An article entitled, “Why Do Websites Cost So Much Money?“, by Christine Anderssen (Tailormade4you), which appeared on January 10, on GOARTICLES.com(1), very succinctly summarizes the reasons why reputable web design and development firms charge more for their work, even to their smaller business clients/emerging enterprises.

Anderssen makes clear, simple and effective statements about the value of using professional interactive agencies: “Frankly, building a website so that it works in all browsers, has a good design and presents all the information about the company in a pleasing, eye-catching and user-friendly fashion takes proficiency, and this costs money.” More importantly, she adds that when you utilize a good firm, you are “paying for the advice, the support and the long term relationship.” We at MITRA CREATIVE agree—-these are some of the key factors in deciding to engage an experienced agency. There is value added through working with professionals who can see your brand from an external perspective and can translate your business requirements, messages and calls-to-action into engaging, highly web-usable designs instead of “just” designing websites. It is equally critical to work with visionary design agencies that continue to innovate within their discipline, but that also know your business and its culture well enough, and stay with it long enough, to maintain the consistency of, and to grow, your brand.

Most critical is brand. Simply put, design firms that truly understand business in addition to art and technology elevate brands by giving them credibility and respect and by making the appearance of companies forward-thinking. They do so using today’s most impactful, powerful and pervasive medium: namely, visuals on the web. A picture is now worth a billion words… everywhere.

(Article Copyright © 2010 Jayde Online, Inc. All Rights Reserved.)

One of my company, Mitra Creative’s, most important clients is Derive Technologies. We produced Derive’s now multi-award-winning interactive site, and continue to work with them to refine their messaging, support ongoing needs for their website — including the development of new tools, SEO, drawing additional business development/lead generation value from it, and much more — and .

Derive is a renowned, Wall Street Area-based Infrastructure consultancy which has served the needs of New York businesses for more than two decades. Their reputation as technology problem-solvers for small to large clients in the Healthcare, Financial Services, State and Local Government, Legal, Advertising, and Education industries is nearly legendary. Leading worldwide brands such as Hewlett-Packard (HP), Microsoft and Citrix have turned to Derive not just as high-volume sellers of their services, but as Elite, Platinum and Gold alliance partners–the highest level of relationship that solution providers like Derive can attain. With Citrix, Derive is a “Platinum Solution Advisor,” wherein, according to Citrix, they “play a big role in Citrix processes, programs and policies and are a valuable business resource in designing and improving our route to market engines with customers.” Derive also maintains Platinum, Gold and other marquis-level relationships with giants such as Cisco, VMware, Panasonic and others, and has built a powerful Healthcare technology specialization extending far beyond standard IT sales and support.

Derive’s John Wood, a partner in the business, and the company’s Vice President of Marketing and Corporate Development,  is a visionary. He attended several of the seminars that I have been giving on behalf of Mitra Creative — largely, to-date, for Microsoft partners — about Web 2.0 origins and tools, and the use of online social communities/social networking, Blogging, and social sharing for business development, lead-generation, problem-solving, viral marketing, talent recruitment and more. Most of the presentations that I have made have been to the owners of IT Business Consultancies and to marketers. After seeing/hearing one of my presentations, the highly forward-thinking John Wood asked me to give a talk on the same topic to Derive’s Sales team. Challenged with giving Sales professionals tools to increase their customer reach, John is not satisfied only using the “standard” techniques and offerings that are commonplace in the IT Channel. He sees the current and future wave of social media and wants to get the Derive team ahead of the curve.

I attended, and made my “IT Business 2.0″ presentation in, a Derive Sales meeting, held yesterday (6/16/2009). I was thrilled to observe such attentive faces and active listening as I discussed the use of communities such as LinkedIn as a “living CRM” for business development and resource acquisition, the social-professional use of Facebook profiles and pages — including a “how-to” guide and responding to questions about appropriateness and methods of personal and professional information sharing — the power of twitter and micro-blogging, the reach of viral marketing through social sharing/bookmarking (especially to promote company — and/or company + partner — events and news), the use of other social networks (especially contextual and industry-specific networks), my Web 2.0 “chaos theory” (yes, “good chaos!”), etc. During and after the hour-long presentation, there was plenty of lively dialogue and were many questions. The time flew by… and I was barely able to scratch the surface! I felt that, both for the audience and for me, there was a hunger for more. I was right–at least 10 members of the Sales team asked me to come back and do a follow-up session. Before I could say that I’d be happy to approach John about scheduling another appearance, the next question from these Sales executives — of many different professional profiles, ages, etc. — was “when?”… this, meaning how soon can you (*I) do it?

