While the numbers show that many consumers are using social media to shop online, another report shows that the consumers are loyal to just a handful of brands. 61% of shoppers focus their attention on 1-5 retailers or brands, while only 21% focus on 6-10 brands.

To find out how you can create a social network marketing plan for your business, contact a&g Digital Consulting.

If you are not familiar with the Twitter Counter website, it is a great resource.  Use this website to find out all kinds of great information including individual twitter account stats, most popular accounts and lists and now and twitter account comparisons.  Recently, a new tool was released to allow you to be notified if your twitter username becomes available. There has been recent talk about an upcoming release of a number of old and unused Twitter usernames. When then is going to happen is not exactly known, but if you have been waiting for a particular name, now is the time to visit TwitterCounter.com.

Here is how it works:

Step 1: Visit www.TwitterCounter.com and enter the username in the box at the top.

Step 2:  Click on “Claim this username” on the resulting page.

Step 3:  Enter your email address and click “Notify me”.

That’s all there is to it.  They will now notify you if and when your username is released.

Google Sets

Google Sets is a free tool which can help to expand your search phrases for your businesses. This tool allows you to enter up to five keyword phrases which pertain to your business. You can then choose a small set, which will generate 15 or fewer items, or a large set, which will provide a much more extensive list of phrases.

In my experience, you would not want to cut and paste the list of results to your pay per click campaign because the results are not always going to be exactly what you need. However, the results can help you come up with extended keywords and phrases to add to your paid search campaign.

Try it now at http://labs.google.com/sets

Google Ad Preview Tool

If you are a Google pay per click advertiser, how many times a day to you find yourself searching your keywords, just to find out who might be bidding against you? If you are monitoring your placement, as well as competitor placement, Google’s Ad Preview tool is something that you should be using. When you continuously run a search for your bidding keywords, without clicking on your ads, Google may determine your own ads are irrelevant to you and stop showing them to you.

Try it now at https://adwords.google.com/select/AdTargetingPreviewTool

Google External Keyword Tool

I have always used Google’s External Keyword Generator when I am formulating my list of keywords and keyword phrases to target for a search engine optimization campaign, as well as my paid search campaigns. This is a scaled down version of the tool that is available to you when you log in to your Google Ad Words campaign, but if you are not a Google advertiser, you can still use the tool to not only generate ideas for your other campaigns, but also export the results in a easy to manage form. If you are a Google Ad Words advertiser, log in to your account to use their keyword generator. It is much more in depth.

Try it now at https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

Our new affordable website design package includes the following:

• Your choice of two designs, complete with your logo and color scheme

• A contact form to allow your potential contacts to email you directly from your website

• Up to 5 pages of client supplied information for your website. (Page examples include Home, Contact Us, Services, FAQ, About Us)

• Basic web hosting for just $15 a month – If you already have web hosting, we can work with that as well

• Add a blog for an additional $199 – add the ability to easily add news, updates and information to your website

• Add additional pages for just $75 a page

Here are a few website design samples built with this package:

Starter Web Design Sample 1

Starter Web Design Sample #2

Starter Web Design Sample #3

Our goal is to have your website online in just 5 business days. When you sign up for this package, we will work with you to gather the information for the website. While that is happening, we will create your designs and have those to you for approval within 2 business days.

If you thought that it was too complex or time consuming to put together a website for your business,  let us assure you that we want to make the process as easy as possible. Contact us today to get started on your website design.

a&g's mascot, Hugo, getting ready to attend the Fishers Chamber of Commerce Pet Day and Business Market

Many local Fishers business's displayed their products and services at the Fishers Business Market.

Hugo makes some friends at the Fishers Chamber of Commerce Pet Day and Business Market

For more information:

www.Consultagc.com – Indianapolis web design and website marketing

www.fisherschamber.com – Fishers Chamber of Commerce

My job is to make the process relatively painless for a business. Sure, I am going to need some general information in regards to company history, staff and services, but usually, I can take it from there. Below is a partial list of questions that I ask a potential new customer when planning their website.

