You'd think color doesn't really matter when choosing a design for your company branding. The fact is that when it comes to design, everything matters. Just like we strongly advise you not to use clip art for your logo (don't even get us started on that!), we also strongly advise you to seek help from a professional when making branding decisions. 

Not convinced? Check out this infographic we found that shows the color choices of the biggest companies out there:

Isn't it interesting how the vast majority of these brands fall into two main color families? We're not saying you have to go blue or red, but we are saying that there is a method behind the design madness. 

Why did you choose the design you currently have for your business? How did you come up with the concept? Our graphic designers and branding experts are well-versed and qualified to help your company come up with a brand that appeals to your audience and advances your message. There is a process that we go through to pick the look, the color, the font, EVERYTHING that goes into the design. Don't let clip art happen to you! 

It’s time! It’s time! IT’S TIME TO VOTE!! The time has finally come to vote for our 2012 Website Giveaway winner. (Want to learn more about our finalists? Check out our blog post about the Top Two!) Voting opens today, January 9, and closes January 31. 

There are 3 WAYS TO VOTE:

Facebook 

On our Facebook page, you will find 2 photos. One says New Beginnings Church, one says My Life Youth & Family Services. You need to LIKE the photo of the organization that you’re voting for. HOWEVER, you MUST like our Facebook PAGE (www.facebook.com/immerseme) for your vote to count.

Twitter

Send us a Tweet (just mention @ImmersemeWebDev) and tell us who you want to vote for! Again, you have to FOLLOW us for your tweet vote to count! (You can vote on Twitter up to 3 times per day!) Find our Twitter feed at www.twitter.com/immersemewebdev.

Website

Yep, we have a one-button-click voting setup here on our website. Just click HERE to go to the form. 

GOOD LUCK to our finalists and be sure to SPREAD THE WORD!!

We decided waaaay back in 2011 that we wanted to give away a website to a deserving non-profit organization. Nominations flooded in and after a lot of review and consideration, we are thrilled to announce that we have chosen TWO finalists!

Drum Roll Please.......

Finalist #1: MyLife Youth & Family Services

MyLife Youth & Family Services is a non-profit counseling and psychological treatment center for substance abuse in Downey, California. They provide education, prevention, and intervention services to youth and at-risk families in their community. Their staff is made up of unpaid volunteers who provide group and in-home counseling at no cost. MyLife is currently without a website. With an official, informative and easy to navigate website, they feel they could reach more people in their community. Learn more about MyLife at www.facebook.com/mylifenonprofit

Finalist #2: New Beginnings Church

New Beginnings Church is a growing congregation located in Covington, Louisiana. It's a newer church with a big heart. The church is only about a year old, but they are vibrant and growing in their community. Their motto is "Reach and Teach". They want their church members to not only KNOW, but to GROW! While New Beginnings has a website up and running, they feel that their vision is not communicated as effectively as they would like for it to be.  Learn more about New Beginnings at www.nbchurchnorth.com.

So... what now?

We've selected the finalists. The voting will open on Monday, January 9, and close Monday, January 31. Until then, be sure that you've LIKED us on Facebook and FOLLOWED us on Twitter! We'll be sharing more information about these finalists and how they have impacted their communities. We're honored to share their stories. 

Happy Voting, and Good Luck to the Finalists!

Immerseme is proud to announce that we’ve welcomed some new members to our family.

When we started Immerseme back in 2000, much of our focus was on churches and ministries. As the world was transitioning to online platforms, many churches had no idea how to start, where to go, or what to do to create a dynamic website that would connect with their congregation and community. We’re now in 2012, and while we now create websites for so much more than churches, we still are passionate about church websites and how to advance their message.

Because of this, we are honored and beyond excited to acquire MinistryWebsites.biz. MinistryWebsites.biz has partnered with churches, ministries, missionaries and more for more than 3 years. This company shares so much of our vision. Their goal was to bring ministry online in a format that is effective, relevant, clear, and creative. The values of MinistryWebsites.biz and Immerseme closely aligned, making the acquisition a no-brainer.

MinistryWebsites.biz is a well-built company that fits perfectly into our goals. The founder, Tim Schmoyer, will help us transition as we learn about the great people that use the services of MinistryWebsites.biz. We’re honored to take on the new challenges presented by their clients as we adopt them into our Immerseme family. From the client perspective, not much is changing. We will continue to provide the clients of MinistryWebsites.Biz excellent service and creative solutions to make their website the best we possibly can.

We’re excited to begin work on these great websites and continue doing what we do best: We’re using our skills to help you be seen, heard, and connected with your audience. Reaching people using digital technology. Advancing your message through new media.

Welcome, MinistryWebsites.biz. Let’s get to work!

In the last 60 seconds, I have opened ImmerseEdit CMS, taken a sip of water, deleted an email, pressed play on iTunes, and began typing this blog. But that's just little ol' me... I'm just one person out of the millions using the internet. And in 60 seconds, everyone using the internet is doing a lot of things. We're a busy little bunch of people.

This week, Business Insider released some great images showing all the things that happen on the internet every 60 seconds. These easy to understand, colorful illustrations are quite fascinating! 

And here's another one showing even MORE:

Source: Business Insider

695,000 status updates on Facebook. 950 purchases on eBay, with 180 of those purchases being made using a mobile device. 100 new LinkedIn accounts. 98,000 tweets. $219,000 payments thru PayPal, (with $10,000 paid via a Smartphone.) 

New Media is here, traditional media has subsided. We are digital. With every minute that ticks by, we are becoming MORE digital. Our Smartphones are being used as computers and our computers are being used as phones. 

Like I said, we're quite busy with our online activity!

One of my favorite things about Google is their doodles. You know what I mean... the days when the Google logo isn't just the typical, colorful Google logo. 

According to the Google Doodles page, the team at Google has been doodling since the birth of the company! 

"In 1998, before the company was even incorporated, the concept of the doodle was born when Google founders Larry and Sergey played with the corporate logo to indicate their attendance at the Burning Man festival in the Nevada desert. They placed a stick figure drawing behind the 2nd "o" in the word Google, and the revised logo was intended as a comical message to Google users that the founders were "out of office". While the first doodle was relatively simple, the idea of decorating the company logo to celebrate notable events was born.

Over time, the demand for doodles has risen in the US and internationally. Creating doodles is now the responsibility of a team of talented illustrators (we call them doodlers) and engineers. For them, creating doodles has become a group effort to enliven the Google homepage and bring smiles to the faces of Google users around the world." Source: Google Doodles

I thought we'd share some of our favorite doodles. 

November 30, 2011: Mark Twain's 176th Birthday

October 8, 2010: John Lennon's 70th Birthday

July 29, 2008: 50th Anniversary of NASA

January 17, 2011: Dr. Martin Luther King Day

November 10, 2009: 40th Anniversary of Sesame Street

Those are just a few... the list goes all the way back through 1998. What a fun and creative way to celebrate so many things in our world. We've gotta admit... being a Google Doodler would be a pretty awesome job!

The internet is a fascinating place, full of fascinating facts and fascinating, useless trivia. In this day and age, if there's something you need to know, you'd be hard-pressed not to find the answer on the world wide web. Oh, the magical powers of search results. :)

We thought we'd share some of our recent findings with you here on our blog. Ladies and gentlemen, straight from the experts at Christmas Tree Market, we give you: The History of the Christmas Tree:

See? Don't you feel smarter? 

When a searcher is logged into their GMail or other Google account, they are likely to see search results that are affected by people in their social circles. Since recommendations from friends are trusted 90% of the time, and social search results tend to have much higher click-thru-rates - it is a good idea to get your happy customers talking about your business.   Here is a short video that shows how social search works on Google:

Many of us don't know what we did before we had Google Maps. Who needs to get directions anywhere? We have Google maps! As usual, Google is taking it a step further. This time, Android users are going to get some detailed interior maps of some of the larger places they visit. 

According to Search Engine Land, the Google Maps feature will now include interior maps of airports, major malls, and major retailers in the U.S. and Japan. See the photo below of the map of the Mall of America, both interior and exterior:

We predict that this will start to become "the norm" for major retailers. Have you checked out our Immerseme Mobile services?

Here is a short 6 minute video that shows the evolution of search from Google's perspective.  Be sure to check out the timeline posted below the video.  

Click the image for a larger view. 

The following graphic from SEOMoz shows the factors that are likely to have the greatest impact on website ranking in search engines in the near future.  This is according to a panel of 132 search engine optimization experts.  The graphic lists ranking factors in order of influence. The ones listed near the top will have the greatest influence with diminishing influence as you go down the list.  

To summarize, well-written, high value content that is freely shared across social media will have the greatest impact.  Social signals will be relied upon more heavily to determine domain and page authority as linking factors decrease. Usage data, including bounce rate from the landing page back to the search engine, will be a big ranking factor. This indicates whether or not a searcher found what they were looking for. A high bounce rate may indicate that the landing page did not capture the interest of the searcher.  Furthermore, a click to a competitor from that same SERP could be an indicator of greater relevancy to the original search query.  And as always, good web design is important.  Diminishing factors include link anchor text, paid links, and keywords in the domain name. 

