We’re thrilled to announce some great new firepower to our Client Services team!
Introducing Megan Bookless as our newest Account Manager:
Megan Bookless – Account Manager
Megan Bookless has joined our Client Services Team as an Account Manager. She has extensive experience in marketing and customer support. Megan brings with her a great strategic mind, attention to detail and a warm personality that will make clients feel comfortable. Previously, Megan was an Account Manager for a design and branding firm. She worked closely with well-known companies to help them incorporate their offline brand with digital and social media marketing. Megan will join our team along side one of her triplet sisters, Michelle Bookless, who is a Project Manager working with our Interactive Clients.
Although Google+ is still in the beginning stages of its life, it has captured the attention of some major companies and social media lovers. When branded pages were finally launched at the beginning of November, brands such as Pepsi, Cadbury, and Jet Blue were quick to jump on board and create some really interesting content. Because the few people using it are so social-media-savvy, they have been asking for real engagement and conversations from these companies. The brands who have experimented with the features offered by Google+ have been quite successful and have caught the attention of their customers.
One brand that has been especially successful is the American Red Cross. Although they don’t have the flashiest page, they have been engaging really well with their customers. Most of their posts are about real issues going on in the world and reason why you should care. From there, they have created real conversations with their followers without just telling them to give blood. They are focusing more on developing a dialogue rather than “selling,” which has been quite successful.
The USS Constitution Museum is a Boston, MA national landmark. A must see for everyone visiting Boston. The Museum collects, preserves, and interprets the stories of Old Ironsides and the people associated with her. They seek to create a positive, memorable experience for all.
In order to bring the story of our nation’s oldest commissioned ship to life, the Museum needed to reevaluate its online presence. Their new site enhances their current marketing efforts, appeals to a wider range of audiences, and sets them up for success with their future initiatives. Intuitive navigation allows visitors to quickly and easily find information on exhibits, tickets, donations and upcoming events.
Union Street Media’s work on the project included:
We’re pleased to announce that Dan Kompass has joined Union Street Media as our new Business Development Manager. Dan will be based in Massachusetts and will be an integral part of our team as we continue to expand our presence in Massachusetts. Dan has spent the last 20 years living on the Cape and working with many local real estate offices. He really knows his stuff!
Dan has worked in nearly every aspect of web development from project and account management, to search engine optimization, Internet marketing and application development. Dan started building websites in 1995, around the time that some of Union Street Media’s current interns were starting Kindergarten, and has overseen the development of real estate websites for agents and offices throughout New England. “We couldn’t be more excited for him to bring his industry expertise and customer service ethic to the Union Street Media team,” said Jon Adler, Director of Account Strategy at Union Street Media. “Being based in Massachusetts will be a great opportunity to schedule in-person consultations with current and prospective clients in that area.”
“My first few weeks at Union Street Media have been fantastic! Our team of dedicated and talented employees have taken real estate website development to a new level. I feel inspired Union Street Media’s commitment to our clients and impressed by the sites we have developed over the years. It’s great to be on board!”
www.vtseniorliving.com
Bullrock originally designed their sites for Otter Creek and Shelburne Bay with Union Street Media in 2008. Three years later, with a renovation in the works for The Shores at Shelburne Bay, they recognized the need to update both sites to accommodate changes at their facilities and to stay ahead of their competition on the web. Design revisions would focus on a more modern layout with updated color schemes to match changing print marketing materials and larger, more recent photos of both facilities. Updates to navigation would combine keyword research with revised phrasing to more successfully highlight the personality of both communities: upscale and high-end but personal and welcoming.
www.joanheatonarchitects.com
Joan Heaton Architects is located in Bristol, VT and has been specializing in quality residential design for new construction, addition, renovation, and historic restoration projects since 1996. A long time client of Union Street Media, Joan recently wanted to update her site to keep the design and content fresh and engaging for prospective and returning customers alike. Through the redesign, she was also looking to increase the SEO value of her site and provide her customers with new projects in her portfolio.
http://www.vtbenefits.com/
“How often should I write a blog post for my website?” has been The Question to ask since blogging began. The answers to this question vary and should because it really depends upon your goals and the niche or audience that reads your blog. Most that ask the question just want a quick answer and there isn’t one. Ultimately the question is asked because the person wants their blog to be successful. There is a certain logic in thinking that if I produce X amount of good quality blog posts then my blog will be successful. There are many factors that make for a successful blog and, combined with the updates to search engines and online social landscape, the success of a blog becomes somewhat of a moving target. Although there is a core structure to effective blogging, some of what worked in 2006 for bloggers isn’t going to necessarily work today. The good news is there are guidelines below that will help get you on the right track with how often you blog. By using the points below as a guide and then adjusting to your specific audience, you can determine an effective answer for how often to blog.
