Relocating or Traveling? Check out HomeTownLocator.com!

Are you moving? Relocating to a new area?  Looking for a job in a particular location?  Whatever the reason might be that you need information about a U.S. city, you can find it all at the site we just launched for our client at HomeTownLocator.com.

This site has very clean and simple, easy-to-use navigation to drive you to a wealth of information with profiles of 179,000 cities, towns and neighborhoods in the United States.  The robust search features let you search by city, town, state, county or even area code.  There are maps, data and directions for 1.8 million (yes – million!) physical, cultural and historical features. 

The cultural features ‘locales’ information is a great resource to become acclimated with a new area.  The physical and historical features will also provide to be very useful.  The founders of this site have used decades of anayltical research to bring you the data that is informative, in a useful format.

Visit the site today.  I’ll bet you will learn something new about your city.  But be forewarned, there is so much information here that you might get carried away. . .   Enjoy.   www.HomeTownLocator.com

Back in August, 2008, we wrote our first blog article about Twitter.  It’s been the subject of many subsequent articles as we marvel at the way the site has changed how people communicate. 

The site has grown over the past year, with Twitter accounts increasing at more than 1500%!  The company has grown more than 500% and they have just added their 140th employee!  What a success story!

Some of the major technological changes that have occurred this past year include making it easier to use Twitter from your mobile phone (which is perfect, since most people only want to have to type 140 characters at a time when using a phone keyboard); making it easier to create lists and providing a simple retweet button to make it easier to spread information.

We’ve been enjoying Twitter for the following reasons:

• It is an excellent resource to new information about the topics we like, from social networking to business practices and Web site design as well as more personal interests such as worldwide surfing and parenting.  We can find links to the latest/coolest blog articles on all of these topics.
• It’s a great way to interact with other people — most of whom we’ve never met in person — on those same topics.  I’ve enjoyed reading tweets from people as far as Ireland and Australia, and it’s a reminder about how Twitter really brings us all closer together.
• It’s been a useful tool to promote our latest news and our upcoming ASK THE EXPERTS Webinar programs.  We’ve had lots of attendees tell us that they attended because they saw it reposted on Twitter.  (Thanks.)

How have you been using Twitter?  What, you’re not using it  yet?  Well, give it a try.  You can start by following me at Twitter.com/BTSMarie.

In so many industries, people want to ‘buy local.’  It’s patriotic.  It’s good for the local economy.  It’s easier.  There is a stronger trust factor when working with a ‘neighbor.’  Whatever the reason, the bottom line is that it is important for you to make it easy for your customers to find your business, and you can do this by adding a map to your Web site.

Years ago, you had to either hire a graphic designer to draw a map of your area or to purchase a local map, but it’s much easier now.  Both Google and Yahoo allow you to use their map images (provided you keep their logo on the map) on your Web site. 

You can even link out to their sites to get directions, so your Web visitors are only a click away from getting customized directions to your location.

Google maps has a great tool that you can display a street view of your location, and you can post that on your Web site to show that you have a real physical structure (which is often very important for eCommerce stores) and to give your future visitors a visual guide to recognizing your location.  For example, our Blue Tangerine Solutions offices are located at 1380 Sarno Road, Melbourne, Florida:

If you have multiple locations for your business, like a homebuilder in several communities or a retail store with many locations, then you can benefit from using something like Google maps to show the multiple locations or you might prefer our EasyAreaMap(TM) that lets you add/move locations on the map.

For example, Virginia-Homes.com displays this Google map on their Web site, to make it easy for people to find their communities:

An example of a more custom map can be seen at the WeissHomes.com Web site, as this site utilizes our EasyAreaMap(TM) tool which allows for a more visually pleasing and informative ‘pop-up’ to appear when someone mouses over a community location, and it provides a lot of community information in that little snapshop, including a link for directions.

When someone places their cursor over the community location on this map, a pop-up window appears that provides very useful information such as a community description and starting price as well as a link to get driving directions.

 Remember, there are many benefits to adding a map and driving directions to your Web site.  If you  need help with this, or any other modifications to your Web site, please give us a call as our Internet consultants are always available.  321-309-6900 or via eMail to info@BlueTangerineSolutions.com

On January 28, our company President – Expert Greg Bray – delivered a very informative Webinar  about how to use local search sites to drive more traffic to your Web site.

Local Search is the next wave in Search Engine Optimization.  Your Web site is only useful if you are driving qualified traffic to it.

