Hey hey folks. I just wanted to tell you about an awesome group on linkedin.com that we started with the simple purpose of promoting business between the members.
The group is called The Market Place and membership is open to all businesses on linkedin. To join The Market Place click here.
Once a member, please post about your business and what you do, what makes your services stand out, etc. You can also post news articles, ask questions of the group, start discussions, and get to know the other group members.
Thank you and have a great day.
Big Cloud Media
Posted in The Buzz on { December 3rd, 2009 } ~ 2 Comments
Tagged with: Big Cloud Media • business • linkedin • linkedin group • linkedin.com • promote • promote your business • The Market Place
This is an exiting time for Big Cloud Media. We just finished the revamp of our website and we also just finished the rebranding effort that was long overdue. After consulting our clients on the values of a web-presence that matches the company, we have filled our own words and completed the task.
This redesign of the company has certainly been a learning experience for us and from it we will certainly provide more insightful consultation on these matters, having been through them first hand.
Watch for our logo to start appearing places. We are developing new strategies and other offerings to compliment our newfound approach to web-design, based around the Return on Investment standpoint. Sure we can build websites and web-applications custom to businesses, redesign websites and web-apps etc. but what is the purpose if the client does not know how they are doing now or what is happening on their website that needs changing to be successful. This knowledge is key to effectively improving things online. We start there and give a unique insight into what needs to be done to improve the Return on the Online Investment and how to do it effectively.
Our new logo is:
We are super exited folks about our new approach, new website and new logo and we thank you for your support. 
God bless.
Posted in The Buzz on { November 13th, 2009 } ~ 1 Comment
Tagged with: Big Cloud Media • business • effective • new approach • new logo • new look • return on investment • services • website • website design • websites
Return on Investment. It’s what we are in business for and ultimately, what we expect out of our investments at the end of the day. So why not expect the same out of our online investments, such as our websites and online marketing efforts? The Return on the Online Investment is often ignored in the rush to achieve online web presence and to start establishing a basis for being found online. What represents your business online? Your website does and it does a fine job of it. Is it sending the right message though? If you send 10,000 people there will it result in sales? If it is not selling your product or bringing in more customers now, it probably wouldn’t do so with a crazy increase in traffic. Unless you know where you are at, with your website, you can’t hope to get where you are going (except by luck maybe). Knowing the return you currently get on your website is the stepping stone to planning what you would like to have as the return on your website and how to get there. I hate to say it but if your business website is yielding no return (either in clients or sales) than something must be done because you have wasted money or time and your potential biggest asset is not doing the job it should be. It is time to get back to the nitty gritty of what your online purpose is. This is the new focus of Big Clou
d Media as a web-design and development / marketing company. Get back to the roots of why businesses are online in the first place and re-engineer the experience and the presence to maximize and reach that reason. Through a unique combination of website analytics analysis and the analysis of both online and offline marketing, we can establish what works and what doesn’t, where the problems are and where the excellence lies, and ultimately, where the money has been spent and where it needs to be spent, in order to get the greatest ROI. A business’s online presence is an investment. Plain and simple. It can also be the most awesome marketing / sales tool, ever, if done correctly. Think of it as an extension of your business to the masses that have never heard of you or met you. You can communicate through it to your customers and potential clients. You can customize the user experience to maximize the comfort and ease of use for your customers. It can be used at all hours at any time of day and the space is yours to do with what you please. You build it, nurture it, keep it in good shape and it will, in one way or another, continually return the money put into it. It is the face of your company online, the first sales person an online visitor meets, and a great marketing and communications tool that never sleeps, never eats and costs little to maintain. Therefore, your website should be at the forefront of your marketing program, not the backend. Especially considering you can send people there at any time of day, with relatively inexpensive marketing and have it work its magic over and over again. I guess my point is this, businesses need to adopt the idea that their website is an investment. Only then will the website and online presence really start working for the business. Once this idea takes hold, it can be adopted into the
marketing plan to keep the website at the forefront of marketing efforts and therefore, keep the always-working, never-stopping, creative-as-you-want-to-make-it marketing engine, that is the website, in the shape that it should be in, to really compete with your competition online and start getting a Return on the investment already made online. If you have any questions about how to turn things around and start doing more with your website or online marketing activities, or you haven’t taken that vital step yet to get your business online, please contact us today and we will be happy to talk to you more about your situation and what can be done about it. Realizing the issue exists is the first and most often, hardest problem. Do something about it and start on the road to a more successful online presence.