John Wood knew the session would be very valuable for Derive’s Sales team and that they would have interest in the topic. However, when I told him that so many people approached me about a follow-up presentation, he was bowled over by their enthusiasm. “I’ve been in this business for more than 20 years…” John said to me. “In all that time, and after sitting through countless presentations to Sales, I’ve NEVER remembered this team, or any Sales team, asking for someone to come back again. CONGRATULATIONS.” (He followed this with a high-five-like handshake.) Always the cutting-edge marketer, now eager to adopt the principles of Web 2.0, John then said: “You should talk about what happened today at Derive on the Mitra Creative Blog and let everyone know about it. I encourage everyone in the Channel to engage Mitra to educate them on this important topic!”

I look forward to the next session for Derive — which we will schedule soon (in which I will speak about the nuts and bolts of permissions and privacy, more about the tactical use of contextual and vertical social networks, about Blogging, and about creating and implementing a corporate policy on Social Media use) — and to conducting more of these programs for other important IT Business Solution providers.

Mitra Creative is excited to announce our new Digital Video Production practice. The practice is led by filmmakers Joe Cantor and James Sapione–both of them highly-accomplished cinematographers/videographers, editors and sound recordists.

With this new discipline, Mitra Creative can provide corporations with superb quality intro. videos, video case studies, presentations, learning tools and more, and entertainment and media organizations and others with the very best of entertainment. These productions can be developed end-to-end, leveraging the new creative team, as well as Mitra Creative’s existing, award-winning talent pool which has, for the past four years, driven our communications, interactive design and development, and branding practices.

Please contact me (Karl Joseph Ufert, Mitra Creative’s President) at karlufert@mitracreative.com for more information, for a general quote or to discuss a specific project.

 (L to R: Karl Joseph Ufert, Mitra Creative; Eric Rabinowitz, the Nurture Institute; Dean Maire & Tim Freestone, enter:marketing)

Mitra Creative was asked to be part of a distinguished panel of experts on the subject of IT Channel marketing and communications at last week’s New York Chapter meeting of the International Association of Certified Microsoft Partners (IAMCP) (February 19). The event was held at the Microsoft office in midtown Manhattan.

Entitled “Marketing in a Down Economy”, it brought a packed room of Microsoft Partners who engaged in a lively discussion with the panelists which could have gone on for many hours past the allotted session time. Host Howard M. Cohen, President of IAMCP NY (Howard M. Cohen Corporate Copywriting & Consulting Services), invited me – Karl Joseph Ufert, Mitra Creative President/Co-Founder – to join Eric Rabinowitz, President and Co-Founder of the consulting, communications and training firm, the Nurture Institute™ (and leader of the monthly Microsoft Partner Essentials Marketing program Roundtables), and Dean Maire and Tim Freestone, Vice-Presidents of the IT-focused marketing and communications agency (with strong emphasis on Direct Marketing, among other services), enter:marketing, to share our knowledge and ideas.

Much of the discussion focused on:

• Integration of marketing campaigns across a VAR/solution provider’s entire organization from start to finish (including Sales, Marketing, Professional Services) and ensuring follow-up (value for campaign dollars).
• Maintaining marketing focus—speaking to your audience instead of about yourself.
• Utilization of straightforward marketing communications to maintain trusted advisor status with clients—leveraging your unique selling proposition.
• And, especially, the use of Social Media/Web 2.0 to reduce advertising costs and extend reach.

The event was covered by Michele Masterson of ChannelWeb (with contributions by Chad Berndtson). READ THE ARTICLE HERE.

(Howard M. Cohen, IAMCP NY President)

I had the opportunity to make the kickoff presentation at an important event on Web 2.0/3.0 for Business for the Long Island Software & Technology Network (LISTnet). The event was held on November 13, at the New York State Small Business Development Center on the campus of Long Island’s Farmingdale State College.

I spoke about the origins of Web 2.0 — Tim O’Reilly of O’Reilly Media coined the term back in 2005 — and delineated Web 2.0, and, thinking ahead, Web 3.0 platforms, that can be harnessed by IT Business professionals to more effectively build a living interactive dialogue with their clients, partners and the business community at large. These included Social Networks, Content-Managed Websites (built on licensed and open source platforms) and Blogs. I provided very detailed information about the ways that businesses can monetize these platforms and also extend their brand. This presentation was one slightly modified from another I gave in September and October for Microsoft Partners.

My fellow presenters at the event — both of whom are publishing and media veterans — Arthur Germain, Principal of Communication Strategy Group, and John McCormick, Chief Content Officer of the exciting, new, niche-focused social network, CIOZone, focused on context and the value of the content in social media and on direct application of the technologies to audiences and participants.

We were excited to learn that our talk was covered by Newsday and Long Island Business News. This undoubtedly demonstrates the buzz surrounding the topic for businesses both large and small.