Firebrand Blog

Why Facebook Really Matters?!

Wed, 27 Jul 2011 21:48:00 GMT

Facebook is really important for your business and your website visibility! Learn why we believe that Facebook is so important for your business!

With all of the new Facebook customization features including iFrame, Rss Feeds, and more! Here are a few of our favorite apps to make Facebook easier to manager and more customized for your business:

Shortstack.com
RSS Graffiti

Examiner Article - Elizabeth Rider

Wed, 03 Aug 2011 14:25:00 GMT

Elizabeth Rider, founder of WholeLivingBlog.com and vice president at Live Well International, is a nutrition expert, healthy living guru and a brilliant wellness strategist. Elizabeth has combined her passion for healthy living and her vast wellness knowledge to create a website that is receiving a lot of buzz lately.

Wholelivingblog.com is the one-stop place to find recipes and nutrition advice for living a low G.I. lifetyle (Low Glycemic Index). Elizabeth has expertly crafted her website to offer you loads of free advice, recipes and tips on how to manage your health through diet.

Every week Elizabeth answers reader questions relating to diet and she offers a wide range of delicious recipes that are created with seasonal freshness and quick prep times in mind. When visiting Wholelivingblog.com, you are immediately struck by how easy it is to navigate and that there is so much free information that is useful. In addition to the blog, Elizabeth teaches a “Hot Body Nutrition Challenge” where she will teach you how to reset your body’s metabolism and shed pounds.

One participant in the Hot Body Nutrition Challenge stated recently, “This program changed my way of thinking about food, I lost a total of 10 pounds.” Another participant shared “I lost my belly fat, my skin cleared up and my sleeping habits improved.”

Whether you are interested in the Hot Body Nutrition Challenge or just a great local website where you can find tons of free and valuable nutrition tips, check out Wholelivingblog.com and support local business woman, Elizabeth Rider in her efforts to educate all of us about healthy eating habits.

Tips for working with a web designer, this one is a juicy topic!

Wed, 03 Aug 2011 14:57:00 GMT

I hear it all the time and we wanted to answer the "age-old" question here on the Firebrand video blog! I know it can be daunting to choose a web designer, today I offer you some tips on how to make it work for everyone!

Taking time to plan for your website project will expedite the development process and help you vet candidates and make the right choice.

BONUS: I am giving you Firebrand's FREE website planner, it will be available always on our website and can be a great first step to planning a new website!

Click below to view the video:

As always, please leave comments on the blog. Let me know what your experience has been working with a web designer, what projects you have coming up, or how Firebrand could help you in the future. I love to hear from my readers and it always helps me to get feedback!

Review: ShortStack.com

Tue, 02 Aug 2011 16:39:00 GMT

Review: ShortStack.com

We know that you want to do it all and need to look great doing it.

No, I am not talking about fashion, I am talking about Facebook! Now that you have answered the question “Do you really need to be on Facebook + Twitter,” you are ready to move forward and make it rock!

Recently, I went searching for an easy to use Facebook custom page tool and I stumbled across ShortStack.com. Of course, when I first found it I thought that it was too good to be true. So many “apps” claim to be easy but just end up giving you a headache.

I wanted to find something that I could easily execute for my clients or recommend in order for them to effortlessly create a beautiful custom landing page in Facebook.

I created a free account, yeah I LOVE free! You don’t need to pay for the service until you read over 2000 fans. Perfect! This is really starting to seem like the right app for me.

Once logged in, there are several pre-built templates to choose from or you can go with a “framed” template that is laid out but not designed. Now, if you have done any basic website or Facebook set up, you can use this tool!

Shortstack.com has a drag and drop interface, love it! It also makes uploading photos a breeze, you can link your other social networks to feed onto the custom page and the best part? You can even decide if you want content to show up for people who are not fans, and then different content to show up if they ARE fans.

This really did seem too good to be true, I took it for a test drive and voila in less than and hour I had a really professional looking and functional custom landing page.

Features included in Shortstack.com

• Promotions
• Polls
• Countdowns
• Linking
• Sharing
• You can also add PRODUCTS, yes products!

I am just over the moon about the ease of use & set-up of this app as well as all of the functionality.

I highly recommend before you spend one penny on a developer or a designer for a custom Facebook page that you check out Shortstack.com, it has rocked my world.

Managing Your Web Developer

Wed, 27 Jul 2011 21:58:00 GMT

Are you frustrated with your Web Developer? Watch the video post below to learn about some best practices in working with a Web Development agency and what to consider before hiring someone to work on your website.

