Outrank.com

Last month, we announced we were joining forces with our Yodle NYC office on their Monthly IDEAs initiative. The project for the month was a community service undertaking where ProfitFuel and Outrank partnered with Ronald McDonald House Charities to provide “wish list” items to the Austin Ronald McDonald House.

We filled a truck load of household necessities like shower curtains, trash bags, cleaning materials, batteries, food storage containers and food items to help our community in need. The project was a success and we always being part of great causes like this! Looking forward to the next IDEA!

Author: Tara Cuccia

Some very exciting news came out of New York recently … the legalization of LGBT marriages, or more accurately and simply put – equality! Personally, I think it’s kind of sad we have to vote on and legalize something like this but I’ll shy away from being a Debbie Downer and keep it positive.

This year, Google has been celebrating their pride around the world at different parades and demonstrations. They have also partnered with musicians on the It Gets Better Project, aimed at putting an end to bullying against LGBTQ youth and providing resources for support and empowerment. Google has a strong LGBT Community as well as other groups that prove diversity in the workplace creates a successful organization that is well-rounded and intelligent enough to realize that being unalike promotes innovation.

Hearing what individuals at Google have to say on the subject was really heart-wrenching and inspiring. We applaud Google for being outspoken and showing their support!

Author: Tara Cuccia
I have no idea what the strategy is behind this thing. It did have a Smurf and some other thing tucked under each arm but I don’t know where they went. I could simply ask someone what’s going on. Surely, it’s part of some sort of sales competition but I like the mystery. I’ll listen around and try piecing together some clues … or I’ll simply just ask someone if the suspense starts to kill me.

This weekend the families of Outrank.com and ProfitFuel came together to enjoy burgers, snow cones and more for the Annual Family Picnic! This is one of the many traditions employees look forward to each year! It is an opportunity to introduce families to co-workers and enjoy some great summer activities!

This year the picnic took place at Gilleland Park in Pflugerville. This great location had a huge pavilion to give some protection from the sun and it was conveniently located next to a stream and swimming pool to give attendees different options to cool off.

Our resident expert chef was on hand creating made-to-order hamburgers and hot dogs. There was plenty of watermelon, chips and cookies to finish out the meal. We had a snow cone machine that worked non-stop to provide ice cold treats throughout the day.

Our little guests had plenty of activities to occupy their time. There was a face painter on site that created wonderful designs for kids throughout the day. There were also two babysitters available to keep the kids busy so the adults could mingle and have some fun with coworkers.

The event ended with a drawing for a variety of prizes ranging from beach towels and gift cards to a 19” LED TV. Everyone had a great time – and we are already looking forward to next year’s event!

Author: Tara Cuccia

Today we found out that we were purchased by Yodle to merge as the largest independent provider of local search marketing in the United States. We’ve received enthusiastic emails from David Rubin, previously ProfitFuel CEO, now Senior Vice President of Sales for Yodle, Louis Gagnon, Chief Product and Marketing Officer of Yodle, and Court Cunningham, CEO of Yodle. The emails outline the new general structure of the two companies merging and why they felt this was the best fit.

Of course, the driving factor is to increase value for customers by providing additional products. Yodle and ProfitFuel complement one another – together, we complete a fully integrated online marketing package to be reckoned with.

Beyond that, both companies agreed that this decision would increase career growth and development opportunities for employees. And last, but not least, they realized that the cultures were so similar that everyone involved in the preliminary discussions felt that much better about sharing this important news with their teams.

Everyone at ProfitFuel has always expressed a sincere interest in protecting our unique culture any time we’ve gone through changes due to our continued growth. That concern has always been addressed by upper management to the satisfaction of the entire team at ProfitFuel and Outrank. Along our path, management has reassured us that, with each new decision, they look at how the various elements fit into our family environment. The merger was certainly no exception as is evident in the meetings we’ve had today and emails we’ve received from all company heads.

Some statements from the introductory emails sent out companywide today:

So why did we pick Yodle? Here are the primary reasons:

A strong respect for our unique culture: It was exciting to talk to a leadership team that shares many of our values and understands our unique culture is at the core of everything we do. Yodle’s stated values overlap ours in a number of places – they express a complete commitment to winning, a deep respect for individuals and a desire to generate the best results for clients. And, I’ve seen for myself that they also believe in having fun! I feel confident that when we come together, these shared values will only accelerate our momentum.

The highest quality products in the industry: We received demos from everyone in the industry. Yodle without question has the strongest product suite. Yodle has a robust product set for the SMB including SEM, SEO, Display, Social and Websites.

The strongest management team we talked to: Yodle’s management team is excellent. They are incredibly competitive, data driven, care about their employees, and dedicated to client satisfaction. Jared and I got along with the team very well and we’re convinced our employees will be equally impressed.

