December 2007

My hair stylist just up and moved to Joplin, MO. No call. No goodbye. Just left.

I was devastated. And I can’t even begin to TELL you how distraught my hair is over the situation. It’s like losing a best friend … a best friend with magical clippers.

I’m losing hair where I need it … and I’m gaining hair where I don’t want it.

So I’ve started the long, laborious and painful process of shopping for a new hair guru. My hair takes a village … and so does finding the right person with the right touch.

The same thing has happened from time to time around here at PlattForm. No — I’m not talking about an exodus of hairstylists … I’m talking about clients who have up and left. No reason. No justification. Just buh-bye. And it smarts. You start beating yourself up wondering what you did wrong or could have done differently. And then you hear the words that cut deep: “We’re going in a different direction.”

And then one by one … they start coming back. (Not in droves or anything … but slowly but surely we win them back.)

Why?

Because we provide exemplary, awe-inspiring customer service! (It’s engrained in our essence … not to mention the word “S-E-R-V-I-C-E” is printed in big block letters methodically around the building.) It’s the foundation of who we are. And it usually doesn’t go unnoticed when clients occasionally switch to (GASP!) another agency. Trust me, if my hairdresser came back … first, I’d smack him for leaving. But I’d go back in a heartbeat because he was phenomenal at what he did.

So as we head in to 2008, I’m sure there will be the occasional hiccup as one client or another heads in another direction. But just know this … we will do whatever it takes to win you back. We’ve got smiles on our faces and we’ve got good heads on our shoulders.

Unfortunately, I can’t promise what the hair will look like on my head … but whatever.

By Nici Krehbiel, Kat Reves, Casey Liddle and Kris Little

Service is the key to the PlattForm Client Services team’s ability to go above and beyond our competitors. From leads to graduates, Client Services manages the entire marketing campaign for our clients. We are the voice of our clients and the face of PlattForm.

As a Client Services team, we live and die by our goals. The goals we set are the foundation for our service. We set goals as individuals, as a team and for each of our clients to measure our standard of service. These goals become the stepping stones for our success and are reevaluated for relevancy.

Proactivity is just another piece of the pie. We strive to be proactive in our marketing strategies and work with the school to stay on the cutting edge of lead and start generation. Being solution-focused and always planning with the end in mind is our way of never losing site of the goal – exceeding start goals, of course!

Client Services is dedicated. Dedicated to the success of our clients. We care about the people we work with at each school, the students and the staff. We truly believe that in order to achieve ultimate success, we have to build a partnership with each client.

We change lives one lead at a time.

PlattForm People

Can you hear the rhythm of the office beat? Kevin Kuzma can. Like slowly entering into a jazz club, at first the beats and rhythms seem erratic. But once you sit down and absorb the feeling around you, you start to understand how the music blends together. Kevin describes this is how he feels when he is at work at PlattForm.

“Controlled chaos is the best way to describe when I am at work,” Kuzma said. Kevin feels that the ‘office rhythm’ comes to him by the end of the week. “On Monday, I am still trying to find the beat but by Friday, I know I have it down.” He says that you don’t have typical days but typical weeks. His work week usually consists of meetings, writing when he has the time and joking around with his team. Sounds like a great work week to me!

Kevin was brought in 3 years ago to our Public Relations department. Since then he has had his hand in the writing jar. Whether he is writing press releases to articles for Career College Central or KEY magazines, Kevin is always engaging in some form of writing. I guess you could say that writing is a passion of Kevin’s. Ever since he wrote a story about Michael Jackson’s Thriller album in the second grade, (yes, I just showed how old you are) he was intrigued.

Kevin is an essential cog in PlattForm’s wheel. As Manager of the Pubic Relations and Publications department, Kevin has many different jobs. He serves as editor to Career College Central and KEY magazines. He is responsible for a team of people to forward PlattForm’s image to the public on both national and industry-specific media outlets. He is in charge of establishing a variety of public relations services to be sold to clients. He develops the costs for new offerings, sales collateral, internal documentation and tracking processes. Wow, that is a lot! That is why Kevin is so vital to us here at PlattForm.

