Our team over at Ulistic.com are launching our newest Workshop in a series of Internet Marketing related programs.

Join Stuart and I on June 23rd at the Blackfoot Inn where we will not only give you a powerfully tuned installation of WordPress, we are going to show you how to use it. But not just how to blog… how to make you blog a magnet for natural search traffic. Once you understand the power of the blog in terms of gaining it’s own following, we’ll teach you how to focus that attention to your marketing website.

Blogging for Business is June 23rd, 2010
8:30 am to 4:30 pm – Blackfoot Inn, SE Calgary, Alberta

Learn in a small group envirionment, seating is limited - Register today.

Did you know that blogs naturally attract visitors and that they almost do their own search engine optimization?

Learn about blogs and the applications that make them run. Learn why blogs are so effective at generation of targeted traffic. Learn how to cross optimize your blog and your marketing website to make the perform like a lead generating machine. Understand what syndication is and why it works…. go her to learn more about this Blogging Workshop in Calgary

Cheers,

David A. West

Would you do business with a person who didn’t tell you their name or hand you a business card when you met them?

Would you consider requesting a proposal from an online service that does not include a phone number, contact form, or address on their website? It is not difficult to find websites on the internet where there is no information about the owners or key stakeholders.

Does your website have your phone number on the home page? How about a page that has information about your company directors? A detailed contact page is important – it certainly would encourage me to give you a call.

The Social aspects of the Social Networking craze that is sweeping the internet has to have an impact on how you write for your marketing website. Earn some trust by providing good information, make a clear call to action, and identify yourself. The days of doing business with corporations are slipping away… people want to do business with people.

If your marketing website is more than a few years old, it will be missing key elements that a modern website should include. It may be time for a website review with an Internet Consultant.

David A. West

Connect with me:

Has the economy slowed your business down?

I talk to a lot of small business owners in a week and the general consensus is that most companies have seen a decline in revenue over the past 12 months. You really have two choices to make when your business is slow – cut expenses or increase sales.

Do You Want More Leads from Your Website?

You may have the ability to increase the leads that your website generates.  Have you heard of Search Engine Optimization – my guess is yes. It’s quite a buzz right now. That and “Social Media”… things like Twitter, Facebook and Linked In.

What does all of this SEO, social media stuff mean?

If you are even slightly confused or feeling overwhelmed trying to both understand and implement an online marketing program – we have a solution for you.

What does it do for your business website?

If you cause enough banter online and direct the focus of the various media to your marketing website, the search engines respond by showing searchers links to your online presence. The louder you banter… more traffic.  A well designed website with clear conversion goals will convert those visitors to potential clients.  That’s what search engine optimization, social media and video syndication can do for your business.

I’d like to Introduce you to Ulistic

I would like to introduce you to ULISTIC Inc. Our focus is completely on internet consulting and marketing.  Here are some of the things we want to help you with;

• Managed social media, yes we can do it for you. Become a part of a growing Twitter pool and let work at driving traffic to your website or blog
• Search Engine Optimization, get your website showing up on Google for the important keywords and phrases that will generate new leads.
• Website conversion goal review and optimization. Getting traffic is only one part of the big picture… is your website really ready to greet guests and compel them to call you?
• Social Media Coaching and Setup. One and one setup and design of your Facebook company page, LinkedIn, and Twitter account. Setup to automatically cross syndicate you blog writing, tweets and status updates!
• Internet video production and syndication – with a focus on getting traffic!

This is the time of year to decide what to do for the next book. I have a number of clients asking me what they should consider doing. Are you curious to know if people are renewing? canceling? increasing or decreasing their Yellow Pages advertising…

If you would please take 3 minutes to complete this very brief survey – I will compile the results and share them with you. I wrote the survey in order to get an idea of what business owners or managers are planning for this years “Yellow Pages” budget.

What are you planning for your Yellow Pages budget this year – please complete this brief survey (8 questions)

–> http://ekzact.com/survey/index.php?sid=16849

Thank you for participating.

David West,
Director
dawest@ekzact.com :: www.ekzact.com

eKzact Solutions Inc.
Tel: 403-770-3023 ext. 111
Fax:403-398-1446

NEW – VideoSpokes :: Be the spokesperson at your website!
Business Blog :: All business, all of the time.
Personal Blog :: Mostly business, but some fun too.

Skype: ekzactsolutions
SkypeIn: 403-775-2205

PS – Are you afraid? Afraid of public speaking, that is? Registration is now open for EasySpeak™… click here

eKzact is sponsoring a new Calgary networking opportunity for Entrepreneurs who are blogging for business. This is not just another “bloggers” group…  Our focus is very much on business.

Who is this Calgary networking opportunity for?

If you are a Calgary business blogger or if you think you would like to better understand the power of blogging, then this group is for you.

