As every day passes, more and more people are accessing EVERYTHING from their phones! If your company is not prepared to be accessed from a mobile device, then you are behind! Making your business mobile friendly is more important than ever.

Do the test! Pull up your website on your phone, or ask SIRI to locate your business. Did it work? How well?

 

Having your business on Google Maps and your website appearing correctly on mobile phones will get you seen by customers!

Want to learm more about local/ mobile marketing?

Join us May 15th from 12:00pm- 1:30om at the Half Shell Oyster House for our Plugged-in workshop. Click here to register!

 

 

Join us for our Pinterest Workshop

It's time to do some pinning!

By attending our workshop, you also receive a one-time free 45 minute business development coaching session with our certified coach to discuss your business plan on an individual basis.

Wednesday, May 1st, 2013
12-1:30 PM
Half Shell Oyster House (1991 Main St.)

 

Buy any 5 workshops and get 20% OFF! 

Think Pinterest is just for women? Think again.

Find out why your business needs to be on Pinterest and how to create and execute a successful Pinterest strategy.

 

Every 2 weeks we will feature a new Business Development topic while you enjoy a phenomenal lunch in the Half Shell Oyster House private meeting room. This is also a great NETWORKING opportunity.

PRICE $20 Includes Workshop, Lunch, Beverage and Gratuity. 

Seating is limited so please reserve your spot in advance.

Vegetarian option available.

Register at www.destinyg.com/education

by Amanda Brooks

Conversions & Call Tracking Workshop

By attending our workshop, you also receive a one-time free 45 minute business development coaching session with our certified coach to discuss your business plan on an individual basis.

Wednesday, April 17th, 2013
12-1:30 PM
Half Shell Oyster House (1991 Main St.)

 

Buy any 5 workshops and get 20% OFF! 

In this workshop you will learn how to make a more successful website which converts visitors into customers, be able to track conversions, do call tracking, etc.  We will focus on HOW TO CONVERT internet marketing traffic INTO REAL CUSTOMERS!!!

Every 2 weeks we will feature a new Business Development topic while you enjoy a phenomenal lunch in the Half Shell Oyster House private meeting room. This is also a great NETWORKING opportunity.

PRICE $20 Includes Workshop, Lunch, Beverage and Gratuity. 

Seating is limited so please reserve your spot in advance.

Vegetarian option available.

Register at www.destinyg.com/education

by Amanda Brooks

Looking for a news reader alternative to Google Reader?

Google recently announced its Google Reader is going to be expired on July 1, 2013. Before you panic, a similar, if not better, alternative is already available and gaining popularity: Feedly. It's available for Chrome, Safari and Firefox as well as mobile syncing for Android and iOS. It features a simple, sleek interface and will migrate all of your Google Reader information seemlessly. The site currenty has over 600,000 users, 500,000 of which are new users since the announcement of the end of Google Reader two days ago.

Make sure you switch to Feedly before Google Reader ends in order to ensure all your information is transitioned over seamlessly. Once downloading Feedly you are immedietly prompted to sync with your Google Reader account and in moments all your subscriptions and "starred" posts have been transfered over to Feedly. 

Feedly has the same core features as Google Reader with many preference options available and makes it easy to save and share content. Although the default "magazine" view is a visually pleasing way to scroll through your updates, you may want to consider switching to the "condensed" view in order to have a view similar to Google Reader. This shows a list view of titles which is more efficient when scanning through articles quickly. There are many different settings you can alter in order to create an experience similar to Google Reader. To get more tips for Google Reader users migrating to feedly click here.

 

Wednesday, February 20, 2013
12-1:30 PM
Half Shell Oyster House (1991 Main St.)

Buy all 5 Social Media or SEO Workshops and get 20% OFF

Come learn about search engine optimization and how to market your company effectively online.

Every 2 weeks we will feature a new Business Development topic while you enjoy a phenomenal lunch in the Half Shell Oyster House private meeting room. This is also a great NETWORKING opportunity.

PRICE $20 Includes Workshop, Lunch, Beverage and Gratuity.
Seating is limited so please reserve your spot in advance.
Vegetarian option available.

Register at www.destinyg.com/education

by Gabriel Marguglio

 

 

We are so excited to partner with The Sarasota-Manatee Originals! The Originals are such an important part of our city's history and community. They are a close-knit group of locally owned restaurants, some who have been around as long as 20 years, who are committed to keeping the Sarasota and Manatee area unique.

We have built The Originals website from the ground up! Running their social media has been such a special project for us because of their interesting events, special promotions, and variety of restaurants involved. We have taken on all of the social media platforms and are thrilled to see such a great response from the community and desire to see The Originals succeed!

We are going to begin educational programs with The Originals and teach their members about online marketing, social media platforms, and search engine optimization. These classes will help them to create a stronger image for their restaurants and understand how to tackle different online publicity strategies. This will not only enhance their own image, but The Originals image as a whole.