It is important to understand the in's and out's of how design and development folks work and how they prioritize projects. This post will help you find someone great who can work well for you and also design what you need.

As always, please leave your comments below, we would love to hear all about your challenges with working with a web designer or developer!

Web Wednesday's - Boosting your (gorgeous) website's search engine rankings

Wed, 20 Jul 2011 20:07:00 GMT

Do you have a GORGEOUS website?

Do you like to feature a lot of photos (or videos) on your site?

You love your site but it's not coming up in search engines?

This blog post is for you!!!

Please leave your comments, don't forget to enter our Fire Brandstorm Contest and check out our upcoming DIY SEO workshop so you can learn ALL the tips on how to get your business to show up on those Search Engines!

Web wednesdays - The importance of blogging!

Thu, 14 Jul 2011 03:34:00 GMT

Learn the in's and out's of why blogging in so important! We know, we hear it all the time "I don't know why I have to blog" or "I hate to write and now I feel really locked in to something."

Learn some strategies that will help you get blogging and how it can help your business.

Firebrand develops all of it's websites on Adobe Business Catalyst. Check it out, it is the most amazing Content Management System that is all inclusive!

We will be launching some extremely well designed, super professional and beautiful pre-packaged websites in the next few weeks. You will be able to buy a website that it built in Business Catalyst for less than $1000! Stay tuned!

Please leave your comments below and share on Facebook and Twitter if you like the blog post!

Web Wednesdays - Top 3 DIY SEO Tips!!

Thu, 14 Jul 2011 03:21:00 GMT

This Web Wednesdays post is all about Do-it-yourself (i.e. FREE) SEO (a.k.a. Search Engine Optimization).

I often get asked about the top 3 quick and easy things businesses can do to increase their SEO rankings, watch the video below to find out these quick tips.

Also, don't forget, we are teaching a B.Y.O.L. Social Media Crash Course this month. Registration is going to fill up very quickly, we have had a lot of interest in the program. We will be opening registration next Monday, to read more, click here!

This is the first of many Web Wednesdays, stay tuned for more and don't forget to comment and write in your answers by emailing me Stephanie@FirebrandPremiere.com or filling out the contact form!

Top 10 ways to get visitors to your website

Tue, 05 Jul 2011 20:56:00 GMT

Hey there, Everyone! So I often get asked "are there things that I can do to improve my SEO (Search Engine Optimization) without having to spend a fortune on an SEO expert." To answer this, I wanted to start a series on tips that you can implement yourself to improve your SEO rankings.
In the coming months, DIY SEO will become a commonly blogged about topic and I hope that it will help you at least start to target your keywords more effectively and get more people to your site. That being said, once you have tapped your own resources, finding a local SEO expert that can help you out within your budget is a great idea. We will be interviewing some experts in the coming months, so feel free to write in and ask us questions about SEO (or anything else marketing related) and we will slate it for our blog!

If you are ready to take your SEO to the next level, click here to pre-register for our upcoming DIY SEO workshop that will be held in August. In this workshop we will teach you hands on how to implement many of these tips and so much more and you will get one-on-one time with me, plus a 30 minute private coaching session after the workshop to ensure you understand all the work you did and how to stay on top of it!

Ok on to the tips, the top 10 ways to get visitors to your website:

Use SEO (Search Engine Optimization) strategies to optimize your site. You can click here to reserve a free DIY SEO guide which wil be published on our website later this month

1) Get links to your site through blog commenting, social media involvement and directory listing.

2) Get noticed, in the press. Run a streamlined and efficient but effective PR program and position yourself (or your company) as experts.

3) Keep an eye on lists like the HARO and get to know influential people in the local media. When they interview you, make sure the interview has a link to your website.

4) Become an expert writer in your field. You can write for forums like Examiner, ehow, or make videos for Lynda.com and get noticed by the public through sharing your expertise.

5) Make sure that your links are on respectable and large websites. Having a link to your website from a website like you local chamber of commerce, business bureau, non-profit organization, or heavily visited blog will help the search engines "see" that your site has staying power.

6) Share the love with your neighbors, friends, family and business associates. We keep a running list of people and places we love and link (for free) the those business websites. Ask your network to link to you as well, often times those businesses will do it for free and are happy to recommend your services, if they aren’t ask them why and work to get your quality to the point where people are happy to scream your name from the rooftops in a resounding recommendation. See our "We Love" page as an example!

7) Get active in social media and share your thoughts, comments and ideas. Re-tweet other peoples ideas and the community will respect and listen to you more, often times sharing your content and helping you get more clicks.

