A massive, massive thank you to Mike Propst. He's the designer behind Emurse, Engadget and now AlexRudloff.com. A pretty impressive lot, if I do say so myself. Probably a few little kinks here and there, as it's getting late on a friday night. Let me (us) know what you think though, and if you find anything looney. Apologies if things look funny during the transition. I think comments might not be working right for a bit as well, sooo... All good.

My site's starting to gain more cred with google lately, and I've encountered a more.. let's say.. diverse group of readers. It's no longer simply a blog to keep my mom and some friends updated with what's going on in my life. I intend to keep writing it exactly for that purpose, but the new design reflects me a little better. The old design was something I threw together on a plane late one night. Mike's the official world's-most-experienced-blog-maker after serving as the sole weblogs, inc designer for, gosh, way to long. It's truely a blessing to have him on our side.

I just read Gavin's post on using tootsie rolls to bribe upset customers. Completely ignoring the humor behind Gavin at an Amscot, that has to be the most brilliantly laid plan I've ever heard. Follow that up with Marc Andreessen's reposting of a woot.com customer service letter, and well.. I guess I'm just in the mood to wax on the subject some.

Humor is a double edged sword. Too many people think that they are funny who aren't, and when they try to mix in their cheesy jokes in a presentation or an email, the whole thing can fall apart. In the case of customer service, I'd suspect thats especially true. Fortunately for woot.com, they totally pull it off. They know their audience, they know the demographic and they write to it. Simply reading the letter makes me excited to see what the next woot off is, and I don't even know the context in which it was written.

I'm probably not likely to find my self in an amscot (a check cashing type place) anytime soon, but it is an interesting case study. The jest of it is, for those who didn't see the post, is that whenever a customer is made to wait or is otherwised bothered, they slide them a free tootsie roll. I'd love to see the data for before and after implementing that. We Americans love our candy, and it's just enough of a gesture to give us pause. It might cost them ten cents a customer, but how much does it end up saving them? Hell.. marketing wise, here I am writing about it on the internet.

In the case of Emurse, we do our best to hand reply to everything that comes our way. At first, I was super snappy in getting back to folks. 4am and they'd have a response in 30 seconds. When that happens, there is a huge chance that they'll upgrade to a premium membership. There's most certainly a direct correlation. Unfortunately, as we've grown, it becomes much harder to get back to folks as quickly as I'd like. All the sudden, things like standard replies for certain issues and FAQ type answers seem logical. We haven't made the move to that yet, but it may sadly be inevitable. I can't keep spending my weekends on gmail, ya know? The question then is whether or not such a change would affect conversions. Would they be higher, would they be lower? I don't know. If they're lower, would it justify hiring someone to do nothing but respond to emails and blog posts? Maybe.

There's some sort of old fashioned attraction that I think most people share. Something that responds positively to a high level of service. It's a simple acknowledgment that you, as a customer, are an actual person living an actual life. The anonymity of business, especially online, makes transactions all too often boring and stale.

Chris Heuer gave a presentation at blogOrlando where he talked about business becoming personal again. In context, it was specifically about real life social networks and how we're all more tied. Individuals have been impowered through social media kind of stuff. I wonder though, if that mindset, that personal feeling towards business, will gravitate to other aspects of the market? I'd love to see less cost cutting on customer service, and a more human voice out of companies instead.

Been awhile since I posted the going on's of Emurse. Growth rate is really solid and is compounding (meaning, our growth % stays in our target range even as we add more and more users). Raw traffic, as defined by returning visitors and new visitors (unique), is exploding. Raw traffic this month is about 2000% higher than March, to give you an idea. On one hand, I want to say it's surprising, but I think that's only because I remember how this all started -- just a simple utility to help Gavin, myself and our friends.

We've been getting some blog press lately, which is great. Lockergnome, a favorite of Gavin and I's, posted a really glowing review. Always cool to wake up and find a site you enjoy talking about you!

We have some new features in the works, and some features that were postponed are now once again on the short list. Expect some exciting things over the next weeks/months.

Josh posted the session schedule on the blogOrlando site yesterday. I'll be presenting on the local Orlando scene. My thought is to basically extend the "Why Orlando" portion of my venture post (that was in response to John's announcement). From there, talk a little bit about who's here (companies, user groups, various meetups), mix in some local initiatives (a little co-working pitch never killed anyone.. ;), and hopefully a whole lot of great conversation.