Posted in The Buzz on { November 13th, 2009 } ~ 4 Comments
Tagged with: Big Cloud Media • business • effective • effectiveness • investment online • online investment • questions • redesign • return on investment online • ROI • web analytics • website • website analytics • websites
Big Cloud Media is proud to announce that we now offer 2 different kinds of SEO solutions for your business. SEO is Search Engine Optimization and it is a blanket term for any techniques that will help to raise your ranking in the search engines.
Our new SEO program takes it a step further and is focused on not only getting your website first search page presence when certain keywords are searched, but taking up 4-6 spots on that first search results page. Imagine your website showing up in 5 results on the first page of the google search instead of 1 result. This is an incredible advance in the SEO world and the results are guranteed.
If you are interested in applying this innovative SEO technique to your website give us a call at 210-373-7352 and we can discuss it more in detail with you and answer any questions you may have.
Thank you for reading and God bless.
Big Cloud Media
Posted in The Big Cloud, The Buzz on { September 30th, 2009 } ~ 3 Comments
Tagged with: Big Cloud Media • bigcloudmedia • business • effective • effectiveness • Google • search engine optimization • SEO • websites
How many of us love to make new connections and find new clients online? Well, I do, and I would like to share with you some different places that are awesome for online networking and also, why, especially now, becoming a part of online networking and social media sites is such an important part of business.
To put it simply, social media and online networking gives you the power to make contact with millions of people all over the world. Facebook topped 300 million users and is used by newscasters to get opinions on topics, by radio shows to get recos for music to play, Best Buy now uses twitter to answer questions about tech and much more. This is happening folks. People, potentially your clients, are online and clicking away everyday and if your competition is in on it and working it, you are losing out. Don’t take this the wrong way. Your sales may be off the charts and money is coming in from everywhere and you might say, “I don’t need to get online, everything is working for me just the way it is.” and you would be totally right. In that case, establishing an online presence in the online networking and social media world would only grow your business more. For those who can’t say that and are looking for another way to get the word out, social media and online networking should be considered. If done right and effectively, it can’t hurt.
You have probably heard of the online phenomenon Facebook. I just mentioned it above and with 300 million users and more joinin
g daily, it’s a big one. Originally created as a social media site (which it still is) Facebook put a little twist on things and added the ability to create pages. This is where your business would come into play. If you create a page for your business, you can build a following, provide updates on services and products, inform people of newindustry news that may affect them, etc. Having a facebook page and effectively growing your fan base through Facebook gives you one more avenue through which to reach your current customers and potential customers. Keep this in mind though, when on Facebook and your doing all of this, DON”T SPAM!!! Apologies for the change in tone but the fastest way to lose fans of your page is to post every 5 min. the same thing you just posted about this product or that service. Mix it up and keep the content relevant and interesting.
Through facebook you can also join groups and create groups to further your reach into the networking world. There are business groups galore, so get on and start meeting people.
As a business, you have probably heard at some point or another about LinkedIn. Think of it as a business facebook. This one is all business, no joke. Through LinkedIn, you can meet all sorts of people (CEO’s and presidents of companies, etc.) and do all sorts of things to get the word out about your business or products/services, and the best part 
is, it’s free. Yay, free stuff!! Once you create a LinkedIn profile, you want to make sure you fill it out completely and put a picture up there. After that, join some groups that you think match your industry or your customers and start meeting people within the groups. LinkedIn also has a thing called Q&A. You can answer questions other people have and also ask questions of your own to your network. Build up your network, spread the word about your company and meet other business people. LinkedIn is awesome for business networking but once again, DON’T SPAM. It’s getting to be a real issue in some of the groups and you will be booted if you SPAM the group. It’s pretty serious and can completely ruin what you are trying to do.
Things to Remember about Social Media and Online Networking:
One thing to remember about these online networking sites and just the principle in general is that you are building your reputation as a business just as much as you are building clientele for your products or services. Protect that reputation by not SPAMMING other members and by offering good information on your products and services in an unobtrusive way. This is very important because you can achieve awesome results but you can also, just as easily, loose your rep for your business.