Blogging for Business is a powerful way to generate valid traffic to your marketing efforts. By brining together a large group of Calgary bloggers we plan to work together by sharing ideas and by blogging about common topics. Furthermore, by blogging about each other we and help our members to leverage the power and ease of cross-optimization for each others blogs and marketing efforts.

Come and share writing ideas, tips and tricks. Build relationships and start cross-optimization of your blogs and business websites by writing about common topics!

This meetup is being co-hosted by me, David West a Calgary website design company owner and Stuart Crawford of Bulletproof Info Tech, a Calgary IT computer support company.

All people who Blog around a “business topic” or are interested in becoming a “Business Blogger” are welcome!

To learn more and join this group – click here and start blogging today!

Here is a quote from an email from a company representing itself as a “professional search engine optimization” service. They also provide pay-per-click services.

“Thank you for signing up. Ash said that he was able to cut a deal with Google, and you will get a report from Google in our behalf, and you will be able to track every  visitor from your site and you would be able to track every detail and you would know where your clients come from. They would be able to identify if it’s by eB——–W-b [name removed to protect the stupid], YP, search results, and other marketing endeavors. We would like to ask for your FTP access in order for it to work efficiently, and accurately. “

Find out why this statement not only raised red flags around ethics, but also raised my hair… I write at length about this one at our corporate blog.

….to read the full posting, visit the eKzact blog and read the article, “Some Peoples Kids… will say almost anything”

Apparently with no skin in the game, ie: no paid membership fee and no paid executive, the Calgary Entrepreneur Meetup is doomed to fail. Free membership in a Calgary networking group is a route to disaster.

Does voluntary leadership really mean that there is no skin in the game.

Take a closer look at why we do it.

Why do business owners network? Why do they volunteer to co-ordinate and host networking opportunities. Why do legitimate business owners volunteer to be Presidents, VP’s and Treasurers for their weekly referral networking clubs? Quite simply, we volunteer because it helps our business. It is a way to give back to the community while expanding our social networks beyond the world of “not so personal” Tweets and “Friend lists” in our virtual worlds.

The choices and decisions made around when and where a business networks is totally open to a huge number of factors. If you are a new business owner looking for leads, then you join a networking referral club. If you are a more established business looking to build relationships, then a larger monthly forum may be a better match. It may be a matter of time, or no time. Perhaps you are available at lunch time, or only in the evening. In anycase, relationships are built (and in some cases un-built).  Who and where you choose to dine, or network with, is not a slight against the other opportunies to network in Calgary - it really is just a personal choice. At the end of the day though, no matter how you shake it up – meeting good people is good for business.

Back to the question that started this little article… do volunteer run networking groups fail to deliver?

NO. In fact, participating in the Calgary Entrepreneur Meetup (established in Nov. 2002)  is very rewarding. Just over 6 years of open networking as a volunteer run club – I’d say there is no pending disaster.  Just good old fashioned hand shaking.

Where do you network for your business? Visit the Calgary Entrepreneur site today.

Tell me your thoughts on this… I would love to see your (your constructive) comment added below.

Cheers -
David A. West

If you want a sure fire way to generate targeted traffic to your website, then you need to understand the power of blogging.

Not only is David West a blogger, but he is an internet marker and website developer. David is going to introduce you to the “nuts and bolts” of blogging for business. Starting with a general overview and a non-technical explanation of why blogging works.

To learn more about this blogging course, coming up on February 18th, visit this page…

Business Networking Works…

When I started our website design company over four years ago, the concept of networking meetings was something quite new to me. When the first networking group contacted me and invited me out to a lunch meeting, I actually turned them down. Thankfully, they were persistent and after a few weeks I attended my first meeting. I joined my first networking club.

I had a tough time understanding how meeting the same dozen people every week would bring me new business. The focus of the network referral club was to bring leads to other members. It worked fairly well in terms of my business, most of the referrals received were actual club members.  I really appreciate these early clients.

As our business grew, and as our website began generating more and more leads, my attendance at networking meetings declined. I no longer attend a regular weekly lunch meeting. Having said that, the early start we got through networking continues to pay off today. I gained a lot of new clients in the earlier years through these clubs. The relationships that were fostered continue to work for us. I consistently receive new business leads from the neworkers that I met years ago.

Great Leadership = Great Growth

The Calgary Entrepreneur Meetup is one of the greatest opportunities for business to business networking in Calgary today.  Stuart Crawford is the founder and current chair of this meetup. Stuart’s passion for the community is stronger today than ever before. His approach to giving prior to getting is admirable.

When do they meetup?

The Calgary Entrepreneur Meetup currently gets together formally one time per month. We have plans to increase this to include more frequent meetings including breakfast and lunch meetings. While the current meetings are held in the evenings, the odd alternative time will likely bring more members out. At last count there were over 500 members in the group – making this one of Calgary’s largest networking group.

