Houston Web Video On Location

We just finished our first on location video shoot for a local Houston Interior Designer. You can check out her video on Kitchen Remodeling below:

Contact us if you are in the Houston Texas area and would like us to create a video for you.

Mathnasium Facebook Fan Page Design

I should write about some more of our recent designs, but since I haven’t written about any of our facebook fan page web design projects I thought I would mention this one. We just finished creating a Facebook fan page for Mathnasium in Cypress, TX. We set up the entire fan page and created 3 custom landing pages on it. You can check it out by clicking here:

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Cypress-TX/Mathnasium-Cypress-TX-Math-Tutors/120296381339705

What is Social Media?

For those who have been in the internet marketing world for a while, this may be a big “yawn” question. But there are a lot of local business owners out there who hear this buzz word and don’t really know what on earth this means.

I talk to such owners frequently and when I ask about social media, the typical answer is typically something along the lines of “you mean Facebook?”. It’s impossible to leverage a tool when you don’t really understand it.

So, let’s answer the question. What is social media? There are a million definitions out there, but all the definitions have a few things in common. When you’re talking about social media, you’re talking about an internet or mobile application that involves user-generated content or feedback intended for public consumption. So, if there is a way for you, as the website visitor, to interact directly with the content of the page and others can see that interaction, it’s probably social media.

What about email? Is email a form of social media? It depends. If you are using email in a group setting, such as Yahoo groups or Big Tent, then that’s a basic form of social media. The content for that group is user-generated and intended for public consumption.

Private email is not social media, as it is intended only for the person to whom it is addressed. If email is like a letter in your mailbox, social media is like putting up a message on a billboard and allowing others to spray paint messages on your billboard in response.

Some other examples of social media include:

Blogs — Notice that there’s a comment at the bottom of this post. That means you can give feedback on this post, and we can have a conversation. That makes this a social media site.

Website polls — If you put a poll on your website, and people can vote and see the results, that is a basic form of social media.

Facebook — This is a pretty easy one to grasp. Everything on your Facebook page, whether it’s a personal page or a fan page, is created by you, your friends, your “fans” or someone who is reading the page.

Twitter — Again, it’s pretty easy to grasp why Twitter is a “conversation” tool. You don’t go to Twitter to read what the creators of Twitter have to say. You go to say something or ready something that some regular person (or not so regular person) had to say.

YouTube and other video sharing sites — Although it’s obvious when you think about it based on the above definition, many people don’t immediately think of YouTube as social media. But it is. Where does the content come from? Users. People can comment on that content and provide feedback. That’s social media.

Social bookmarking sites, such as Digg, Reddit, Stumbleupon — For the sake of brevity, I’m lumping all of these together. Social bookmarking sites are websites made up entirely of links to articles that users have said are worthwhile reads. Users give content a thumbs up or thumbs down, and people can see the most popular articles on a given topic.

Websites that utilize Facebook’s new social media tools — This is a new option for changing any website into a social media site. Facebook now provides a suite of tools that allows you to incorporate some of Facebook’s features directly on your website. People can “like” your page and perform and see other Facebook actions without ever leaving your site. This is a great opportunity to include a social media aspect on a site without spending a fortune designing a brand new site.

This is by no means an exhaustive list of all of the social media sites and applications that exist. But I hope it gives you a better idea of what people mean when they mention social media.

If you have any questions about how you can use social media on your website or to promote your business, please give us a call or contact us. We’re always happy to help.

7 Reasons Your Business Needs A Blog

I have been blogging since 2004 and over the last 6 years more and more businesses have added blogs to their website. When I started blogging there weren’t a lot of people doing it. However, now the tides have turned. Not only are a lot of people blogging, a lot of businesses have blogs. The truth of the matter is that EVERY business needs a blog.

Here are the top 7 reasons that every business should have a blog:

1. Traffic
Blogs give the Search Engines fresh new content on a regular basis, and that’s exactly what they love to see. Search engines reward most blogs by sending them more traffic. Now you do have to know a little about SEO, but even people who don’t have clue about SEO sometimes get great traffic from the Search Engines when they blog.

2. You Become Known As The Expert
When you write about your profession on a regular basis people start noticing you. Also, new people that come to your site will read your blog and instantly be able to tell that you know what you are talking about. Regular blogging about your profession makes you stand out as an expert in people’s minds.

For instance by having a blog and having it ranked high in the Search Engines, my wife Jill was able to get an interview with Cristy Yamaguchi. Why would they chose Jill? Because her blogging has helped her to become known as an expert on the Winter Olympics. In some ways, she is an expert on the Winter Olympics, but it’s not something she would have ever been if it weren’t for her blogging.