At Immerseme, we are constantly aware of how search engines are changing and the impact that has on your organization's website. We are practicing SEO in ways that impact search results today and tomorrow.  

Not yet, but read on...  

Over the past two weeks we began to notice that Google was experimenting with Google Places placement on Google's search result pages.  We discussed this internally, but could not confirm our hypothesis that Google+ location pages would some day replace Google Places.  (After all, Google seems to be getting rid of services that are not a good fit with Google+ while integrating just about all of their other web properties with Google+).

Today, Mike Blumenthal discovered that Google is starting to render search result pages with Google+ local pages integrated into Google Places universal search. See an example below for the search query "transmission servicing lexington ky".

What does this mean for you?  Simply, that if you have a physical address for your business, you should consider adding Google+ to your digital marketing strategy.  See my previous post for a list of Google+ best practices for businesses.  It is complicated, but we've already been down that road and back.  Talk to Immersme and let us help you get ahead of your competition. 

Update:  See Google+ Replacing Google Places

"Link building" is an  SEO strategy that is as old as Google itself.  Once webmasters realized that Google's PageRank viewed backlinks as votes in determining authority, many scrambled to get as many links in any fashion as they could. In it's simplest form, link building is as easy as asking webmasters to link to your website because you have a legitimate relationship with their company or organization.  This includes chambers of commerce, trade associations, vendors, distributors, etc. 

In a more complicated form, link building involves paying webmasters to link to your site.  This is considered a "black hat" technique that got companies like J.C. Penny, Forbes and Overstock.com in hot water with Google earlier this year.  Whether paid or not, massive link-building campaigns are considered unnatural and manipulative by Google. 

According to Google's quality guidelines:

The best way to get other sites to create relevant links to yours is to create unique, relevant content that can quickly gain popularity in the Internet community. The more useful content you have, the greater the chances someone else will find that content valuable to their readers and link to it. Before making any single decision, you should ask yourself the question: Is this going to be beneficial for my page's visitors?

Google has always encouraged webmasters to engage in social media.  Creating conversations via blogs and engaging other bloggers has always been considered a legitimate way to create content and to develop backlinks.  These conversations need to be natural, non-spammy, and engaging authentic conversation. 

Facebook, Twitter, and other social networking websites have quickly become excellent platforms for creating social conversations about brands.  Late last year, Google confirmed that "social signals" from Twitter and Facebook have become a factor in their ranking algorithm.  Google believes so strongly that social signals are a better way of determining website authority than PageRank, that they developed their own social network in 2011.  With the launch of Google +, Google is adding the human element to their ranking algorithm.  A central element of Google+ is the +1button .  

This little gem allows individuals to cast a vote for website content that they consider to be meaningful or helpful. These votes can be seen by people in their social circles and can actually alter website positions as rendered on the Google search engine results pages. Google is now using social signals to develop authority clues for websites.  With the recent launch of Google+ pages for business, brands now have a place to aggregate their social authority from +1 votes, paid ads, and the brand's website.  Best practices for gaining social authority for brands now include:

1. Create a personal profile on Google+
2. Create multiple pages on Google+ pages for product lines, services, locations, etc. 
3. Become eligible for Google+ Direct Connect by linking each Google+ page to the brand's website and placing a Google+ badge on your website for each Google+ page created. 
4. Link your Google AdWords campaigns to your Google+ pages.

Following these practices will help to verify that your Google+ pages are legitimate and will help you to start earning social rank.  But that is not enough, you must be willing to invest the time in creating social content, responding to comments, and creating conversations of your own.  

Better than link-building is the practice of engaging in online conversation via social media with individuals who are considered to be authoritative, are widely followed and likely to have strong social rank. None of this is easy.  It is very time consuming, but can be very rewarding.  Immerseme.com is here to help you navigate the social media jungle. We want you to know that we are on top of the latest SEO strategies and we are always scanning the horizon to find the most effective and ethical ways to promote your business online.  You need a digital guide to get you through this and we want to assure you that we are the most equipped company to accomplish you digital marketing goals.  

Tomorrow is the last day to submit your nominations for our 2011 Non-Profit Website Giveaway!  Let's go over the basics here:

What are we giving away?

We're giving away a custom website and Internet Marketing valued at over $5,000 to a qualified non-profit organization. The donation includes a fully custom website design by Immerseme's world-class designers, plus, one year of free hosting on ImmerseEdit CMS, our easy-to-use content manageme software.

The end results will be world-class websites with content that the organizations can manage themselves with easy-to-use tools. Each site includes advanced features like blogs, podcasts, videos, forms, donations, payments, calendars and more.

Who is eligible? 

Any registered, non-profit organization with operations based in the United States is eligible to receive the website donation.

How do you nominate?

By filling out this nomination form, silly goose!

Got more questions?

Visit the details page!

Nominate! Submit! One day left!!

The curiosity is killing me.  I recently read this article from the New York Times and it has me intrigued.

Here's the gist of it: There's apparently a Top-Secret lab in the Bay Area of California where they are coming up with crazy-cool inventions that will potentially make their way into our homes. The lab is called Google X and the details are being held behind sealed lips. 

A few concepts mentioned in the article are enough to blow my mind. A robot goes to the office for you. Your refrigerator is connected to the internet. Cars drive themselves. Lightbulbs in your home that you could turn on from your smartphone.

"Although most of the ideas on the list are in the conceptual stage, nowhere near reality, two people briefed on the project said one product would be released by the end of the year, although they would not say what it was." Source: New York Times

Please, let it be the robots. 

Google has announced another round of algorithm changes. No, this isn't the same blog we wrote last week. It's a different one. Google has changed the algorithm. Again. (They do that a lot, you know.) (It's a lot to keep up with.) (That's why we keep up with it for you.)

Let's get some basics out of the way: The Google algorithm is the way Google finds it's search results. You type in your search criteria, Google's algorithm "does its thang" and then, voila, you have search results. Google is a little bit of an overachiever and wants to make sure you have the best results. The most relevant results. So it is CONSTANTLY (like, several times a day) changing the algorithm to be the best little algorithm there ever was. (And let's be frank, the algorithm ain't little.) 

(We're using a lot of parenthesis today.)

Why does this apply to you? If you have a website, and you want Google to put your website in search results, than it is best to make sure your website is in-line with Google's search criteria. In other words, if Google said "our new algorithm will only bring up web pages that have puppies on them", then you would want to make sure your web page had some pretty cute puppies. Get it? 

So, we were reading a super duper article from Search Engine Land detailing the 10 new Google algorithm changes. I know, I know, it's overwhelming. You don't have to get all of it, but this is just a basic idea of some of the changes:

• Improved Snippets
• Rich Snippets, More Often
• Better Page Titles By Using Anchor Text Less
• Auto-Complete Fix for IME Queries
• Cross-language Information Retrieval
• Better "Official" Page-Detection and Boosting
• Image Search Loses a Ranking Signal
• Better Date-Based Search Results
• Fresher Results

The article  has a significantly higher amount of detail, but these bullet points should give you an idea of what you need to change on your website to fit the Google algorithm criteria. Right? Wait.... you're confused? Yeah, we're SEO experts and even we feel like this is a lot to do. Let's be honest, it is a lot to keep up with. However, the good thing is, our clients who use us for on-going, turnkey message advancement don't have to worry about all this. They know we're handling it for them. We'll make adjustments to their websites to make sure they're getting a good ranking in Google. 

For more on our (awesome) proactive turnkey message management, check out Our Services. 

Earlier this week, Google launched Google+ Pages for businesses and organizations. If you have a Facebook page, do you need Google+ ?  You do!  If you don't have to time to set up and manage another social networking account - we will do it for you. 

Forget about the number of members that Google+ has vs Facebook.  Google+ is a platform for publishing to the Google search engine result pages. Your Google+ posts may get indexed and displayed in real time. 

Checkout this short video by Rand Fishkin on 5 Ways to Get Immediate Value Using Google+ and then take a look at the new Immerseme Google + Page. 

It's an addictive little thing, isn't it? That smartphone. Always in our hand. We can't go anywhere without it, and many of us refuse to let any significant amount of time go by before we make sure we're not missing anything. 

Waiting at an airport? You're on your smartphone.  Alone in a restaurant? You look cooler if you're browsing the web on your smartphone. Commercial break on television? You guessed it: Smartphone.

"As many as 80% of people multitask on a mobile device while watching TV, finds a new study. Using a laptop in front of the TV is no new behavior, yet few TV spots capitalize on the fact many consumers hold an Internet-enabled device in their hands as commercials air. The DVR presented hurdles for advertisers a decade ago as viewers were able to fast forward through ads. Today, tablets and smartphones introduce a new challenge: A more engaged yet distracted consumer." Source: Mashable

The fact of the matter is, our smartphones are with us ALL. THE. TIME. It is one of our culture's main sources of information. Immerseme recognizes this and knows that our clients need to reach their customers where they are. And where are their customers? On their smartphones.

Here's a few things that our ImmersemeMobile solution can do:

• Appointment Reminders: If your business or service depends on appointments or reservations, mobile text reminders can reduce missed appointments and increase revenue.

• Mobile Coupons: The BEST way to get coupons from the store sent directly to the customers phone.
  
