A non profit client of ours recently asked for a list of internet marketing tactics to consider while building her online marketing strategy. Here’s where our web design firm started with our list:

• SEO (organic search engine optimization) and linking campaigns
• PPC (pay per click)
• Affiliate marketing (think amazon.com’s books)
• HTML Emails and Auto-responders
• Conversion Concepts (getting people to do what you want them to do on your site)
• Web Analytics and Testing
• Online Video
• Blogs and Social Media (facebook, twitter)
• Banner ads
• Article writing

Does anyone else have more to add?

Sandstorm Design officially has over 1,000 followers on Twitter now! From wishing one of our employees a happy birthday (go Alma!), sharing the latest words we’ve added on Marketing Addictionary and random social networking tips, people are following Sandstorm and getting to know who our web design company is from the inside out. Now I owe Holly Potbellys – her social media goal has been achieved with 1,000 followers :)

I got a text today that read “Your VISA account is closed due to unusual activity, call us at 1-(888) 568-2788.” After doing a quick search online I came across 800notes.com that shows a string of other people like me who have gotten these texts but with a different 800 number. It’s fraud, but it made me second guess that maybe we did have an issue with our company credit card. I have mixed feelings about mobile marketing as I don’t like having to pay for someone’s ad to me, but this is even worse – paying for spam and fraud. Ug.

Today Bryan hosted a “Food for Thought” for the Sandstorm Staff. One way that we exchange knowledge here is by selecting (or in this case Bryan volunteered) one person on staff to put together an educational course on a topic that they have expertise in that they feel would benefit everyone. This is done at noon, and the presenter gets to select their lunch of choice (potbelly’s today – my personal favorite – thanks Bryan!)

Through his wit and humor, Bryan took our staff through the various web site development and database programming languages we use, what they do and how we use them to create standard compliant, technically effective, and cross-browser compatible data-driven web sites. Everyone at our web design company attended, from the creative team of designers and writers, to sales and research. Bryan took the sometimes intimidating acronyms of programming languages and unlocked the secrets to our web site development. And I learned what css sprites are.

I had a creative block for today’s blog entry, but I really wanted to write. Alma popped into my office, so I asked her for some ideas (this is a very common scenario here at Sandstorm… I have an idea, or at a loss for one, and the staff member in the closest proximity to me gets “chosen” to help brainstorm the solution). She jumped right in and rattled off like 5 ideas, and the one that struck me the most was her perspective about how unique we are in how we openly share ideas here – and that anyone can add insight and make a contribution. Some may say this is an inefficient use of time… these random unplanned idea-dreaming water-cooler conversations, or is it really one of the perks about working for a boutique?

Last night we had our 3rd class in our 8 month program where we had a pretty interactive discussion about the five stages of business growth. We broke out into teams that were in the same growth mode, and shared personal stories on how we each got there. My favorite part of this SBA e200 group so far is hearing the personal stories of each CEO – how they got started, what factors motivated them, and what risks they took to get here. Each CEO has their own story of courage, recognized opportunity and personal growth. I bet this group would make a great twitter novel… (hmm, note to self). But I wonder how much time that novel would take away from me working on building our web design company.

It was a green day for us! (not the band, even though I do like their music) Our web design firm launched a new web site for the National Association of REALTORS^® to promote the Green REsource Council and NAR’s Green Designation. This designation is the first of it’s kind from NAR and offers specialized green real estate training for residential, commercial and property management professionals. How cool is that? Check out their “green” web site.

Our tweeting has generated a new business lead for us today! At 500 followers and counting (Holly has a personal goal of getting us 1000) our web design firm has hit a point where we can track our tweeting to a lead. And it is a good qualified lead – perfectly matched for our usability expertise and in the green industry. Stay posted as we continue to build our social media strategy and track the results.

The Small Business Administration (SBA) was searching for 200 companies across the country with a high potential for growth to become part of their Emerging 200 program. The e200 would provide education, networking and resources to help CEOs scale and grow their businesses, create more jobs, and expand into new markets. It sounded like an interesting concept, so I applied.

I was in Colorado on a snowboarding trip when I got the call that Sandstorm Design was 1 of 16 companies chosen from Chicago. More to come…

Our twittering is driving web site traffic to our web design company. This week twitter made it into our top 10 referral sources according to our web analytics. And the great news is that our twitter traffic is staying longer on our web site than traffic from other referral sources. Today we plan to add twitter as a referral option on our request a quote and contact us forms to start to track if twitter traffic turns into qualified leads.