RALEIGH, North Carolina., Jan. 12th /PRNewswire/ — AmericanEagle.com, an industry leader in Web site design, development, hosting, and marketing, is expanding its national footprint with today’s announcement that Raleigh will host a new North Carolina regional office located at 6070 Six Forks Road, Suite-E. The new office will bring onboard the innovative Media and Web Marketing team from RTP Designs.

In order to share information about the new regional office, AmericanEagle.com is hosting an online introduction seminar the last week of January, 2010. Included in the discussion will be web design, hosting, and marketing services. To register for the event and learn more, please contact Jason Jasura at 919.341.0152 or ncinfo@americaneagle.com.

AmericanEagle.com serves customers nationwide through 6 corporate offices. Since 1995, AmericanEagle has designed and developed more than 3,000+ Web sites, Intranets, and online applications for virtually all types of businesses, including small and medium-sized, Fortune 500, government organizations, and associations. The goal: to provide their clients with unrivaled website strategy, designs, development, and maintenance through their internet development solutions, services, and technology. Their services focus on providing businesses with expert marketing, consulting, and development of compelling promotional campaigns. These services insures the success of a on-line web presence..

“We are excited to welcome the North Carolina office to the AmericanEagle.com family. The office is an ideal location to service customers and we are confident that the new office will be a successful addition to the local community.” said Tony Svanascinni, CEO of AmericanEagle.com. ” With the combined expertise and skills of AmericanEagle.com and the RTP Designs Team we will continue to expand and satisfy a growing demand in and around North Carolina for high-quality Web design, development, hosting, and marketing.”

“With a history of innovative product introductions and a commitment to service, AmericanEagle.com delivers long-term value to its customers” said Paul Gothier of the North Carolina regional office. “Through our new regional office, we are proud that we can work with clients to build compelling, value-based web presence and content management systems that will aid business’s marketing/branding, business management, and success in today’s economy.”

About AmericanEagle.com

Americaneagle.com, Inc., founded in 1978, is based in Park Ridge, Illinois, and employs state-of-the-art web-based technologies to help businesses improve quality, efficiency, and operate more cost effectively. Currently, Americaneagle.com employs approximately 160 professionals including broad support teams geared to simplify web operations, design and development experts, operational support professionals, and training managers. These high quality web-based services are provided to small and large businesses, startups, Fortune 500 companies, professional sports teams, other business niches. It has offices throughout the country including Chicago, Cleveland, Washington D.C., New York, and Los Angeles. Some of their 3,000+ clients include Body Central, Fannie May Candies, New York Giants, Donald J Pliner Shoes, NASCAR, Chicago Bears, and the U.S. Army. For additional information about Americaneagle.com please visit www.americaneagle.com.

Posted by Jason under Company News | No Comments »

Our previous entry in the Internet Marketing Strategies focused on researching the marketplace. Today, we continue with Strategy #3.

Strategy #3: Define your Objectives and Target Metrics

Defining your internet marketing objectives may seem too obvious to worth mentioning, but many a marketing effort has failed to deliver the anticipated results because this crucial step was not taken before crafting the campaign. The most important aspect of your campaign will be the actual message content followed by its delivery. By taking the time to define your objectives and success metrics, your internet marketing efforts will have a higher chance of achieving your goal.

Make sure to define objectives align with your overall business strategy. If your overall business strategy depends upon selling a certain product, then create an objective which provides a path towards the product purchase, keeping in mind that the objective does not have to be a direct sales pitch. This objective can be thought of as Building Brand Awareness. Other objectives might include:

1. Community Building around your product

2. Gathering market research information from potential customers

3. Improving customer satisfaction

Finally, define your target metrics. With the advances in targeted marketing and data analysis, businesses have more access than ever to consumer activities. By defining the metrics before the campaign starts, you can work with the content delivery providers to ensure that the message delivery system will provide measurable statistics. For example, a simple metric may be counting the respondents to a promotional pricing. By embedding a coupon code in the campaign content and tracking the coupon at the point of sale, you have direct knowledge of the campaign’s effectiveness. Of course, if you hadn’t taken the time to define the metric and ensure its implementation through the coupon code, that data would have been lost.

Check back soon as we explore Stategy #4 of  Top 10 Internet Marketing Strategies for Beginners

Posted by Jason under All Content | No Comments »

Facebook has grown up a lot since it was first started in Marc Zuckerberg’s college dorm. A site that was once limited to students is now a worldwide phenomenon. In it’s early days, a  key seperator between Facebook and Myspace was how it controlled who you could access in a network. Facebook kept you fenced in to other users in your region, business or school.

