Setting this Google Places feature up couldn’t be simpler. Go to google.com/places and log in. Assuming you have a listing, just click Edit and then scroll down. You’ll see an option for “Yes, this business serves customers at their locations”. Once selected you’ll be able to specify your coverage area.

Here’s a video from the folks at Google:

But with access to great baked goods (cupcake bakeries are popping up everywhere these days,) comes a certain level of experience and knowledge about the difference between good and trendy baked goods, and great specialty cakes and cookies. That’s where Joelle’s Desserts comes in. Even here in New York City, when we at VisibleU want to send a special sweet gift we order from Joelle’s Desserts in Florida.

Joelle’s Desserts bakes and ships some of the most amazing blondies and brownies available anywhere. From the moment you pop open one of their beautiful tins you’ll feel a physical draw to these scrumptious treats. Hold yourself back and don’t listen to that little voice that’s telling you to keep them all for yourself. Because if there’s one thing better than exquisite home baked goods, it’s sharing them with friends and family.

These are the special treats you’ve been looking for, that thing no one else has, that surprise at the end of a meal that will have your guests seeking with their mouths full, just having to know where you found these? Your clients will just adore you when a tin arrives with a personalized note, shipped directly from Joelle’s kitchen, and your family will forgive that little incident over the holidays last year.

VisibleU worked with Joelle and her team to create a site that made it simple for her cult-like following to order and share these gems. The product and the fans speak for themselves, so check out the new site, and be among the loyal fans that turn to JoellesDesserts.com for that truly special treat.

The site gives this great little company everything they need to manage all of their orders, including everything from a single tin shipped as a gift, to a thousand orders for a business promotion. The site is also designed to allow for easy search engine optimization, and can be updated simply by the staff at Joelle’s Desserts.

With no branding guidelines to go with at the time, we worked with volunteers and staff to create a compelling look for the site. The site itself has amazing features and functionality, including it’s potential for growth (new features coming soon!). Everyone was proud of the work.

But over the past year CBST went through the process of creating a full brand strategy. (Yay!) Of course it was VisibleU’s job to apply it to the site, and we’re quite thrilled with the results. Take a look at the screen shots.

Step one back in 2008 was to build a new, organized, strong cbst.org that had the technology to expand to meet the needs of this dynamic community. Among those needs were multiple levels of authors and editors, podcasts, organized and dynamic site structure, potential for blogs, and so much more. The greatest challenge was presenting all of the many parts of the organization’s work and community.

The site launched to great response and has worked well over the past year or so. Now the site is newly updated to reflect the new branding (courtesy of the excellent folks at BigDuck). This wasn’t just a matter of changing a few colors. We had to make a lot of small adjustments so that the site didn’t simply reflect the new colors, but reflected the whole look and feel that the branding process came up with.

Surprise! Over the weekend, we’ve launched a whole new home for our marketing news blog. Everything that used to be over at hiringtheinternet.com can now be found all in one place here at visibleu.com.

Hiring the Internet’s been around since the beginning of 2007 (that’s forever in internet years) and we’re really proud of the loyal following of readers we’ve gained in that time. We get thousands of visits from people like you every month, looking for some advice or insight in web marketing. We’ll be continuing to give you everything you’ve come to expect with our new blog.

Our goal is to deliver a nicer experience, with easier access to both news about us, and our regular and super-informative and probably-researched articles on Internet Marketing.

A brief tour of our new features:

• A slick new homepage at http://www.visibleu.com/web-marketing-blog/ where you can see our most recent posts highlighted (making use of some fun new CSS3 design tricks!)
• Nice big images, both as lead-ins to our most recent posts, as well as in the headline for every post.
• Re-organized and condensed categories. You can see them listed at the left. Each category has it’s own accompanying icon, that appears next to the title on every page a post is listed. Click an icon to see the most recent posts in that category.
• All the old posts on hiringtheinternet.com have been seamlessly redirected to their new URLs. Good for our readers, and good for SEO. Everyone’s happy.

Like the new look? Hate it? We’d love to hear your feedback.

Our free workshop program in New York has come to a close. We provided training on Internet Marketing and Sales techniques every Wednesday since May. We got great feedback, and we’d like to say thank you the many of you who attended.

While the Workshops are over for now we still have 1 full day Internet Marketing Boot-camp left to give. It’s scheduled for Friday August 6th. There is space available so if you are interested in becoming an Internet Marketing Maven give us a call. Here’s what you’ll learn a the Boot Camp:

1. Creating an Internet Marketing Strategy

   Learn the most important steps for creating a realistic, actionable, and flexible strategy.
   You will walk away with a marketing road map to bringing in more business.

2. Connecting with New Prospects

   Attracting prospects and making that first connection is key. If you don’t have prospects
   going into your sales funnel, it doesn’t matter what you do next. We’ll review the What,
   Why, and When of Search Engine Optimization, Advertising, Affiliate Marketing, Referral
   & Word of Mouth, and Social Media.