The easiest answer to this question is if you can blog at least once a day, you should. Most don’t have that much time to dedicate to blogging and yet do want some success. To measure success, at a very basic level, a blog is effective when it brings in the right traffic. (A quick side-note: you shouldn’t expect that just because you write enough blog posts you will automatically get traffic, it will still need to be optimized and promoted). There is also a nice balance between enough content and other time commitments in your work week. To get and maintain a steady stream of readers, you will want to write at least once a week. If you write more, you will see additional benefits but if you write less, your blog won’t generally be a strong addition to your overall online efforts (whatever they may be).
Image via Wikipedia
The harder question to ask is, why are you blogging in the first place? What are your goals? To write just for the sake of writing won’t get you were you need to go. When you review those goals and the benchmarks for their success, you may find an entirely different answer than the one above. To get an idea of how much blogging some of the professional bloggers do (such as those behind Wired, ProBlogger, Gizmodo, Engadget, etc.) take a look at the book Blogging Heroes by Michael A. Banks. Banks does an interview with 30 of the world’s top bloggers and the answers are not only insightful but contain over-riding themes (such as how often they blog and how much online content they read). Consider the varying perspectives from Hubspot, SEOMoz, ProBlogger, and Gigaom that offer quick answers to the same question of how often to blog.
The Greater Boston Association of Realtors® (GBAR) and Union Street Media, a leading provider of websites and internet marketing services for the real estate industry, are pleased to announce a new partnership to help GBAR members generate more business online and save money in the process.
Any self-identified GBAR member that signs up for a new website with Union Street Media will receive the first month of web services for free.
“With over 90% of home searches beginning online according to the National Association of Realtors®, it is important that our members are focusing their marketing efforts on the web,” said John Dulczewski, GBAR Executive Director. “We want to help our members get a high performing, easy to use website at an affordable price and feel that Union Street Media is a great partner for both us and them.”
Union Street Media offers three website packages: Enhanced, Premium and Custom. Enhanced is perfect for savvy self-starters who want to leverage Union Street Media’s powerful property search system, while saving money by inputting content themselves. Premium includes a Project Manager that helps every step of the way, a series layouts which are customized to the clients’ brand, development of a custom site map, layout of internal site pages, implementation of a mobile-friendly version of the site and sold property search. Custom sites include all Premium capabilities and are developed from scratch to meet specific branding guidelines of larger offices.
We’ve had the privilege at Union Street Media of launching several new real estate websites.
www.byselrealty.com
New England Land Company has been a long time Union Street Media client. Being one of the top producing offices in Vermont, they draw a lot of attention. They wanted to update their website after recently being purchased by a larger office not native to VT. The website needed to reflect the new brand but still show their Vermont roots and let clients know they haven’t changed.
www.lisameyer.net
Lisa Meyer, a Century 21 Jack Agent is tech savvy and understands how the Internet has effected the real estate industry. She needed a website that had easy to use search tools so site visitors could find what they were looking for quickly and efficiently. Through an easy to use content management system, she is able to reveal her expertise and success in Vermont real estate while showcasing her specific market of Waterbury. The site design reflects Lisa’s connection to Vermont with photos of scenery and biking.
www.c21baribeau.com
85% of the agents we work with tell us that they need to get better at social media and technology tools.
I am super excited to be bringing Agent Reboot back to Boston this year. We have been traveling around the country, bringing Agent Reboot to 24 cities this year and the feedback has been phenomenal.
Agent Reboot Boston
October 26, 2011
Hynes Convention Center
Having your business on Facebook with a fan page is essential to staying competitive. Once you have a Facebook fan page, it is time to start looking at best practices to an effective page. One of the first questions to ask is, when visitors come to your fan page, are they seeing a consistent message that will get them to become a fan? When a first time visitor’s first impression is from a random wall posting, you have less influence over how they will perceive your business. You can change all of that by providing a consistent message via a custom landing page.
A customized landing page provides a consistent, branded message to the first-time visitor. When someone lands on your fanpage, instead of seeing a random posting on your wall, they get content and images that are specifically designed to convert them into liking your page. Once a visitor likes your page, your wall then becomes the default view.
If all you want is one custom landing element on your Facebook page, there are many free Facebook apps available. Some of these options require you to use code but there are others that have pre-formatted versions with default background images. Here are some to consider: Wildfire Woodbox Pagemoto Goso
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Search Engine Optimization
