High-tech Maine Internet Marketing & Web Design firm finds success in Lewiston-Auburn.

Core Zero Creative, Inc., a web design and internet and social media marketing firm established in 2009 in Auburn, Maine by Eric and Tina Bryant, has hit its stride in the Lewiston-Auburn area. That says a lot for Lewiston-Auburn, and Maine in general. Less than twenty years ago, the world wide web did not exist as we know it today. There were no graphical web browsers and there was nothing to look at except text–no pictures, no graphics, nothing to design at all. And as recently as six years ago there was really no such thing as social media, Facebook and the like, or Web 2.0 as we now know it. How does a company get from zero to sixty in a brand new industry? The same way that any new technology or solution provider ever got up to speed: by filling a need; meeting a demand; solving a problem.

The fact that Core Zero Creative, Inc. has its virtual hands full says a lot about tech-savvy businesses and their owners in the Lewiston-Auburn area. ‘They get it’ is the shortest, simplest way to put it. Only a few years ago many businesses did not have websites, and a good deal of convincing and cajoling went on in order to get them to see the light. Some entered the arena without a plan at all, simply to keep up with the competition, while many others put up websites that never changed–ever–and quickly became obsolete. Nowadays, most businesses have websites. Websites are even part of the planning stages of new businesses. There are also entire classes of businesses that run online, with no local brick-and-mortar presence at all.

Most of our local businesses are hybrids; businesses that have a physical presence, have engaged in traditional marketing efforts, and now see the internet as a new and powerful way to market, brand, advertise, relate, prospect, sell, and support. Local Maine businesses want more than a website, too. They want a website that shows up in the search engines when people are looking for the goods and services that business provides. They want to join the social media conversation, they want Facebook pages and Twitter accounts. They want to share videos and photos and blog posts and information about their products, services, culture, and people. They also want to listen to what is being said to them and about them on the internet, and they want to respond. Which brings this topic to close, for now. Core Zero Creative, Inc. provides strategy and implementation services for web design, Web 2.0, and social media. And it wouldn’t be happening without the rich collection of tech-aware businesses here in Lewiston-Auburn, Maine that want to make it happen online.

2011 is ready for you. Is your Internet & Social Media Marketing Plan ready for 2011?

Whether you want to use Social Media Marketing to launch a new product, promote an existing one, improve customer loyalty or improve brand awareness, a strategy and plan are crucial.  It’s not enough to have Social Media tacked on to the end of your traditional marketing plan as an afterthought.

Let’s face it–there is NO QUESTION that online business accounts for billions and billions of dollars changing hands each year. The question is, would you like some of that to land in your hands? If your answer is yes, and it’s not wishful thinking, if you are ready, able, and willing to get into the driver’s seat and make it happen, then you will need an Internet & Social Media Marketing Strategy for 2011.

I could throw out a bunch of stats—you know I do it all the time at our Free Social Media Lunch-n-Learns: 500 million Facebook users, 1.3 billion Tweets per month, you know… but stats are there for the taking. The QUESTION you need to ask yourself is whether or not you are going to take this Internet thing SERIOUSLY in 2011, and see how far IT can take YOU! That’s a good question to ask.

The neat thing is, you don’t have to understand how all of this works to USE it. You plan, you implement, you measure the results, modify as needed, rinse-n-repeat, then decide if it works for you based on real-world RESULTS, not wild ideas and wishful thinking. Another great thing about Internet marketing is you can take it on in stages over a period of weeks-to-months, and as you add new stages they all layer very nicely, complimenting one another and increasing the effectiveness of previously implemented stages.

Here are a few topics to be thinking about that Core Zero Creative can help you with:

• Content Development (Web) Strategy
• Blog Marketing Strategy
• Event Marketing Strategy
• Facebook Marketing Strategy
• Twitter Marketing Strategy
• Defining your target audience
• Defining your goals
• Measuring your success
• Identifying competition
• What you can provide for valuable content
• Building your prospect list online
• Finding helpful tools
• Encouraging people to spread the word through social media

Social Media Marketing has shifted power into the hands of your customers and prospects. They’ve changed how they buy, and what they do before they buy, and they expect more interaction with you.  A Social Media strategy will help you get the word out and make better choices in selecting what works for your audience, your company, and your objectives. An Internet and Social Media Marketing strategy and plan will definitely make you more successful in your online prospecting, sales, and branding efforts.

Think of it as your road map to success.

Do you have one?

If not, then call us today—we can help!

Once again we had a great turnout and great conversation at the monthly Social Media Lunch-n-Learn! Today’s lively and interesting conversation covered a few topics including social media update automation and scheduling, content and strategy tips, a preview of the Holiday Social Media Lunch-n-Learn material and my favorite: 500 Million ways to make money using Facebook! There was also a spontaneous product demonstration by Shelley Brown, so belly up to the bar next time and arrive early for the 30 minutes of business networking at the beginning!

