El Camino

We are just hitting our stride in the internet revolution. The best is yet to come.

In 1908 the Ford Motor company put out the first Model T and in 1913 the assembly line was first used. These two moments changed our lives and allowed the World economy to grow exponentially. About 40 years later, Chevrolet, a brain child of the Ford Motor Company, developed the El Camino. The El Camino was a revolutionary production; utility and style all in one. What a great thing?

Google, My Space and salesforce.com are the El Camino of the internet era. Like Ford, the internet has changed our lives and allowed the World economy to grow exponentially. But where are we now? Just hitting our stride. The above mentioned websites seem like the Holy Grail right now, but they are not. We have a world of innovation ahead. Just think if we had stopped at the El Camino?

Companies that realize this future are better equipped for growth. Don't allow your company to satisfy for a web presence that simply tells your story. Use the internet to create business, do business and maintain business. Take what you do today and see yourself doing it better, faster and more efficient; that is what the Toyota Prius does.

Experience Marketing

Cascade Web Development developed the site for the Portland Action Sports Film Contest this summer. www.oregonsports.org/action the contest was created to give local filmmakers and athletes the opportunity to get involved with the Dew Action Sports Tour, months before it even arrived.

It is amazing what can happen when you give people the opportunity to engage in something they care about. Today, marketers are feeding us millions of messages from all mediums. What really sticks are the things that give you a real experience. One that means something.

Last week, I sat in a lecture about this very topic, experience marketing. Something dawned on me as they were feeding us red bull and ice-cream to "show" how experience marketing really worked. Experience marketing can easily become the same thing that TV or 2/3 advertising magazines have become. In your face forced marketing. At this point it is not an art it is a formula that tends to work over time.

If done right experience marketing can liberate the individual and the brand. The result is a life long relationship worth more than any marketer could ever dream of!!

Google Trends

Some web sites shed thousands of dollars every month on SEO and specific keyword campaigns, but what if nobody is searching for that specific keyword or search term? How do you know which ones to optimize for?

It's generally been the domain of SEO experts to tell you, for a pretty penny, which search terms were actually worth optimizing your site for. Google Trends is a tool, launched back in May according to TechCrunch, that allows any user to compare how often specific terms are searched on Google. The results can be broken down by time frames as well as geographic location.

While you may still want to go to the experts for fine tuning, Google Trends is a great starting point for web sites looking to beginning focusing on SEO.