We converted their site into WordPress, a leading content management system, consolidated their blog, and added integrated social media features.

We also integrated whirLocal, our reputation management system that allows DeSantis to proactively gather reviews from their clients and share the reviews on social media sites like Facebook and Twitter.

Here is a screenshot of their new site.

Last week, Gary was a guest on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, where he spoke about his new book, The Thank You Economy and the power of one-on-one relationships in today’s economy.

If you missed the spot, which ran on March 9^th, I’ve pulled out a couple key points that I feel are essential for the future of any business in any market, large or small.

• Be more small town, more human. Have the corner store mentality – know what your customer wants and get it for him/her.

• The big-box store era is over and businesses will compete on relationships rather than strictly on pricing.

• People have a hunger for socialization and we have turned back the clock with our smart phones and social media platforms.

• Google will be the major player in social reviews and social searches.

According to Vaynerchuk, many businesses will be scared off by the lack of immediate, measurable ROI. But rest assured, those that prevail will come out with a bang in 2013-2015 and we will see some revolutionary new business models. Think Netflix vs. Blockbuster.

Click here to read more from this Mashable article about the release of Google Places.

For more information about whirLocal, check out the whirLocal website.

The Hotpot is run by you and your friends. You add friends whose opinion you trust and rate places like cafes, restaurants or hotels etc., Your search results will be listed based on the ratings you and your friends have given to the places. Seeing place recommendations based on your tastes and those of your friends across more Google searches will make results more relevant to you and maybe lead you to discover a new gem. If you don’t have Hotpot friends yet, you can invite them to share all the places they love with you by using the Friends tab on google.com/hotpot.

Check it out and give it a try.

I saw an article that caught my eye today.

What We Need to Win the Entrepreneurial Race

Welcome to the entrepreneurial race. President Obama declared we are now faced with the current generation’s “Sputnik moment.” How America responds to the marching orders for entrepreneurism will impact all of us. Success will require that we recognize the challenges and adapt to the demands. Most of all, it will require that we set our priorities straight, sacrifice and have patience.

[read the entire article here...]

Do we have what it takes?  I’d love to get your thoughts below.

• Merging Facebook fan pages with Facebook places pages.  At this point we are NOT recommending that you do this.  If you are doing any custom marketing on your fan page, the results can be disastrous and there is no Unmerge.
• Individual post insights – a great way to gauge your fan interaction.

Watch the video below;

Watch video live on Vpype Live Broadcaster

We’d love to hear your comments and questions.

“We’re excited to step into the digital marketing age with this new web site”, stated Jim Hobbs, owner of Hobbs Painting.  “This will be a great way to showcase our projects and demonstrate the professional results that our company provides.”

Be sure and check out  the helpful information about residential and commercial painting as well as concrete flooring solutions for garage and other flooring needs.  Also,  be sure and become a fan on Facebook.

Key project features include;

• built on the WordPress content management system with a custom design
• complete social media integration including custom designed Twitter, Youtube, and Facebook channels
• built in blog for articles
• online videos
• and more …

First, the good news: Based on its study of 1,500 Facebook users, ExactTarget concluded that 38% of online U.S. consumers “Like” (formerly “Fan”) a brand on the social networking site. And the average fan Likes nine different brands, giving you plenty of opportunity to find your way into potential customers’ news feeds.

Here’s the breakdown of why users might “Like” your brand, illustrated by the percentage of respondents who said that they use Facebook for the listed activity:

* 40% to receive discounts and promotions

* 39% to show my support for the company to others

* 36% to get a “freebie”

* 34% to stay informed about the activities of the company

* 33% to get updates on future products

* 30% to get updates on upcoming sales

* 29% for fun or entertainment

* 25% to get access to exclusive content

* 22% someone recommended it to me

* 21% to learn more about the company

* 13% for education about company topics

* 13% to interact

On the surface, some of these findings seem to conflict with the idea of users being resistant to marketing messages. But the real takeaway is that users like brands for a wide variety of reasons, and the mix of content you post to your Facebook Page should reflect that.

To read more, click here, to go go straight to Mashable.

At thirdRiver, we halp small to medium sized businesses launch, develop and manage their brands via Social Media. How can we help you?

When Chuck Mullin founded First Call Home Health in 2002, he had the desire to look beyond traditional home health and instead take a modern, holistic approach and look at the needs of the whole person. His goals were accomplished as he built a successful home Salem Oregon home health care company.  Now the company has recently debuted a new web site and online marketing initiatives after working with Third River, a Salem Oregon web design and marketing firm.

“With the mainstreaming of social media, blogging, and video, we felt like now was a great time to update our web site in order to better share the vision of holistic home health with a wider audience”, stated Jacob Mullin, administrator at First Call Home Health and Chuck’s son. “By providing tips, resources, and updates on a more regular basis, we can help more families as they experience the need for home health care.”

The new web site incorporates a blog, video Q&A, a newsletter, and full integration with the company’s social media profiles.
“We’re excited about the possibilities of connecting in new ways and building a wider audience via our newsletter, blog, Twitter, and Facebook”, added Jacob.

Sadly, the senior Mullin did not get to see the end result of all their efforts, as he became ill and passed away earlier this year. Fortunately his vision lives on as First Call Home Health continues to be a leader in holistic home health care in Salem, Albany, Corvallis, and the mid-Willamette valley.

Key project features include;

• built on the WordPress content management system with a custom design
• complete social media integration including custom designed Twitter, Youtube, and Facebook channels
• built in blog for articles and healthy living tips
• video marketing with interviews and FAQ videos
• email newsletter
• and more …

Screenshot:

With more than 100 years of combined legal experience, Black, Chapman, Webber & Stevens has literally helped thousands of people get the compensation they deserve. Realizing that their online marketing needed a facelift, they contacted Third River Marketing, a Salem Oregon internet marketing firm, to redesign their web site and implement modern law firm internet marketing strategies to help reach the online consumer.  The firm wanted to create a fresh, modern, inviting look for the firm’s web site that incorporated the company’s branding and colors.  They also wanted to increase search visibility on the major search engines and get started with social media marketing.

Features of the project include;

• brand new web site built on WordPress, a leading content management system used by Third River Marketing and thousands of other web developers around the world
• an integrated social media marketing strategy with a customized Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube marketing channels
• improved search optimization and search engine rankings
• over 50 video interviews to answer frequently asked questions that clients ask on a regular basis
• a custom landing page featuring a free special report called “Top 10 Mistakes That Can Wreck Your Oregon Accident Case”
• an extensive FAQ section and legal journal with answers to common questions and information articles
• a custom email newsletter and autoresponder series
• customized online forms to improve workflow, gather prospective clients information and to help determine if they have a case
• and much more…

Screenshot:

“I’m not sure I’ve ever told you the story of THE lowest point of my career. Laura and I drove from Chicago to Nebraska over a steamy hot 4th of July weekend in our $1200 1985 Honda Civic whose engine had just $$$ blown out 3 months before. We were buying gas on whatever fumes were left on our credit cards. I’d been demoted from my sales job to production manager at a tiny manufacturing company. Now I was earning zero sales commission. To try make up the difference I took home “outsourced assembly” projects from work.

My project that weekend was tiny screw assemblies. We took the box of parts with us and one of us would assemble while the other drove. We got paid 4 cents for each one. 5000 assemblies, 200 bucks. Woo-hoo!  In the middle of Iowa, our car engine started sputtering. Had to stop for the night. No money for a hotel. My brother in law knew some people in Cedar Rapids and we stayed at their house.  He made some comment like, “Hey I thought a young sales exec like yourself was supposed to be earning big commissions.” Bit my lip. Built screw assemblies and watched TV.

Took an extra day for somebody to fix the fuel filter. Had to call my boss & explain why I wasn’t coming into work that day. One more step closer to getting the boot.

Who’s gonna hire a sales guy who’s been at it for 2 years and hasn’t hardly sold anything? What engineering company is going to hire an engineer who’s left engineering and spent the last 2 years in sales?

DANG. THIS TOTALLY SUCKS. I felt totally, completely trapped.

Fast forward 6 months.

It’s 6:30 in the evening on a freezing cold January night in Chicago. Everyone else has gone home. There’s only 2 people in the office, me and my new boss Mike. It’s been a good sales day. I’ve just gotten my December check and it’s the biggest commission of my life.

I’m going to be late getting home from work. . . but Laura’s not going to be upset with me this time. I know that when I come in the office tomorrow there’s going to be more fresh hot sales leads waiting. More opportunities, more adventure.

The conversation Mike’s having with me is: “OK Perry, so what do we need to do to get you to stick around???”

In 180 days my life had done a complete 180.

I’m saying to myself: “Self, you and I sure could get used to this. Are you sure this is really happening?”

Yes, it was really happening. There were no words for the elation I felt. And it was only the beginning of a new and rewarding season. Of finally being useful to somebody, finding my groove, and digging myself out of the giant hole I’d created.

Last week I did a conference call with Drayton Bird, the great UK advertising legend. He said, “Good times breed bad habits. Bad times breed good habits.” How true.

It was at that low point in Iowa that I finally began to throw the useless cargo off the ship.

It didn’t *seem* useless at the time. But it was holding me back. When you begin to ask yourself the questions you’ve been afraid to ask, when you start listening to the right people, situations change. And they can change *fast*.

Some people are doing extraordinarily well right now. But admittedly, most people are wrangling with tight credit, reluctant customers and broken systems.

Now is the time to fix those systems. The marketplace is beckoning you to move from where you’ve been to something new… and it’s asking you to do it with existing resources.

The good news is, you aren’t confined to your existing knowledge. Almost every problem you need to solve has already been solved by somebody else, somewhere. Within the existing resources you have is some new configuration that offers 10X more value to others than what you’re doing now.

Within your reach is someone for whom your skills and your offerings are highly prized.

The other good news is, you only have to get about 5-10% of it perfect. A handful of the right ingredients can create a huge success story. The rest can wait.

And here’s something you can ABSOLUTELY take to the bank:

While the rest of the world roils in chaos and waits for “something to happen”, we proactive alchemists are quietly re-engineering our offerings, our systems and our priorities. We’re still reeling in customers because we’re focusing on the core essentials.

We’re not listening to the whiners. We’re not reading the morning paper. We’re rising up in the morning and focusing on what’s POSITIVE. We’re building on what’s GOOD.

Today is August 6. On February 6, 2011 you can look back on your 180 day 180. My friend, you win in the end. IF you ask yourself the right questions. IF.

Don’t be afraid of those questions. And don’t let anyone steal your victory. It will be yours to keep and celebrate forever.”

Wow….I hope you enjoyed that and were as inspired as was when I read that. I haven’t edited ONE word that Perry wrote…it was so powerful.

Staying stuck in the way you were doing business before this recession and HOPING the economy turns around and your business becomes profitable, viable, or just even fun again is not a strategy. I hope you’ll take action on what Perry had to say here: Embrace change, ask the right questions of the right people and TAKE action.

