Events, Happenings & Cool Stuff

In today’s world, it’s more effective to have a website that has some automation. I cannot say enough about Joomla, and it’s free! I hooked up Nichols Insurance Group in Lakeland with their own Joomla website.

Joomla does take a bit of tweaking to change the default template (which isn’t very attractive). This is where I come in. I encourage my clients to learn the back-end so they can easily add pages themselves (including pictures) so I set-up the framework, style it and make it search engine friendly (which is very important). The stock versions of Joomla are not friendly for search engines.

Nichols Insurance Website Almost Done

Here is just a few of Joomla Features:

• Your customers can easily create their own accounts, and you can keep any page you want private to the public. For example, if you look at the screen shot above you will see the get estimate widget for an insurance quote. If Nichol’s really wanted to, they could force people to create an account first and make it visible only when someone is logged in.
• Joomla has widget friendly sidebars so you can easily place Twitter, Facebook and other widgets in seconds just about anywhere on your website.
• Custom Google Maps have come a long way. Make it easy for your customers. Check out the demonstration here.
• Don’t spend thousands on a website when you can get this for a few hundred. Joomla can easily be restyled if you want a new look in the future, without compromising your search engine rankings. For more information, you can contact me here.

Be Sure To Customize Your Directions Page Like This

With Joomla, you can even add cool photo galleries like this!

The New England Patriots Vs the Tampa Bay Buccaneers football game was a big deal over in London England yesterday. Even Toni Braxton (who looks amazing by the way) sand the national anthem.

As soon as that ended, a woman started singing “God Save The Queen” which brought out the biggest surprise of the night. Benny Hill! What’s more English than that?

Benny Hill Makes Surprise Appearance At Patriots Vs Bucs

Visit My Menu Florida For More Information

Every once in a while I find a great new company in Lakeland Florida. In this tough economy, businesses are finding it more difficult to find effective advertising. Basically, your ad will go on a place mat at participating restaurants in Lakeland.

I think it’s a great idea, and for people like me it will work. When I go to a restaurant I have to wait for my food, so I’m always looking for something to read. Karla from Ad Mats To Go goes one step further, she prints them on quality paper with full color!

Here is a bit more about Karla:

Admats-To-Go reaches hundreds, if not thousands, of potential residential and commercial customers each week. This is a low-cost, yet long-term method of reaching your target market in a relaxed, low pressure environment.  With Placemat Advertising you get a captive audience.  Your advertisement will also be listed on the restaurant’s menu website where customers also have the opportunity to visit your website to learn more about the benefits of your products and services.

Your advertisement will be on the restaurant tables before a minimum of 5,000 viewers putting you directly in front of your customers for 3-4 months at a time and shared even more when taken home as to go menus!
When you visit a restaurant and you’re waiting for service – you would welcome the opportunity to read something placed directly in front of you.  A dedicated audience for at least 15-20 minutes?  WOW!

Do any of these individuals meet your potential client profile…
•     Business associates meeting
•     Friends catching up
•     Families enjoying a meal together
•     Couples enjoying happy hour
•     Seniors enjoying early bird specials

The value of the potential audience you can reach through this method is only exceeded by the extremely low cost of advertising. Compare that to radio or television advertising…especially with XM and TiVo – no fast forwarding or changing the channel during commercials and you receive contract exclusivity. This means no other advertiser in your service category will compete with you on that placemat for the term of your contract. You will also be extended the opportunity to renew prior to the acceptance of another advertiser in your category. Each restaurant has a minimum run of 5,000. A discount is offered when purchasing more than one location or when advertising on more than one placemat in a different restaurant. You provide the art or our price includes a custom designed ad by our professional graphic artist and the placemats are professionally printed in full color. Just think – placing your ad on the restaurant’s placemat reaches your target residential or commercial clients in a very influential way.  Reading your advertisement could trigger a need they didn’t realize before seeing your advertisement.

This is a great opportunity – call or e-mail us today!

I know car dealers are desperate to find new ways of luring in potential car buyers, but I think Ken Garff of Utah is taking it to the extreme

Last week, I noticed someone started following me on Twitter with the name “veryhotlisa”. I couldn’t help to notice the thumbnail photo was simply a woman showing her cleavage.

Utah's Largest Car Dealership Using Sex Appeal?

After looking up at her profile her introduction says:

“Hi everyone! I’m 22 years old, graduated from college in 2008, and I love sunbathing! I am currently marketing director at UsedCarsUtah.com”

I was very curious who was behind this odd campaign. I visited the website and at has “Ken Garff” written all over it. Looking at the WHOIS, they are not listed as the domain owner.

They are obviously paying somebody for this promotion. For a company that had a boycott from the Gay Community earlier, this may not be a good way to manage their reputation.

Last week, I sent out a Tweet about it to see what other thought:

carsalsa said “ That dealer doesn’t get how much they are alienating their biggest buyer base”

cgsommer said “She should sell bikes RT Not sure of this is an appropriate way to advertise 4 largest car dealer in Utah”

I’m curious what your thoughts are?

Google is all about quality search. There are drones of spammers trying to figure out how to beat the ever-so-clever Google Search Algorithm. Last week, I wrote about how I felt Google was in trouble with Social Networking. Google CEO Eric Schmidt pretty much admitted it at a conference yesterday in Orlando Florida.

As I previously stated, I am finding myself using the Twitter Live Search more often. I used to search Google Blogs, then sort by date to find my most recent topics. Since Google Launched the Caffeine Update, it seems they are indexing blog posts a lot slower. It used to be 1 or 2 minutes, now it’s taking up to 24 hours. I think their update backfired on them. Perhaps they moved a bit too fast?

Google’s biggest problem is how to rank live search results without allowing spam. How to decide who get’s to be number 1? I’m sure Google has something up their sleeve. Perhaps it’s the upcoming public release of Google Wave?

Google should of sealed the deal with Twitter a long time ago. In my opinion, Bing is lousy search engine that can easily be manipulated.

I am involved in over 20 websites, and I am a stats guy. On all of my websites Google brings me 89% of the traffic. If Bing becomes popular I will make more money because of my current Bing Rankings. On the other hand, I don’t see myself ever using Bing for searches. I will continue to use Google and Twitter.