On the morning of Friday January 7th, I was reading the local news on our local daily newspaper, The Burlington Free Press’s website*. As I clicked through the happenings around Vermont, I came across an article titled 11 Places to Eat Breakfast in 2011, and as a man who likes his breakfast, I clicked the link and began to read. As I scrolled down the page I realized that my favorite breakfast place Handy’s Lunch was not on the list and nor was another great neighborhood breakfast place called August First. Finding 
this totally unacceptable I got on Twitter and saw that Earl, the third generation owner of Handy’s, had seen the article 2 hours earlier and had asked the Free Press why he had been snubbed. I was glad to see that he had called them out, but there had not been much followup, most likely because not to many people are on twitter at 7 am when Earl had posted it up.
Before I go any further, let me tell you a little bit about Earl and Handy’s lunch. Handy’s is an old style U shaped lunch counter; you sit down and everyone talks to each other and discusses the days events. It is a truly wonderful place. What makes it what it is is Earl. Earl knows the majority of the people who come into the diner by name, some people don’t even have to order, he just knows what they want before they sit down. It is the kind of place that when I moved to the area, becoming a regular there was high on my list of priorities. After I had earned regular status 
at Handy’s, I heard Earl talking about how he was having a hard time attracting new customers, because while when the restaurant was started it was in a commercial area near the waterfront, now it was in a quiet residential neighborhood. I said to him, “Earl, every time I come in here, you are holding court and people are talking. This is the kind of place people want to be a part of, all you need to do is expand the lunch counter online. Get on Twitter!” That was all I had to do and he was away and running. At last count he had been featured in two articles on Social Media for small business, had been voted by a Vermont-wide poll as the runner up for best Twitter Stream in Vermont and had 704 followers. He is a social media natural because he has the basic required equipment; he is social.
Now that you have a little background info, let me tell you what happened on Friday.
Just after I saw the article, I tweeted
2010 was a great year for Union Street Media. We thank all our clients who have been with us for some time and those who just came on board. We were launching new sites up until the last day of 2010. Below are some of the sites we launched.
Geri Reilly Real Estate Geri Reilly Real Estate
Geri Reilly has been in Real Estate for over twenty nine years. She recently decided to start her own real estate office. Working with Union Street Media, Geri was able to build a site that focused on what she does best, selling homes. Her site is a testament to her personalized service and attention to detail.
The news crew from WCAX visited Union Street Media yesterday. Our Founder and President, Ted Adler, toured them around our office and spoke about the current business environment in Vermont. The story is about the optimism of local Vermont businesses for the New Year as expansion and hiring is predicted to increase from two years prior.
We are currently looking for a Project Manager for our Real Estate Team. Visit www.unionstreetmedia.com/jobs to read more about the position.
In this tutorial, we’ll be revisiting the Brillante blog design, covering the PSD slicing, HTML/CSS coding, custom fonts embedding and some handy cool tips to improve your website performance.
This is Part 2 of 3 of the Photoshop blog design called Brilliante, published some time ago on SpyreStudios and designed by Mahmoud Khaled Deiab.
In this second part, I’m gonna walk you through the PSD to HTML/CSS coding process. Third part will be about creating a WordPress theme. Let’s begin!
Nature provides design inspiration all around us. Nature’s impact on web design can be easily seen by browsing through design galleries and observing how many quality designs are inspired by nature. In addition, many logos include some element from nature.
In this post we’ll showcase 45 logos that have been inspired by nature. Many use trees or leaves in the design of the logo, while others use other things from nature such as a landscape, mountains, and more.
Bollywood Masala
As cheesy as it sounds, there’s nothing we’re more thankful for than the wonderful clients we get to work with every day. We’re especially excited and thankful that we have so many new clients this year who have new sites that will drive business in their direction. While in the future, you can expect to see our launches divided into Real Estate and Interactive, today, we wanted to highlight all of November’s launches.
O’Brien Brothers Agency
O’Brien Brothers Agency is a Burlington, VT based real estate development and management company. Working seamlessly together, USM and O’Brien Brothers Agency created a new site that clearly guides users to all sides of the business. The resulting website not only features top of the line design, it’s also easy for Josie at O’Brien to manage. See her note to USM about how the process worked for her.