In this Webinar, we provided information on the latest and greatest ways to use local search sites and directories to achieve higher search engine rankings, and thereby generate more qualified visitors to your Web site.  The Webinar provides actual instructions on how to get listed with the local search sites, such as how to have your company appear on the local map listings with Google and Yahoo.  Plus, many more tips that are available in the recorded version of the Webinar.  Visit our on-demand library to learn more.

On Tuesday, February 9, we interviewed industry Expert, Rick Storlie, President of New Home Sales Coach, to talk about Six Secrets to Maximizing Your Home Sales in Any Market.

The Webinar was exciting, with lots of useful information as well as some thoughftful questions from our audience.  Rich encouraged us to think about how people perceive our business and to analyze how we are positioned in the marketplace.  He reminded us that it’s important to understand what your customers’ problems are, and to then show them that you understand by offering solutions to be the best person to solve that problem.

For more information, please visit Rick Storlie’s Web site, especially the Free Resources page.  You can download the recorded Webinar event by visiting our On-Demand library at http://www.bluetangerinesolutions.com/index.cfm?method=Webinar.WebinarHistory.  To learn more about our future Webinars, check out our schedule at http://www.BlueTangerineSolutions.com/webinars.

 Psst.  Want to know a secret?  You’ll get more traffic to your Web site if you have great keyword-rich content on your Web site.  (If your Web site was built with  content management tools like our EasyRemoteAdmin(TM) (ERA) tools, then you can change your content without incurring any outside costs.)

 O.K., that might not seem like much of a secret to some of you, but I bet if you analyze the Web sites of your top ten competitors you will find that the majority of them could improve their search engine rankings by changing their content so that it’s more keyword rich.

 In marketing, most everyone agrees and recognizes that “content is king.”  With this knowledge, you do need to keep in mind a favorite phrase from my esteemed colleague, Chad Fagg, who says “Remember, people don’t like to read on the Web.”  That doesn’t necessarily mean that your site should be all pictures and video, but rather that you need to write your content in a Web-friendly format.

 So, what does this typically mean to your Web site?

•  First of all, you need to have great content on your Web site.  It should be a resource for the information that people want to learn about your product or services.
• Your content is best provided in a Web-readable format, which often is in short paragraphs, bullet point copy and images or videos of your product.
• *Your content should be compelling for the Web site visitor to want to interact with you, either by signing up for your eNewsletter or providing you with their contact information through your Contact us or registration forms.

Once you have those basic tenants in place, you need to analyze your content to ‘take it a step further.’

•  Review your content.  Does it include keyword rich terms in the page text, meaning the terms that someone might use on a search engine when they are looking for your product?  For example, if you’re a new homebuilder in Memphis, do you use those words on your site?  If you sell citrus gift baskets, are you using those words in the text on your Web pages?
• Does your content offer the visitor easy ways to stay in touch with you by becoming a fan of your Facebook business page? Following you on Twitter? Signing up for a subscription to your blog?
• Does your Web site content seem current?  Does it include your current promotions or events? 

We’ve been building Web sites since 1995 (which is several lifetimes in Internet years) and while we take great pride in building a Web site that is easy to use and follows good Web site best practices, we know that the real secret to a successful Web site includes having great content.  Content is king, and your Web site is the castle.

Want to learn more about how to get better search engine rankings, sign up for our upcoming Webinar to be held on Thursday, 1/28 at 1 p.m. Estern entitled “Secrets for Utilizing Local Search Sites and Directories to drive traffic to your site.” For more information about the Web site development, search engine marketing or social networking tools that we offer, please contact us at 321-309-6900 or become our fan at www.Facebook.com/BlueTangerineSolutions; follow me on Twitter at www.Twitter.com/BTSMarie; or subscribe to our weekly blog at http://thejuice.bluetangerinesolutions.com.

Social networking has changed the way we communicate.  The world has become ’smaller’ and communication is ‘real time’ and ‘personal’ even with strangers.  This is exciting to us, since we’re long-term players in the industry that has changed the world.  (Yes, we’ve been building Web sites since 1995, when most people weren’t sure if they really needed a Web site.)

As of this writing, the big players in social networking include these sites that you’re probably using or have heard of:

• Facebook.com  (become a fan of ours at Facebook.com/BlueTangerineSolutions.com)
• Youtube.com (check out our BlueTangerineTV channel)
• Twitter.com (become a fan at Twitter.com/BTSMarie)
• Myspace.com (join us at MySpace.com/BlueTangerineSolutions)
• LinkedIn.com (Linkedin.com/in/GregBray)

There are dozens of new sites, however, that are growing in popularity and many promise to be the next ‘big thing.’  Here are a few that you  might or may not already be using.

