New E-Commerce Website Launched for Syl’s Art – Sylvester Peebles

Several months ago, the most important client of my life asked me to design a website to showcase his art collection. It was my hero, my father! How could I say no? My dad, Sylvester Peebles, has been drawing and painting for as long as I’ve been alive. He has had artwork showcased in the St. Louis Art Museum and won first place in several art shows over the past few decades. One funny story he shared with me was the time he and my sister entered the same contest for art, (I think it was the Creve Coeur Days art show) and he said that he won second place and my sister (who would have been about 7 years-old) won first place. The only issue with that was first place won $100 and second place won a ribbon. My sister was crying because she did not want money; she wanted the ribbon. Ah to be young again.

Back to the original point of this post. My dad asked me to design

Social Media For Business

Recently I was chatting with a client who was against social media for her business. I asked why and she told me the following:

1. It’s too much work
2. I don’t want to have to always post photos and personal things
3. It’s unprofessional to have anything other than a LinkedIn page

I was happy to know that she at least saw value in LinkedIn. When she told me that she wanted more exposure at a low cost however, I had to let her in on some of the biggest bang you can get for your buck…which happens to be social media platforms.

With social media you can really leverage your products using your blog on your website just as I am right now. Showcasing your products (or knowledge) will prove to your buyers that they should choose your company over the next one. If your company mostly provides a “service” then you can still do this by using your blog to write articles that prove that you know what you are talking about. Simply sharing information about those services or tips to help your consumers will increase traffic to your site immediately. How you leverage those articles is through social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.

It’s important to note, that having a

Baby Clydesdale Makes News In Marketing Ad

Recently, Budweiser had a commercial run during the Super Bowl. Very creative! They offered the public a chance to name the baby Clydesdale and today they released the name of that baby as…..(*insert drumroll here*) Hope!

If you haven’t seen the commercial which was my personal favorite, you can watch it here:

Morning Cup of…Facebook?

I got to wondering today. “What’s the first thing normal people do in the morning?” I mean..for me, it’s wake up, log into Facebook and see if I have any messages, then see what everyone else is chatting about (there could be some happening news ya know), then check to see if my fan page has any questions or leads. After that I hit up Twitter…This process lasts for about the first half hour of my morning before I ever leave the house. So I started to wonder…Am I the

How are you using your Facebook and Twitter Lists?

I had an interesting conversation with my boss the other day. For those who don’t know, my boss and company I work for have been adamently against the use of social networking for business from day one. Well, now that they know that I have been using Twitter for us and gained about 100 strong leads (which are about to close for orders totally over $500K) they are very interested in what I’ve been up to. He wanted to know how we could leverage Twitter for an upcoming trade show. His concern was how we could target certain states. Lucky for him, I had already

Young kid needs marketing help from you!

I had a call the other day asking me to help out a friend’s son to promote their blog. It’s actually a beautiful site. I was super impressed. Sure I said. You need me to help with your keywords? Your meta tags? What’cha need buddy? But, nope, he didn’t want that. He wanted to know how I could help get him advertisers on his site. Hmmm…interesting. So, I asked him what his site was about. He said it was a site about

Get your blog posts and links retweeted faster on Twitter

When I post my blog articles on Twitter I usually get about 10-50 reads depending on the time of day I send it and the leading text I use in the tweet. That can be half the battle. However, if you want to see major increases in your blog reads and pick up new followers of your blog, I have found a great tool that I would like to share with everyone. Some might say I am crazy for sharing this information, but lets be real, if you are not Mashable , then you can probably use all the help you can get!

So, what’s my big secret? Well, for some of you this may be old news, but to a good portion of you, it may be new news. First off, you need to have a

What’s your strategy to get people to open your blog via Twitter?

I have seen several methods used on Twitter and have tried most of them. There is the good old “Hit them hard and hit them fast” method.  This method consists of sending 4 – 5  different

Creating great copy for websites is easy!

Websites need to have a focus and a clear definition from all parties that are involved so that the branding remains in tact.  Objectives may include, product advertising, promotion, sales, fulfillment, service, data collection, relationship building, investor relations, public relations, press relations, recruiting, product development and more.  Think of your site as a

To Blog or Not to Blog

Blogging is one of the most current technologies available on the web.  There are millions of users who blog and who read blogs.  Most major corporations have a blog about their products.  People will come back and subscribe to your blog once you become an “expert” on your topics. Your blog should remain focused on a main topic. As people begin see that your content is of value, they will depend on your posts as a matter of information that they need. This will take time and not happen overnight, but if you keep these main points in mind it, will keep you from posting meaningless articles and instead stick to rich, creative information that people really want to hear about. Also, remember not to