At thirdRiver, we do more than just web design and social media, we help businesses do 180′s…so, if you’re ready to throw your useless cargo off the ship and are ready to create new systems and processes for attracting clients…we’re here to help.

Here’s to an awesome 180 days!

If you’d like more information about Perry Marshall, you can check him out here, http://www.perrymarshall.com/ .

However, that’s where the two components of social media marketing come into play. And without an understanding of this, you’re dead in the water as soon as you hit a Web 2.0 domain.

The vast webspace comprised of “social media” and “Web 2.0” properties are actually, from a marketing perspective, two kinds of sites and there are, as of right now, over 2000+ of them:

1. Social Media for Networking

2. Social Media for LinkBuilding

In his book, the 7 Habits of Highly Successful People, Steven Covey recommends that we begin with the end in mind. That “habit” is just as salient in an off-line world as it is in the Social Media world. So, we encourage all of our clients to think about what results they want from social media marketing. Is it to brand you or your product? To bring more referral traffic? To help with search engine optimization?

Michelle goes on to say, “It’s important to have your goals prioritized too so you know exactly where you should focus your energies at any given time. Is branding (Networking) more important than SEO (Linkbuilding)? Is referral traffic (Linkbuilding) more important than branding (Networking)? ” The answers to that question will bring clarity and allow you to develop a cohesive approach to your internet marketing strategy. In addition, it will help you set an accurate online marketing budget.

So, can you do it yourself? Yes…but if you’re a small business owner you already have a full time job. You could also consider outsourcing your social media managment needs to a Social Media firm like thirdRiver.

In her blog, SearchAmelia, tommielee, had this to say about the Social Media Manager as a new job in the new economy:

“Many small and midsized business entrepreneurs, as witnessed in our workshops, do simply not have the time to learn how to build, manage and profile themselves in the Social Media circus. And a circus it is but… unfortunately not getting involved means “Not Mattering Anymore” and you WILL lose out and could face extinction because your competitors are either more internet savvy or understand the importance of engaging with customers on social media.

Just as a refresher for some and an eye opener for others, Facebook today is the third largest country (if it where a country) in population with a little under 500 million users, responsible for over 40 billion sign-ins per month and well over 500 billion human interactions. Twitter is a distant second, but is gaining momentum regarding interaction and messages send and ranks now as the 6th largest, traffic wise, website in the world while YouTube, not strictly a Social Medium, is adding 25 hours of video per minute, 24 hours a day, as people and businesses getting into high gear of personal branding.

Foursquare, Flickr (yes, even them), Google Buzz are gaining traction in the circus and with more than 220,000 iPhone apps of which a good 20% are geared towards social media, as well as the development of social Android apps, the forest is growing into a jungle where trees are becoming more difficult to uniquely identify.

What tools to chose? Which networks to follow? How much time is needed to maintain the social media status? How to push the products and services in the social marketplace? All good questions and this is where the Social Media Manager Job description and thus services come into play. The job has grown exponentially in the last several months and consequently demand and job open positions is staggering. One small Job market website alone has over 17,000 Social Media Manager job openings listed.

A very recent survey shows that 91.5% of all small and medium sized businesses are considering a Social Media Manager while 85% who already have a social media manager have seen more than abnormal growth. These are staggering numbers if one realizes that there are over 30 million small businesses in the US alone. Many small businesses share a Social Media Manager and consultancy fees totaling $10,000 per month for a manager are not abnormal. Even if one considers that only one in 50 small businesses considers a Social Media Manager to take care of their social media needs, this would mean that 600,000 companies would be in a need to hire about 200,000 Managers in the next 3-6 months.”

To read the entire article, click right here.

As a small business owner, you are well aware you cannot NOT have a presence on Social Media sites…whether they be networking or link building sites. And as we’ve already said, “have your goals prioritized so you know exactly where you should focus your energies at any given time. Is branding more important than SEO? Is referral traffic more important than branding?”

If you have any questions, shoot us an email or just pick up your iPhone, Droid or ….gasp…landline phone…. and call us…we’d love to help YOU.

Just a little over a month ago, Google announced its new search index: Caffeine. For those who have yet to do their homework on the announcement, the first thing to know about Caffeine is that it is not a rankings algorithm update; rather it is a new indexing system. According to the Google blog,

Today, we’re announcing the completion of a new web indexing system called Caffeine. Caffeine provides 50 percent fresher results for web searches than our last index, and it’s the largest collection of web content we’ve offered. Whether it’s a news story, a blog or a forum post, you can now find links to relevant content much sooner after it is published than was possible ever before.

Some background for those of you who don’t build search engines for a living like us: when you search Google, you’re not searching the live web. Instead you’re searching Google’s index of the web which, like the list in the back of a book, helps you pinpoint exactly the information you need.

So why did we build a new search indexing system? Content on the web is blossoming. It’s growing not just in size and numbers but with the advent of video, images, news and real-time updates, the average webpage is richer and more complex. In addition, people’s expectations for search are higher than they used to be. Searchers want to find the latest relevant content and publishers expect to be found the instant they publish.

To keep up with the evolution of the web and to meet rising user expectations, we’ve built Caffeine. The image below illustrates how our old indexing system worked compared to Caffeine:

Our old index had several layers, some of which were refreshed at a faster rate than others; the main layer would update every couple of weeks. To refresh a layer of the old index, we would analyze the entire web, which meant there was a significant delay between when we found a page and made it available to you.

With Caffeine, we analyze the web in small portions and update our search index on a continuous basis, globally. As we find new pages, or new information on existing pages, we can add these straight to the index. That means you can find fresher information than ever before—no matter when or where it was published.

Caffeine lets us index web pages on an enormous scale. In fact, every second Caffeine processes hundreds of thousands of pages in parallel. If this were a pile of paper it would grow three miles taller every second. Caffeine takes up nearly 100 million gigabytes of storage in one database and adds new information at a rate of hundreds of thousands of gigabytes per day. You would need 625,000 of the largest iPods to store that much information; if these were stacked end-to-end they would go for more than 40 miles.

We’ve built Caffeine with the future in mind. Not only is it fresher, it’s a robust foundation that makes it possible for us to build an even faster and comprehensive search engine that scales with the growth of information online, and delivers even more relevant search results to you. So stay tuned, and look for more improvements in the months to come.

Why is Google Caffeine good for me?

Underline it, highlight it, draw circles around it, asterick’s, star it…whatever …here’s the thing…fresh content is more important than ever! In a world of real-time, right now, in the the moment results brought to Internet users from Facebook,  Twitter, Foursquare, et al…. Google has to pay attention to providing most up to date results, especially if they want to stay atop the two social media giants

SEOBoy has this to say about what you should do:

* Sitemaps – As Google more frequently indexes information, make sure you’re updating and resubmitting your sitemap. For en e-commerce client who regularly adds products to their site, I like to generate a map 2x a month.

* New Content – I can’t stress this point enough. The more unique, fresh, and relevant content you have on your site, the better you’re going to perform in search. Managing a website is not easy. If you want to be an authority on a topic or product, and thereby rank better, you have to prove your worth with great content. There is no such thing as setting up a site and sitting back while the rewards roll in.

* More Activity: Not only will you need to generate more content on your website, but in order to succeed in the world of Caffeine, you’ll need to be active on the real-time sites as well, which means Twitter, Facebook, etc.

This last point leads me to think that Caffeine could actually bring some huge changes to the SEM/PPC industry. If you’re already a client of the third river marketing, then you already know we’re ahead of the “Google Caffeine” curve by utilizing WordPress as a CRM platform because it allows you, as a client, to easily make quick changes to your website and add fresh, relevant content very quickly. In addition, we’ve long advocated using your website as the HUB for all your social media, which is why we rarely, if ever design a site that does not incorporate and link to a clients’ Facebook, Twitter and YouTube accounts.

Web 2.0 is all about being where the people are and engaging and interacting. Social Media is here to stay and just as a company as large and far reaching as Google has had to adapt their business model to it….your business needs to adapt to it as well.

If you have any questions about this or the whole idea of “Social Media Management”, feel free to reach out. We’re here and ready to help.

Sources: Official Google Blog, SE O Boy

At the Battles of Concord and Battle Road in Massachussetts, the British met a surprising militia formation of American farmers. The Redcoats marched in plain view while colonial minutemen hid behind every house, tree and fencepost.

The score: Americans lost 93, but the British lost 273. It was a humiliating start to a war they would eventually lose.

As my friend Perry Marshall would say….that’s Guerrilla Warfare, my friend. Traditional warfare is “playing by the rules,” but Guerrilla warfare means re-defining the rules, even as the game is being played. It’s tossing conventional wisdom out the window and becoming your opponent’s unseen enemy.

Every week I talk to people who are sick and tired of playing by the rules, and not winning nearly as much as they could or should.

They’re sick of pulling that black checkbook out of their top desk drawer, giving money to some media rep and not knowing if that money is coming back, when it’s coming back, or how they’ll ever know.

But the game is shifting…and the battlefield is CHANGED. Are you ready?

The amount U.S. companies spend marketing themselves on social networking sites like Facebook is expected to grow from an estimated $4.5 billion last year to nearly $38 billion by 2015, according to a new report from Borrell Associates Inc.

More than 1.5 million local businesses participate in social networks, and they accounted for about half of all spending on social-network marketing last year, the report said.

While it can be a lot of fun (and silly) on a personal level to be social and to keep up with friends on Facebook and other similar sites, from a business perspective, you really should decide how to be intentional about who you connect with and how you interact.  I thought I’d share just a few thoughts about things that we have done that has made a big difference in our business and, most importantly, has brought us new leads and buyers.

1. Decide what you want to be known for and what your potential connections want to hear;  this determines what you put on your profile(s), who you connect with, and what type of content you post.  For example, one of the things we like to be known for is that we’re passionate about using WordPress.  WordPress is the platform that we build almost all of our web sites on (including ours).  Subsequently, I have that in my various profiles.

2.  Use tools to find people who need your expertise;  One of the tools we use all the time is Twitter Search.  You can search, real time, for conversations happening on Twitter around your area of expertise.  For example, we have a query setup in Twitter Search that monitors people looking for help with WordPress.  Here is a recent screen shot;

The two highlighted questions represent an opportunity to demonstrated our WordPress expertise and potentially generate a lead for our business services.  You or an assistant can monitor this and respond very quickly since this is real time. Imagine the power of getting an answer almost immediately. This strategy alone has resulted in a lot of work for our company.

3. Add yourself to directories or groups; Another way to be intentional about who you connect to on the social networking sites is to use directories and groups.  For example, consider joining Twellow.com, the Twitter Yellow Pages.  Or, consider joining, or even better, creating a group on Linkedin.

4. Create a Facebook fan page for your business;   We do a lot of speaking on the topic of social networking to business groups.  One of the things we always do is ask who in the room has various different profiles such as Facebook, Linkedin, and Twitter.  While almost everybody in the room has a Facebook profile, many fewer people have a fan page.  Having your own fan page is a great way to see people who have ‘raised their hands’ and said they like your company.  You can then be very specific about the messages and content you post on the fan page, making it all about your business.

