Posts Tagged ‘Matrix Group’

Our social fundraiser last year was so successful that we’re repeating it this year. Help Matrix Group raise money for DC area charities by participating in our social media campaign. We’re starting with a pot of $1,000. We’re adding $10 for every new “like” on our Facebook page and every new subscriber to our YouTube channel. Then we’ll distribute the money according to votes for the videos about each charity on our YouTube channel.

This whole campaign has been about social media and group effort. First, I polled the Matrix Group staff to see if they wanted to repeat the social media fundraiser from last year. The answer was yes. Then I asked the staff to nominate their favorite charities; I picked the top 5 charities selected by staff.

Next, we reached out to the local charities and asked them to create an informative video that makes the case for giving them money. Not surprisingly, we got amazing, authentic videos from each organization. One was created by a volunteer who did a stellar job.

Next, we came up with a way to fold in social media, increase our reach, and make the campaign fun. So we filmed a kitschy video that explains the campaign and tied the donations to getting new likes on Facebook and subscribers on YouTube. The whole campaign, including creating the video, working with the charities and putting it all together on the web was made possible by my amazing staff.

Check out our funny video on YouTube explaining the campaign and introducing the charities.

Watch the videos of the five deserving organizations on YouTube. The five organizations are Doorways for Women and Families, Food and Friends, SPCA of Northern VA, Washington Animal Rescue League and the Washington Area Bicyclist Association.

Here’s how YOU can raise money for those in need this holiday season:

• Like us on our Facebook page.
• Subscribe to our YouTube channel.
• Vote for your favorite charity or charities by liking their videos on our YouTube channel.
• Spread the word about the campaign to your networks on Twitter, Facebook and Google+.

You’ve got until December 20 to like, subscribe, vote and share. I’d love to raise $5,000. Can you help?

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• Tags: Facebook, Google Plus, Matrix Group, YouTube

I was on the phone with a company receptionist the other day, trying desperately to reach someone in sales or customer service. Trouble is, the person I was speaking with could not have cared less about me or my needs. She kept repeating that she had no idea where anybody was, she could not leave her desk and all she could do was put me through to voice mail. You can imagine how that encounter made me feel about the company and their products.

In the corporate world, it’s conventional to believe that the person answering the phone is the lowest person on the totem pole. Worse yet, many companies believe we can replace receptionists with automated attendants: ring the doorbell for service or dial by extension.

Me, I’ll always have someone answer our main line because most people calling Matrix Group are customers who need help or prospects who need our services. So you better believe I want a warm, friendly, knowledgeable and committed person answering our phones! And because it’s not always clear to people who does what in a Web agency (do you talk to the programmer or a front-end developer or the PM about an error on your admin site?), a good receptionist can field and route calls efficiently.

My Creative Director Alex Pineda says that every employee is a brand ambassador for the company. So my receptionist, as the person who perhaps has the most contact with the most people, is arguably the most important brand ambassador I have. Which is why her title is First Impressions Officer. The other admins in the office, who also share customer interaction responsibilities, are equally important brand ambassadors.

Scott Spandauer defines a brand as “more than just your company image. It also includes your customers’ experience and the expectation you set when doing business with your company. In short, it is (a) promise.”

As a CEO, I may set the tone for our corporate culture and brand, but it’s my staff who live and reinforce it with our customers. Company owners everywhere, remember that your customers’ experiences start with the person who answers the phone and greets people at the door.

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• Tags: branding, corporate culture, customer service, Matrix Group

It’s kind of a tradition at Matrix Group that when you go on vacation, especially if you’re gone for an extended period of time, you get pranked. When Dan went to Cancun for a week, he came back to find his area converted into a resort, complete with beach umbrella and inflatable pool filled with jello. When Maggie went on vacation, she came back to find 400 balloons in her area; it took a couple of hours to pop the balloons so she could reclaim her space.

So when Maki and I went to the beach last week, what did the staff do? They pranked me and prank me good they did!

I came back to find that my blog had been completely redesigned and rewritten. I became Jar Jar Binks, my signature purple was now green, and I had apparently been blogging about our new dress code and drinking on the job (if you know me, you know that I’m not much of a drinker). The net admins went to great pains to make sure that my new, green blog wasn’t available from outside the office.

I was in shock initially. Then I panicked that the blog had actually been replaced. Then I started laughing hysterically when I realized I had been pranked and pranked hard.

Check out the alternate version of The Matrix Files. (If the image comes in small, click it to make it full screen in your browser. Trust me, this will be worth it.)

