We want to help create an amazing website for your business. To steal a line from Jerry Maguire: Help us, help you. Green Bay Net is already booked up tight for the remainder of May. We’re getting booked up very quickly for June, and we already have two large projects set for July. We don’t get to take summer off! Our clients need to have enhanced web presence for “Back to School” time - and especially the “Holidays”. These types of businesses should really be getting engaged RIGHT NOW:
- Flowers/Gifts
- Candy/Chocolate Retailers/Manufacturers
- Furnace
- Winter Sports
- Football Season Equipment/Apparel
- Education Relate
- Any other seasonal business with “summers off”
If you are in a summer tourism type of business (Door County, Northwoods, Lakeshore, etc.), then you need to contact us soon as well to book time for fall! All you need to do is click here to set up a free 90 minute consultation.
The Stillmank Brewing Company is pretty new but is ready to hit the ground running at 1000MPH! This site features full-featured e-commerce with SSL, mobile commerce, and some GREAT products! There might still be some finishing touches, but we’re so thrilled with how things are turning out that we had to give everyone a “sneak peak”. It turns out brewery collectibles is a pretty big deal, and we’ve already seen inquiries coming in for some of the pint glasses! There is a limited supply, so let your collectible friends know about the offerings on here!
The premiere brew is Wisco Disco, and it is a real Wisconsin brewer with real Wisconsin ingredients, and the beer is expected to be popping up all over Wisconsin! There are more details to come, but we’ve already said too much! Follow the Stillmank blog for more updates!
We have a new “masthead” image up on our Tumblr blog featuring the amazing panoramic Green Bay illustration. Astute readers will also notice that it is featured on the footer of the Green Bay Net site. This masterpiece is just a taste of the talent and work of designer Ben Teegarden.
We decided a few months back to try more of a uniform and unified push across the major social media platforms. While we have yet to see much of anything gain traction on the Tumblr platform (soon to be covered with ads), we do push most of our content there with nearly zero effort using the magical MarsEdit and IFTTT.com! So, unless we see a reason to abandon the platform due to advertising, it is literally only 3 additional clicks for us.
There is a slight penalty for Green Bay Net to pay from a “search engine optimization” aspect. However, this is a small price to pay for us to be engaged where our clients - and potential clients spend their time.
If you are on Tumblr, drop us a line. If you are not, and you’d like to find out more about building that into your online marketing strategy in an efficient/frictionless way, contact us! As always, feedback’s welcome.
Increasingly, prospective clients ask “How much will it cost me to be on the front page of Google?” Amazingly, they don’t ask themselves why anyone would want to see them on the front page of Google. Google is trying to continually filter out the “black hat” SEO providers while allowing the appropriate results to rise to the top. Are you giving searchers what they want? Why not?
Flip It On Its Head
So, we flip that question on its head “For search term ‘X’, what content do you have on your site that a user would find value in?” Of course that word value is a tough one, right? One person’s gold is another person’s garbage - or something like that. Google (and Yahoo/Bing as well as other smaller search engines) all do their best to “get it right” in the aggregate - on average. So, what are you providing “the average” user of value? Then, you also need to understand what that value gets you? What are your goals?
Of course, content more and more is truly KING on the Internet. Whether we are talking about social media networks, search engine optimization techniques, or your email newsletter - the name of the game is CONTENT. We typically work from start to finish with our clients, and we try to work with their expectations and workflow. Here is what we look at:
The Green Bay Net SEO “Formula”
Start
- Goals Analysis - What do you want out of your website? How do you determine success? Failure? Budget?
- Efficiency Opportunities - How else can your website make you money? So many times, people think of a website as a “brochure” or a marketing channel. It is SO much more than that.
- Site Construction - We do our best to put together sometimes conflicting goals (speed, search engine optimization, social optimization, mobile optimization, visual appeal, etc.) into a flexible framework
- Review - How well do we think we reached our various goals?
Recurring
- Competitive SEO Analysis - How are we ranking in Google and other search engines against the “perceived” and actual competition. Sometimes the online world is different from the local, competitive landscape.
- Competitive Social Analysis - What is your competition doing from a social standpoint? Are they being “broadcasters” or are they having two-way, friendly dialogue with your/their potential clients? What channels are they using?