These are just some of the ways you can be intentional about social networking (or as I like to call it social media marketing) to generate new leads.  Be intentional, and it will pay off.

###

Tim Fahndrich is the co-founder of the Third River, an Oregon-based Internet Marketing company.    He is passionate about people, marketing, and technology and loves helping businesses and organizations harness the power of the web. You can follow Tim on Twitter here or contact him at 503.581.4554.

Whether you are an experienced business owner or marketing professional or you are just starting out, NOW is the time to harness the power of social media marketing.  Small business experts around the country agree: social media marketing is one of THE most important things that small businesses should be doing RIGHT NOW!

When: June 15th, 2010

Where: Chemeketa Center for Business & Industry

Time: 9am – 4pm

Are you using social media marketing to grow your business?  Join speakers Tim Fahndrich,  David Chandler, and others for a hands-on workshop to help you turn your passion into profits!

By the end of our seminar, you’ll know how to;

• Create professional looking web sites that blow away your competition and turn visitors into warm leads
• Find buyer keywords that your competitors are not targeting on the search engines and how this could dramatically increase your conversion rate
• Harness search engine optimization (SEO) to get found on the first page of Google and dominate the local search results
• Use Social Media sites like Twitter and Facebook to build the “know, like and trust” factor and turn contacts into cash
• How to tap into a huge audience that is hungry for your message by using Youtube and online video
• Little known tricks that can turn your web site into a money making machine
• Follow-up techniques that we can almost guarantee your competitors are NOT using that will blow your clients away
• … and more

PLUS, you’ll also learn;

• How location based social media marketing and mobile marketing are changing the game, AGAIN, right in front of us.

You’ll also receive the following valuable add-on bonuses;

• a complete workbook of the presentations
• an analysis of your existing web site and modern marketing ‘grade’
• networking time
• purchase the complete video of the event for just $47

Who should attend?

• small business owners
• marketing managers
• business professsionals
• hobbyists
• network marketers

Limited to 75 attendees

Cost:

Early Registration by June 7th: $97  (bring additional guests for just $47)

After June 7th:  $147

Call 503.581.4554 or click the button below to register today!

Intentional word-of-mouth marketing is a great way to generate more leads

As business owners we can all generally benefit from more traffic and leads coming in the door or to our web site.  How can we generate more leads?  How about being more intentional about word-of-mouth referrals?

Most business owners will tell you that referrals account for the bulk of their new leads.  I have people tell me that all the time. Ok, that is great!  But, it can get better!  Here’s how;

1. Be intentional about referral systems; Instead of just ‘letting it happen’ …

• Setup marketing systems that keeps your name top of mind to your existing clients
• Create a client loyalty or rewards program
• Look for intentional referral, networking, or joint venture partners (which I’ll talk about in more detail in another article)
• ASK! for the referral … a step so many of us forget

2.  Engage casual referrals to become leads;  Many times when you ask a friend or colleague for a referral, you might receive a couple names to check out.  When this happens to a prospective client of yours … what do you do to engage them and turn them into a lead?  A great place to start is on your web site.  When I hear people talk about all the referrals they get, I often ask them “Yes, but do you know how many you are missing?”.   If you’re not offering an opportunity to connect or engage with you … you might miss them forever.

We’ll talk more about specific ways to do this in future articles.

###

Tim Fahndrich is the co-founder of the Third River, an Oregon Internet Marketing company.    He is passionate about people, marketing, and technology and loves helping businesses and organizations harness the power of the web. You can follow Tim on Twitter here or contact him at 503.581.4554.

What are the 5 strategies?

1. Generate more leads: What are you doing to generate more traffic (online and off) and leads for your business?  How are you getting more people to notice your company and raise their hand to say “yes, I’d like to know more?”  Until they become an actual lead, they are just suspects.

2.  Increase your conversion rate:  You can have all the leads in the world, but if you never convert them into a buyer, you will forever have hobby, not a business (and I might add, an expensive hobby at that).  What are you doing to increase your conversion and turning leads into buyers?

3.  Increase the buying frequency:  How many times does your average customer buy from you in a given month, year, etc?   You’ve probably heard the phrase “anybody can sell something once, but getting the repeat buyer is the key”.   What are some ways that you turn buyers into repeat buyers?

4. Increase the average dollar sale:  Have you ever bought something on impulse that was strategically positioned at the checkout counter?  I know I have?  Why, because the retailer knows how to increase the average sale by upselling.  What are some ways in your business that you could increase the amount of money your customer spends on average?

5. Increase profit margin: Do you know what products or services contribute the most profit to your bottom line?  There might be some areas of your business that you need to eliminate, and others that you need to increase so that your profit margin can go up, even if it is just a few percentage points.

What happens if you make small improvements in each of these areas?  Well, let’s look at an example:

Wow!  In this simple example, when you increase all five of these components by just 25%, you increase your profit by 305%!

So how is this done?  Over the next month or so we will be talking about 31 specific strategies to help you in each of these areas.    So be sure to stay tuned and we’d love to hear your comments and questions as well.  These are all great marketing and business makeover strategies.

If you’d like help with a marketing makeover, be sure to give us a call.  You can reach Tim Fahndrich @ 503.581.4554 or David Chandler @ 503.816.6350.

Staged to Sell knows home staging. They stage over 150 properties each year in the greater Portland area.  Staged To Sell owns a vast collection of beautiful furniture, art and accessories ranging in style from formal traditional to urban chic. Staged To Sell prides itself on it’s fine reputation for excellent customer service, quality work, and competitive pricing with payment options.

Working with The Third River, Inc, they now have a brand new web site that allows them to manage themselves by publishing short home staging tips and showcasing home staging projects and success stories.  Michelle recently tweeted her first tweet and wrote her first blog post using the new web site.

Platform:  WordPress

Key Features:

• Content Management System
• Dynamic drop-down menus
• search engine friendly
• branded Social Media marketing channels
• Viral Social Media marketing loop
• Custom WordPress theme
• New marketing video
• Easy navigation

Screenshot:

When we started out with the marketing makeover, we had several distinct goals;

• update Matt’s logo, branding and web site
• improve search results and overall visibility online
• create an improved social media marketing strategy and coordinated branding approach
• set up systems to create more leads and more referrals
• position Matt as the fun, hip wedding entertainer that he his (but that his old branding did not reflect)

We unveiled the makeover last week when we hosted the Salem Area Chamber of Commerce Greeters. Thank you to everybody who attended.  I think it is safe to say everybody had a good time.

Here is a screenshot of his old site:

And here is a screenshot of his new website, live now at OregonWeddingDJs.com:

We worked with Signworks of Oregon to create new branding.  We wanted to create a new look that was hip and created a ‘nightclub’ and entertainment feel immediately.  We’re really pleased with the result.   You can see the new logo below;

We also had a new publicity photo taken by Cherie Renae, a Salem photography studio.  She did a great job capturing Matt’s fun and playful side.  Here is the picture we used on his new site;

This marketing makeover really allowed us to demonstrate the depth of services that we can provide for our clients.  It had a lot of features, including;

• new branding and photos
• custom built web site, built on the WordPress platform
• marketing video
• search engine optimization (this is an ongoing thing that we’ll be working on with Matt)
• Q&A marketing system
• new or revamped Social Media Marketing including Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube channels
• Twitter and Facebook marketing system designed to provide value and get more leads
• radio show featured wedding experts
• ability to broadcast weddings live over the internet for those not able to attend  the wedding
• lead generation tools
• and more…

A big thanks goes out to the team at Signworks of Oregon, Cherie Renae, and of course Matt Bixby.

If you’d like your own marketing makeover, give us a call at 503.581.4554.   We handle marketing makeovers from small to extreme and everything in between.

###

Tim Fahndrich is the president of The Third River, Inc., an Oregon Internet Marketing company.    He is passionate about people, marketing, and technology and loves helping businesses and organizations harness the power of the web. You can follow Tim on Twitter here or contact him at 503.581.4554.

We’re so excited to be able to host the Salem Area Chamber of Commerce Greeters tomorrow morning and unveil the marketing makeover we’ve been working on for Matt’s Entertainment.  Come join the party!  Matt will be there with Friday morning ‘get up and go’ music, and Kurt Spingath will be serving his amazing Belgian Sugar Waffles.

There’s a lot to do yet, so I need to get back to work.  We hope to see you there!

Special thanks go out to Signworks of Oregon and Cherie Renae Studios for their contribution to the project.

###

Tim Fahndrich is the president of The Third River, Inc., an Oregon Internet Marketing company.    He is passionate about people, marketing, and technology and loves helping businesses and organizations harness the power of the web. You can follow Tim on Twitter here or contact him at 503.581.4554.

The last couple of days we’ve been working on the following main areas;

1.  Branded social media setup;   One of THE most important things that businesses should be doing in today’s marketplace is building a social media marketing strategy.  We believe in taking an integrated and branded approach for our clients, so we’ve been setting up new social media channels for Matt including Twitter and Youtube that will connect his brand with his audience, both prospect and clients, and allow him to continue building the all important “Know, like, and trust” factor.

2. Local search;  As part of his makeover, we’ve done some important research to find local keywords that people are using in Matt’s industry.  A local search keyword is the ‘what’ and the ‘where’ that somebody might be using to find his company.  A good example would be ‘Salem Oregon wedding dj’.

Did you know that over 40% of all online searches have local intent?  That means that people are using the ‘what’ and the ‘where’ to find local businesses to connect with.  With this in mind, we are working on several ways to get Matt listed on the front page of Google for these local search keywords.  This can take some time, but we’re hoping to have a listing or two on the front page by Friday.

3. Radio show; One of the ‘out of the box’ ideas we’ve brought to the table for Matt is to have is own wedding radio show.  We want to position him as an expert in his industry (which he is) and provide a lead generation tool.  When we presented Matt with the idea of having his own show , his first thought was “What am I going to talk about?”.   Content creation is always a concern, but here’s how we’re approaching it with Matt.  Instead of feeling like he has to provide all the content, he is going to be inviting local wedding vendors, such as videographers, photographers, caterers, etc. to be guests on his show.  He will simply do the interviewing, but the cool thing is that his name and his brand will always be in front of the listening audience.  His listeners will gain valuable ideas, best practices, and more about how to have a great wedding, and Matt will get new leads.  With the show, people will be able to tune in live and also subscribe to the podcast via iTunes.  Pretty cool, huh!

Well, we still have a lot to do by Friday morning … but this has been fun so far!  Hope to see you Friday!

###

Tim Fahndrich is the president and Chief Relationship Officer of The Third River, Inc., an Oregon Internet Marketing company.    He is passionate about people, marketing, and technology and loves helping businesses and organizations harness the power of the web. You can follow Tim on Twitter here or contact him at 503.581.4554.

Today we are working on two main areas;

1.  Video Creation;   One of the most effective ways to engage with your online audience and to create better search engine rankings is with the use of video.  Today we’re working on a short marketing video for Matt that focuses on his wedding clients and their guests having a great time at the wedding.  We’ll be able to post this video on Matt’s new web site, YouTube, and other sites.

