This 4 hour seminar features national experts as well as representatives from Google and Bing, covering an incredible amount of Internet marketing information.

• You can sign-up now for just $89 (Save $40!) by using Five Technology’s promo code:  five2010

This workshop will be held at the fantastic Westin Hotel in Edina, located just off France Ave.  There are two identical sessions, one morning and one afternoon, but seating is currently limited to just 200 per session.

Local University introduces, explains and teaches Internet marketing basics, aimed at the small business owner and marketing person.  Incredible insight, process, best practices, D-I-Y tips and case studies will be provided on:

• Search engine optimization (SEO)
• Local search (Google LBC & Maps, Bing Local)
• Social Media (Blogs, Facebook & Twitter)
• Web Analytics

This event is truly one of kind to hit the Minneapolis & St Paul area.  Take advantage of the opportunity to learn Search Engine Optimization tips and techniques that will lead to sustained, long-term search engine rankings (and new customers).  The last Local University event in Spokane, WA was a huge success.

Local University Presenters
I’m also excited to be part of the outstanding line-up of presenters including David Mihm of GetListed.org, Mike Blumenthal, Matt McGee, Mary Bowling, Ed Reese, Ryan Hayward of Google and Mikko Ollila of Bing.

Register Today
Head over to the Twin Cities registration page (use our promo code) and reserve your spot.  If you’re coming from outstate Minnesota, the Westin is offering a $139/night rate for fantastic accommodations.

You simply won’t find another seminar, with this amount of information here in Minnesota for the price.

Local University Twin Cities is sponsored by Google, Bing, Deluxe and ReliaCloud Cloud Servers from VISI.

View your email marketing reports on your iPhone, Android or newer BlackBerry mobile phone.

A Feature Rich Email Marketing Service
This latest addition of mobile reports is just one more reason clients are often blown away by what Five can offer with our email services. While baseline services like Constant Contact are better than blasting email out of your Outlook, our tool is a complete and robust offering.

Here are just some aspects of our email marketing offering:

• Custom e-letter or e-offer designs
• Web based management tools to give you control
• List building, management & segmentation features
• Pay as you send, no monthly fees
• Service & support from Five, you have a partner!
• Full reporting, Google Analytics integration
• And now, mobile phone report access

Email marketing is a great customer relationship tool and if you are looking for a better service, stronger reporting tools or just want to finally get started, we can help.  Give Five a shout and let’s discuss email marketing.

Showcasing The Work Of A Commercial Real Estate Firm
In just about any line of business, Five works to find the best ways to provide case studies and real world examples to feature on a company’s website.  West’s website has specific pages to view both their industrial properties and retail properties.

The West Real Estate sections feature a photo gallery per project, location map, details about the property and the ability to print, share via email, share via social media and bookmark.

Recap Of This Web Design Project
Here is what Five Technology provided for this website project:

• Custom web design
• Photography of all commercial properties
• SEO friendly web design
• Web content creation
• Property feature, photo gallery & details

The West Real Estate web design project turned out just like their commercial real estate projects, valuable and professional.

Visit the website: http://www.westreinc.com

Denver based SEO firm seOverflow recently posted their presentation slides on 7 Characteristics of an SEO Friendly CMS and I’ve embedded it below.

Lets look at each of the 7 SEO items and how they factor into our CMS, the Site Management Console.

1. Customizable title & meta tags – YES
Each page in the SMC has a “properties” option to edit your meta title tag, meta keywords and meta description.

2. Custom, keyword rich, SEO friendly URLs – YES
Each page gives you the ability to create it’s file path.
Example:  http://www.concretetreatmentsinc.com/concrete-services

3. Only one URL exists for each page – YES
The CMS will only let you have one unique file and URL structure.  No dynamic URLS, no canonical issues.

4. 301 Redirect Functionality – YES
Our CMS allows for 301 redirects and other redirects as needed.

5. Ability to add ALT tag to images – YES
In both our general content editor and custom templates, we allow for the ALT attribute for images.

6. Ability to create HTML & XML sitemaps – YES
Our CMS auto-generates  the HTML sitemap upon a full release and while we set-up XML sitemaps for our clients, they have access in our file manager to change this at anytime.

7. Ability to create keyword rich internal links – YES
Absolutely. From our initial design concepts, we are looking to help clients leverage internal linking and the CMS allows for multiple ways to easily control your links and their anchor text.

So overall, I think we get an A+ on this simple SEO checklist for our content management system. We offer these SEO benefits above and also have some more enhanced SEO features for larger sites or e-commerce websites.

With the vast array of functionality our CMS offers, you can see why businesses are often blown away by our web platform. Reliable, stable, flexible, scalable, easy to use and yes … very SEO friendly.

Organized by GetListed.org co-founder David Mihm, the seminar featured a great line-up of experienced Internet marketers as well as Google and Bing representatives.  The Local University seminar will be heading out to other cities in 2010, bringing a fantastic wealth of information for any business or organization looking to improve their online marketing knowledge.