Becoming known as an expert increases the likelihood that people will buy your products and/or services. In fact, being known as an expert goes hand in hand with…

3. Trust
When people read your blog posts and interact with your by commenting your posts you build a level of trust with them that’s just not possible without a blog. Having a blog helps build trust, which is one of the biggest hurdles you have to get past to get people to buy from you.

4. Networking
Blogging is a great way to network both with your potential clients and with other people in your industry. I have made many great business contacts because of my blogs. Blogging and interacting with other people’s blogs is a great way to form relationships with potential clients and potential partners.

5. Branding
Blogging gives your brand a personal face. By writing about your business and providing helpful tips to both your customers and potential customers you are branding yourself not just as an expert, but as someone who cares about the people you are helping. For this to really work, you do have to care. It will show in the way you interact with your readers and it will build your personal brand. You have something unique to bring to the table that no other person in your profession has…

YOU!

By writing on a blog or putting out videos on a blog you are showing a side of yourself that makes it easier for your customers to relate to you. Which builds your unique personal brand along with the brand of your business.

6. Makes it easy to update content
Blogs make it very easy for you to add unique content to your site. This is very important to the Search engines and is one of several reasons that they rank so well in Search engines.

7. Makes Your Site Sticky
When you blog you are putting out new content on your site on a regular basis. People who like what they read on your blog will want to come back and read your frequently which makes your site “sticky” ie. a site that people want to come back to time and time again and a site that once they are there people want to stay and read more.

When all is said and done…

In summary, blogs are something every business needs if they want to maximize their profits through the web. So if you own a business and aren’t blogging… what are you waiting for? Get started now! You will be glad you did.

P.S. If you need help getting your blog set up, make sure to give us a call.

What Do You Want To Know About Twitter

We are finishing up writing an ebook on Twitter and I wanted to know what your biggest question was about Twitter so that we can be sure to answer it in our book. Go to our facebook fan page and let us know the answer:

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Mantyweb-Designs/135146992341#!/pages/Mantyweb-Designs/135146992341?v=wall&story_fbid=118274714852934&ref=mf

or leave a comment below.

Think Facebook Doesn’t Matter?

A lot of business owners like to think that Facebook isn’t really important to their business. Isn’t that just a place to play Farmville and Mafia Wars? Does any serious business really take place there? Is it really necessary to my business?

This piece of news may change the way you look at Facebook. Last week Facebook surpassed Google as the most visited website on the internet. So, if you think you can ignore Facebook, does that mean you think you can ignore Google? Visitors to Google are still growing– up 9%. But visitors to Facebook were up… wait for it… 185%!

So, what does that mean for your business? There are a few things you should absolutely be doing.

Make sure your business has a fan page

Even if you have a personal page (which is better than nothing), you should really still have a fan page. It’s not that hard. Once you’ve set up the page, invite all your friends, colleagues and customers to become fans. Don’t have time or inclination to do that? Check out our services page for our social networking package.

Use Events

You can use Events to run specials, not just to run events. Having a March Madness sale? Create an event. It will automatically promote on your Facebook page. And when your fans RSVP, this information goes on their wall, going out to all of their friends, serving as an instantaneous promotion tool.

Post Regularly

It doesn’t have to be profound. Integrate Facebook with your company blog. Or your Twitter account. Send public thank yous to clients or employees. Give your clients hints for how to better utilize your services. Give them hints to make their lives easier. Post inspirational quotes sometimes. You don’t have to post every single day, but you should aim for at least once a week. Set aside 15 minutes a week (at least) to work on your social networking.

Obviously there’s a lot more you could do with Facebook. This is just the bare minimum. But it’s something every business can and should do to take advantage of the rising number of Facebook visitors.

Why Search Engine Rankings Matter

You may have noticed we haven’t written a blog post in a few weeks. Once every two years we write an Olympics blog– one for the Winter Olympics and one for the Summer Olympics (this one hasn’t yet undergone a facelift– look for that soon). For a couple of weeks every two years, every spare moment is spent watching and writing about the Olympics. What does that have to do with your Search Engine Results Page (SERP)? Keep reading, and I’ll let you know.

In the current age of Pay Per Click, it can become easy to ask– does it matter where I rank? After all with the right PPC manager, I can appear on the front page any day I want. That may be true and, certainly, given enough money you can buy a spot in the Sponsored Ads.

However, PPC cannot buy you authority. People who know those are sponsored ads know that you paid to be placed there and that it has nothing to do with the quality of your site. Sometimes that may not matter. It depends whose attention you’re trying to attract.