Kudos to Liz, who masterminded the whole prank, and the whole gang of people who designed, wrote, posted, and hosted.

If you’re at familiar with some of the internal jokes at the office (purple is our signature color, we don’t allow shorts, yada, yada), you’ll get a chuckle at the posts. The writing is so good that I think I’ll recruit some new guest writers for this blog.

If you’re shocked at the amount of time that goes into our pranking or that I even allow pranking, let me just say that pranking is great for office morale and productivity. The prank prep is done during personal time and it’s just plain fun.

How about you? Have you pranked anyone lately? Share stories!

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• Tags: corporate culture, Matrix Group

Even though Matrix Group has had a YouTube account for years now, we weren’t doing much with it. Well this past week, we finally, fully integrated this platform into our overall marketing and social media strategy by launching a new series called The Matrix Minute.

Why so late to the YouTube game? As I’ve explained before in previous blog posts and webinars, I believe that it’s important to create a layered experience across different media. In other words, don’t just post the same stuff to Facebook, Twitter, your website, YouTube, your blog, etc. Have an overall strategy, but take advantage of each site’s capabilities and culture to maximize followers across all platforms.

Until recently, we didn’t have a clear idea of how we wanted to incorporate YouTube into our marketing, sales and client engagement strategy. We had videos from Matrix Group staff events, but we had reserved our Facebook page for information and posts about the project we’re working on and corporate culture. I didn’t want to use YouTube as another place to promote corporate culture. And until we hired a new Marketing Coordinator, we didn’t have the bandwidth to staff an active YouTube channel properly.

But this past week, we launched The Matrix Minute, which is a series of interviews with in-house and outside experts who discuss web technologies, mobile technologies, social media, design and web development. Occasionally, we’ll feature local CEOs who will talk about leadership and what their organizations are doing to stay relevant and vibrant.

Here’s how the Matrix Minute fits into our overall sales and marketing strategy:

• As a company, we’re extremely committed to ongoing education for staff and clients so content-rich interviews make sense for us.
• It’s a way to showcase the expertise we have within the staff.
• It’s a way to leverage the expertise of our clients and partners.
• It’s a way to continue demonstrating thought leadership.
• We get to show off our video production capabilities.
• YouTube is owned by Google and Google favors keyword-rich videos and descriptions so the channel is good for search engine optimization (SEO).
• It’s a way to layer YouTube into our strategy in a way that’s new and different from what we’re doing on our website and social media.

The Matrix Minute has also been a lot of fun.  So far, I’ve been doing all of the interviews and I’m learning a ton. Ray Stankiewicz, New Biz Manager at Matrix Group, is the producer and Melissa Bader, Designer at Matrix Group, does the video editing.

We’ve got a half dozen interviews already online. For example, Jill Foster of Live Your Talk talks about videoblogging. Jennell Evans of Strategic Interactions shares her tips for managing remote teams. And Sherrie Bakshi of Matrix Group talks about why 2011 is the year to start a corporate blog.

BTW, we call it The Matrix Minute, but the interviews are usually 2-3 minutes long. 1 minute just didn’t provide enough time for a meaningful interview and Matrix Minutes sounded goofy.

I hope you’ll check us out on YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/MatrixGroup) and you’ll rate, comment and subscribe. Tell us what you think of our latest initiative!

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• Tags: marketing, Matrix Group, strategy, Video, YouTube

Matrix Group is competing in the Arlington Green Games, a competition for the commercial office sector (property owners and tenants) in Arlington, VA to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Gold, Silver, Bronze and Recognition awards are given based on points achieved in different categories: Energy, Transportation, Waste, Water, Materials, Employees & Outreach, and Innovation.

When we first signed up for the competition, the office was all gung ho. We formed a green team, we filled out the benchmark survey and we got to work on our green initiatives. Turns out, it ain’t easy being green. Here’s why:

• Little Control Over Major Systems. At home, my husband and I ultimately control our energy consumption. We upgraded our HVAC system to a high efficiency system; our house is cold in the winter and warm in the summer; we just upgraded our windows to be triple-paned, argon gas-filled and super efficient; we installed dimmers; we wash our clothes in our cold water; yada, yada. But at work, our options are much more limited because we can’t control many of the systems that generate the most greenhouse gases. For example, as a tenant, I can’t exactly upgrade the windows on the 12th floor and we didn’t install the HVAC system that heats and cools the building.

• Being Green Costs More. As any news article on green technologies and lifestyles will tell you, being green just plain costs more. The Green Games website recommends that we purchase green credits to balance our CO2 emissions. We can also make sure that all of our purchasing (office supplies, equipment, furniture) is green, which can be considerably more expensive.

