Connections Vol. 1 Issue 4 November 2006

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Hilton Young Entrepreneur of the Year

Did you know?

October 26, 2006 Blaine Hilton was recognized as Young Entrepreneur of the Year at the annual Entrepreneurial Awards Luncheon, hosted by the Northwest Indiana Small Business Development Center. The luncheon recognized the entrepreneurs of Northwest Indiana and the impact they have made in the regions development. There were a total of seven award categories, one of them being Young Entrepreneur of the year.

"Congratulations to Blaine on his award. As a fellow member of the E21class, I am especially proud of his achievement. We at Ujamaa Construction Inc. continue to wish him continued success."

Jimmy Akintonde, President
Ujamaa Construction, Inc.
www.ujamaaconstruction.com

"In 2000 I started freelancing as a web developer and providing solutions to small businesses." Says Blaine. "Now we have grown to a total of four full-time dedicated professionals here to serve our clients and work on a variety of projects."

For more information about Blaine's Award - you can log onto our web site and watch a short video clip of Blaine's Interview.

www.blainehilton.com

If you are interested in integrating video into your site, we'd be glad to help you out.

November Feature
Web Site Promotion: Organic or Paid?

Q and A

Q When is organic web site promotion the best?
A

  • You're looking toward the future.
  • You are ready to launch a new web site and would like for it to gain relevant traffic that will not be instantaneous.
  • A monthly expenditure for marketing the web site isn't within your budget.

Q When is paid web site promotion the best?
A

  • You're content hasn't been indexed by the search engines.
  • You aren't number 1 in the search engines.
  • If you want to market to a specific market of searchers.

At a Glance

Organic Promotion focuses on:

  • Long-term business value
  • Better overall listings in search engines
  • Variety of visitors (by source)

Paid Promotion focuses on:

  • Immediately increase relevant traffic
  • Setting a daily budget and let us take over the rest
  • Having complete control of he advertisements

Neither method is mutually exclusive. We suggest to use both methods of web site promotion. Most everyone has a web site, so if you're considering starting a new web site, or revamping the one you have, you have to do it with a quality site to keep ahead of the competition. When considering the long run, organic promotion has more value than paid promotion because if done right, organic has virtually no promotional maintenance. Organic is geared for the long term and over time will pay off. The early bird gets the worm BUT... the second mouse catches the cheese.

Promotion Pays Off
Organic and Paid Web Site Promotion
By: Joseph Duron

When you have something you've spent a great deal time and money on, wanting to let everyone know about it is human nature. But when it's for a business or organization, promoting yourself is a must! The same goes for a web site. Promoting your web site is very important. There are many methods of web site promotion, and we will discuss the most common ways. Without talking to your company specifically, we cannot determine what is right for you.

Organic or paid
There are primarily two different types of web site promotion. Paid web site promotion is having an outside source to promote your web site, and bring in traffic. Organic web site promotion on the other hand is investing a quality web site and let the traffic build on its own.

Paid web site promotion has an immediate effect on the web site's traffic. The early bird gets the worm. This may be by a Cost per Click (CPC) ad where you pay for how many people click on the ad or by the amount of people who view the ad. Depending on your industry this can be very effective. Paid web site promotion usually goes through a company such as Google Adwords or Yahoo! Search Marketing (Formerly Overture).

If you depend on traffic on a daily basis (such as e-commerce) it may be a good idea to make sure that you begin the process of organic promotions. For example, if a paid web site promotion was paused, you may experience a significant drop in traffic during the period the campaign was paused. You are basically relying on the search engines to feed you traffic.

Organic web site promotion looks towards the quality of the web site, and what's in store in the long run, without help from a third-party. Rather than constantly maintaining and paying for traffic to come to you, organic web site promotion can be left alone and still maintain and build traffic. Organic web site promotion will help you achieve better rankings in the search engines. For these reasons, organic web site promotion is thought of as the best overall method of promoting your web site. As they say: Slow and steady wins the race.

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