Ranking for Olympic related terms is, as you can imagine, challenging. When we wrote our first Olympics blog– 2006TurinOlympics.com, it ranked in the top three for the phrase 2006 Turin Olympics. Not only did this lead to a huge amount of traffic, over 200,000 page impressions for the month of February in 2006, but it also lead to being quoted in the Washington Post.

Of course, then we had the domain working for us. But after the Turin Olympics, we decided to create the ongoing winter and summer Olympics blogs. That meant we would no longer be attempting to rank for a specific Olympics, but for the more general (and, therefore, more difficult) terms winter Olympics and summer Olympics. During the 2008 Beijing Olympics, we ran into a problem with our ranking. While we ranked well early on, our site completely disappeared the day of the Opening Ceremony and didn’t reappear for over half of the Olympics.

We were concerned we were going to have the same result with this winter’s Olympic blog. Sure enough, when we started out, our rankings were pretty low and so was our traffic. Once we started adding content, though, we were able to rise to 12th in the rankings for “winter Olympics” and to maintain a number 1 ranking for “winter Olympics news”– not bad considering five of the top ten positions were held by the official IOC site, the official Vancouver site, and NBC’s Olympics site. As our rankings rose, so did our traffic. And, apparently, so did our profile and authority in the eyes of others.

During the second week of the Olympics, we were contacted by a representative of the public relations firm running Proctor and Gamble’s Olympics campaign. Would we be interested in interviewing a couple of the women from the U.S. women’s hockey team? Um, sure. That resulted in this post about Jenny Potter.

When Sherry (my co-writer for the blog) emailed our contact to say thanks, she offered to set up another interview. That resulted in this interview with Kristy Yamaguchi. Not bad for a couple of “amateurs” writing an Olympics blog.

So, what’s my point? I know that the pr firm rep found us through the search engines. She didn’t pick a random company who was paying for sponsored links. She picked a website that ranked well for the terms she was searching. Our ranking gave us automatic authority in the eyes of others. In turn, that gave us the opportunity to conduct a couple of interviews that allowed us to create some unique content that will allow us to gain even more traffic. I hope you can see how this could be a good thing for your business.

Even if you’re not trying to conduct interviews or writing a blog on your website (although if you’re not, we really must talk), a top ranking for your keywords WILL promote you as an expert. If you’re searching for Houston widgets, which company are you going to do business with? The one ranked number one or even number four? Or the one ranked twentieth? Whether you, personally, think your ranking should make a difference in your potential customers’ eyes, it does.

Am I saying Pay Per Click is bad and that no one should go that route? Certainly not! More traffic is more traffic and a well-designed PPC campaign can be especially helpful as you’re building your organic search ranking or if you’re in a really competitive niche. But PPC will not help demonstrate that you’re an expert. Natural search results just might.

The Most Popular Twitter Tools And Why They Are So Popular

When it became clear that Twitter is a bona fide phenomenon, everyone jumped on the bandwagon to come up with all sorts of tools and applications. There are so many out there to choose from, wading through them can be quite a job in itself. One of the first things many new to Twitter complain about is that once you begin following and being followed, response can be overwhelming. So, many tools focus on organization and filtering. Others are time savers that let you make the most of Twitter without having to constantly be on it. To help you out, here are a few of the most popular Twitter tools and the cool things they can do for you and your business.

Tweetdeck is a kind of overall organizer that connects you with contacts over Twitter, Facebook, and other social media. With the browser you can create groups, filter tweets, and keep up with favorite subjects. The easy to navigate screens spread everything out in front of you so you can reply, direct message, retweet, add to favorites, etc.

Twhirl ranks almost as high on popularity lists as Tweetdeck, but also allows you to manage more than one account within one application. For those with multiple businesses, blogs, or just want to keep a private and a public account, this is for you.

Tweepler is a tool that helps you organize your followers and decide if you want to follow them back, or just ignore them. It gives you helpful stats about followers and generally streamlines the decision making process.

Twitpic allows you to post pictures on Twitter. You can post via your phone, their API, or the Internet. Useful for both social and business activity, this application pretty much speaks for itself. After all, a tweet is a maximum of 140 characters, and a picture is worth a thousand words!

Twitoria helps get rid of clutter by scanning your account to see who has been inactive for certain periods of time. It can also help you track down spammers.

Twitpay lets you give and receive payments via your Paypal account. It makes payments incredibly easy and mobile, no need to use your desktop or laptop.

Twitter to WP/ WP to Twitter; great for bloggers, Twitter to WP posts your tweets on the sidebar of your WordPress blog. WP to Twitter sends an automatic update when you post something new on your blog.