1. Do you currently have a company logo or color scheme?

2. Are there any special features that you would like on your website? (Blog, database use, search capability, e-commerce  – don’t worry, I explain these)

3. Are there any websites that you like? I always encourage companies to not only look at businesses within their industry, but also other websites which might catch their eye.

4. Do you currently own your domain name (www.yourbusiness.com)? Want to see if your name is available, search here.If you business name is not available, try adding something short for your location, for example if I could not get consultagc.com, I may have chosen agcindy.com.

5. Would you like free business emails included with your website hosting? If so, please provide a list of emails that you would like to have.

This is typically enough information to get me started. If you are requiring some additional functionality, such as offering the ability to sell online or database information, there would be a few more questions that I would need before I could provide a quote.

If you are needing a website, please contact us today for a free quote.

I loving hearing about these new features, especially when I see a use for it with my business. The new offerings for Google Calendar include the following:

- Attach Google Docs: This is pretty self-explanatory. It allows you to attach your Google docs to your calendar event. I see this being very useful for a client meeting, whether to review a proposal or go over search engine optimization results.

- Background Image: This allows you to choose a background image for your calendar. Not particularly useful,  but I will try it.

- World Clock: This clock will keep track of the time around the world. When you view an event, you’ll see the start time in each time zone. This will help clear up some of the confusion on conference calls with representation across multiple states.

- Jump To Date: Instantly jump to any past or present date in your calendar.

- Next Meeting: I really like this feature because it shows me the next meeting in my calendar and the amount of time until that meeting. Particularly useful on a busy day.

- Free or Busy: If you decide to share your calendar with your friends and contacts, you will be able to see if they are available. Good luck getting any work done with a long list of contacts.

For all of you coding geeks, Google will also be releasing an experimental API to allow you to write your own Calendar apps. More information can be found here: http://googlecode.blogspot.com/2009/07/sidebar-gadgets-coming-soon-to-calendar.html

If you are currently using Google Calendar, check out these features in the settings of your calendar. Don’t use Google Calendar? Get access here.

Real Estate on the Verge
By Michael Stark

Declining prices, a credit crisis and millions of foreclosures pushed the real estate market to the brink. Commissions are under attack. Sellers try to connect directly with buyers. Investors crave to know about deals before they hit the MLS (multiple listing service). And consumer frustration makes matters worse.

The National Association of Realtors (NAR) reported on May 12, 2009, that first quarter sales were at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.59 million homes and condos sold. The population of prospects is enormous when you add in all of those struggling to sell, buyers on the fence, approximately 1.1 million realtors, and countless lenders, escrow, insurance and home improvement contractors. The real estate vertical seems poised for a gold rush.

Current tools used for marketing this depressed market — PPC advertising, banners and even e-mail — are not working as well as in the past. There is simply too much inventory. Therefore, claiming your stake in the virgin vertical of real estate means moving your covered wagons across a great divide. This new land of opportunity is ready to settle, and it starts with forming long-term relationships with those steeped in the industry. When the housing market rebounds, this will put your business in a position to fuel the impending boom.

The first obstacle is to understand that people are not leads. Investors, sellers, realtors and lenders are real people involved in a very long business sales cycle. Enterprises that can help these individuals and businesses through the process, while serving up products and services will gain trust, respect and profit. Your site will bookmark, brand and build if you educate, enlighten and enable individuals.

OPPORTUNITIES ALONG THE WAY
Pioneers scouting the real estate territory should understand its five sub-verticals, with some sites blending two or more.

1. Sites that allow MLS search. Most agent sites provide a local service. Realtor.com is great nationally.
2. Sites that deliver blogs and news. A good blog can provide important news, featured listings or valuable resources. Curbed.com is a nice example.
3. Sites mashing up census, neighborhood and lifestyle content such as HomeFair.com.
4. Sites providing valuations and sales data, such as Zillow.com.
5. Free and paid sites that assist FSBO (for sale by owner) sellers. Free sites syndicating postings to other sites and search engines are the most popular.