8) Join some professional organizations, usually a membership will come with link sharing and positions you as an upstanding member within your community

9) Enter yourself (or have a colleague nominate you for an award). Often times awards are given out to those who enter and you can end up having something cool to brag about. I used to this “oh man if I could JUST get on the top 100 xyz list” and then I realized that many of those lists (especially local ones) are easier to get on than you realize and many times they will put on the list whoever applies for it.

10) Be authentic, there are a LOT of ways to do this. It is important to be doing these things because you want to and be yourself with anything that you do. People will see right through it if you are only doing it to increase web traffic, you definitely want to become an active, happy and engaged member of these communities and raise your brand up to the highest level in anything that you do. Otherwise, you run the risk of being seen as a phony and that is the last thing you want!

We hope that these tips are helpful to you, stay tuned for more information, video tutorials and interviews to help you get out there and ignite your brand!

Cheers,

Stephanie

What are you trying to accomplish with your website?

Thu, 16 Jun 2011 16:58:00 GMT

I am going to be bold here, I am going to tell you in the first (well, OK, the second) sentence what you are trying to accomplish with your website. The answer is: make money!

Now, regardless of whether you sell something on your site or in your shop, you are trying to get people to spend money. Even if you are a non-profit, your ultimate goal is to make money (or increase memberships, donations, etc..) in order to further your cause.

Let’s talk about ways that you can make money on your website. We are going to call this new-fangled “making money ”concept “Conversion.” Conversion is the act of taking a starting point, for this example we will say visitors and having them follow through to completion of a desired action. That desired action is to complete a purchase.

So I hear a lot of times that “you can’t track R.O.I. (Return on investment) for social media. I am here to tell you that is wrong. I am going to walk through the basics of calculating R.O.I. and then post some more blog posts on other topics relating to R.O.I. and conversion.

The most basic calculation for R.O.I. is:

# of visitors that complete the desired goal vs. # of total visitors.

Let’s say you post a Facebook post and the link directs visitors to a landing page you have set up on your website. That landing page has been designed to get the visitor to take an action, let’s say the action is to sign up for a new seminar you are teaching.

Example:

1000 people click on the link and visit your site

100 people register and pay to attend your seminar

You have a 10% conversion rate

You know that 10% of the people that clicked on that link on Facebook paid you money and registered for your service. As a business owner, or Marketer, your job is to make more sales. If you know that you can get on average a 10% conversion rate and you need to increase sales, what is the next logical step? The answer is to increase leads or visitors. From there we are going to get technical and talk about tracking tokens and landing pages, but don't worry, as always we will break it down and make it simple for you to do and we will include a video tutorial so you can dial it in, set it up, and rock and roll!!

How can you do that? Check out our next blog post which we will post next week called “Calls to action, how to get more people to click on your links”

Until then, please leave comments, we can only get better with your feedback!

Thanks and much love,

Stephanie

Facebook for Business

Tue, 15 Mar 2011 04:59:00 GMT

We are proud that our Chief Creative, Stephanie Lindquist, is presenting a Facebook for Business seminar at the Colorado Women's Chamber of Commerce today from 9-10:30am.

View the slide show below and we will post a link to the presentation later today!

Facebook For Business on Prezi

New feature on Facebook pages

Tue, 15 Feb 2011 18:19:00 GMT

A recent blog post from our colleague J ohn Bosley is a great follow up to last weeks post here.

Thanks, John.

As a business owner with a Facebook page, it has been frustrating to not know when a fan comments on your page. Facebook just released a new business page layout that gives you the option to receive email notifications when a fan posts something on your page. This is nice, but it's not exactly what we've been looking for.

Another new option for Facebook Page users is the ability to use Facebook as your Page. This means that instead of leaving a comment as "John Bosley", I can comment as "John Bosley Photography". I decided to try this out and, to my surprise, discovered something pretty awesome. When you use Facebook as your page, you get notifications when someone posts on your Page! As you can see in the screenshot above, the first time you use this feature might be a little surprising, as you have a Friend Request for every fan of your page.

Read the rest of the article here and see an great example of how John uses it.

Also, if you need a FABULOUS photographer to take pictures of your place of business or a fantastic headshot, John is your man. Check out his website for John's portfolio.

John Bosley Photography
Phone: 720-938-4689
Email: john@johnbosleyphotography.com
Studio (by appointment only): 10650 Irma Dr, Suite 33 Northglenn, CO 80233

The power of Facebook events

Wed, 09 Feb 2011 02:03:00 GMT

Facebook is a powerful feature, in fact it is so powerful that it can seem overwhelming to most of it's users. There are even days that I can't find exactly what I am looking for and I am a Facebook pro. As frustrating as Facebook might be, we have all come to accept that it is an invaluable tool for connecting with friends.

