I found an interesting article in the Christian Science Monitor this afternoon about how kids increasingly don’t know much about King (aside from the fact that they get to miss a day of school because of him). I’ve certainly come to take King’s struggles and achievements for granted, and this piece made me stop and really consider why today is a national holiday.

That, of course, is unrelated to the Marketing Monday Roundup, for which we’ve compiled several other interesting articles about technology, social media, and online marketing. Here are the winners this week:

Why Social Is So Disruptive to Traditional Marketing
I appreciate Judy Shapiro’s piece in Social Media Today because she helpfully articulates the shift from a content distribution platform to a community distribution platform. She also serves as a model of a marketing industry veteran who’s adapted to the new landscape (or rather, is adapting) and is embracing new ideas about what marketing is in the social web.

Justified – Beginning Steps To Proving Your Internet Marketing Point
Carrie Hill’s post on Search Engine Land is specific to using Google Analytics and AdWords to measure marketing success — which is useful in and of itself — but I also like her opening point about the need to justify marketing expenses and why it’s essential to have clear metrics to measure your success.

11 useful tips for marketing your brand on LinkedIn
A well-written, concise set of tips from Katerina Walter on The Next Web for how to use LinkedIn as a business.

What’s in a gTLD?
We’re accustomed to a rather limited set of top-level domains: .com, .net, etc. We’re now seeing the expansion of TLDs to the point that someone could conceivably own “.beaches” and license the subdomains of it (for instance, “spain.beaches”) to others. This insightful column in The Economist nicely contextualizes this development.

Online Shoppers Are Rooting for the Little Guy
Not exactly a triumphant story about small businesses rising above the online retailing behemoths, but an encouraging New York Times piece nonetheless for small and mid-sized retailers.

What I really like about Seattle Consultant’s website is the use of lots of different module types. Jaime pulls in photo slideshows, service and article lists, vMarketing listings, floor plans, and more to populate his site with different kinds of content. While no website is ever complete (as any good webmaster knows), the Seattle Consultant site feels sufficiently full of information, as though I could go there and find everything that I came for.

Jaime also structured his site well. Take the homepage for instance: it includes an “About Us” section with a slideshow, another slideshow that displays properties the firm has successfully marketed, a map of their location, and testimonials from their clients. It’s a lot of content, but the page is so thoughtfully laid out that it doesn’t feel cluttered or overwhelming in the least.

Excellent work, Jaime and the Seattle Consultant team!

Real estate agents and brokers looking for a new website solution can give their web presence a boost by switching to vSites. vFlyer’s new website service is easy to use and, more importantly, makes it easy to update a website on an ongoing basis. Contact us at sales [at] vflyer dot com or (800) 594-5930 ext. 2 if you want to learn more about how vSites could help your business.

Here’s a graphic showing how the program works:

Resellers use our program to create marketing content for their own clients. They then sell this content to their clients at the regular price.  After they bring on 3 clients, they start earning 30% on each client they subscribe, or if the Reseller is paying, he or she gets a 30% discount for each client account.

Benefits of the program:

1. vFlyer’s platform is intuitive yet powerful.  Both of vFlyer’s services use a “fill-in-the-blank” template approach for adding content, greatly simplifying the content creation process.

2. Customization. vFlyer provides an extensive range of themes and layouts to choose from.  In addition to the ability to upload photos, videos, custom headers and integrate social media, users can also create their own themes allowing them to match their branding.

3. Flexibility. With vFlyer, you can grant access to an account to a client so that they can log in and make edits themselves or simply restrict access to yourself. You can also set up all of your client accounts under one login, making access to all of them super easy.

4. Save time while creating higher quality content.  The vFlyer platform is easy to use, enabling users to create professional-looking high quality content quickly and easily.

Interested in learning more? Check out the new Reseller page and the Reseller FAQ’s. To sign up, email reseller [at] vflyer [dot] com, or call 800-594-5930 x 5.