Here’s some interesting statistics about online video ads according to a recent study:

• 80% of web users have seen an online video ad
• 52% took action after viewing the ad
• 31% visited the advertisers web site
• 22% searched for additional info about the product or service
• 15% visited the advertisers store or place of business
• 12% made a purchase
• PLUS, 16% talked to friends and family about the product / service
• 9% forwarded it or shared it with their friends and family

Powerful?  Definitely!

2. Final design decisions;  Over the weekend we took the layout that we had decided on last week and created some mockup designs of the new web site and what it would look like with Matt’s new branding and color styles.  This allows him to visually see it all in place before we actually start the final design process for the web site code.  Together we selected the best look and now we’re off to final coding.

Oh … the photo session was today; We’re really excited to see the new publicity photos from Cherie Renae of Cherie Renae Studios.  They got together today for a photo shoot.  Thanks Cherie!

Whew!  It’s starting to really come together … stay tuned for more… and mark your calendars for Greeters, April 9th, at the Northern Lights Theater Pub, 8:30am for the unveiling.

###

Tim Fahndrich is the president and Chief Relationship Officer of The Third River, Inc., an Oregon Internet Marketing company.    He is passionate about people, marketing, and technology and loves helping businesses and organizations harness the power of the web. You can follow Tim on Twitter here or contact him at 503.581.4554.

Today we are working on three main areas;

1.  Layout;   One of the main things people think about when doing a new web site is the design.  What is it going to look like?  What will the layout be?  Here are some of the questions we typically ask our clients when doing a full-blown web site;

1. • What are some of your favorite web sites?  Why?
   • Do you have a particular style or theme you are looking for?
   • What types of information do you want to include on the site?
   • Do you have a preference for the layout of the header or logo, menu, body of the page, etc?
   • Would you like a sidebar column?
   • What do you want in the background?

However, as important as these layout-related questions are … we believe that they pale in comparison to this important question – “What do you want the web site to do?“  You see at the end of the day, it’s not really about the web site design at all.  Yes, we all want it to look good, and we make sure that it does … but it is more important that the web site serves a marketing purpose and causes the customer to take action.

We have seen so many people get caught up in the exact details of what a web site looks like … when in fact we should be spending our energy in the marketing aspects of getting visitors to the site, and then turning those visitors into leads (or connections), leads into buyers, buyers into repeat buyers, and repeat buyers into raving fans … that go on to tell a lot of other people about your business.

Today as we began thinking about Matt’s needs, his re-branding efforts, and what he wants to accomplish with his site, we did some searching for some website ‘themes’ that would work for his needs.  We found a great option and sent it off to Matt to get his feedback.  He and his wife Kim reviewed it and both of them loved it.  So, what we’ll be doing from here is to begin customizing it with Matt’s new branding, colors, and specific needs for his site.

2.  Content;  One of the things we’ve asked Matt to come up with is the top questions his prospects and clients ask.  So, Matt has been busy coming up with the questions and the answers.  We’re going to be using those in a variety of ways on his site.  We also began the discussion today about pictures and videos … what does he have in his media library right now that could be used on the site?

For our clients that don’t have access to good media files of their own, there are a ton of great resources online.  Our favorite photo resource is iStockPhoto.com.  For audio, we like either iStockPhoto.com or AudioMicro.com.

3. Photo Shoot; We were excited to be able to schedule Matt for his publicity photo shoot with Cherie Renae of Cherie Renae Studios.  Cherie takes wonderful photos and we can’t wait to see how they turn out!  We’ll be using his new publicity photo on Matt’s new web site, his marketing materials, social media profiles, and more.  Thanks Cherie!

Ok, that’s it for now.  More to come …

###

Tim Fahndrich is the president and Chief Relationship Officer of The Third River, Inc., an Oregon Internet Marketing company.    He is passionate about people, marketing, and technology and loves helping businesses and organizations harness the power of the web. You can follow Tim on Twitter here or contact him at 503.581.4554.

Today we are working on three main areas;

1. Finalizing the branding;   We have new branding!  The design team at Signworks of Oregon, John and Jeff, did a great job working with Matt to finalize the branding including a new logo and color style for Matt’s Entertainment.  It was important to Matt to convey a fun, contemporary brand that utilized modern colors, look and feel, and a clear sense of what he provides … and we are all very excited with what we ended up with. (Can’t wait to share)
2. Homework for Matt;  Yes, we do give out homework when we begin a marketing project. Why? Because we feel like it is important to get inside our client’s minds and that they know their business much better than we do … so we try to bring out some key concepts and guidelines for content that will be used on the web site.  So yes, Matt has been busy!
3. Domain setup;  Yesterday we purchased a keyword-based domain name, and today we set it up with a hosting account.  A domain name is your online address (ie yourname.com), and a hosting account is where your web site files (pages, pictures, forms, etc) are located.  Setting up the domain with a hosting account makes the web site accessible to the world.  BUT, we can’t tell you where it is yet … you’ll have to wait until April 9th.

Stay tuned to this channel…

###

Tim Fahndrich is the president and Chief Relationship Officer of The Third River, Inc., an Oregon Internet Marketing company.    He is passionate about people, marketing, and technology and loves helping businesses and organizations harness the power of the web. You can follow Tim on Twitter here or contact him at 503.581.4554.

Today is day one of the Extreme Marketing Makeover project that we are doing for Matt’s Entertainment, an Oregon wedding entertainment company. We notified Matt yesterday that he had won, and to say that he was excited is, well, an understatement.

Today we are working on three main areas;

1. Discovery;   We like to get to know our clients and their business before we start the project.  Going through a set of marketing interview questions, we discover key services/products, strengths, and opportunities that a business has.  This is the foundation of what we’re doing and helps us formulate a marketing plan that will have the most impact for the client.
2. Research;  We took the information that Matt gave us above and did some keyword analysis and research.  Keywords are the search words and phrases that people use to do a search on Google, Yahoo, Bing, and other search engines.  The analysis involves looking at the volume of searches, the number of search results, and the makeup of the search results.  What we end up looking for is a “buying” keyword that also has a domain name available.  The more defined a keyword is, the more qualified the search is.    We selected a domain for Matt’s Entertainment and will announce it on April 9th.
3. Branding; Actually, we began the branding discussion yesterday almost immediately after we announced the winner.  Moving forward on the marketing web site that we will be building hinges on having the logo and color style in place, so we got on a conference call with Matt as well as John over at SignWorks of Oregon and began mapping out what we wanted the new look to be like.  In Matt’s case, he has recently gone through a personal “image makeover”, working with an image consultant.  So now it is perfect timing for this “Marketing Makeover”.  We set goals of creating new branding that is modern, contemporary, and hip to fit into this new image.  We expect to have the new logo and colors in place by the end of today.

That’s what we’re doing for day one.  We’re really excited about this project and the impact it will have on Matt’s business.  We’ll be keeping you posted … so stay tuned.

###

Tim Fahndrich is the president and Chief Relationship Officer of The Third River, Inc., an Oregon Internet Marketing company.    He is passionate about people, marketing, and technology and loves helping businesses and organizations harness the power of the web. You can follow Tim on Twitter here or contact him at 503.581.4554.

Update 3/29/10: We have a winner!  Matt’s Entertainment of Albany.  Be sure to follow our Makeover Updates here

Is your business (or one that you know) in need of a marketing makeover?   The Third River, Inc. is excited to announce the Extreme Business Marketing Makeover: Salem Edition program!

Why are we doing this? We’re hosting the Salem Area Chamber of Commerce “Greeters” on April 9th, 2010.  In order to fully showcase the range of our services, we need more time than the 15 minutes allotted at Greeters.  So, we’d like to bless one local company with a complete marketing face-lift designed to help grow their business and showcase the range of services we can provide.   We will unveil the new look and marketing strategies at Greeters on April 9th.

If you are selected, here is what you’ll receive;

• A new company logo and color style (provided by Sign Works of Oregon)
  • PLUS, Sign Works is throwing in 500 business cards and 250 postcards with your new logo!
• A new keyword domain address and free hosting for 1 year
• A semi-custom marketing web site branded for your company, including
  • your new logo and color style
  • up to 5 pages of content
  • a built-in blog
  • integration with social media
  • a lead generation form to capture email addresses
  • easy-to-use content editing system which allows you to easily change the web site
• Social media marketing package
  • Branded Twitter profile and marketing package
  • Facebook Fan page
  • Linkedin Profile
  • Viral marketing loop
  • YouTube channel
• A new publicity photo for the owner(s) (provided by Cherie Renae Studios)
• Local search optimization for your primary keyword and 2 secondary keywords
• Local directory listings (ie Google Local, Yahoo Local, Bing Local)
• A short <2 minute video showcasing your business
• Your own broadcasting station
  • internet radio channel
    • one audio interview turned into a podcast
  • live internet TV channel
• A social media press release
• A mobile marketing campaign

Co-Sponsors:

Terms & Conditions:

• You must be a current member of the Salem Area Chamber of Commerce,  Salem Business Builders, or Keizer Chamber of Commerce to apply
• The winner will be chosen by The Third River, Inc. based on a number of criteria.
• You must be able to be present at Greeters on April 9th.
• This is not a custom “web design”.  We will use our experience and marketing best practices to build a marketing web site and integrated marketing strategies designed to help you grow your business.
• You must be available for an initial interview on or around March 29th and be able to work with our marketing team in a very timely manner between March 29th – April 9th.
• This will not replace your existing web site, unless you choose to do so after the unveiling on April 9th.
• By your nomination, you give The Third River, Inc. permission to use your name, company name and brand in the marketing makeover and all related marketing efforts done by The Third River, Inc.

Timeline:

• Nominations will be received through Friday, March 26th, 2010.
• The selected company will be announced on Monday March 29th, 2010.
• Between March 29th and April 9th, our marketing team will work with the selected company to design and implement the Business Marketing Makeover.
• The Marketing Makeover will be unveiled during Greeters on April 9th, 2010.

As their business grew, they knew that they needed a web site but couldn’t seem to find the time to get it done.  So they hired The Third River, Inc., a Salem web design company, to design and build a web site.  Their two primary objectives are 1) showcase the services they provide and 2) showcase local coupons from their advertisers.

Because the coupons will change each month, they needed a content management system that allowed them to change the coupons out quickly and easily.  We selected WordPress for the job because of it’s flexibity and ease of use.

We also setup an email marketing program for them that allows customers to sign up to receive an email each month when new coupons are available.  Coupons are currently on the site from merchants in Salem, McMinnville, Sherwood, and Newberg.

Platform:  WordPress

Key Features:

• Content Management System
• Drop-down menus
• Ability to click on coupons and print out just the coupon
• Email Newsletter
• Contextual sidebar (allows for different sidebar items depending on where the user is in the site)
• An ongoing maintenance program to keep things updated

Screenshot:

While we were at it, we also built a new web site for the lawn care company too!

