If you’re somewhat knowledgeable on social media, you’ve probably heard the word “Vine” thrown around in conversation here and there. Maybe you have an account, maybe your friend has one; maybe you’ve simply read an article about the growing trend. And if you’re as knowledgeable as you think you are, you’re probably aware that as of last week, Instagram released video functions comparable to Vine. Although it may seem counterintuitive that I’m discussing Vine less than a week after Instagram released rival video capabilities, it’s important to highlight each platform before effectively comparing the two.

Continue…

Another video app? That’s right—as you’ve probably heard, Instagram rolled out video functions on June 20^th. But what does this mean for big video sharing software Vine? Recently I wrote a blog post about Vine and how to know when and if it’s appropriate to use for your business. Now it’s back to the drawing board, but before you decipher whether Instagram Video or Vine (or either) is right for you, let’s take a broad look at the capabilities of each.

Continue…

Nowadays, it’s rare to find a company without a website. And if you do, how annoying is it to scroll through Google and Yelp just to find their contact information? Having an online presence is necessary in today’s technologically centric world – just read our previous blog post about the importance of having a good web presence to see why.

What’s becoming increasingly important as well, though, is having a blog. Blogging has become a staple for businesses both big and small. It provides companies an outlet to show off their personalities, industry knowledge, and to engage their audiences with stimulating content. Nevertheless, blogging is a time commitment, so the big question still remains:

Continue…

Local, as in—we’re from here, we work here and we employ here. As you already know, Austin is THE place to be; a thriving economy, a driven talent pool and all the BBQ, beer and live music you could ask for. Having our HQ here also helps connect us with some of the nation’s brightest entrepreneurs who are changing the way the Internet and its users operate. We’ve also had the pleasure to work with major staples in the local business community such as OneStar Foundation, WhaleShark Media and The State Bar of Texas.

When we say full-service we really mean it. We go past the web and focus on creating brands. We’re an extension of your business and work with you to create a lasting presence both on and off the Internet. From branding to email marketing to graphic design and printing, we have you covered.

Ten-year tenure. Say that ten times fast. Well, before you get caught up in a tongue twister, listen to this. We started in 2003 and haven’t looked back since. We’ve learned a lot from our successes but even more from our failures. These types of experiences can only be had over time and have been tried and proven over again. This is what we give you, a proven approach that has been molded and continues to mold with new technologies, new clients and new ways of thinking.

Okay, so we’re an Austin branding agency. We’re a local web and print company. We’ve been blowing minds since ’03. We have a solid presence in the local community. But what does that mean to you, the business owner? It means nothing if we can’t deliver. Deliverability is the most important part of the process, because without it, we’d be out of business and you’d be pissed. So we avoid all of that by delivering a quality product that we stand by.

Coolness. Yes, I said it and yes, I meant it. We’re not only a happy bunch of creatives, developers, account executives, payroll administrators and interns; we are fathers, mothers, husbands, wives, sons and daughters. We are the person you saw during SXSW at the Dawes show singing every word of “When My Time Comes.” We are the person who bumped into you at Tacodeli who accidentally spilled the “roja” sauce on your shirt- sorry. We are the person who wears a legitimate fireman costume on Halloween and pranks co-workers on April Fool’s. We are the group of people who work late to deliver on a last-minute project. We are HMG Creative and we are your creative agency.

We are so very excited to announce the new website launch of our local Round Rock client, Zenith Massage and Spa.

Unfortunately, our work for them didn’t entail testing out free massages and spa therapy, shucks.  Instead, we focused on what WE do best.  We started by creating a full corporate identity for Zenith by designing a powerful and lasting brand package.  To compliment this robust package, we created a logo to that would represent their uniqueness and produced a variety of stationary collateral.

Continue…

HMG is thrilled to announce the launch of our newest client project, ParcelyPaid.com, which gave us the exciting opportunity to be a part of the growing crowdfunding craze, from the ground-up. ParcelyPaid is a startup that takes its own spin on crowdfunding and came to us almost a year ago for web development and design.

Parcely Paid, as the tagline “Real Friends Chip in” implies, is your personal platform to promote and raise cash to get the that you really want on your birthday. HMG Creative built out the membership-based site, enabled week-long campaigns leading up to a user’s birthday, integrated eConnect Email for email marketing and, of course, seamlessly set up PayPal for the ease of donating (and accepting) funds also offering tips for transferring structured settlement.

Make sure ugly sweaters, random gift cards and last season’s technology doesn’t happen to you. Move over Kickstarter, not everyone has an entrepreneurial venture, but we all have birthdays. Check out ParcelyPaid and the launch video here.