What I like most about Rental Home KC’s website:

1. It’s well organized. They pack a lot of content into the site but keep it easily navigable through the use of drop-down menus in the navigation bar. I also like how they put links to the most important pages on the site (“Find a Rental Home,” “Submit Application,” and “Lease your home”) on the homepage, “above the fold” where people can easily find them.

2. They make good use of their vMarketing content, including a listings page that pulls in their vMarketing listings, and a widget that they display on the homepage. The widget scrolls through the photos of their listings, giving site visitors a taste of the kinds of properties they can find on the site.

3. They’ve made the site functional. That is, instead of simply providing information, they give site visitors the ability to download a rental application and pay the application fee via PayPal. With vSites’ new file upload and JavaScript support, making a site functional in this way can be done easily.

Great job Betty, Larry, and all the folks at Rental Home KC on building a fantastic website!

If you’re interested in building a website for your business, take a look at vSites and all the things you can do with it. If you have questions, contact our Customer Success Team at support [at] vflyer.com or call us at (800) 594-5930.

Beyond Residential did a great job customizing each page, and took the time to personalize the website so that viewers can get a feel for their company culture.  My favorite things about this site are:

1) They customized the Facebook Like module, spreading it across the bottom of their homepage, which gives it a unique and fun look.

2)Beyond Residential’s branding really shows through on the website, and is consistent with their Facebook and Twitter profiles as well.  They use the same custom header, logo, and slogan on all three accounts, which is great.

3) They added a Contact module on each of their pages (besides the homepage) making it super easy for people to reach them.  This shows that they encourage people to get in touch with them.

4)Each page appears to have been given a lot of thought.  They customized the splash images to better reflect the content on the page, and it is really easy to figure out who the company is, and what they do.  They even customized the footer to be more aesthetically pleasing and match the rest of their site.

5)The “Contact Us” page is fun.  It has an attractive splash image with a human element, and utilizes the Map module beautifully.  In addition to providing the Contact module, they also created a new module with the heading “Reach Out to us:” again, driving home the point that they want to interact with their visitors.

Great job, Beyond Residential, and best of luck with your new business!

If you are interested in creating a professional-looking site of your own, visit us, or sign up for a free vSites for Beginners webinar!

]]> http://www.vflyerblog.com/2011/09/23/site-of-the-week-by-beyond-residential/feed/ 0 http://www.vflyerblog.com/2011/09/16/site-of-the-week-by-zs-outdoors/ http://www.vflyerblog.com/2011/09/16/site-of-the-week-by-zs-outdoors/#comments Fri, 16 Sep 2011 19:07:47 +0000 Dan Lenehan http://www.vflyerblog.com/?p=1265 Our site of the week, created using vSites, comes to us from Z’s Outdoors in Buffalo, Minnesota, just northwest of the Twin Cities. Z’s Outdoors is an outdoor equipment retailer, focusing on fishing and hunting gear, and they reflect those themes right in their logo. They did a nice job showcasing the logo on the site and coming up with a color palette to go along with it.

Z’s Outdoors also makes good use of various module types on their site, especially the map module, which they use on each page, and the Facebook Like module, displayed on the homepage. Now visitors to their website can immediately see how many people “Like” Z’s Outdoors on Facebook and “Like” them themselves.

Finally, one thing I really like about this website is that they prominently display their phone number at the top. I always find it annoying when I have to search around on a website just to find the phone number. It may not seem like an important detail, but shouldn’t your website be a source for phone inquiries? If people can’t find your phone number on your site, it’s unlikely you’ll be hearing from them. So take a note from Z’s Outdoors’ playbook and show your phone number, large and in charge!

Learn more about creating a website for your business or sign up for an upcoming vSites for Beginners training!

Treetop Sales is a manufactured homes dealer hailing from Kissimmee, Florida. Naturally, the website focuses on the homes available for sale today. Whereas last week’s featured site employed an inline frame to reference a listing inventory hosted elsewhere, Anthony, who already has all of his homes on vMarketing, made good use of the Listings Module in his website. The Listings Module automatically draws flyers from your vMarketing account and seamlessly displays them on your website. Click the thumbnail image for a property that appeals to you, and a detail page appears—complete with Flash slide show, contact form, and all the listing details.

