March 16th, 2010
Editor’s Note: This is a letter sent by BlitzLocal CEO Dennis Yu to the American Marketing Association’s Alli Libb, who invited members and friends to the AMA’s “Demystifying Social Media Measurement” webinar. To social media, add search engine optimization and web best practices to the list of things that need not be mysterious.
Hi Alli,
Hope you’re well.
Here is a screenshot of the Social Media Measurement email I got today– the register button or link is not visible, since images are off (see gray box circled in red at bottom).
Most consumers will see the same thing, as that’s the default setting for webmail applications such as Gmail and Yahoo mail. Images off is also the default setting for Google Apps (corporate gmail– such as what we use), which is powering the majority of Fortune 500 corporations and educational institutions.
We see this issue frequently. Good news is that there’s an easy fix. Just make sure to include alt tags on images. This is a great web practice, too, since people who have slow loading pages can still see what the images and links are labeled as.
Calls to action should also be links, not images.
If you implement this, you should definitely see increases to your open rates. Hope that helps!
Posted in SEO and Marketing | No Comments »
March 4th, 2010
Company name: Design Matters Home
Hometown: Louisville, Colo. (Old Town)
Website: Design Matters Home (http://www.designmattershome.com)
Years in business: We opened our office in Old Town Louisville in 2008.
Motto: “Your design matters, our expertise, results you want!”
Describe your business in 50 words or less: Design Matters believes that design is important, if not critical, to everything in the world, natural and manmade. We have broken design matters into six main components that we feel encompass all the pieces that are important to customers in interior design projects – Aesthetics, Functionality, Health, The Earth, Saving Money, and Future Investment.
What are your areas of specialty: Interior design, home staging for real estate
What’s your competitive advantage? We feel we have a very good ability to take a client’s vision, wants, and needs and use our expertise to come up with a solution that will work for their budget. Tim Gunn on Project Runway is famous for saying “make it happen!” We make it happen for our clients! We really want customers to embrace us as part of their project team. We are in it for them first and foremost and I think this vibe, and our attitude toward design, resonates with many people in our area.
We are the only full service Interior Design and Home Staging company in the Boulder, Broomfield, Longmont area providing services that enhance all the phases of home ownership: Kitchen and Bath Design, Real Estate Home Staging, Settle-In Design, Redesign and Interior Styling, Home Office Design, Home Entertainment Design, Outdoor Kitchen Design, Green Design, Universal Design, Color Consultations, Lighting Plans, Window Coverings, Project Management, Space Planning, Furniture Layout, Flooring, Upholstery, Feng Shui, Accessorizing, Built-in Design, Party and Holiday Styling.
What’s the most unusual thing that ever happened to you at your business? We are in a unique place as a business because when we go into a person’s home, we are seeing an aspect of their personal life that few people outside family and friend circles get to see. Sometimes we come across some real strange accessories and situations. One time we encountered a bunch of baby chicks in a bathtub while doing a consultation, and we love this kind of experience. We love to meet all kinds of people with all kinds of aesthetics and needs.
What’s the biggest misconception in interior design? There is no one-size-fits-all level of importance for any of our six design principles, or any project. Different customers will rank each design matter differently and that is cool. We pride ourselves on our flexibility and true desire to make the client’s interior design or home staging project succeed no matter what design issue is most important to them.
People frequently apologize about the state of their home. It is all good from our perspective, we have seen it all, and we need to see it all to get the driving force behind the life of our clients. Well done interior design is as much about a person’s lifestyle as it is colors on a wall. This is the spice of life and the lifeblood of our business. People should be proud of their homes. When you are proud that means you are comfortable and at peace in your home. This is super important. We all have enough challenges and stressors in our lives and our home should be our retreat. It should function how we want and it should calm or excite our senses as we want. We really do take this to heart and give everything we can to help clients feel this way and be as happy as possible inside their homes
What do you do when not running your business? We are part of the community where we do business. We live very similar lives as our clients and are able to have a strong rapport with them. My husband and I are both athletes. He races bicycles and I run marathons. We have kids in the BVSD school system, we participate in many countywide activities, and we support many local causes and local businesses. We are out there engaging in our surroundings. We know the market very well. Every member of the Design Matters Home team loves being around people. We are one of the guys or gals. We are here for our clients and are dedicated to the success of every project we take on. We know that when you are going through an interior design project or need a home stage that you are going through a big change. We are there with you during that change to make it go as fast as possible ending up in the desired results.
