About Your company

Chief Ingredient was established in mid-2007 to help meet the increasing need for businesses to gain an understanding and a competitive edge by using social media as a component of their overall marketing plan.

We have shaped our service offerings into four main categories: Research, Platform, Buzz and Tracking. Each offering is part of a four part cycle that works as an ongoing improvement plan for all aspects of online marketing.

Company URL

www.chiefingredient.com

How Different are your Products from Competition

There are many who claim to be Social Media Consultants, and some of them are very good. However, Chief Ingredient sets itself apart by understanding the direct needs of businesses – from all aspects of marketing and online strategies.

Our strengths shine with the ability to take basic business needs/objectives and translate them into successful strategies using multiple marketing channels and focusing on social media.

Finally, our processes and tools allow us to help our clients understand reactions to their services and products and refine their messages to convert the largest percentage of interested people into paying customers.

Tell about Yourself

I originally grew up in Minneapolis, MN, but currently live and work in San Diego, CA. Over the course of the last 10 years, I have started two businesses and help run and manage three others. My interests have always been in emerging technology of all sorts.

Can you explain more about social media marketing and quality traffic generation?

The most simple way to explain social media marketing is through the term “online word-of-mouth.” In other words, it’s learning where you audience is and understanding what it will take to get them to talk about your business to their friends and associates. Since the web is becoming more social every day (blogs, comments, people also bought…, ratings, forums, groups, networking, etc…) word-of-mouth is being the standard instead of the theory.

Think of the last time you searched for a restaurant, product or service online. Chances are that you found a web site (or wanted to find a website) that had customer comments from people who have used that product, eaten at the restaurant or purchased services from a company. Knowing that someone has giving a company a try and then posted that online and gave a positive response is going to make you feel more comfortable in purchasing from the company too.

This also extends into the thought of having companies who are now being forced into offering a quality service or products, because if they don’t then the word gets around fast and their competitors will soon have a major advantage. But this is a topic for a whole separate interview…

. What steps should company or website accomplish to come in Natural Search in Google or Yahoo?

Here’s a list of the best things you can do to get listed well organically:

• Write quality content with a keyword focus.
• Update or add content to the site weekly, at least.
• With the updates and the quality content, you should naturally be getting relevant sites that start linking back to yours. The larger the network of relevant site that link back to you the better.
• Submit your content to relevant social media sites and categories – these are updated often by search engines and this may lead to getting the page or content you submitted indexed within hours as well.

Apart from Google Adsense, how do you rate Adbrite or Axill ads or SMX ads or Yahoo Adsense program?

Outside of PPC, we rarely use these other ad networks and services.

How does Page Rank work?

Google describes PageRank as:
“PageRank relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web by using its vast link structure as an indicator of an individual page's value. In essence, Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B. But, Google looks at more than the sheer volume of votes, or links a page receives; it also analyzes the page that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves "important" weigh more heavily and help to make other pages ‘important’.”

Again, it comes back to good content. If you write good content and share ideas and resources that your audience will likely share, then you have a good chance of other people and sites mentioning you on their sites – effectively creating a link and helping your page rank.

Which one should a growing company measure? Page Rank or Alexa Ranking?

I wish it was this simple. The truth is that there are many things to measure, and each measurement plays its part in determining what is working and what isn’t from many different sides of the picture. Both Page Rank and the Alexa rating are important. However, your site’s performance, usability, bounce rates, referring sites and top content are arguably more effective numbers and data to measure and understand.

What change in strategy did your company pursue from 2001 to 2005 to grow from 20 to 150+ customers in less than three year?

The large growth in customers came from the quality of service that we provided. Back then, we did the same thing that hundreds of our competitors did. However, we did it with amazing service – and like the word-of-mouth that we promote now, our clients told their friends and associates leaving us with more incoming calls than we could handle.

Can you name 5 major requirements that entrepreneurs should not miss when building a Social Networking website?

1. Usability
2. Flexibility
3. Scalability
4. Available Market
5. Niche Focus

Where you see yourself and your business in 10 years? 20 years?

I’m looking forward to travelling much more than I can now. Within 10 years, we are going to see a lot of changes in the marketing and advertising industries. Chief Ingredient is set up for agility and has the ability to flex to the changes that we will see. Knowing that, and seeing the team that is coming together, I’m very excited.

About Your Mentor?

I think there are two types of mentors. There are the ones you can ask for ideas and opinions from, and there are the ones you learn from by their mistakes. I’ve had a couple of the first kind and many of the second.

Excluding yours, what company or business do you admire the most?

That’s a great question – and definitely one that I’m not even sure of myself.

Being inside the marketing machine, so to speak, you get an understanding of the face that many companies put on. The marketing and the image that they want the public to see is often very different than the personalities that make the critical decisions.

I would say that people should admire the people within the companies (and not just the leaders), and not the companies themselves. I, personally, didn’t start a business to be a “business owner” or because I loved the thought of “business” as an activity. No, instead, I actually fell into this path and haven’t honestly spent much time looking at others who I admire in the business world.

10 best social networking sites that you admire.

I don’t have 10 favorites, as the client objectives really determine what makes sense to use and what doesn’t.

Biggest Challenge you faced in Life?

Starting my first business, at age 20, with $8,000.