A success story in the making.

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We recently went live with a new site for one of our favorite clients, the Bruce Jones Band. It was a wild ride putting their new website together, but the results they have gotten since are impressive. Here’s what happened:

  1. We went to a Bruce Jones Band practice with a camera and lots of ideas for how the images on the site should look. One night of shooting (and a little Photoshop work) produced enough pictures to get going.
  2. Ira and Bruce hired awesome sound guy Mark Ericson to come record a few demos at practice. After taking several cuts that night, plus a few short sessions at his studio, the band got some great songs that showed off their talent and versatility.
  3. Band members (yes, all 9 of them) wrote their own bios, with Wendy and Ira kicking in on some extra copy for other pages throughout the site.
  4. We registered the domain, set up hosting, installed WordPress and some of our fave cool plugins and started building.
  5. One week later, we had a working site. (Sure, there were a few things that needed tightening up, but for the most part, they were online. )
  6. While seize creative was busy building the site, Wendy and Ira cranked up a Facebook page for the band. Everyone sent out messages to their FB friends to check out/like the site. Within a few days, they had over 100 likes.
  7. In the meantime, Ira also contacted several local bars and festivals to test the waters for future bookings. With a great looking site and that many FB friends, they landed 3 gigs within 2 weeks.

BTW, all these musicians have day jobs and families and those other obligations that demand time and attention. They shared the load, hired out the tasks they couldn’t do themselves, and made a lot of noise when everything was online and looking good. Check out their calendar and make plans to see them live — it’s always rockin’ when they start making music for everyone.

Why Small Businesses Will Bite the Google+ Bullet

You are a small business owner and  you can’t possibly make room for another social media tool, right?  You’re lucky if you can remember to post to Facebook this week.  Well, as we all know, more and more business is being done online than ever.  Even if the transaction doesn’t take place online-this is where customers are won.  It’s not just about ecommerce sales either.  Relationships are built in social media, consumers are educated here, and loyalty is nourished here.

Check out Google’s “Search Plus Your World”

Can’t I Just Ignore this Google+ Thing?

Our clients want to know, what is Google+ and do I have to worry about it?  In short, you do if your competition is doing it.   Google+ and Your World will now be incorporated into the Google SERPs (Search Engine Results Page).  So, that means all those = signs and how people in your Google + social circles recommend things by clicking the + sign will show up in Google search results.  Basically, Search just married Social Media so you can be influenced by your friends’ opinions.   For example, your friend posts on Google+ that her new LG flat screen is the best purchase she ever made and 250 of her friends comment on how they agree….LG just surged in your query “What kind of flat screen TV should I buy?”

Is Google+ Good or Bad?

Of course, there is a ton of discussion going on about how this will affect businesses, users, and privacy.  Get Busy Media reviews the Pros and Cons of Google+. But the bottom line is, if you are not actively participating, sharing your content and promoting your business on Google+ and your competition is, then get ready for your competition to rise above you in the SERPs.  So, actually it doesn’t matter if it is good or bad, it just is.

What about Facebook and Twitter?

No, Google isn’t going to crawl Facebook data to include in their search data.  They don’t have to.  Facebook and Twitter have not allowed Google to scour their social data and it is unlikely Google wants to include other social sites’ user data just to be “nice”.  Google will allow YouTube data to be included though.  So, keep posting those videos about your new products!

I’m Only One Person

How are you going to keep up with yet another place?  Well, you know your business.  You have worthwhile information to share with your customers.  All you have to do is put it out there on a regular basis.  Making it a habit might be hard, but putting it out there doesn’t have to be.  For that there is Hootsuite.  Set up a dashboard in Hootsuite and you can easily manage all of your social media channels.  At the time of this writing, Hootsuite includes Google+ on their Pro version only, which is a paid service.  Be on the lookout for that to change.  .  Keep sharing great content via your blog.  Then share a link to that article everywhere else-like Linkedin, Facebook, Twitter, and don’t forget Google+.