• Flickr.com – It’s a great photo sharing site and worth looking into if your business sells a product where it’s beneficial to see photos of it.  For example, if you sell new homes or citrus gift baskets, then you should consider posting your product shots here.  If you sell computer memory, it might not be the best use of your time.
• Digg.com – Digg is a place for people to discover and share content from anywhere on the web.  Content is  voted on by the members/users, rather than paid Editors.
• Yelp.com – This site is for ‘real people to provide real reviews’ and it’s based on a geographic area. If you run a business with local customers, you should check to see what they’re saying about you.
• FourSquare.com – Foursquare is a cross between a friend-finder, a social city-guide and a game that rewards you for doing interesting things. You can earn points and badges and even become the ‘Mayor’ of a local establishment. I like the concept of tying in frequent customer rewards on your smartphone, and predict we’ll see more of this site.
• Xanga.com – This site is a blogging community.  It started as a site for sharing book and music reviews and now has over 40 million users worldwide.  If you want to see what other people are saying or to share your thoughts in an online blog, then sign up to become a Xangan.
• Kaboodle.com – Kaboodle is the largest and fastest growing social shopping community where people discover, recommend and share products.
• FriendFeed.com – This is a great site to manage all of your other sites. It lets you tie into your Facebook, Twitter, blog, etc. accounts and to see people’s responses to your updates – in real time.
• Tribe.net – This is an interesting site whose purpose is to unite people within their local geographic community. You can meet locals who share similar interests or those with information you might want such as to help you find a great apartment deal or local jobs.  At this time, it’s growing and works well if you’re in a major U.S. city.

Obviously these are just a few of the many social networking sites available to you.  Please let us know of any other social networking sites that you think have the potential to become ‘the next Facebook’ or to make it into the top five (or even the top ten) list.

Social networking has significantly changed the way that people communicate, which has ultimately caused businesses to change how they do business.  They need to be aware of what their customers and competitors are saying about them online, and they should be on the lookout for new business prospects.  Fortunately, there are some wonderful tools to help.

One of our favorites is a useful online service called SocialOomph.com (formerly known as TweetLater.com)  that will scan all Twitter updates and then send you a list of those tweets that have your specific “keywords” in them.  You can sign up for multiple keywords, such as your own Twitter ID, your company name and any terms related to your business. 

For example, I receive daily reports that list when our company name (Blue Tangerine Solutions) is mentioned in a Tweet, as well as several keywords related to the vertical markets that we service.  You’ll want to include mis-spellings and abbreviations, to make sure you don’t miss anything, and that’s how I’ve learned that a LOT of people like the color combination of blue and tangerine.

SocialOomph.com will do more than just provide you with reports, as it’s a great tool to schedule tweets, set up your automated direct messages and even set up automatic ‘follow’ or ‘unfollow’ rules for your account.  Check it out at www.SocialOomph.com.

Another useful tool is Google Alerts.  This tool will send eMail updates of the latest relevant Google results (Web news, etc.) based on your choice of query or topic.  You can set up Google alerts to keep tabs on your company’s name, industry news, competitors, etc.  It will let you customize the alerts to the frequency of notification (daily, as-it-happens, weekly) as well as to identify the source such as all news articles, blog articles, Web articles or a comprehensive search that encompasses each type.  It takes about one minute to set it up, and the benefits are huge.   

We love both of the tools mentioned above because they offer free reporting services that can be automatically pushed to you via eMail.  What other tools have you used to monitor your brand online?  Please share your favorites with us.

I found this fascinating quote today on Rick Storlie’s Blog:

The Only Thing That Matters is What Consumers (i.e. the market) Feel is Important Enough to Pay for.nhsalescoach.com, “Green is for Idiots!” Part II- The Green Marketing Answers Home Builders Have Been Looking For… | nhsalescoach.com, Dec 2009

You should read the whole article.  While this article is dedicated toward the residential homebuilding industry, the message is important to ALL marketers.  It’s critical to “put yourself in your customer’s shoes.” 

Use your Web site to promote what your audience wants to learn about, rather than what you want to ‘tell them.’  We run into this so often, where a client might want a Web site link that has a title/label of something that means a lot to their internal company (such as ‘Our Collections’) but it truly doesn’t mean much to their visitors.  While it’s great to first conduct a ‘focus group’ to gather opinions on your Web site navigation link names, you also can use the Google Analytics ’site overlay’ tool to see just how many people are clicking on each of your top-level navigation links.  Then, you can use your research results to be proactive and improve your Web site navigation (if needed), to ensure that your Web site is the best business tool possible.