I’m going to take a few minutes here and update you on what you missed, and hope that

you will be inspired to join us again December 7^th! We talked quite a bit about using Analytics on your website. If you employ a free tool such as Google Analytics you can find out where your web traffic comes from, where it goes when it leaves, how long it stayed, what pages it looked at, and for how long, what page it entered and exited your site on, what traffic came from Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and search engines, and a host of other data. If you use a link shortening service such as bit.ly you can also get basic analytics such as whether people clicked your links from Facebook or Twitter.

If you use a sales funnel to direct your website visitors through a desired path of actions to a desired goal, such as purchasing, signing up for info, or downloading an info file, analytics can help you to tune the funnel, and it can show you the weak points where you are losing people.

Tuesday and Wednesday are the best days to send out a newsletter, Thursday is next-to-best, and forget Monday and Friday–people are too busy getting started or getting finished on those days. We talked about monitoring social media and scheduling content using free tools such as Tweetdeck, SocialOomph, and Hootsuite. I know, they sound like character names from a children’s story book gone bad. Nonetheless, there are some powerful features available to you in these tools, out favorite being Hootsuite. We also looked at a sample scheduling worksheet created by yours truly to help you schedule your week or month in advance, leaving room for spontaneous updates along the way.

We talked about Facebook Pages and Profiles and Likes and Groups and comments. We discussed the merits of branding yourself, making real connections with people, and shooting for 5,000 friends on your personal profile. If you are busy establishing yourself as a guru or resource, a go-to person in your field, then when someone goes to friend you and sees that you’re capped out at 5,000 friends, the idea is that they begin to think you might know what you’re talking about, and you might have some influence, or valuable things to say at the least!

It was tough to wrap it up today. Perhaps we should have the next meeting at our home and carry on into the wee hours. By the way, kudos and many thanks to Margarita’s Mexican Restaurant on Center Street, Auburn for begin a great host for this year’s meetings. HOWEVER, they have decided not to do LUNCH ANY MORE! So, look for a new location to be announced for the December 7^th Holiday Social Media Lunch-n-Learn.

Until next time, it’s internet marketing resource Eric Bryant signing off. Happy Trails!

Recently we created a flyer for Michelle Neujahr, a motivational speaker based in Maine. She is doing a special event for the Lakes Region Referral Team which is a networking group that meets in Gray, Maine every Thursday morning at Cole Farms.

The group asked for a flyer that described the event to attract attendees. We at Core Zero wanted the flyer to also represent Michelle’s “brand”. We used her logo and color scheme and came up with some complimentary colors that would “pop” and be a bit edgy.

Core Zero prides itself on helping company’s, causes, and personalities with branding themselves on the internet. We are a New Media Marketing Company and we’d love to help you with saturating the web with your brand with an innovative, dynamic websites or with Social Media consulting. Call us.

I mentioned in my post If I Can Do It You Can Do It about my new best friends. My new social media best friends are HootSuite and AddThis. Each of these tools or applications have made my social media marketing implementation a lot easier.

HootSuite is a social media dashboard for teams using Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, WordPress, and other social networks. You can manage multiple profiles on Twitter, Facebook, etc, add multiple editors, pre-schedule tweets, and measure your success. You can do all this through one easy-to-use interface.

AddThis helps website publishers and bloggers spread their content across the web by making it easy for visitors to bookmark and share content to their favorite social destinations. If you create an account you can get analytics to understand how people are sharing your content.

So start sharing because it’s fun.

Yes, that’s a challenge.

I have made a commitment to blog more often. One reason, of course, is for all the reasons we’ve been telling you to start or be actively blogging… become a trusted resource on your industry, it’s great SEO (Search Engine Optimization), develop a conversation around your industry, product or service, cause, or personality. To be honest I have many of the same limiting beliefs as most of you. What do I write about and who actually wants to read what I have to say. Well, I guess we’ll find out! I know what you’re thinking “but you give hands-on workshops on blogging“? The brains and brawn of that division of Core Zero is Eric. He is an absolutely beautiful writer and speaker. Listen, I know my strengths and I am all too aware of my weaknesses but I am teachable. And so are you which is the point of this experiment. You know how much we love our experiments!

First, I will tell you what my qualifications are so that you will want to follow EVERYTHING I have to say… there are none! Well, mostly none, but that is exactly why you are going to want to follow my blog posts.

I am an artist. I enjoy holing up in my studio and not having contact with the outside world for long periods of time. I call it “catching a groove”. When I’m in it, don’t bother me. Just ask my family. They all know what it means when I tell them to “pretend that I’m not here”. I am NOT a writer! I have no idea where to put comma’s (as I’m sure you have already noticed) I just start putting them wherever I think it looks good or where I would naturally take a breath while speaking. I also write like a speak so grammar is right out the window. I am thankful for spell check. Use it, it’s your best friend (read about my other new best friends) but don’t get too hung up on the occasional spelling error, it’s not that big of a deal. My only advice is that you try to know the difference between words like there, their, they’re, here and hear, and when to use desert and dessert as we all know that dessert is the most important meal of the day.

