This website design project involved:

• Custom web design
• Built on the SMC for content management
• Photo gallery and video tour
• Search engine optimization
• Custom WordPress blog
• Various flash elements
• Custom drop down navigation menu

We’re excited to work with The Crown Room’s exceptional offering and staff.  Check out the new website and consider their facility for your next event location.

• http://www.thecrownroomrogers.com

Bringing Social Interaction To The Duck Blind
The guys behind The Hunting Authority came to us with the goal of being the best website an avid hunter and outdoors person could find.  Great design, great content, great features and most of all, a voice for the hunter.

We jumped at the challenge to build user profiles so that visitors to the site could create their own profile and interact with each other.

Here are some of the social features we built into the website:

• Account creation with screen name
• Ability to add/edit a bio
• Ability to designate hunting interests, areas and the ability to search other members with similar interests
• Status area to announce what you’re up to
• Bulletin board to leave comments on other members profiles
• Photo gallery to add your own hunting photos
• Ability to embed YouTube or other 3rd party video players
• Ability to write your own blog articles and comment/respond
• Ability to rate and review guides, outfitters and gear
• Ability to show your favorite web links

We packed a ton of great interaction and community tools into the initial launch of the website and already have more features slated as the website takes off.  We built out all of these features on our content management platform.

Hunting Blog
The site features a hunting blog that already is packed with great hunting info, wild game recipes, dog training tips and more.

Setting up a custom blog design isn’t a big deal for us, but the fact we integrated the profile account creation and log-in with the blog was pretty great.  This made the user profile creation just a single log-in for the site and simplified their ability to comment on blog articles.  It’s nice to have your CMS and WordPress play together so nicely, for everyone’s benefits.

Guides & Gear: Give Your Review
Once registered, the website users have the ability to add, rate and review outfitters, hunting guides and the hunting gear they use to hunt with. Users can search for hunting guides and outfitters by searching states or Canadian provinces and then view detailed information.

Working Footer
Lately we have voiced our thoughts on website footers being important.  On this website we put both first, second and even some deeper levels of links and pages into the footer.  You’ll see more of this as we feel its a great usability feature.

Success In The Crosshairs
As you can see, this web design project was no small creation.  The website has many more features than what we touched on here.  If you are a hunter, we encourage you to check out TheHuntingAuthority.com and create a profile. We enjoyed the challenge of the project and look forward to continuing to build out more great features.

We can vouch that these guys are dedicated to having the best hunting website on the Interweb.  Great content, great features and giving those with the passion and knowledge a voice; that’s what The Hunting Authority is about.

OutWest had been on the Site Management Console web platform for over 5 years, but the growth of their business and interest in new web features brought them to explore a web redesign.  In meeting with OutWest’s owners and staff, we learned the new additions of horses for sale to their offering and their desire to further interact and push event information to their audience.

With the new web design we pushed more of the romantic western feel.  Earth tones, torn edges and leather textures were used to create a warm, inviting and western feel for the interface.

The website project entailed:

• Full interface web redesign
• New features for events, horses for sale
• OutWest Blog & RSS Feed
  
• Email marketing integration
• Enhanced on-page SEO

The client has already let us know their excitement with the site launch.  We think it’s always great to see our long term clients become even longer term.  No matter the need for a new design, new features or additions, the SMC can scale and adapt with them.

We’re looking forward to the great things OutWest will do with the new website.  Check it out at OutwestArena.com and give it a big “Yee-Haw!” for yourself.

Iron River realized their past web design wasn’t cutting it.  It lacked in many areas so Five outlined a web redesign project to give them easy navigation, a clean design, enhanced content, an online quote request form and more.  The new site is well organized, search engine friendly and built on the SMC for easy management and content updates.

Iron River also realizes the benefits of business blogging and will be putting out great blog posts on their company, industry information, products, construction materials and more.  What a great way to build trust and interact with potential and current customers of your construction services. Make sure you check out the Iron River Construction blog.

Five had a great time remodeling this website and the owners and staff at Iron River were great to work with. Check out the new website and keep them in mind for your siding, roofing, window or construction needs!

I came across a blog post recently that stated web analytics should be called business analytics (sorry I forgot where!) and I couldn’t agree more. Yes, the tool is producing statistical information from your website, but it truly is providing stats, behaviors, strengths and weaknesses of your business.

