Congrats to My Earth Day Client!

JWR Inc, Johnson Creek, WI

It’s been online for a while, but there’s no better time than the week of Earth Day to congratulate JWR Inc. on their new website! And how fitting, considering JWR and its sister company NewWay Global are innovative leaders in the waste and recycling industry. They are my 2013 Earth Day clients!

Last year, the JWR marketing team came to me wanting an updated website. I did their site five years ago and it has served them well. It’s helped them earn recognition and they’ve built a reputation based on their quality products and reliable service. With this company image well established, JWR now wants to emphasize its forward thinking. As owner Dave Wolf says “JWR has always been successful with niche products. We’re always trying to be a year or two ahead of the game.”

What better way to communicate such eco-moxiness than a new website!

JWR’s team had a list of ideas of “must-haves” for their site. Earlier this year they were featured on The Environmental Report so they wanted a way to showcase this and any future videos. They wanted a responsive layout for a variety of communication devices. And they wanted to maintain their own content. Thanks to Ben Seigel, of Versa Studios, we came up with a great Expression Engine framework that allows easy CMS capabilities. JWR is doing a super job with it.

So congratulations JWR! And happy Earth Day to you!

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Expanding Into New Lines of Communication

close stitching of quilt by Chris Kirsch

Sometimes it’s hard to decide whether to be enthusiastic or envious. Like now…I pass along social media marketing advise to my client Chris Kirsch and she successfully runs away with it in ways that far surpass my own marketing.

I’m just kidding, of course. I’m so proud of Chris’ business savvy and I’m itching to pass it along. And because Marketing Mentor’s Ilise Benun extols the benefits of podcasting, I’ve decided an interview with Chris will spread her success and introduce a new communication tool for myself.

There’s just one problem: I sound like a dork.

In Marketing Mentor’s podcasts, Ilise always comes across as intriguingly poised. In our podcast together, Chris sounds delightful and I, well, let’s just say I’ve left myself room for lots of improvement. But that’s okay. This was so fun to do and there are so many interesting people out there to interview, I’m anxious to try it again.

So, here it is. The first of my audio podcast series, rough as it is. And let me introduce to you—Chris Kirsch!

Chris, to me, is foremost my friend and neighbor. We enjoy walking together several mornings a week, where we discuss business, faith in God and lots of other things. Hey, we’re talented, multi-tasking women—we can both walk and talk pretty doggone fast!

Chris is also one of my clients. A couple years ago I suggested she try blogging as a means of reaching out to her target audience. The tricky thing is, her audience generally is not considered to be users of social media.

No problem!

Here’s how Chris gets around that and uses blogging to bring further success to her business.

THE PODCAST (be patient, I forgot to compress the file and it loads slow)

PS. The photo above is a closeup of one of Chris’ quilts. Okay, yes, I admit; I am envious.

PPS: I know so little about this podcasting. I’m looking for suggestions; so please, do share!

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Check Out the New Digs!

A new look for Adunate!

Well, what do you think? My blog has an all new look!

I’ve been working on this for, oooh, I’m embarrassed to admit. Let’s just say I’ve been squeezing it in between my client’s important projects and it’s taken a very long time.

Speeding the process along was John Sawyer, a WordPress guru from The Small Business Website Guy. I really liked the features of WordPress’s Twenty Eleven theme but I also wanted some customized design elements. So John did the foundation work and I tweaked, and tweaked, and tweaked and tweaked.

Anyway, here it is—Adunate’s customized WordPress theme, complete with three columns and a maximized content area. It’s coordinated to match my Adunate business site, yet comes with unique accommodations for photography, Twitter feeds, and other cool media stuff.

What about you? Does your blog need an new look? Want to start blogging to promote your business? Let me help with a theme specifically designed to fit your needs!

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What a Strawberry Patch and Website Have in Common

 

weedy strawberry patch

When I was a kid, my mom had what seemed like a huge strawberry patch. My siblings and I were supposed weed it early in the morning before the day got too hot, but because we wasted so much time taking breaks, arguing and generally working hard to get out of working, our benefits from this patch were much less than they could have been.

Somewhere along the way, I got all grown-up and wise (I actually enjoy gardening now). While my patch isn’t as large as my mom’s, and I still need to weed it, water it and every few years allow new runners to replace old plants, I now recognize my end return is related to my invested effort.

Obviously, you can’t plant a strawberry patch, be done with it and shazam!, have a freezer full of tasty, organic berries.

Websites are the same way (which is constantly nagging at me because my website is so neglected and out of date).

In the old days, you’d put up a website and your online marketing was good to go. Not so anymore. Now, not only do viewers want to regularly see fresh content, so do search engine crawlers. This is even more important since Google tightened its guidelines for successful rankings.

Here’s where a content management system (CMS) comes in. We always correlate blogging with CMS, but now you can have it with your website as well. CMS enables you to become your own webmaster. You can regularly do your own updates without knowing the technical mumbo jumbo of web coding.

And the end return?

How about higher rankings for your site. And an increased exposure to your business. And, best of all, a greater cost savings because you don’t need to rehire a web designer to update your news.

Almost as tasty as this strawberry-rhubarb pie!

strawberry rhubarb pie


Want to update your website using CMS? Contact me!

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Wednesday Webs: How Google Changes Affect SEO

Last month Google made a few changes—52, to be exact— to the way it searches for websites. These, in addition to changes it made a year ago, have web masters a bit on edge.

Just to explain, Google has well-defined guidelines for publishing quality websites. And web designers have well-utilized search engine optimization (SEO) tactics to make their sites easier to find. If SEO tactics violate the Google guidelines, well, then the you-no-what hits the wall.

That’s why Google has made some changes. Here are a few sites on the subject:

 


Want a website with Google-friendly SEO? Contact me!

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