How your business can save thousands of dollars: How can I save you $6,000…

How can your organization save thousands of dollars?

I can help save you $3,000 by finding you professional and affordable web design.

I can help save you $3,000 dollars by providing training for you in search engine optimization and social media.

To find out how, give me a call at (615) 974-9662

Guide to WordPress Blogging

Guide to Word press Blogging: A Tutorial for WordPress Noobs:
Everthing from blogging tips to seo for wordpress to adding helpful widgets to your wordpress blogs.

Everybody Get Your WP on!!!! Enjoy!

• Here is a great how to on WordPress Installation

• Best Word press Theme = Thesis

• I created this SEO for WordPress Guide

• WordPress on Alltop

• What else should I add????

Nashville’s Bloggers: Guide to the Most “Influential” Nashville Bloggers

Nashville’s Bloggers: Guide to the Most Influential Nashville Bloggers

This is a guide to Nashville blogging rockstars. While I have weird feelings about celebrity and perhaps even weirder things about internet celebrity, I thought this might be a helpful guide for those getting introduced to the Nashville blogging scene. If I leave someone off the list, I’m genuinely sorry…I wasn’t able to name all 250-350 bloggers….but you can drop your favorites in the comments.

Rex Hammock’s Blog- CEO of local publishing company in the Nashville area, Hammock Publishing. Rex is also a bit of a Nashville photo blogger.

Jaxn- Startup executive and entrepreneur for Stat Zen and URL Zen. Jackson’s company was featured at Tech Crunch 50, a conference of the most influential and interesting tech and new media startups.

Dr. Jeff Cornwall- Professor at Belmont and editor and chief of the Entrepreneurial Mind.

Pete Wilson- at pastor at Cross Point Church at Without Wax. Pete’s blog feature features great sermon bumpers as well as short entertaining video stories about life and growing up. Here is Adam and Eve explained by Pete’s kid.

Anne Jackson. Writer, blogger, designer, and church leadership person at Cross Point Church. She’s putting out a book very, very soon called Mad Church Disease on Zonderzan.

Michael Hyatt- Just some guy. Actually, he is the CEO at Thomas Nelson. So some guy with a plush office.

Matthew Paul Turner- Christian author, speaker, and funny guy. He is author of the Christian Culture Survival Guide, Hokey Pokey and a handful of other personal and thought provoking Christian books. You can see Matthew Turner on his Youtube channel, check out the feature about him on the God’s Mac podcast, or see the Cred Productions videos about Hokey Pokey. (please forgive me Matthew–I haven’t forgotten) His wife is also an occassional video blogger.

Dave Barnes. Hilarious guy, video blogger, and up and coming music guy . (quite possibly insane) Kanye West’s workout has nothing on the Dave Barnes workout. Or perhaps you’d like to see his video tour of Franklin, TN. For the Christmas season, this “Christmas Extravaganza” is probably the most appropriate and cheery.

Randy Elrodat Ethos Blog in a Christian entrepreneur and always has something forward thinking to say.

Tiny Cat Pants- Funny stuff.

Nashville is Talking- is a round up of local Nashville blogs. Its run by Christian G at WKRN.

Jay Deragon. He’s an author of a well researched book about social media called the Relationship Economy. Nice guy–I met him about 3 weeks ago at Fido.

Nashville Post-Mr. Kleinhelder keeps the Nashville area informed about politics.

Dave Delaney-Resident Canandian new media guy for Griffin and creator of Geek Breakfast and the guy who along with Marcus Whitney brought Barcamp Nashville and Podcamp Nashville to Tennessee. He’s also faciliated a fantastic new project Tennessee Bloggers for education.

Chris Wage. Photoblogger Chris Wage has had his photos featured in the Tennessean.

Mitch Canter- web designer who specializes in WordPress design. He was recently featured in the WordPress section on Alltop.

Newscoma is a former reporter who reports mostly on politics and other fun stuff..

Rob Robinson is in PR and reports on Vanderbilt, Nashville News, and general community happenings at Thinktrain.

Brittney Gilbert- Brittney is no longer in Nashville, she’s moved to the left coast, but her effects on the community as a person and blogger are still heard.

Local Nashville Blogging Resources:
Nashville Yelp- local food blogging and business review community.

Outside In for Nashville, TN

Outside in for Brentwood, TN.

Nashville on Placeblogger.

Who is your favorite or most influential blogger in Nashville, TN?

Nathan Ketsdever is a blogger about Christian nonprofits, faith, and social media at Compassion in Politics. He is also the chief online strategist at Creative Fusion Media. He is also a Nashville blogger.

