CleverUs - Matt's Blog

My favorite websites

2008-04-22T12:04:00.003-07:00

Just to get this whole blog thing restarted on here.... I thought I would mention some places you will find me when I'm not working.

FanIQ.com - One of my favorite time wasters! Great site for sports fans where you can interact with other fans of yoru teams, talk trash to your rivals, make picks on games, compete against other fans and experts, and answer tons of sports (and non-sports) trivia. A lot of fun and very addicting!

Twitter.com - interesting little site where you just keep updating what you are doing all day. Not sure of the relevance of it, but it is kind of fun to see what everyone else is doing.

Yelp.com - great site where you can review almost anything (restaurants, retail stores, etc.), add events, and talk to people in your local area. Great place to check if you want to try something new.

Facebook - Not on here as much, but I like it better than MySpace. Not as much of a meat market and much less spam.

LinkedIn - Great business networking site.. if you are a business owner or professional, you need a profile on here!

Mapchamp.com - Ok, this is one I'm working on. Still a great site if you live in or around Phoenix. Nothing wrong with throwing in a link to one of my sites, right?

Internet Marketing - Church style

2006-11-22T14:17:00.000-07:00

Ok, so where was I?

First, let me start with something I am doing right now for a local church. This church has a website that was designed with FrontPage in about 5 minutes, where most of the pages are still "under construction," and there is no real content to speak of. Definitely nothing that would cause someone searching for a church in Peoria, Arizona to say "Let's try that church out this Sunday!"

Well, it happens that the Pastor at this church is my neighbor. So we started talking about it, and I offered to create them a new website pro bono and optimize it for the search engines so visitors could find it easily. Well, I am no designer (I have people that work for me that are, but I'm not going to volunteer their time) but I cranked out a pretty nice, clean looking website for them over the course of an afternoon. The next step is to create a blog for the Pastor, since he would like to communicate with his congregation on a consistent basis, so I will probably have to use FeedBurner so that his readers can receive his posts by email (I'm assuming they won't be big bloglines subscribers.) How many churches out there take full advantage of the Internet and current technology to communicate not only with their current members, but to draw in new members as well? In my searches for churches in this area, I have found little to none that offer any sort of interactivity with people at all. It seems like churches are way behind the rest of the world in this, and the winners will be the churches that embrace this technology and use it to bring in more members. After all, churches run and grow on offerings by their members (and frequent attendees, at that) and the Internet can not only help them attract new members, but also convert infrequent attendees into frequent attendees. Sounds like a good business model.

Should be interesting... but it feels good to do something for free every once in a while, even if I do end up writing it off when I file my taxes.

Actually, I think that's all I'm going to write for today... need to boil some eggs for Thanksgiving tomorrow. I can't cook more than two things at once, so I better get started..... Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

P.S. Tomorrow morning is my first road race this year - 8K Turkey Trot (that's about 4.8 miles to me and you.) Since it starts at 8 am, I might be about half asleep for the first half of it anyway... Wish me luck!

Evolution of a Web Site, Part One

2006-11-14T23:40:00.000-07:00

I have been thinking for weeks about what to blog about - I hate just regurgitate content off of someone else's blog or articles. I really want to bring something new and fresh. And while this may be common knowledge for many people, I am hoping to do two things: One, present information for small business owners or entrepreneurs who are thinking about starting a website for the first time. Two, to actually get all of my thoughts and information on paper (electronically anyway) about what I think is the natural evolution of a company's website, from the basic (We need a website!) to the complex (We need to determine where customers are dropping out of the queue and test different pages to improve our internet marketing ROI.)

So, without further ado, I will start with part one of my yet unknown number of entries on the subject.

PART ONE: Do we need a website?

Whether you are starting a new company, or have been in business for a while, there comes a point where you start to wonder if you should have a website for your business. What are the benefits? (I will get into that later.) What will it cost us? (Answer: depends) Will it make a difference in our business? (Absolutely, if done right.)

It's a lot easier to start with your internet strategy in mind (for example, if you can name your company based on what .com urls are still available, you can get offline customers people to your website easier) but it's still very possible to use your current business name in your new website.

So let's use as an example a person who is starting a dog grooming service in the city of Phoenix, Arizona. They first are going to purchase all of the supplies that they need to actually groom dogs of course. Once they are ready to start grooming, how do they start getting clients? The first thing that most people think of is putting in a Yellow Pages ad. Then they find out if they sign up now, their yellow pages ad will come out in next year's edition, 9 months from now. What now? How will people find me when looking for a dog groomer?

So after printing business cards and giving them to all their friends that have dogs, begging for referrals, and meeting everyone they can at the dog parks, they finally decide to get a web site because everyone keeps asking them "What is your website address?" Now almost always in this case, they decide they need a website for one reason: because everyone keeps asking them where it is. This is the beginning of the website evolution.

