ShrimpTank Productions

Teaching the newbies…

// July 22nd, 2010 // No Comments » // SEO

and getting PREE Corp a number one ranking on Google.

I office out of the Idea Finishing School space in San Antonio. I have a desk set up in the “school room” and most of my day is spent working on different sites that CFO Rudy owns. In all, I work on about 6 sites daily. We also brainstorm on other things, like now he’s started an app company, so in addition to laying out the site, I also get to help with the actual apps. It’s definitely keeping me on my toes.

Right now, one of the “students” of the Idea Finishing School is PREE Corp. They are  4 grad students from UTSA who have invented a phone charger that works by harvesting Wi-Fi signals and using those to charge your  iPhone. Last week, I was in charge of helping them set up a temporary website, so they would at least have something out there. There had been a bunch of press releases and they were showing up on the IFS site, but they didn’t have anything of their own to show off. So, we grabbed a WordPress site and started putting up some stuff. Matthew, who is one of the PREE Corp people and is also officing here right now and I played around with it so I could teach him all the back end stuff. He had never used WordPress before, but I assured him it was super easy and Google loves it.

Today, Matthew was so excited, because last week, PREECorp.com didn’t show up anywhere. Today, they were number one on Google. Admittedly, there’s not a lot out there about PREE Corp, so he should rightly be number one. But, it was pretty cool that in only a week, with some SEO tweaking, he got that coveted number one position.

So, make sure when you’re working on your site, if you’re using WordPress, have the SEO pack installed. Use that extra bit to make sure you’ve got all your keywords included. Use that description section. Make sure you take advantage of using tags. It really does make SEO so much easier for your site.

Now, we just have to make sure we keep up with the PREE Corp site so he stays number one. We don’t want some press release pushing us off the position.

LOL, Matt was just walking out the door for the day and said my blog post here better not push his PREE Corp off number one, since his only competition was my blog posts on IFS and the press releases…..

June Idea Xchange

// June 17th, 2010 // 1 Comment » // SEO, idea xchange, marketing, social media

June Idea Xchange

Guess who’s the guest speaker for the Idea Finishing School Idea Xchange on July 30?
Yep, that’s right, it’s ME!

Each month the Idea Finishing School hosts an open house called the Idea Xchange. Each month, they have a guest speaker to talk on a different topic in relation to small business start-ups. So far they’ve had Matt Reedy, a hugely successful San Antonio entrepreneur,  John Bray and Court Allen, lawyers from Cox Smith, and Rudy De La Garza, who’s specialty is in taking companies public.

So this month they wanted someone to talk about how to make your company visible and get your name out there. Since I do most of the blogging, tweeting and social networking for the Idea Finishing School as well as several other companies, I guess I was the natural choice…

I believe in using a combination on SEO, social media marketing and face to face time to build a brand. I don’t think you should put all your efforts in one area, but I don’t think you should spread yourself so thin with being social that you’re not getting any actual work done. So, at this months Idea Xchange, I’ll be discussing how to use all of these methods to build your brand, create awareness of your company and most importantly, how to build relationships with your clients.

Social media shouldn’t be used just to blast out what you’re doing.  It’s not just about advertising. It’s also a great way to see what people are saying about you. It’s a way to connect to people, to interact with them.

We’ll also go over the myths of public relations, like “all publicity is good publicity”.  Having just come back from Australia, and been on the cover of several magazines, I can give first hand accounts of why your reputation is more important than any giant publicity blitz. We’ll also talk about how to pick who’s going to be the one who’s doing your social media. It’s important to have someone who really cares about your brand. You never want the type of person who says “never let the truth get in the way of a good story” to be in charge of your reputation….

So, if you’d like to hear me speak, or just want someone else’s opinion on all things publicity/marketing/social, come along to the Idea Xchange.

Idea Xchange

Wednesday, June 30th 4-6pm

3463 Magic Dr, suite 245
San Antonio TX 78229

RSVP HERE

Who’s looking at you kid?

// April 30th, 2010 // 2 Comments » // SEO, marketing

One of the best thing I like about Wordpress, besides its ease of use, is all the neat little plugins that you can install. I think my absolute favourite, and one that I have on all of my sites is the Visitor Maps.