So when I was approached over the holidays about a new company called ShopBest.com, I decided, reluctantly, to take a look at it in detail and see if it was just another shiny little object passing over my desk, or if actually passed my “Opportunity Filter” and was something that I felt I could share with others in my circle of influence.

>>>>> If you are just ready to start getting cash back on your online purchase, go now to ShopBest.com <<<<<< (Please note, this is an affiliate link.  If you make a purchase through the link, we will get paid)

I must admit, at first glance I was not interested in the least.  ShopBest.com looked like another ‘me too’ product offering in the way too crowded world of ‘click and save’ online shopping malls.  It reminded me immediately of a recent product launch of an online shopping mall / portal called Blastoff , which, quite frankly, I wasn’t interested in either.

So let’s begin our review about the company with a discussion about online Affiliate Marketing.  Many people have heard of affiliate marketing, but most do not understand it.  Amazon.com is one of the pioneers in the industry, and they offer the ability for just about anyone with a web site to make money by promoting their products.  I have been around the affiliate marketing industry since 1996, when I was one of the charter merchants with a company called Linkshare.  Here’s a brief video that explains how affiliate marketing works;

So affiliate marketing is a simple way to earn some extra cash by doing what Joel says, “selling other people’s stuff”.  Thousands and thousands of online merchants have affiliate programs.  I believe they are a great way to help grow sales as a merchant, and can become another income stream the little guy. The challenge is that in reality, it isn’t as simple as it sounds.  Here’s why:

a) As a web site owner (commonly called a publisher),  you have to drive the prospective buyer to the merchant’s web site through a special affiliate link on your web site.  However, in most cases, online shoppers already have their favorite merchants that they shop at, such as HomeDepot.com, Dell.com, Macys.com, or BestBuy.com, and they will usually just go directly to that site when they want to buy something.

b) Traditional affiliate programs rely entirely on the efforts of each individual affiliate.  This can be difficult if a person lacks online marketing experience … heck, it can be difficult even for experienced online marketers.  So it can be tough to make any real money.  So while I am a huge fan of affiliate marketing, it can definitely be more difficult than most people want to admit or spend their time on.

ShopBest.com changes this in a very innovative way.  It is setup as an affiliate program of sorts, except for the fact that they’ve done all the heavy lifting for you.

1. They’ve setup the affiliate relationships with thousands of merchants so that you don’t have to.
2. Instead of having to have a web site to publish the affiliate links, you simply have to download a ShopBest.com toolbar.  This toolbar installation takes about 3 minutes and tracks shopping activity at all of the participating merchants.  Even if you turn your toolbar off, it still tracks the shopping activity and rewards you cash back points.
3. The toolbar has built-in tools to be able to share it with others via your favorite social media links… so it is not a difficult process to setup affiliate links, etc.
4. You don’t need to rely on just your efforts.  You can share the toolbar with others … and get a percentage of their transactions as well.  This is where it starts to get really interesting.

The second thing you need to know about ShopBest.com is that it is set up as a network marketing company, which in a simple way is an affiliate program, but just with multiple levels of payout.  Now, I am a very cautious fan of the network marketing model.  There are so many fallacies and problems in most of the programs out there that most people don’t think about, including some of my favorites below:

• “anybody can do it” – not true… it takes hard work, the right mindset, and tremendous dedication to make anything work
  
• “everybody needs this” (ie their product or service) – again, not true
• “you can make tons of money” – some people have, but the vast majority of network marketers struggle to break even
• “we’re going to be bigger than Google” – this is one of my favorites … often stated before the company even launches by unknowing distributors.  How do you know you’re going to be bigger than Google? Do you realize how big Google is and how much they are worth?
  
• premium prices which are way more than most people would pay for the product – very common
• a complete change of buying habits in order to participate – customers and distributors usually have to completely change their buying habits to take part in the business

So while the model does have a lot of problems with it … it also has some real strengths as well.  It is definitely a model that provides leverage, and given the right product, can be a valid way of doing business.  In fact, it can even redefine entire industries.  One network marketing company that we believe in and promote is SendOutCards.  It is a great product and actually makes it easier and usually less expensive to send greeting cards to your friends, family, and business clients.

Back to Shopbest.  Here’s what I like about it:

1. You can benefit from it without spending a dime. There is no upfront cost or monthly fee to use the basic Toolbar.  You can simply download the toolbar, shop online at your favorite participating online merchants (there are over 1800), and you will get cash back points.  When you earn the equivalent of $15 or more,  you will actually get a check in the mail.  Once installed, you can basically ‘set it and forget it’ and it is still working for you.
2. It doesn’t force people to change their buying habits if you’re already shopping online. You don’t have to go to a specific ‘portal’ or ‘online mall’ to start your shopping.  Just download and install the toolbar, and the system takes care of the rest.  Quite frankly, I already have my established portals, social networks, etc… I don’t want another one.
3. There are no inflated pricing models. You shop directly at your favorite online merchants’ web sites.  Plus, there are often super saver deals that can potentially save you even more money.
4. You can start earning additional cash back points when you share the toolbar with others.
5. If you want to share the toolbar with lots of folks, there is an affiliate marketing opportunity that allows you to make even more money.

Here’s what I’m not going to tell you about ShopBest.com;

• It’s going to be bigger than Google: I have no clue how big it will be, but it does look like they have done pretty innovative things and could become a big company.
• You can make save gobs of money by earning cash back and taking advantage of the super saver deals that the merchants make available:  I can’t tell you that because I don’t know what your shopping habits are now.  While many of my friends shop online at least for some things, some prefer to only shop locally.  Being actively involved in my local chamber of commerce, I am a fan of that as well, but there are some things that I definitely buy online on a regular basis due to convenience and pricing.
• You can make a million dollars this year:  I can’t tell you how much you are going to make if you sign up as an affiliate.  I’m not going to promise you the moon.  I’m not going to talk about islands in the Caribbean that you’ll be able to visit at your leisure because you were in ‘early’ and are now part of the ‘billionaire’ club.  I can’t promise you anything.  I can only point you to the income calculator on the site … and let you determine if it is worth it for you and your family.
• Your kids can become millionaires by the end of the year.  (cool, sign me up right!)
• In case you’re wondering … I’ve heard all of these over and over again about other recent ‘opportunities’.

Closing thoughts:

If you shop online at all, it probably makes sense to download the free ShopBest.com Toolbar.  It takes about 3 minutes to download and install.  You can set it and forget it.

If you’re looking for ways to make additional money in 2010, check out the videos and the earnings calculator on the ShopBest.com web site to see the eight different ways the company allows you to make money by sharing this free toolbar with others.  For me, it fit my opportunity filter.

Here’s to a fantastic 2010.

For anybody not familiar with Touch of Mink, they have been around for 28 years, located in West Salem.  If you’ve been to a home show in Salem, you’ve seen Touch of Mink.  Their primary marketing strategies have been shows, where they do demonstrations of their product, mail order, and their web site.

However, their web site had not been updated in several years and was badly in need of an upgrade.  After taking several months to outline their objectives, they came back us in mid-Fall and hired us to completely redo their ecommerce enabled site.

Their objectives were as follows;

• create a clean, updated website with easy navigation
• integrate their new company branding and color styles that were completed over the summer
• create a more modern shopping cart system
• develop a comprehensive ‘back end’ admin area to manage orders, customers, and marketing
• set the foundation to dramatically grow online sales in 2010

We went to work, and we’re excited to announce the brand new Touch of Mink web site.  In addition, phase two of the project will integrate modern online marketing strategies such as social media integration, additional search engine optimziation, an email newsletter, an affiliate program, and online video.

Platform:  Volusion

Key Features:

• completely revamped design and layout
• easily tell your friends about our products
• product reviews
• categorized product listings
• fully functional “MyAccount” section where you can update your information, track orders, and more
• ability to create your own “Wishlist”
• live shipping rates
• affiliate program (coming soon)
• … and much more

Screenshot:

Broadway Books, Portland Oregon

It is a story about blogs, burritos, and books, (I know – a seemingly odd threesome)  and how it saved Broadway Books, an independent bookstore in Portland.

You can read the entire article here.  It is a great read and made me want to stand up and cheer.

A couple of interesting things stood out for me in the article.

1. Turning to social media to help the business was more of a knee jerk reaction than a planned marketing campaign … therefore it was very authentic and heartfelt.  A good reminder for us who use social media for business that sometimes the best laid plans get trumped by total authenticity and passion.
2. It brought a different set of buyers into the store than they usually got.  A great illustration of how you can start connecting with entirely new audiences using social media.
3. The power of ‘going viral’.  What was posted by just one person … ended up being shared with thousands.  Who could ask for more?

While the local bookseller still has challenges ahead in this economy and social media is not necessarily a magic bullet, it looks like they are fully embracing it and it has made a real difference in their business.  Way to go Broadway!

I’d love to hear your stories of how you’re using social media in your business to attract new prospects and clients.  Just leave me a comment below.  And if you’d like to discuss your social media strategy, give us a call at 503.581.4554.  I look forward to the conversation.

~ Tim Fahndrich is the President and Chief Relationship officer with The Third River, Inc. a Salem Oregon web design and marketing firm.  He is passionate about people, technology, and relationships, and loves to help his clients harness the power of the web.

1. Is it relevant?
2. How do I find the time?
3. How do I ‘do it’?
4. Where is the return on investment?

During my presentation I talked about 4 steps to getting started and maximizing your social media efforts for your business;

1. Get started: sign up for accounts at Linkedin, Twitter, Youtube, and Facebook (both a personal profile and setup a Fan page). Setup keyword-rich profiles at each one and brand your presence to match your current branding.
2. Start connecting:  Reach out to others who may want to connect to you.  While each of the sites provide a tool for you to import and invite your entire address book – doing so is probably not necessary nor is it appropriate.  You can use these tools, but be selective when you invite.  Remember, you are out to build relationships, not numbers.
3. Setup a routine that works for you:  Don’t feel like you “have to” tweet, post, or nudge a certain number of times per day or certain content just because somebody else says you should.
4. Continually promote: put your social media icons on your web site, in your email signature, forum and blog signatures, and anywhere people might see it.  (Link to your Facebook Fan page, not your personal profile).

I didn’t realize how close #3 had hit home until later after the presentation.  You see, I had started out on a lighter note with the following slide (No offense intended with the politically-incorrect ‘R’ word)

One of the attendees, Fred Molesworth, a Salem Oregon photographer, mentioned how he had recently attended another seminar in Salem where the presenter was talking about how you should get up in the morning and Tweet what you are having for breakfast, and keep tweeting throughout the day exactly what you are doing.   Really.

Really?? My slide was intended to be funny, not a statement of what you should do.  Now I’m not going say that I’ve never posted about food (especially my daughter’s brownies) but I don’t make a regular habit of it.  And neither should you.  If you are trying to use social networking for your business, focus on things like the following;

1. Building relationships by engaging in conversation
2. Providing value for those connected with you
3. Keeping people abreast of what’s happening in your company (and life, but don’t overdo it)
4. Positioning yourself as an expert

While we are all certainly interested in the details of each others’ lives (to a point), and the occasional posting about food isn’t going to hurt anything … we can only handle so much detail.  If you’re doing it every day … pretty soon it just becomes overwhelming and we begin to tune it out, which doesn’t do anybody any good.