  
• Mobile Voting: Create fun and engaging SMS polls for your customers
  .
• Mobile Contests: Our mobile platform features text contests, also known as text to win, mobile contests and text sweepstakes. All people who enter go in your database.

There are many more things our handy little mobile marketing service offers. If you're a business owner, make sure your customers are able to access your business on their own time and on their own turf. 

Plus, everything looks cooler on a smartphone. :)

Google brings you search results based on a very tricky and ever-changing algorithm. The goal of Google is to bring you exactly what you're looking for, and bring you the most relevant items at the very top of the list. The search results have gotten more comprehensive. If you type "Coldplay's New Album" into Google, they are going to do more than search for websites that have those words somewhere in the content. If that were the case, you would have years of content that is no longer relevant. Rather than finding websites discussing Coldplay's new album in 2005, X&Y, Google is going to assume that you are referring to their newest album released just last week.

Because of this, Google is constantly changing its algorithm to make sure that they are making your search easier. Their most recent update, as detailed by Tech Crunch, brings you the most recent and the most relevant content into your results. 

According to the Tech Crunch article, this new algorithm update will affect 35% of searches. 

"Google says that the new algorithm knows that different types of searches have different freshness needs,  and weighs them accordingly. For example, a search for a favorite recipe posted a few years ago may still be popular enough to rank highly, but searches for an unfolding news story or the latest review of the iPhone 4S should bring the newer, fresher content first, followed by older results."

To put it frankly, Google doesn't like a hermit. They are more likely to rank newer and more current content higher than others. Also, if you're talking about a current event or something that is happening in the moment, you're more likely to turn up in search results. To bring more traffic, talk about what's going on in the world. Don't create content and then not update it for months at a time. Google wants to find fresh, recent information. They'll even post things in their search results that are less than 10 minutes old. 

We have a whole team dedicated to keeping your business visible by your target audience, and by the search engines. Not only do we build great websites, we have a total turnkey message advancement process where you don't have to do anything. We'll make sure your websites are always updated, always current, always relevant, and not lost in the crowd.

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls! We are thrilled, ecstatic, overjoyed, and honored to start accepting nominations for our custom website giveaway! A deserving non-profit organization will be chosen by vote to receive a year of hosting and a custom website designed by our team of professionals. 

Here's the timeline of how this will all play out:

• Nominations begin November 1, 2011. (That's TODAY!) :) 
• 
Nominations accepted through November 22, 2011.
• 
Semi-Finalists will be announced December 1, 2011.
• Stories of interest will be collected through December 20, 2011
• Finalists selected and announced at Facebook.com/Immerseme on January 3, 2012
• Public vote for finalists at Facebook.com/Immerseme from January 1 - January 31, 2012
• Winner announced February 1, 2012 (HOORAY!!)

We want to give back to those who give, so we are excited to find the non-profit organizations that are most deserving of this custom website. Over the next few weeks, you'll see our finalists, hear stories about them, and help us vote for the final winner.

Check out the Website Giveaway page for more details, frequently asked questions, the nomination form, and ways to spread the word! 

Let the nominations begin!

Immerseme has recently launched Immerseme Mobile, our mobile marketing platform to take your business to the next level. We are passionate about helping our clients, both existing and future, reach their audience in ways that are relevant and necessary. 

The use of smartphones in our everyday lives is skyrocketing, and not stopping. Our smartphones are so much more than phones and a tool to communicate with our contacts. Microsoft Tag spells it out in this Infographic:

Coupon usage is one thing that we think will sharply increase over the next couple of years. The ease in which you can obtain coupons and present them is going to be a major pull for people. We offer Mobile Coupons as part of Immerseme Mobile. Are you making things as easy as possible for you and your customers? 

Earlier this week, we announced the exciting news about our mobile marketing services. With Immerseme Mobile, we are working with you to help your optimize your business for the smartphone user. 

Did you know that 9 out of 10 smartphone users will take action after doing a search on a smartphone? Check out this video:

Giving makes the world ‘round. And, here at Immerseme, much has been given to us. We’ve been blessed. So, you know what we decided?

We decided we want to give back!

There are so many wonderful organizations that do amazing things for amazing people. Often these jobs are thankless and pay next to nothing. Sadly, many of these organizations have to dedicate so much of their time to fundraising to keep themselves at a functional level of operation when they should be focusing their efforts on doing what they do best.

We put our brains together and came up with an idea that we are MEGA excited about:

We’re gonna give away a website.

A really, really cool website.

A website valued at more than $5,000.

A website for a non-profit organization.

And then we decided to make it fun and decided to make it a CONTEST!

Because we love contests.

So, we’re calling on the troops. (And by “troops” we mean “YOU”.)

We’re gonna need your help. We want to know who you think should get this website.

(A super cool, over $5,000 custom website for a non-profit organization.)

(Plus a year of hosting.)

(For reals.)

I know what you’re thinking.

You’re thinking that you want to know how you can get your favorite non-profit organization nominated. Here’s what I can tell you for now:

Over the next few days and weeks you’ll start to see how you can nominate one of these super awesome non-profit organizations for one of our super-awesome websites.

So put your thinkin’ caps on. Get ready.

IT’S CONTEST TIME!

Stand by for now, troops. Instructions to come shortly.

We're so excited to tell you about some exciting developments we have going on at Immerseme. As New Media continues to grow and evolve, we know our clients have new demands from their customers as we walk through the digital age. Your customers have different needs, and we consider it our responsibility to make sure our clients don't have to worry about keeping up with the times. We're doing that for you. 

One thing that is definitely growing and changing is the use of Smartphones by your customers. Here's an example of what people are starting to look for:

You're trying to check movie times using your phone and the theater's website hasn't been optimized for smartphone usage. Translation: It's appearing on your phone exactly how it would appear on your computer monitor. Problem is: You're not using a computer monitor. You're using a tiny little smartphone. It looks different. You're having to zoom in on everything and scroll to the right for what feels like 2 miles. 

The fact of the matter is, enough people are using smartphones now that we should be making darn sure that our websites look great on mobile phones. 

Check out this great infographic from Socialcast:

Is your business viewable and usable from a smartphone? 

"In any case, it's clear that the era of smartphones is no longer on the horizon. It's right here. Android has seen a 379 percent increase in sales when compared to just one year ago, and Android and iOS, when tallied together, hold more than two-thirds of the market." Source: Search Engine Watch

According to an article from Search Engine Watch, Google Android has skyrocketed past iPhone and has 48% of the global market share. iPhone is no longer the smart phone king. We shouldn't be customizing our smartphone pages and apps for iPhone alone. If you have an app for iPhone, you MUST have an app for Android.

Additionally, Google has now reported that Local searches account for 40% of Google searches from Smartphones. People in your community are searching for you when they're on the go. 

So, how is Immerseme going to help you with this? 

We are proud to introduce: Immerseme Mobile 

Here, you will find all things mobile marketing. From mobile coupons, mobile voting, mobile contests, appointments and reservations, text to screen, bulk sms-campaigns, we take care of everything. You can view our features here. 

It really is a whole new world, and we're honored to serve our customers in such a relevant way!

Unless you've been living under a rock for the last couple weeks, you've probably heard a lot of people talking about Siri. 

What is it?

It's a new program from Apple on the new iPhone 4S that talks to you. Well, it's more than that. It's a personal assistant of sorts that recognizes your voice and can have pretty complex conversations with you. In fact, she can be a little bit sassy!

It's an application that features a very advanced speech-recognition program that is useful AND fun to play with. Here's an example of a Siri conversation: 

Stephen Colbert even tried to have Siri write his show, but he didn't get very far!

All in all, it's quite fantastic. The most obvious use is for texting while driving. Who needs to wait for a stoplight when you can just tell Siri to send the text? 

The following infographic from Brafton underscores the importance of having well-written, fresh, relevant and sociable content on your website.  Let's face it, people use search engines to find information.  Your website is a source of information about your business or organization.  Content helps people to decide whether or not they will do business with you, join your organization or refer you to their friends.  It just so happens that the websites with the most compelling content get more links, likes, +1's, and tweets than the dull, boring ones.  They usually rank higher on search engine results pages (SERPS) too.  If you don't have a lot of time or don't consider yourself an expert copy writer, we can help.  Immerseme can manage your copy, search engine optimization and social networking for you. Contact us to start the conversation. 

There's a rumor going around that Google is going to launch a cloud-based music store of its very own. 

In this article from Search Engine Land, it sounds like the discussions may not be going so well:

"One of the issues that may hinder a potential Google music store is the way in which Google Music currently works.  Unlike Apple, Google (and Amazon) basically allow users to store music, then listen to it via a variety of devices.  This means that all songs have to be uploaded; they can’t be streamed from the service."

Honestly, iTunes is so big and has been the standard for so long, we're just not sure that Google could sway people over to their side. But then again, if anyone could accomplish such a feat, it's Google. 

Google has also announced that they have now shut down Google Buzz in order to put all their eggs in the Google+ basket which has seen a surge of activity since the Facebook changes made everyone throw a hissy fit. (Speaking of the Facebook changes- we are staying on top of everything and are here to help if you have any questions whatsoever about how to make sure you and your company are staying visible!)

So, here's our question: Would you switch from iTunes? 

