Three years ago, on January 15th, 2013, I announced here that HIPPO Internet Marketing was closing. After ten years, I decided to stop taking clients and focus on my e-commerce sites. Shortly after that, I went to Ephricon as their Director of Client Services for about a year.
Two years ago, after Ephricon became Straight North, I took some Internet marketing clients, but mostly just those that I already had a relationship with already. I never opened up Hippo Internet Marketing in the sense that I started taking clients. But now, after three years of being “closed”…
HIPPO Internet Marketing is Open again!
In fact, I’ve started to redesign our website at www.HippoIM.com!
(I love the fact that my office is the main picture on the home page.)
For those of you that read my occasional email newsletter, you’ve probably figured out by now that I’m starting to work with Knowmad. I’ve known the good people at Knowmad for quite a while. In fact, I first met them years ago when I was teaching my Internet marketing classes in the Charlotte area.
Knowmad is what I consider a “boutique marketing agency” in Charlotte. They are a small group of smart people that work hard (and intelligently) for their clients. Over the years, I’ve felt they were one of the small agencies in Charlotte that did not get the attention they deserved. Why? (more…)
For some reason, the Charlotte area has a love addiction to Twitter. It’s true. At most everyrecentevent locally, the thing everyone wants to talk about is Twitter. It draws the largest crowds and fosters the most conversation before, during, and after.
Don’t get me wrong, the whole country loves Twitter. But Charlotte, North Carolina seems to have embraced it. I think it’s wonderful. I use Twitter every day and so do manyofmycolleagues, friends, and workmates. I am grateful to be living and working in the Charlotte area where so many people “get it” when it comes to social media and public relations.
Twitter is a wonderful way to spend time making connections, meeting people, and sharing ideas. I also think it is a great tool for getting questions answered quite easily.
What about Google?
But just because we all enjoy Twitter, don’t forget Google!
You remember Google, right? It’s been around for over ten years, which is practically an eternity online.
Now Google may not be as interactive and as exciting as the big three in Social Media – Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. But please don’t think that you should ignore it, especially if you are involved in marketing and/or public relations.
Google is by far the most popular tool for people to find things online. That includes the “things” you sell and the information you offer.
As most of you know, I’ve been teaching SEO for several years. But this year, we made a special effort to create and teach repeatable classes in the Charlotte area.
In doing so, many students have expressed appreciation. So far, I don’t have an official “testimonials” page on my training site, so I’m going to list a few comments I’ve been getting lately on this blog.
The Thoms Estate in Asheville, North Carolina is having their Grand Opening Celebration and Private Offering Event this weekend – October 12 and 13, 2007.
It is a pleasure handling the Internet Marketing for this client. What they are doing is so exciting. For example, this weekend is going to be quite an event. The invitation states:
Join us for an unforgettable day in the Blue Ridge Mountains as we officially open Asheville’s newest private old-world inspired residential community.
It includes cocktail reception and dinner with music and a personal overview of The Thoms Estate by Kent Smith. If you have never heard Kent talk about The Thoms Estate, you are really missing out. I’ve had the pleasure of being with him several times in the early stages of this project. He’s very passionate about doing this project the right way.
Sunday at 9:30 AM they are doing the property selection process. The event will also include classical guitar and hammered dulcimer, storytelling, and a jazz trio. My work with The Goss Agency has led to some very interesting opportunities. This is one I am enjoying the most.
It’s a pleasure to work with people who not only enjoy what they do but are proud of the product they create and how it works in with the environment.
Here are some new pictures of what some of the buildings will look like:
The Thoms Estate – Artist’s Cottage
The Thoms Estate – Home
Some of the techniques we are using (and not using) to get their website the attention it deserves may surprise some Internet marketers, but I assure you it is working. We have the proof. Interest in this property is growing steadily.
I only wish I could be there this weekend.
If you happened to attend this weekend, please leave a not below about what you thought of the event. It promises to be very interesting.
One of the more exciting things we’ve done is take some of the excellent videos they have done and place them on YouTube and Google Video.
In particular, this first video has been watched over 320 times in less than a month. It is regarding the Festival of Native American People held on July 19–21, 2007.
Check it out…
Now do me a favor. We’re trying to get more attention to these videos, especially as they are pretty incredible.
The Thoms Estate in Asheville has finally got their website up and running as of today. I’ve been in conversations with them (as part of my relationship with The Goss Agency) for about seven months now.
Hippo Internet Marketing is happy to announce that we are once again working with one of our favorite clients, Scott Hornick. Scott has a new company named Adventure Systems Climbing Walls.
Adventure Systems Climbing Walls are rock wall builders that will professionally engineer, design, and build climbing walls for schools, gyms, and any number of other places. Check out their (more…)
About six months ago I attended PubCon at Boston. There was a session (as always) for site reviews for search engine optimization. This session is usually a big hit and the room was packed. You can see the details of it here. Matt Cutts (famous Google employee and blogger) was on the panel. So was Tim Mayer (Director of Product Management at Yahoo) and Bruce Clay.
I put up my new client (Cherokee NC) just for fun. In the conference, Matt specifically mentioned that he has family down this way. He was therefore familiar with the Cherokee NC indians and wanted to know if this was the “official site” for them. It is. He then stated that “Google wants to rank this site”. He recommended that we put more text and text links on the site, and not just flash all over the place.
Of course, I agreed.Â
However, I am not the one designing the site. These are comments I pass on to the agency building the site. They take some of my advice and ignore (or forget) some advice. I guess that’s the nature of being a consultant.
I have been working with the agency to enhance the site by adding text, adjusting title tags, and adding paid search. They are quite fond of their graphics and flash on the site.
Getting back to the point…
A colleague of mine that is a Canadian Internet marketing consultant messaged me today to let me know that Matt Cutts mentioned my client’s site again on an Internet eMarketing Talk Show.  (He mentions Cherokee right around 6:30 into it.)
Unfortunately, he was not quoting us as a good example, but of a site that has almost all the navigation exclusively in flash. He recommended in the show that sites offer “alternate navigation”, perhaps at the bottom of the page.
The good thing is that although this is something that I have spoken with the agency about before, I now have a little more ammunition.
Charlotte Loves Twitter!
You remember Google, right? It’s been around for over ten years, which is practically an eternity online.