Where can we get more information? We have a blog on our website where we share our thoughts on various interior design, home staging, and market topics. We also conduct monthly workshops to help educate and inspire you with design. Questions about interior design and staging are always welcome, and we offer a free initial design consultation. We can meet you, preview your space, and see how we can help you transform your space to suit you perfectly.
Tags: Accessorizing, Built-in Design, Color Consultations, Feng Shui, Flooring, Furniture Layout, Green Design, Home Entertainment Design, Home Office Design, Kitchen and Bath Design, Lighting Plans, Outdoor Kitchen Design, Party and Holiday Styling, Project Management, Real Estate Home Staging, Redesign and Interior Styling, Settle-In Design, Space Planning, Universal Design, Upholstery, Window Coverings
Posted in Business of the Week | No Comments »
March 4th, 2010
Save money, sharpen your AdWords skills and learn from experts by signing up today for the first-ever AdWords Advantage Online Summit, a three-week online event beginning Tuesday (March 9).
The summit’s 14 sessions are led by top industry experts, including Bryan Eisenberg, Co-Founder Future Now Inc., Frederick Vallaeys, product evangelist for Google, and Dennis Yu, CEO and co-founder of BlitzLocal.
As a bonus, BlitzLocal is offering free pay-per-click campaign templates for a few industry verticals for those who attend “AdWords for Local: Sort Heads from Tails, Find Free Clicks and Calls,” which Yu is leading on March 16.
Yu will cover a number of topics including:
- how to build effective campaigns for businesses that have a local customer base
- why mobile ads are a hidden gem for lead gen on smartphones and non-smart phones alike.
- how to manage the difference between “Chicago restaurants” and “restaurants” searched from Chicago: find out how much traffic can you expect from geo-targeted search versus geo-multiplied keywords.
For more information and to save $200 by registering today, please follow the link here.
Tags: AdWords, local search marketing, PPC
Posted in BlitzLocal, Learning Center | No Comments »
March 3rd, 2010
SYDNEY — BlitzLocal and SEOMoz will offer a joint session on measuring success on Facebook at the eMetrics Marketing Optimization Summit in Sydney, Australia, April 22-23, 2010.
With meetings in nine world capitols this year, the eMetrics Summit attracts web analysts, business intelligence experts and marketing managers, who share wisdom on how to increase the return on online investment.
Dennis Yu, CEO of BlitzLocal, and Gillian Muessig, co-founder and president of SEOMoz, will demonstrate how to adapt standard web methods to track form completions, shopping cart checkouts and phone calls to the Facebook environment.
Yu and Muessig will show how to use Facebook’s own Insights tool to add a social dimension to analytics. They will also address the pros and cons of using modifications of Google Analytics and tools from other providers.
With more than 150,000 members, SEOmoz is the world’s brand leader in search marketing software tools, education, resources and community. The company’s flagship product, Linkscape, powers SEO tools and applications such as OpenSiteExplorer.org, RavenTools, and many more.
Muessig has provided keynotes and sessions for conferences around the world on the state and future of search marketing as well as technical issues. This month she launches “Getting Down to Business,” a new program on Webmaster Radio.
In 2006, Yu co-founded BlitzLocal, a Denver area firm that provides local search solutions for enterprises of all sizes. Clients include J.C. Penney, Equifax and Yahoo!, as well as local professional service providers, national franchises and non-profit groups.
An entrepreneur and internationally recognized lecturer in search engine marketing, Yu is an expert in search marketing technical analysis and pay-per-click (PPC) ad campaign development and optimization. He has written widely on the industry, been featured on National Public Radio and has counseled the Federal Trade Commission on privacy issues for social networks.
Tags: Conferences, Facebook
Posted in BlitzLocal, Company Blog | No Comments »