-David Rubin, SVP Yodle (most recently ProfitFuel CEO)

To all Yodle/ProfitFuel Team members:

In my years as Head of Product at Monster Worldwide, I have participated in many acquisitions including the recent acquisition of Yahoo HotJobs. In most cases, the benefits of integrating the businesses involved significant organizational changes. Not this time… In fact, the complementarities between Yodle and ProfitFuel are deep and go well-beyond a single class of assets.

Both organizations developed a sophisticated optimization approach to different products. We share an evidence-based practice and philosophy.

Yodle developed a Go-to-Market model/system that enables high yield per rep. ProfitFuel enables high account productivity per rep.

Both leadership teams have built a result-driven culture of accountability and we share basic human values and vision for our employees.

-Louis Gagnon, CMO Yodle

Hi,

I wanted to follow up on David’s email and welcome all of you to Yodle. Leadership, teams and culture are the bedrock of any company. In my opinion, the leadership team at ProfitFuel is among the best I have met over my four years in the industry. David, Jared and all of you have built a great company together and have defined a culture of success and winning that permeates everything you do. More than anything this is what brought us together and what excites me about the announcement today.
-Court Cunningham, CEO Yodle

We’re all looking forward to the changes this will bring and are embracing a new journey and successful future.

Author: Tara Cuccia

One of the ways in which we engage our team is through our blogs. Blogging is a great way to share industry and company news and updates, recognize achievements and congratulate one another as well as joke around occasionally. Blogs give companies the opportunity to relate to what’s going on in their industry and make comparisons, form opinions and make predictions.

Blogging is a creative way to stay up to date and it is a valuable tool to be able to share knowledge and experiences with those outside of the company as well. Blogging is not only a great way to stay connected and form community networks, but also a great place to garner feedback from consumers and customers. User-generated content is extremely valuable to learn where you have room for improvement, what people need and therefore what you might look at developing down the road.

Not only is blogging an essential aspect of solidifying your company culture and forming a trustworthy online community of users but it is also something that can help with your own corporate online rankings by way of link sharing. A team member shares a blog post they found useful or funny either by emailing it to a friend or posting the link to their Facebook or Twitter page … and other people visit the blog and/or share it as well. The more views and shares you get, the better your ranking on the search engines because they algorithmically assume your sight is important and have received “votes”. The better your ranking, the more consistently search engines return you in results and the easier you are to be found … and hopefully services rendered.

Back to blogging … it’s very useful for various reasons, as I hopefully just made clear. Now, any time we talk about the internet, mobile usage has to be considered in the overall equation because it is so immensely popular and convenient. And we’re all about convenience in America but, more appropriately, in SEO. Search engine optimization. We optimize aything online that is relevant, ethical, and useful to your business. Optimization = convenience because if you’re optimized to be easily found online, you’ve won half the battle already. We’ve cut out the work for you AND your potential customer. We help the search engines find you by speaking their language and, in turn, speaking the same language as consumers. After all, their job is to provide the best solution to whatever consumers are looking for.

Say Jane is out having a coffee and is thinking about all the things she needs to do to get the house ready for her out of town guests coming next week. After she painted the extra bedroom she realized painting is no easy task and she doesn’t want to tackle the rest of the house. So she types “painters in austin” into her browser on her Smartphone. Within seconds, a few options show up on the front page of Google, including your business. After she clicks the link to your website and finds out some information about your services, she dials your number to talk about pricing and scheduling. New customer!

Let’s back up for a minute. We’re talking about blogging as relates to mobile media. The Mobile Mondays Column on Search Engine Land recently asked the question “Do Mobile Blog Templates Have Enough Substance for SEO?” The answer is yes.

As more online activity shifts to mobile devices, bloggers are becoming aware of the benefits of having mobile versions of their websites. As luck would have it, the developers of major blogging platforms recognized this, and stepped-in to provide default solutions for those wanting to serve-up content to a mobile audience without a lot of investment.

The column outlines some specifics as to what developers did to make default settings for mobile blogging solutions on platforms like Blogger, Wordpress and Posterous. Additionally, you’ll find best practices for managing your blog:

Best Practices For Mobile SEO
The good news is that all these platforms are taking a similar route, so best practices are easy to formulate. Here are a few factors to keep in mind as you manage your blog:

•Post titles are more important than ever, because they become a large portion of the visible content on your blog’s home page. Engines and users alike will be very dependent on your post titles to figure out what your content is about.
•Posts themselves are largely untouched, so there’s no technical need to write shorter posts. One might argue that mobile users will have a get-to-the-point attitude when it comes to mobile content. But my opinion is that commercial sites need to be brief (“Where’s that 1-800 number?”) whereas blogs are for readers, and readers, well, want to read. For more on this, check out my previous post on brevity versus mobile SEO.
•A suggestion specific to self-hosted WordPress bloggers (or anyone self-hosting a platform) would be to constantly maintain updates for your mobile plug-ins. Because these plug-ins rely on user agent lists, these lists have to stay updated to keep-up with new phones being released to the market. At minimum, you’ll want to update whenever you see a new wave of TV commercials for a hot new phone.