Usually, I end my presentations with my one and only rule “Never, ever post something you wouldn’t want your spouse, kids, boss, or colleagues to see” …

but now I’m adding a new rule.  “Just because you can …. doesn’t mean you should“.

If you’d like help with your social media strategy for your business, give us a call at 503.581.4554.  We’d love to chat.

Tim presenting to Chemeketa Small Business Management Group

Since we provide search engine optimization services for our clients, we get asked a lot of questions about how to improve rankings.

One of the steps we take to improve your search engine results is to make sure your meta-titles, meta-descriptions, and meta-keywords are accurate and descriptive for the key words and phrases that you are trying to get ranked for.  Now … what exactly do I mean by that?

I’ll review what each one is below;

Meta-Title:

When you do a search on Google, the title is what shows up in the search as the link to the website.  You can see the link above has the title of “Search Engine Optimization & Local Search | Web Design Salem Oregon“.   This properly describes what this web site and in this case the actual page on the web site is trying to get ranked for on Google.

More often than not we see titles that are not descriptive, include the company name only, or a simple page name like “Home” or “Search”.  You should focus on the “What” you do and the “Where” you do it.   Titles are one of the most important factors of your page content and structure that you should make sure are structured properly.

Meta-Description:

The description shows up in the search results as well, and in the above example starts with “We can help you with …”.  Descriptions should use sentence structure for the most part and should not be a list of keywords.   Again, focus in on what you do and where you do it.

Meta-keywords:

Keywords do not show up on the search results, but they can play a part in your search results… although recent things we’ve read suggest that the search engines are not paying as much attention to keywords that they used to.  Your key words are just a comma separated list of key words and phrases that describe, again, what you do and where you do it.  In this case above, we would want to use things like “search engine optimization, salem oregon, google rankings, …”.   You can use as many key words and phrases as you like, but you generally shouldn’t repeat them (you could get away with that in the old days, but search engines are much smarter today).

So, if you are looking to review your titles, descriptions, and keywords, you can do a search for the term and location that you want to be found for.  Check out what the top search results are using to get ideas of how to improve your own.  By the way, you can go to any web page and view the page source (the code behind the page) to show the keywords as well.   If you use Firefox for your web browser, you can right-click and View Page Source.  If you use Internet Explorer, you can right-click and View Source.  Here’s what it looks like:

If you are doing your own web site using a content management system or site builder, you will want to look for a SEO or Search Engine Optimization section for your site or (preferably) for each page.   It should look something this:

Getting your titles, descriptions, and keywords properly structured is definitely a positive step to help your search engine rankings.

If you’d like help with your search engine rankings to help you get your web site listed higher on Google, Yahoo, and Bing … give us a call at 503.581.4554.  We’d be happy to provide a free consultation on how you can improve your rankings.

But, I kept hearing the term … so I decided to check it out and find out what it really means.  And boy am I glad I did.

You see, I’m a very visual person, and if you’re anything like me, you’ve got way too many ideas floating around in your head and far too many things to do that won’t fit on your standard linear “to-do” list.  That means my productivity suffers sometimes, as I can’t quite keep track of it all and easily get distracted.

Now I’ve been through all of the day-planning seminars over the years to try to get my life organized … but to be honest I still struggle with staying on task in any organized fashion and yet still capturing all of my ideas into a cohesive action plan.

Enter the mindmap.

The mindmap is basically a piece of software that allows you to organize your thoughts, things that you need to do, and even business systems into a visual format.  You can see an example below;

(** We are an affiliate of DiscoverFreeMind.com and receive a commission if you purchase their mindmap video training course)

This inspirational video is based on the oft-quoted and loved poem:

When things go wrong, as they sometimes will, When the road you’re trudging seems all up hill, When the funds are low and the debts are high, And you want to smile, but you have to sigh, When care is pressing you down a bit, Rest! if you must; but don’t you quit.

Life is queer with its twists and turns, As everyone of us sometimes learns, And many a failure turns about When he might have won had he stuck it out; Don’t give up, though the pace seems slow; You might succeed with another blow.

Often the goal is nearer than It seems to a faint and faltering man, Often the struggler has given up When he might have captured the victor’s cup. And he learned too late, when the night slipped down, How close he was to the golden crown.

Success is failure turned inside out;The silver tint of the clouds of doubt; And you never can tell how close you are, It may be near when it seems afar; So stick to the fight when you’re hardest hit; It’s when things seem worst that you mustn’t quit.

As you can see, Yahoo, MSN and the others are distant runners-up. That doesn’t mean they are insignificant, but it does mean that by optimizing for Google, you will likely receive the highest ROI on your optimizing efforts.

So, where do you rank on Google? For what keywords? (the terms people type into the search engine) Do you know if these are the right keywords? And just how do you achieve high rankings in Google anyways?

These are all questions that we can help you answer.

Simplified, “Getting found on Google” aka “Search Engine Optimization” (or SEO) boils down to two main things;

1. Setting up your site so it has Google friendly structure and content.

2. Setting up beneficial, good-quality links both internally on your site and externally from other popular web sites pointing back to yours.

While this is an over simplified-view, it does give you the big picture of what it takes. Actually acomplishing high Google rankings, however, can be a difficult and time consuming task. How difficult it is to achieve success will depend on a number of factors including keyword competition, search volume, age of competing sites, links (and link structure) for competing sites, and much more.

Now with all of that said, it is also important to realize that “Search” is just one leg of your online marketing stool. In other words, you should NOT depend on search rankings alone to build traffic.

For example, looking at recent statistics from one of my client’s sites, we can see that a little more than 50% of traffic comes from search engines. The rest is coming from links from other sites and direct traffic – meaning someone typed in their domain name directly into the browser.

This will vary of course from site to site, but it re-enforces the fact that we also need to focus on optimizing other areas of driving traffic to your web site.

I wrote another article on online traffic building strategies that will provide further insight in this area.

Bottom line: There is a lot you can do to get found on Google and drive traffic to your website. We suggest you use a professional who knows that they are doing so you can maximize your ROI.

If you’d like to sit down over a cup of coffee or talk on the phone to explore your options, give us a call at 503.581.4554.

It depends because the site that is the best for your business is really the one that works best for you.

Ok, so what do I mean by that?  I mean you have to find the one that best works with your personality, style, corporate culture, target audience, and needs.  There are literally hundreds of social networking sites (actually, let’s start calling them business networking sites).

The big three that I talk about all the time are Linkedin, Facebook, and Twitter.  If you’re a member of the Salem Chamber, don’t forget Face2Face.  BUT, that doesn’t necessarily mean these are the only ones or that either of these is “it” for you. Each one has it’s unique characteristics.  And, there may be a niche networking site that generates more leads and relationships for you than the big three.

So how do you determine which one is best?  Let me first say that it is not an overnight kind of deal.  Just like any other marketing strategy, it will take time and some testing, measuring, and tweaking to fine tune your strategy.

Here’s my suggestion;

1. Setup profiles on all of the big name networks.  Follow a branded approach so that you present your company brand consistently among the networks.
2. Also research and find either 2-3 niche networks or groups within the big three that are your target market.  A great place to start is to go to Ning.com and search niche social networks to find one that interests you.
3. Start building connections, friends, followers, etc. on each site by inviting select current contacts to connect with you AND by carefully selecting others who are a) like minded or b) are in your target demographic.
4. Start writing articles (aka blogging) to a) position yourself as an expert, and b) test response to your articles
5. Connect your articles so that they automatically post to your online profiles.  Some call this magic … and I would agree.
6. Engage, provide value, and build relationships.  See who responds and on what sites.  Determine which site(s) you are most confortable on.
7. Get married to the process, NOT to a particular site.  What works today may be outdated a year from now … but if you engage in the process, and are willing to adapt and change as necessary, you will always be ready to thrive.

Make no mistake, online business networking is here to stay.   Business is being done.  Relationships are being built.  Time is being leveraged (yes, you read that correctly).  Brands are being built.

I strongly encourage you to incorporate online social business networking into your marketing plans.  If you’d like help getting started and determining the best strategy for your company, give us a call at 503.581.4554.

And so, this is our ‘top 10 ways to tell if your company web site stinks’:

10. You have an animated cartoon character that you grabbed off of freespinningicons4you.com. Ummm, I’m not even gonna go there.

9. You haven’t updated your site since 2004… and you’re proud of it (ie. you display ‘last updated October 2004′)

8. Nobody has a clue what your site is all about and what your company does … except your cousin Benny who designed the site for $50 and a 6-pack

7. There is no contact form or any way to get a hold of you …(c’mon people, don’t you want people to contact you? It’s not a bad thing … really!)

6. Poor and inconsistent navigation … dude, don’t you think people are having are hard enough day already?

5. Your still measuring “hits” to your web site and even have a “counter” to tell the world (ugh!)

4. Your music audio or video starts playing automatically. STOP! First of all it scares the %^%&^&% out of people. Then they’re scrambling to turn it off!

3. It’s sooooooo pretty … with all kinds of Flash and incredible graphics … but it doesn’t DO anything to support your business goals and make a connection with your visitors.

2. Your site has 15 automatic pop-up windows that annoy the heck out of your visitors and distract them from the actual site … trust me – they are not gonna come back!

And the number one reason why your web site stinks is …

1. Oh yeah, you don’t have one.  Smile

Seriously, there’s a lot more too it than this humorous list … but if your web site has “issues” … or you don’t have a web site for your business … take action today. Give us a call at 503.581.4554 and I’d be happy to sit down over a cup of coffee or hot chocolate and talk about how to take your web marketing to the next level.

I was talking with a potential JV partner today and explained some of my process with him.  I told him I was a “recovering opportunity addict” (I’m a work in progress) … which generated a good laugh from the other end of the line.  I know a lot of people have been there… I know I have.  Things come along that look really good and so we jump head first without thinking … and usually regret it later.

Here are a couple of questions I ask as part of my opportunity filter.  It could apply to network marketing opportunities (I’m sure you’ve never been approached right), online marketing “secrets”, or other types of business ventures;

Q:  Is it part of my core business offering or would it require a totally different skill set than I have right now?

Focus.  That is a good word.   This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t ever take the opportunity to expand your horizons (sometimes this CAN be a good thing) … but you really need to think long and hard before doing so.  Otherwise you are going to stretch yourself too thin and ultimately will not feel like you are reaching your goals.

By focusing on areas that are within your core competency, you will most likely be able to build a much more effective, profitable business and one that meets your goals and lifestyle needs.

Q: Ask the person promoting the opportunity this question – “if you never made a dime from selling “x” (the product or service), would you still promote it to your closest friends and family?”

This is a great question!

