Eco-Friendly Digital Marketing Internship

If you are looking to add some curb appeal with a new driveway in Ann Arbor or upgrade your homes driveways and patios in Oakland County then Matrino Home Improvements is the company for you. For over 30 years the company has been servicing the entire Southeastern Michigan area.  No job is too big or small, Matrino Home Improvements will repair or replace roofing, windows, concrete, siding, gutters, driveways, patios, or insulation. They are committed to 100% customer satisfaction from the start, to the finish, to the future, and nothing less.

Martino Home Improvements is competitively priced, does meet deadlines ahead of schedule, thoroughly inspects each individualized job multiple times, keeps the construction site free of debris so it does not interfere with your living space, pays attention to every small detail, and offers an unmatched no-questions asked service policy until the customer is completely satisfied.

For a home improvement company this translates to one thing, innovation. Martino Home Improvements changed their product category through innovation. They are not just another home improvement company that does the job quickly. Martino Home Improvements offers an enhanced service that no competitor can match. Throughout the duration of the construction process the company will stand by and personally answer all of the questions a customer may have. Give them a call today!

When I read Joe Jaffe’s blog about possible front runners of the digital marketing age, combining social and digital media to get the job done, I immediately thought of Ingenex Digital Marketing.

After interning at Ingenex for a few weeks now, I can already tell that this company consists of digital marketing pioneers. The planning and strategy that is necessary for each project this company takes on is carefully thought out by more than one person. Having more than one person offer insight to each project gives the team members at Ingenex the opportunity to provide different ideas and angles.

The agency’s strategy for digital marketing includes social media methods that most companies strive for. Ingenex has the ability to not only create a marketing plan, but to also monitor that company’s social media sites and provide the feedback that is necessary for the survival of company’s brand online. Ingenex has mastered the social media sites Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Vimeo, Flickr, and Linkedin so team members are able to brand a company appropriately. Ingenex gets to know the company it is working with, and learns what is effective for that brand. Being such a small company, it can give its customers the one-on-one time that is appreciated; the big-shot digital marketing companies cannot offer the flexibility and quick-thinking that Ingenex can when a problem presents itself. Two members of the Ingenex team are Google-certifed, assuring customers that they are receiving the most up-to-date techniques in the digital marketing world. This company is quickly growing, offering Internet marketing services such as web site design, digital public relations, search engine optimization (SEO), pay-per-click advertising (PPC) and Google analytics. Ingenex also offers iPhone and mobile applications providing your company with the opportunity to increase its brand exposure to consumers. These apps increase exposure as well as give consumers the ability to interact directly with a company’s brand via mobile phones.

While Ingenex is a growing digital marketing agency, it continues to show the same customer appreciation and dedication through the years.

The North American International Auto Show (NAIAS) is known for one thing: Cars. It is a once a year event loaded with all of the next generation of vehicles as well as dozens of futuristic concept cars, all waxed to a near reflective shine. Well this year the show offered a glimpse at another new and exciting technology: LED Lighting. Now, LED’s are not new by any means, but they aren’t old either, and they are just hitting their curve. With the impending incandescent blubs ban, LED lighting will become the new norm in illumination. The future of LEDs was on full display at NAIAS where several of the worlds largest auto-makers built massive LED walls, screens and even a color-changing LED walkway or two.

In addition to the large LED displays there was also a focus on many of the smaller applications of LED technology. There was, what seemed to be, a competition on which of the new green cars used more of the new lighting. Every car that claimed to be “environmentally friendly” listed it’s various lighting systems that utilized LEDs. Also, Lexus was unveiling their new vehicle, the eco-friendly, wallet-friendly CT 200h, and one of the main points they pushed in their presentation was that they boasted, a record holding, 89 LEDs in this new vehicle.

Overall, the spectacle was quite impressive and really featured all of the advantages to LED lighting: crisp images, clean white light, limitless applications, and of course, minimal electricity usage. It was definitely a sign of whats to come.

Lexus LED Walkway

Prius LED Wall

As I predicted earlier, QR codes would soon be everywhere, and at the North American International Auto Show they were. The new, high-tech bar codes were being used by several of the worlds largest automakers at the yearly auto show in Detroit. The codes, which can hold a link to a web page, a picture, or preset text, allows customers access to this information on their smart phones. For the most part, companies at the Detroit Auto Show were using these codes, posted on their cars, to provide more information about the car that you were looking at. Some companies took it a step further. One company used them to direct you to a page that contained information about their products and a $250 “Auto Show” discount on their vehicles. Yet another company used them to sign you up to receive information and enter you in a sweepstakes to win a car.

