Faulkner County Biz Interview

Pleth and supporting tech related events like Barcamp Conway in Central Arkansas.

What is Pleth:
Pleth is an interactive agency co-founded by myself, Greg and Stephen Smart of Batesville.  We offer web design, application development, graphic design & print, social media consulting, and business class email outsourcing solutions. We have offices in Batesville, Jonesboro, and Conway.

How many employees do you have:
We presently have 8 people on our team, 2 of them are part time.

How long have you been in business:
I have personally been involved in this industry for over a decade.  We formed in 2004.

What technology trends are you seeing in small-medium sized business:
It’s hard to ignore the fact that social media, primarily Facebook and Twitter, have completely changed the way that small-medium sized businesses interact with their customers.  I think that trend will continue to evolve as more and more businesses and consumers adopt social media.  I haven’t seen recent statistics for social media usage in the United States but based on earlier usage statistics that I have seen you would be surprised how much time the average web user spends inside Facebook as opposed to surfing the rest of the web.  I think the important lesson to be taken from this trend is that not only does a business need a web presence, they must also have a social media presence as well as a strategy for management and interaction.  Another aspect of social media that is starting to really catch on is Geo-Social. Geosocial check-ins occur now on several social networks and in a nutshell they basically allow users to check in at venues, business, or any physical location on their wireless devices to share their locations with friends in their network.  This has huge potential for businesses moving forward and I feel that it is something that should be on all of our radar screens right now.

Another big trend that I am seeing from an insider standpoint is how interaction with the cloud has grown.  In the old days web content existed on corporate servers or co-located server farms, but when virtualization of server resources became a buzzword we started seeing a lot of content providers moving in the direction of the cloud to store and deliver their content in a more cost effective manner.  I have seen everything stored in the cloud from Email and business critical data to Digital Content like e-books, movies, etc.

What is “the cloud?”
I like to explain the cloud as internet based computing. Instead of having a single server with limited resources for storage, etc., the cloud presents an endless amount of scalable storage and resources on demand through virtualization.  Cloud usage is typically metered by usage so it can often times cut IT costs for small-medium sized businesses dramatically. Business critical data storage and Email Hosting are examples of two applications that we see a lot of businesses transitioning to these days to cut IT Overhead and increase their resources. I think the days of having an in-house server are probably limited.

How can a small business use Geo-Social?
There are tons of ways that businesses can interact w/ Geo-Social.  I have seen Fortune 500 companies leverage services like Foursquare, Gowalla, and Facebook Places to run some incredible promotions. I have even personally won items for checking into businesses in Central Arkansas.  I have even seen a hot dog vendor in Central Arkansas build a network of followers and alert them on a daily basis as to where he is located.  In my opinion, location based services present the most opportunity for small businesses to promote their business and build a community around their products and services.  My advice is to every small business I speak with is when they are putting together their strategy for social media that they spend a lot of time investigating the geosocial aspect as well. One other thing that I think is important to emphasize that as social media continues to grow in popularity and usage, having a presence alone is nothing without interaction, it’s for this reason that my company, along with several others in Central Arkansas provide social media consultation and coaching more or less to get businesses up to speed with the proper ways of interacting socially.