AVL Marketing

Carolina Connect 2010, May 13 at The Renaissance Downtown Asheville

Posted on 29. Apr, 2010 by Tracy Sigler in Random

Oh yes, you want to be at this event. Carolina Connect 2010 is sure to be a great opportunity to network with all sorts of businesspeople in Western North Carolina, and way beyond. Many of the speakers and panelists are coming from all over the country.

I’m moderating a panel in the Entrepreneurial track with some great panelists from local startups, a major media company, and an international corporation that the founder recently sold. The overall theme is still being worked out but we will certainly discuss the “growing pains” with any successful startup, big mistakes to avoid, managing remote teams and outsourcers, leveraging technology, and anything else we can jam into the hour.

At the end of the day there will be a bunch “Critical Conversations” and Bryan and I are hosting one of those. It will certainly be related to modern marketing but we are up for discussing anything. Please let us know your thoughts.

And remember, tickets are only $95 if you register by May 7. After that tickets are $125.

See Carolina Connect 2010 for more info.

Add Your WordPress Blog to Your LinkedIn Account

Posted on 23. Apr, 2010 by Tracy Sigler in Blogging, SEO, Social Media

Here’s a short video I made for my friend Dan. It’s really easy to add a WordPress blog your LinkedIn profile. As you can see from the video it took me less two minutes to do it, and that’s while I was blabbing about it. If you have a business-to-business enterprise, or if you’re a professional or consultant, a blog is an excellent way to demonstrate your expertise and experience while providing information of real value to your target market. But wait there’s more! Continually producing high quality content also has a massive SEO (search engine optimization) benefit. Your site will show up higher in search rankings if you’re using keywords related to your business. It’s a little more complicated than that, but not much.

If you’re going to do the work of creating great content you should get as much leverage from it as possible by incorporating it into your social media marketing efforts and social networking sites. So take two minutes to integrate your blog with your LinkedIn. Once it’s done, new blog posts will be automatically be added. Now that’s modern marketing. You might be surprised how many people will find your content through your LinkedIn profile.

Let us know if you have any questions.

Biking and Brainstorming, Marketing That Is

Posted on 15. Apr, 2010 by Tracy Sigler in Blog, Random

We want to help as many small business owners as we can with their marketing needs. Many of the people we talk to are not able to afford the comprehensive marketing package we provide for our current customers. The full-service marketing package is ultimately the best value, but, again, not everyone can afford to do that. So, we’re going to break the mold here and try something completely new.

The details are still being worked out, but generally speaking it will be a streamlined service, that will be very affordable, and will allow almost any small business to tap into the power of modern marketing using blogs, email and video (oh yeah, there will be some killer reporting too). These are the essential elements, and the foundation for SEO and social media. Other services will be available on a la carte basis.

Stay tuned to the site for more details in the coming weeks. Or, even better, jump on our email list and we’ll keep you updated.

Tracking Traffic from a Redirected Domain, Is Your Marketing Working?

Posted on 26. Mar, 2010 by Tracy Sigler in Advertising, Small Business Tools

There are a zillion ways to do this. Here are two that are easy to implement and will be good enough for most of us.

Let’s say you just bought a billboard, or an ad in local newspaper or magazine, and you want to know if this type of advertising will drive traffic to your site where people can learn more about your company, services or products. You could use something like “mycompany.com/newspaper” and track the traffic to that URL. But most people won’t bother typing in the extra stuff, unless there is some special content there or other incentive. Plus it’s hard to remember. Domain forwarding to the rescue!

Probably a better option is to use a special, dedicated domain name for that particular ad. Something like “MyCompanyNC.com” or “GetMyCompany.com.” You get the picture. Just add a simple modifier or possibly use an altogether different but descriptive term (e.g. “SpringfieldPlumbers.com” instead of “JohnsonPlumbing.com”).

Now what? Well, you use domain forwarding or redirecting, call it whatever, and point that thing to a special page, or tracking URL, on your real site. I’m going to outline two different ways to do this that are fairly easy for non-techie types to implement. In fact, you can even combine the two if you want, but that might get tricky.

Option 1

Tracking a Domain Redirect with a Landing Page with Google Analytics

1. Register the new domain that will be in your ad.
2. If you don’t already have it, install Google Analytics on your main site.
3. Create a landing page on your real site: “mycompany.com/landingpage.html” (Name it whatever you want, but make sure the Google Analytics tracking code is added to this page.)
4. Go back to registrar you used to register the new domain. Edit the “host record” settings to redirect it to the landing page you just created on the real site.
5. Use the new domain in your print, billboard, etc. ad.
6. Check Google Analytics for results: Content > Landing Pages

Option 2 (This assumes your site is running WordPress. High five if it is.)

Tracking a Domain Redirect with WordPress and the Redirection Plugin

1. Register the new domain that will be in your ad.
2. Install the Redirection plugin for WordPress.
3. Create a fake tracking URL for your real site and add the redirect using the plugin: “mycompany.com/billboard” (Name it whatever you want, but make sure you the exact same URL in the next step.)
4. Go back to registrar you used to register the new domain. Edit the “host record” settings to redirect it to  a fake tracking URL for your real site: “mycompany.com/billboard”
5. Use the new domain in your print, billboard, etc. ad.
6. Check WordPress admin panel for results: Log in > Tools > Redirection

How easy is that? Questions? We’re here to help.

Video and Movie Making Tips from Make Magazine

Posted on 13. Mar, 2010 by Tracy Sigler in Video Marketing

This video is a quick insider’s look into how Kip Kay uses microphones, soft boxes for lighting, video cameras, reflectors (even how to make your own), and a lot more to produce videos or “movies” for the Make Magazine Weekend Project series. For editing Kip uses Adobe Premier Pro CS4, some spendy Windows hardware, and some other desirable gear.