There comes a time when change is necessary. Change is painful; it’s uncomfortable. But change is what we ask of our clients. They hire us to help transform their results, their brand, their tactics, and their team. To help them do this we need them to be the change they seek on their bottom line.

So when we discovered we had a strategy that wasn’t allowing us to meet our impact goals or our financial ones – we knew what we would tell one of our clients and we knew what we had to do.

Over the last 6 months, we have systematically and strategically changed everything about how we serve our clients. This is so that we more effectively provide the clarity, inspiration, and success our clients and our community so eagerly need.

Through much reflection, we felt our client services business (and its considerable overhead) was obfuscating the consulting and transformation that we promised to our clients. While we will still take on select software development or design jobs, we only do this as part of a long term retainer engagement. This is because transformation can’t come from one design job. Rather, transformation comes from defining what success looks like, setting the feedback loop of accountability, and consistent coaching to ensure focus. This takes months, assuming everyone is on their best behavior. Some teams take longer, you’re mileage may vary.

Rest assured, we still bake all of the awesome user experience and technological wizardry (for which we’ve become known) into every development project we complete. Our difference now is that we only do such projects when our client’s organization is ready to take advantage of the results. This takes collaboration, open communication, and commitment.

This letter is a commitment too, of sorts. It is a re-commitment to our core values of Professionalism, Leadership, Imaginative Innovation, and Freedom. It is a commitment to our clients and community that we are constantly looking for better ways to make their world – our world – a better place. And lastly it is a commitment to our vision of the future, to the idea that the tools for success be accessible to every dreamer who is open, honest, and willing to do the necessary work.

We hope you join us. Talk to us about joining our team. Ask us to join yours. Or join the conversation. Change is hard. Let’s do it together.

Tongue firmly planted in cheek, we often say that we are convinced that the internet is here to stay.

Need proof? Consider this fact from the 2013-2014 holiday season:

“Amazon.com shipped enough items with Prime this holiday to deliver at least one gift to every household in America.”

For the rest of the figures, check out the full article from Zagg.

With the 2014-2015 holiday season just around the corner, the primary question that small and medium sized businesses have to be asking themselves is “Does my business plan include engaging online buyers in a serious way?”

If not, it is never too late to contact Live Mercury to talk about the system we built that allows small and medium sized businesses to invest in their internet presence. With this, your business can say it is serious about moving a significant portion of its business to where your customers live – online.

You don’t have to be an expert to use Facebook, you just have to be willing to look at the data. Chris Miller wrote a great article for Talkers pinpointing some things to focus on when navigating through Social Media.

“All social platforms are getting more sophisticated about how they determine what their users will see.  Facebook has adjusted their formula that determines what content we all get shown, emphasizing the interesting over the merely silly and self-serving.  Here’s how to help insure that more of your posts get shown to your fan base:

1. Promotion Kills

2. Questions Still Matter

3. Deep, Focused Info

4. Hashtags

5. Watch Your Numbers”

What adjustments do you find yourself making on Facebook?

For the full article, click here.

A lot of businesses have put up a FB page because it’s so easy. But if they don’t actually have a plan to engage their audience on FB, they may be doing more harm than good.

One dilemma that many businesses face is, “How do they keep up with all the changes in Social Media? With Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, etc. it’s impossible to stay on top of it and still run their business!”

Experts like Social Media Examiner make great recommendations:

“The challenge for Facebook marketers is to succeed on an increasingly turbulent channel, while trying to hold the attention of multi-platform users. Under these circumstances, your best bet is to diversify your content marketing strategy and engage with customers not just on Facebook, but also on every other channel where they hang out.”

In order to keep up, you have to be aware of the changes that are occurring in Social Media.

Pew Research has released a brand-new study that provides some very interesting insights into the shifting social media landscape.

1. Facebook is still popular, but is not always the platform of choice.

2. Instagram has an incredible loyal base of users.

3. LinkedIn continues to be dominated by high-income executives.

4. Women are spending more time on all social media, besides Facebook.

To read more about these insights, click here.

Infographics are to the communication of complex data what analogy is to logic. There’s great opportunity to help people understand what it all means, but it’s also possible to horribly mislead.

A picture is worth 1,000 words, so follow this link to Brandsavant and look at the pretty (and plain) infographics to see what we mean.

The number in this quote from “think with Google” is interesting…

“Over 60% of leisure travelers turn to the internet for inspiration, and travelers across segments shop around to secure the best value before booking.”

Let’s think about the trend. Do you think this number will be higher or lower next year for leisure travelers?

Now think about the trend in your industry. Do you think more people will use the internet to search for your service or product next year?

Click here for the details.

Have you noticed the graphs and charts on your organizations “Facebook Insights” page? Have you ever thought it would be nice to know what it means for you?

Social Media Examiner points out that, “As marketers, we’re on a mission to track and measure our efforts and their success.” For Facebook, Pinterest and Twitter the data is available, but it important to know what parts of that data are useful.

Social Media Examiner suggests:

For Facebook: Review the Posts tab on Facebook Insights

For Pinterest: Optimize you Pinterest activity

For Twitter: Use Twitter Tools to expand reach

Click here for the full step by step article on using these reports to improve your marketing efforts is a great resource for beginners. Don’t stumble blindly. Learning isn’t as hard as you think and when you see your Facebook, Pinterest and Twitter audience growing, you’ll be glad you did.

In the article “6 Facebook Marketing Tips for Managing Your Facebook Page,” Social Media Examiner says “There are two basic types of Facebook page admins: Those who post based on hunches as to what motivates engagement, and those who look at Facebook’s Insights to see what actually drives engagement.”

As with any serious marketing effort, taking the time to check results is critical to success. Knowing what works is especially challenging when it comes to Social Media because the rules on who sees what and why seem to change often. The good news is that Facebook provides some excellent tools to measure results and learn.

And knowing their rules is far less important than knowing your results. Here are the six tips Social Media Examiner suggests:

1. Check your wall-posting preferences.

2. Use Insights to determine what is working for your page.

3. Assign Admin roles.

4. Choose your featured likes.

5. Bookmark Facebook’s Page Guidelines and reacquaint yourself with what’s changed recently.

6. Use Facebook as a Page instead of as yourself.

To check out all the details of these tips, click here!

“More than a billion…”

From Isabella Roughol at Linkedin

“Those 150+ million iPhones Apple sold last year may be impressive, they represent just a little over 15 percent of the market. More than a billion smartphones were sold around the world in 2013, according to IDC. That’s roughly a 40 percent increase over 2012.”

That’s a lot of people who might come to your website on a tiny screen. Are you ready? Can people read your website on a 4 or 5 inch screen?

Having a mobile friendly site is no longer an option, it is a necessity.

To read the full article, click here.

Reputation Management is something major corporations have had to make a priority for decades. Small and medium sized businesses have usually not approached Reputation Management with the same urgency, but Social Media is changing that paradigm.

This article from Social Media Examiner gives some great case studies of companies who took action and avoided a damaged reputation.

The article also gives seven steps to defend your company’s reputation. They are:

1. Act Quickly

2. Take Charge

3. Handle Reality

4. Engage the Nay-sayers

5. Spread the Word

6. Encourage Dialogue

7. Deliver on Your Word

To read more details, click here.