Here at Immerseme, we love our jobs. We love what we do. And we love to utilize the tools that are made available to us to make our jobs (and your job) easier! I thought we'd share some of our favorite things.

Let's give a big blanket statement to start out with: WE LOVE APPLE. Our jobs would be a royal mess if it weren't for the Mac arsenal and all that Steve Jobs created. We honestly would have gone crazy by now. 

That being said, I can now separate out our most favorite things! We LOVE iChat. We use it all the time to talk to one another throughout the week. Especially if we just have a quick question and don't feel like making a phone call, iChat makes our lives easier!

We love our ImmerseEdit CMS. CMS stands for Content Management Software. It's how we put everything on our website. Our clients also use it to update and add things to their own websites, and they love it to. It's so easy and functional and pretty self-explanatory. We're really proud of it!

We also love the mega-functional toolkit that is 37 Signals. This is where we keep our contacts, share files, communicate about projects, calendar our deadlines, go back and forth with clients to create their perfect website, chat with one another, and record our conference calls. 

And let's face it, we love YouTube if for no other reason then we get to see 7 seconds of hilarity like this:

More of our favorite things to come! We have lots of cool tricks up our sleeve :)

If you had to choose between the potential "iPad killer" Amazon Fire.....

..... OR the Dunder Mifflin-Sabre PYRAMID....

...which would you pick?

We're leaning towards the Pyramid. 

SEO, or "Search Engine Optimization" is a highly useful, extremely necessary, and mega-important tool to make you findable in all of the search engines. 

The thing is, there's more than one way to do it, and you must be careful regarding in which of these ways you are associating yourself. The industry has separated the SEO techniques and dubbed them "Black Hat SEO" and "White Hat SEO." So, what's the difference between the two? And where does Immerseme's services fit in?

SEO Technique #1: BLACK HAT.

   

Black Hat SEO is sneaky. It ain't clean. (Hey, that's a cowboy hat up there, we had to throw in an "ain't" somewhere, didn't we?) Black Hat SEO's spam the web full of links to try to trick the search engines into thinking their pages are more popular than they actually are, so that these search engines would be more likely to bring these pages up in the coveted first page rankings. The search engines don't like this at all. In fact, if caught using Black Hat techniques, Google might even BAN your site from their search engine for unethical practices. 

SEO Technique #2: WHITE HAT (otherwise known as: The Good Guys)

White Hat SEO's follow the rules. They actually use their brain to come up with good angles, wording, and placement to make sure Google can find your page in the sea of content that is the world wide web. White Hat SEO is just great web design that works FOR you. No spamming involved, just smart people who know what they are doing to maximize your visibility. 

The search engines back the White Hat's. 

And here at Immerseme, White Hat is all we do. 

Well, they've added yet ANOTHER awesome feature.

Google is now offering flight searches! Yep, just the same as Expedia and Travelocity, you can now search for the best flights on multiple airlines on the world's #1 search engine. This is one of those things that makes us wonder why they didn't start doing this sooner! You can find the new feature at www.google.com/flights

Check out the video for a short demo!

We've all heard the saying "Work Smarter, Not Harder." The problem is that we have a tendency to make things more complicated than they need to be. Often our excuse is nothing more than "Well, that's just the way we've always done it!"

Here's the issue: When it comes to marketing our businesses, most of us are not only wasting time, but we're wasting MONEY. 

Take a look at this infographic (have we mentioned that we LOVE infographics?!) comparing Traditional Media (television, billboards, radio, yellowpages, newspaper) to New Media (internet, smartphones, etc.).

Source: LeadGenix

Let's take a minute and ponder that last point. "By spending only a couple hundred dollars, you could repeatedly reach the 232.7 million daily internet users in America (that's roughly 75% of all Americans) who spend over 2 hours a day on average browsing the web."

What basket are you putting your eggs in? Are you spending MORE MONEY to reach LESS PEOPLE? 

People, let's work smarter, not harder. Let's spend less money and speak to a broader audience. 

When we started this company over a decade ago, we had to spend a considerable amount of time trying to convince folks that their business needed a website. As we're now in 2011, we rarely have to have that conversation anymore. Everyone knows websites are necessary. Most people have one. 

The conversation we're having now is this: WHAT IS YOUR WEBSITE DOING FOR YOU?

Think of your website as a salesman out in the field. 

It just so happens that his field isn't Dallas, San Francisco or Boston, his field is the WORLD WIDE WEB. (That's a mighty big field, folks.)

 So, he's out in the field trying to communicate your message to the people who are looking for you or looking for someone like you. Have you given him all the proper tools? Does he have all the necessary information? Is he speaking clearly? Does he engage people quickly? Is he boring to talk to? Does he look nice? Is he dressed in a sophisticated manner or is he kinda outdated? Have you told him about your new products or specials? Have you made him aware of any upcoming events or recent news that he could be sharing? Is he going to the right places? Is he representing you well, or do people leave him wanting something more? When he comes back into the office, is he giving you a detailed list of where he has been, who he spoke with, and what that person needs?

Is your website just an online version of your tri-fold brochure? Or is it working for you?

This viral video posted by the Webby Awards is cracking us up. From Google Earth, Pandora, EHarmony, to Evite and blogs, they get major creativity points. And the guy who plays "Tony" has a pretty good voice too! 

Enjoy!

Google makes changes to its ranking algorithm an average of 1 1/2 times per day. That means that any book or article that you read about search engine optimization is outdated before it is published. Watch this short video to find out how Google tests these changes before they go live.  

Don't worry.  Immerseme is on top of it.  We are constantly updating our knowledge and adjusting our practices to keep up the the changes.  You have a business to run and that is why you hire accountants, lawyers, carpenters and electricians to take care of things that are not core to your business, but necessary nonetheless.  That is why businesses hire Immerseme to do on-going SEO and PPC SEM.  Relax, we've got you covered. 

Replenish is a ministry focused on helping, restoring, and encouraging pastors who have reached a point of exhaustion in their ministry. (Did you know that 1500 pastors a MONTH are permanently walking away from ministry?) Lance Witt, pastor and speaker, reaches out to the “burned out”. His book, Replenish, Leading from a Healthy Soul was recently released by Baker Publishing and can be purchased on Amazon. 

With the launch of the Witt's new book, their existing site (designed by Immerseme in 2009) needed a new look. Immerseme was given the task of rejuvenating the Replenish website. The redesign was geared towards matching the design, look, and feel of the upcoming book. We also removed the flash content from the previous site for usability reasons, and made several landing pages for those that are looking for the book or looking for Lance’s consulting and speaking services in order to increase conversion goals for site visitors.

Take a look at the new Home Page for Replenish:

And here’s the landing page for his book and consulting services:

In order to further extend the Replenish Brand, we've also created customized HTML Newsletters and even a Twitter background.

We’re really excited for Lance and look forward to seeing the continued growth of Replenish! Go check it out for yourself at www.replenish.net.

Wild Purls Yarn is a yarn boutique in Billings Montana. As a retail storefront, WP sells yarns, patterns, knitting tools, and offers on site classes. In April 2011 Wild Purls relocated to an area that has proven to offer significantly more foot traffic. The Billings market is a shopping destination of sorts for surrounding communities that creates a geographically diverse customer base (including many tourists to the area). This created the need for better communication methods to maintain contact with the base, both local to Billings and beyond, and offer more opportunities to connect with the Wild Purls brand.

Their previous website was a on a platform that created ongoing management challenges as well as an inability to add e-commerce capabilities to the site. Here's a quick shot of the old site:

The new Wild Purls website Immerseme developed allows online shopping, knitting class registration, and a significantly better back-end user management system through the ImmerseEdit CMS.

Additional care was taken to create many graphical abilities like CSS Buttons, styling and layout options to keep the cost of management down by enabling the Wild Purls staff to manage site content without requiring additional graphic design costs to create images, buttons, etc.

Ultimately the conversion goals for the new Wild Purls Yarn site is to increase new customers through class registration and adding online shopping as an additional sales channel.

Check out the new and improved Wild Purls website design:

If you want to check it out for yourself, please visit the Wild Purls website.

We also designed an email newsletter:

 

We have been so excited to launch this for Wild Purls! We've truly enjoyed working with the client and look forward to watching them continue to grow!

We recently came across this B2B infographic from Marketing Sherpa. 

The #1 most effective demand generation tactic? Website design, management, and optimization. The #2 most effective is SEO. 

While it's very important to have a solid marketing budget, it's even more important to make sure that that budget is geared toward the right channels. The #1 tactic for creating engaging content is using a multi-channel messaging strategy. Is your business using new media to accomplish this?

Many of our clients have asked if and how Twitter could be of any help to them and their business. To the naked eye, Twitter just seems like random people posting random things about their random life that doesn't mean anything to anyone. But, if you dig a bit deeper, you'll start to learn that Twitter is a great way to LISTEN. If Facebook is a social network, than Twitter is a social tool. 

You have the ability to see what millions of people, all over the world, are saying about a certain topic. Wanna know how people feel about the Casey Anthony trial? Check Twitter. Interested to see if people are liking the new Captain America movie? Check Twitter. Maybe McDonald's started selling a new McBacon sandwich today and they want to know if people like it. BELIEVE ME, McDonald's is CHECKING the TWITTER.