• There’s Little Incentive to be Green as a Tenant. I once asked a friend if she had switched her light bulbs to compact fluorescents and she said, “Why should I? I don’t pay for my electric bill. My building does.” As a tenant in a commercial office building, it’s hard to see the effects of our energy-hogging or green ways.

So what’s the green path and how are the Green Games making us better?

What I’m appreciating the most about the exercise is twofold: 1) we are focusing on obvious practices like composting our Keurig grounds and making sure the recycling is going into the right bins and actually being picked up by the recycling contractor and 2) we have initiated a conversation about real policy changes at the company that will result in meaningful greenhouse gas emission reductions.

For example, we currently subsidize half of employee parking fees and Metrocheck cards. But we don’t have incentives (financial or otherwise) for the staff who walk or bike to work. What can we do for these staff beyond giving them $50 a month that will mostly get eaten up by taxes (whereas parking and Metro subsidies are tax-free)? Can we alter the IT policy of leaving our computers on at night so that security patches can be installed; can we at least turn them off on the weekends? And how much of our company profits are we willing to forgo in favor of purchasing green products and credits? All tough questions that we don’t have answers to but that I look forward to exploring this year.

When I was in college and taking a course on aid in the developing world, my professor urged us students not to think about what one person can do in a day, but what a community of people can do over time. The Green Games are hopefully helping the business community in Arlington chart a course for real green practices and change in Northern VA. While it ain’t easy being green, the alternative ain’t much better.

How about you? What is your company doing to be greener? What innovative policies and initiatives have you come up with? What’s worked? What hasn’t?

• 3 Comments
• Tags: corporate culture, green, Matrix Group

Matrix Group partner, Grocery Manufacturers Association (GMA) is the leading voice for food, beverage and consumer product companies and serves many audiences in communicating the interests, research and publications developed by staff and also helps its members produce safe products through a strong and ongoing commitment to scientific research, testing and evaluation. GMA partnered with Matrix Group and Rational 360 on a website redesign and implementation. Rational 360 created the information architecture and design, while Matrix Group implemented a new content management system and integrated the website with GMA’s membership database.

 Matrix Group and Rational 360 work features:

•  News and information organized by topic, including Product Safety, Health & Nutrition and Preserving the Environment.
•  A unified member experience for members who previously had to use multiple passwords to access content on two websites (GMA merged with another organization several years ago), and multiple, separate e-commerce applications. Today, visitors use one username and password to access ALL resources and members seamlessly gain access to protected content and discounts.
•  Complete integration with GMA’s back office. Member profiles are changed instantly, purchased are processed in real-time, and all registrations are automatically saved to GMA’s association management software, MatrixMaxx.

Visit the Grocery Manufacturers Association Website.

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• Tags: Matrix Group, Web site

Matrix Group  has been a long time partner of the world’s oldest and largest nonprofit membership organization of police leaders, the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP) who decided to launch an online clearinghouse of information and free resources to help members develop or enhance their agencies’ use of social media and integrate the tools into their daily operations. To create this online resource center, IACP turned to Matrix Group. Matrix Group collaborated with IACP staff on a new website, using the agency’s user-focused methodology to develop and implement the strategy around the website.

 Matrix Group: 

• Developed a user-friendly navigation with a clear understanding of the users’ motivations and behaviors.  Matrix Group considered all types of users for this website, from beginners to more experienced users. The topic-based navigation directs visitors clearly to specific areas of the website based on their needs.
• Created and integrated an online directory of law enforcement agencies that use social media, including the URLs of agencies’ social media pages and blogs.  This directory not only showcases the work that the various agencies are doing, but it also helps members develop their own social networking strategies, policies, etc. Members can now browse or search the directory, and view other agencies Facebook pages, Twitter profiles, blogs, etc.
• Created a catalog of resources, templates, case studies related to law enforcement use of social media. The new website is a “one stop shop” where chiefs and officers can find examples of social networking policies and strategies, download guides and fact sheets on how to create profiles on social networking sites, and read case studies about how other agencies are including social networking in their work.

View the International Association of Chiefs of Police – Social Media Website.

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• Tags: Matrix Group, Web Design, Web site

Matrix Group recently worked with the Sheet Metal Workers – National Pension Fund (SMWNPF) on their website,  which  provides pension fund participants with information about the Fund, plan of benefits, financial information, forms, contact information, and frequently asked questions about the Fund.  Matrix Group worked closely with SMWNPF staff to design a “user-centered website” that now speaks clearly to SMWNPF’s target audiences of employers, retirees, participants, trustees, SMWNPF staff and business managers of local union affiliates.

