Once again – I have to say that my favorite is Website Grader from Hubspot.com. This has to be one of the most comprehensive tools for outlining the general SEO and finability of your website.

Check these web services out to help you rate and ultimately improve your website.

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Dimdim Web Conferencing

Step right up! Dimdim is a web conferencing tool that will make it possible for you to share your knowledge and expertise with your followers for a very reasonable monthly fee!

The Dimdim Pro edition is available for $ 19 per month – and that includes unlimited meetings with up to 50 attendees per event.
Dimdim Pro is feature rich – and has full functionality to make your web presentations professional and easy to setup and deliver. If there are less than 20 members in your group – there is a Dimdim Free edition for you to use – and it is just that: free of charge! They also have a Virtual Classroom edition for anyone in the education market that needs to host a meeting and share their knowledge.

Offering a webinar is within your reach! And it is also within your budget.

Meet anyone without going anywhere! Signup for Dimdim Web Conferencing for less than $20 per month.

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Dreamstime

Dreamstime is one of the best sites – period.  And oh by the way, they are so reasonably priced its crazy good!  They have one of the best selections of stock photography available on the web.

I started using Dreamstime about 5 years ago when I had a big project to design a trade show booth and needed some unique pics for that project.  I have searched for some pretty obscure concepts and have found a good photo to use every time.  You can download watermarked images to work on comps for free.  To begin, you purchase credits for photos and then your account is debited when you have a download.  Some photos are only a dollar!

So, the next time you are looking for great stock photos – check out Dreamstime.

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WWGD

This is one of the best business, entrepreneurial, and/or problem-solving books I have probably ever read. I usually zip through a 240 page book in less that 5 hours – this one has taken me 5 weeks – because it is so thought provoking and interesting.

We are in the middle of possibly the largest paradigm shift since the industrial revolution. The author, Jeff Jarvis, writes one of the most popular blogs on the web - Buzzmachine.com.  Jarvis explains how Google approaches a problem, and then solves the problem.

And if you pat yourself on the back for thinking outside of the box, get over it. The folks at Google take thinking outside the box to an entirely new level – where there might not even be boxes to consider.

In the second part of the book, Jarvis applies Google’s problem solving, Googlejuice and googly thinking to some of the problem industries we face today;  airline service, banking, real estate, education, etc.  It is fascinating to learn how to approach a problem from a new perspective.

Get this book.  Read this book.  Think Googly.

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Since I have left my small business, and returned to Corporate America, my job requires me to understand search engine marketing, search engine optimization, website analytics, and pay-per-click campaigns. The more I learned about all of these tools, the more I wanted to spread the word to small business owners who might have been in the same position I was – out of sleep, out of time and needing a marketing campaign of some sort.

Because I am a geek, and wanted to connect with friends, I joined Facebook. There are days it drives me absolutely nuts. How many quizzes can some people complete in one day! BUT – buried within Facebook is the wonderful marketing capabilities made possible by its inner-workings and programming that shares information between members. So I bought a book, learned more about how Facebook works, created a few fan pages, had an “online home party” and I am hooked. An expertise  in social marketing was born.

In the blog, I will cover many different activities you can do via the web to increase your marketing efforts, develop a fan base, and connect with customers. You can complete any one of these activities to help market your products or services. What I strongly recommend, do more than one – and I will be posting a series of “You Need to…” suggestions. I also recommend that you do them consistently – you can’t just do one thing and hope it keeps generating new leads and business. You will see results if you are consistent in your efforts.

Develop a plan! Spend 15 to 30 minutes every day in support of that plan. Pick 5 or 6 of the marketing tasks and combine them into a comprehensive plan that drives new customers to your web site. Divide the different activities up by the days of the week. Keep track of what you accomplish. As your business grows – don’t be afraid to outsource this part of your marketing. There are many companies out there – with a fabulous amount of expertise – that would help you “kick it up a notch” and really generate some results for your business.

I am happy to help. Please feel free to email me for advice!

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Website Grader

We had an earlier post about Hubspot’s Website Grader.  During the latest bout of insomnia – I decided to run our site through the grader again to see if we had improved.   AND WE DID!!!  We are up 12 points over our last grading in May.

Here is what Hubspot had to say about our site:

A website grade of 62/100 for www.rorirasel.com means that of the hundreds of thousands of websites that have previously been evaluated, our algorithm has calculated that this site scores higher than 62% of them in terms of its marketing effectiveness. The algorithm uses a proprietary blend of over 50 different variables, including search engine data, website structure, approximate traffic, site performance, and others.

The website www.rorirasel.com ranks 514,903 of the 1,368,012 websites that have been ranked so far.

The software is constantly being upgraded and the algorithm enhanced. The number of potential recommendations provided by the tool is also increasing frequently. Please check back often.

You definitely want to check out the Website Grader and get suggestions for improving your site.   If you don’t get the results you had hoped – you can use the report to improve your site.  If you need help with the report – or don’t have time to make the improvements on your own – contact us to help you increase your rating!

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Thanks in advance for your patience.

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Facebook

To save time – a lot of social marketers will integrate their Twitter feed with their Facebook posts.  Since everyone seems to Twitter pretty frequently, your Facebook fans are overwhelmed with all of your tweets.  The rule of thumb regarding the frequency of Facebook posts is to not post as often – only when you have something new piece of information to share or a special offer.

Be careful when you are linking your Twitter feed with your Facebook posts.  You might be inundating your Facebook fans with too much information and too many posts.

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All the little birdies go tweet tweet tweet...

This is a fabulous article on Twitter.  If you are a novice user – or a complete beginner – I recomment reading this article to get started.

Twitter User Guide

Adam Sicinski put a lot of time and effort into this article!

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