Twit(url)y tracks the urls that are currently being twittered about. Use this site to see who’s got the most talked about sites and what’s on the minds of Twitter users. It tells you who has the most active tweets in real time.

MrTweet calls itself “your personal networking assistant.” Use it to find which conversations are most important and relevant to you. It can help you track your relationships discover new networking opportunities.

These are just a small slice of the incredible tools available to make your Twitter account work harder for you. Adding just a few of the applications to the already powerful Twitter can make the difference between just doing well, and having huge success online.

Think Social Media is a Fad?

Think that social media is a flash in the pan that will pass, and you’ll just “hunker down” until it passes you by? Or that social networking is nice for teens but has nothing to do with your business? Watch this quick video and let us know if you still feel that way.

What Can You Expect from Social Networking?

Social media is being talked about everywhere these days and for good reason. Social media sites like Facebook and Twitter are bringing companies more business every day. In fact, Pepsi announced recently that for the first time in 23 years they are not going to be advertising Pepsi in the Super Bowl! Instead of doing Super Bowl ads Pepsi plans to spend 20 million dollars (yes, that’s million) on a social media campaign. This announcement highlights the shift for companies, both big and small, when it comes to spending marketing dollars on social networking.

Does Social Networking really work?

Asking whether social networking works is like asking whether any form of networking works? Why go to networking breakfasts? Why attend industry functions? If you don’t leave a networking breakfast with a contract, but you leave having made three good contacts, was it a waste?

Whether you’re talking about Facebook or Twitter or some other social networking site, it’s good to go in with an end in mind. What are you trying to get out of it? Are you trying to improve your brand? Establish communication with your customers? Take advantage of social networking’s viral aspect? Meet other industry leaders?

Each of these purposes will require a different approach. Twitter and Facebook are excellent for reaching out to your customer base and spreading your branding message. Linked In and Plaxo are better for reaching out to other business owners for forming strategic partnerships.

So, yes, social networking works, but only if you have a clear goal in mind and use the proper method to achieve that end. Approach social networking like any other networking event or like a trade show, and you’ll probably be happy with your results. Approach it like buying a billboard ad or sending out a direct mailing advertisement, and you might be disappointed.

What’s my ROI?

Trying to measure a Return on Investment, or ROI, for a company’s social networking strategy may be like asking someone to quantify happiness (although apparently some people try to do that). Measuring the effectiveness of your marketing is a big key to being successful. So, it’s understandable that a business needs to measure the costs of any marketing strategy it implements and then measure the monetary results to find out if the strategy is worth continuing. But how can you possibly measure the results of your participation in social media networks?

The good news is that the actual financial investment in social networking is pretty low. Unless you’re paying someone to do your social networking for you (or are purchasing advertising on a social networking site), you’re looking at more of a time investment than a monetary one. So, your dollar investment may not require a lot of return to justify what you spend.

However, as the saying goes, “time is money”. If you spend hours every day on social networking at the expense of other business activities, that needs to pay off. So, how can you measure whether you’re spending the right amount of resources on your social networking strategy?

Again, you’ll want to start with an actual strategy, complete with some measurable end.

Want to get out your brand message?

Perhaps the strategy is to increase the number of people following you on Twitter or the number of fans on Facebook. That’s something you can measure.

Trying to establish a particular contact within a company?

Map out how to get closer using Linked In. Did you manage to get linked in to a contact within the right company or within the right industry this month? Great! You’re on the right track.

Of course, there are some tools that can help you look at your numbers. You can use Google Analytics or other similar programs to track your traffic and see where it’s coming from– visitors to your site from a social networking site is a good indication that you’re doing something right. Each site generally has its own set of helpful tools, as well. For example, Facebook fan pages have an “insight” section that provides you information about the number of visitors, interactions and even demographic information about your fans.

So, what’s the bottom line?

The real return on investment for social networking is that it builds a community of people who go on to boost a company’s brand. It also provides a forum where a company can defend itself against detractors. In many ways, social networking sites are more of a public relations tool than a marketing tool.

The new media engages a company and its potential customers in a conversation. If people get value from your social media presence it will boost your company’s image and cause more word of mouth advertising to take place, and word-of-mouth is the generally the best possible form of advertising. While word of mouth traffic generated from social media is difficult to track in terns of ROI, it provides traffic that has already been convinced by “social proof” that your brand is worth viewing. These are potential clients who are already half sold on buying from you, so when you actually DO traditional marketing, you’re more likely to get a return.

Social media optimization is not about spending X amount of money and raking in Y amount of dollars through a clear connection. It’s about creating a positive, cooperative atmosphere that will eventually bring good results to your business. In order to maximize your profits, your company needs to build an excellent social media presence in 2010 and beyond.

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