Why Blog? Andrew Sullivan Answers in the Atlantic

Andrew Sullivan on the purpose and historical context of blogging:

A ship’s log owes its name to a small wooden board, often weighted with lead, that was for centuries attached to a line and thrown over the stern. The weight of the log would keep it in the same place in the water, like a provisional anchor, while the ship moved away. By measuring the length of line used up in a set period of time, mariners could calculate the speed of their journey (the rope itself was marked by equidistant “knots” for easy measurement). As a ship’s voyage progressed, the course came to be marked down in a book that was called a log.

In journeys at sea that took place before radio or radar or satellites or sonar, these logs were an indispensable source for recording what actually happened. They helped navigators surmise where they were and how far they had traveled and how much longer they had to stay at sea. They provided accountability to a ship’s owners and traders.

Andrew on the attitude sensibility of blogging:

So I wrote as I’d write an e-mail—with only a mite more circumspection. This is hazardous, of course, as anyone who has ever clicked Send in a fit of anger or hurt will testify. But blogging requires an embrace of such hazards, a willingness to fall off the trapeze rather than fail to make the leap.

Andrew continues and points out the importance of the hyperlink:

An old-school columnist can write 800 brilliant words analyzing or commenting on, say, a new think-tank report or scientific survey. But in reading it on paper, you have to take the columnist’s presentation of the material on faith, or be convinced by a brief quotation (which can always be misleading out of context). Online, a hyperlink to the original source transforms the experience. Yes, a few sentences of bloggy spin may not be as satisfying as a full column, but the ability to read the primary material instantly—in as careful or shallow a fashion as you choose—can add much greater context than anything on paper. Even a blogger’s chosen pull quote, unlike a columnist’s, can be effortlessly checked against the original. Now this innovation, pre-dating blogs but popularized by them, is increasingly central to mainstream journalism.

Andrew Sullivan on embracing the haters and contrarians:

Some e-mailers, unsurprisingly, know more about a subject than the blogger does. They will send links, stories, and facts, challenging the blogger’s view of the world, sometimes outright refuting it, but more frequently adding context and nuance and complexity to an idea. The role of a blogger is not to defend against this but to embrace it. He is similar in this way to the host of a dinner party. He can provoke discussion or take a position, even passionately, but he also must create an atmosphere in which others want to participate.

Andrew Sullivan on blogging turning sourcing on its head:

Readers tell me of breaking stories, new perspectives, and counterarguments to prevailing assumptions. And this is what blogging, in turn, does to reporting. The traditional method involves a journalist searching for key sources, nurturing them, and sequestering them from his rivals. A blogger splashes gamely into a subject and dares the sources to come to him.

Andrew Sullivan on blogging’s human tone:

What endures is a human brand. Readers have encountered this phenomenon before—I.F. Stone’s Weekly comes to mind—but not to this extent. It stems, I think, from the conversational style that blogging rewards. What you want in a conversationalist is as much character as authority. And if you think of blogging as more like talk radio or cable news than opinion magazines or daily newspapers, then this personalized emphasis is less surprising. People have a voice for radio and a face for television. For blogging, they have a sensibility.

Andrew Sullivan on social media, prose, and the future of journalism:

In fact, for all the intense gloom surrounding the news-paper and magazine business, this is actually a golden era for journalism. The blogosphere has added a whole new idiom to the act of writing and has introduced an entirely new generation to nonfiction. It has enabled writers to write out loud in ways never seen or understood before. And yet it has exposed a hunger and need for traditional writing that, in the age of television’s dominance, had seemed on the wane.

Words, of all sorts, have never seemed so now.

You can read Andrew Sullivan’s blog.

Andrew Sullivan, an Atlantic senior writer, Why I Blog, The Atlantic, November 2009

Guidelines for outsourcing article writing

Proven Rules for Outsourcing Content Creation:

Finding great content creators can be challenging, especially given that the needed skill set isn’t clear. With those concerns in mind, here are some principles that can guide you along the way toward better outsourcing. Whether you need content for your blog launch, corporate website, or latest white paper, these guidelines for finding expert content creation services hold true:

Think long term value. When you outsource content its easy to think quick turn around on value, but you need to think about the long term value of content online.

Think wholistically. The money you may save by hiring an overseas content creator may cost you in terms of time spent editing for grammar and clarity.

Get a writing sample. Get a writing sample. They should be able to send you a link or two to some content they have written or created.

Start Small. Starting small allows you to experiment with a host of content creators to pick the best one.