To grow your prospective or existing real estate business, contact the top sites in each sub-vertical, and entice them to sell your products or services on a CPA (Cost Per Acquisition) or CPL (Cost Per Lead) basis. You might find that some site owners ask to be compensated for access to their database and audience.

Even more opportunities can be found by exploring the angles involved in each real estate transaction. With some creative thought and planning, the list of possibilities grow. For example:

* Buyers are interested in loans, investments strategies, foreclosures and sales data. Any one of these topics could make for a nice side blog to your website, or consultancy work.
* Sellers want tools beyond yard signs, flyers and print ads. They need websites, e-mail, SEM and SEO services, and help engaging prospects — social media strategies and video production.
* When a property doesn’t sell in a timely manner, rental options are needed. This involves prospects, community organizations, and even moving companies.
* Contractors are always needed in every real estate market to make repairs and prepare properties for selling or renting.

In the foreseeable future, times will continue to be tough for real estate buyers, sellers, realtors, lenders, contractors and insurance professionals. But now is the time to connect with this demographic. Show them how your product or service will improve their life, and you’ll discover a huge new source for customers — now and, more importantly, in the profitable times to follow.

There is a learning curve to the program and information overload can happen if you don’t know where to focus your attention. If you want to start with a general overview of what is happening on your website, I would recommend monitoring a few specific categories.

1. Unique Visitors: I often hear businesses discussing “hits” on their websites and using that for a gauge on how they website is performing. This number can highly overestimate the popularity of your website. A hit is registered whenever one of the many files on your website is loaded. For example, a single page in your site might have 10 images, as well as 2 script files within it’s code. This page could register 12 or more hits from one single visit to the  web page. For that reason, I monitor unique visitors. This number will provide a more accurate way of monitoring the number of people who come to your site, excluding multiple visits from the same computer.

2. Referring Sources – Having spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on marketing during my career, I consider the referral data on your statistics to be very important. The referring sources will be able to tell you who is sending you traffic. This can be very valuable if you are spending company time exposing your business to the social networking marketing mediums, or more importantly, paying for display and paid search marketing.

3. Conversion – This is the most important statistic that you are going to monitor, hands down. You can drive all of the traffic in the world to your site, but if they are not turning in to a customer, then you have some work to do. Google Analytics allows you to place some code on your site at what you consider to be the point of conversion. For most businesses, this is the order confirmation page, which thanks them for placing their order. However a business’s goal may be to drive an online information request lead or to drive a phone call. In these cases, placing the code on the contact form confirmation or on the contact page itself can give you an idea of the interest in your particular conversion. Either way, if you are getting the traffic without conversions, it is time to dig deeper in to your site to find out what is happening. In these cases, bounce rates and average time spent on the site by a visitor can get you pointed in the right direction.

For more information on conversion tracking on your website, contact Angie Commorato at blog@commorato.com. Angie is an Indianapolis based web consultant and owner of the online marketing company, a&g Digital Consulting, LLC.

Hunch.com was created by Caterina Fake,who was also co-founder of the photo-sharing community Flickr. She says she created Hunch not because people need help with emotional decisions but because it’s too tough to find smart information online. I wanted to test it out, so after their server had stabilized, the first topic I chose was “What funny video should I watch?”. A few questions later, I was watching a cat fight a copy machine on Youtube.com, complete with sound effects. I found the clip pretty funny and proceeded to watch a few other suggested clips, that were entertaining as well. It turns out that I should also be leaning towards designer Marc Jacobs’ clothes, adding an adopted Saint Bernard to our brood and choosing a Chevrolet Corvette for my next car. Whereas all of the choices didn’t necessarily fit my tastes, it was on cue more often than not and was an entertaining website.