I'm told my buddy Alex Hillman gave a similar talk up at blogPhilly, so I'm sure I'll bounce things off of him.. Any thoughts from my fellow yolcals though?

Oh, and Emurse is now a blogOrlando sponsor. w00t.

Special thanks to Jeff Everett, who authored a series on Etiquette for the Emurse blog. Great stuff, Jeff! I'm sure it will help a ton of people out there searching around on the interwebs.

Etiquette Guides:

• Professional Networking Etiquette
• Telephone & Voicemail Etiquette
  
• Email Etiquette

Also a few new collections of inspirational quotes. We've been posting this every weekend to switch it up a little:

• Quotes on Boldness
• Quotes on Purpose

Finally, as a follow up to our how to write a recommendation letter, here are some sample recommendation letters. I tried to use fictional movies characters to make it a tad more interesting to write. My favorite was pulling out the back to the future references ;)

We're starting to post occasional guest bloggers over on the Emurse.com blog. If you cover the career space and are interested, drop me a line.

Peggy McKee from PHC Consulting provided us with a great article on Creative Sales Resume Tips.

We also posted a neat little guide to body language last week.

Articles:

• How to Ask for a Reference Letter: Securing a solid letter of recommendation can be crucial towards advancing your career.
• Answering "What is your Greatest Weakness?": How to answer the most hated interview question
  
• Quotes on Opportunity: We'll be doing Saturday quotation posts this month. Here's one on Opportunity.
• Quotes on Goal Setting: And one on Goal Setting

Lifehacker linked to us for our article on how to write a resignation letter. It's always a pleasure waking up on a saturday to find one of my favorite sites sending a little link love our way. Any tips/suggestions/advice on the subject, add them to the comments!

Sample Resignation Letter

Emurse Articles:

• How to Answer Behavioral Interview Questions
• Complete List of Behavioral Interview Questions

Around the Web:

• Summer Jobs - Summer job search tips and advice. It's that time of year.
• Personal Branding Blog
  
• How to Start a Business
• Cool Workspaces

We had another record setting month over at Emurse.com. Traffic was up something fierce, largely from various SEO improvements (all of the new traffic was organic, no paid links/ads/whatever)

I really think it was the result of ongoing work throughout the first quarter. April was big, but if you zoom out and measure from say, February, its been astounding. We're looking at 200% growth easy. Combine these improvements with the new look we launched a couple weeks back (mike is the man), and we get the month of April.

As far as accomplishing the objectives we laid out at the start of the year, we changed gears a little bit in late February. We started assembling the pieces to the "new" emurse project and realized that a complete I.A. overhaul was in order. Our focus then became the new look and feel, and it has really paid off in spades. Our conversions are up, we're all buzzing with excitement, and really, we just look much more like we ought to now. Sometimes it helps to stay flexible and responsive I guess ;)

We're focused on getting back to some of these shelved things now, though we've decided to break apart some of the components and bolt a few of the features on independently. This lets us easily test out the concept (much like we're doing with contact manager on network). It's a lot easier to get a solid idea of how something will play out once you can measure, tweak and change based on the responses. It's kind of like having a beta, but a bit more effective in that they are completely usable features on their own. (less about bug testing).

We'll probably contact our beta list about participating in a limited trial first though, so stay tuned. Also, drop me a line if you would like to be considered.

Recent Emurse Blog Posts:

• Phone Interview Tips
• New Resume Design
  

Articles:

• Sample Entry Level Resumes (or, How to write an entry level resume)
• Professional Summary Example (or, How to write a professional summary for your resume)
• What to Wear to an Interview (an addendum to How to Prepare for an Interview)

Mike Propst's amazing new work went online yesterday. Feedback/bug hunting most certainly appreciated!

Links:

• Sample Resume Objectives - Demystifying what a resume objective is and isn't.
• What to Take to an Interview - Prepared = calm and focused.

General

Traffic increases continue to impress us. March 2007 was the highest traffic month in our history, eclipsing our initial launch numbers when we were all over the web. March also set the bar for revenue in all categories.

Development

Some of the things we thought would be priorities this quarter have been delayed until next. We're getting better and better at understanding our metrics, and really think we can improve a few things before releasing all the new features. Changing our internal design (signed in users) helped improve things greatly, we're expecting even more success with the next couple of changes.

Currently Around the Web

• Sean Lavelle tries his hand at building up his online persona, starting with Emurse. Word on the street is that we are now Nadine's #1 search result after an initial rocky start. I'm positive Sean will have great success right away though!