In other words – be sure that they (and ultimately you) believe in the product itself, not just the opportunity to sell it and make money from it.

Let me give you an example.  We represent a company called SendOutCards.  It provides a service that allows you to quickly and easily send real, send-through-the-U.S.-mail greeting cards through the internet.  I love this service!!  It is convenient, inexpensive, flexible, and people love to get real cards from us (especially in this electronic age).

Hopefully when you ask this question, you get a resounding “YES!” as the answer, just like I feel about SendOutCards.

Q: Are you saying “yes” to an opportunity only because you’re afraid of what you might miss out on?

This is a bad reason to say yes.  Taking on a new project, business, or opportunity should be something you really want to do and can get passionate about, not something you feel badly about saying no to or because you think you might miss out on something.  If it’s a good opportunity and it fits your other criteria, it will still be available when you are ready.

Q: Do you already have umpteen “opportunities” that you’ve already started and not finished.

Opportunity addicts are always looking for the magic bullet, the “secret”, or the latest, greatest, bestest way to make money.  Trust me – I’ve been there and am still there every day.  I see stuff come across my desk that makes sense and I think to myself – “oooh, that looks good”.  My friend Jennifer Powers calls it the “shiny little object” syndrome.

That is why it is extremely important to ask yourself these questions when presented with opportunities.  Otherwise, you will just have a stack of projects, tools, systems, opportunities and unrealized goals sitting on your desk.

Q: Does it align with your values and core beliefs of how you’d like to be treated?

This is one of the most important questions you can ask.  Again, I see lots of things come across my desk.  Sometimes, I just want to shut off the noise and all the hype.  I mean c’mon people – do you really believe that if I just buy into your opportunity or “system” that I can make $77 million this next year?  Really??  I mean it says ‘anyone’ can do it right!

If you get turned off by the marketing of an opportunity … it probably doesn’t make sense for you to turn around and market it yourself.

I learned this the hard way this past year.  I had received an email inviting me to promote a particular online marketing system.   The story was an interesting and somewhat inspiring one … but it used a lot of hype to get people excited about it.

Well, I sent it out to my list … and it didn’t take long to get an angry email back from one of my loyal subscribers … I had hooked her with the subject / headline … but totally turned her off with the offer.  When I revisited what I had sent out … I realized that I would not have liked to have been treated that way.

These are just a few of the questions I ask myself.  I would highly recommend that you come up with your own opportunity filter to help guide your decisions each and every day.

Online video and audio is a great way to engage the visitors to your web site. BUT, you don’t want it to drag on and on either. A good video length is somewhere between 1-3 minutes, particularly for a featured welcome video. More in-depth videos can be longer, but realize that not everybody will have the time or patience to sit through a longer video.

Here are some additional stats regarding online video:

If you’d like help creating online video or a welcome audio message for your website, contact The Third River today at 503.581.4554.

We provide a full suite of online marketing services including web design, traffic building and search engine optimization, social media and networking, online video and audio, lead generation and email newsletters, and complete online marketing packages.

As a parent and coach it is my responsibility to believe in my kids and my players.  This video is a great reminder of what a little bit of belief can do, and how important it is to pass on.  Imagine if more young people and adults had the confidence of this young man.  What a difference that would make.

I hope you enjoy it.

Mr. Massey needed a web site that he could control and provide the opportunity to showcase his investment properties, provide real estate investing advice, as well as showcase his public speaking and direct sales coaching.   After discussing options with The Third River, an real estate web design company, they worked together to come up with a powerful, flexible web marketing platform.

Platform:  WordPress

Key Features:

• Content Management System allowing 24/7 editing by Mr. J.  Massey
• Ability to ‘Feature’ content and articles in a rotating slideshow on homepage
• Integration with Social Media
• Custom Header and icon integration
• Email Newsletter

Screenshot

www.mrjmassey.com

Sue Bloom, the co-coordinator of the program, contacted Tim Fahndrich about doing a redesign due to a number of challenges with their existing site.  Challenges included a) the lack of ability to easily add and edit site content and keep it up to date, and b) the need for a revised information flow when educators request guest speakers for their classrooms.

The Third River, Inc., and active member of the Salem Area Chamber of Commerce, provides web design in Salem Oregon, as well for clients all over the country.

Platform:  WordPress

Key Features:

• Content Management System allowing for easy updating by organizational staff
• Ability to load documents, flyers, and related collateral
• Request Speaker forms that coordinate request forms between educators and staff

Favorite New Feature:  Ability to easily update the site without having to wait on a web company

Screenshot:

www.workandlearnnow.com

At age 34 he found himself flat broke, and having to start life over. If you’ve ever made a lot of money and lost it, you can relate. It’s a very uncomfortable, disheartening experience. Things got so bad for Matt that he found himself bagging groceries for six months.  He couldn’t believe where he had ended up.  He had gone from living a life that consisted of six-figure months, weekend getaways and fine dining, and had now been reduced to nights at home with the television and a Cup-of-Noodles.

He has now found new success through various avenues including real estate investing.  He is in process of writing a book called and has become known as “The DoOver Guy”.

Matt contacted The Third River, Inc., a provider of web design for authors and marketing services, to create a new web site to help him chronicle the “Do Over” and start building exposure for his upcoming book.  He had seen an Anthony Robbins site that he like the looks of, so we built a similar layout for the WordPress platform.  Matt is now maintaining the site and adding content to it.

Platform: WordPress

Key Features:

• Content Management System
• Social Media Integration
• Ability to add affiliate links for recommended resources

Screenshot:

www.thedooverguy.com

I never tire of watching this video.  A friend of mine passed it on to me and I immediately posted it on my website.  This inspirational story and message has already been watched over 3000 times on my site alone.

This video is about a father and a son. The son asked the father if he would run a marathon with him … and so he did. Later the son asked if he would run an Ironman competition with him … and so he did. Watch the video to see this incredible story. It is sure to inspire and encourage. Next time you think you can’t do something in your business, or things aren’t going well, or circumstances aren’t what you’d like them to be … I hope you remember this video. Please share it with your friends.

If you’d like to learn more about Team Hoyt, visit their website.

By day she might cut hair, but by nights and weekends she is a car and racing fanatic. She selected The Third River, a leading provider of web design services in Salem Oregon, to redesign the site.  Previously, Bry managed the site in Homestead, a national provider of web hosting and services.  But the limited design flexibility  left her wanting more.

Platform:  WordPress

Features:

• Ability to edit 24/7
• Search Engine Friendly
• Integrates with Bry’s Social Media profiles
• Built-in article / tip blog

Favorite New Feature:  The clean yet exciting new design

Results: #1 on Google for “Dallas Oregon Stylist” and “Salem Oregon Stylist”, among others

Screenshot:

www.hotrodhair.com

And as usually is the case, most hands went up for Linkedin … BUT, there was a lot of questions as to “what do I do with it?” There is SO Much you can do with a Linkedin profile, but I thought I’d just share two quick things with you today.

1. Be sure to fill out a complete, keyword-rich profile:

Linkedin takes the longest when setting up your profile because there is a lot to fill in. Past employment, current employment, specialties, etc. But having a complete and keyword rich profile can definitely improve the Linkedin experience and results for your business.

2. Linkedin use a multi-tier connection approach:

One thing that many people don’t know is that Linkedin has 3 tiers of connections. You have your connections of course (level 1), but it also can show you who they are connected to (level 2), and through the Linkedin search engine, also shows a 3rd level.

So let me bring both of these points into a practical, real-life example that I used this morning…

I have a friend (virtual of course – I’ve never met him in person) who was looking to help his dad move to another state. He jumped onto Linkedin and typed in the “Realtor” and the city his dad was moving to. In the search results, a Realtor on the second level of his network showed up.

Now my friend did not know this Realtor, but he was able to talk to their mutual connection and find out if he was worth his salt or not and be a good fit to help find a house for his dad. Turns out the mutual friend gave a glowing recommendation (which can also be done on Linkedin), and the Realtor was enlisted successfully to find a house for my friend’s dad. My friend was able to get a warm referral from a trusted source, and everybody was very happy.

Had the Realtor not filled out a keyword-rich profile and made connections on Linkedin … this transaction would never have happened.

If you’d like to maximize your Social/Business Networking websites and take full advantage of all they have to offer for your business, give us a call at 503.581.4554.

Also, please feel free to connect with me on Linkedin.com

So what are some ways that we might be able to gain some instant leverage?  I subscribe to a newsletter by an Internet Marketer named Yanik Silver.  A while back he sent out a one page diagram that outlined four distinct methods to create leverage.  I figured now was a good time to review it for my own business and thought I’d share a few of the basics here.

1. Transactional opportunities to increase sales; things like upselling and cross-selling, thank you emails, and continuity programs.
2. Your Existing database; prospects, past customers, and referral sources
3. Analyze existing areas of your business for possible leverage; can you license something? do you own any web sites that can be sponsored?  Could you start earning referral fees for recommending a product or service?
4. Pricing; ahh, the age old question of pricing.  The tempation in a down economy is to lower your pricing (I know I’m guilty of that)… but that doesn’t provide any leverage.  Instead, perhaps you should raise your prices, or create some tiers (good, better, best).

I hope this helps you to start thinking of possible ways to create leverage in your business.  I know I’m looking forward to going through this with a fine-toothed comb and gaining every bit of leverage I can to improve cash flow and profits.

A wise friend of mine said to me the other day, “Tim, I’m really excited about the friction that you are experiencing in your business right now”.   Why?  Because through the challenges we will only become stronger as we learn to create better systems and more leverage.

If you’d like to explore leverage points in your business, I’d love to have a cup of coffee with you or talk on the phone.  Together we can probably improve both of our businesses.  Give me a call at 503.581.4554.

However, I recently read a story of how the small town of Albert Lea, Minnesota used WordPress (one of my favorite content management systems) to not only improve their website, but do it at a fraction of the cost of traditional development.

The City of Albert Lea had solicited bids from local web development consultants, and was facing project costs of between $10,000 to $30,000.  In a chance meeting, another local consultant shared the wonders of WordPress, a free “content management system”.

It (WordPress) is a Web-based content management system that allows officials in each department to change their pages without needing much knowledge of Internet language, said Teresa Kauffmann, the city’s public information coordinator.

Some cities pay a consultant $10,000, $20,000, even $50,000 for a Web-based content-management site that looks professional and is consistent through and through. …

… Kauffmann was in charge of the site’s revision, and last October she put together a committee of city officials to advise her.

She said the committee decided to shoot for a site using a content management system — or CMS — but it was outside of her Internet skills. The city began seeking estimates from Web design companies. When the estimates returned, they realized the city couldn’t afford it.

“We just didn’t feel we could justify spending $20,000-plus on a Web site,” Kauffmann said. “I happened to run into Jeshua Erickson on the Pelican Breeze one day, and we talked about Web sites and how he was developing them using WordPress.”

WordPress is a very powerful, flexible, almost infinitely extendable, and search engine friendly web platform.  While project costs will still vary using WordPress, it is still dramatically lower in most cases vs. traditional web development.  For example, while we’ve seen costs go as high as $9,000 for a very complex implementation, most of our projects are in the $1500-2500 range.

