Founder's Blog

We have a lot of clients who are interested in online advertising and don't know where to start.  If you're not using AdWords yet, here's your chance to try out Google AdWords for free with our $100 free AdWords vouchers.

As a member of Google Engage for Agencies, we offer our clients Google AdWords campaign development and management.

We had a great trip to NYC with students from Ben Capozzi's classes at the Business of Art & Design School of Southern Virginia Higher Education Center.  A couple of the highlights of the trip were visiting Google's Chelsea headquarters and taking part in art workshops at Etsy, and I'm finally getting a few pix posted.  Great group of students! (click photos for larger view)

 
 

I struggled with whether to do this post or not.  Those who know me well know that I'm not a troublemaker or rabble-rouser; I cringe at stirring up trouble, especially for others in their jobs. As a business owner, I know how hard it is to get everything right and make the pieces all fit together. Having said that, I had an experience recently that I really do feel has a good lesson in it and have decided to share it in the spirit of learning and improving, not in attacking or flaming.

Usually companies do a better job in their traditional sales and support services than through social media, simply because people are still getting used to it.  This is a case in reverse.  It is not meant to be an indictment of the company I had the experience with, just an example of how one area can be on top of things but another drop the ball, negating gains made by the one doing a good job. [UPDATE: please read to the end for response from Justyn Howard, CEO of Sprout Social.]

Tuesday evening we were honored to have Andy Beal, renowned online reputation management expert and founder of Trackur, Skype-in to our blogging workshop and speak with the participants, taking questions and sharing his insights.  Thank you, Andy!

We live streamed the workshop and also videotaped it to make available for later viewing. Unfortunately, the next day we found that Murphy's Law took effect during Andy's speaking with us: we didn't realize the camera had accidentally been left on earlier when testing, and the battery died without our being able to video all of his segment. Ok, no problem; we had a backup plan because we were doing a screen capture of the Skype segment. Old Murphy struck again, though, and the quality wasn't good enough for use. Soooo, I apologize and will try to recap some of what went on. I'm sure I'll be leaving out a ton of good information, though, and am so disappointed :(

Tomorrow night marks our fourth workshop in the monthly series of free workshops we're doing for 2012 (the first one was in December, 2011), and we're excited to welcome special guest speaker Andy Beal. Not only will this workshop be recorded for online video, but we'll also be live streaming from the Mechdyne cave at Riverstone Energy Center.

Andy Beal, internet marketing consultant, award-winning blogger, professional speaker and coauthor of the critically-acclaimed book Radically Transparent: Monitoring & Managing Reputations Online will join us via Skype. Andy has appeared on ABC News, CNBC and NPR and has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times , Business Week, Inc. Magazine, Forbes and many other publications - and now he'll be appearing in Riverstone Energy Center! He is considered “the Indiana Jones of reputation management.”