What is it going to cost you?

The fact that the meetup is run 100% by volunteers is admirable.  The token fee of $5.00 per meeting is taken on a drop-in basis. There is no annual membership fees.

What will you experience at a meetup?

You will meet like minded entrepreneurs. Many of us own our own successful businesses. Some will be in the start-up phase. Some will be representing larger organizations. One thing that is common, we all come out to learn from each others experiences.

Where to you network for your business? Visit the Calgary Entrepreneur site today.

Tell me your thoughts on this… I would love to see your comment added below.

Cheers -
David A. West

Stuart Crawford and I jointly presented “Creating Stickiness on the Web”, this is the second opportunity that I have had to jointly present with Stuart. I really enjoyed the meeting. We had an excellent turn out.

If you are an Entrepreneur in Calgary and aren’t a member of the Meetup – visit the site here and learn more.

Stuart published a blog entry, just now actually, that sums it up.  Here’s what Stuart had to say…

Dave and I have got some great ideas about what we are planning to do and to take the Calgary Entrepreneurs Group.  Our goal is to make this group the premiere networking group in all of Calgary.  So if you are an entrepreneur looking for a great networking experience, visit http://entrepreneur.meetup.com/5/ and sign up today.  We also have a blog at at http://www.calgaryentrepreneurs.ca.

Tag Goulet commented

“Stuart and Dave provided an excellent overview of important issues affecting entrepreneurs on the web. This was the best meetup yet. ”

I wanted to provide a few links to some of the websites that Stuart and I talked about;

Miro – by Participatory Culture -  http://participatoryculture.org/

Television is the most popular medium in our culture. But broadcast and cable TV has always been controlled by a small number of big corporations. We believe that the internet provides an opportunity to open television in ways that have never been possible before.

Google Enterprise Apps – http://www.google.com/enterprise/

Google enterprise products make your users more productive by combining the innovation and ease of use of Google’s consumer products with the features, security and support that your organization requires

Google Analytics – http://www.google.com/analytics/

Google Analytics makes it easy to improve your results online. Write better ads, strengthen your marketing initiatives, and create higher-converting websites. Google Analytics is free to all advertisers, publishers, and site owners.

Google Webmaster Tools – http://www.google.com/webmasters/

Dim Dim – Web Video Conferencing – http://www.dimdim.com/

Dim Dim is the world’s free web meeting where you can share your desktop, show slides, collaborate, chat, talk and broadcast via webcam with absolutely no download required by attendees.

Hey – why not get Skype now and give me a call? – 403-775-2205

Cheers -
David A. West

PSst: don’t forget to subscribe at the bottom of this page…

PSSSsst: www.eKzact.com

Tom Costello and Anna Patterson of the new search engine “Cuil” have something to celebrate!

Anna Patterson’s last Internet search engine was so impressive that industry leader Google Inc. bought the technology in 2004 to upgrade its own system. She believes her latest invention is even more valuable — only this time it’s not for sale.  See the Fox News site for full article

And according to CUIL;

The Internet has grown exponentially in the last fifteen years but search engines have not kept up—until now. Cuil searches more pages on the Web than anyone else—three times as many as Google and ten times as many as Microsoft.

Rather than rely on superficial popularity metrics, Cuil searches for and ranks pages based on their content and relevance. When we find a page with your keywords, we stay on that page and analyze the rest of its content, its concepts, their inter-relationships and the page’s coherency.

Since it’s launch on July 28th, CUIL has enjoyed more than 50 million searches. This type of traffic closely rivals that of Yahoo and Microsoft’s Live.  A fair feat to celebrate given that CUIL is a small start up with only 30 employees.

I spent some time on CUIL testing some of my favorite keyword phrases, like “Calgary website design“. I have mixed feelings about the search results that CUIL is returning.  Actually the result for Calgary website design is fairly excellent   When I search the names or domain names of some fairly well know Calgary business websites, to my surprise they don’t perform as well as I thought that they would.

I think CUIL is a pretty fine tool. I am looking forward to it maturing and giving the big boys a run for their money. There is a lot of room for strong search engines on our Internet… competition is good for us all.

CUIL claims to be the “World’s Biggest Search Engine“… now we wait to see if the search results are a relevant as our friend Google.  While indexing 120 Billion plus pages on the internet is quite impressive, the true measure of success for a search engine has to be in the quality of the actual search results.

By the way… did you download your free report from Stuart’s blog yet…
http://blog.itsuccessmentor.com/connect-the-dots

Hey – why not get Skype now and give me a call?

Cheers -
David A. West

Stuart Crawford and I will be presenting at the upcoming Calgary Entrepreneur Meetup Group. The meeting is on August 14th, in Calgary, at 6:30pm.  We will be discussing “Stickiness on the Web”.  We spoke together last month and I really enjoy presenting with Stuart.  We are both very excited about the Intenet and how it is impacting business. I think that becomes very clear when you see us interact in this some-what formal “discussion” on the ‘web’.

