Host Carla Beaurline features various businesses from the Twin Cities area on the show. Five is the web host and CMS provider of the Around Town website and is currently redesigning the website for 2010.

You can view the full current episode here.

Everyone in our office had a great time with the shoot. It’s fun to talk about what we do on a daily basis for clients.

You are missing out if you’re not in Omaha. I made the voyage down from Minneapolis to check it all out. I’m a big fan of people taking ideas and working them to reality like Jeff and Dusty did.  That’s real inspiration to me.

Local web talent What Cheer and marketing mix Secret Penguin hosted an open house that got the evening started.  Things shifted around the corner at 7:30pm to Slowdown, where Gary Vaynerchuk got things up another level by doing his Wine Library TV episode LIVE to a packed house.  Gary will be presenting Friday at Big Omaha as well.

Here are a few photos and video to give you a taste of the night.

Gary Vaynerchuk doing his Wine Library show LIVE at Big Omaha

Big Omaha Conference Kick-off With Gary Vaynerchuk from Five Technology on Vimeo.

Big Omaha co-creator Jeff Slobotski at the kick-off event with me

Badges?  You better believe Big Omaha has some stinkin’ badges!

It was a great night to catch up with some great web design and marketing minds I have connected with in person and online. Drinks and dialogue with Eric Downs, Steve Gordon Jr., Jeff Slobotski,  Robert Murphy, Michael Kelley, Brad Wisler, Chris Burns, Nathan T. Wright and a slew of others.

Things get even better tomorrow with a line-up of great speakers.  I’m pretty excited to hear from Matt Mullenweg of WordPress fame.

If you’re not here in Omaha, you can tune it to the chatter  http://twitter.bigomaha.com.  Holler at me tomorrow if you are here and I’ll be recapping Friday and the whole weekend next week.

Each one has some great takeaways you can plug into your business strategy online. Better fundamentals, better content, better use and better marketing.  Great reads!

+ The SEO Pyramid Fundamentals
SEOmoz and the fabulous Whiteboard Friday video’s are a must for any beginner/intermediate in the SEO world. I keep waiting for them to put their SEO video series out on DVD so that small business owners can rent it at Blockbuster or Netflix. This video covers the fundamentals and needed areas of SEO in a way that makes sense to us all, a pyramid. Watch it and you can’t help but understand the importance of valuable content that is beneficial to the user, accessible by search engines and worthy of inbound links.

Speaking of content …

+ The Discipline of Content Strategy
Minneapolis’s own Kristina Halvorson writes a great article on web content strategy that appears on the A List Apart blog. Her breakdown of website content disciplines is darn near a step by step guide to success with content strategy for both your users and SEO. It’s not a bad idea to keep an eye on her staff’s musings on the Brain Traffic blog as well.

Speaking of a vision …

+ Pancheros Gets Twitter … Kinda
The always entertaining and idea factory Ted Murphy throws out his visions for burrito chain Pancheros on their current use of Twitter and how they can deepen their use of the social media tool. Ted gives great examples and photos on how the restaurant chain can take their Twitter marketing use to a whole new level by bleeding it down to each location and employee. First read the post, then follow @pancheros and then go eat at Pancheros.

Speaking of what to do first …

+ 73% Of Business Owners Would Do Taxes Themselves Before Search Marketing
Yikes! What is the fear? This article surveyed 400 business owners and found that 73% of them preferred taxes to search marketing. Is paid search marketing really a great unknown to fear? I guess so. The article highlights the following as reasons why:

• Nearly nine in 10 (89 percent) feared keywords may become too expensive.
• Eighty-one percent questioned if paid search marketing is the best use of their marketing budgets.
• One quarter of respondents believe paid search marketing is too complex.
• Twenty-one percent thought it would be too time-consuming.
• Thirty-five percent felt they would need an agency to help set up a search marketing campaign.

I can’t disagree with the last bullet.  I think engaging a SEM professional is a good idea to maximize your goals and budget. From the right keywords, to the right landing page, a pro can really make a difference.  Having an expert as a service partner also alleviates many of the other fears listed.  Funny how that works.

I was able to watch the Broncos come back on the Browns for a victory online as well as my phone.  Just a fun glimpse into the future of more media consumption online and mobile … with the TV fading away.  Think it won’t?

The only bad news was that Broncos QB Jake Cutler had a monster night in Fantasy Football … and of course I’m playing the team in my league that has him at QB.

Do you have anything to share on your transition to web or mobile from the tube?

The biggest takeaways I found:

+ It’s tough to be found for a term being searched if that text isn’t on your website somehere, listen to Matt’s example for a San Diego Chiropractor.

+ The importance of title tags and meta desciption tags, not only for Google in understanding the page, but for users deciding on what search results to click on.

+ Blogs! Blogs are a great way to acquire inbound links and put out engaging and valuable content. Hello small businesses!?!?!

+ Submit your site map, or have your web person or firm do it for you. It’s an easy way to get Google to crawl your site and index pages.

Make sure you check out the video.

Side note to USA Today Tech Talk: Put your videos into a player that others can embed to better promote you on their blogs and websites. Be a bit more social!

The first, since it has the mass appeal, is the US Open golf playoff going on right now. Thanks to the US Open website, I can watch streaming LIVE video of the bonus playoff round today between Tiger Woods and Rocco Mediate while I sit at my desk.

Without Internet video of this, I would be checking updates every 10 to 15 minutes or taking a long lunch at the bar around the corner (still sounds like a good option). Internet video brings more eyes to the web. I”ll be interested to find the stats on the increase in web visitors and viewers for todays playoff round.

Drumroll please ……
My second example is our new Five Technology company video. We finished up this minute and a half segment last week, added it to our website as well as a few video sharing sites on the net. Internet video is a great way to showcase your company in an overview, offer customer testimonials or feature a specific product or service. Five’s Internet video production can help you plan, script, shoot and edit your own video segment to really enhance your website. Todays’ website visitor needs more than a few lines of text to engage them and video on your website grabs a hold of the user and lets you tell your story. It truly is a powerful and engaging medium.

Here is our web design company video below in a YouTube player, but if you visit our Why Five page you will see we can customize and embed a Flash video player into any website or page with endless customization.

Give Five a holler with your video production needs for your website.

A company overview video is a great way to bring more to the table on explaining and showing who you are, what you do and how you do it.  Your website visitors are engaged with visual and audio instead of just reading text and viewing photos/graphics.  Here are just a few of the basic items you can cover and include for your own company overview video:

• Show the personality of your company, the faces of the talent inside your walls
• Talk to the levels and capabilities you offer
• Outline the  uniqueness of your company
• Showcase specific skills or past projects
• Outline the process of working with your company

These are just a few ideas.  This video can also be used offline as well for trade shows, exhibits, sales DVD’s and more.  You can also leverage you video and optimize it for the search engines.

Below are some screenshots from our video shoot in our offices last week as we are currently in production of our own company overview video.  We aim to show how we are a fantastic Minnesota web design firm that can bring creativity and function to any business website.  Stay tuned as we hope to launch the finished product in the coming weeks.