I was impressed with these large companies utilization of a relatively new phenomena. Plus, not only did they use them, they used them perfectly. They used them to improve user experiences at their displays as well as cut back on a lot of the paper associated with information packets. In addition, I would assume they set up some sort of system to track their total scans on these codes, providing usable data from their presence at the event.

Overall it made the whole experience, which is fun to begin with, far more interesting and interactive. That is why I love these things; they could turn a boring trip to the mall, or grocery store into an interesting, fun, insightful experience. Expect to see a lot more of these in the future.

Facebook has teamed up with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children and is now allowing AMBER alert notifications to reach its Facebook audience when a child is abducted. Fifty-three AMBER alert pages will be set up on Facebook; one for each of the fifty states including the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands. It’s refreshing to hear that Facebook is starting to be used for something productive.

The appropriate police departments will be updating its designated page with any information of leads that they have acquired regarding the specific AMBER alert. If a child has gone missing in the state that you reside, you will be updated on the case, once the police department receives information and posts it on the Facebook page. These Facebook pages will contain pictures, a description of the child and any other information that could be helpful in the child’s recovery. The Facebook pages are organized by the state they concern, if there are possible leads that a child could be in another state, the Facebook page of that particular state will also be informed.

Facebook has been careful not to irritate its users; users will receive these AMBER alert notifications only when they have actively “Liked” the page. The official AMBER alert website states that 525 missing children have been recovered via Facebook. This opens up a new door for AMBER alert, giving hope to all the missing children in the world today.

According to the AMBER alert website, the first 3 hours after a child is abducted is the most critical and using social media pages for the AMBER alert system is a great way to inform people at a rapid rate. So many Facebook users are constantly checking their page and if they are receiving notifications about an abducted child, they can post the updates on their page, informing their friends. AMBER alert partnering with Facebook will contribute big to missing children.

SEO is a very powerful thing anyone can do to get their blog or website placed on the first page of relevant search results on Google. The right kind of SEO is a timely process and does not happen over night but once you get it right your blog or website will stand out amongst hundreds of links just like the red apple in the picture.

Here are some of the basics for bloggers and web developers: Stand out, be bold with important key words, use the bold tags for keywords once or twice a within the body of your text. This will allow users to navigate your site easier too! External Linking, I cannot stress how important this one is. Make sure most of the pages on your website or blog are externally linked from other websites. Almost every page on your website or blog should have a link coming into it from a different website. The variety of links will add significant weight to your content to all search engines. Create a Sitemap, this is a separate HTML document that acts as a directory for your website. What this does is it makes it easier for any spiderbot from Google to      crawl your website and index it faster. Avoid Flash at all costs, Flash developed websites look great but you cannot link     to  a single page so search engines cannot rank your page as easy as a linked based website. Image Alt Descriptions images on a website are cool but they must have keyword rich Alt Tags for effective optimization. Content, Content, Content! Add more daily, if you don’t your website will quickly fall in the page ranks and your subscribers or readers will stop visiting. A quick fix for bloggers and developers that don’t have time to add content daily is RSS Feeds, Really Simple Syndication can frequently freshen your website, page, or blog with no effort. This is a must for everyone. Social Media Integration, this is a simple often overlooked concept. Integrate your social media with your website it drives traffic from each of your websites to the others and adds SEO weight.

These are just some quick tips to get started and organized with your SEO effort. Before you even start any project though it is important to define your target market so your can centralize your SEO efforts around that market which will insure the accuracy of your keywords, descriptions, links, and content.

Are you one of those people that can’t live without getting their favorite drink every morning from Starbucks?

Do you also dislike waiting in line as people fumble with their money, or talk rudely on their cellphones and hold everyone up? Well a new technology might have an answer to both of those problems. Starbucks announced yesterday that soon you will be able to pay for your favorite coffee drinks using your mobile phones. Yup, your heard me right. No more cash or change or anything like that. Soon you will be able to pay for your drink with a quick scan of your phone at all nationwide Starbucks locations.

Starbucks released their Starbucks Card Mobile app a while back and, until now, it hasn’t been good for much other than checking balances on your gift cards. Well now they’ve made it so you can use the app as legal tender at their stores.

Here’s how it works. You get a gift card for Christmas, or you buy a refillable card yourself, and you input it into the card onto your smart phone. From there, any time you want to pay you just push a button and it generates a QR code which you can scan using their readers, and voila, you’re on your way. In addition, you can add to your card anytime using PayPal or a credit card. It’s truly genius.
My hope is that, similar to how everything social I do can be done on my phone, I hope that one day I will no longer need to carry a wallet, and never have to worry about money again. Wouldn’t that be nice? Every great adventure must first start with one small step, and this is that step.