I once had a friend that went into a bookstore, we'll call it "Flarnes & Doble", with her pre-teen son. Upon arrival, she saw that they were really pushing the new Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition and the magazines were EVERYWHERE and the large giant cut-outs were EVERYWHERE and it was all a bit overwhelming. She got out her smartphone and wrote a tweet mentioning Flarnes & Doble. It said something like, "Wow, Flarnes & Doble, I love coming here with my son but the giant sexy swimsuit edition everywhere was a bit much this morning". Within minutes Flarnes & Doble corporate and responded to her tweet, apologized, told her she was right, and she looked up to see store employees taking down the display.

So why does Flarnes & Doble care about what one woman with her one child has to say? Because that woman, she has a lot of Twitter followers. And all those Twitter followers just read something bad about Flarnes & Doble. And they need to fix that.

I know many people that have gotten airline hassles solved just by tweeting about them. If you tweet out "Mountain Sky Airlines lost my luggage AGAIN!", you can guarantee that Mountain Sky Airlines is going to try to get you happy enough to tweet something nice about them later. 

Check out this infographic (WE LOVE INFOGRAPHICS) full of Twitter stats:

Source: Touch Agency

Our point is this: Twitter can be a major tool for you to listen to what people are saying. People are going to talk about what's going on. They're going to tweet about what they want, what they like, what they are looking for. If you own a business called Baton Rouge Garage Door Company and you see that someone in Baton Rouge has tweeted "Ack! My garage door is not working! What do I do?!?!".... well then guess who gets to come to the rescue?

Your current customers and potential customers are on Twitter. Do you know what they're saying?

Seriously, this is blowing our minds.

Ah, YouTube. I'm the first to admit, I can spend an embarassing amount of time clicking around from video to video. It starts off simply enough. Someone sends you a video of a dog pulling a kiddie pool into his house:

Before you know it, you're hosed. You're clicking around from video to video, emailing them to your friends and family and wasting a perfect good Saturday morning.

YouTube started off as a way for people to share their daughter's dance recital with Aunt Mary in Tuscaloosa, but like most social media platforms, it's evolved into something much more. 

It's a marketing tool. It's a teaching tool. It's a way to show off what your business can do and how they can do it.

I've seen hairdressers with their own YouTube channels showing "how-to" videos for the perfect up-do. I've seen college students in their dorm room giving a tutorial on the Quadratic Formula. 

Real Estate agents can do video tours of their properties. Public speakers can direct possible clients to their YouTube channel to see video packages of their speaking style. Churches can upload videos of a recent Sunday morning worship song, a video montage of the kids at youth camp, or a weekly message from their pastor. 

YouTube is a VERY useful tool to advance your message. It's far more than kitties that can't jump! 

Answer:  Because they are going to help my site to rank better in Google search results.  

Google became a social network because Facebook is becoming a search engine.  Both Google and Facebook are now providing social search, which combines traditional algorithmic search results with friend recommendations.   Way back in 2009, Nielsen reported that people trust recommendations from their friends and virtual strangers 90% of the time.  

When a powerful search engine such as Google or Bing is able to serve up relevant content +personal recommendations, internet searchers are much more satisfied with the results. More satisfied searchers means more people to click on those AdWords ads  ($28B in revenue for Google in 2010) at the top and right side of the search results.  

When someone clicks on a Google Plus button in a search ad, search engine result page, or a page on your website, that is like a vote for your content.  When the same person or their friends are logged into Gmail or any other Google account, your website is likely to rank higher in relevant search results.  Higher ranking = more clicks and conversions which result in more revenue for your business.  Adding the code for Google +1 and Facebook Like is now a standard part of on-going SEO services provided by Immerseme.  To learn more about our SEO services, contact your relationship manager.

This weekend I was taking pictures at a family birthday party. One photo in particular turned out especially well. I showed the photo to my sister-in-law on the screen of my digital camera. Immediately, she said "Be sure to put that on Facebook!" She didn't say "Be sure to make a copy of that photo for me!" or "That's frame worthy!". She just wanted it online, because that is where our photos exist now. (Much to the dismay of my mother-in-law, who has no social media presence whatsoever and feels like we're hiding all of these great family photos from her!)

We just think of things differently than we used to. I read an article this last week called "How Google Impacts Our Memory."

From the article:

"A new study has demonstrated that Internet technologies, especially search engines, have changed the way we remember information: We now focus on remembering information sources rather than the information itself." Source: Search Engine Watch

Rather than remembering what an article said, we remember where we found it and how to get back to it. 

It really is fascinating to see how the internet has changed our thought process and the way we live our lives. I'm the first to admit that there have been several times that I've experienced something funny or memorable and immediately started to write a blog entry about it in my mind. The experience becomes less about how much fun I had and more about how I'm going to write about it on my blog. 

We get our information online. We share our emotions online. We communicate our political opinons online. We tell other people that their political opinions are WRONG online. We share family photos, family drama, and relationship statuses. 

My point is this: as people trying to convey a message to our clients, our audience, our followers.... we must communicate differently than we did 10 years ago. Everyone has "Internet Brain". We must speak their language. 

Source: XKCD

You're headed to a meeting. You spoke to this company on the phone and you think they might be the perfect business to partner with. They seem to be reputable and knowledgeable. If all goes well, this could be a very lucrative partnership for both of you.

But then, you get to their office. Let's just say you're...... less than impressed.

The walls are painted a lovely hue of mustard yellow. It smells funny in there. There are papers everywhere, stacked on the floor. The framed velvet "art" on the wall is slightly disturbing, and the orange shag carpet is a bit much. You feel like you've stepped back into the 70's. The first face you see is a woman who is dressed in running shorts and she is smacking her gum. She's got the television in the lobby turned to a Maury episode entitled "Are You My Daddy?" and the couch you're told to wait on is covered in cat hair.

Maybe you were wrong about this company. They seem dated, unprofessional, and messy. Before the meeting even begins, you leave. You know this isn't the right fit.

My friends, this is what will happen to you if you have a bad website.

People come to you on the web to get a first glimpse of you. This is a MAJOR first impression that is hard for people to forget.

Your website will make you seem either legit or irrelevant. Classy or unprofessional. Attractive or overwhelming.

You may have great content, but if it isn't presented well, it won't matter. People will click out of your website faster than you even know if they don't feel like this is the right place.

All websites are NOT created equal.

Are you making the right first impression?

I know, you don't wanna hear it. Everyone keeps telling you that you need to put your company on Facebook, but you really don't see the point. I mean, your grandson is on Facebook and so is your wife, but she only uses it to see pictures of the grandkids and keep up with her friends. Everytime you look over her shoulder at this thing, all you see is people posting what they ate for dinner and you don't really see the point in all that silliness. And what could Facebook do for your business? These people don't care. It's a bunch of teenagers on there and you're marketing to other businesses. It doesn't apply to you.

Here's the thing though.... all of that? It's not true.

Facebook isn't just for teenagers and kids. Just last week, Mark Zuckerburg, the CEO of Facebook, announced that there are over 750 million Facebook users worldwide. Take a look at these demographics:

Source: www.kenburbary.com

Do you see those numbers? 53.6% of Facebook users are over the age of 25! The grown-ups are on Facebook. You know who else is on Facebook? YOUR CLIENTS.

And maybe people are posting "silly" things, but they also read other people's Facebook posts. Your clients will be reading your Facebook posts. And maybe what you're posting may not be that silly. Maybe what you're posting will be about a summer special you're running. Or maybe you want people to know that you moved. A picture of a project you're working on. Some industry news from today's paper. The possibilities are endless.

Your audience is on Facebook. You need to be there too.

Don't have time to create it and keep it running? Well, guess what? We'll do it for you. :)

I love infographics. The ability to visually communicate data is creative and sometimes humorous, but when done well, effective. I ran across one recently that talks about the evolution of small businesses; where they began and where they're going (hint: it has to do with the ability to effectively market in a digital age. hint hint: this is what we do. ; ) ).

Enjoy!

(click to enlarge)

Source: Blog.webs.com

"With e-commerce expanding to include almost all avenues of goods and services, small businesses will delve further into the virtual world to reach new customers and clients."

Earlier today, Google unveiled the next level of social networking: The Google+ Project.  Currently available by invitation only, The Google+ Project will eventually offer features that give users much greater control over social sharing.  Google "Circles" will allow users to create friend classifications so that not all information will be shared with everyone. "Sparks" is a feature similar to Google Alerts that allows users to subscribe to new content as it becomes available.  The new video chat service is dubbed "Hangouts" and it promises draw people away from Facebook, which currently lacks such a service.  "Instant Upload" allows users to quickly share photos from their smartphones.  "Huddle is a group texting feature designed to help friends to connect on the go. Check out the following short videos for an overivew of each of these new products that make up The Google+ Project:

Update (7/1/11):  Google introduced sweeping changes across many platforms this week. Most of these changes were related to the Google + Project.  The Immerseme team will keep you informed about these updates and how they affect your business.  Fell free to request more information from one of our team members.

 

If you use Facebook "Like" buttons to make it easier for your website visitors to recommend your pages to their friends, you may be asking yourself if you should add the Google +1 button as well. Adding the code for each button to each page can be time consuming.  However, allowing your website visitors to easily vote for your web content can improve your search engine results on Google and Bing.  The extra effort is worth the trouble. 

