Square One Web Solutions Blog » Minnesota Internet Marketing

Introducing Dan Kompass, our new Business Development Manager

admin — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 19:58:58 +0000

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!”

Why Use Twitter?

admin — Fri, 04 Nov 2011 19:23:44 +0000

Been thinking about using Twitter but have avoided it? Here are 3 compelling facts from online data to consider.

Twitter’s Expanding Influence

Although more people use Facebook than Twitter, they each have a different type of audience. As a social platform, Twitter has some very compelling facts to start using it (facts are from Hubspot’s 100 Awesome Marketing Charts):

Two Times More Leads from Twitter

Companies that use Twitter average 2x more leads/month than those that do not (Hubspot 2010).

Union Street Media on Twitter

Think of Twitter as not just a social media tool but as a search engine. Twitter provides a ton of exposure to people needing answers that can provide. Being a regular resource means that you will be there when they are ready to commit to a purchase.

Real Estate Website Launches

admin — Thu, 20 Oct 2011 13:30:36 +0000

We’ve had the privilege at Union Street Media of launching several new real estate websites.

www.byselrealty.com

New England Land Company

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
Real Estate Agent

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

Preppy Dress Up Day at Union Street Media

admin — Mon, 03 Oct 2011 15:26:40 +0000

Who said dress up days were only for kids at Halloween?

Two years ago, Union Street Media redeveloped the website for the Burlington Tennis Club. One of the best kept secrets in town, they have eight beautifully maintained Har-Tru tennis courts and a pool that is home to the Vermont state champion swim team. Burlington Tennis Club has experienced a renaissance lately in part thanks to Union Street Media’s Andy Vota & his wife, Cara, who have recruited a number of new members. The Club is by no means a bastion of popped collars and top siders anymore. When we recently hosted our end of the summer party at Burlington Tennis Club, we decided to rock it old school style… and office Preppy Dress Up Day was born.

Here’s a photo of several Union Street Media employees, one of whom I don’t think any of us had seen wearing shoes all summer, decked out in style.

New Union Street Media Websites

admin — Mon, 12 Sep 2011 16:30:48 +0000

In the last few weeks, we’ve had the privilege at Union Street Media of launching several new websites. The Lynn Jackson Group, a Century 21 Jack office, located in Vergennes, VT, was looking for a new website provider that would be able to help them expand their market. Union Street Media had the right tools to do the job. The system allowed them to update listings and syndicate with Social Media sites with the added ability to create additional content pages on their website; a task that had previously taken up a lot of their time. The new website also allowed them to segment their MLS data, providing site visitors with recommended searches and more SEO authority.

Mysteries of the Title Tag

admin — Wed, 31 Aug 2011 12:00:13 +0000

In this post I wanted to turn my attention to an oft-misunderstood basic SEO practice—and one that I get a lot of questions about: the title tag.

What Is It and Where Is It Found?

The title tag is one of if not THE most important piece of text information that search engines look at as a signal of relevance on a web page. These innocuous words and phrases appear at the top of your browser. They also appear in search results and sometimes as link anchor text, from external links.

Title tag at top of browser

By HTML and XHTML law, a title tag is required on every web page document. Title tags are located in the source code within the Head section. For anyone not familiar with code, you don’t necessarily need to know that but it helps if you want to ask the right questions. It looks something like this:

Recent Union Street Media Website Launches

admin — Wed, 24 Aug 2011 14:43:07 +0000

In the last few weeks, we’ve had the privilege at Union Street Media of launching several new websites.

HKS Associates, Inc.

HKS Associates Inc. is located in New Hampshire’s beautiful Monadnock region. As an office that wears many hats in the industry, they needed a website company that specifically understood real estate. HKS was looking for a vendor who would create a website that represented their markets lifestyle and also took advantage of real estate tools available to help home-buyers learn more about their listed properties. The website needed to be easy to updated without the need for a developer or HTML knowledge. HKS wanted a company who would help them to understand the tech jargon and work with them to implement these new technologies and help grow their business.

Union Street Media Wins Best Web Developer Award

admin — Wed, 10 Aug 2011 16:20:15 +0000

Union Street Media was proud to be awarded Best Web Developer (three years and running!) by Seven Days; an independent paper that calls on Vermonters to vote for their local favorites in dozens of “Seven Daysies” categories.

The team at Union Street Media is honored and excited to be recognized by our Vermont neighbors and clients once again.

Congratulations to three of our clients for making the list as well. Shelburne Vineyard for winning best Vermont winery Sneakers Bistro for being a runner up for best breakfast/brunch restaurant. The Skinny Pancake for being a runner up for best street eats.

Thank you from our team!

AIGA Vermont Event Recap: SEO Tips for Website Owners & Designers

admin — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 20:54:25 +0000

Last week I participated in a panel discussion about SEO hosted by AIGA Vermont, the VT chapter of the national organization for design professionals. Together with my counterparts at Green Mountain Coffee Roasters and Gardener’s Supply, Tom Funk and Joe McHugh, we examined the topic “Designing with SEO in Mind,” sharing information about how to design a website that will look fantastic, attract search engines, and generate lots of targeted traffic to your website.

Many of the take-aways we shared with our audience of designers were, in fact, great advice for anyone with a website. It’s important to build a site well from the start, but it’s equally important to put careful thought into the way you maintain and improve your website throughout its lifetime. Below are some points we touched on at the AIGA Vermont event that will contribute to a great experience for both your website visitors and the search engines.

1. Strike a good balance between content and graphics

This is key. Your website needs to inspire trust, and an attractive, professional-looking design is important to that end. However, search engines are much better equipped to digest easily readable text than beautiful pictures.

How to Gather Actionable Insights From Your YouTube Videos

admin — Wed, 15 Jun 2011 14:59:15 +0000

Basic YouTube optimization is an excellent first step into getting your video found on YouTube. The next step, once you have that optimization in place, is to start looking at YouTube’s Insight tool. The Insight tool is key in developing an understanding of your YouTube audience and figuring out where they are coming from and what they like and don’t like. If you have never taken a look at the YouTube Insight tool, here is your chance to see just why you should be using it regularly.

How to Get to YouTube Insight

After logging into YouTube, head to My Videos. Once there you should see a tab labelled Insights. When you click on that you are presented with several different viewing options: summary, views, discovery, demographics, community, and subscribers. All of them have definitions (look for the “?” link within each view) and provide different points of helpful data for your journey with YouTube. Rather than reinventing the wheel and going into each, here are a few highlights that will help get you into using Insight regularly. Keep in mind that you can look at the Insight data below as an overview of all videos and on an individual basis.

YouTube Discovery Section (Click for Larger Image)

How Your YouTube Videos Are Discovered

Once you create a video and it is out in the wild, how are people finding it? Taking a look at the Discovery section gives you an ongoing view of the major ways people find video, such as: YouTube Search, External Website, Embedded Player, Google Search and more. There is a graph and you can alter not only what results show, but also what span of time is measured. As often happens with data, the short term measurements vary a bit from the longer term. Although it is important to look at both, the longer term measurements generally give you data that produces reliable insights or trends. If you are targeting your video via different channels, the discovery section gives you some indication of how successful your efforts have been.