Make Sure the Content Is Original. Unoriginal content not interesting to users. Copyscape can help you make sure your article writers and outsourcers create unique articles.

Experiment. Outsourcing article wriging gives you the ability to try out several content providers and then choose a core group of content creators to write your content.

Establish clear expectations. I have a document I use for creating specific expectations I have for article and content writing. Having a standard, easy to read document helps keep both parties on the same page. This is one of the best ways to manage expectations with outsourcers and a great way to manage expectations with employees.

Specialist vs. Generalist. Realize like all humans, you content creators have special talents and general talents, and its important to play to those strengths.

Create relationships. Once you have determined the content creators you want to work with, build meaningful business relationships. Just like any employee, you want to build a relationship with your content creators and article writers.

Add Value to the Relationship. A quality content creator will want to learn how to better themselves. If you develop a relationship and add value, your content will inevitably of a higher quality.

Its also important to keep in mind these advantages and disadvantages of outsourcing.

Creative Fusion Media provides social media consulting services and ethical and affordable search engine optimization solutions to innovative companies and forward thinking non-profits.

Problogger Darren Rowse: 10 Steps to Making Your Blog Sticky

A Quick Guide to Sticky Online Content for Your Corporate Blog:

I found this great summary by Garrett French:

- Use a Newsletter
- Highlight key Posts / Related Posts
- Promote your RSS feed
- Be conversational (ask Questions’s)
- Build community
- Make readers famous
- Give readers jobs (i.e., moderators)
- What does your blog say in the first 10 seconds?
- Provide a search function
- Use polls and other interactive tools”

Other additions? What makes blog content sticky?

Here is one great resource I look to for marketing blog and social media projects via search engine friendly means. Using both social media and online public relations oriented tactics is critical to the success of your social media marketing ventures. Otherwise, your writing may fall on deaf ears.

Creative Fusion Media provides social media consulting services and ethical and affordable search engine optimization solutions to innovative companies and forward thinking non-profits. Nathan Ketsdever is the chief internet marketing and online pr strategist at Creative Fusion, which is located in Nashville, Tennessee.

The Best in Competitive Market Analysis and Search Engine Optimization Tools

A Step by Step Playbook to Keyword Analysis for SEO Success:

Fundamentals of Keyword Analysis for Search Engine Optimization
If you are looking for competitive analysis there are plenty of free tools available that can serve your needs. There are plenty of free tools to serve your ethical search engine optimization and link building needs. Initially for keywords analysis the top two free SEO tools are:

• Google Keyword Suggestion Tool
• Aaron Walls SEO Book Keyword Tool

Strategic Keyword Tips
These tools should provide you with more than enough data to keep you writing content till the cows come home. A few things to keep in mind:

• Remember to target “buy” words
• Remember “care” words. What does your customer really “care” about? That’s what they search about. That’s what they buy.
• Remember to target Long Tail keyword phrases. For instance that means targeting “Nashville SEO Company” or “Nashville Search Engine Optimization Company” or “Ethical Search Engine Optimization Services” instead of just “SEO” [Aaron Wall also suggests looking toward fat belly phrases, instead of long tail]
• You may also want to target various places along the buying process by creating an mega FAQ. (I recently visited a venture capital fund that had a blog post that was called “What Types of Ventures Do We Fund at [insert Venture Capital Firm name]“
• Creating a website is about creating solutions for your customers. That means answering their questions.

Competitive SEO Tools and Tactics Analysis:
Next, you want to discover what keywords you are ranking for so that you can maximize what you are already ranking for. Seodigger offers a fantastic tool for doing competitive analysis of your site as well as your competition’s website. Don’t know who your opponents might be, just do a search for the 5 most likely ways your customers can find you (without using your actual name).

Discover Your Back link Love. Next, you will want to check out where your competitors are getting links. A great tool for finding out where your competitors or your site are getting links is Link Diagnosis. Aaron Wall suggests Link Harvester. A recent Pub Con panel suggested Back Link Watch, which is very handy because it tells you what the anchor text attached to the link is. This is critically important to your SEO efforts.

Traffic and Web Analytics Google Analytics are free and a great way to find out how people are getting to your website, what they do when they are there, and where people are abandoning your website.

Need an Seach Engine Optimization Diagnosis for Your Website? A couple of overall site analysis tools that help give you an overall idea about the search optimization of your website, including Website Grader. One very good alternative is the SEO Automatic which runs an SEO diagnosis on your website.

Show Firefox Plug in Love for SEO. I also like SEO For Firefox, Rank Checker, SEO Quake. 97th Floor has a helpful Firefox. plug in for blogging and social media.