A new tool that was released earlier this week may help to simplify this process. If you only have the Facebook Like code installed on your web pages, the Like +1 Chrome Extension will allow your visitors to vote for your page content on Facebook and Google at the same time.  The extension changes the Facebook "Like" button into a hybrid Like/ +1 button, allowing the visitor to recommend your content on both services with one click. However, the extension has to be installed on the visitor's browser in order for the hybrid image to be displayed.  Since only the most proactive web visitor would be likely to use the extension - the best practice is to add the code for both Google and Facebook, or better yet a multi-bookmarking service such as AdThis.

Once the initial design for a website is finished it’s easy to assume that the work is done, however this mindset can lead to a stagnant website giving the image of little progress or stability for your organization. When thinking through how often to update your website, think of your website like a plant; the work isn’t done once you’ve got it planted in the ground. Without water, sunlight, or weeding it will eventually just shrivel up and die. Initially the website might attract a lot of visitors and be as pleasant as a bouquet of roses, however over time, and a short amount of time at that, if there’s no care then the amount of visitor activity will decrease and much like the roses, the website will begin to lose it’s appeal.

Content should be updated as often as possible. A newspaper wouldn’t continue to put out the same headlines and articles every single day and if they did most people would stop reading the paper altogether. Fresh content once a day or even once a week sends a positive message that your business is healthy and thriving and also makes significant impact in the quality rankings of search engines.

Remember, Search Engines are trying to provide the most relevant results to searches. In most all cases content on a topic that was indexed a week ago is much more valuable than content posted 2 years ago and the ranking results will show.

How often should I update my website design?

Another thing many people don’t think about is changing up their website design. While this doesn’t need to be updated nearly as often as the content, it is a good idea to make changes about every 12 – 18 months. Updating too soon could indicate instability while waiting too long could leave visitors wondering if you are still in business. Additionally, web design is always changing and there could be many browser advances and new features you could be missing out on to help bring in more visitors.

With a little care and some fresh content you could see a steady flow of visitor traffic to your page.

Are you advertising on Gmail? With over 200 million active users and a new contextualization strategy, advertising on Gmail makes great sense.  Immerseme.com can help you to target your ads to the right audience so that you are advertising next the email content that is relevant to your customers' needs while they are at the right place in the buying cycle.  Contact a Google marketing specialist  today for details.  

Is a temporary high worth all of the consequences of the big crash that follows?  We are not talking about energy drinks or illegal drugs, but bad (black hat) Search Engine Optimization techniques. To answer that question, all you have to do is to ask one of America's favorite retailers.  As reported in the New York Times, J.C Penny was penalized by Google for buying links on spammy websites.  The retailer was riding high in the #1 spot on Google's search engine result pages for several important key words. Once the Google anti-spam team discovered that J.C. Penny was not following quality SEO practices, the company dropped from # 1 to # 71 on Google. The big drop was also followed by huge drop in sales for J.C. Penny. The long-term consequences of getting caught in black hat SEO far outweigh any temporary benefit.

At Immerseme.com, we only follow white hat SEO best practices.  We know, understand and follow Google's guidelines very closely.  Our success as a company is based on your long-term success.

Search engines like Google are constantly making changes to the ways that they discover, index and display websites on their search results.  This week, Google made a major change to their search algorithm to keep spammy websites from showing in their search engine results pages  (SERP's).  At Immerseme, we carefully follow Google's guidelines and only use accepted "White Hat" good-guy SEO techniques.  We have your interests at heart and improving your bottom line with integrity is our measure of success.

Although "Black Hat" search engine optimization can produce limited short-term increases in web traffic in some instances - the long-term effects can be devastating to your business.  Success should be measured in completed goals or sales over the long haul and not by site visits only. 

The following video provides more information is what is being dubbed the Google farmer update:

Do you run a business so that you can have nice conversations with lots of people? If you are a people person, that may be something that you really enjoy doing on a daily basis. But, is your success measured by the number of conversations or conversions that you have? Now, don’t get me wrong… conversions are the result of good conversations. However, sales pay the bills.

Having a great web design is just the starting point, kind of like opening a store front. The next key measuring point is increasing foot traffic to create opportunities to actually convert in to a paying customer. Converting website traffic to specific actions or goals is no different.

Measuring website success is not only a function of how many visitors you had to your website but the number and percentage of visitors that completed a desired action (i.e, made an online purchase, signed up for a newsletter, completed a contact form, scheduled an appointment, etc.) as well. Ultimately, we are looking for and measuring increased revenue.

As a strategic partner, Immerseme helps you to grow your business by improving your bottom line. We do that by facilitating more conversations with your prospects through search engine marketing like SEO and Campaign Management and drive that traffic to a specific call to action constantly looking for, measuring, and tweaking to result in increased conversions and repeat business for you.

With advanced analytics your website is completely accountable to you. Not only do we track conversions, we measure the value of those conversions to help you to determine your ROI and provide relevant decision-making data to help determine how to spend your marketing dollars.

At Immerseme, we help you make strategic decisions for the future based on hard data in real-time. As a strategic partner, our success is measured by your profitability.

Contact us today to discuss how we can help you increase your revenue. 

There has been a lot of press lately on what's going on with Facebook, specifically as it relates to the valuation of the as yet public company. If you've been under a rock for the past month or so a recent investment of $500 Million dollars puts the valuation of Facebook in the $50 Billion range (yes. That's billion with a "B" and there's a zero after the 5. Fifty Billion and no/100------). 

(Image courtesy of TechCrunch)

This morning, Mashable posted a story about the obsession that America has with Facebook and released a really interesting infographic.

Via: Online Schools

One thing is for certain: the world is on Facebook. Take advantage our our Ongoing Services for your organization to reach a targeted Facebook Audience.

Contact Us today!

We're continually looking for ways to improve our users' experiences with our software. One of the recent improvements is solving the challenge of administrative access to Immerseme websites through touch devices. More and more users are accessing the web through mobile devices like iPhones, Blackberry touch screen models, or even iPads.  We have recently rolled out a small improvement that enables your touch device to access the element drop-down menus in admin view. On a laptop or desktop computer, these menus are accessed by hovering over the menu bar, which isn't possible on a touch device. So, we've changed the behavior on touch devices so that touching the element name will open the drop down menu. This new feature will allow touch devices to: Access the "manage posts" page on blog elements Access the "manage entries" page on form elements Access the "settings" pages for all elements Use the "move up" and "move down" buttons to move elements within a region Use the "delete" button to delete an element This update is just a small step in our continued work toward improving the experience on mobile devices. We hope you enjoy it!

A (relatively) recent update to the ubiquitous "Did You Know" video sheds some very interesting light on convergence and how social media is changing the media landscape. 

So what, you might ask? Watch this 4 minute video and see for yourself.

A few key highlights:

• Newspaper circulation is down 7 million over the last 25 years, but unique readers of online newspapers are up 30 million in the past 5 years.
• In 2009, traditional advertising is in steep decline
  • Newspaper down 18.7%
  • T.V. down 10.1%
  • Radio down 11.7%
  • Magazine readership down 14.8%
• Digital advertising however is growing rapidly.

• 10,000,000 - The number of unique visitors ABC, NBC, and CBS get every month, collectively.
  • These businesses have been around for a combined 200 years.
• 250,000,000 - The number of unique visitors Myspace, YouTube, and Facebook get every month, collectively.
  • None of these properties existed 6 years ago.

• 93% of American adults have a cell phone.

• In February 2008, John McCain raised $11 Million via traditional methods (fundraisers, etc).
• That same month, Barack Obama attended NO campaign fundraisers... and raised $55 Million through leveraging online social networks in 29 days.

• The mobile device will be the world's primary connection tool to the Internet by 2020.

This is a video that's been going around based on the book Socialnomics by Eric Qualmann. It's a shocking realization to the growing ubiquity of social media, connectivity, and power of the people. If you're not defining or executing your social media strategy, regardless of your organization, let me encourage you to watch this and contact us if you need guidance.

Google announced last week that Facebook content is now available in Google's real-time search.  To use real-time search from Google.com, Click "Show Options" then "Latest" or "Updates".  

Good SEO strategy should also include social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter.  Having a strong presence in social networking gives your business or organization website more doorways to the web community and more opportunities to be found and indexed by search engines. 

Google search options allows web searchers to narrow their results to information most relevant to them.  For example, anyone can now refine their search results by geographic location.  Someone looking for tire stores near their home can click "Show Options" on the Google search results page and then "Custom Location" to enter their address.  Search results specific to the search query and geographic location will now be displayed.  

Webmasters, organization leaders and business should focus on optimizing their local listings for the products and services that they offer to their regional customers.  For more information on how to do that, contact an Immerseme representative. 

Here it is straight from the horses mouth: Google ignores keyword meta tags.  This has been the case for many years, but some search engine optimizers still use keyword meta tags for smaller search engines.  Using keyword meta tags is in no way harmful, but they won't help you with Google.  Here is a video clip of Matt Cutts from the Google Quality team saying it in his own words:

Google is going to start providing links to relevant page sections intheir search results.  These are going to be done algorithmically sothere is no way to manipulate them.  However, Google recommends thatpages with lots of content should have a table of contents that linksto various sections of the page.  This along with a descriptive anchorat the beginning of the section will help to increase the likelihoodthat a page's sections will get listed below the main search result forthat page.  The section anchor will likely provide thecontent for the link on the Google search result page. 

