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.)
As I stated earlier, I’m spending considerable time right now on my own e-commerce websites in an effort to improve their marketing, product range, conversion rate, and more. This is long overdue. These sites make pretty good money and just improving them by 10 to 20% would be a significant benefit to our business.
In the process, I’ve started to come up with a list of tools I use that help me. These are not just tools for e-commerce, but most are good for marketers in general. too. I am hoping this will spur some others to write similar posts so I can see what they use. Here goes…
I recently asked my pal, Jason Keath if he could write out the history of Social Fresh. Here’s what he sent me. Enjoy! For those of us in Charlotte, you’ll remember much of what he speaks of…
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Written by Jason Keath – Owner of Social Fresh
In 2005 I decided I wanted to be a creative director for an ad agency.
This was pre-Mad Men mind you. But the fine arts major inside of me saw the creative world of agencies as a pinnacle of sorts.
Needless to say I got sidetracked.
Today, almost 8 years later, I am running a company called Social Fresh, a social media training company. Social Fresh started in 2009 as a social media conference in Charlotte, NC, where I was living and working at the time.
Social Fresh came about out of frustration. Working my way through three very different agencies, where I was lucky enough to be able to pitch social media strategies for clients and potential clients, I recognized that there was a big gap when it came to how people thought about social marketing.
For those of you that have attended my classes or attended my meetups, you know I’ve been a little “under the radar” lately. So here’s an update:
For the past two years, I’ve been working a lot with Social Fresh and for a few clients. I’ve also reopened the Hippo Internet Marketing classes on Search Engine Optimization, Google AdWords, Blogging, and other topics.
But last month I moved my office from Huntersville to Mooresville. It’s a closer location from home and a little cheaper. But more importantly, it’s setup to do video better. (more…)
As a marketer, one of my favorite expressions is “It’s Worth Testing”. I sincerely believe that it is the one answer to every good marketing question. Granted, there are lots of “bad” marketing questions, such as “Should I spend most my time in MySpace promoting my products?”
However, there are lots of good marketing questions out there, such as “Is Pinterest a good option for my business” or “Is Google AdWords worth it?”
But some are confusing the concepts of “testing” with “studies”.
For example, you can perform a study of 10,000 websites to determine if sites that have active Facebook Pages rank better or worse than sites that do not have active Facebook pages. But that’s not a test. It’s a study. (more…)
As most of you know, I do some work for Social Fresh. Because of that, I get some great opportunities that I’m happy to pass on to my readers. This is one of those moments.
Just this morning, Jason Keath (president of Social Fresh) and I finally finished a major project. For the first time, we took an entire conference including some awesome speakers and topics and made it available online.
By now, you have probably noticed that I launched Hippo Academy on April 19.
The launch involves making three videos and then a sales page. The first video is giving some general ideas of why you can believe me. The next video will explain the actual details of the academy and why it will work for you. The third video will answer any questions that come up.
But you want the inside scoop, right?
The reality is that I stopped teaching my classes about six months ago for two reasons. (more…)
I know some of you have been waiting a while. But we’ll be opening our doors soon to the Hippo Academy. It’s taken me longer than expected because it’s going to be much more than I originally planned.
This week I’m creating video training and posting it. That way, once you get in, it will be waiting for you. But we’re not stopping there. Being a Hippo Academy member will get you some other pretty cool perks.
We’re not open quite yet, but will be soon.
PS: If it sounds interesting to you, feel free to visit Hippo Academy now and leave your email address to stay informed.
At the beginning of the month I announced to my subscribers that I am no longer going to teach classes after next month. But I forgot to post it here.
(Why? Because I combined the announcement with a special discount that was primarily for my subscribers.)
So here are the details as I announced them earlier this month. (For those of you that subscribe to my newsletter, none of this is new.)
The History of our classes…
In June 2007, my wife and I moved to Charlotte. One of the main reasons I did so was to start teaching classes about Internet marketing. We felt Charlotte was a bigger and better market to do so than Asheville, NC.
It proved true. Starting in early 2008, I have taught about 30 classes. It’s been a real pleasure for me to meet so many incredibly interesting people and to hear about their jobs and businesses. I continue to keep in touch with many of them.
But now it’s time for a change.
I’m stopping my classes…
I’ll probably never stop teaching. I enjoy it too much. But I am stopping my classes. (What will replace them? You’ll have to watch for future newsletters to learn that.)
As of today, I’ve decided that I’m only teaching two more classes.
Thanks for your support…
The last three years or so have been a real thrill for me. I love the atmosphere of a classroom filled with students that are eager to learn a subject (Internet marketing) that I love so much.
But the work I have to do on my own business is taking priority this year. Next year, I’ll be announcing some newer, bigger, better initiatives.
We have only one more search engine optimization class before “summer vacation”. It will be held on June 10 and 11. You can see the agenda here and register here.
Once this class is over, we will hold one more round of all five of our classes from September to November of 2010.
We have no schedule yet for 2011.
To be honest, I’m not quite sure if we’ll even be teaching classes in 2011. Some of our e-commerce projects have been going well and I’ve got some new clients and new projects we need to accomplish.
So if you are interested in learning SEO or other Internet marketing topics, please don’t delay. Check out our full schedule here.