For more information about the article mentioned above, visit http://www.nhsalescoach.com/ and sign up for our next ASK THE EXPERTS Webinar when we will talk with Rick Storlie on February 9th, 2010 at 1:00 pm Eastern (12 noon Central).

What a decade!  Our company, Blue Tangerine Solutions, has been building Web sites since 1995, so we’ve been incredibly grateful for the constant technology improvements that have happened over the past ten years because they have made our jobs more interesting.  (To think, I remember some clients early on who actually questioned whether they would really “need one of those Web sites.”)

It’s hard to limit these Web site advancements to just ten, and we welcome your recommendations for the list.  Is it too strong to say that the following technology improvements and Web sites have made a significant impact on the world?  Probably not, as these Internet tools have most certainly changed the way we live and do business.  So, in no particular order, here are our top ten Internet technologies/sites of the decade:

1. Increased bandwidth: Remember the early days when we were excited to have 2800 baud dial up access into our homes?  We were patient as we waited for pictures to download to the Web pages.  Then, everything changed as we have increased broadband bandwidth so that we can now use our Internet to watch videos on just about every topic imaginable.
2. Online Video:  Yes, this goes hand in hand with the increased bandwidth.  Video has become incredibly popular because it’s a wonderful way to entertain or to showcase a business’ product or service.  It’s created a brand new industry (think YouTube and similar sites) and done wonders for the advancement of video capture devices.
3. eCommerce and Online Shopping: For the past several years, each holiday season has resulted in fewer trips ‘to the Mall’ because we can order just about everything we want online through sites like Amazon.com.  Online shopping has created thousands of new businesses and made so many brick-and-mortar stores change the way that they do business. 
4. Online Classifieds (like Craigslist):  Think about how easy it is to sell or buy pre-owned goods, or to conduct a job search online.  In the 90’s, you couldn’t easily find job openings across the nation . . . and you couldn’t easily post an ad to sell that collector’s Andy Warhol Marilyn Monroe poster that you longer needed… and you couldn’t easily post an ad indicating that you are a collector of well, let’s say – Andy Warhol art.  The online classified sites on the Internet have made the world so much smaller/closer.
5. Search sites like Google and Yahoo:  We’d be nowhere without incredible search sites like Google and Yahoo.  These sites have done an incredible job of indexing an unbelievable amount of information and they are constantly improving the methods on how they help us sort through the Web.  While there are many sites trying to improve search, the true winners of this past decade were definitely Google and Yahoo.  (They are so mainstream that the word “Google” has now become a verb, as in ‘If you don’t believe me, ‘Google it.’)
6. Social Network Sites:  Social networking sites like MySpace, Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn are some of the most popular sites worldwide.  They have changed the way we live and certainly made the world a smaller place.  Who needs to attend their class reunion when they are in touch with everyone on Facebook? Do you really need to send out holiday cards when everyone you know is viewing your regular posts on Facebook? Isn’t it wonderful to be a potential employer and to be able to get a glimpse into your prospective employee’s personal life by visiting their Facebook page.   There’s no doubt that Facebook and other social network sites have changed the way that we live and also the way that companies do business.
7. Blogs: In addition to the social network sits, blogs are one of the biggest advancements in this past decade as they have changed the way people and businesses communicate.  A blog gives a person a platform to share their ‘thoughts’ and for a business to show its ‘personality.’  They offer the opportunity to reach a worldwide audience as you stand on your soap box and share your latest comments.
8. SmartPhones: Remember when your mobile phone was big and bulky and you could only use it to make phone calls? This decade introduced the smartphone that is a rolodex, calendar, eMail tool, camera and oh yes, a phone too.  We’ve given hand therapists more business thanks to texting and psycho therapists have found a new issue to deal with for those people who are addicted to their phones.
9. Online Collaboration and Webinars: We started our “Ask the Experts” Webinar program a few years ago because we were looking for a way to ‘give back’ to our clients by bringing them closer to industry experts, through the use of technology.  Our goal was to create a program where the Speakers could share their expertise without having to leave their office, and the attendees didn’t have to travel or pay to attend costly seminars or trade shows.  The program has been a huge success because of technology like GoToWebinar(TM).  This type of technology has increased the speed in which business is conducted by eliminating travel time and costs and allowing for group viewing and review of business materials.  Just as cell phones changed the way we did business in the 1990’s (because we were all of a sudden accountable from any location), the online meeting tools have further changed the way business is done.

We’ve left room for one more Internet technological advancement to be added to our “Top Ten” list, and welcome your input.  Let us know what you think of the items listed above, and whether there are any additional advancements that you feel are worthy to be on this list. 

The 2000 – 2009 decade can certainly be called “The Decade of the Internet!”