Blue Liquid Media Blog Carmel Indiana

Carmel Family Dentistry

January 1, 2012 By Adam Leave a Comment

Ahhhhh! I hate going to the dentist. Well, maybe not hate. But it’s certainly not my favorite thing to do. Especially with the amount of junk food that I eat and coke that I drink. They always yell at me.

But I guess that’s their job; to keep our mouths healthy and instruct us on how to properly administer oral hygiene. But when it comes to finding a Dentist in Carmel Indiana, they’re are more options than there are teeth in your mouth.

With that said, I encourage you to check out Carmel Family Dentistry. Dr. Worthington is dedicated to improving every patient’s quality of life through their smile. She is very enthusiastic and energetic about the work that she is doing. She has a great personality and can commonly be heard laughing or giggling throughout the office. She’s also a Butler grad and, really, who isn’t a Bulldogs fan?

You know you’re over-due for a teeth cleaning. So check out my fav Carmel Indiana Dentist.

Filed Under: Projects

Illuminating Concepts

December 11, 2011 By Adam Leave a Comment

Do you hate stepping into the shower before the water has warmed up? Then you need this! The LED lights in the shower head are powered by the water current and change color to correspond with the temperature of the water. Three colors will display depending on the water temperature: Green, Blue, or Red. Most shower heads just dispense water. Illuminating Concepts’ LED Shower Heads & Faucets also provide a romantic shower experience, making your bathroom the most popular room in the house! Easy retrofit installation; just twist off your existing shower head and replace with your new LED one!

This is one of our newest website development projects, and a really cool product too! I received one of these shower heads from my client and installed it in my bathroom. I have young children and just by looking at the color of the water, I can adjust the temperature just right. Aside from that, it provides a really neat ambiance in my bathroom.

These products are eco-friendly, super easy to install, powered by the water, and just plain cool! Check out the website to see what you think – and I recommend checking out the product too!

Filed Under: Projects

10 Things EVERYONE Should Know About SEO

September 11, 2011 By Adam Leave a Comment

You don’t have to spend too much time in the SEO world to know that there’s a heck of a lot of contradictory information about there. As an SEO consultant, what is common knowledge to you reads like black magic rocket science to someone else. And sometimes that can be okay – it’s job security. But when it’s NOT okay is when the person infected with Bad SEO Information-itis is your boss. Or a client. Or that designer you’ve been tasked with working with. Or anyone else you need to have a basic understanding of SEO so that YOU can do your job without their meddling more effectively.

What do you wish your boss/client/person in the next department knew about SEO? If you could drill one thing into their brain to help their SEO education and make your life easier, would what it be?

Below are ten things about SEO I wish everyone knew.

1. SEO comes now, not later.

If you come to Blue Liquid Media freshly after new redesign and ask us to fix your designer’s errors, it may be more costly than just coming to us in the first place. Why? Because SEO needs to start at the ground floor.

The time to think about and plan for SEO is before you’ve launched or redesigned your Web site. It’s before all those content pages were purchases and before you’ve done much of anything. SEO comes now, it doesn’t come later. Businesses owners should stop thinking of SEO as a condiment they can throw on at the end. The sooner you bring SEO into the conversation, the better off you’ll be. Otherwise, you waste a lot of time cleaning up mistakes.

2. SEO is an investment into the long-term health of your Web site

There are quite a few marketing tactics that you can employ today and see results as early as tomorrow. For the most part, though, search engine optimization is not one of them. SEO is an investment into the health of your site that will get stronger with time; it’s NOT an overnight solution. And that’s why working with a reputable and trustworthy SEO vendor is so helpful – because you need them to help you set realistic expectations and to instill the faith that you will see results once the engines catch up to what you’ve got going on.

3. SEO does not equal shiny Meta tags

Though some really enjoy whispering myths that all SEOs do is rework Meta tags and explain the concepts of linking, it really is just a tad more complicated and involved in that. When we take on an SEO project, we have a long list of areas that we’re looking at when we complete that initial SEO site audit. Sort of like how a brain surgeon doesn’t just grab a scalpel and go to town on your inner lobes. There’s a science involved; a process. There are a lot of working parts that must be balanced to get the desired outcome. Otherwise the person dies.

In SEO, it’s your site that dies. And, by association, your business.

SEO may not be as complicated as digging into someone’s brain, but if you don’t know the inner workings and what’s involved, it may as well be.

4. Just because you read it on a blog or in a forum doesn’t make it true

Read. Verify. Test.

Always.

You should never believe anything you read on the Internet unless you are able to do these things. Yes, even if you read it on your most favorite, trusted blog or Web forum. Everyone has off days. Others are just bored or looking for page views.

