Esultants happily shares that we are expanding our offering to now include promotional products.  We encourage you to learn more about the benefits of promotional products and to contact us for more information or to place an order.

Promotional products are “articles of merchandise (often branded with a logo) used in marketing and communication programs [that] are given away to promote a company, corporate image, brand, or event.”  Use promotional products to your company’s greatest profit by first understanding the benefits.

Blogging takes time and commitment.  Here are a few tips to get your blog turning and to increase your online presence.

Topics

·   Customer’s frequently asked questions

·   Industry trends

·   Reviews about new industry techniques or products

Content, truly effective content, nurtures relationships and deepens trust. It is about what is offered to the reader not what the reader can provide in return.  Although the content may incite a response, it is not its’ primary intent.  Content is meant to educate and entertain.

I will admit, as a current patient of Complete Eye Care of Medina I am somewhat biased, but their service, expertise and patient care is the best in the Twin Cities in my opinion.  That is why I made sure to take extra special care of their newly remodeled website - www.completeeyecareofmedina.com.

Working directly with Dr. Gina Wesley and her talented staff, we were able to modernize their website and add in some incredible features, such as a more streamlined layout, a built-in Mobile Website (for viewers on the go), and upgraded the video and photo software to provide higher quality media that is compatible across different viewing platforms.  All while moving them into a Content Management System so that they can manage the website themselves, and give their patients an even better online experience!

GooglePlus, as a newer social media site, is growing and changing constantly.  The exciting part about joining now is you will be a part of the change and will already be utilizing the benefits before it becomes the next big thing.  To learn more about the benefits of Google+ and what it can do for your company, read our previous blog entry “Google+ For Business: Why Your Company Needs It”.  The next step is creating your business page then start building connections and sharing content.

Create Your Business Page

Google has put together some great resources to walk people through creating a business page.  No need to reinvent the wheel when Google has provided a good starting point.

Follow the steps in this Getting Started guide and set up your business page.

Welcome back to the wonders of learning Twitter! As mentioned in Twitter for Business: Why Your Company Needs It, Twitter can benefit your business with increased networking and marketing opportunities.  This may sound like an ideal marketing strategy which requires little monetary investment, but you may be unsure as to how to get started. Today, you will learn how to set up your business Twitter account, have a better understanding of what to tweet, how to manage your relationships with followers, and how to maintain your business presence.

Basic Setup 

1. Go to the Twitter home page at twitter.com – to sign up for Twitter either enter your information here or click Sign up for Twitter to begin there.

If you are in need of quality medical supplies or equipment, at a reasonable price and shipped to your door, then you should definitely visit one of our recently launched websites: www.medical-supply-company.com.  They are a brand new company with years of experience in the medical equipment and supply field. 

We worked closely with them to develop their website identity, and building a robust E-commerce platform for them that would help them sell to customers all over the United States and grow their business and product lines over time.  Their E-commerce platform also features many cool options, such as the Special Offers module (currently they are utilizing this to offer Free Shipping on orders over $50).  We look forward to the start of a long and successful relationship with Medical Supply Company and are excited to see what the future holds for this new business venture!

The first Social Media for Business series post, Why Your Business Needs Facebook shared that Facebook is beneficial for your business because it helps attract new customers, increases consumer knowledge of the industry, and creates an open communication platform. Many small businesses know they should utilize social media in order to increase reach and generate more leads but are lost about how to do that.  This blog post will address a basic overview of how to set-up your business page, what to post to attract and sustain customer interaction, how often you should post, as well as a few general tips and reminders.

Sometimes the easiest way to learn about something is just to ask. In a survey on Facebook about how businesses could utilize Facebook more, a few users shared their responses.

Mackenzie: “…I don’t really look at businesses on Facebook unless there are coupons or some sort of incentive to do so…”

Kenzie: “I agree [with Mackenzie]… I also sometimes look to see what the business is all about if I see others posting about it.”

We are proud to announce the launch of a new website for one of our clients - SF Advance Transportation.  Their previous site had begun to look dated, and was using some older technology that was hampering visitors from accessing the site on different mobile and tablet devices. 

Their new site - www.sfadvance.com features a sleek, clean and more modern design, as well as an integrated mobile website - all built on a CMS platform that will allow them to add/edit and update content and pages on the fly!  It is a great step forward for the online marketing of their business, and we were happy that we could be a part of helping them through the process!

Google +, or Google Plus, is a social networking site incorporating personal and business interactions with real-time opportunities and tailored messages to specific groups of people.  At the turn of this new year, Google + ranked second as a social network behind Facebook.  This is not just another social networking site; it offers different benefits and new options that have not been offered before.  The over-arching benefits include online business management and more personal customer interaction.

 Online Business Management

Online business management is the supervision of your business’s online presence.  This includes the management of your business’s website, the analytics of interaction on your website including traffic and lead generation and SEO, and the upkeep of social media profiles and interaction with customers.  Through the new options offered with Google +, the online management of business will be more centrally located and easier for your convenience.

The Social Media for Business series continues with a detailed explanation for why your business needs a Twitter account.  Twitter is a conglomerate of networking, information sharing, and personal data.  The primary interaction is by communicating through “tweets” which are sentences of 140 characters or less.  And the people that choose to follow your tweets are called “followers.”  According to Twitter’s own business page, there are over 200 million active users (“What is twitter,” n.d.).