So what are some of the things I’m going to write about? Hmmm, good question I’m still not sure but my guess is that I will be sharing what it’s like to “be” in our office. Maybe a little about the musings of working with your spouse, and hopefully some helpful tips on getting YOU started/inspired/off your duff to create your own blog.

The gauntlet has been dropped!

Well, July is almost over and I’ve neglected to post on a couple of great events we’ve been a part of this month.

First, on July 7, 2010, Eric Bryant had the honor of doing a special breakout session on Social Media for Maine Successful Thinkers and on July 22, 2010 Core Zero Creative hosted a face-to-face networking event at Margarita’s in Auburn, Maine with guest speaker Debra Ann St. Hilaire of Menda-A-Body. Both events were well attended and many great connections were made.

Jeff Ball of Maine Successful Thinkers and Debra Ann St. Hilaire of Mend-A-Body are both exceptional people and business owners with the highest integrity! We are honored to have been paired with them during these events and pray many blessings on their endeavors.

Hang around these two, take lessons, and pick their brains if you want to know how to be successful.

Congratulations to Ellen Gibson of Professional Writing Services! She won the Sony Walkman Water Resistant 2GB MP3 Player that we raffled off to those that participated in the up close and personal social media consults we had at the Androscoggin B2B Trade Show! It’s a neat MP3 player because it has no wires to tangle up! It was carefully selected by our Media Team Leader, 16-year-old Zaq Stiles. It’s got to be good if a 16 year old musician selected it, right?!!

If you’re in need of professional writing services give us a call or shoot an email over and we’ll connect you with Ellen!

And Ellen, it was a pleasure working with you at the trade show.

Best wishes and enjoy!

The Core Zero Creative Team

Photo Credit: Mainely Portrait Photography

Core Zero Creative, your one-stop shop for Maine Web Design & Social Media Marketing Workshops in Maine had a WHOPPER of a day over at the Androscoggin B2B Trade Show Thursday! First of all, Thank You to the LAEGC, The Chamber, and all the businesses and people involved to make this event happen each year. What a wonderful statement of commitment to our economy and local businesses! It was our first year there as an exhibitor and we could not have been more delighted with the experience. We brought a crew of 5 to “work the show” and that really paid off. We all got plenty of face time with visitors as well as enough down time to stay sane. Those that chose not to stay sane spent their free time walking the show visiting other booths, sharing the insanity. And eating cookies. And other good stuff. I may still be touched…

With over 200 vendors plus their crews, and over 2,500 visitors… 3,000 people… what a great day to network and get the pulse on who’s who and what’s what here in Lewiston-Auburn and the surrounding areas. (Not to mention getting to sleep all day Friday!) I highly recommend taking a day out of your busy schedule next year to attend this show. You will be glad you did!

The countdown to 5-10-10 has completed and the BIG DAY has officially arrived! Eric Bryant (that’s me) is now the acting full time Marketing Director of Core Zero Creative! Unbeknownst to many (archaic word alert!) in addition to my role at Core Zero as a WordPress Web Designer, Social Media Marketing Strategist & Trainer, and Internet Marketing Guy, I’ve also worked as an IT Specialist for the past 25 years managing corporate computer systems and networks. As millions turn to Web 2.0–the social web–as a means to promote their businesses, products, services, organizations, and causes, Core Zero’s steady growth has made it both possible and necessary for me to come aboard full time, leaving the IT field behind. This year companies will throw billions of dollars at engaging people in web-based conversations around their brands and causes, and getting people to friend, follow, link to and talk about them.

Having built my first commercial website in 1993 I’ve always been what I like to call artsy-techy. Computers weren’t much to write home about back then, but still, I was drawn to expressing my artistic side in the digital realm. Over the years I’ve worked on many marketing campaigns, creating posters, flyers, websites, and other media for many companies. As the artistic side went deeper with web design, the techy side picked up on topics like search engine optimization (SEO) and how to get websites ranked on the front pages of the search engines. By the time I had mastered SEO, social media had appeared on the scene, and in case you didn’t know, the social media conversation is only half the story–the other half of social media is actually all about getting to the top of the search engines… how convenient!

I love being in the social media conversation as well as analyzing it from the sidelines, collecting stats and data, and predicting and watching where all this is headed. There’s a lot more to having a web presence than putting up a website. At Core Zero Creative we’ll help you formulate and implement a branded comprehensive internet marketing plan including a website that you can manage and edit, and a winning social media marketing strategy to go with it. Not only that, we really like what we do and we’re wicked fun to work with!

Looking forward to serving you,

Eric Bryant