All in all, Kevin is an important part of the controlled chaos that makes PlattForm great. And like a great jazz musician, Kevin knows how to go with the flow. Maybe that’s why he fits in so well as writer extraordinaire, mentor and friend.

Why is linkbuilding such an integral part of any SEO campaign?

Many of the search engines use a link-based algorithm to determine search engine results. It is inherent then, that search engine performance hinges on the quantity and quality of inbound backlinks.

According to Google’s Webmaster Help Central web site, “Link-based analysis is an extremely useful way of measuring a site’s value, and has greatly improved the quality of web search. Both the quantity and, more importantly, the quality of links count towards this rating.” Essentially, an inbound link counts as a vote for that web site. The more votes that you have from similar web sites (relevant sites) the better rankings you should theoretically have.

So we all now know that linkbuilding helps with search engine performance.

Are sales affected by the power of an inbound link?

According to an article found on Search Engine Land the search engines and search engine marketers are not the only ones who benefit from linkbuilding.

It is possible that sales, or to take it one step further, conversions in general, may benefit from inbound links as well. Not only can traffic increase based upon the value of the inbound link, but that highly targeted traffic may convert better.

Therein lies the answer to the original question about linkbuilding. Inbound links can affect a web site’s search engine performance and conversions if the inbound links are from targeted, relevant web sites.

How else could you use linkbuilding as an SEO tool to benefit not just your web site, but your entire online presence?

There are some strange debates that find their way into the confines of the Proofing office. Recently, a rather heated discussion sprang to life after our rule to include a hyphen in “e-mail” was questioned by an outsider. Thus, the debate began about whether the hyphen should remain: e-mail vs. email. To most normal people, hyphens fit snugly into that category of just below ‘obscure meaninglessness’ Much like the protective seal on a can of peanut butter – the hyphen serves it’s purpose best in those brief moments where it can be disposed of, or at least ignored, and then forgotten. But, to me, where you fall on this issue is the equivalent to choosing your political affiliation. So, on which side do you stand?

Since its inception, e-mail has been spelled with a hyphen. It does, after all, represent two, separate words. However, it has become trendy with the kids to go around dashing hyphens right and left – without any justification. (Oh, that was intended!) I seem to remember a similar approach to grammar in Orwell’s 1984. The goal of Big Brother was to simplify language and make sure everyone was super depressed about it. Unneeded words and letters were removed for efficiency sake.

Now, the hyphen, many would argue, is not a very sexy or exciting appendage of the English alphabet. However, I beg to differ. The hyphen represents a bridging of two worlds. “Electronic” representing the new frontiers made available by the expansion of the Internet – and “mail”, which represents the old-world of slow, inefficient snail mail delivery by human hands/feet. Those brave, hardworking individuals at the U.S. post office are trudging forward to this day, in their fight to get us our various generic mailings and credit card offers. Let me put it to you this way. Which brings you more joy – seeing an e-mail pop onto your screen, or receiving a personally-addressed envelope in your real, physical mailbox?

Removing the hyphen from e-mail would equate to rigging this bridge to our past with an unreasonably huge arsenal of explosives and blowing it straight to hell. These anti-hyphenists must realize that they are calling for nothing less than the elimination of our identity as human beings! This dependence on the old, slow method of communication must be honored by the new, digital era. Snail mail paved the long, hard road which electronic mail owes it’s livelihood to. And the least the electronic world can do is to symbolically retain this essential historic link, so that our children will never forget where their little bleeps of code came from. So when I am a grandfather I can tell stories about way back when – before we all became digitized and downloadable. Before the polar caps melted, and we all swam into the binary abyss of the nonphysical realm, where thousands of single-sentence, partial-thought messages beamed directly into our cortex on the hour, every hour, for the rest of our lives.

Here’s to the future! 100000111010111111111000001111001011000000110000