The benefit to searcher is that they can find content relevant to theirsearch query without having to scroll down the page. The benefit to thewebsite publisher is that searchers will be more likely to click to apage if the link appears to be more relevant.

When we consult and talk about "Branding" to our clients we do so in the context of what we call "Big B" and "small B" branding or the difference between "Branding" and "branding."

Branding refers to the emotional feeling as a result in the complete experience and interaction with that organization. It encompasses everything from how your receptionist answers your phone, the cleanliness (or lack thereof) of your facilities, the professionalism and excellence of your work product and on and on and on.

branding refers to the visual representation through your communication with your audience. Your logo, design style, photographic styling, font choice, tagline, et al.

branding is all about how you represent your Branding.

Once your Branding is defined and you define your branding the next step is to extend that brand and build equity through remaining consistently consistent in how you represent your brand identity.

A Case Study - Karen McConaughey Photography

Karen McConaughey Photography (KMP) is an Immerseme client who we helped define both the Brand and brand. KMP is all about capturing authentic memories through photography. You can read how Karen presents her intangible Brand at KarenMPhotos.com.

One of the recent projects we did for Karen was to extend her brand across multiple communication platforms. First we obviously began with her brand where we extended it to her primary website. Our recent addition was integrating social networking via her facebook pages as well as integrating her twitter feed. This is also the primary location where Karen utilizes solid Search Engine Optimization practices.

 

As a photographer, Karen wants to illustrate what she's doing along with large format client photographs. While ImmerseEdit CMS incorporates blogging tools, RSS feeds and more in to the CMS, it is not a blogging platform like Blogger, Typepad, or Wordpress.

Karen chose to use Wordpress as her blogging platform of choice where we extended her brand by customizing it to match her main website.

Finally, Karen utilizes Twitter and Facebook as social networking tools to communicate and build her online community. So her Twitter page got a facelift to match her brand as well. 

All of these small details serve to create a consistent brand experience for Karen McConaughey Photography that helps reinforce her Brand.

How can we help you?

One of the questions we get asked every now and then is to see a portfolio of our design work, which we're certainly obliged to do. As we interview one another (yes, we interview prospective clients as much as we're being interviewed) we tend to ask what the purpose of that inquiry is. Generally speaking the prospective client is looking to see our design chops, which leads to an interesting discussion.

You see, We believe each organization has a brand, whether it's been defined visually or not. As such, each of our designs are unique to ourclients. Your business or organization isn't cookie cutter, and neither are our designs.

This was so visually evident as I was celebrating a few recent client launches here on our blog.

Mission Church in Helotes, TX is a new (and very successful) church plant in the San Antonio area. The church and leadership tend to be more rough around the edges (and I mean that in a positive way!), gritty and generally true to life... and their design and brand tell that story.  

First Baptist Church in Spartanburg, SC is a church with 170 years of tradition and history. The DNA of FBS is unique to their local context and much different from Mission Church, as reflected in their design.

Now, truth be told, we want all of our clients to represent their brands and uniqueness in their design to truly build a brand identity (and then market the fire of that brand through social media, SEO, et al!), but we also realize that in today's economy, not everyone is ready to take the proverbial plunge of a professionally designed website. 

For those we've created a few Templates (that are easily customizable) in the hopes that this is a step in the right direction and that ultimately we'll get to help each organization we partner with realize their uniqueness! Now, you won't find our Templates in our menu structure here at Immerseme.com, but if you're looking for a low cost option to use ImmerseEdit CMS, this may be an option for you (but hopefully a short term option!). 

A recent report from Nielsen continues to speak to the increased validation of Facebook Advertising.  "Online advertising remains strong, even as ad spending has decreased across other media, and MySpace has benefited from this trend with several large-scale campaigns from auto makers. But in recent months, Facebook has surpassed MySpace in terms of monthly unique audience and stickiness: its monthly unique audience grew 177 percent in the last year compared to a 9 percent decrease for MySpace and time per person on Facebook went from 1 hour 8 minutes in March 2008 to 3 hours 16 minutes in March 2009." (more).

Part of Immerseme's Search Engine Optimization services includes creating and managing Facebook advertising campaigns. The MET Church in Houston, TX, one of our current clients has generated tremendous success with Facebook Advertising:

From period 02/09/2009 to 04/16/2009

Impressions: 3,509,617
Cost: 745.03
Clicks: 1,522
Average Cost Per Click: 0.49
Average Cost Per Thousand Impressions: 0.21

Contact us to discuss your traffic needs!

Mission Church in Helotes, TX, just outside of San Antonio isn't your mama's church. Focused on inviting people in to life with Jesus, Mission Church values:

• Wow. Everyone likes the Wow Factor. We are highly motivated by the Wow of God’s character, nature, and work, and so is He. Attention on Him benefits everyone and is the catalyst to life with Jesus.

• Access. We enjoy ultimate Access. We take advantage of the ultimate access God provides to Himself and to His people. You can begin enjoying ultimate Access by connecting to God directly through our Growth Groups, building a wise mind through prayer and the study of God's Word.

• Change. Change is growth. Jesus is inviting you to choose a journey that will change your heart, your mind, and your actions for life. Life with Jesus changes people. And this church reproduces and changes with them.

•  Journey. It's all about the Journey. We are thrilled by the process of coming to Jesus and being sent out by Him.  Responding to His invitation begins a journey of life with Jesus that gives you bold feet that go. You will be invited to begin your own Journey to Jesus through our Invitational Culture, see others’ Journeys through our Celebration of Stories, and start your Journey into the lives of others through F.U.N. Teams.

Immerseme has worked with Mission Church for over a year helping MC launch a "hold over website" while they completed their branding process. At that point, Immerseme took their new look and incorporated it in to their website that certainly communicates the Wow factor present at Mission Church.

MC was looking for something a little more rough around the edges that communicates their "come as you are" or ultimate access environment.

We also added some custom development adding AJAX animations to the site to create four different content areas, all without having the user leave the homepage or have to wait to reload a new page, plus incorporated simple but effective links to social networking tools key for any church.

How can we help you communicate your vision better?

 

 

First Baptist Church in Spartanburg, SC is a church with a long history. And when I say long, I mean 170 years long! Most recently FBS made national news ironically when Billy Graham joined the congregation in January of this year.

FBS has been going through a vision clarity process with Auxano Consulting, a strategic partner with Immerseme. Auxano founder, Will Mancini most recently published Church Unique published by Leadership Network. With Auxano's guidance to first define what makes First Baptist Church unique they then provide marketing and branding services helping to create a new identity for the historic church.

Immerseme then translated that new brand identity to a new web presence for FBS.

FBS began with a flash based landing page that presents three key entry points for its site visitors, Guests, Regular Attenders, and a section to share life Stories that reinforce the FBS tagline that In Christ more is possible than you can ever imagine.

The Guest section of the new FBS site incorporates specific AJAX development to present relevant information to those not connected with the church, all without reloading the page creating a more seamless user experience.

The Regular Attender section reinforces the FBS Vision Path, specifically the FBS strategy of Worship, Prepare, Serve, Engage.

The Stories page incorporates an interactive flash movie that shares real stroies of life change from those connected with First Baptist Church.

All of this development works in tandem to present the FBS mission and vision to both those who are already connected with the church and targeted information to those who have yet to experience that more is possible!

Replenish, founded by former Executive Pastor of giga-church Saddleback Church, Lance Witt is a ministry focused on the "Soul Care" of church leaders.

States Witt, "Replenish exists because there is a crisis in the church.  It is notthe crisis of innovation or resources or leadership skill.  It is acrisis of the soul.  Many of us who lead have lost our way.

Pastors are leaving the ministry in record numbers.  Discouragement anddisillusionment are epidemic among those who lead churches. The storyof too many Christian leaders is the story of a neglected soul andmismanaged character.  It is the story of a slow drift into relationalisolation.  It is the story of the seduction of ambition."  

Immerseme was contracted to create the Replenish brand, website, strategy icon system, and flash development.

"We loved our experience with Immerseme.  Their approach was both professional and personal... which is a difficult combination to find these days. We found Immerseme to be skillful, thorough, reliable and timely in hitting deadlines.  We had an idea, but immerseme brought that idea to life visually and technically.  We couldn't be happier with the result." - Lance Witt, Founder of Replenish

 Local online advertising is flattening out in 2009 but online spending continues to increase.  This may be a good time for your business to shift from traditional media to local niche marketing.  Banner ads are not the way to go, however, ppc text-based ads such as Google AdWords may show better ROI.

Traditional forms of interactive advertising such as banner ads are quickly falling out of favor and site publishers should begin looking at expanding their ad arsenal with other offerings. BorrellA Associates, Inc.

The bottom line: Your actual cost-per-click is partially determined by your quality score.  Higher quality ads can also receive higher ad position. 

 

Matt Cutts from Google gives a recap of Google advancements in 2008 and a look into what's coming later this year.  This is a long video, but it is worth watching to the end.