Unleash the Hounds

Facebook will now remove regional networks in it’s entirety so people can connect around the world. I am sure this is also tied into their new online translation efforts. Facebook started removing regional networks a few months ago, but some new privacy settings will also be incorporated that should help you maintain the seclusion you are accustomed to. In fact, you will be able to limit what types of posted content is displayed on a friend by friend basis.

Here is the Entire Press Release from Marc Zuckerberg:

“It has been a great year for making the world more open and connected. Thanks to your help, more than 350 million people around the world are using Facebook to share their lives online.

To make this possible, we have focused on giving you the tools you need to share and control your information. Starting with the very first version of Facebook five years ago, we’ve built tools that help you control what you share with which individuals and groups of people. Our work to improve privacy continues today.

Facebook’s current privacy model revolves around “networks” — communities for your school, your company or your region. This worked well when Facebook was mostly used by students, since it made sense that a student might want to share content with their fellow students.

Over time people also asked us to add networks for companies and regions as well. Today we even have networks for some entire countries, like India and China.

However, as Facebook has grown, some of these regional networks now have millions of members and we’ve concluded that this is no longer the best way for you to control your privacy. Almost 50 percent of all Facebook users are members of regional networks, so this is an important issue for us. If we can build a better system, then more than 100 million people will have even more control of their information.

The plan we’ve come up with is to remove regional networks completely and create a simpler model for privacy control where you can set content to be available to only your friends, friends of your friends, or everyone.

We’re adding something that many of you have asked for — the ability to control who sees each individual piece of content you create or upload. In addition, we’ll also be fulfilling a request made by many of you to make the privacy settings page simpler by combining some settings. If you want to read more about this, we began discussing this plan back in July.

Since this update will remove regional networks and create some new settings, in the next couple of weeks we’ll ask you to review and update your privacy settings. You’ll see a message that will explain the changes and take you to a page where you can update your settings. When you’re finished, we’ll show you a confirmation page so you can make sure you chose the right settings for you. As always, once you’re done you’ll still be able to change your settings whenever you want.

We’ve worked hard to build controls that we think will be better for you, but we also understand that everyone’s needs are different. We’ll suggest settings for you based on your current level of privacy, but the best way for you to find the right settings is to read through all your options and customize them for yourself. I encourage you to do this and consider who you’re sharing with online.

Thanks for being a part of making Facebook what it is today, and for helping to make the world more open and connected.”

Mark Zuckerberg

I think this was a wise decision on Facebook’s part. These steps combined with Facebook’s developing language translation efforts will make the global online community even more unified.

Posted by Jason under social media | No Comments »

Tags: facebook | facebook privacy

Our previous entry in the Internet Marketing Strategies focused on creating a Marketing budget. Today, we continue with Strategy #2.

Strategy #2: Researching the Marketplace

Let’s face it. The Internet is too vast to market effectively to every corner, so targeting your message delivery to key locations is critical.  How to find those key locations? Fortunately, there are many tools that can pinpoint those locations. A few tools listed by MarketProfs include:

1. Google alerts http://www.google.com/alerts – Sends an email whenever a key word or phrase is mentioned in online content

2. Google Blog Search http://blogsearch.google.com – Searches blogs for keywords or phrases

3. Twitter Search http://search.twitter.com – Searches Twitter posts for keywords or phrases

While you are examining your results, look at the content and format of your competitor’s messages and how their message compares to that of your company. Can your message meet the same needs as those supplied your competition? Can you exceed the value provided by your competition?

By using solid research, you can begin laying the foundation for crafting and delivering your message to where it will be most effective and deliver positive results!

Posted by Jason under All Content & Internet Marketing & social media | No Comments »

Tags: Internet Marketing

With any emerging marketing channel, it takes time for the stakeholders in your business to recongize it’s value. Social Media is one such channel. As a marketer, you recognize it’s value but how do you convey this to stakeholders who are responsible for your bottom line?

Know your budget constraints:

If you are prepared to discuss the financial and personnel resources required for a social media strategy, you will look educated and more credible when stating your case to stakeholders.

Here is a list of common items to budget for when planning your social media campaign:

• Staff hours dedicated to the campaign instead of work involving core-competencies.
• Ongoing social media education and training
• Additional bandwidth usage from your company website (especially video)

What to do if your stakeholders balk at the cost:

Let your stakeholders know that when compared to traditional marketing, Social Media is actually a low cost vehicle for fulfilling many business objectives such as:

• Promoting products and services
• Increasing website traffic
• Boosting natural search engine rankings
• Monitoring your competition (what stakeholder would not like that?)

Some more statistics to the help the case:

No claims holds water unless they have some concrete data to support them, so here you go:

1. Research from Hub Spot found that companies that blog increase their website visitors by 55% compared to those who don’t and they may generate 97% more website links and 434% more indexed pages.