Website Screenshots

Here are some of the best plasma cutter reviews. Take a look.

[button size=”large” type=”square” color=”light-blue” icon=”circle-arrow-right” url=”http://hmgcreative.com/project/parcely-paid/”]View Project Overview[/button]

HMG Creative is pleased to announce the addition of another cog to their creative machine, Scott Mise. As a formally-trained Graphic Designer (Abilene Christian University) and a self-taught Web Developer, Scott enjoys merging the disciplines to create comprehensive solutions for clients’ needs. With previous agency experience and a constant curiosity for developing web technologies, I’d say he brings a lot to our table. You’ve probably already seen much of Scott’s design work in restaurants and bars around Austin as well as on the web, and we hope you’re ready for more.

In his spare time Scott loves tinkering with Javascript and PHP just to see what’s possible. Also, as an avid Metroplex sports fan you won’t ever be able to pull him away from a game as long as Jerry’s, Cuban’s or Nolan’s teams are playing. Besides being glued to screens, Scott enjoys working or riding on any of his three, two-wheeled vehicles.

If you’re a small business owner, you’re likely managing everything from your financials to your marketing activities–and you’re doing it all on a limited budget. While you know that you need a better way to manage your sales prospects, especially during periods of growth, you just aren’t ready to pay for a customer relationship management system to keep in touch with potential and existing customers.

At the Software Advice website, I help review and compare most of the major CRM (customer relationship management) systems on the market. But the truth of the matter is that many of the popular systems on the market can be too expensive for many small business owners. For these small businesses, it may be more effective to take the do-it-yourself (DIY) approach and build your own CRM system.

Building your own CRM system can provide several benefits:

• It’s affordable (read: free)
• It’s flexible
• It’s easy to use and customize

A great tool for building a CRM system on your own is Google Docs. If you have a Gmail account, you already have access to an easy way to build your own CRM software. Already widely used as a management tool, it’s fairly easy to extend the power of these applications to help with customer management. Here’s a quick step-by-step overview of how to do it.

Decide Who Gets Access–And What Information to Include
Google Docs allows all users to collaborate across any document thanks to their sharing and editing features. So, if one person changes a contact’s information, it automatically syncs across the system. This allows all document collaborators to see the change immediately. Beyond that, you can monitor user privileges to ensure that all users have access to the right information.

Once you decide who will be able to access and update data in your CRM system, you’ll need to create a Google Spreadsheet. After that, it’s time to determine what information you want to track about sales prospects in your spreadsheet. A few pieces of information that are a good idea to track include:

• Demographics – company name, contact name, email, phone number, etc.
• Prospect source – how the prospect found out about your company
• Next actions – a code that determine how you’ll follow (e.g. phone call or email)
• Contact log – notes from every contact you make with the prospect
• Estimated opportunity size – an estimate of the size of the sale
• Lead nurturing stage – a numbered system that shows how close the prospect is to purchasing (1 = aware but not interested; 4 = has purchased)

Keep in mind that this is just a starter list and you’ll likely want to record other information that’s specific to your business. So feel free to add any field that’s relevant to your company. If after a while you realize that you want to track more information, it’s fairly easy to add a new field.

Learn How to Manipulate the Data with Spreadsheet Functions
One nice thing about using a Google Spreadsheet is that there are easy sort features that allows you to sort by any field you like. If you only want to look at contacts with the biggest opportunity size, just sort by “estimating opportunity size” and you can view your most largest sales prospects from the largest potential sales to smallest.

Or, maybe you’re interested in the looking at the number of companies that are in the very beginning of the lead nurturing stage. You’ve already coded all entries that are in this stage of the buying process with a 1 but you don’t know how many of your contacts are at that phase. To figure this out, you can use a simple function known as a “countif()”. It works like this:

Determine the cell range you want to count sales prospects for (let’s say it’s cells C2 to C100)
Decide the criteria for counting each cell (in this case it’s a “1”)

To count all your prospects that are the beginning of the sales cycle, you can use the formula in cell C101: ‘=countif(C2:C100, “1”)’. This will give you the total number of contacts that are at phase one in the buying process. Of course there are a whole host of other functions that you can use to manipulate that data, but you get the idea. For a comprehensive list of spreadsheet functions that will work in a Google Spreadsheet check out Google’s help page.

With this method, you can start tracking their sales prospects in an efficient and paperless manner. And you can do it for free. As a bonus, you’ll also be able to access this data from anywhere with an Internet connection because information in Google Docs is stored in the Cloud.

Do you have any other DIY tips on creating a CRM system? Leave us a comment below.

