Imagine Web Designs launched the new website for Hillbilly Tubs of Sterling Mass today. From their site – “Hilly Billy Tubs LLC is the newest dumpster rental service in the Central Massachusetts. We have a signed contract with Devens Recycling Center a 90,000 sq. ft. Construction and Demolition Recycling facility located on 11 acres in Devens, MA. to bring all of your waste where it will be separated in their state of the art indoor recycling facility.”
Visit the Hillbilly Tubs website!
Posted by Paul Wackell
Imagine Web Design
Principal Designer, Social Media and Marketing Consultant
NASCAR DUDE
Lets set the scene, (because you couldn’t make this stuff up even if you tried). Monday evening, the Daytona 500, live from Daytona Florida. The Super Bowl of NASCAR – that’s right I used a football metaphor for stock car racing – deal with it! By the way I’m a NASCAR fanatic and have been since I was six years old. This may seem weird for a guy from Massachusetts but I embraced my Inner Redneck very early on in my life. I consider myself to a duel citizen of Massachusetts and Alabama! Go Skynyrd. But I digress (what a surprise).
For the NASCAR fans no explanation of the details is required but again since this is Massachusetts, I’ll explain the details. It was lap 160 of 200. The race was under a caution flag (also known as a yellow flag, it is used when there’s a crash, or there’s debris on the track or some other circumstance arises that makes it unsafe to proceed with the race at top speed. A yellow flag is waived and the race slows to a predetermined speed, usually 60 miles per hour our under, controlled by a pace car, until the track is cleaned up.)
The race was about to resume again, the pack (all the cars lined up for restart) was circling the track on the last lap before the green flag was to be waved to restart the race. Juan Pablo Montoya driving the Number 42 Target, Chip Ganassi, Ford, was coming out of pit row, speeding up to catch the field when something in the back end of his car broke, sending his car into and uncontrollable slide striking a jet dryer causing a massive explosion and fire.
Jet Dryer just after impact!
A jet dryer is a large truck with a surplus army helicopter jet turbine engine mounted on the back, along with 200 gallons of jet fuel. Hence the explosion! They are used to dry off the track after rain or to blow debris off the track during a caution flag.
Juan Pablo’s car just after impact!
I promise I’m getting to the point! Immediately after the explosion, jet fuel leaked out onto the track creating a wall of fire and the race was red flagged (red flag waves, the race is halted, the cars stop on the track until it is safe to start again). Both Juan Pablo and the driver of the jet dryer were uninjured in case you were wondering!
The explosion occurred in a location where there was little camera coverage and since the race was about to start, most of the TV cameras were focused on the rest of the field, so at first they didn’t have a great view of the fire. Here’s where we get back on track.
Cars stopped under red flag.
While the field was stopped, Brad Keselowski, driver of the number 2 Miller Lite, Roger Penske, Dodge, who happened to have his smart phone in the pocket of his racing suit, took out his phone and snapped several pictures of the fire and then tweeted them! NASCAR has embraced social media with enthusiasm, but this was the first tweet ever from a driver during a race. The tweet was immediately picked up by the announcers in the TV booth and the images shown on the air, and attributed to Brad. It became quite a point of conversation.
First image taken by Brad, from inside his car and Tweeted.
Within minutes Brads Twitter following went from 60,000 to over 200,000 followers! How often have you struggled to add a few followers!
So NASCAR dude, what’s the moral of the story? – Social media and smart phones have become pervasive in all aspects of our lives. Social media has become an important, instant outlet for breaking news – and last but not least, you never know when something you tweet, will get you more followers, so keep tweeting – its free!
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Paul Wackell
Principal Web Designer, SEO Strategist, Social Media Consultant
After years of prodding from your marketing rep – that writing a blog would help your business – after the continual poking by your web expert that it will help with search engine optimization for your website (if set up correctly) and after all the blogs you read that say you should blog, you were finally dragged kicking and screaming to the place where you started (against your will) your own small business blog!
You’ve written a few entries? Now what? Do you just sit around and hope someone will read them? Do you give up and stop writing them? Do you bury your head in the sand and hope for things to go back to the good old days where business just came your way because you were a nice guy or gal? Duh! Of course not!
Since you were brought kicking and screaming to blogging in the first place – keep kicking and screaming – but not about writing your blog and how much of a pain in the butt you think it is, but rather about your blog to the world.
Like your website and your business your blog needs promoting. Don’t just sit there whining! Its time to cowboy up, stand up and promote that darn blog of yours. Here are but a few easy and free ways (not freeways!).
There are lots of ways to promote your blog. Its just a matter of overcoming inertia so again, Cowboy Up, stand up and start kicking and screaming about your blog!
Post by
Paul Wackell
Principal Web Designer, SEO Strategist, Social Media Consultant
In last nights Republican Presidential debate from New Hampshire, Michelle Bachmann did something that we can all take and apply to our businesses. She promoted her website!