In the Sarasota area, we have done website design for The Bijou Cafe and Drunken Poet who are part of The Originals and are currently working on revamping The Crow's Nest. With such as strong sense of unity throughout the different restaurants within The Originals, we feel as if we have been accepted as part of their family and look forward to additional projects we take on.

 

 

by Amanda Brooks

Happy Holidays from Destiny Group!

From all of us at Destiny Group, we wish you a Happy Holiday!

 

Mark Baker from Shuhari Martial Arts explains how his new website is working better for him and keeps bringing new customers to his Karate Dojo. Learn More about Shuhari Martial Arts at www.shuharimartialarts.com

 

 

Shuhari's new website comes up in the first page of google with several related keywords in the necessary areas or interest. This not only brings more customers but also got the attention from ABC7 News and they contacted the dojo to do a story about Self Defense showcasing Mark Baker and Shuhari.  Check the video bellow... ABC7 reporters searched "Self Defense Sarasota" on Google and Shuhari came up several times on the first page, check the results by clicking on this link.

A new twitter version is out and it looks a lot like facebook to me. I think we have now a 3 way competition for the best social network, facebook now is not only competing with Google + but twitter got into the race too. You might think they where already, but tweeter was left behind by the power of facebook and the business pages...  well, now twitter announces branded twitter professional pages coming up...  

 

Draw traffic to your website using Twitter:

Every time you have a new product, a new services, a special or anything that might be useful for your customers you should communicate that to your followers on Twitter. There's a chance they will click on it and go to your site to read more about it and that generates more traffic to your site.

Follow your brand and products on Twitter:

Twitter has become one of the best tools to see what people think about your brand and products, competitors and keywords related to your business. This allows you to reply to any concerns immediately and really know what is what people is saying about these issues.
You can use Twitter Search (http://search.twitter.com) to find your brand on twitter and subscribe thru RSS Feed to get updates of that search.

Use favorites in Twitter as your Testimonials:

Mark all good comments about your company and products in Twitter as Favorites and then use this as a new source of Testimonials. This is done thru the STAR icon on the top-right of every tweet.

Be the expert and leader on your area:

Use twitter to help other people, send tips, recommendations, and valuable links thru Twitter. This will help improve the credibility and image of the brand and company on twitter.

Use Twitter as a customer service tool:

• Reply to all comments about your company and brand:  Designate a person in your company to check search.twitter.com every day and if there are questions or issues about your products reply to them as soon as possible. This will help keep the image of your company and your customers happy thru good customer service.
• Use twitter to let people know your site or blog is under maintenance or down: This will help communicate this to a lot of people very easily and fast.

Here's a great video showing how Social media is changing everything and why you should be doing it. Incredible numbers that show how marketing changed in the past years and why it is so important to be part of this change.

del.icio.us is a web-based bookmarking site. Delicious users save their bookmarks on the website so they can access them from any browser. A website that has many bookmarking it is generally popular and will get more traffic. You can use del.icio.us bookmarks to help improve your SEO campaign. The public social component of del.icio.us makes it a great tool to make your website stand out form your competition. 

Here's a video explaining how to use del.icio.us and why is it SOCIAL:

 

You can also use Social Bookmarking as a great online collaboration toll. Since your bookmarks are public delicous allow you to easily share important or useful links with coworkers, customers and partners. 

We believe there really is a new era emerging in the Web's evolution. So what's next?  What will define Web 3.0?

One explanation is that:

Here are a few trends that are distilling the conversation and, in the process, defining Web 3.0:

1. Aggregators

 No one wants to manage accounts on 25 different social sites. This frustration has driven the creation of tools like iGoogle, FriendFeed and Netvibes — all aimed at streamlining your social Web into one space. But more importantly, it has led to the reinvention of Facebook as the ultimate social aggregator.

Recent redesigns of Facebook have turned it into a place where your photos, videos and blog posts can be easily (and automatically) funneled into one place. That's an approach that FriendFeed pioneered years ago, but there's a big difference: Your friends are actually using Facebook.

And now they can even comment on your shared items without leaving the social network. That's bad news for YouTube and other sites that need traffic to create ad revenue, but it's good news for users who don't want to scramble all over creation just to say "Cute video!"

2. Simple sharing

 We've all been seeing those "Share this!" buttons for years now. If you're a marketer or PR person, you've probably plastered them all over your work in hopes of helping it "go viral." But the reality is that these links to sites like Digg or Reddit just haven't been that useful.

That's finally starting to change thanks to Web and smartphone tools that simplify the sharing process.

A few examples:

 • Hootsuite's Ow.ly Social Bar: A bit more comprehensive than TBuzz, this tool shares sites but then also makes it easy for the viewer to share it again. So if you like the link I send you to, you can click a button at the top of the page and keep the share train rolling.