It’s not publicly visible on all my sites, but it is in the dashboard of each. I know that there are other analytics tools out there. I have Google analytics installed, and I occasionally pop over to previous employer, Pear Analytics to use their site juice tool. But, there’s something nice about the visitor maps. Maybe it’s because I don’t have to go somewhere else to see the information. Maybe it’s that I’m a very visual person, and I like seeing the actual map. I like that it tells me how many times a visitor has been there before. It also tells me if they were referred from another site.I can see what term they were searching for in Google that brought them to me. When I send out a tweet with a link back to my blogs, I can see how many people actually clicked on that link and went to read it.

I guess I’m just amused by small things, but I really like this plug in. Even if you have, and you should have, another analytics tool installed, I’d get this one, even if it’s just for the fun of it.

Looking at the visitor maps on the Sarah Monahan website, I’m amused by how many people come to the site just by searching my name. Guess it’s an inside joke though. Ryan at the Pear made fun of my old site for not being properly SEO’d. He said it was only SEO’d well for “Sarah Monahan” and nobody would be searching for that.  Over 39k hits in 4 weeks for “Sarah Monahan” ain’t bad Ryan.

No matter what tool you’re using, make sure that you’re using something. You want to know who your visitors are and why they’re looking for you.

Happy New Year

// December 31st, 2009 // No Comments » // SEO, social media, video production

Can you believe it’s already New Years Eve?

Where did the year go? It seems every year just goes faster and faster! I did a lot this last year. I started off with Matt up in Iowa, freezing my butt off. We headed to Tampa for my birthday/Easter and to take a break from the Iowa cold. We were also seriously considering moving to Florida, so it was also a scouting trip. Then Matt got a new job in San Antonio. So we came back home to our nice house. It seemed so big after that little corporate apartment in Iowa.
I got a job teaching acting classes and working for a SEO firm. I was also going to do a bunch of filming and diving, but the jobs got in the way! So, after a work trip to New York City, which was also a first for me, I finished with that company and added SEO services to ShrimpTank. The beauty of the web is that I can work from anywhere, so now if I have a weekend shoot, I can take my laptop with me and work on the road. It’s probably much less distracting than working in an office where everyone is playing Wii tennis anyway.

So I’m looking forward to doing a bunch of stuff in 2010. I hope we’ll get several more episodes filmed for Going Down. I’d like to see a few more cities I haven’t been to yet. I’d like to get healthy and back into shape. I hope this is the year my folks finally visit me from Oz.

What are you hoping the New Year brings?

Here’s wishing you Health, Prosperity and Good Times. I can’t help you with your health, but if you need support for the Prosperity or Good Times, give me a shout. We can work on your SEO and Social Media campaign over a cold beer!

Follow through is Key

// October 28th, 2009 // No Comments » // SEO, social media

It doesn’t matter how great your site is SEO’d, if your product or service sucks.

During my long years of working, I’ve seen some great companies and some really crappy ones. Some had a great concept, but lacked follow through. Others only had a so-so product, but such great customer service, people stayed loyal to them.

Social Media is a great way to improve your customer service. It gives you a chance to interact with your clientele. You can see what people are saying about you, and it gives you a chance to address any questions or concerns. For example, I tweeted out that I was having issues with putting wordpress on my GoDaddy hosted server. I got a Tweet back from GoDaddy with a link to instructions on how to resolve my issue. I was impressed. I went from listening to co-workers diss GoDaddy to defending them. On the other hand, I once worked for a company that was spending a bunch of money to launch a product at at Trade Show out of town. After spending many thousands of dollars, the product wasn’t ready. They weren’t ready for the launch and all they did was upset a whole lot of potential customers.

While you’re working on the Search Engine Optimization for your website, make sure you’re also working with your employees on customer service. It doesn’t matter if you show up number one on Google if you can’t follow through with your service.

New Services!

// October 21st, 2009 // No Comments » // SEO, social media, video production

We are launching a new arm of ShrimpTank Productions this week.

ShrimpTank Productions started off as a Media Production company to produce “Going Down“. We are now expanding to encompass Social Media and Search Engine Optimization. These days, all three work together to help you get noticed. There’s no point having some webmaster build you a beautiful website if it doesn’t contain any keywords or content that target what you do. Everybody is on Twitter. We’ll help you make sure your posts aren’t pointless babble. Got a message that really goes over better face to face? Put it on video! We’ve got the cameras and the editing equipment to get your message online.

After attending SMX East in New York City earlier this month, it’s obvious that there’s some major changes going on in the search world. Make sure you stay visible.