Author: Tara Cuccia

Team 1 -Scott Smith: Soul Salsa
Team 2 – Patricia Lewis: El Diablo
Team 3 – Patricia Lewis: Vaquero Verde
Team 4 – Sarah Odgers: Hoppin’ Toppin’
Team 5 – Heather Young: Kaboom
Team 6 – Johnny Gaunt: Hunka Hunka Burnin’ Love
Team 7 – Kevin Irsch: Save Me Serrano
Team 8 – Tammy Knapp: Jalapeno Ranch
Team 9 – Josh Garvin: G6 Salsa
Team 10 – Lynn Jauregui: Bulletproof
Team 11 – Kristin Wallner: Vida’s
Team 12 – Jason Howell: 3 Pepper Salsa
Team 13 – Jay Chappell: Salsa Fantasma
Team 14 – Scott Schoppert: Hot Salsa
Team 15 – Reid Mendez: El Gallo Rojo

Verde, roja, creamy, chunky, sweet, spicy, hot and every combination therein — we had our work cut out. It was a fun “job” munching on chips y salsa, deciphering ingredients, talking amongst ourselves and evaluating which ones we liked best and why.

Jay’s SALSA FANTASMA was pronounced the clear winner. As has become tradition, our resident culinary expert Jerry challenged Jay to a salsa throwdown! His first challenge happened back in February, after Jay and John of Team “O-Ring” won the ProfitFuel and Outrank 1st Annual Chili Cook-Off.

Once again, we wait to see who will reign supreme in the ProfitFuel and Outrank Kitchen Stadium.

In case you didn’t know — We had two volleyball teams this season, one made up of team members from our Superhero Sales Squad and the other joined together various Outrank and ProfitFuel Staff Members. Our teams were two and three when they headed into the playoffs on April 28th. We were hoping to see them both kill it in a single round elimination but unfortunately they became prey in the volleyball food chain. However, the opposing teams who did make it to the championship were at the top of the game, so our two teams did hold their own for the most part!

Win or lose, the moral of this story is that by teaming up outside of the office, our ProfitFuel and Outrank family builds relationships, increases morale and trust and develops a deepened bond and sense of responsibility toward one another. It’s one of the ways in which we create and sustain our unique culture. You’ll find, in many of the blog posts, the ways in which we incent, motivate, and have fun while driving sales higher and higher. That’s an energizing part of our culture and our Superhero Sales Heroes are naturals. However, extracurricular activities and team builders are a more casual and relaxed way to enhance company culture. If people feel relaxed they are more likely to share ideas and think creatively, adding a broader and heightened commitment to work.

Way to make things happen, guys! Good job! Keep winning!

How many companies would send you to the beach for doing your job? We’re not scamming! Our sales agents do their jobs so well that we’ve go a beach weekend planned for the top performers and they’re working hard for an amazing beach weekend!! A new contest was rolled out at the beginning of April for the Top 10 sales agents to earn a weekend retreat on the beach in Port Aransas.  The battle is on and the top contenders are vying for their spot in the sun!!

Winners will be treated to a room at the historic Tarpon Inn in Port Aransas, June 24 -26th. To make the weekend extra special – we have thrown in a deep sea fishing adventure while in town. Red Fish will be in season so it will be the perfect time to throw out a line and reel in the big one! If fishing is not your thing, winners will have the option to go on a shopping spree and then hit the beach to soak up the rays.

The weekend will conclude with a recognition dinner where winners will have the opportunity to share their stories from the trip. 

Winning will not be easy – the Top 10 will need to keep their spots throughout April and May. Agents not in the Top 10 will also have an opportunity to earn a spot through a wildcard drawing where they will earn tickets based on their performance throughout the two month span.

The agents will be joined by the Top Two Development Supervisors and a little birdie told us that a spot might open up for our staff as well.

Needless to say…now is a great time to be a part of the ProfitFuel team!! Come see what we’re about!

Author: Tara Cuccia

Congratulations to our Top March Performers in Sales and Client Services! Because of Outrank’s tremendous customer outreach efforts, both teams continue to grow in size to support our client base and product demand. Throughout Outrank’s rapid expansion our Top Performers have consistently hit their numbers and broken already impressive records.

Outrank realizes that one of the most effective ways to recruit and keep skilled and talented team members is to recognize and reward their successes. We not only want to keep our valuable team in our corner for the long haul but we also want to keep them happy by showing them that we appreciate their work, dedication, and positive attitude.    

Thank you all for your hard work and your helpful insights.