• Smub.it: Designed to make sharing easier on an iPhone, Smub actually works on just about any device with a Web browser. You simply add "smub.it/" in front of any URL, and it will pull up a page of simple buttons to share that site on Twitter, Facebook, Digg, etc.

3. Un-Sites

The design-heavy microsite has been under serious assault lately. Why? Because businesses and marketers are realizing that there's an infinite supply of content out there, being refreshed every day. Why go through all the trouble of creating 100% of your site's content yourself?

And here's another point: A few years ago, if you wanted video on your site, you had to write or find a code that would let you host the video. Big pain in the butt. Now Google is dumping millions of dollars into making YouTube the best, most advanced video service on the planet. Why would you still go it alone, when you can just embed YouTube on your own site for free?

Right now, this concept is being pushed to its limits by ad agencies and others who want to get buzz by showing how minimalist their Web design can be. The most notable examples are Modernista's pop-up home page, the similar Skittles project by Agency.com, and most recently BooneOakley's bizarre conversion of its agency site into a YouTube video. (watch bellow)

 

For now, these kinds of projects are mostly just publicity stunts. But there's no denying that repurposed content from sites like Twitter and YouTube is going to become the norm with almost any site design in the near future.

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On another angle we've heard that if Web 1.0 was characterized by connecting people to content, and Web 2.0 is connecting people to people, then Web 3.0 is certainly connecting objects to people and to eachother. The Internet of things. Tim O’Reilly has also been talking about this for a while.

Inanimate objects can be embedded with sensors and connected wirelessly to the Internet. This enables us mere human objects to effectively communicate with those formerly inanimate objects. The hope is that as we are able to collect data from these embedded objects and analyze it we’ll be able to make better, more informed decisions based on all the available information we have.

This requires, of course, better analytics to makes sense of it all. But coupled together (data+ analytics) it’s truly the next transformative era of computing. 

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So what's your take on the term "Web 3.0"? Is it a bold new era? Or just a reorganization of all the information we have today? I'd love to hear what trends you've noticed and where you think they're taking us.

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Original Blog Posts: thesocialpath.com  and  asmarterplanet.com

If not done properly you could be missing out on very valuable keywords. If you do not take your time you could put keywords on pages that don't belong or target keyword in your pay per click campaign that do nothing but produce clicks and burn through your marketing and advertising budget. When conducting keyword research there are some things you should be looking out for.

What Niche do you want to be In? You will have to find out what type of group you want to be visible to and get inside their shoes in order to figure out what types of keywords will fit best on your website. Really find out and isolate what type of products you are servicing and find all the niche keywords and phrases that revolve around that niche. Don't always worry about targeting all the high volume keywords because they receive the most traffic. Long tail keyword phrases often times convert the best when it comes to SEO and PPC. The long tail phrases are usually conducted by web users who know exactly what they are looking for.

Budget: Budget meaning how much of a marketing budget do you have to go after competitive keywords? If you are a one person company starting out you will need to bring some heavy ammo to go after the same keywords that your competition that might have been around for 5-10 years and is established is going after. It is important to not only target the very competitive keywords but also the keywords that have medium amounts of traffic and also low. You have to remember that SEO is long term and you won't be visible over night, but SEO could bring better results and it creates an asset over your website (because it could keep building up without having to spend money per every click)

Competition: Take a long hard look at your competition to see what it is that they are targeting. It is always important to take a look at what your competitors are targeting for keywords on their website when you starting conducting your keyword research. You know what they say; the best offense is a good defense. It is always important to know what types of keywords your competition is going after so you can gauge just how much of an effort you will need to put out there in order get into the same area.

Here at Destiny Technologies we include KEYWORD RESEARCH in all our SEO packages, Contact us if you have any questions about this.

 

Original Blog Post: addme.com

# 1 - Drive Traffic:
You can use Twitter to let know your followers you have a new blog entry on your website, or you have a new products line and always include a link to your website or the article you are relating to.

# 2 - Develop Brand Loyalty:
One of the many ways of building BRAND LOYALTY is to release good, related and useful information to your own customers.

# 3 - Improve your Exposure (Buzz):
In Twitter you will be able to interact with thousands of potential customers.

# 4 - Networking using Twitter:
This system allow you to interact with people and it could help you know you clientele or your potential customers a lot better.

# 5 - Real Time Research:
Find out what people is doing, buying, searching, etc. You can decide what content people will enjoy the most by using the search function.

Want to learn more?  Contact us!