 Matrix Group:

• Developed a robust navigation that helps visitors navigate to specific sections based on their needs.  Visitors can navigate by audience, topic or most frequently requested information.
• Created a design that is friendly, professional but not slick, accurately echoing the image of the Fund.  The design includes prominent calls to action, e.g., Participant Sign in and Employer Sign in.
• Implemented a content management system that allows SMWNPF staff to update the entire site without knowing html skills.
• Supported the launch of the website by developing a postcard and video that showcase the new site.

View the Sheet Metal Workers – National Pension Fund Website.

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• Tags: Design, Matrix Group, Web site

A couple of weeks ago, we unveiled a new home page for the Matrix Group website. We didn’t change the overall navigation and we didn’t create a new look and feel for the site. All we did was revamp the branding area and re-arrange elements on the home page. Small changes, big impact.

Most organizations go years between redesigns. It’s a big deal to redesign a website; it takes a boatload of time, effort and money. But in between redesigns, most organizations become unhappy with their sites. We have clients come to us because they’re unhappy with everything on their site, which was last redesigned 3, 4, or 5 years ago. Does it have to be this way? I think not.

There are many, many reasons to redesign your website, including:

• Your organization’s mission, name, logo and/or brand have changed dramatically.
• Visitors complain about not being able to find what they’re looking for.
• Your products and services have changed or you’ve added new offerings and you don’t know where to put all the information.
• You are rethinking how your website fits into your company’s overall marketing strategy and want to redo all or nearly all of the content.

BUT, if you’re largely happy with the design and navigation of your site, visitors are able to find what they’re looking for, and your company branding and messaging remain the same, perhaps all you need is a website refresh. Here are some ways in which clients have refreshed their sites:

• One client changed the headers graphics throughout the site and added social media widgets.
• Another client made the entire website wider (the site had been designed for 800 x 600 pixels) and added another column on the home page for events and a featured publication.
• Yet another client revamped important landing pages and improved pages by editing the text and adding images and formatting.

If you don’t have the budget for a full redesign this year, opt for a refresh and focus on content and making calls to action more prominent.

BTW, here’s a photo of the new Matrix group home page and reasons for the refresh. I’d love to know what you think.

How about you? What’s in store for your site in 2011? Full site redesign or refresh?

• 4 Comments
• Tags: Design, Matrix Group, Web Design

Last year, Matrix Group decided not to send out printed holiday cards.  Instead, we sent an e-card and donated the money we would have spent on printing and mailing and donated it to several local charities.  This year, we’re doing something similar, but with a social media twist.

We’re taking the money we’re saving by not mailing printed cards to our entire list and once again donating it to charity. This year, however, we’re trying to increase the amount that we give away.  For every new Facebook fan who “likes” our fan page (the deadline is December 14), we’re adding $10 to the charity pot.

Next, we’re asking our entire network of clients, partners, vendors and supporters to tell us how to give away the money.  I polled the staff and asked for recommendations for charities they thought were worthy of a gift.  We came up with the following organizations:

• Back On Your Feet
• Capital Area Food Bank
• Doorways for Women and Families
• Goodwill of Greater Washington
• John L. Gildner Regional Institute for Children and Adolescents
• The Reading Connection
• The Washington Animal Rescue League
• WEAVE

In our Facebook page, we set up a Poll that allows fans to vote for their favorite charity from the list above. So far, we’ve gained over 100 new Facebook fans and nearly two hundred people have voted.

I like this year’s holiday campaign because we’re able to increase the amount of our donation this year, we gain new fans, and we are able to showcase effective and well managed charities in the DC area. It’s also been fun to promote this holiday campaign to our house e-mail list, on our social media pages, and to our network of friends and supporters.

Here’s how you can help:

• “Like” our Facebook fan page at http://www.facebook.com/MatrixGroup
• Vote in our poll
• Spread the word about the campaign to your network of colleagues, friends and family

We’ve got a goal of $5,000.  Help us support some terrific charities this holiday season!

P.S. In case you’re wondering, we decided to still mail printed cards to our key client contacts because we were worried about some clients and partners not receiving the e-card because of a firewall or anti-spam software. In the end, we liked the idea of clients receiving something tangible from us and the ability to sign and personalize cards.  But instead of mailing nearly 1,000 cards, we’re mailing fewer than 200 cards.

• 5 Comments
• Tags: Facebook, Matrix Group, social networking