- in Uncategorized by Jack
Welcome Kitchen Dance To The BRM Family
Kitchen Dance is a supplier of disposable aluminum foil pans to bakeries, hotels, restaurants, delis, and caterers since 2002. Located in sunny Southern California, their warehouse ships products nationally and internationally on the daily. Lots of them!
Brick Road Media is proud to be working with such a successful and well-established business!
About Kitchen Dance
Online since 2002, Kitchen Dance provides well over 700 different products to personal and commercial kitchens all over the world. From tart pans to to roasters, if it can be made out of aluminum foil and used in the kitchen or for science projects, they have it.
While there are a few stores that are bigger, customers get more of a personal touch when shopping with this still-growing family-owned business. And we love working with businesses in that sweet spot of past success plus tons of room for growth.
Not just a place to buy foil pans and other kitchen accessories, Kitchen Dance also helps customers with ideas for different desserts and meals they can make with these products. Chefs, caterers, and bakers are always on the lookout for new ideas to give their clients that "wow" factor, so it has always been important to provide food for thought along with pie pans and other baking products.
Over the years the product line has expanded to include many items their customers also require, such as turkey basters, ramekins, recipe cards, knives, and even washing machine aluminum lint traps. Having one place to grab all their needs is a great convenience to Kitchen Dance customers.
Our Work
Brickroad Media is responsible for growing visibility for Kitchen Dance. Specifically to make more of their ideal customers aware of the range and quality of products in their line. And to make it all easy to find.
We are super happy to welcome Kitchen Dance to the BRM family!
- in Uncategorized by Jack
James Strauss, Vietnam Vet and Author
Brick Road Media is proud and excited to welcome James Strauss!
James is our latest client and has a very interesting story to share with the world. (Actually, he's got many stories both nonfiction and fiction.) Strauss is the author of "30 Days Has September," a full account of his time as a Marine in the Vietnam war.
Strauss' other works are available on his site for free, or on Kindle, and include:
James is taking a different approach to publishing in that he is putting all chapters of his books on his website for free. If people would like to download to their favorite reader, they are also available on Kindle and in paperback.
Caution: Once you start reading his Vietnam war story, it is going to be hard to stop. The level of chatter this book-in-progress is generating on the site and all over social media is amazing... and intense. Vietnam vets from all over are finding James' style and honesty refreshing in an age where this war has been all but forgotten, along with the surviving soldiers who fought in it. (And still fight to this day!)
About James Strauss
James Strauss was born into a Coast Guard family during WWII. He’s lived in four countries and twenty-seven states, in places from South Manitou Island, to Santa Fe, New Mexico, to Honolulu, Hawaii. He’s held a variety of positions in many careers, from being a Marine Corps Officer wounded in Vietnam, life insurance agent, timeshare salesman, physician’s assistant, and a college professor in anthropology.
As a CIA team leader in the field he traveled to 122 countries, where he remains welcome in most of them to this day.He is credentialed in the areas of deep sea diving, fixed wing and rotary piloting and hot air ballooning.
Website: JamesStrauss.com
Follow James Strauss on Facebook
- in Website Makeovers by Jack
Grand Canyon Helicopter Tour Gets An Upgrade
We love giving our clients a new look to go with their high-performance sites.
The most recent recipient of a brand new look is Grand Canyon Helicopter Tour.
Here's what we have accomplished with the Grand Canyon Helicopter Tour site:
Have you ever heard someone say "the picture doesn't do it justice" when talking about their Grand Canyon pics? Well, it's true, there's nothing like being there as anyone who has visited the Grand Canyon can tell you.
So how do you best depict the grandeur and the massive vistas of Grand Canyon on the web?
Step 1: Use REALLY BIG images. Fill the viewer's screen with as much Canyon beauty as you can fit. (Oh, and still make the site fast as lightning.)
Of course, looking good and performing well are important. But content is important as well. That's why we fill the site regularly with articles and pages that will have the Grand Canyon traveller up to speed on myriad topics and things to know before they take a heli tour.
Speed, ease of use, chock full of excellent information about Grand Canyon, and optimized to dazzle visitors and search engines alike. That's how we roll at Brick Road!
Key Factors In Designing A Site That Performs
- The faster the better for search and visitors
- Elegant user interface - easy to use
- Perfectly mobile for all devices
- Chock full of relevant information about the Grand Canyon and things to do in and around the area (not just helicopter tours)
- Organized the way Google loves to see (and rank) websites
- Great links and testimonials showing social proof from past customers and sites around the web
The best way to experience it is to surf it! Check out Grand Canyon Helicopter Tour for yourself and, hey, maybe you'll be flying over the greatest canyon on Earth yourself one day!
- in Local Marketing Tips by Jack
Prosperity Quote From Unknown Author
"Confidence comes not from always being right but not fearing to be wrong."
– Unknown
The quote is awesome. Too bad the author is "Unknown." What would it be like to leave this world with something great that you created and then have it attributed to "Unknown?"
On the web, to be known is everything. Known in search, known on social, and for having a business that helps people solve a problem or be successful. But we're not just here to build businesses and make money to pay for stuff and bills.
We're here to leave a mark. To prosper in life as well as business and have it known that we created something that served people well in our lifetimes.
Don't be "Unknown." Get some help with your marketing, get more traffic, and get known! Talk to us, we can help you!
And check out Prosperity Quotes for daily inspiration for yourself and your business.
- in Local Marketing Tips by Jack
Engagement More Important Than Likes On Facebook?
In a new article by Fast Company, "Your Facebook Fans Are Hiding Your Posts At An Alarming Rate," Ekaterina Walter takes a look at some stats most businesses don't pay attention to.