3. Converting Prospects: Putting Communications Marketing to Work for You

   Learn the tricks that great sales and marketing professionals use to turn prospects
   into clients. We’ll show you a process that self optimizes, improves closing rates, and
   actually helps you spend less time while getting more business.

4. The Most Important Website and Email Design and Optimization Tips

   Years of schooling and experience have taught us that optimizing for human beings is
   much harder than optimizing for search engines. We’ll learn the secrets to converting
   website visitors and email subscribers to contacts and prospects .

5. Taking Action Now

   You’re all pumped up, you’ve learned the most important things that guide our own
   firm. Now it’s time to harness it all and take action. We’ll work collectively to create
   actions you can take today that will increase your visibility and clients within weeks!

Interested? Call George (646) 213-1442

But I’m most excited about their official video. This is one of the best (it would be the best, but I have to give the top spot to our own video) This is a video done right. It is clean. It is clear. It is beautifully done. Take a look and tell us what you think about the video or service.

Recently, I was sitting around and thinking about how I would use the amazing information I recently learned at a Sales Partner workshop. I was motivated and I had some new tools. I want to continue to grow VisibleU and while I have a great product, staff and market reach, our sales department can use improvement (I can say this because Sales reports to me).

At about the same time, Dano over at Sales Partners NY was thinking that he has a great product, staff and sales capability, but thought he’d like to improve his company’s market reach. He remembered meeting me and was thinking of getting together to talk about his Internet Marketing needs.

As we sat down to talk about helping each other, it dawned on us that we are not that different from our customers. We’re really good at our core business and need help in other areas. Our strengths are Sales, Marketing and Business Building. Who doesn’t need that? So, we decided to join forces and share our strengths with our peers.

We’ve created an action-packed, motivational 2 hour workshop to help you grow your business faster and more consistently than you’ve ever imagined. And, we’re making it free. There is a catch: You have to come to the workshop in mid-town Manhattan. Yes, this is a live event with real people in a room and a great opportunity to learn.

In the workshop you will learn:

• The six critical elements needed to run a successful business
• Ten tips for Online success in 2010
• How to sell more in any economy
• How to get more customers
• The six necessary steps to every effective sales process
• How to hire the Internet to work for you.

Workshops will start at 9:00am and end at 11:00am and will include some networking. The coffee’s on us. Sign up today.

We know you just can’t get enough of him, and he loves to talk so, you know, listen to the show, and call in!

You’ve got a business, be it services or a product. You’re not doing much. Your phone isn’t ringing. Paying your rent is getting difficult. You have no money for advertising. How can you get the word out? We’ll be speaking with Gabriel Blau, marketing consultant and co-founder of VisibleU.com who will discuss how to get your name and news of what you do out there.

Download our free 8-page Email Marketing whitepaper PLUS get a handy email checklist.

Understand the fundamentals you need to get started on your email campaign.

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Everyone who has done some online marketing has felt that sharp pang of terror and panic just before they send out an email campaign. (Even if you’re a full service email marketing agency!) Once you click that send button, your bulk email marketing campaign will go out to your targeted email marketing lists of hundreds or thousands of your potential clients, and if it doesn’t make the impression you’re hoping for, it could mean a real loss of revenue. It’s hard enough making sure that you’re making the right impression with your words, but there are plenty of little ways that an email can go south for other reasons – especially if you’re using rich HTML formatting. It’s worth taking the time to sit down, take a deep breath and make sure all your ducks are in a row before you click that button. Because once it’s gone…it’s gone.

You’ve put your heart and soul into putting together your email: here’s a quick checklist for you to run down before you send your baby out into the world.

1. Is your subject line working?

   Make sure that the subject line of your email is short, simple and engaging without being too misleading. Look back at what subject lines have worked best for you in the past (Don’t know? See number 8 below and start tracking!).There’s no excuse for not testing email campaigns.

2. Do all your links work?

   Send yourself a test version of the email, and click on absolutely everything that can be clicked on. A simple typo can lead to a broken link, and that may lead to lost and disappointed customers.

3. Is all of your copy correct?

   Read through your email letter by letter. No, we’re not kidding. Make sure any phone numbers, email addresses or URLs are correct. Make sure your offer or main message is accurate. Make sure you included the right coupon code if you’re offering one.

4. Will all your images load correctly?

   All your images should be hosted remotely, not included in the email, and you should make sure you’re using absolute urls to point to them. (“http://www.mywebsite.com/image.jpg” not just “/image.jpg“)

5. Does it look good in most email readers?

   Different email readers vary widely in how they display HTML emails. Being aware of some of these quirks will help you design your email, but it’s still worthwhile to run any new design through a series of tests. A service like Litmus can make those tests much easier.

6. Will your email still be readable if images are turned off?

   Many email readers don’t load images by default, so you’ll need to make sure that your email doesn’t look empty at first glance. Every image that needs to convey information in your email should have alt text specified. Even if the image is purely decorative, specifying alt="" inside the <img /> tag is better than leaving it out entirely.

