Posts filed under 'Internet Marketing'
Sandy Maine Marketing Conversation with Harvey Ramer [19.3MB]
Sandy Maine’s Sunfeather Natural Soap Company store and factory (view photos) is located just outside of Parishville, NY along Route 72. Her facility bustles with the production and shipping of bath and body products all year long.
Sunfeather Natural Soap Company has been built over the last 26 years one customer at a time. The small enterprise she started with an idea and $15, the company now boasts more than $1,000,000 in sales each year.
As her company grew, she learned from experience how to develop and manage a micro enterprise. Her company now employs 14 full time and 6 part time workers. Sandy had developed a socially responsible model of operation for her business which takes a holistic view of the “bottom line.” In that spirit, she is having her Web site re-designed and is making an effort to keep it updated. To see the new site, view the slide show images.
Sandy has authored 5 books and done international and domestic consulting in her field. She also helped to form an international trade association for soap makers which enjoys membership of over 800 members. Most importantly, Sandy enjoys the Bus-i-ness of motherhood and family. She is the mother of 4 children ages 2-14.
Sandy has been open to experimentation with marketing and has gleaned much of value to share regarding small business marketing. Enjoy the podcast!
Sandy’s Books
Sandy Recommends:
March 27th, 2006
Though much of this post is excellent, there seem to be some errors. Search engine robots do browse dynamic urls, and meta tags are no longer used by all but meta search engines such as hotbot etc. I still think it is an article worth sharing, but don’t buy everything it says.
A check list for making your site friendly to the Googlebot. This post discusses search engine optimization for Google in more detail than most.
read more | digg story
March 24th, 2006
I started Design Delineations with the intent of creating great Web sites that would sell things, share information, and help small businesses achieve their goals. Soon I discovered that there was much more to business success in the online world than having a well constructed Web site. I have been learning what I can about online marketing since then and want to take things down this road a bit more.
Inspired by the great value that television shows like the Small Business School offer, I will begin conducting audio interviews with business owners who are successfully using eCommerce to increase their business revenue. If you are interested in being interviewed and having the interview published here, please contact me with a short biography of yourself and your company along with a single paragraph summary of your marketing efforts.
March 14th, 2006
Why doesn’t a glitzy online catalog cut it in the world of online commerce? Lately, a number of streams of thought have been running through my mind. I’ve been busy designing Web sites, talking to people about marketing, and watching people with varying personalities working to make a go of online commerce - and, of course, reading books.
Here’s the big idea. Those who talk big about the Web and eCommerce as a way to make money easily either know more about marketing than I do, or they are completely unaware of the values of most people who browse the Net .
Instead of using Web based tools to engage visitors as individuals with opinions and feelings, the natural path for most of us is to assume that people visiting our Web site are there as passive rather than active viewers. For example, a Web site that tries to sell its products by simply creating an online catalog and adding “Buy Now” buttons, and doing little more.
Though in reality, the affordable eCommerce solution that most businesses need is not more technically advanced than this, it also should include an attempt to seek feedback about the products offered and to provide information that is useful to potential customers. The difference between treating a customer as ignorant, suggestible, and passive and engaging them as active participants is largely psychological, not technical.
Including a Blog or other software package that publishes valuable information about your products and company can help facilitate two-way communication. By doing everything you can to foster two-way communication, your company no longer is treating its customers as impulse purchasing couch potatoes and is acknowledging them as intelligent contributing individuals with unique reasons for their purchasing decisions.
Though an eCommerce initiative needs high-quality products, an excellent offline marketing strategy, and clear vision (not to mention financing) to succeed, it is my opinion that the most commonly missed component of an eCommerce strategy this: We fail to view our customers as intelligent - collectively certainly more intelligent than our company. As a result, we fail to engage their imagination, contribution to our vision, and ultimately, their dollars.
This oversight is, according to Blog Marketing author, Jeremy Wright, a holdover from television marketing where a passive stance is assumed. The Web is active, and companies can either harness that energy or they can let someone else do so.