More than 300 million of these short sentences are shared each day which begs the question of why?  People like sharing their interests and passions and enjoy interaction and acceptance; Twitter is a great avenue for that.  And it can help improve your business as a tool for networking and marketing.  Twitter recommends that businesses use twitter to “influence and participate in real-time conversations” and “listen and gather marketing intelligence and insights” (Shaefer, n.d.).

 Networking

1. Twitter channels opportunities for personal and professional networking.  The sheer number of people you can connect with is greater than any in-person networking event.  You are able to connect with professionals and companies throughout the world; including people you look up to, trends you wish to follow, and your people in your target market.  This benefits your company through the vast information, expertise, and advice that is shared among these connections.

The benefits of a Facebook page span beyond just the initial creation.  There is a demand for interaction and upkeep on the business’s end which will increase the value for customers and prospective buyers.  Currently, more than half of the US population have Facebook accounts and of those about 400,000 reside in the Minneapolis area (Facebook Statistics by Country, n.d.).  Facebook, as with other social media platforms like Twitter and Google +, are continuing to evolve into larger players for marketing, advertisement, brand awareness, and customer service.  Some of the primary benefits for creating and maintaining a Facebook page are listed below.

1.       Attracting new customers that would not have discovered our business through traditional means

2.       Increasing knowledge of the industry and potential personal benefits from the business itself

3.       Creating an open platform for questions to be asked and answered about products and services

Here at Esultants, it has been a very hectic end of 2011/start of 2012.  We have been working on a number of different websites – everything from corporate limo websites to banking websites and everything in between.

One of the really cool aspects of my job is that during the course of building a client’s site is that I get to learn a lot about what it is they do. Despite the VAST differences from one client to the next, there is one resounding similarity that all of our customers seem to share - the desire to have a web presence that best represents their business to both current customers and potential customers.

Website design is kind of like fashion.  Looking at website designs dating back to the onset of the Internet can be similar to looking at pictures of someone in the 70s wearing a leisure suit*, in the 80s wearing acid washed jeans, or in the early 90s rocking a pair of Zubas.   When you encounter past images of yourself or others wearing these items, you probably feel a mix of nostalgia, combined with a little bit of embarrassment, along with awe at how far things have come.

Is this your website? (Metaphorically speaking)

So it looks like this Facebook thing is kind of a big deal.  Hundreds of millions of people use it every day to interact with their friends, play silly games, post interesting (and uninteresting) life updates, and to hear from companies like yours.

If you have already set up a Facebook page for your business, your customers and others who are interested in you can choose to “Like” your page.  This means that whenever you post something on your page, everyone who “Likes” your page will see it.  This is a great way to stay in touch with your customer base.

So how can you get more people to “Like” your page?  One easy way is to put a “Like Box” on your website.  By

The development team has had a fast start to August, already launching three new websites in the first 9 days.  All three projects were quite unique, although in all cases the main objective was the same - to create a more professional, modern and stylish design, and to give the website owner more control over the content presented on their site.  Here is a brief rundown of the project specifics. 

These phone books have been sitting on the porch of my apartment building for over a week.  Four apartments in the building, four sad, lonely phone books just sitting there, most likely never to be used.  That is, unless someone needs an impromptu doorstop.

So what happened?

Your phone book (if you even have one) is like Woody, from the movie Toy Story.  It used to be your trusty companion when you wanted to find a place to eat, buy a new piece of furniture, or hire someone to fix your sink.  Then the Internet came along. 

To complete the Pixar simile, Google is like Buzz Lightyear.  Even if you’re still the phone book’s “favorite deputy,” it’s easy to leave it behind in favor of some fancy search engine that seems to go “to infinity and beyond.”  With any piece of information just seconds away, it’s understandable to leave that old phone book on the porch like some old broken toy that you’re bored with.

In a way it’s almost sad.  I imagine that at some point in the future we’ll look back with nostalgia and miss the

I know this is a question that we all toss and turn about in bed at night. 

 
A quick multiple choice test:  Which of the following is the right way to write it?

 
A. web site

B. website

C. web-site

D. Web site

E. Web Site

F. Some cutesy spelling, like wEbsiTE  (Please don’t pick this one)

 
Maybe you have a preference that you tend to use yourself.  Maybe you just go with whatever you feel like in the moment.  But is there a correct way to write it that you should be using?

 
Let’s cut this Gordian Knot by taking a look at a few arguments for the use of different versions of it, and also see who uses it how.

The one and only Google appears to have chosen website.  Since Google is taking over the world, I think this carries some weight.  When I mentioned this in an office discussion, Rob, our Project Coordinator said, “If Google jumped off a bridge, would you too?”  Touché, Rob, touché.   If that’s what it took to get one of our customers’ websites higher on search engines, I just might.

 
Tim, one of our consultants, had an interesting take on it. He said, “What about a landing

We're excited to launch our new website, which will enable us to provide even more value to our customers.  The new site uses one of our content management systems, which allows anyone from our staff (web developer or not) to add pages, content, and more to the site.

We're just getting started.  Take a look around, and we'd love to hear what you think.

Don't forget to bookmark this blog and check back regularly for informative posts about how you can get more from having a website.