What we also need to realize is the power it has to connect us to our clients, customers, and potential clients. Many of us know that we can create a Facebook page for our business to connect with people who are interested in what we have to offer and learn more about us. Did you also know that you can upload deals, coupons, run promotions, share photos and promote events?

I am going to focus this blog post on the later, Events! Events are a great way to spread the word (for free) that you are hosting an event at your place of business. You can use the events feature for anything, but here are a few ideas:

* Grand opening
* Anniversary sale
* Ladies night out
* Fundraiser
* Product launch party

The only quirky thing about Facebook events is that it's really challenging to invite all of your personal friends. My Facebook page doesn't come close to what I am talking about. I am talking about people that have hundreds or thousands of friends. In this tutorial we are going to walk you through setting up a Facebook event and then we are going to let you in on a little secret.

The secret? YES, there is a way to "select all" friends when sending an invitation and we are going to show you how!

Steps to "invite all"

1. Go to Event
2. Click Invite
3. When the popup loads you should see a list of all your friends (not fans, friends**)
4. Once the page is done loading put your mouse in the web browsers address bar (not the little on in the popup window but the address bar of the bigger Facebook page behind it)
5. Click Enter and WAIT

***you must wait for the select friends window to close on it's own,

if you have a lot of friends (hundreds or over one thousad) it could take 15 minutes or more***
6. Once the window closes, you can finished setting up your event

Code:

javascript:elms=document.getElementById('friends').getElementsByTagName('li');for(var
fid in elms){if(typeof elms[fid] === 'object'){fs.click(elms[fid]);}}

**Disclaimer** you cannot send invitations to your fans on a page but you can post it on your news feed and ask your best fans to resend it to their friends using this tutorial as guidance.

Get your business listing in Google Places - here's how!

Thu, 27 Jan 2011 01:42:00 GMT

Join Firebrand Consultation's Chief Creative Director, Stephanie Lindquist, as she walks through a tutorial on how to set up your Google Places account and get your business listed on Google. This video tutorial is a great place to start when trying to establish a local presence both for your local marketing, community awareness for your business and for Google.

Firebrand Consulting featured in the CRAVE - Denver Book!

Thu, 13 Jan 2011 03:50:00 GMT

We are proud to share the Firebrand Consulting featured pages of the CRAVE Denver book featuring our founder, Stephanie Elizabeth Lindquist.

Firebrand Consulting has been chosen as the only website design and full-service marketing firm to be featured in this book. the CRAVE guide is a book published every two years highlighting Denver's best and brightest female entrepreneurs.

Congratulations to the winner!

Thu, 13 Jan 2011 03:38:00 GMT

Congratulations to Worthwhile Style founder Tina Gill on being the winner of our December promotion! You have won a Kodak Zi8 video camera and we know you will put it to good use.

Tina Gill is the president and founder of worthwhile style, an image consultancy based in Denver Colorado, and currently provides personal styling, professional image consulting, and fashion styling services for the Denver metro area.

Armed with her degree in Psychology, her extensive background in customer service, and her love for shopping, Tina shines at helping individuals to look and feel their best. With her contagious laugh and outgoing personality, Tina’s specialty is empowering individuals to be comfortable with who they are right now in their lives.

For the past twenty years, Tina has worked in the field of customer service and retail sales as a sales associate, manager, and buyer. Through her years of experience, she has honed in on her skills as a personal shopper, developed and defined her fashion sense, and has heightened her ability to help individuals to be their finest selves. She has long embraced creating a safe and encouraging environment for everyone to feel comfortable with who they are and to see the true beauty that they possess.

Congratulations, Tina and enjoy your camera!

you can learn more about Tina Gill & Worthwhile style by following these links:

Worthwhile Style

Tina Gill

Facebook

End of year promotion!

Mon, 13 Dec 2010 23:33:00 GMT

To celebrate the end of the year and because we are just so darn excited for 2011, we have decided to run an end of the year promo! Between now and December 31,2010 if you "like" our page of Facebook you will be automatically entered to win a new Kodak Zi8 video camera.

Here at Firebrand, we are always talking to clients about the importance if video testimonials. It isn't just important for their websites but can really help with Google local listings and can bolster SEO if added to a well tagged YouTube.com channel.

To help make it easier to record video testimonials on the run, we are giving away a new video camera. With one touch of a button you can record your happy customers and share it with the world!