The truth is, there is no quick mix. Here’s a clip from a speech Alaina Sheer recently gave on the subject.

To hear Alaina again along with Cement Marketing SEO Director, Brad Spencer, snap up tickets to Finding Your Virtual Mix: A Sway Workshop Day Camp at Ohio University on September 30th. The $38.00 tickets include a full day of search engine marketing and social marketing basics.

The low ticket cost is thanks to our generous hosts for the event: Ohio University’s Innovation Center, Business Remixed and the Small Business Development Center.

[Special thanks to Ruth and Jan of Articulation, Inc. for the above speech - a result of their meticulous and inspiring speech coaching].

If you missed it here’s what went down.

• A nice man in California searches the Internet using these keywords, “Lifesize E.T. Doll”. He needed said doll for a charity bike ride.
• His search term leads him to this post on my personal blog.
• My son and I pack up E.T. and ship him off for the long trip to California. See pictures here.

E.T.’s temporary owner just posted these pictures to Facebook. E.T. has landed and is about to take off on a bike ride to raise funds for the San Francisco Aids Foundation. Donate here.

To find out how your business can rank #1 in Google for terms like “Life size E.T. doll” contact Cement Marketing or attend our Sway Search Marketing Workshop on May 20 – 21st.

Unlike any other search or social marketing conference you’ve been to, Sway will teach you how to truly sway your audiences through a hands-on workshop with one-on-one instruction from Cement Marketing’s Bradley Spencer, Alaina Sheer and special guest instructors John Raymond and Leigh Householder. Seats will be limited to ensure that every attendee gets the most out of the Sway experience.

More details coming very soon. We’re putting the final touches on the Sway website as we speak, including these mug shots.

Bradley Spencer, Search Engine Optimization Wizard

Alaina Sheer, Social Marketing Maven and Web Strategist

John Raymond, Search Engine Optimization Consultant

Leigh Householder, or Advergirl, nationally renowned social marketing and digital strategist

We can’t wait to see you there. Stay tuned to the Cement Marketing blog and Twitter for the launch of the Sway Website and registration.

Fate? Destiny? Or just some really cool chartreuse and burryberry mustard chairs.

Either way, we’re beyond pleased with our new space.

And our first client. More on Lifeline of Ohio soon.

]]> http://cementmarketing.com/the-new-first-office/feed/ 0 http://cementmarketing.com/big-things/ http://cementmarketing.com/big-things/#comments Sun, 24 Jan 2010 20:22:21 +0000 alaina http://www.cementmarketing.com/?p=213 Cement Marketing is proud to announce a move to our first studio/office space.

Located above Wild Goose Creative, the Cement Marketing offices will be at 2489 Summit Street, just south of Hudson in Columbus, Ohio. We can’t wait to show you our new space!

At this very moment, our space looks like this:

And because we have a crazy amount of exciting client work to tend to, we’re planning on transforming the place in less than 36 hours. Stay tuned for an update and follow us on Twitter as we make our progress.

Cement Marketing provides complete Website development, social marketing and search engine optimization services to a select group of clients in Columbus, Ohio. For information or to set up an appointment in our brand new offices, e-mail – alainasheer@cementmarketing.com

It’s 8:00 am on Monday morning – what’s the first thing you do when you sit down in the office? As a marketer or a business owner you should be checking your website traffic report from the prior week. Did your traffic drop or jump? And if so, why or how? What can you do this week to ride the momentum or turn the dip around? Does your current advertising agency provide you with weekly analytic reports? If they don’t, they’re not doing their job.

When launching a Twitter campaign a good social marketer will measure the incoming traffic throughout the day and watch the visitors poor onto the website, tweaking as necessary. Using Google Analytics we  can then tell which page they visit after the home page and follow their user path until they leave the website. We can even tell you what time of day they come onto your site and tell you exactly how they got there.

A challenge for you… ask your marketer or website manager for your site’s analytics report. If they hestitate for a second, you may want to us a call because you may be driving a lemon.

Chances are, by now, your head is spinning.

During every one of our meetings with new clients we always hear this question, “I just need someone to tell me where to start, what do we do with all of this stuff.” Our answer –  “What’s your message? What do you offer your target audience?”

It’s an age old question but one we’re all forgetting, which should be expected when we are so overwhelmed with information.  Your message should be the same across all of the networks you are on, whether it be Twitter, Facebook or YouTube and you should be leading all of your potential visitors to one targeted channel on your website. But to bring them to action on your website or from within their social network your content must be worthy of that action. You can spend all day on Twitter but if you don’t have a compelling piece of content, like a fantastic blog post or YouTube video, no one is going to pass it on.