One of the reasons we love this site is that Anthony has put lots of effort into each of his vMarketing listings—especially when it comes to the listing photos. The result is a website with a ton of rich, high-quality content, much of it imported from the corresponding vMarketing account.

Rounding out the site are a concise About Us page, a Services page highlighting the buyer and seller services Treetop offers, and a Contact page with an embedded Google Map. In the left-hand column, and displaying on all site pages, are a nice pair of client testimonials and Treetop’s hours of operation. The header and footer, also appearing on each page, hold key facts like company name, slogan, address, and phone number. In case you were wondering, this site uses the “Winsett – Beachfront” theme.

All in all, it’s a squeaky-clean, elegant site that shows off the power and simplicity of the vSites platform as well as the listings and services of a fantastic small business.

There a few features of vSites that Steve has put to good use in his website.  First of all, he’s chosen the “Broadmore – Lounge” vTheme, a real-estate theme with smooth menu styling and a bold splash image.  Steve then used the vSites Theme Editor to change the color scheme to a sharp light blue, and set the header font color to white.

On the homepage, the “column divider” module is used to create four columns side-by-side.  In each of these columns, picture modules have been inserted advertising the four main sections of Steve’s site – listings, seller info, mortgage calculator, and contact info.  These picture modules are all linked to the appropriate pages of the site.

On the “Listings” page, Steve has used iframes to embed his property inventory.  Since his inventory is already entered and managed elsewhere, the iframe is a quick and easy way to incorporate these existing webpages into the vSite.  It’s like a page within a page.

Finally, Steve makes good use of drop-down menus.  The “Listings” menu item, for example, has five different categories that pop up below.  Sub menus like this are easy to create—just customize your menu module and indent one menu item beneath another to create a sub menu.

All in all, it’s a snappy website that has a lot of content but doesn’t lose its clean, professional look.  Well done, Steve!

The background image looks like the type of pattern you might find on the walls of grandma’s house, but the fresh colors lend a modern feel to the whole affair.  And as with any good advertisement, this flyer is chock-full of professional photographs showing off the property in its best light.

Speaking of the listing photos, can anybody spot the famous movie character voiced by Tom Hanks in this flyer?  He appears in three of the images, and he’s wearing a hat.  View the full flyer, and all of its photos, here: http://ryanhanson.vflyer.com/home/flyer/home/47284001

Thanks to eGreen Realty for a top-notch custom theme!

I was accepted into the summer program in early April, and soon found a few minutes to throw together a “Sublets & Temporary” rental flyer. I entered my address, wrote a brief description, and laid out the pricing. I didn’t have any photos available, but I published it anyway, planning to add pictures later.

As a “sublets and temporary” flyer, the ad was syndicated automatically to Oodle, Vast, HotPads, Trulia, eBay Classifieds, and OLX. Now as fantastic as these partner sites are, the main reason I created the vFlyer listing was for an attractive Craigslist post.  Considering the incredible volume of traffic that Craigslist gets, I imagined I would get most of my leads from there

A few days later, however, before I’d had a chance to upload photos or post the flyer to Craigslist, I received the first of these leads. A teacher from Valencia was headed to San Francisco for the summer. The dates didn’t match up perfectly, but he was very interested in the room.

As we corresponded—and I tried to ascertain if this was the right person to fill my room—more leads came trickling in, mostly from HotPads, but some from eBay Classifieds, Trulia, and Backpage.com as well. In all, my flyer’s landing page was visited by 130 different people in the first 26 days after it was published. Out of those views, seven different people emailed me for more information.

Page visits by source for my flyer

In the end, I reached an agreement with the gentleman from Spain, and I unpublished the flyer from our partner sites. I think I’ve found the perfect person to take my room, and I spent all of five minutes advertising the apartment. Now that’s web marketing made easy.