Dave Chenette
Ted and I went to The Vermont Small Business Development Center (VtSBDC) Advisory Board’s Celebration of Success of Small Business in Northwestern Vermont yesterday morning. Ted was kindly invited to be the guest speaker and got to tell both his story and the story of USM.
Following a warm introduction from Janice St. Onge, who was a Peer-to-Peer mentor for USM, Ted started by sharing the most recent chapter in USM history about how I recently joined the USM Team as Interactive Director. He then jumped back to where his entrepreneurial adventure began with his lemonade stand. He explained how his mother’s attempted shut down of the stand due to a messy kitchen and underpaid siblings lead to the “incorporation” of Adler Family Enterprises with his father’s help and then his failed attempt at a hostile take over of his siblings shares in Adler Family Enterprises, which was blocked by his father, who also played the role of S.E.C.
After a lot of laughs, Ted discussed how USM evolved from creating sites at college campuses like Middkid.com, to developing web sites for Vermont businesses and then to specializing in websites for REALTORS. Today, USM Interactive develops custom web sites for businesses & non-profits throughout the country. USM’s Real Estate team develops innovative website tools and websites for REALTORS in Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, and most recently Maine. In planning for the presentation, Ted & I pulled together a group of locally-interesting sites that USM Interactive has developed in the last six months. The presentation’s show-and-tell included the following clients:
As I reflect on my first two weeks as Interactive Director at USM, I look out the office window at the Lake Champlain view with a huge smile. I bet there would be even more smiles around here if the recent cold November rains were snow. I feel welcomed and inspired by an amazingly talented team. I feel challenged and charged by beginning a new career opportunity. And, I know clients from my previous business that are managing their website with Legitify Studio now have access to a higher level of support and expanded services to improve their existing website.
USM recently acquired the Legitify Studio accounts from Legitify. I have been operating Legitify as a web service company for seven years on Burlington’s waterfront. The Legitify team and services have evolved over time but one constant has been my dedication to delivering high quality, high value and innovative web services. I am eager to continue and nurture this dedication with Union Street Media’s Team, Clients, Platforms, Services and Vision.
USM has two distinct service groups: 1) Online solutions for real estate professionals 2) Internet marketing, design and development for business, education and non-profit organizations. My primary responsibility is to oversee the operations of USM Interactive. With this role I have the opportunity to work closely with both USM Interactive clients and the talented USM Interactive design, production, internet marketing and support teams.
If you are a business, education and non-profit organization looking for a new website or to redesign and existing website, visit USM Interactive to learn more or Contact USM.
Holmes: On the Case for a Good Back Link
Inbound links or back linking is a tricky topic. It’s difficult to write about, can be tedious to implement and there are many gotchas to avoid. Why should I want to tackle this on a Monday morning I ask myself?
The fact is, this area of SEO is still as important as ever and the rules of the game periodically change, as search engines continue their Darwinian evolution right in front of our eyes. I encourage you to take the Sherlock Holmes approach with link building as I help you investigate the evidence, deciphering the good from the bad ways to get links.
I’ll keep it simple by saying that search engines consider a vote for your website, from another one of good authority and relevance one of the prime factors in search engine results.
On this blog I have written often about giving your website visitors value, making your site the best resource for real estate information in your market area, and capitalizing on the resulting engagement by providing visible and attractive conversion tools on key pages. These approaches work—people see the value that your are providing and frequently will take that next step and contact you. But what if you don’t want to be that nice?!?
Welcome to the world of forced registration, where a visitor is required to provide contact information in order to view more details about properties listed on your website.
Sometimes people need a little push to take that step and contact you, but you need to be careful: If you push at the wrong time you might push them off your website, rather than to your sign up form. As with everything, it is all about timing and value. If you are going to use forced registration in an area where it is not required by your MLS, you are walking a dangerous line. From a visitor’s point of view, you are “selling” them information and making them pay for it with their contact info. If they can get the information you’re offering down the street for free, you’d better have a highly appealing value proposition accompanying that sign-in form. Let’s look at the right and wrong way to implement forced registration.
For this exercise, we will pretend that I am a potential customer who arrives on your website. I might have been referred by someone or might have found you through search engines; either way, I have never talked to you and I don’t have any particular allegiance to you or your brand.
Search Engine Optimization
