Sean Reed Consulting

Small Business Spotlight: Sprouts! Showcasing Prize-Winning Artwork of Local Students at ArtiGras 2010

seanreed — Sat, 13 Feb 2010 21:36:09 +0000

Every so often, I cross paths with a small business that is truly outstanding in their contributions to the local community. Sprouts! is one of those businesses. In this first edition of my Small Business Spotlight, Sprouts! takes top honors.

This article was written by the Sprouts! staff.

Eco-Conscious Company’s Plantable Seed Paper Products Grow Flowers When Planted

Sprouts!, Inc., an innovative West Palm Beach-based company that uses 100% recycled, handmade paper embedded with flower seeds to create a diverse array of environmentally friendly products, is playing an active role in this year’s ArtiGras Fine Arts Festival by printing beautiful note cards featuring the prize-winning artwork of local students.

“We are thrilled to be involved in this year’s Festival and especially proud of our work with the youth artists,” says Sharon Quercioli, Sprouts owner and founder.

The company’s note cards, featuring prize winning student artwork, will be available for sale in the Sprouts booth, located in the Youth Art Gallery. A portion of the proceeds from each box of cards will go to support the ArtiGras Art Education Fund.

“Sprouts is committed to supporting our youth and to educating the community about waste reduction and conservation through our products and environmental education efforts,” added Quercioli.

Sprouts products reflect the beauty and simplicity of a green message.

“Instead of ending up in the landfills, our products can be planted in the earth and produce flowers that create oxygen and provide food for small organisms, all the while beautifying the world,” Quercioli continued.

Founded six years ago by Sharon Quercioli, a lifelong entrepreneur with over twenty years in the recycle industry, Sprouts products include greeting cards, bookmarks, Blooming BoxesTM and a host of custom marketing pieces – all of which grow flowers when planted. Sprouts products can be purchased directly from the company’s Web site (www.sproutem.com) or custom printed to accommodate various volumes, sizes and print specifications. Next time you need to send a greeting card or your company plans to send out a mailing or distribute handouts, consider using one of Sprouts “Green Greetings” or “Blooming Boxes.” It’s a fun, easy and environmentally responsible way to help tackle a growing problem.

If you would like to support the ArtiGras Art Education Fund but can not attend the event, Sprouts is offering the ArtiGras Youth Art Collection 2010 & 2009 on its website: http://www.sproutem.com/category/ArtiGras-2010-Note-Cards

For additional information about ArtiGras Fine Arts Festival please visit: http://artigras.orgtest

4 Tips for Search Engine Optimization

seanreed — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 01:45:51 +0000

Now that you’ve got your brand new website, how do people find you? Search engines.

To properly and reliably get your site listed, I’ve compiled the following list of tips to get you started:

Stay away from the tricks
A lot of web design firms will promise grand things and instant results. The problem? They usually use some sneaky tricks to get you ranked higher. And the problem with these tricks? Search engines eventually catch on, and could even punish your site for using the tricks. Keep it clean, and follow the clear-cut rules for optimization.
Keep your content fresh
Search engines tend to favor new content. For this reason, I have a blog on this site. For the most part, the information I have here doesn’t change. I may add additional services here and there, but it rarely changes. The easy way to keep things fresh is with a blog. Post articles related to your industry. You get two benefits: Search engines will begin to rank you higher, and your customers will have more reasons to check your site more often.
Relevant linking
Most search engines calculate part of your website’s rank on the number of incoming and outgoing links. For example, if a highly ranked website, such as CNN.com, linked to an article on your website, your site gains not only instant traffic increases, but a better search ranking. The same goes for the opposite direction. Try your best to link to relevant and highly ranked websites from your own site.
Optimize your URLs
Take a sample of five websites. Half will probably half URLs in an optimized form, while the other half will not. An optimized URL is one that tells a search engine what to expect at that address. For example, http://www.example.com/?page=29 doesn’t really say much about what will be on “page 29.” On the other hand, http://www.example.com/graphic-design-samples tells quite a bit about what’s on the page. If you don’t maintain your own site, ask your web developer if your URLs are search engine optimized.

