John McKown: President of Delaware.Net, Inc.
I just launched a new real estate portal on Delaware.com. The new real estate search engine for Delaware includes all homes in both Delaware area MLS databases. This allows us to offer a local real estate search that covers ALL of the available homes in Delaware. Each morning, we syndicate over 60,000 homes into our databases. With newer XML-based MLS data being integrated, we will expand this database even further.
Three years ago, I came up with an idea to get a little more local exposure for us, and to also help out area chambers of commerce. The idea was to have a business-to-business (B2B) trade show, where businesses that sell to other businesses could mix and market. On March 5th, we held our third one. It went great!
Thanks to all of our customers, friends, and partners that attended the Third Annual Delaware Expo Trade Show. The weather was perfect yesterday and we had over 1,000 attendees at the show. The exact number was close to 1,200. Our show is now the largest business-to-business networking event in the state of Delaware, with over 120 exhibitors. We got a lot of positive feedback on the show, and some ideas that we will use to make the 2009 show even better.
I was asked whether I have Google Adwords experience by a trade group, so that I could share some tips about selling AdWords management as a service. Sure, I do have some Google adwords experience. But I also have tremendously more Search Engine Optimization (SEO) experience.
2007 was a good year for Delaware.net. We grew 24% overall, and web design project revenue grew 90%. Our staff also grew, and we accomplished most of our goals, including launching new applications. Lots more is coming in 2008, and if you want to hear about some of our plans, click the link.
Read the rest of this entry »
Adobe invited me to give and advanced web design presentation live online, and it happened today at noon EST. There were over 1200 attendees. The presentation will be available on-demand on the Adobe web site in about a week. I demonstrated how Delaware.Net is using the latest Adobe Dreamweaver and ColdFusion tools to build Web 2.0 web sites.
Blogs are continuing to explode in popularity. In a recent post, I explained why you need a blog, and how to set one up. If you aren’t familiar with blog software and what it is for, then you should read that post first. I also explained some of the pitfalls and potential misuses of your blog in another post. With this article, I want to give a bigger picture for folks that need a web site quickly, and who are considering blog software to run their ENTIRE web site. There ARE cases where blog software can work as the main web site for a business under rare circumstances, and I will go over this as well.
I market socially in local networking groups, national trade shows, local trade shows, and here on my blog. To do that much marketing, I have to expose some of my techniques and secrets behind online marketing and what works. That being said, it takes a LOT more than a couple of tricks to be successful with your online marketing. A good example is blogging.
I participate on an email mailing list where other Internet company owners discuss local and national marketing strategies. Sometimes there are great ideas, sometimes not so much. Recently there was a post from someone in the industry about how a good local marketing strategy should contain marketing to not-for-profits and other good-natured word of mouth efforts locally that can help your reputation.
I used to believe that, but what I found is that they really don’t work all that well.
Blogs. Certainly you have heard of a blog, but many people still don’t know what they are and why they are useful. In this article, I am going to explain what a blog is, why you need one, and how they can make you and your company a lot more money. Almost for free.
I’m giving a free search engine seminar on March 7th at Dover Downs at the Delaware Expo Business-to-Business trade show in Dover, Delaware. And I’m giving away lots and lots of solid search engine marketing tips, with handouts. What’s the catch? There are only 40 seats, and it’s first-come, first-served. The show is from noon to 6pm, and you can only register for the seminar at the show.
Here is what you will learn:
Digg it