If they have, send me your site URL and a brief description of how your results have changed. Use our Send a Message form here.

If you made changes to your site that you suspect may have contributed to the drop let us know that as well.

We will publish a summary of these reports in the coming days.

Date:     Dec. 10, 2009
Venue:     Hilton Chicago Chicago IL
Event Type:     Seminar/Workshop
Website:    http://www.searchenginestrategies.com/chicago/training.php#landing-page

Contact: Colleen Wright [ info@sea-oregon.com ]    Phone: 503-530-8178
Date: Saturday, September 12, 2009
Venue:     MacForce in Portland OR
Event Type:     Seminar/Workshop
Website:     http://www.sea-oregon.com

Join O’Reilly Media founder and CEO Tim O’Reilly, Edelman Digital SVP Steve Rubel, and Twitter expert Sarah Milstein at this one-day boot camp. Attend this event to learn best practices you can immediately apply to engage your customers and grow your business. While the necessity of businesses having a presence on Twitter is becoming more apparent every day, many marketing professionals face some common obstacles to entering the Twittersphere:

1. Lack of time and resources to create and manage Twitter campaigns for their business and/or brand; and
2. Difficulty conveying to management/decision makers – the “ROI” of Twitter.

At O’Reilly’s Twitter Boot Camp, participants will learn:

• why and how they need to get their businesses and brands on Twitter
• what works and what doesn’t
• some ethical and legal pitfalls to avoid
• and how some businesses are already measuring ROI and customer engagement on Twitter–directly from the people behind the brands, businesses, AND communities that are successfully interacting on Twitter everyday.

For more information: http://training.oreilly.com/twitterbootcamp/

If you’re thinking about getting a custom theme, following these steps can make the process shorter, more productive and more enjoyable for both you and the designer.

1) State what you need and define the scope of the work

We’ll start with a list of everything that we need from this design:

A WordPress theme – sounds obvious, but you don’t want the designer to supply you just the PSD files, or a HTML file that you can turn into a theme yourself, right? Specify which version of WordPress you’re going to use it with.

Logo – a professionally designed logo can be expensive by itself, so make sure it’s included. When you ask for a logo, remember that you’ll also want to use it in printed material (like business cards or in magazines). This means asking for a high resolution version of your logo with transparent background.

Copyright – make sure it’s crystal clear that you have full copyright and exclusivity. This implies that the designer cannot use anything that violates the rights of others.

The discussion about copyright should clearly mention back-links. Web designers often give away free themes in exchange for credit links. If you want to link back to your designer’s site, that’s great, but you should decide that. You can instruct the designer to get your approval for any outgoing link placed in the theme.

Testing – ask the designers to supply a preview of your theme on their server. Normally, you can’t test their work on your live site. You might need to supply contents for this, or just do with the standard Lorem Ipsum.     Read entire article here…

Sick and tired of your email service, but worried that switching providers is too much of a pain? Well, Google has attempted to solve that problem for those wishing to switch to its Gmail service. The search giant on Wednesday released a new feature that lets users import their email archives and contacts into their Gmail accounts directly. It also supports message forwarding from your old account for up to thirty days. The new feature supports importing from all the important email providers, including AOL, Yahoo, Hotmail and dozens of others. The feature is currently only available for new accounts, with support for existing accounts being added over time.

Google is making this really, really easy-all you have to do is enter your other mail service’s user name and password and Gmail does all the work, importing your messages and contacts. “It’s making a once frustrating process nearly painless, and it’s going to attract new users in droves,” says TechCrunch’s Jason Kincaid. – Read the whole story…

I am happy to say that I have been busy updating several client sites as well as my own.

With a little luck and much coffee I will again be able to create useful info here for my clients and brothers/sisters in arms.

I hope this finds you all happy, healthy and living with ease.

Art Schobey

All indications are that the social media space may quickly become very crowded as companies look for ways to stretch their marketing and advertising budgets. Being engaged with your clients and prospects online has never been more important. Social media will transform the way that companies interact with their customers. You need to be there. Your competition probably already is.

• Being Peter Kim: Social Media Predictions 2009
• eMarketer’s Predictions for 2009
• More media blogger predictions for 2009
• 42+ Social Media and Content Marketing Predictions for 2009
• Social Media Wins In Marketers Plans for 2009
• Search Trends To Watch In 2009

Have any predictions of your own?

SMM stands for Social Media Marketing.  As defined in Wikipedia: “Social media marketing is the process of promoting a site, business or brand through social media channels by engaging and interacting with existing consumers or potential consumers. The term most often refers to activities that are used to enable marketers to build links, attention and receive large amounts of traffic for their company or site.”

yoursearchadvisor.com defines SMM as “Utilizing social networking and user-generated content platforms to promote a product, service or content. Often involves creating and participating in a dialog with the target audience, rather than forcing an advertisement upon them. SMM can also include creating and promoting viral content that is meant to be shared by users. Many marketers are not comfortable with the lack of control over social media but when approached properly, social networks can be extremely effective channels for building product evangelism, reputation management or corporate branding.”

The best known examples of social media sites are YouTube, MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. There are now hundreds of content sharing, networking and blogging sites covering any topic you may think of.

Sure, every business needs a website or at the very least a company Blog. The truth of the matter is you need both PLUS a well planned and executed Social Media Marketing program.

If you are just now putting together your first website, there is much to learn. Hence the dilemma, where do you start, from the beginning or from today forward. If Social Media Marketing isn’t built into your overall Internet Marketing plan TODAY, you may find it very difficult to catch up in the future. I don’t want to be an alarmist, but the current economic crisis is driving thousands of worried individuals to network wherever there is an opportunity to do so. The greatest opportunity is online.

My advice is:

1. Claim your brand and/or your name (sign up) in all of the social networking sites that are appropriate for your business. After signing up watch and listen (every single day) to the conversations taking place within these sites. Don’t post anything for at least two weeks unless someone directly asks for your input.
2. Read three books: Don’t Make Me Think, The New Rules of PR and Marketing and Tribes.
3. If you are not equipped to build a custom website or blog today, at least set up a free blog
4. Follow at least ten blogs about these subjects as well as marketing in general. If nothing else you will discover what you don’t know but need to learn. (I will share links to my favorites in upcoming posts)
5. Find a mentor or hire an Internet Marketing Consultant and learn everything you can about HTML, SEO and SMM.

The answer to the question “Start with the basics or Be in the Now?” is the basics will always need to be addressed and the basics advance as the technology evolves. What was advanced 2-3 years ago is basic today. You really have to do it all. The sooner you begin the better.

Comments, questions?