Another thing to remember: It takes time and effort if you are to succeed in networking online. You have to build your following and your friends and connections from the ground up and keep at it. The payoff may not be immediate but just remember that when you have established yourself in these different places online, you are that much easier to be found online and you have more exposure to potential clients and customers.
If you have more questions about networking online or social media, please don’t hesitate to leave me a comment or contact me through my online form. Big Cloud Media also offers consultation on these matters if you are having trouble effectively using them to get word out about your business so please feel free to contact me if you are interested in that as well.
Thank you for reading and God bless.
Koji Flowers
Big Cloud Media
Posted in The Buzz on { September 17th, 2009 } ~ No Comments
Tagged with: Big Cloud Media • bigcloudmedia • business • effective • facebook • linkedin • new clients • new connections • online • online networking • reputation • services • social media • websites
Good day all. I just wanted to let you know that the wedding went without a hitch thanks to all of the support from family and friends. Thank you all so much.
Big Cloud Media has relocated to Dallas, TX and is back up and running so please feel free to write or call (210-373-7352) if you need our services. Just to recap we currently offer the following services:
- Custom website design and development
- Custom web-application design and development
- Marketing services and consultation including but not limited to: social media, blogging, online marketing, offline marketing, marketing plans and more.
- Printing, from billboards to business cards
- Search Engine Optimization
- Website Effectiveness Consultation and Planning
Please let us know if you are in need of, or are interested in any of these services for your business, band, corp etc. We will be more than happy to help.
Thank you all and have a great day.
Big Cloud Media
Posted in The Big Cloud, The Buzz on { September 9th, 2009 } ~ No Comments
Tagged with: Big Cloud Media • bigcloudmedia • business • companies • dallas • effective • redesign • services • social media
How many times have you looked at your website and wondered just how effective it is? Have you ever wondered where the people that visit are coming from or what search terms they used to get there? If you have wondered these things, you are reading the right post because we are going to look into the awesome world of website analytics and go over some of the key info you can gather using them.
Why do analytics matter?
Through analyzing website analytics, you can gather info about the activities of your website visitors which you can then compare to your marketing actions, giving you a big picture view of what is going on with your website and how effective it and your marketing is. Combine this info with information that you collect regularly about your clients and you can start to understand why your visitors do what they do when they go to your website, be it buying, calling or leaving. As in any situation, the more you know, the better the decisions you can make.
What can analytics track?
In this post, I will be talking about Google Analytics because that is what I use for me and my clients and that is what I am most familiar with. Using Google Analytics you can track over time:
- Visitor Trends
- # of visits
- Referring websites (where they came from)
- Search terms used to find your site
- Location (down to the city) of visitors
- Visitor operationg systems and browsers
- Visitor connection speeds
- Popular pages
- Visitor time on the site, etc.
The list above is actually only a fraction of the information you collect on your visitors through analytics. The beauty of it is that you can make changes to the site and compare the analytics results to the results before the changes were made, giving you a way to trend your visitor activities and really get a great idea of the effectiveness of those changes.
Where Can I Get Analytics?
Here is the best part of all of this, website analytics are free. Go to Google.com/analytics, and sign up for them. From there, copy and past the tracking code into the bottom of your website pages (right before your ending </body> tag), check your Google Analytics page to make sure it is working and you are good to go. There are a slew of other website analytics companies that you can get your analytics from, so don’t think Google Analytics are the only ones. I am most familiar with Google Analytics so that’s what I wrote on.
Analyzing the Analytics
If you need help analyzing your analytics, contact us right away because that’s one of the things we do and we do it well. Call us at 210-373-7352 with any questions you have and we will be happy to help you.
I hope this has been informative and helpful to you. If you don’t have analytics on your site, get them and start gathering the info. Information is powerful and the more you have, the more effective your site and your company can be.
God bless.
Koji Flowers (Big Cloud Media)
Posted in The Big Cloud on { August 21st, 2009 } ~ 3 Comments
Tagged with: analytics • analyzing • Big Cloud Media • business • companies • effective • effectiveness • Google Analytics • Information • trends • visitor • visitors • website • websites