- Negative Case - This is an interesting aspect of SEO that you may not think about. Are there things you do NOT want to rank for? Don’t laugh! All traffic is not GOOD traffic to your website. (See Goals Analysis above)
- Blogging/Social Calendar - This is the “meat”. We work very hard with our clients to help get them producing content. They need to produce content that people - and search engines will like.
- Analytical Consulting - Great! You have “Google Analytics” all set-up. Now what? How are you making decisions? Are you making the right decisions? How do you know?
No Magic Bullet. Just Hard Work (Or Buckets of Money)
That is just the basics. There are hours and hours of work in performing all of those pieces - and there are more pieces! Obviously, there is much MORE work after the site is “launched”, but a great foundation is important. Hit us up on social media with some questions and comments.
It’s hard enough to consistently put out blog updates after a few weeks. We feel your pain! Blogging is the top tool you can use to improve your search engine optimization, produce content that is timely enough to be shared through social networks like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIN, Tumblr, and many of the up-and-comers like Pinterest.
Without further ado, here’s the list of tools that we use most for updating this blog as well as some customer blogs:
- Google Docs Spreadsheet - this is where we store our Blogging Calendars. By brainstorming and pre-planning, when the day comes to post a blog, hopefully we are concerned more with writing than coming up with exciting ideas! While not perfect, you need a plan in order to have something to throw out once you have a brilliant, timely idea! Hopefully we’ll have more on Blogging Calendars in the future. As always, these are works in progress!
- Email - good old fashioned email is often used for pushing ideas, in-progress posts, and finished posts looking for proofreading.
- Flickr - while it seems to be the “old-timer” in the social media world, Flickr is a great site for rapidly getting up photos for your blog. Even if you use your website’s built-in photo options - which we generally recommend for SEO reasons - Flickr is a great way for you to share your photos on your blogging team!
- MarsEdit - Mac WYSIWYG (or “What You See Is What You Get”) visual blogging app.
- BlogPress - a similar visual blogging app for iPhone.
There are many more, but those are the most important collaborative, editing and posting tools we use. We’ll try to follow-up with more tools, tips - and some Windows PC blogging tools as well.
The Green Bay Education Association is tackling 21st century education head-on! We always look to streamline, simplify and AMPLIFY. The staff of GBEA took that idea - and pushed it FARTHER and BIGGER. The list of features built into this community site would be overwhelming - but we never turned our backs on simplification. PDF library uploads in 4 or 5 clicks, events in just a few taps on the keyboard, and simplified blogging.
In just a few weeks, we developed capabilities in the site for members to vote for their board! There is a tremendous amount of simplified power, and the staff has already taken it in stride with a barrage of updates. From the front-page slideshow with auto-resizing and cropping to streamlined publishing of meeting minutes - this site has it all. The GBEA membership will be thrilled with the new member focus. All the same great content is there - except it’s now MUCH easier to find.
The new front-page events and blog will make it even easier for casual users to get and stay connected with their fellow members and the GBEA staff. All that streamlining, and we’ve even given it a cleaner make-over design - as well as tons of opportunities to get the focus onto the great teachers and students of Green Bay.
Great job, GBEA! This is a winner for the community!
As you may have read in our previous post - Max at St. Baldrick’s: Max is shaving his head to raise money to find a cure for childhood cander.
He and his friends have been doing an amazing job of raising funds for the St. Baldrick’s event tomorrow! It’s not too late for you to join in. Join Max’s Super Pirate Squad. Please consider giving a donation large or small to help in this great effort.
Max is at it again. He’s changed roles many times over the years. From super hero to astronaut to model to sick kid with an emergency operation last fall. Luckily he made it through that perfectly, made a quick recovery and has never been better. However, having a little hospital time himself has made him very empathetic to the pain of others. He heard about the St. Baldrick’s event, and he immediately wanted in!
In their own words, St. Baldrick’s Foundation:
The St. Baldrick’s Foundation is a volunteer-driven charity committed to funding the most promising research to find cures for childhood cancers and give survivors long and healthy lives.
There will be an event at Preble High School in Green Bay on March 24th. Max needs donation pledges and supporters to cheer him on! He also set a personal goal this morning of trying to recruit his entire 2nd grade class at Beaumont Elementary to join him! Imagine an entire BALD 2nd grade class. That would make a statement!
Hopefully, THAT will raise some serious cash for cancer.
Please consider helping out. Max has a big mouth, and he will shamelessly promote your donation. (Hint: great for small businesses who want to give back without breaking the bank!)
http://www.stbaldricks.org/participants/maximustroy