5. SEO is not your IT department

Being serious about search engine optimization means making it part of your entire business process. That conversation may start with your IT department and your developers, but it has to progress beyond that in order to be successful. SEO isn’t just the concern of your IT department, but that of your content department, your marketing division, your link builders, your public relations people, your sales team, etc. Instead of locking SEO up in your IT room and creating an unhealthy battle between SEOs, Developers, and those that have to deal with both – let’s break down the wall and do this together. SEO isn’t anyone’s job, it’s everyone’s job and it needs to be treated that way inside your organization.

6. Your keywords actually matter

You can’t pick keywords out of the air and decide that those are the ones you’d like to rank for. Because some keywords aren’t worth going after. Either because you don’t have the resources to go after them or because they’re not the keywords that are going to convert for you and deliver ROI. As an SEO client, you don’t need to know the total ins and outs of keyword research, that’s why you’ve hired an SEO consulting firm, but do know the basics. You should understand that rankings mean nothing unless they convert. Anything else is a vapid distraction you can’t afford.

7. [Click Here] is never suitable anchor text

Speaking of keywords…

You’ve identified them, yes? Someone on your team spent time doing research, running numbers, and pinpointed which terms will best convert for you? Awesome. So now use them. The phrase [click here] is never suitable anchor text, for anything EVER.

8. Your rankings don’t tell the whole story

Where you fall in the eyes of the search engines is obviously important. In many scenarios, it’s what you’re paying your SEO services provider for. However, do be aware that there are many OTHER metrics you’ll want to look at.

Like what?

-Increased conversions
-Time on site
-Better visibility
-Brand sentiment and authority
-Share of voice

With everyone getting personalized results, there’s a lot more to think about when it comes to SEO and there’s a lot more to watch. Your SEO vendor should be able to present your data to you in a way that helps you see the full view, not just the trail you took to get there.

9. It’s not all about you

SEOing your Web site means making it easier for your audience to complete THEIR objective and to meet THEIR goal. It’s about giving them something to connect with and maybe even inspire them. It’s not about you. None of this is about you.

10. In 2011, it’s not whether you’ll invest in SEO, it’s how

If you have a Web site that is responsible for driving leads and converting users, than SEO is something that your business needs to make an investment in. So you can stop having that pointless mind battle with yourself and use that energy to decide HOW you will integrate SEO into the core of your business.

Ask yourself:

-How can you better marry SEO into your sales process?
-How can it be used to improve the content you’re putting out for users?
-What does your SEO activities mean for customer service?

It’s the tiny things that lead to big results. When you’re worried about how SEO will fit into your organization, start small. Then build out.

Those are ten things I wish everyone could learn about SEO. They’re not even hard things, they’re basic things that would help move this conversation forward.

Filed Under: SEO

Face Recognition Coming to iOS 5

July 28, 2011 By Adam Leave a Comment

Apple is planning to include face detection capabilities in the next version of its smartphone/tablet platform, iOS 5, 9to5Machas discovered.

It is too early to tell exactly how the face recognition in iOS 5 will work, but it appears Apple plans to open it up to developers via several API controls, including a call for recognizing the position of the person’s eyes and mouth. This means that in the future we’ll be seeing iOS apps utilizing face detection from third-party developers and possibly from Apple itself.

The technology behind this feature probably comes from Polar Rose, a Swedish face recognition company, which Apple acquired in 2010.

Check out this video showcasing an augmented reality app called Recognizr, which Polar Rose co-developed.

Filed Under: Miscellaneous

4 Reasons Why Contests Should Be Part of Your Marketing Strategy

July 22, 2011 By Adam Leave a Comment

While contests and sweepstakes have been around for a longtime, they have taken on a new life with the growth of the social web. Contests are certainly not the answer to every marketing challenge, but they should be part of every social media marketer’s toolkit. Here are four reasons why.

1. Contests Are a Great Tool for Building Your Fan Base

Whether you are starting with 100 or 100,000 likes on your Facebook Page, contests offer a proven way to increase that number. I’ve seen clients go from 50 to 1,000 and from 15,000 to 30,000 likes in a matter of days or weeks when running a contest. Of course this is not the only metric to think about, but it is one measure of the power of a promotion. A basic enter-to-win sweepstakes with a lower barrier to entry often provides the best option for those just starting out with social media contests or without a large base of fans in place.

2. Contests Enable You To Engage Your Audience

In addition to increasing the sheer number of people who interact with your brand, a contest provides a means to deepen the connection as well. A user-generated content (UGC) promotion such as a photo or video contest is a great way to do just that. UGC contests tap in to the human drive to compete, and they provide an opportunity for everyone to experience their 15 minutes of fame. Most importantly, when participants upload their personal content (e.g., a photo or story) to your promotion, they are naturally invested in your brand.