The day after Steve Jobs announced that he was taking a medical leave, Apple’s stock fell 2.25%. This is the second time in 2 years that he has taken a medical leave, and Apple’s stock has dropped significantly both times. So, what does this mean for Apple? The consequences might not be bad short-term, but this could effect the company in a few years from.

As the anticipated release of the iPad 2 and the new iPhone in a few months, the plans for those new devices are likely developed and ready to go. What about the innovation of new products? It appears that the public has little faith in Apple without the man behind the brand, Steve Jobs.

When new products are announced, many wonder who will present them if Jobs is not in the picture. People are infatuated by his notorious presentations; he is known to hypnotize his audience. Losing the product presentation  aspect of Apple could leave some people uninterested.

Apple is such a large company that it seems hard to believe that losing one person, even if it’s the face of Apple, could impact sales so drastically. Many tech guru’s are certain that the creation of new Apple products will succeed on their own, but it appears that the public likes the security of seeing Steve Jobs take part in all aspects of Apple products.

It’s hard to predict how the absence of Steve Jobs will directly impact the company in the long-run, but it appears that consumers of the brand have consistently little faith in Apple without him.

Have you ever been out and about and noticed those little scrambled black and white boxes? Well those are called QR codes and they are the future of… well I don’t know, but the possibilities are endless. QR codes, or quick response codes are essentially bar codes that are able to store much more information. They can store URLs, geographic coordinates or text, and can be read by any smart phone, or tablet, with a QR reader. When you scan one of these codes your mobile device will display the hidden content right there in your hand.

I’m going to let that sink in because it is pretty awesome. These little scrambled boxes are paper links that, when opened, take you to whatever information their creator wants you to see. From an advertising standpoint the possibilities excite me to no end: coupon codes on products, coded sponsorships, codes that direct to your site, even guerrilla codes, posted anywhere, that take people to your content. The possibilities are endless.

In addition, as a consumer, I’m equally excited for this. It’s like a scavenger hunt. I’m hoping for hidden codes that provide discounts to a particular establishment, or less excitingly, codes that provide more product information on something I see in a magazine, or in an ad. This can literally make any paper media an interactive, and digital experience. I bet newspapers are letting out a collective sigh of relief. This might save them. They could use codes to give more information or insight that you could read on your tablets or phones, allowing them to provide something that you can’t get online. You could use them in museums to provide interactive content to guests, on your resume to link to your online profile, or put them on your business card to provide a prospective client with more information without more paper.

I’m sorry if this is becoming a scrambled, or rambling post, but I am literally coming up with new uses for these things as I write, and my excitement about them is causing my thoughts to get ahead of my fingers.

Anyway, check these things out, make a couple, get a scanner on your phone and start looking for ‘em. They’re out there.

Add more daily to keep people coming!

A successful social media strategy must have a strong base and steady flow of relevant content that engages the target audience. Content strategists typically produce content that solves the audiences problems, entertains, and or educates them in some way. This general rule of thumb has experienced success in the past because people will keep coming back to your page for more, it will keep them engaged in your brand. It is important that a content strategy is developed prior to the implementation of the new media campaign. So here are 5 Key Tips for a Successful Social Media Content Strategy.

Tip #1 Have a consistent tone of voice for your brand.

- Branding is personality and the personality of your brand should be reflected within your social media content. This adds consistency to your brand and is the primary reason for engagement with your audience.

Tip #2 Release your content at the right times.

- This can be accomplished by creating a chart or calender of what you are going to say and when you are going to say it. For example you want your content to be relevant to where people are in life and the season.

-Tip #3 Know who your talking to!

- This may be a traditional marketing rule. “Know everything about your target audience” but the same applies to new media. Certain types of content will attract certain types of audiences. The type of content you produce determines the type of people who follow your brand online, and why they click the like button.

-Tip #4 Be a problem solver

-Everyone is connected so everyone is on the internet at all times and it is only growing. People experience problems daily. So produce content that is consistent with your brand, your message, and your unique selling point but tweak the content so that it gives people the tools/knowledge to solve their daily problems and they will keep coming back for more.  This technique adds equity to brands.

-Tip #5 Honesty

-It is human nature to exaggerate or tell a little white lie here and there but for a content strategy to be successful it must be honest. The internet has given consumers hundreds of answers through blog posts, and other websites. If your content is not truthful people will find out and switch brands or ignore you. If the content is truthful this will develop trust between your brand and the consumer encouraging the most powerful form of advertising for your brand.

Word of Mouth.

At a place like Ingenex Digital Marketing several different new media content strategies are developed for companies that not only increase followers/fans but drive traffic to websites through SEO  and more check it out.