 

Here you have a nice video about TWITTER SEARCH:

First of all, what is a WIKI?, well lets go to the WIKIPEDIA definition of WIKI:

A wiki is a website that uses wiki software, allowing the easy creation and editing of any number of interlinked Web pages, using a simple text editor, within the browser. Wikis are often used to create collaborative websites, to power community websites, and for note taking. The collaborative encyclopedia Wikipedia is one of the best-known wikis. Wikis are used in business to provide intranet and knowledge management systems.
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WIKI

A wiki could be use for collaborative projects, events and more. In business all this is going to be published online so you could use it to promote your events and products by creating a wiki about them and having the members of these events or product collaborate. Remember to create links back to your blog (were you talk about the event) or to your website, were you have information about yout product.

Here is a good video about how wikis work and how you can create one.

 

Destiny.

Google has launched a new keyword tool called Sktool (Search-based Keyword Tool).

Google’s new Search Based Keyword Tool (SKTOOL) allows search marketers to generate keyword ideas based on the content of their Web site and back-end data.  The tool maps similar queries to each other and also maps back to the keywords you’re currently bidding on in your AdWords account.

The tool has a number of applications.  The main application is to expand your keyword list in an organized and thematic way.  However, many of the keywords suggested by the tool should not be bid on by search advertisers; in fact, an advertiser would waste a lot of money if all the suggested keywords were added to a program.  The tool should be used to consider suggestions and pick ones that are relevant to your site.

 

The tool also shows the amount of competition on a given keyword, a suggested bid for that keyword, the average monthly searches for that keyword and the best page of your Web site to land that searcher.

This tool will actually help us in creating a better, more relevant, keyword list for your SEO campaign. We will be able to find the keywords that people are searching for a specific market and apply it to your search engine optimization and social media optimization.
Even thought this tool is in its BETA phase, we think it has a lot of potential.

link: Sktool - Search-based Keyword Tool    

 

Here you have some interesting videos about Social Networking and Social Media...

 

Google Wave was released at the recent Google I/O event as a demo product. It is an amazing real time collaboration and communication platform with email, instant messaging and heaps more combined to form an awesome product.

The demo product is an HTML 5 applicaion built using the Google Web Toolkit. Wave is being released as an open source product. Its open platform encourages developers to build other Wave clients, extensions and embed waves in other web pages and platforms. The product is characterised by the 3P’s namely product, platform and protocol.

The brothers Jens and Lars Rasmussen from Google Australia are the creators of this incredible product. Their previous creation was Google Maps which is now the defacto standard for online mapping of geographical locations. This has taken a good couple of years to develop and bring it to its current form. Jens stressed this fact to the audience - You must remember that all this is happening in your browser.

A “wave” contains equal parts document and conversation where people can simultaneously work and communicate together with richly formatted text, photos, videos, maps and more.

 

 

How Google Wave Works

You create a wave and add contacts to it. All the contacts on your wave can use richly formatted text, photos, videos, gadgets and feeds from other sites on the web. All members can edit the wave directly and also insert replies. You can see all the edits in real time as the changes are made to the wave by others.You can be running a Firefox browser and your friend can be on Safari browser. You can add as many contacts as you want.

The playback feature is a very powerful feature. If a new contact joins the wave, she can see the collaboration and communication that has taken place in a certain form at that point of time. By clicking playback, she can see how the whole wave has evolved from the beginning to the point of time she joined the wave. This is a very powerful feature especially when teams are working on different parts of the same project document.

Some of the really cool features are:

• Google Wave offers plain vanilla type email conversation where you can send emails to contacts you choose to.
• Instant messaging where unlike the typical IM chat, you see the message - Sarah is typing
  before you get to see the message once Sarah is done typing, in a wave, you see the chat transferred character by character in real time
• Use playback to see how the wave has evolved to its current shape
• Drag and drop attachments, say photos, into the wave from your desktop and everyone else on the wave can see it almost instantly
• API for embedding your wave to web pages such as a blog
• Wave can be embedded in social media sites like Orkut
• You can participate in a wave from your mobile phone
• Editing of the wave in real time and edits appear instantly with markups denoting the different edits
• Ability to send a private message to a particular contact which others cannot see
• Teams working on a project document can collaborate in real time and communicate simultaneously when working on it

Google Wave can be viewed as a platform with a rich collection of open APIs. This allows developers to build new extensions that can work with waves and also embed waves in other web services.

The Google Wave Federation Protocol is the basis for storing and sharing waves with the all important live concurrency mechanism which allows edits to be viewed in real time across contacts and services. This protocol is designed such that any user’s wave services can communicate with each other and with the Google Wave service. This is going to be achieved by making the Google Wave protocol code open source.

An excellent video on the Google Wave demo by the development team will give you a great idea of the amazing features that have been built into it.

 

Google is encouraging the developer community to create some cool apps that can be incorporated into the Google Wave before it is made public. You can sign up at http://wave.google.com to be notified of the release date when Google Wave is launched as a public product.

 Original Blog Post: www.naturalsearchblog.com