3. Contests Are a Rich Source of Data

With the lure of a prize, many people are prepared to share information with you as part of the entry process. You don’t want to introduce too many barriers, but don’t miss the opportunity to learn a bit more about your consumers (i.e., how they heard about your promotion, what their favorite product of yours is, etc.). Remember that what you ask should be commensurate with what you offer in return. In addition to collecting data as part of the entry process, you can also learn a great deal from the interaction and conversation that takes place around your contest, so be sure to listen in.

4. Contests Empower Consumers To Do Your Marketing For You

How would you like to have hundreds or thousands of your fans helping to spread the word about your campaign? It is important to have a promotional plan that encompasses multiple marketing channels, but thanks to sharing via social media, contests today enable an amplification of your marketing message that was not previously possible.

If your contest includes a voting component, participants will be inclined to share through their social graph, asking friends and family to support their entry. From experience, I’ve adopted the following rules of thumb in voting competitions: You are likely to see ten voters for every entry (often many more) as well as ten clicks for every shared link. These numbers represent a significant multiplier of traffic to your contest site or application as a result of consumers marketing to other consumers.

Like other tools, contests can be extremely effective when used as part of a comprehensive social media strategy. Any consumer facing organization, as well as many business-to-business enterprises, can take advantage of contests to realize the four benefits highlighted above.

Filed Under: Social Media

5 Ways to Encourage Customers to Share Your Content

July 19, 2011 By Adam Leave a Comment

Nearly every brand has realized that integrating social elements into most or all of its marketing programs is essential. Companies are also thinking about social media as an integrated element that spans all of its campaigns and channels – not as its own silo. But enabling people to share a campaign with friends is only half the battle; you’ve got to give them a compelling reason to socialize.

Here are five creative ways to motivate social sharing. We’ll provide insights as to how you can structure campaigns to encourage more people to share, alongside examples of brands that are getting it right.

1. Increase the Payoff When People Share More

With the advent of DIY group deals, you can create campaigns in which the more people share among themselves, the more they all save. The idea of collective benefit also plays to team dynamics: people will mobilize when lots of folks can get a benefit.

Oscar Mayer’s recent program for its new Oscar Mayer Selects hot dogs provides a good example. Oscar Mayer offers consumers a coupon to try the product, and encourages them to come back to share a “Taste-a-Monial” (essentially their personal review of Selects Hot Dogs) to get a second coupon. But this second coupon is progressive in nature: for every 5,000 people who share their Taste-a-Monial, the value of the coupon will increase by $0.50. The value continues to increase until the deal becomes a free pack of hot dogs, or until the promotion ends on August 15. At that point, everyone who shared a Taste-a-Monial will be rewarded their coupon.

Snoop Dogg made headlines recently for the progressive group deals he runs from his Facebook page’s “Shop Snoop Now” ecommerce tab. Each day, one product is featured for a special group deal – the more “Likes” the product gets, the lower the price for the product.

2. Give Them Something Exclusive

Giving people something unique or exclusive in return for sharing can be a powerful motivator — we all want to feel privy to something special.

For example, in a recent campaign to build awareness for recording artist Cady Groves, RCA offered fans a free song download for registering on the Cady Groves website. RCA also incentivized fans to share Cady’s music with their friends by offering a free merchandise pack to every fan who convinces five people to download the song.

Many brands are also rewarding fans by providing early access to content. For example, a big trend we’re seeing in the music industry is “share to reveal,” where fans get advance access to music videos or song tracks in return for sharing with friends.

3. Appeal to Their Altruism

People are inherently good. If you make it easy for them to help, they often will — and your brand will get a major boost along the way.

For example, Clarisonic recently ran a fundraising campaign for “Look Good, Feel Better,” a program that helps women battling cancer cope with treatment-related skin changes and hair loss. It contributed a $1 donation for each new “Like” on its Facebook page. The campaign made it fun and easy to share the program with friends by designing different “calls to action” that visitors could choose to share. As a result, Clarisonic generated over 30,000 new Likes on the page.

Of course, many fans will share simply because they love the cause and want to spread the word — so make sure you’ve at least added social elements to all your customer touch points.

4. Let Fans Help Create the Offer

Giving fans the ability to choose which version of a product should be offered, or to vote for the discounts or special offers they want to receive, helps ensure they’ll share it. For example, HarperCollins’ Bookperk website, which keeps readers up to date on new books and special deals, lets members select which books will be offered at a discount. Once members have chosen a book, they have the option to log into Facebook and share their selection with friends, therefore spreading the word about the discount.

5. Identify, Recognize and Reward Superfans

Humans are inherently social beings, and like to be recognized for their expertise and achievements. Recognition can be a powerful motivator for social activity.

In the Cady Groves example mentioned above, not only was the campaign successful in getting many fans to share with their friends, but furthermore, quite a few “superfans” took sharing to the next level. They generated their own tweets, direct messages and Facebook posts. Some individuals managed to recruit several hundred new fans to the Cady Groves website and Facebook page.