I’m still amazed at the number of conversations where a business is asking for help in improving search engine rankings, but has no idea if they even have an analytic tool on their site measuring their current efforts. Wow. Businesses that have had a website for 10 years, but not one number to provide any measure of success or failure.

I can write on and on about how silly it is to IGNORE the valuable data a website statistic tool can put out, but let’s just look at these features and benefits if you’re on the path to correcting this for your website and business.

Analytics – Reasons & Tips to Start Now

1. There are many tools out there. Your web host likely has a basic one, Google Analytics is free and their are many forms of paid services and tools out there to get you started. Here is a big list of them.

2. Go past just the number of visitors and stop talking “hits”. Most tools have over 100 filters to begin with, but make sure you take a look at where you traffic is coming from, keywords used to reach you by search engines, the pages your users visit most, the pages users leave most and trends in click paths (what path users take moving on your site.)

3. Have more than one person tasked with viewing or reporting on your web statistics. Get it out in the open for questions and discussions with your staff. If you have a web provider, engage them in meetings on it.

4. You can advance quickly. Most analytic tools have so many features it’s unreal. Tracking just about everything you can imagine. With one of the tools we use, we can even track the  companies visiting and revisiting the website because I have tagged their IP addresses. (No , you can’t see what person, whew!)

5. You can track process. As I stated in mentioning click paths, you can see the most used routes and where users are getting lost. While this is VERY important with e-commerce sites, it also works for service oriented websites. You can build a funnel/path and track it so you can improve it.

So here is your plain English takeaway: Business Analytics are a voice, start listening to them. You obviously don’t ignore your financial data, sales data or employees performance, so don’t shut out your analytics! Listen to them, they’ll tell you great things to help your business succeed.

+ If you need help, of course we’re here for you.

The outcome: Some simple Twitter promotion and retweeting DOUBLED my normal blog traffic for the day.

I’ve found myself referring to Twitter as broadcasting channels, no different than TV or radio. Each channel (person) has it’s own set of followers (audience). Some are shared and the sizes, interests and interaction of the audience vary.

The Blog Post To Be Retweeted
The first thing I did was create a post of solid value and interest. No, not all of my posts make this criteria. So I thought that sharing our email marketing campaign statistics would be a great post.

The Twitter Broadcast Channels
Next I hit up some folks I know on Twitter from various web and Internet marketing backgrounds, “Twitter styles” and number of followers. Accepting my request to help were Desarae Veit of Sniki, David Mihm a Portland Web Designer, Kirk Anderson a Wisconsin Web Designer and Mike Rynchek, a Minneapolis Online Marketer. I’ll break down their Twitter handles and followers at the end of this post, but these four broadcast channels and myself gave me exposure to over 2,300 followers.

The Retweeting Message
Here is a screenshot of a Twitter search of the TinyURL that was given to them to retweet my post. You can see how each of them suggested my post/link to their followers and audience.

The Blog Traffic Result
Retweeting and the Twitter broadcasting made my unique visitors double, my page views double and I gained 8 new subscribers that day. No doubt, it was a powerful promotion tool for my blog. I went into this little experiment hoping for a bit of a spike but was very pleased with what it offered up. A few of my retweeters even shared with me that their readers gave them feedback or thanked them for putting them onto my post. How cool is that?

Twitter is a great broadcast tool and traffic generator, not just a great networking tool.

The Twitter Info On Those Who Helped
Here again are those that helped me and how you can follow them on Twitter. They all put out some great tweets on web design, social media, online marketing, SEO and small business. I suggest you follow them.

• Desarae Veit (1400+ followers) http://twitter.com/desaraev
• Mike Rynchek (500+ followers) http://twitter.com/mikerynchek
• David Mihm (300+ followers) http://twitter.com/davidmihm
• Kirk Anderson (150+ followers) http://twitter.com/kirkaanderson

Of course you can always follow me as well at http://twitter.com/AaronWeiche .

Do you have a Twitter story to share on what it has done for your blogging traffic, web traffic or another aspect of your business? I would love to see your comments on this.

Here are just 5 ideas to add fresh content to your website with a CMS or blog:

1.   Write a short comparison article on your product or service versus the competition.

2.   Produce case studies on clients you have helped.  Describe the solution and how it benefits the client.

3.  Have some fun.  Put together a Dave Letterman type Top 10 list like “The Top 10 Reasons Our Web Geeks Are The Best”.  Humor can also educate.

4.  Spotlight on an employee.  Breakdown their job position, their interests and how what they do is of benefit to the customer / client.