2. A survey run by McKinsey of about 1700 corporate executes discovered that 65% of respondents claimed measurable advantages from social media – which included a lower cost for doing business.

3. Dell computers which has 1.3 million followers and has earned 2 million in revenue since 2007 directly from their Twitter account.

So there is a start of how you sell the value of social media to your stakeholders. Check back here for more insight on this subject later.

Posted by Jason under Internet News & social media | No Comments »

Given that it’s Friday, I thought It would be appropriate to discuss Twitter’s follow friday phenomenon.  Follow Friday is nothing new. In fact, it started in Mid-January of 09 by the Tweeter Micah Baldwin.  I am often asked about it’s use by Twitter newbies, hence the reason for this blog post.

So what is Follow Friday anyway?

Simply put – a Follow Friday Tweet contains the usernames of other Twitter users that you think your followers should follow. (Say that 10 times fast…). The Tweet usually contains the hashtags: #ff or #followfriday so that users searching those hashtags can monitor the day’s reccomendations.

Why would you want to reccomend people to follow?

Well executed social media campaigns make building relationships a priority. If you recongnize someone you are following as valuable with a Follow Friday Tweet, it can only strengthen your current relationship with them. It will also strenghen relationships with your followers if you provide quality reccomendations (see below).

Here are some guidelines for your Follow Friday Tweets:

• Don’t reciprocate Follow Friday Tweets unless you genuinley want to. Spammy Twitter accounts often send out Follow Friday mentions with the intent of receiving a reciprocation for exposure.
• Don’t arbitrarily choose your Follow Friday mentions. Briefly explain why your followers should follow your canditates in your Tweet.
• Don’t feel pressured to send out a Follow Friday mention every Friday. If you did not engage with any new Twitter user’s this week, wait until you do. Remember, quality over quantity counts in your Tweets.

Posted by Jason under Twitter & social media | No Comments »

Tags: #ff | #followfriday | follow friday

Previously, we discussed the creation of this series, Top 10 Internet Marketing Strategies for Beginners. Today, we continue our series with Strategy #1.

Strategy #1: Start preparing your Marketing budget

You wouldn’t expect that launching a new television or radio advertising campaign to be free, would you? Of course not, but many businesses are under the mistaken impression that since a web page can be changed with the act of typing, the cost of Internet marketing is free. Or management may say “The intern can handle it by himself, we don’t need to pay for that.” Such notions are common and must be held up for scrutiny. A MarketingProfs study suggests there just a few of the costs which could arise in an Internet Marketing campaign:

• Time and personnel used to create professional, compelling content on a recurring basis ( you wouldn’t let just anyone create a TV ad for you, so why trust that job to the intern?)
• Training of personnel to use social media tools
• Time spent in addition to normal duties to push out new content
• Advertising dollars
• Giveaways, promotional tie-in items

Once the hidden costs related to Internet Marketing are recognized, they can be assessed and refined as you start focusing on the creation of your marketing content and the delivery of it through the Internet.

Check this space again for Strategy #2 in our series, Top 10 Internet Marketing Strategies for Beginners.

Posted by Paul under All Content & Internet Marketing & social media | No Comments »

Tags: Internet Marketing | social media

Last week RTP Designs attended Internet Summit ‘09 (#isum09) – a conference that united likeminded businesses and internet professionals right here in the Triangle.

This entry focuses on my impressions of the conference agenda, speakers and material presented.

Please note that these are my thoughts and opinions and not necessarily those of RTP Designs.

Venue:

The conference was held at the Raleigh Convention Center. Parking was ample, but cost $7 each day…ouch. The reception on Wed was held in a business casual setting complete with fine appetizers and an open bar. (beer and wine). I was lucky enough to be approached by some of my Twitter followers later in the evening as the gathering transferred over to the Oxford - a quaint pub in downtown Raleigh.

Keynotes:

Aside from the 5 minute video plugging ESPN.com, Jim Kosner’s keynote was informative and entertaining. He educated the audience on ESPN’s strategy for content delivery on multiple mediums such as web, phone, TV, radio etc. Many companies make the mistake of concentrating on one or a few media pipelines to deliver their message. ESPN proved that thinking outside the pipe (so to speak) can bring excellent results.

Richard Jalichandra of Technorati provided some interesting metrics on how bloggers monetize:

• Display Ads:  40%
• Search Ads:  39%
• Affiliate: 36%
• Paid Postings: 8%

Other than that, there was some additional discussion on blogging trends for 2010 but overall I was not too inspired by this discussion.