As we all know regardless of our politics, debates are about sound bites. Questions that often take several minutes to ask are supposed to be answered in one minute. Are we to believe that issues so complex that we give blue ribbon panels, and super committees months to debate, can be solved by candidates in a sound bite! This is beyond idiocy!
So what did Michelle Bachmann do – (not an endorsement by the way) on several questions she at least had the sense to mention that for the details visit her website and she gave her website address a few times.
Outside of politics, what can a business owner draw from this? Explaining what services our businesses offer, particularly the details and nuances require more time than we often have. At gathering such as networking groups, events, and tradeshows and online, particularly with Twitter, we are stuck with the sound bite (or as some call it, an elevator speech). What are we to do? Know your sound bite cold, deliver it with enthusiasm and professionalism, but end it by explaining that for more details visit your website and give them the web address twice!
Use the sound bite to your advantage – Promote, promote, and promote your website!
Post by
Paul Wackell
Principal Designer, SEO Strategist, Social Media Consultant
In the classic 1980 comedy movie Caddyshack – Rodney Dangerfield’s character Al Czervik exclaimed -”I tell ya, golf courses and cemeteries are the biggest wastes of prime real estate”.
While I don’t agree with him about golf courses being the golf fanatic that I am, I do agree with him about the other. So what does this have to do with anything anyway.
How you utilize your web real estate – that is the different parts of your website - particularly as they apply to search engine optimization is crucial to your site being ranked on the first page or 10th of Google Searches. Getting your website found on search engines is hugely important to business success. After all someone can’t hire you if they don’t know they exist.
So how do you use your web real estate? The absolute prime real estate on your website for SEO is the title tag. That’s the text that appears in the top blue bar of your browser. While often over looked by most web users – it is the most important – and first place – Google goes to index information as part of the ranking process.
You need to create title tags that are short and contain crucial keywords! Good title tags on all your web pages can definitely improve your search engine rankings.
So to quote me (as I often do) “I tell ya welcome messages and page names are the greatest wastes of prime web real estate!”.
Check your title tags – if they aren’t keyword rich – give some though to updating them and getting the ranking respect you deserve!
If you need help – give us a hoot!
Post by Paul Wackell
Principal Website Designer – Marketing Consultant
Imagine Web Designs
Let’s face it – the economy sucks and it appears it will get worse before it gets better. Small businesses of all kinds are suffering. Budgets are tight, marketing money is scarce. So given the limited resources should you look at redesigning your website?
There is no right or wrong answer to this question but below are a few things that you may want to consider when making this decision.
Posted by
Paul Wackell – Principal Web Designer – Marketing and Social Media Consultant
Imagine Web Designs
By now the whole world knows the creepy details of Weinergate, unless of course you live in a cave near Kandahar.
Without rehashing the details of this or many other instances of bad behavior on social media by politicians, this is again a teachable moment. Social Media is permanent, prolific and spreads like the plaque!
While these features can be a great thing for things like promoting your business, creating buzz, starting a peoples uprising in Iran, or sharing your favorite cute kittens video, it can also be a deadly trap. Step into it stupidly, impulsively, without thinking, it will clamp down on you like bear trap, and by the time you realize you can’t free yourself from the trap, not only will you regret your decision, the ongoing degradation, and your plain old poor judgment, you’ll be begging someone to make it all go away, or kill you!
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Paul Wackell – Principal Web Designer – Web Marketing Consultant
Imagine Web Designs
Love him or hate him, there really seems to be no in between, Glenn Beck is a master of publicity, media, and politics. Arguably one of the most beloved and despised men in media and politics, began a new venture today by launching GBTV.com a new online tv news and entertainment network.
His media empire, which includes a Talk Radio Program, TV show on Fox (soon to end) websites Glenn Beck, The Blaze, The 9-12 Project, Fusion Magazine, and the list goes now includes what is essentially and online TV network.
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Paul Wackell – Web Designer – Social Media Consultant – Marketing Consultant
Imagine Web Designs
It’s that time again, the time you dread each month, or day, or week depending on the schedule you set up and promised you’d keep. Time to write another blog entry!
Now I know as pupils of mine (okay I can dream) you realize the influence blogging can have on your business. The roll it plays in marketing and in social media. It doesn’t have to be just another one of those things that stress you out so much that they keep you up at night. But you made a promise to your self and you intend to keep it.
Posted by
Paul Wackell – Web Designer – Social Media Consultant – Marketing Consultant
Imagine Web Designs
The following business owner is fictional. He is a composite of many business owners I’ve come across in my travels (including me). The names have been changed to protect the innocent (Dragnet reference for the kids in the crowd and not the Dan Ackroyd version.) And he is speaking in the first person! Its as though there are voices in my head!!
Business owner mental rant (not Dennis Miller) - I don’t have time to go out with friends anymore, or go to the game, or read a book, or figure out who this Justin Bieber kid is, or have a life! I own a business!! That’s my life, that’s it! Particularly in the this crappy economy, (pardon my political incorrectness – did I say crappy economy, I meant to say the Summer of Recovery, Mr. Biden). I spend all my time chasing new business and holding on to those clients I have!