Know Your Visitors: Google Analytics

seanreed — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 01:03:00 +0000

To quote Google’s own website, “Google Analytics is the enterprise-class web analytics solution that gives you rich insights into your website traffic and marketing effectiveness. Powerful, flexible and easy-to-use features now let you see and analyze your traffic data in an entirely new way. With Google Analytics, you’re more prepared to write better-targeted ads, strengthen your marketing initiatives and create higher converting websites.”

If you’re in the business of knowing your website visitors, I recommend Google Analytics. Whenever I talk to a client who needs statistics on visitors, I tell them about the “marketer’s dream” that is Analytics.

Let’s say you have a 10-page website. Visitors start at the leading page, then you lead them through a series of pages before an eventual call to action, where they are encouraged to buy your product.

What if 95% of your visitors stop at page two? What if they don’t even get that far? To arm yourself with this kind of information, check out Analytics. You’ll be amazed at the type of picture you can create about your visitors: locations, trends, loyalty, time spent on the site, and many, many more metrics.

To see for yourself, follow the directions on Google’s website, and contact your web developer to install the necessary tracking code.

How to Start Your E-mail Marketing

seanreed — Sun, 10 Jan 2010 02:50:05 +0000

I’ve encountered a lot of clients lately that seem to be in an e-mail bind. They all usually rely on an outside contractor to furnish, maintain, and send e-mails to their mailing lists.

Some are good. Others offered e-mail marketing as an “add on,” though they really had no infrastructure to handle it. In these cases, the relatively simple task of creating and sending e-mails to your clients or customers becomes annoyingly complex.

In one instance, a client’s previous web development company had a contract to handle e-mails, but because the size of the mailing had grown beyond their abilities, shortcuts had to be taken to make things run. Mailings had to be sent out in batches: A-G one day, H-M the next day, and so on. Imagine having to send out an important announcement, perhaps about an event cancellation. What good will it be to the last batch of the alphabet when they receive the e-mail a day after the event?

Enter Constant Contact: “With our Email Marketing, you don’t need special technical or design skills to create html emails. If you can cut, paste, point and click, you’re good to go! Start with any of our 400+ professional email templates, then make it your own with your logo, colors, and photos. Use your own imagery to start from scratch, or let us help you get you started with our custom services.”

With a tiered pricing structure, you can find the price that fits for your mailing list size. Plans start at $15/month. Take a look at Constant Contact’s features for a more specific overview.

If you’re looking for the ability to manage your own e-mail marketing with an easy interface, the ability to schedule e-mails, and virtually no limit on the number of e-mails you can send, Constant Contact has my recommendation.

The New Gardens Band Launches

seanreed — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 02:36:10 +0000

The brand new website for the Indian River Pops Orchestra and The New Gardens Band has been launched. Check out the site for upcoming shows, CD releases, and band information.

The New Gardens Band is a non-profit regional community band based in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida. We perform a series at the beautiful Eissey Campus Theatre on the campus of Palm Beach Community College, located in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida. In addition we also perform at a number of other venues throughout the region including the Lyric Theatre in Stuart, St. Lucie West Centennial High School in Port St. Lucie, and Mizner Amphitheatre in Boca Raton. Our purpose is to enrich the culture of the community and provide opportunities for musical expression, enjoyment, and education of the band members.

The Indian River Pops Orchestra is a regional community symphonic pops orchestra based in Stuart, Florida. We perform light classics, movie favorites, broadway hits and popular favorites on each concert. Our principal series are in Palm Beach Gardens and Port St. Lucie but we perform throughout the Palm Beach, Martin, and St. Lucie county region.

Click here to check out the website.

Pizzazz Hair Welcomes WordPress

seanreed — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 02:42:53 +0000

Click here to check out the new version of the site, re-designed to utilize WordPress. By setting up the site this way, the client is capable of maintaining and updating all the content, without needing to put in a phone call to request them. Any content changes that are made are immediately available on the site.