Search Marketing Panel:

I was particularly impressed with Jason Dowell of Triangle Direct Media . He exuded an in depth technical knowledge and explained the architecture necessary to stay one up on search engine algorithms. While most of this was not new to me, his ability to articulate the subject passionately added to the discussion. Ian Kelevich of eMarketer beefed things up with some stats and outlooks for the Search Marketing industry. He noted that overall advertising spend was down 15% in 09 and search marketing spend is projected to increase 6% next year.

Analytics Panel:

This panel focused on the ongoing maturity of the analytics industry and how the issue of data integrity is holding it back. Dan Forootan, an obvious data-head was passionate on the subject of data integrity. When asked what his recommendations were for improving data he replied: “Hire better programmers” which I found amusing. However, I think it takes more than clean code to make analytics worth your business’s time. KPI’s are different for every company and need to be defined correctly. Once businesses’ begin to this effectively, the value of analytics will become more evident.

Online Advertising Strategies Panel:

This panel was a little general for me but moderator Gian Fulgoni (chairman Comscore) did an excellent job of creating debate on the subject of traditional V.S. online marketing. Fulgoni kept stressing that traditional branding offline was still just as important as marketing online.  At first, I disagreed. However, Fulgoni raised the point that 80% of purchases are still made offline, which changed my perspective a bit. I am still however, partial to online marketing.

Email Marketing Panel:

Aside from the debate on whether or not social media would eliminate the need for email marketing, this panel was somewhat stale to me. Ultimately the panel agreed that social media and email marketing are intertwined, which is my take as well.

Conclusion:

Overall I was happy with this conference. It provided great networking opportunities and it was good to see both local and national businesses come together to discuss business and technology. However, I would was hoping for more advanced material in the panels.

Posted by Jason under Company News & Internet Marketing | 1 Comment »

http://www.flickr.com/photos/lovelysparks/
CC BY 2.0

Whenever I share at a social gathering that I design Internet Marketing campaigns, people stop whatever they were talking about with “I have a friend that owns their own business and they want to do this Internet Marketing thing. Would you mind talking with them? Oh, they can’t really pay anything, but I’d really appreciate it.”

And so began my quest for a way to help out my acquaintances without going broke providing one-on-one training. After numerous days of going back through my marketing presentations on Twitter, Facebook and other social network platforms, the outlines for a series of informative posts which I call “Top 10 Internet Marketing Strategies for Beginners” began to take shape.

Why create a series on using the Internet for marketing especially for beginners? To start, the social media and Internet Marketing medium is changing so fast, that someone casually looking for easy tips on how to begin Internet Marketing can easily find information that was relevant just a month ago, but no longer applies to today’s fast-moving market. And the amount of information that exists in this domain is so vast, that the person who really wants to focus on their business can easily be overwhelmed.

All of which brings us back to the series. I will provide some analysis, some insight and hopefully some thought paths to get things started so if you are a business owner, you can begin formulating your own strategies which apply to your business, not the one next door. Check back in this space for the first post in my series “Top 10 Internet Marketing Strategies “.

Posted by Paul under Internet Marketing & Internet News | No Comments »

Tags: Internet Marketing | social media

Original Post by Niamh Arthur

Obviously everybody these days is on some form of social media online. It’s the new way that we communicate and work together.

People are essentially social. Gone are the days when we trusted big companies and brand names, now we prefer to know who we are working with or giving our money to. We want to know their stories, their likes and dislikes, we like to work with people like us.

Using social media tools for marketing allows me to simply be myself online, provide valuable information and content to anyone who is looking for it, and I attract people who share common interests and feel that they already know who I am, to my business. The benefit is not just that they know who I am and what I’m about, but I get to deal with the type of people I want to work with. I want to work with people like myself and my team, big-thinkers, positively motivated, want to be a force for good. Nothing is more frustrating in business than wasting your time with people you just do not resonate with. It’s frankly depressing when you try to deal with people who are negative and pessimistic.

When you advertise you have absolutely no control over the type of people who respond to you. You know nothing about them, and quite often they have a “show me” attitude. They approach the interaction with suspicion because you are a stranger to them. When you attract people to you using social media they already know that you provide value, they know that you are a moral person, and that you are genuine. These people only contact you if they feel they would like to work with you, so by the time you are spending time with them they simply have to decide if they like what you are offering, they already know they like you.

For several months now I have not advertised my business at all. I have not placed any ads (well, apart from ones on Craigslist, which is also a community). By only using social media tools for marketing the difference is now I get to collaborate with others, I get to provide a service, I get to find the people I want to work with and who want to work with me. One of the best parts is…it’s absolutely free! You just have to spend some time to create good content for people and to make connections.

This is a great video that outlines some of the statistics of social media tools. It goes a bit fast…but you can pause to catch some of the stats. Really fascinating… ”

Posted by Paul under Internet Marketing | No Comments »

Tags: Internet Marketing | social media