The MET is a mega church based in Houston TX with multiple campuses and multiple ministries, some with their own brands. Immerseme designers were tasked with creating unique websites for several MET ministries while still maintaining an overall visual consistency that adheres to a master brand. 

The Contemporary School of Fine Arts is a ministry that trains both youth up through adults in instruments primarily for the purpose of facilitating a growing worship ministry.
KIDConnect is the before and after school program for grade school children.
The Lamb School is The MET's daycare and kindergarten program where the goal is to lay biblical foundations in the lives of children.

The economic recession is fueling growth of online sales. Online retailers like Amazon are reporting record sales and profits for 2008. In the following video Matt Brittin, Director of Google UK, shows how search is affecting consumer behavior. 

 

We got confirmation yesterday that Google has completed a PageRank update for the Google toolbar.  The update does not affect your listing on Google search engine result pages, but you may want to check to see how you are doing.  Every 3 or 4 months, Google exports data to the visible PageRank tool on Google toolbar.  So, if you see a change, it may be reflective of something that happened a few months ago.

PageRank is a measure of website importance (based on the number and quality of links to your website) as determined by Google. This determination is based on over 500 million variables.  The Google PageRank tool is a visual representation of a website's importance on a scale of 0-10.  Page ranking that affects search result pages is constantly updated but the graph that you see on the Google toolbar  is only updated quarterly at best. 

Too many webmasters and SEO's obsess with PageRank as if it were the number 1 determining factor of a website's search results.  It is only one of 200 factors that determine search results.  I am not saying that PageRank is not important, but it is not as important as some people would have you believe.  Achieving high page rank is like receiving a award for having a well developed website with fresh, relevant content. It is better to win by outperforming your competition than by trying to lobby the judges.

PageRank develops organically as visitors and happy customers spread the word to others by linking to you.  So, instead of spending your time on link building - just write some quality text that describes who you are, what you offer, and how it is going to change the world.  Then, find the most appropriate ways to let the people who know you to know about your website so that they can tell others who tell others.

In the golden days of mass marketing, it was fairly easy to create a brand image.  You just had to hire the right agency and spend a lot of mony.  It is not that easy any more. The internet and social networking now make your brand a subject for open discussion.  Greg Stielstra points out that you can no longer control your brand through advertising alone.  Your customers have many venues and opportunities to talk about you on the web.  The best practice is to provide the absolute highest quality customer experience and to prompt your customers to say good things about you. 

A little customer training can go a long way. Happy customers will become loyal evangelists who are like unpaid marketers- spreading the message about your products and services.  All you have to do is to ask them to join your fan club on Facebook, blog about you and post positive reviews on ratings websites. Consider sending a follow-up email to each of your happy clients with a little nudge on how to share the love with others. ImmerseMail is an excellent tool for connecting with your customers and building your brand through viral messageing that has the potential for exponential growth.

One of the best ways to showcase ImmerseEdit web CMS or any other product online is by using video. So we've done just that! We've just released the first round of featured videos for ImmerseEdit web CMS.

View the featured videos for ImmerseEdit web CMS.

Immerseme is pleased to announce the launch of Weddingphotography.pro for Allure Photography.

Allure Photography is a crack team of professional photographers in Houston TX specializing in Houston Wedding Photography. Immerseme was hired to develop a website specifically for their Wedding Photography portion of their business. 

In an article released today, the FCC is set to vote on December 18th on whether or not to allow free broadband internet access across the United States.

According to the article, "About 38 percent of rural households have broadband. In urban and suburban areas, where competition for customers can be fierce, the numbers are a lot higher, 57 percent and 60 percent, respectively. FCC Chairman Kevin Martin says free broadband can help bridge the gap. 'This initiative brings with it the promise of a free basic broadband service to hundreds of thousands of Americans who currently have limited or no access to the high-speed Internet.'"

Assuming this initiative is passed, consumers will have unprecedented access to broadband speed internet service, that obviously means a significant number of increased people accessing the net, which makes ensuring your site can be found when people are searching for your content.

Proper search engine optimization and search engine marketing is key to make sure your website is properly optimized. Each Immerseme website includes optimization. Contact us today to discuss your website needs.

Some of you have noticed the new arrow and x boxes next to Google search results. What are they? Well first, you have to have a Google account and be signed in to see them. If you are seeing the boxes along with the quote clouds, then you are participating in the Google Search Wiki.

Now, you can actually remove irrelevant search results and move up the more relevant ones. Pretty cool huh? You can also create notes and comments about specific search results. Well before you get too excited, you are the only one who can see your manipulated results and only when you are logged into GMail or some other Google account. However, if you click the "See all notes for this Search Wiki"link at the bottom of the page, you can see the collective edits of all members of the Google Search wiki.

Thinking about this from an SEO perspective... Google Search Wiki users will be able to remove search results that appear to be less relevant to them. So, what you want to do is to make sure you website is putting its best foot forward for each of those users. You don't want to be removed from someone's personal search results. So, you want to make sure that they see you as being relevant the first time. Good SEO work is more important now than ever before.

Check out the following video for more info on how the search wiki works...

 

I've been blessed to be married to my wife for 12 years now. Every so often she comes to me and asks me to paint something, generally a room in the house. I'm sure you can relate. There's not really anything overtly wrong about the existing paint color, so why then the change? Sometimes it's the simple act of just freshening up the room.

Just like we freshen up our homes, our websites deserve some tender loving care too. An outdated or static website does not communicate the health, progress, or stability site owners are striving to achieve. A logical and often asked question by clients and friends is how often a site should be updated?

How often should my website content be updated?

A general rule of thumb is that your site content should be updated as frequently as you want your site visitors to visit your website. The best analogy I've come up with is that of a morning newspaper. If you read the paper each day, you want fresh content each day.  If you get a paper each day and the headline and articles are the same day after day you will certainly stop reading that paper.

How often should my website design be updated? 

This one's a little trickier, as there are a few factors at play. While there's no hard and fast rule about updating your site, your website design should probably be updated about every other year. While this is more of an art than a science, changing your design too fast can communicate instability (sooner than 12 months) but wait too long and not only does your site look outdated but is most likely not taking advantage of browser advances and design styles as well.

So, content should be updated as often as you want your site visitors to return and a rule of thumb on design is around every 18 - 24 months.

Certain to practice what we preach, you'll notice that the Immerseme site just got a new coat of paint as well. We hope you like it!

 

This afternoon I was having coffee with my son at one of those bookstore Starbucks locations.  I picked up a copy of Jonathan Salem Baskin's new book - Branding Only Works on Cattle.  I hardly ever recommend books about the internet, because they are usually outdated before the ink hits the page.  This book is more about marketing to online people than specific web apps.  So it is still relevant.

Baskin has some good points about the way that online search has changed the way people function offline.  Search engines have added an interesting factor to the concept of branding, because the algorithms are brand neutral. While a strong brand for your organization is key, don't stop there. Strategies exist to establish your online identity and help create customer evangelists who hopefully (if your brand matches your DNA) reinforce your message. The best way is simply focus on providing quality products and services and training your happy customers to say nice things about you. 

Your internal links in your website need to be descriptive of the landing page's content. Likewise you blog post links from your platform back to your website should be descriptive. Here is what the official Google webmasters blog says:

Use descriptive anchor text

Writing descriptive anchor text, the clickable words in a link, is a useful signal to help search engines and users alike to better understand your content. The more Google knows about your site—through your content, page titles, anchor text, etc.—the more relevant results we can return for users (and your potential search visitors). For example, if you run a basketball site and you have videos to accompany the textual content, a not-very-optimal way of linking would be:

To see all our basketball videos, click here for the entire listing.

However, instead of the generic "click here," you could rewrite the anchor text more descriptively as:

Feel free to browse all of our basketball videos.

We've got a major release of new features scheduled for tomorrow for ImmerseEdit CMS, so we wanted to give you a slight heads up. These are some major enhancements and some items that many of you have asked for so we know you're going to really love this release. We'll follow up in a couple of days with more details.

Blog tagging or categories

Some call 'em tags, some call 'em categories. We're calling 'em tags but they also work just like categories. You'll be able to assign any number of tags to any blog post. It's easy. Then, once you've added tags to your posts, you can create lists of all of your tags where users can click a tag to view all posts with that tag. And, for the super fancy blogger out there, we've even created a built-in "tag cloud" view as well.

Photo gallery slideshows

The photo gallery gets a huge upgrade with the slideshow skin. This lets you display the images in your photo gallery one at a time, transitioning from one image to the next. You can control several settings including whether you want the system to resize your images and to what size, how you want the slideshow to transition (fading, scrolling, or no transition), plus length of transition and duration of each slide hold. This hugely requested item is super easy to set up, giving you the power to make a real visual splash on your site.

Improved photo gallery captions

Also on the photo gallery, you will now have the ability to add longer photo names and rich text captions, including links. The new image information can be edited via our familiar WYSIWYG editor allowing you to set up detailed image information.

Launch and downtime

This exciting release is scheduled to launch tomorrow morning, Thursday, November 13th, 2008 at 7am Central Standard Time (GMT -6). There will be a minimal period of downtime (less than 15 minutes) as the changes are rolled out.