What are your favorite search engine optimization tools?

Creative Fusion Media provides social media consulting services and ethical and affordable search engine optimization solutions to innovative companies and forward thinking non-profits. Nathan Ketsdever is the chief internet marketing and online pr strategist at Creative Fusion, which is located in Nashville, Tennessee.

Project Management for Outsourcing Web Development

Breakdown of Finding and Hiring a Web Design/Development/Marketing Team:

Outsourcing web development can be a tricky process, even for the web design and marketing savvy person. Certainly the roles of project management, creating a time line, and progress tracking is a job in an of itself. The other core tasks which must be outsourced or fulfilled in house include:

• Online copy writing
• Web design and user experience (UX and UI)
• Maintenance and updates (content creation / editing / photos / coordination)
• Strategy
• Link building and search engine optimization
• Tracking and metrics for the website
• Social media and other forms of online marketing like pay per click management
• Landing page and conversion optimization
• Old school e-mail marketing coordination

What are the most difficult parts of web project management for you? Do you have a web development or design project you are outsourcing? Perhaps you are looking for a turnkey consulting solution or perhaps you’re looking to fulfill one of the above roles? Any tips for the unexperienced project manager? What are the most important considerations? Have a link to a resource or guide?

If you want to know more about ethical search engine optimization (seo) or social media services, please contact me at (615) 594 – 2095.

SEO Bruce Clay on Search Engine Optimization Training

A successful SEO project starts with training. According to Christopher Hart at Bruce Clay Inc, its all about project management and educating clients. Its vital to have training as a part of a search engine optimization service package, unfortunately all too often search engine optimization firms are content to leave you in the dark instead of building a relationship based on trust:

• Did your SEO training course improve communication and awareness?

• Did your SEO training course improve cooperation between business teams?

• Did your SEO training course help build a strong foundation?

• Did your SEO training course help improve efficiencies?

• Did your SEO training course lower cost and improve ROI?

Bruce Clay continues:

In closing, I ask you, the business owners, the following questions:

• Why the indifference to these realizations when it comes to doing business online?

• Do you feel that you have a well-defined online business strategy or just a poorly-cobbled-together set of projects and initiatives that have been labeled as your online business?

• Are your staffs educated enough to understand the requirements or functions needed of their teams in this business environment?

• Is there visible corporate support for this initiative and are consequences of a lack of support known?

To do anything properly takes time, effort and investment. Your opportunity margins will increase over time, but only if the proper foundation is put in place and there is a corporate culture to support it.

Its important for ethical search engine optimization firms to provide training. We firmly believe that here at Creative Fusion Media. Training helps you see the process and understand the web communication environment better. Only then are you best able to see the full landscape of the available opportunities and risks online. Otherwise you are flying blind with your business ventures online, which is the largest risk.

Thoughts? Do you think training is critical to the search engine optimization process?

Intuit on Crowdsourcing | Social Media Case Study

Social Media Case Studies in Customer Driven Innovation:

The Intuit wiki has great insight into the realm of crowdsourcing innovation:

Every day, millions of people make all kinds of voluntary contributions to companies – from  to  – that create tremendous value for those firms’ customers and, consequently, for their shareholders. When I first encountered this idea, several years ago, it struck me as unfathomable: Volunteerism was for charities, not for red-blooded, profit-making firms.

The article continues:

OK, I’m not saying you can or should transform your company into a Google or a Skype whose business model is primarily based on user contributions. But you should understand the power of the phenomenon and, as I have, learn from the growing number of companies in traditional industries – firms like Honda, Procter & Gamble, Best Buy, and Hyatt – that are tapping user contributions to, , , , , and more. Contribution-driven results like those are achievable for pretty much any business.

For more case studies and examples of UCS check out Chris Brogan’s social media case studies or the Intuit wiki.

Congrats to Intuit for being a market leader and deliver real customer value. Given its proactive policy Intuits executives will have massive customer insight that no competitor will have an answer to, unless they chose to follow Intuit. Thoughts?  How long will it take for executives to become advocates of crowdsourcing? How are you using crowdsourcing to connect with customers and deliver better products?

Social Media Research From Universal McCann International

Trend Watching Statistics on the Rise of Web 2.0 Use:

This is a fantastic presentation with international useage data for social media and blogs.  You will want to click on the lower right hand button to see the presentation in a larger, readable form.

Thoughts?  What does this mean for the future?

White Hat SEO Services | Search Engine Optimization as the Engine for Customer Acquisition

Three cool presentations about search engine optimization by SEO guru Stephan Spencer



(h/t Darren)