So rather than being swept up in the social marketing whirlwind of creating accounts to this and that, re-focus yourself on your message. What is it and how does it translate online? And when visitors arrive on your website are you measuring their experience with your analytics?

The way in which we share information is changing but one thing will never change — your brand must be worthy of sharing in order to fly in the social media space. And while you may think your content can’t be livened up at all, think again. You do have employees don’t you? Or a CEO with a compelling personal story? What about your products or services? How do they stand out from the rest?

Your job as the marketing agent of your company is to move products or services. Our job is to give you the tools necessary to make that happen but before we give you those tools we also take stock of your existing social and search inventory. Then we make a detailed strategy recommendation on what content to create and how to share that content online and elsewhere in order to make the biggest impact.

Consider us your social and search zen doctors. We’ll center you again and then send you back out there armed with the tools you need to convert your website into a machine, one working for you – not against you.

Fortune 500 companies are about to eat your lunch. Unless, of course, you grab a sling shot.

If your website is less than a decade old, has less than 100,000 inbound links, or less than 10,000 indexed pages, then enjoy the year or so. Relish the traffic you are getting from search engines. Stew in the delight of ranking high for some pretty common search terms. Because that’s all about to end.

Why is your site about to go ten pages deep?

Because huge companies with massive budgets are watching what us smaller websites and SEO firms are doing and oogling at our ROI.

Fortune 500 companies that are slow and unwieldy have stayed out of the search engine optimization game so far. But now that they are seeing the importance of organic traffic, they are going to systematize and dominate. They have the money, brand and influence to absolutely destroy any websites that stand in their path.

Do you really think you can rank for “Big Red Wagon” when Target, Walmart, Walgreens, and other huge companies with established domains, inbound links, and a team of SEO’s are working for the same thing? Not likely.

Do you really think that your keyword research tools can stand up to something that a genius programmer could design for GE and sell for millions or dollars? I doubt it.

So what does this mean for us smaller, freelance, or one-man webmasters? Is this the end of the line? Are we going to look back on 1995-2009 as the glory days of SEO before the “Big Guys” got involved?

Maybe.

But there IS a way to stay in the game when the big guys enter. And it won’t have anything to do with getting a few links here and there or having a flawless site structure. In the future, as Cement Marketing practices, every site will be built to be fully optimized for search engines. Our SEO practices, while cutting edge now, stand to become industry standard.

So how will smaller websites stay competitive?

Easy. The same way brands and small businesses have always put themselves on the map – with a clear and compelling message that everyone wants to share.  Be unique. Be edgy. Be smart. Be linkworthy. And above all create something memorable.

Fortune 500 companies have Legal Departments and they have Branding, Office Politics and 1985-MBA-Weilding Bosses, and they have writers whose creativity has been sapped by talk about American Idol around the watercooler and endless meetings. My God, The Meetings.

You, on the other hand, have coffee shops, and late-night brainstorming mixed with loud music and screaming kids and thunderstorms and the absolute ability to publish and create whatever you want without worrying about what your boss will think, how the shareholders will react, or what the legal department thinks.

People don’t want to link to corporate legalese. They don’t want to read boring content. And they aren’t going to remember a watered-down sales pitch. Us smaller guys, the Davids, will trump the Goliaths because we are far more interesting and we always will be. If your business has employees, if you have people with smiling faces ready to service or help your customers – than you are more interesting than a dry, corporate website.

Use your employees and customers are your muse. What do they need? What do they inspire in you? In your brand? Maybe it’s a viral application, a widget, a quiz or a compelling Twitter account. Whatever it may be, chances are yours will be more interesting than the same thing created by a giant corporation.

So what do you do now to prepare for the SEO future?

First and foremost, be sure all of your SEO ducks are in a row and that your site is fully optimized and then stop and think about what you are doing today and what you can be doing tomorrow to spread your brand message virtally.

At Cement Marketing we believe that the future of SEO will depend on the quality of your content which will be judged, not just by search rankings, but by the amount of chatter your brand or website is receiving across all social network platforms. That’s why we offer both SEO and SEM capabilities. It’s what sets us apart and what will ultimately set your brand apart in what is about to become a very competitive marketplace.

Break the mold of what your competitors are doing and create something unique, something people will want or something they will use. Don’t worry about tips and tricks, soon those will be commonplace. Start thinking big before the big guys do.

Read Brad’s SEO & WordPress Consulting blog
Follow Brad on Twitter

Just like this chair.

This old chair, thrown out to the curb and forgotten, is a hidden treasure.

Just like your website. 

It just needs a little cleaning, some polish and a splash of search engine marketing. 

This chair has serious potential. Do you see it?

We do.