Stage One: The Internet Caveman

Most business owners at this point want one thing - a cheap website. They know nothing about registering a domain name, choosing a hosting provider and what services are available, HTML, what pages their site should contain, or even how to write compelling website copy. (Don't even mention search engine optimization, CSS, pay-per-click or usability planning!)

This is why I call them an internet caveman - like a caveman needing fire, they have no idea how to start it, or really even what to do with it when they finally get it. They just know that they need it. So, like any good business person, they look for the cheapest (preferably free!) way to get themselves a website. Call their sister who has the 13 year old computer whiz, or their friend who got FrontPage when they bought their computer, and see if they can build them a website. Sometimes it works, but more often than not months and months go by and absolutely nothing has happened. Frustrated, they decide to try something else, and look into those $30 websites one of their friends told them about.

Good place for me to stop, cause I could rant about templated websites forever...will work on Part Two as soon as I can.

New Website and Other thoughts

2006-10-25T16:29:00.000-07:00

Today I am focusing on completely redesigning the CleverUs website. It's a hard thing for me to get around to, usually because I am always trying to get work done for all of my clients first... but after looking at my website one too many times, I decided it was time to ditch the old one and start from scratch.

Does everyone else have the same problem as I do, where I am great at marketing other people's products and services, yet seem to have a hard time marketing my own? I have heard that some marketing consultants hire other marketing consultants to market them... but that seems like a big waste of money to me. I would much rather pay someone to balance Quickbooks or go out and make sales! Marketing is what I love to do (obviously why I do it) so why pay someone else to do it for me? I would probably never think they were doing a good enough job anyway.

One thing that probably only I'm really excited about... Yahoo is completely changing their pay-per-click program to be more like Google's. Thank God. It was an awful mess to work with.

Top 10 Songs of the Week

2006-10-18T12:13:00.000-07:00

Haven't posted on here in a while, so thought I would put up the Top 10 Songs in my playlist this week...

10. It Ends Tonight - All American Rejects
9. Mama's Room - Under the Influence of Giants
8. When You Were Young - The Killers
7. The Saints Are Coming - U2 & Greenday
6. Next 2 You - Buckcherry
5. Seize The Day - Avenged Sevenfold
4. Call Me When You're Sober - Evanescence
3. Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is - Jet
2. Here It Goes Again - OK Go
1. Welcome to the Black Parade - My Chemical Romance

So now you know what I listen to while I am building and promoting my client's web pages... insightful huh? I like to rock it out, especially late at night....

Feeling Awkward?

2006-08-18T14:38:00.000-07:00

I have to get a little more dedicated to writing this blog a bit more... trying to help my clients though will always come first! Anyway, I ran across a great blog by Seth Godin the other day that I wanted to share.... it's about feeling awkward. Often times, standing up and making yourself heard is awkward for many people, in person or online. If you want to stand out, become better than your competition or the run-of-the-mill marketing strategies out there, you need to do something that makes you feel awkward. Only then will you stand out...

Seth's Blog

Well, I Did It!

2006-07-20T00:54:00.000-07:00

Like I said, I finally did it.

I rejected the corporate world, and decided it would be soooo much better out on my own, working from home, at my own pace, and most important, not having to deal with any bosses anymore! (Plus getting up whenever I want is AWESOME!!!)

So now I have my own website, (which is good, since I build them almost every day) my own office at my house, and my own business. No one else to report to, no office to report to... and it's going great! I have a ton of clients already, which is keeping me very busy. My kids are happy to have me home, but not afraid to come in and interrupt me all the time... but that's ok. I'm working from home!

The bad thing is, if I keep expanding this fast, I might have to actually hire employees.... then I would be the boss.

Anyway, I want to post one cool web site of the day here, so here it is:

Stackopolis

Yeah, thought I would start out with a game....

The White Sox Win! World Champs!!!

2005-10-27T00:17:00.000-07:00

I can't believe it. My emotions are all over the board tonight. I have been a White Sox fan since I can remember knowing what major league baseball was. I can still remember the day the Sox traded for Carlton Fisk, who ended up being maybe my favorite baseball player of all-time... I know to this day the starting line up of the '83 White Sox, with Hoyt, Burns, Bannister, and Dotson in the rotation, and the heartbreak of seeing them lose to the O's in the ALCS. This day, this amazing day, I have just watched the White Sox win the World Series, and I don't know how to react to it. I wish more than anything that I was among friends, strangers, and other White Sox fans partying in the streets of Chicago.... to be honest, it hasn't sunk in yet. I yelled and screamed so much in game 2 and 3 that it almost seemed anti-climactic, in what in my obviously biased opinion was one of the greatest post-seasons in baseball history (that I have watched anyway.)

The White Sox won the World Series! The White Sox won the World Series! The words I never thought I would say....

Welcome!

2005-08-24T13:26:00.000-07:00

Ok, so I have started blogs before. Every time, I let them die. I think part of it (a huge part of it) is that I have the attention span of a 5 yr old on Christmas morning, so I have decided to write about things I am passionate about, and maybe I can actually keep with it longer than a week this time.