March 12th, 2006
Ping-O-Matic’s server update seems to have greatly improved its bulk ping speed. This service is by far the best bulk ping service judging by the number of robots that crawl my posts after I notify ping-O-matic’s RPC client.
Over the last few months, I’ve been VERY frustrated by the long wait times and errors generated because WordPress waits for the ping-O-matic server to do its work. Let’s hope those wait times are gone for good!
This is an extremely useful service as long as it can handle the load!
March 7th, 2006
I’ve tested a number of ping services and none of them have stopped my blog software from bogging down when I submit a new post. For the uninitiated, a ping service notifies blog directories and search engines that new content has been posted on a blog. More than one helpful blogger has posted a list of ping services.
I am looking for recommendations from other bloggers. What bulk ping service do you use? Why?
I am currently testing Pingoat after using a number of others. I have started to ping several services, like Technorati directly because they were not being notified by the ping service I last used, which shall remain nameless!
If this post was greek to you, congratulations on haning in there and reading it anyway! More information is available on the Wordpress Web site.
February 25th, 2006
Using standards compliant methods to create highly readable, content rich code with optimized content can aid in your campaign to dominate the search engine category.
read more | digg story
February 25th, 2006
This excellent little Sitepoint tutorial can get anyone with a basic knowledge of PHP started consuming XML/RSS feeds in short order! Includes a working example and PHP code for download.
read more | digg story
February 23rd, 2006
It looks like google is in the middle of a PageRank update. I’m sure others are blogging about this also, but thought I would chime in and mention that if you want to see the Google PageRank dance taking place you can use the handy Future PageRank Predictor at SEO Chat.
What you should see is a considerable amount of difference in the PageRank on each server. As you can see below, my web site today (Februrary 21, 2006) shows some variation and looks like it is being promoted to PR6 from PR5. I won’t hold my breath, but it is fun to watch.
Edit: I see another post on the Google PageRank update here.
February 22nd, 2006
I know better than to contradict someone like Daniel Gross when he says, “… as businesses, blogs may have peaked.” But if this means that blogs are losing their edge as a business pr tool, I’ll have to cautiously differ. Small businesses and nonprofit organizations are just beginning to innovate successfully with blogs, and freelance professionals still can quickly leave a big footprint in the blogosphere.
What happens on a national scale with mega corporations may not impinge upon the effectiveness of your small business or non-profit organization’s use of a blog. However, since blogging is beginning to grow up and there is a glut of average blogs on the market, the truth is that success in blogging requires innovation.
Brief Case Studies
Two innovators that caught my attention recently prove the point that it hasn’t all been done already. Jim Boykin of We Build Pages (a client), and the Pennsylvania Tourism Office.
Jim Boykin: SEO Blog
Jim Boykin heads a prominent search engine optimization company in an industry with a reputation for shady dealings. His blog, launched in September 2005, builds trust and community by discussing current issues and keeping company followers in touch with the latest product offerings and free tools he has developed.
The result of his blogging is evident on this Alexa traffic detail graph. Has all this blogging paid off in terms of business? For a man who sells the ability to generate traffic, I’d say it is likely to help.
Visit PA
The Pennsylvania Tourism Office hosts a blog community called Real People/Real Roadtrips that unfortunately pays bloggers to chronicle their trips across the state of PA. The principle of paying a blogger goes against the grain of the blogosphere, but this still is a very innovative project that deserves attention. The front page of the site looks sanitized and marketing focused, but the blog posts are personal and authentic.
This blog community shows real people enjoying different types of tourism and will likely be an effective recruitment tool for the State of PA. I expect others to follow suit, and I am sure others already have, but there is still a chance to be at the forefront of blogging in a new industry.
For more information on tourism and blogging, search Google for roadtrip blog and tourism blog.
So while blogging may be peaking, especially in the mainstream corporate world. However, real opportunities to create positive PR still exist within the blogosphere.
February 18th, 2006
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