These superfans aren’t necessarily motivated by the incentive; they’re interested in promoting the artist, getting free merchandise for their friends and establishing their reputation as someone in the know. Smart marketers will look to identify and reward these superfans on an ongoing basis, and further provide them with ways to carry on their message.

Once you’ve identified your superfans, make them part of your marketing mix. Give them preferential or early access to new items, and reward them with recognition on your Facebook page, Twitter or your website.

Whatever your methods, find a way to incorporate a social element into every marketing campaign you run by finding compelling reasons for people to share. That’ll make every dollar you spend on marketing look like two.

Filed Under: Social Media, Uncategorized

A Sneaky Way to a Ton of Traffic

July 6, 2011 By Adam Leave a Comment

Here’s a quick tip to explode your traffic from Blog Commenting.

Done correctly, Blog commenting can send you tons of traffic. The best thing is that you’re leveraging the popularity and content of someone else’s site for your own gain.

Here’s how you should do it – for maximum effect:

1. Find a high profile site. Choose a site that’s in a niche related to yours. These sites or blogs have thousands of readers and a loyal following. Also, these readers are super targeted.

2. Don’t spam. I know it’s really tempting to throw down a link with a ‘Thanks’ or an ‘I agree’ but there are at least two reasons why this is not a smart idea. First, your comment may get deleted or have its link removed – which means you’ve just wasted your time. Second, why would a reader of your comment think about clicking through to your site via your link if you’re just some dumb spammer? You’ve got to add a little bit of value and intrigue to earn your click through.

3. Be controversial. You’re trying to make your comment stand out from the rest right? Well then, be a bit controversial. Not rude. Not inflammatory. Just spark a little debate by suggesting a contrary view or something that’ll likely be unpopular! Remember – no one remembers “Yes men”. Make a name for yourself!

So far, so good. This is all great, sensible advice, but what’s the super secret sauce you were boasting about?

Well my friends, it’s as simple as this.

The key to getting massive traffic from Blog Commenting is to leave the first comment. Few people scroll all the way down through the comments. If you get in first, you’ll get your message in front of a TON of eyeballs.

So how to get the first comment?

Simple – set up Google Alerts.

Step 1. Identify your target sites that you want to comment on.

Step 2. Set up Google Alerts for each of these sites so that you get an email as soon as new content is published on these sites.

Step 3. When you get your email alert, immediately head over to that site and add your comment.

That’s it. Easy as pie.

Done right, you’ll get a ton of traffic.

Filed Under: Miscellaneous

What You Can Learn from Hansel and Gretel

June 26, 2011 By Adam Leave a Comment

So you’ve just launched a new site and you want to know how drive traffic to it.

Unfortunately just having excellent content on your site is not enough to guarantee traffic. This is what I call the “Great Content Myth”. Many so called ‘gurus’ will tell you that all you have to do is focus on writing great content and visitors will somehow magically find you.

Well that’s b*llsh*t to be honest. I’ve seen a ton of great sites with a ton of great content on them still struggle to get more than a handful of visitors each week.

So what then should you be doing?

Simple, you need to be like Hansel and Gretel – but smarter!

For those of you who don’t know, or have forgotten, this famous children’s tale, Hansel and Gretel were two children who ran away from home out into the deep dark woods leaving a trail of breadcrumbs to guide them back to their home. The only problem was that birds ate the crumbs and the kids were stranded in the woods… or something like that.

So what does this have to do with you getting traffic to your site?

Simple. Every link back to your site is a trail of breadcrumbs. The more trails of breadcrumbs you have (links) the more likely you’ll be able to attract visitors. Even more importantly – the more varied the types of trail you have leading back to your site, the safer you’ll be.

If only poor old Hansel and Gretel had diversified their trail building.

So don’t just rely on one trail of breadcrumbs. If you’re into article marketing, start focusing on video traffic and blog commenting.

If you’ve been focusing on directory submissions (goodness only knows why??) then stop that nonsense and start building a presence on Twitter and Facebook.

Gimme some Breadcrumbs

Instead of heading to Wikipedia to refresh your knowledge of Hansel and Gretel, why not lay down a few more trails of breadcrumbs right now?

Here’s 10 quick traffic generation techniques you can do right now!

• Post on a forum community’s website and use your signature to link to your site.
• Find a wiki and add a page to it about your topic. Include a link.
• Make an xml sitemap for your website and submit it to Google.
• Submit your rss feed to Feedburner.
• Submit your website to DMOZ.
• Convert your article content to video and upload to YouTube.
• Answer a question on Yahoo answers.
• Post an article on ehow.
• Submit your website to Digg
• Bookmark your site at Delicious

Until next time guys!