7. Does your email include a plain text version?

   There are going to be people on your list who have a problem reading a richly formatted email, no matter how well it’s designed. Don’t leave those people out – if you’re using HTML, make sure to use a multi-part format, and include a plain-text version with all of the same content and links. Most Email Service Providers make this simple. (We use Emma)

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8. Are you tracking your success?

   Make sure you are set up to see how many people opened or clicked through your email. Beyond that, it’s important that you track what people clicked on, and where. Over time, this will help you make your emails more effective. If your email marketing service isn’t giving you all the data or reporting you need (and even if it is), use with Google Analytics or a similar analytics application and tag your links (Google offers a simple tool in their help section). You don’t know what the data will reveal until you have it, and you’ll never get it if you don’t start tracking now. This will help you evaluate (or create) your email marketing plan.

9. Have you updated your mailing list?

   Before you hit send, make sure to add all of the new leads and customers you’ve gotten since your last campaign. You should expect to lose people from the list slowly due to bounces and opt-outs, so you need to work to make sure your active list grows constantly. Most Email Service Providers will let you just import your whole list, and get rid of duplicates and opt-outs for you. And it’s not a bad idea to split up your list into multiple targeted email marketing lists to address different groups of prospects.

10. Will it pass through spam filters?

    Run your email through a testing system that tells you how likely it is to be flagged as spam before you send it – most good email marketing services provide one. Avoid emails that are all a single image with no text content, and look out for obvious spammy-looking subject lines, with words in uppercase accompanied by a pile of exclamation points.

11. Does it comply with the CAN-SPAM act?

    The law requires that your marketing emails are not misleading, that they provide a real physical address where your company can be reached, and that they provide a free and simple way for people to opt-out of your list. Complying isn’t just a legal requirement, it also makes your customers more comfortable with your business, and makes you look more established. Read all the legal details on the FTC website.

12. Is your call-to-action clear?

    Tell your readers exactly what action you want them to take when they get your email. Make sure that action is clear and prominent in your email, and as close to the top as possible. Your customers may get hundreds of emails in a week (or day!) – don’t expect that they’ll take the time to read yours all the way to the bottom. You’ve got a couple of seconds, if that, to get their attention and make them take action. Any email marketing web strategist will tell you, you’ve got to know what you want people to do, and you have to make it easy.

From automated email drip campaign, to triggered email marketing or enterprise email newsletter marketing, email marketing helps business – so take a breather before you send your next email, or sit down with your marketing agency (if you don’t have one, you can always hire us!) and make sure your emails are getting you and your business where you need to go.

Ten steps to greater exposure in 2010

1. Strategy
2. Link Building
3. Community – Participate
4. Community – Build
5. Communicate – Blog
6. Communicate – Email
7. Make it Personal
8. Talk the Talk
9. Give it Time
10. Review & Analyze

2010 is going to be great! Am I just an optimist? Nope. I simply have a plan for my marketing. 2010 marketing is going to be all about communication. “Wait!” you say. “2009 was all about communication!” It’s true, but 2009 was a year of introductions. Twitter really hit its stride and the fad calmed. Facebook exploded and has become practically ubiquitous. LinkedIn is no longer just a place for the technologically ambitious networker. The Mobile Web is something we’re all actually experiencing (Thank you Apple and Google). The past couple of years have been a tipping point for the Internet. We are now in a new era of interactivity and understanding. Across generations and levels of geekdom, the web and its 2.0/Social Media interactivity have become a part of daily life.

So for marketing, 2010 will be not about the hype, the fads, the technology. It will be about using these technologies to better communicate and connect with our markets. This is a year in which marketers and consumers are in sync when it comes to platforms and expectations. There will be amazing technological advances and new services for sure (The iPad, Google Buzz). But we have finally reached a widespread sense of comfort with both the technologies and styles of the interactive web.

We’ve put together this video presentation of ten things you should focus on for your 2010 online marketing. We’ve also created a whitepaper for you to download and read. For small businesses it is essential to create and maintain marketing efforts that fit easily with your business and resources. This list will give you some things to consider, and we hope will be a good starting point for planning your marketing. Oh, and item number one is, of course, plan!

This presentation was originally created for a webinar we did with Verio and it was a great event. Small businesses are finally talking not about whether they should be online, but about interent marketing optimization. Marketing is no longer something big companies do, but the term used for how we all attract prospects, keep customers and clients, and build our businesses. SEO, Email marketing, PPC search engine internet marketing, website design, and website promotion are all becoming part of the small business lexicon and to use these tools right, we have to recognize that they are really all aspects of communicating with our markets.

Consumers (all of us) are letting businesses into our personal space. Effective use of the internet marketing opportunities available to us today is all about respecting that opportunity. So, for 2010, what is internet marketing? It’s the art of using internet technologies to be found, be visible, and communicate in ways that help your business reach its goals.