Click on the …more link to get the full details and learn about the Calgary Entrepreneur Meetup Group. This Group is a great opportunity to network, learn and grow your business!

The Calgary Entrepreneur Meetup Group is the largest and longest running meetup group in Calgary. If you are an entrepreneur, if you would like to become and entrepreneur, or if you want to support entrepreneurs then join us at our next meeting!

Our monthly event is an opportunity for entrepreneurs to get together, mingle and relax. The event is not meant to be a sit down structured event but one where entrepreneurs kick back, network and enjoy themselves.

Cost is $5.00 to attend
You are responsible for your own food bill

Visit our website at http://entrepreneur.meetup.com/5/

Start Time: Thursday, August 14 at 6:30pm
End Time: Thursday, August 14 at 9:30pm
Where: Calgary Coast Plaza Hotel – Horizon’s Restaurant

Hey – why not get Skype now and give me a call?

Cheers -
David A. West

It is difficult, sometimes, to convince a client that their website is actually performing quite well. Clients expectations, sometimes, far exceed their websites ability to perform. Google Analytics offers an industry leading statistics engine for website owners and developers to track and trend website performance.

Using Analytics to better understand how visitors behave, we can determine how they are finding a website, what search engines are people using and what keywords visitors use when searching. We can also review bounce rates and the number of pages viewed by a visitor.

The one thing we could not do in the past was demonstrate to the client that their websites performance is good, or bad, based on benchmarking. It was nearly impossible to demonstrate that other websites of similar size and nature perform better or worse than the clients website.

Google has “stepped up” and changed this by introducing “Benchmarking”. As users of Google Analytics, we have been given the choice to share the statistical data gathered from our websites. In return, Google has made the “Benchmarking” data available back to us.

Google states that there will be a minimum of 100 accounts compared in any given category. Some categories could potentially have thousands of sites being benchmarked.

The data from participating sites is averaged and anonymized through the aggregation process, then classified into a category. We limit the effects of outlier sites from the aggregate data in each category to help ensure that the benchmarking data is most representative of the industry vertical you choose to compare your site against.

Google Analytics Benchmarking Help

Google exposes vertical categories when there are enough websites that fall into the category. If a category for your vertical market is not showing, it is likely because there is not enough data to create a direct benchmark. You will still be able to benchmark websites of a similar size.Google Analytics benchmarking currently allows us to show a comparison for the following metrix;

• Visits – unique visitors to the website. Not hits… hits don’t mean anything.
• Bounce Rate – did they pop in and out again…
• Pageviews – total number of pages viewed during the reporting period.
• Avg. Time on Site – how long did the “stick”.
• Pages/Visit – how many pages a visitor viewed for this visit.
• New Visits vs. Returning Visitors

We currently add analytics to all of our accounts where Search Engine Optimization (SEO) or Online Marketing services are involved. If you are a website owner and would like to have Google Analytics installed on your website, please feel free to contact us and we would be glad to help you.

Understanding how your website is performing in relationship to search, online marketing and in comparison to your vertical markets is critically important. If you have a website and are not measuring it’s success, you may be missing an opportunity to improve.

Getting visitors is okay – Getting customers better!(tm)

Regards,

David A. West
eKzact is a leading Calgary Website Design company.

As a website developer, I have learned to “raise red flags” when a prospective client says certain things. for the purposes of this article, I have named these prospects, “The Expert Prospective Client”.

The expert – Knows how long a task will take before they ask.

They often say things like, “That’s just a simple task, isn’t it? I don’t think it will take long for you to do.”

The expert – Knows the value of our service, without asking for a quote.

They often say things like, “I just need this one thing done, it should be quite inexpensive…”

The expert – Has changed service providers recently.

They often have just left a previous service provider on questionable grounds. In some cases, they did not pay their final bill. They will say things like, “My last guy/gal used to nickle & dime me to death. Every time I turned around, they send me an invoice for something…”

The expert – Hires professionals, but openly admits that they could do it themselves.

They may say something like, “I could have done this myself, but my time is too valuable.”

The expert – Often offers to send you lots of new clients, provided you give them a good deal & do a great job for them.

They say things like, “I know a lot of people, if you do a good job for me I’ll refer you lots of business in the future.” These offers sometimes come as veiled threats if a project goes a bit sideways. The expert will say, “I wish we didn’t have to deal with this, I don’t know if I can refer my friends to you if this is how it is going to be…” It has been my experience that the people who use “referrals” as leverage, are the same people who never refer new clients.

My experience has shown that it is difficult to build a client/service provider relationship with the expert prospect.

Do you run across the expert potential client in your business? Have I missed any common traits in my list above?

David A. West