If you have a website or use a search engine on a regular basis, it’s likely that you’ve heard of SEO Sydney or PPC. These two common acronyms are mentioned and preached every day. However, does everyone really know what they mean, or how they work? If you don’t, you’re not alone.

Let’s answer any lingering questions, settle myths, and clear the air of this Edmonton SEO madness! I’ve compiled the most common myths, most important facts, and the most exciting secrets in this post! I know what you’re thinking, “Whew! it’s about time!”

So let’s start from the top…

Define:
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) – An algorithm designed to impact visibility of web content (pages) through organic search results. Commonly used as a free alternative to PPC (pay per click) advertising.

Facts:

• Organic search results is a natural method for locating a webpage. This process will match search terms with relevant content on competing webpages. The stepbrother of organic search results is “non-organic”, or paying per click. “Paying per click” are ads that allow a company to blindly bid on highly competitive key search terms.

• New content is the maintenance that will keep your page ranked. The most effective way is blogging and tagging with search terms. Google, and other leading search engines will reward your website for publishing relevant information. Since you know your business, show off and show off often!

• Content is king. Keep relevant and new content flowing like a river! Adding content is important for your ongoing ranking; the most effective way is with a blog attached to your website. All blog content should follow the relevancy rules while it gives you space to display content that your website does not have room for.

• Play to win. Similar to Monopoly night with your Grandmother, according to the company from Search-consulting.com. Compete, and compete often to maintain and most importantly to increase your ranking.

• Duplicate and be dumped. Search engines (especially Google) are smart enough to detect fluff and manipulation; so think of these algorithms as more of an art than a science.

• By the numbers. If you’re more of a numbers person; you can make SEO a science project by using the KEI (keyword effectiveness index) equation. This will give specific words a rating based on the number of times a word is searched over the number of webpages displaying the word or phrase, for those in the SEO game is never ending. Using this approach will show you what words and phrases can give you the best chance of winning the keyword game.

The internet can be the most rewarding source of marketing if used properly. Website optimization best practices are ever evolving and will only become more competitive as time passes. Adopting this process now can completely change the way your business operates in a positive way for years to come. Check out the following and read more if you wish to find ways on how you can save money while using internet marketing for your business.

It seems that iPads, Nooks and Tablets are all the rage now-a-days and many are tossing out those big, clunky books. So unless you run a publishing company or a newspaper, you may be wondering what that has to do with your business. As e-books have become more popular, a whole new world of self-publishing has opened up for authors and companies alike.

If you have not already taken advantage of the possibilities for publishing your own e-book, here are a few reasons why you should:

A Published Book Builds Your Authority
Say your company offers consulting services to small businesses. You can build your reputation and establish your authority as an expert in your field by getting testimonials from clients, writing articles, or even speaking in your community. Or you could publish a book. A published book — whether it is an e-book or a print book — instantly establishes your authority on a subject.

The more e-books you have to your name, the more impressive it will be for customers. Publish books in your niche and display them prominently on your site. Market the book to get positive reviews from reputable sources and you will build even more clout with customers.

Creating a Comprehensive Guide Better Serves Your Customers
Your products and services help your customers to solve a problem or to meet a need. You can serve your customers even more by creating a comprehensive guide that provides insights or solutions for a large problem or need. If you run a financial advising company, you can create a guide about investing in mutual funds or how to retire before 50. If you offer weight-loss products, you can write a book about how to get in shape after a baby or what kinds of foods you can eat to lose weight fast.

Offering e-books is another way to serve your customers, and the medium allows you to offer more in-depth answers and solutions.

An E-book is a Great Incentive to Build Your E-mail List
Your opt-in email list is an important way to build relationships with customers and to drive repeat sales. Offering an incentive is a great way to grow your e-mail list faster.  A free e-book that offers a solution for your customers needs will help you to grow your e-mail list quickly. You can write a book especially to give away to subscribers, or you can make your paid e-book free to those who subscribe.

Just be sure that whatever e-book you offer, it provides useful and actionable information for your customers. If the e-book is the first thing that your customers see from your company, you want to make sure it is indicative of the quality they can come to expect from you.

You Can Sell an E-book to Generate Extra Revenue
Of course, one of the most immediate benefits an e-book can have for your business is to give you another way to generate some extra income. The more books you offer and the more popular they are, the more money you can make. If you develop a popular line, your e-books can become a whole other product offering.  Consider how your e-books can compliment your current products offerings or can create an additional focus for your business.

Publishing an e-book or a series of e-books can offer a number of benefits to your business, including helping you to establish your authority in your niche, encouraging growth of your e-mail list, offering your customers more value, and even generating additional income. If you aren’t already offering e-books, it might be time to consider doing so.

Does your company offer e-books? Share how it has benefited your company in the comments!