5.  Recap a company event, a community event you participated in or a networking event.  Add a photo to the recap and show your involvement.

There are just five very basic ideas to add content to your website.  These angles not only produce fresh content but will likely contain keyword phrases that are important to your search engine optimization.  We often work with a client to develop ideas on building better content on their website and it can take only a few minutes of creativity to develop a list of 40 to 50 ideas.

The goal is to show both users and search engines your website is alive and well, not ignored and out of date.

Lets address a few questions that should help you answer if you should start blogging and also squash some of those blog fears.

1. What can I blog about?
The easy answer is what you talk about. Many business owners and management can talk up a storm on their business, their services, products and how they are different. These same verbal exchanges work perfectly for a blog. I often can lay out at least 20 blog topics for a business within seconds. Writing about product features, industry news, service comparisons, new buzz terms, your process and the list goes on. The biggest takeaway here: Make a list of topics you would talk about (blog about). Share your experiences, your expertise and your niche knowledge.

2. How often must I blog?
Yes, frequency has it’s rewards. Consistency is even better in my mind. Even committing and fulfilling posting once a week is worthy of a blog for a small business. You are far better off to put out solid content once a week then to just throw up a few paragraphs daily. I know blogs that post daily without value, they end up with few comments and their content feels very light. I, myself post once or twice every week and I’ve been very pleased with the growth in audience and SEO in the past 6 months. The biggest takeaway here: Once a week posts are enough, but make them valuable. Check out Blue Tent Marketing’s post on Blog Food for valuable posts and content.

3. What about negative comments?
A common “blog fear” is negative comments, I smirk at this one as my first thought is lets get you enough readers to get people commenting. Many businesses fear the slightest bit of negative criticism, especially in a written form online.  Realize that the majority of comments are positive or neutral, probably even over 95%.  Even if you do get something negative or controversial, rise to the challenge.  The Paramount Granite Blog covering granite countertops had this happen, and owner/blogger Barb Rodgers handled it perfectly.  Barb’s blog is a fantastic small business blogging example. The biggest takeaway here:  You likely won’t get anything negative, but if you do … meet it head on, you’ll learn something for sure.

Hopefully I have helped you answer these three questions for your business or eliminated some blog fears.  I want the overall takeaway to be that you need to look into business blogging further or even get started.  I’m an obvious supporter of it and have seen it’s benefits many times over.  If you are a beginning or seasoned business blogger, I would love to hear your path to starting and the experience to date.  Thanks!

+ The StarTrib had an interesting article about the private community of North Oaks asking to be removed, and actually being removed from Google Maps.   Gets me thinking of other things people or groups would like removed from the G

+ Lee Odden posted a great summary of 5 reasons that business and corporate blogs fail.  I felt like I was listening to myself talk when reading the post as the items are all things I point out and discuss with clients that bring up an interest in busienss blogging.

+  Caroline Melberg reposted a list of 13 predictions for Internet Marketing that I found 6.5 to be accurate and 6.5 I don’t think will happen.  Caroline also provides her takes on the predictions.

+  Chris Dohman of North Rock Publishing has a great interview on the new media and marketing success for the St Paul Saints.  The Saints are a Northern League professional baseball team.  The post is on their recent Booblefoot promotion (you’ll have to see it) and Chris interviews Sean Aronson of the Saints.  It’s a fun and informative post.

+  Lastly for some food for thought, here is the link to Punch Pizza and their local blog on pizza.   The owners are using the blog as a great way to interact with customers but also their use of Facebook and especially Flickr for marketing / PR is awesome.  Check out the photo contest. They get it, great work.

Home you enjoy these huge posts and bits from Minny, the land of 10,000 great Internet minds.

Shortly after the blog post hit, which our client Sparkling Clean Window Washing subscribes to via email,  the owner headed off to one of our local pages and left us a great review.  It turns out that Ryan has been nudging clients to use online reviews for his business as well and in loving what Five did for his website wanted to shout out his happiness to others.  Thanks Ryan!

This also shows a nice little process that took place from blogging and interacting with our customers:

1.  Five blogs about online reviews, local search and the positive effect they can have on creating new business.

2.  A client is a blog reader / subscriber and reads this post.

3.  The client realizes they should give a review to help other users looking for a great Minnesota web design firm!

So even thought I didn’t consider this to be one of the outcomes of my post, it shows what business blogging can produce. It can produce reader action and further marketing for us.