Pizzazz Hair Design opened the doors of its first salon in August, 1974. The vision of Dennis and Kristina Marquez, Pizzazz is a full-service salon offering cuts, styling, color services, manicures, pedicures, waxing, facials and body treatments. Through continuous education and training, our service providers stay on top of the latest hair, beauty and skincare trends. Our mission is to help you look good and feel good day after day.

Now with five salons serving Palm Beach County, Pizzazz Hair Design is the salon in your neighborhood.

Search Engine Basics

seanreed — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 00:22:27 +0000

A search engine can be the greatest tool you have at your fingertips, or it can be the biggest waste of time, leaving you to you scroll through page after page of results that are irrelevant to what you’re looking for.

To properly utilize a search engine, there are a few basics that will help:

Searching for a phrase.
If you’re interested in finding results that only have to do with an exact phrase, such as a full name, enclose the search terms in quotes. For example, to search for pages about Diet Coke, put “Diet Coke” into the search box. This would eliminate any pages that discussed diets in general, with perhaps a reference to Coke, and only return pages that had “Diet” and “Coke” next to each other.
Search within a certain website.
Google’s search engine allows you to specify the site you want to search in. If you’re looking for anti-virus solutions, but only want to see what I’ve included on my website, the search would look like this: site:seanreed.org anti-virus.
Forcing a keyword to be used.
By putting a plus sign (+) in front of any search term, you can let the search engine know that the particular search term must be included in any results to are found. If you’re looking for information about dolphins (the animals), and not the football team, your search could look like this: dolphins +animal. Similarly, a minus sign (-) will force the search engine to exclude any results with a term. To find similar results about dolphins, you could use: dolphins -football.

To find more information about search engines and their search techniques, check out the following links:

Web Browsers: Know Your Alternatives

seanreed — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 00:19:20 +0000

When most people think about “the Internet,” they’re actually thinking about a single piece of software: Internet Explorer. Internet Explorer is the pre-installed and default web browser on modern PCs. When you want to visit a website, odds are you first open Internet Explorer.

While Internet Explorer may dominate simply because it’s there by default and easy to use, there are many other web browsers that offer better features and more security. The list below is not exhaustive, but includes some of the more popular browsers in development today. I encourage you to download and try them all. You may find yourself to be much more productive, faster, or just more comfortable in one of the alternatives. Most of the sites linked contain comparisons, features, and any other relevant information about each choice.

Helpful Shortcut Keys

seanreed — Sat, 22 Aug 2009 03:27:45 +0000

I’m not a big fan of using a computer mouse. Whenever possible, I like to keep both hands on my keyboard. With that in mind, I try to use keyboard shortcuts whenever I can. Below are my most commonly used and under-appreciated shortcuts:

Alt+Tab – On Windows PCs, holding the Alt key and pressing Tab will cycle through all the open windows on the screen. For even more productivity when you have a lot of windows open, holding Shift+Alt and pressing Tab will cycle through the open windows in the opposite order.
Pressing Control+ESC or the Windows key (looks like a flag, usually located on the bottom left of the keyboard) will open your Start menu.
Control+A will select all text. Depending on the application you’re in, the behavior of this one may change. For example, if you are in, for example, My Documents and looking at all your folders and files, pressing Control+A will select all the items within My Documents. If you’re in Microsoft Word, this shortcut will select all the text within the current document
Alt+F4 will close the currently active program. This has the same basic functionality as clicking the “X” to close the window.
Shift+Delete will delete a selected file without sending it to the Recycle Bin. Be careful with this one, as the files will be unrecoverable if you delete them using this shortcut.
Control+F within most programs will open its “Find” window, allowing you to search.
To disable the “Auto Run” feature of CDs and DVDs, hold the left Shift key while you insert the disc. This will prevent the disc from automatically launching any programs. You generally want to hold the Shift key until you see the disc drive’s activity light stop flashing.