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, %%theme_more%%

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. %%theme_more%%

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 %%theme_more%%

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