Most of the businesses on Facebook focus, at least initially, on the number of likes they get for their business fan pages.
The reasoning is simple: more fans equals more exposure to new, past, and potential customers. The problem becomes clear soon enough. Engagement often doesn't take off as planned. With 100 or so new fans should come a higher level of engagement, right? Your business should see an increase in the activity from your fans as your likes increase, right?
Not so. At least, not automatically. It all depends on how you engage your audience on Facebook and how you keep them from hiding your posts.
You're now in the realm of tracking response rates to your Facebook posts and figuring out a plan to keep fans engaged and passing around your updates to their friends.
When your Facebook marketing campaign becomes more about engagement than building a huge list of fans who may or may not be seeing all of your updates, you have to start thinking about a content plan for Facebook that keeps your fans glued to your updates and engaged with your business.
Read the article on Fast Company to see what you can do to improve your visibility with the fans you have while you're working to get more fans to follow you.
Want help increasing your Facebook Page engagement, but don't have the time? Let Us do it FOR you! Click HERE for More Info.
Related articles
- in Local Marketing Tips by Jack
You aren’t a local business. You’re just like everyone else…
I don't know why we web marketers treat local businesses like something "other." It's been a thing since the web started, really. There are online businesses, (when they are new they even get their own name, called "startups"). And then there are businesses that exist in some other-worldly place that are free to come online and build a site, and stuff, but we're not having them over to our hip warehouse headquarters (with a slide and free lattes) for game night.
The truth is, business is business and we're all offline. We're all location-based. We are all geographically grounded in the real-world. The internet is the new kid on the block, if anything is.
The internet is a glowing phone book - an interactive directory. A place to hang out and play telephone in a far cooler way than our parents and grandparents did. A shopping mall made entirely of light.
Your business uses it to reach out to grab new customers, leads, clients, fans. Just like any business, yours seeks to grow by reaching more of your ideal audience.
When I started marketing online in 1998, Google looked like this:
A face only a founder and a bunch of old farts of marketing could love.
While a lot has changed, nothing really has. At the same time that we're introducing technology to the world that Marty McFly introduced to the silver screen when we were kids, human nature remains staunchly in place.
To sell stuff to people today we have to do more of what really successful businesses have done since selling stuff was invented. We have to make connections. Historically, connections could get away with being shallow. Today, the pendulum has swung in the direction of deeper connections by being "real." Thus we have social media along with a strong rejection of any commercialization of our "personal streams."
Can't market like the old days with a megaphone and a soap box. Now you have to give to the world in order to receive anything at all back - or you're out of business.
It's really quite a great thing for all involved. People are forcing businesses to actually add value to the world. And in exchange, people listen to those businesses and buy their stuff.
I think (hope) we're getting tired of creating mountains of trash and plastic and things with no meaning. We're getting tired of disposable. A bigger piece of humanity craves meaning. A sense of place. Pride. Quality. Relevance. I also think businesses have gotten pretty tired of the meaninglessness of "business as usual" as we all seek a new way to look at our relationship to the stuff that we do for a living.
Why else would all the new startups be focused so heavily on quality of work environment? I mean, to absurd levels, including free food and massages, and all kinds of perks our grandfathers roll their eyes at when they read the paper (on their iPads we got them for Christmas, of course).
The note here is: Do everything you can to be relevant and meaningful with your business, and the people who represent your business, on the web. Relevance, authority, and influence are rewarded on the web with search rankings, tons of traffic from social, and a large increase in following and customers. And every single bit of it comes from what you do with your site content, your social engagement, and the stories you create and tell. Authority and influence in your market cannot be bought anymore.
That's why we started C.A.S.T. (Customer Attraction Systems Training). It's time local business owners and staff became more involved in their online success. For there is no other way to succeed online today.
Google Authorship Troubleshooting
Here's a great graphic that shows you just about every known problem you can troubleshoot when it comes to claiming Google Authorship properly.
- in Social Media by Jack
Social Media Magic for Local Businesses
It shouldn't be, but the following advice is some pretty out-of-the-box thinking for local businesses who treat their social channels like advertising networks.
- in Local Marketing Tips by Jack
120 Ways To Promote Your Local Business
Ok - the extremely helpful infographic below was created with the title "120 Marketing Tactics for New Blogs." As I checked out the tips, though, I realized that a lot of our advice to clients is in this graphic.
Any local business owner happening by these tips might be thrown off by "Tactics for New Blogs" and not read it. Not only are many of these tips good for new sites of any kind, they are good for old sites. And they are good tactics for local business owners looking to make the web a good customer and lead generation producer for them.
If you are a local business owner or staff member in charge of getting more customers from the web to view your site, tap to call you, or otherwise engage with your web presence, you should get an awful lot out of this one!
If you need any help with anything below, be sure to let us know. We can help you!
Infographic by Digital Philippines
- in Website Makeovers by Jack
Good Life Wellness’ New Website
We're happy to announce the brand new Good Life Wellness website design and content!
On this project, we were able to give their site a modern feel with design components that match the top sites on the web today. It provides Good Life Wellness with a great looking "wrapper" for their services.
Old site...
After we sprinkled some magic Brick Road design expertise on it...
Sample internal page....
About Good Life Wellness
Good Life Wellness specializes in Yoga, Massage Therapy, Energy Therapy, Healing Intensive Programs, and overall wellness. They are based in Richmond Indiana.
Location:
Good Life Wellness
191 Fort Wayne Avenue,
Richmond, IN 47374
Phone: 765-277-4168
Contact page for Good Life Wellness