In just a 4 hour session, attendees took part in detailed presentations, real world case studies, Q & A sessions, how-to’s, do-it-yourself tips, resources and more.  Overall it was some incredible search, social and local/maps information, from talented presenters, all for $129. A complete steal to get a ton of  basics, the best practices and the baseline to market online.

The panel of speakers form left to right were Mikko Ollila of Bing, Ryan Hayward of Google, Matt McGee of Small Business SEM, Mike Blumenthal a local search expert, David Mihm of GetListed.org and Mary Bowling of seOverflow. Not pictured above was Spokane SEO expert Ed Reese.

Local University is a must for any business that wants real answers, real examples and access to grasp the opportunity to succeed online.

In addition to attending the seminar it was a chance for me to finally connect in person with other search marketers I have read, done business with and interacted with for some time.  I had a great time meeting a few new ones too like Mary Bowling, Mike Blumenthal (aka Professor Maps) and Mike Ramsey as the presenters took in dinner the night before.

Minneapolis In The Local University Future?
The one last piece that put me on a flight to Spokane was to attract the Local University offering to the Minneapolis area later this year.  The amount of information, the level of expertise and the complete offering would be perfect for the local business community here in the Twin Cities.

I can tell you that the event left Spokane buzzing, satisfied and hoping for another one.

Hopefully I’ll have some good news soon, but don’t hesitate to let your voice be heard with a comment below.

A Complete Web Application
Rear Window Media runs their business right from their website.  The back-end is a web application that allows advertisers to manage their ad(s) showing, their ad budget and other campaign details.  This application (screenshot below) is the hub of their client interaction and gives complete control to their advertising clients.

Incredible Tracking
RWM advertisers also get to view detailed maps on just exactly where there ads are showing.  How’s that for tracking?  By integrating Google maps with their web application, an advertiser can see what block in downtown Minneapolis thier ad appeared or what mile market on Interstate 35W.  Real time advertising, real time tracking.

Here is a screenshot of the map tracking report.

Web Design Project Overall
Five completed the front end of the web design and as well for their marketing interface.  This project really shows our ability to handle both the marketing front of a project and the complex web application backend, far past our great CMS features.

This project included:

• Web design
• Search Engine Friendly build
• Custom WordPress blog for RWM news
• Advertiser account & log-in
• Web application management for advertising
• Custom Google maps reporting
• Content management platform (SMC)

If you haven’t yet, visit the site:  http://www.rearwindowmedia.com

The project is fully recapped on the Taste Trend blog.

Five also photographed the restaurant and many menu items for the Shorewood to use on the new website.  Below is a photo of their Pepper Seared Ahi Tuna.

• Visit the website:  http://www.shorewoodgrill.com

For those of you new to the term Usability, it covers how easy user interfaces are to use. The word “usability” also refers to methods for improving ease-of-use during the design process. So in short: making it easy to use your website.

First up we’ll take a look at an easy adjustment for any website to make, making your web content easier to read.

Rid your website of long blocks of content and use sub-headings and one or two sentence paragraphs.  This simple rule easily makes your content easier to digest and a more scanable read.

Here is the wrong way to display content:

Here is the right way to make content easy to read:

So take a look at your website’s content and keep these usability tips in mind.  It’s simple to make these adjustments and improve your site quickly:

• Avoid large blocks of content (blocks=boring)
• Use 1 to 2 sentence paragraphs when possible
• Use sub-headers (size or color variance used correctly)
• Use bullet points or other call-outs

Give your page the scan test.  Can you look at it for 10 seconds and grasp what it’s about?  If not, apply the tips above and see your improvement take shape.

In making your content easier to digest for your user, you will likely make it easier for search engines as well to understand what your page is about … but the SEO benefits of usability, that’s a whole other blog post.

For me, small business is all about great people. They are inspired, resourceful, passionate and ever adapting.

Thanks to these characteristics, I feel great about the landscape of small business in 2010. Though consumer and business spending may vary, credit and loans will remain tight, some great things are going to happen. Many have already planned out what they can do this year to improve.

Small business has two fantastic things going for it in 2010:

• Opportunity and Technology

Opportunity: With any slump or downturn, there is the new battle to emerge or launch new ideas. Whether it’s an existing small business adding a service or product to their offering, or a longtime corporate worker being laid off and now taking the jump to work for themselves, opportunity is rampant.

Technology: Without a doubt, here is the part that excites us at Five Technology. We’ll get the chance again this year to work with some incredible businesses ready to leverage technology like never before. It might be a web redesign, a CMS integration, starting a blog, networking with social media or a custom web application that will push efficiency like never before.  The web is business in 2010, just think about it.

So let’s get after it. Let’s take advantage of the opportunity and mesh ideas with technology, to increase marketing efforts, sales, processes and efficiency.

Let’s make 2010 the year of the small business.

Host Carla Beaurline features various businesses from the Twin Cities area on the show. Five is the web host and CMS provider of the Around Town website and is currently redesigning the website for 2010.

You can view the full current episode here.

Everyone in our office had a great time with the shoot. It’s fun to talk about what we do on a daily basis for clients.