If you’d like information on creating a “content management system” web site for your business or organization, give us a call at 503.581.4554.

By using a CMS, our clients our empowered to update and manage their own web sites 24/7, without having to wait on a ‘web guy’.

Plus, CMS sites are search engine friendly by design and can easily incorporate articles and multi-media content like pictures, videos, and audios.

Common content management systems that we use are WordPress, Joomla, iGroops, and Ning. We help our clients choose the best CMS platform for their needs.

Our favorite CMS for most client web sites is WordPress.  We also use iGroops, Ning, and other content management systems.

• Contact you for an appointment
• Purchase a product or service
• Sign up for a class
• or [insert your desired action here]

However, the reality is that most people are not ready to “take action” immediately – particularly when it involves money or a time commitment.

That’s why it is important to offer ways to “connect” with your visitors. We all know that it takes between 7-21 contacts for a prospect to hear or see your message before they buy, right?  So why not provide a way to stay in front of them for at least 7-21 times… and turn them into an actual lead instead of just a browser.

There are a number of different ways to do this.  I’ll talk about two here;

• Set up an email newsletter and ask for their name and email address.
  • Make it very visible and easy to sign up.  Usually, the upper side of your left “sidebar” is a good place to place your form.
  • Offer an “ethical bribe” to give them added reason to sign up.  It may be a FREE special report, access to an audio recording with tips and tricks for your industry, or a discount on products and services coupon … something to get them to take action.
  • Do not try to do this in-house.  We strongly recommend using either Aweber ** or Constant Contact **.  Yes it is a monthly investment, but it is absolutely worth it.

• Provide easy access to your social media profiles, such as Linkedin, Facebook, and Twitter.
  • This is one of the simplist ways of connecting with your prospects … but many people are still not doing it on their web site.
  • By inviting them to “connect” with you via social networking, it provides a less-threatening way for them to find out more about you and whether or not they want to be in your “space” … and ultimately do business with you.

When your visitors connect with you in one of these ways, they now become a lead … someone you can build a relationship with over time.

Leads are much more likely to become buyers and referral sources over time … and isn’t that what we all want for our business?

If you’d like help setting up your lead generation systems, give us a call at 503.581.4554.

(** We are an affiliate of both Aweber and Constant Contact and receive a commission if you purchase their email marketing services)

In fact, I ran into someone the other day who asked if I was related to him … an old customer of his from well over 10 years ago … and they fondly related how much they always appreciated him and his friendly service.

Here are the words on this old, faded sheet of paper:

What is a customer?

A customer is the most important person in any business.

A customer is not dependent on us. We are dependent of him.

A customer is not an interruption of our work.  He is the purpose of it.

A customer does us a favor when he comes in.  We aren’t doing him a favor by waiting on him.

A customer is part of our business – not an outsider.  A customer is not just money in the cash register. He is a human being with feelings and deservers to be treated with respect.

A customer is a person who comes to us with his needs and his wants. It is our job to fill them.

A customer deserves the most courteous attention we can give him.  He is the lifeblood of this and every business.  He pays your salary.  Without him we would have to close our doors.  Don’t ever forget it.

Thanks dad, for the reminder today. 

Here’s how it works:

1. Visitor to your web site fills out a form, usually including their name and email address.

2. They receive an email (that you set up in your autoresponder system) asking them to confirm that they did indeed request information from you. This is called double-optin. This reduces spam complaints greatly and is a marketing best practice.

3. If they click and confirm that they do want the information, then they will receive your autoresponder message(s) that you’ve set up.

The cool part is that you set it up once in your autoresponder system, and it handles everything automatically from there.

Imagine the time-savings. For example, let’s say you want to send the following;

1. An immediate welcome message once they confirm their subscription

2. A followup message in 7 days highlighting some of your key services

3. An “ask for the order” message in 14 days.

You can set up all of this once – and it will go out like clock work. You can also broadcast a message at any time to anybody on your list. And guess what? You can schedule these as well.

The main system I use for autoresponders is called Aweber. It is best in class. You can set up unlimited web forms (do I hear multiple web sites?), unlimited messages, and it keeps you in compliant with all of the spam laws (CAN-Spam Act).

Aweber is a monthly subscription service. It is available for around $20/mo. You can purchase through my affiliate link or purchase directly by going to Aweber.

A great video clip from one of my favorite movies … this just goes to show that when we think we’ve done all we can, we can usually do more.

(This is the 2nd article in a series called “5 keys to effective internet marketing”.  This series is particularly geared to the local brick and mortar business who is trying to maximize their internet marketing.)

Plan your marketing and traffic strategies

Unlike the baseball movie “Field of Dreams”, just because you “build it” doesn’t mean people are going to come to your web site.  In fact, this is one of the biggest misconceptions that I hear when I talk to business owners .  It is often a major source of frustration that ends with the proverbial “my web site doesn’t work” comment.

As a business owner, it is really important to understand that marketing your web site is a must. Otherwise you’re going to find yourself out in the middle of nowhere on the information superhighway with no traffic.

Here are several ways to start driving traffic to your site:

1.    Plaster the web site address on all of your marketing materials such as business cards, flyers, your vehicles, and so much more.  Even better, use direct response marketing and give a “call to action” and incentive to visit the web site. This can be in the form of a “special report”, an informational video,  This will net you much better results than simply listing your address.

2.    Use Pay Per Click ads on sites like Google, MSN or Facebook. This can be very effective, but it can also be expensive and a big budget buster if not planned carefully.  Be sure to set a budget!

One of the best ways to use pay per click is to test and measure.  Run different ads and different keywords to see what people respond to.  You can then take this research and target better search engine optimization in step 3 below.

3.    Optimize your web site with search engine optimization with a particular focus on local search.  This will result in what is called “organic” listings on Google and other search engines.  Your goal is to get to the first page of the search engine for your particular keyword and locality.

Search engine optimization boils down to 2 things;  The content and structure of your web site, and the number of good quality links pointing back to your website.

4.    Video Marketing.  Recent statistics show that 80% of all web users watch video online.  You can leverage this into traffic for your site by tapping into sites like YouTube.  By setting up your own YouTube marketing channel and posting videos about your business, you can drive additional traffic to your website.

Video is also a powerful way to connect with your visitors and engage them in who you are as a company.

5.    Social Networking sites like Linkedin, Facebook, and Twitter.  After Google and Yahoo, these sites are the most popular on the internet today.  An effective social networking strategy can build what we call the “know, like, and trust” factor.  It is a great opportunity to build relationships.  It can also serve as a fantastic way to drive traffic to your web site once you’ve put in the effort to create quality connections and build the relationships.

6.  Local web portal presence.  Look for opportunities to be listed on local portal websites.  These are web sites that are completely focused on a particular locality or region.  Some will give you a free listing along with premium listing opportunities.  For example, we’ve created GatewayToSalem.com as a local portal for Salem, Oregon (and we’re in process of building for other cities as well).

7. Consider writing articles.  Articles are a great way to position yourself as an expert in your field.  You can submit articles to sites like EzineArticles.com, and then these articles can be syndicated among many other web sites.

8. Harness the power of RSS feeds.  RSS stands for “really simple syndication”.  By using a web site with RSS technology, you can allow a “feed” of your content and headlines to be placed on other web sites.  When you provide an RSS feed, your latest content magically appears on the web site that has used your RSS feed.

9. Use Craigslist.  This is one of the most popular web sites in the country.  Design a professional looking ad for your business and list it on Craigslist. While it is a given that most people are looking for bargains there … it can still be a very effective way to drive traffic to your site.

These are just a few suggestions of how to drive traffic to your web site.

If you’d like professional help to accomplish your traffic building goals, give us a call at 503.581.4554.

If you are working on a new web site for your business or organization, or redesigning an existing web site, doing a little planning up front will pay big dividends down the road.

As you are planning, figure out what your goals are for the web site.  What do you want the site to do? One of the most important questions you can ask yourself to answer is “What is the number one action that you want your visitors to take”?

If you are redesigning an existing site, ask yourself questions like “What did I like or not like about the site?”, “What are 2-3 features that I’d like that my current website is not doing”, and a very important question is “Are these features going to help me grow my business?”.

Once you have your main objectives figured out, then it is time to build the site.  We believe that your web site should be designed as a ‘portal’ or ‘hub’ for all of your marketing activity.

It should be easy to update and keep current, it should be search engine friendly, easy to add video and audio, and should have the ability to track your activity and statistics (we’ll talk more about tracking in a later article).

We recommend using what’s known as a “content management system”, which let’s you manage the web site easily and as often as needed.  These platforms also let you easily add new articles and company news on a regular basis, which is a great reason for people to come back to your web site (we’ll talk about this in more detail later).

The site should be visually attractive, but does not have to be fancy.  In fact, I see many companies spending too much of their budget on fancy “flash” and other aesthetics and not giving enough attention to things that are going to make it an effective website.

As you plan your site figure out ahead of time ways to provide useful content, be fun, and interactive.  Give visitors a reason to want to bookmark the site.  You have a very short window of opportunity when somebody visits your site to make a first impression.

Also, be sure to provide the visitor with consistent navigation so they can find their way around the site easily.

These are some good steps to help you get started in planning a new web site.

If you need help with the process, be sure and give us a call at 503.581.4554.

After a quick chuckle I realized that many of the terms that I use everyday in my business just don’t make sense to many of my friends who are not involved in internet marketing.

So feeling bad for excluding him, I quickly explained what #followfriday meant and how it is used on Twitter, one of the web’s most popular social networking sites.

So if you don’t know what #followfriday, hashtags, and Twitter are, here is a quick explanation;

• Twitter is one of the fastest growing social networking sites that allows you to set up a free profile and connect with other people.  People that use Twitter are often called “Twitterers” or “Tweeps” or “Tweethearts”.
• Twitter allows you to update your “what are you doing” status in 140 characters or less.  This is called a “Tweet”
• To engage other “Tweeps” in conversation, include the “@” symbol in front of their Twitter name.
• “#” is called a hashtag.  This is used when people what to associate their “Tweet” with a particular subject, event, show, etc.  This is then easily searched by going to Twitter Search and typing in the “#” + “followfriday” (example).  This is a great way to track all conversations happening around that particular topic
• “#followfriday” happens on Fridays and is used in a Tweet when one Twitterer wants to recommend that you follow another Twitter.
• Here’s an example that I used today: “If you’re not following @MichealSavoie, you should be. He is very much a servant at heart #followfriday”

If you’d like to know more about Twitter, I recommend a good starting point is a book by @JoelComm called Twitter Power: How to Dominate Your Market One Tweet at a Time

You can also check out a recent video blog post about social networking sites and whether to connect or not.

Social networking is one of the best ways to develop relationships online for your business.  I highly recommend that you get started right away.

If you need help setting up and implementing a social networking strategy for your company, let us know and we’d be happy to talk about the options with you.