a few shots of happy smiley customers or you handing a big check to charity - that kind of thing.

Does the President use your services? This is where you choose to share that (or not!) make it relevant and avoid the hyperbole - write as if you were speaking to someone face to face - and for god's sake be honest!

Here's where you get to upload your smiling face - and yes - we strongly recommend that you have a picture of yourself. Icons and branding are great for business identity but this bit is about you and you have to appear human (even if you're really an evil cyborg.) Whatever your personality is - make sure it comes across in the text - if you're not a big talker - leave it very business focused - what skills have you learned along the way that will influence a reader to use your services - if you're a crazy gregarious person - let it rip - share as much of yourself as you are comfortable with.

You will finally arrive on the following page. Annoyingly enough it isn't quite 100% complete - for some reason you have to go back and add your hours again. Not quite sure why it doesn't take it earlier - but there you go!

So - having added your hours - you can finally go and check out your new Yelp Business owner's Page:

Awesome!

Not exactly rocket science but it helps if you have all your information ready and in one place. And of course, if you're thinking strategically - you will be using the same information and visual branding across all of your social media sites.

having set up your Yelp page you now need to make an active effort to check it regularly and to respond to customers - again - more on that another time.

Kilted Chaos - Colorado

Kilted Chaos - Los Angeles

There Are No Short Cuts

Oh I’m sorry – you mean you joined a band ‘cos it looked cool: sex, drugs & rock and roll – win the label lottery and get a lifestyle in your twenties that other people never see in a lifetime.  Well go borrow a time machine and go back to the 70’s and 80’s because you’re fucked.

If you hadn’t noticed there are big changes happening in the world – the tsunami of optimism that Obama rode into the white house turned out to be a mild swell crashing into the entrenched self interests of the establishment.  Things haven’t gotten better – there are no new jobs, labels aren’t making money – A&R people don’t have coke budgets – aside from the Cola type and even the chicks are better educated and have greater self-esteem than you do.

Unless you happen to be “receiving” from a label exec that still has money – that dream is dead and gone – buried under two decades of excess and the same lack of foresight and responsibility that means that no-one I know has healthcare.

Excuse me – what’s that?  Oh – you’re a musician – what – you’ve studied your instrument – you’ve been writing poetry and song lyrics since you were 4.  You were borrowing dad’s old video camera and have been the family’s home movie maker since you first learned how to edit an audio track.  You and your mates practice 4 times a week and you already have 50 friends who will swear that you really do ROCK!

Then step right up – you couldn’t have been born at a better time.  Everything you need to create a life sustained by music is now in your grasp.  I’m sorry – but we don’t have the shotgun approach that will accelerate your career forward 20 years and have you playing to stadiums by the time you’re 25 – but – if you’re prepared to work at it – play and practice, tour constantly and love the hell out of what you do – then maybe, just maybe you’ll stand on stage and play for 500,000 people.  Wouldn’t that be absolutely fucking amazing! ;-)

Marketing New Music Artists

A couple of stories have popped up this week that has me reaching for my keyboard – the one with letters not notes.   Alex commented about Suzanne Vega’s move to Direct to Fan Marketing and DMN noted that Sade just moved half a million units, going gold in her first week.

Now I love both of these artists – The Queen & The Soldier & Your Love Is King are up there on my top 50 songs of all time (well – for this week anyway) – but there is a HUGE difference between these two legends and a new artist – say like Jody Schneider – who is just starting out.

Suzanne Vega and Sade had years of label development, marketing and promotion in order to establish a fan base.  Their music was introduced to the world decades ago in a record industry that looks nothing like the current music business.  The scarcity model makes huge sense if you’re Prince or Bowie or the above two artists, but at the beginning of your career the only person who notices that you’re not producing is your Mom.

As the music business becomes more and more tech dependant with artists getting involved in website design, digital audio, tweets and blog posts - let’s not forget the lessons of the last 10 years of online business.  Just because the big guys are set up in a certain way doesn’t mean you have to emulate them, in fact oftentimes adopting the same strategy can be detrimental. 

The beauty of the web and of being your own boss is that you can change your approach fairly quickly, you can use different strategies to reflect where you are in your career,  change the layout of your website, try different approaches to marketing and distribution.  Unlike traditional bricks and mortar businesses you don’t need a mason every time you want to change how you express yourself.

So – I’m stoked for Sade that a 10 year break from releasing music resulted in her existing fans picking up half a million copies, but – if you’re an Indie artist and you haven’t broken yet – I’d advise against this strategy.  If you want to keep quiet for the next decade – you go for it – the challenge of connecting to people who might dig your masterpiece will still be here waiting for you on your return.