In case you missed the news last month, I will be speaking tomorrow at the Entrepreneur’s Edge.  I am co-leading one of the breakout sessions and will be discussing “Information Technology for Small Business Owners” with Janet Pickel, owner of Sentinel Technology Solutions.  This will be a shortened version of our “How to Avoid being held Hostage by Your Technology Providers” that you may have heard previously at the Fair Oaks BDG where we teach some best practices for keeping your website, domain names, and email servers under your control and not reliant on a single “tech”, employee, or vendor.

This Entrepreneur’s Edge is tomorrow, February 10th at 3:30 at IKEA in West Sacramento.  If you haven’t already registered, you can still check-in at the door for only $49.  For more information, please visit the NAWBO-Sacramento website and Entrepreneur’s Edge page.

I hope everyone is looking forward to this year as much as I am. 

As usual, I will be striving to improve our service offerings to YNot Web clients and help business owners struggling to make sense of all the new web technologies and make informed decisions.

Watch for new YNot Web design packages, restructured service offerings, more informational and educational articles, a revamped newsletter and website, speaking engagements and workshops.

We hope to make 2009 our best year yet!

Well, finally I have been able to notify all the winners of our 5th anniversary Customer Appreciation Raffle.  And the winners are:

• Dave Hollars, Kitchen Mart, Neat Receipts 3.0 Receipt Scanner valued at $180
  Dave filled out one entry form, referred 3 prospects and two new clients since we launched the new Kitchen Mart website and started doing SEO/Marketing services for them last fall.
• Trish Lindvall, Cordova Recreation and Park District, $100 SpaFinder spa Certificate
  Trish submitted 1 entry form and referred one new client since our last raffle.
• Wendy York, York Law Corporation, $100 Morton’s Steakhouse Gift Certificate
  York Law Corp filled out one entry form, referred one prospect and one new client since our last raffle, have had five websites designed, and have been SEO/Marketing clients since 2005.
• Dale Burkam, Web Product Sales: 8mb iPod Touch valued at $199
  Dale submitted 1 entry form, referred two prospects and one new client since last year.
• Laura Abernathy, Mission Accomplished Academy, YNot Web’s Biz Booster package, valued at $460, which includes SEO services and a $100 Google Adwords budget
  Laura submitted 1 entry form and one verbal testimonial
• Debbie Murphy, Murphy Farm & Lawn, $100 Google Adwords budget and SEM services to create an Adwords campaign
  Debbie submitted 1 entry form and one written testimonial since we launched her new website this past spring.
• Trent Long, GoGift, A foursome at North Ridge Country Club valued at over $400
  Trent submitted 1 entry form, referred one prospect, one new client, and has been an SEO/Marketing client since 2006.

Also, we decided to do one additional surpise prize for the best suggestion for a new service given via our survey form.  After reviewing all the surveys submitted, we chose Mary Griffin of Griffin & Associates for the best idea.  Mary suggested that YNot Web offer a class on how to improve and update your website.  This sounds like a good idea to give our clients a chance to have a refresher course on using their web editor, suggestions on content they should consider adding to improve their site and ways to make the most of the website they have.  I will try to figure out how to offer something like this in the future.

Mary’s prize for this suggestion is a $100 Spa Finders gift certificate, good at numerous spas in the Sacramento area and beyond (nationwide).

Congratulations to all our winners and a big thanks to all our YNot Web clients, past and present.   Look for our Customer Appreciation Raffle again next year and if you’re not yet one of our clients, Y-Not?

We have eight more winners for our client appeciation drawing– however– I won’t be able to get notifications out until Monday!  Be patient- you may have already won!

The deadline for our “grand finale” drawing for our 5th Annual Customer Appreciation Raffle is tomorrow at 6pm PDT.  Did you enter as many times as you’re allowed?  If you’re a past client and haven’t received your entry instruction, check your email or junk mail filters for past notifications or you can request a resend. 

Last week’s winners selected from our prize vault the following prizes:

• Ray La Point, Delight Cleaning, selected an 8mb iPod Touch valued at $199.
  Ray submitted 1 entry form and one testimonial.
• Andrea Raymond, Appletree Advertising, selected Season Tickets to the Sacramento Theater Company’s 2008-2009 season valued at $300.
  Andrea submitted 1 entry form and referred one new client since our last raffle.

With these prizes gone, the following items are still up for grabs:

• $100 SpaFinder spa Certificates
• $100 Restaurant-of-your-choice Gift Certificate
• A foursome at North Ridge Country Club valued at over $400
• Neat Receipts 3.0 Receipt Scanner valued at $180
• 8mb iPod Touch valued at $199
• YNot Web’s Biz Booster package valued at $300
• $100 Google Adwords budget
• Trial subscription to YNot Web’s Blogmentation™ service valued at over $400

Don’t miss your chance this year! Get your entries in!

You may have noticed several client winners so far during our 5th year Anniversary Celebration–while having multiple prize options valued from $150-500–have opted specifically for something called “Blogmentation”.  While we wait to announce Week 3 winners and their prize selection, I thought I would provide a brief explanation of our newest service offering: YNot Web’s Blogmentation™.

Most my SEO clients have heard time and time again how their website content drives keywords and search engine rankings (if you don’t talk about ‘zippity widgets’ on your website, you’re unlikely to show up in Google top search results for ‘zippity widgets’).  Also, recentness of content and frequency of site activity are often factors in ranking scores.  For these reasons, I often recommend that my clients start blogging on relevant topics or create an article section or even a web-based newsletter to grow their websites and increase their search engine optimization and rankings.

Unfortunately, many busy business owners find it challenging to have the time needed to create quality content on an ongoing basis.  YNot Web’s Blogmentation™ is a new service we are offering exclusively to YNot Web SEO clients to help solve this problem by augmenting our clients’ website with search engine optimized blog entries or short articles on an ongoing basis.  Blogmentation is an ongoing subscription-based service. Clients choose their content posting intervals and their most important key phrases and YNot Web creates the fully researched, search engine optimized and unique articles on topics relevant to that client’s business and keywords. 

For instance, a real estate agent may have topics such as “How to choose a Real Estate Agent”, ‘How to Work with a Real Estate Agent’, and ‘Interview Questions for Selecting a Real Estate Agent’ or a series of entries on “Tips to prepare your House for Sale”. Keep in mind, blog postings are shorter than full-length articles (generally 250-450 words) and should be laser focused on a particular topic for best optimization effects.  YNot Web’s Blogmentation™ service frees up our clients’ time, relieves stress of coming up with topic ideas and keeping up with continual web site additions, helps our clients compete effectively for keywords relevant to their business, and provides useful information to their clients and prospects.  Currently this service offering is only available to YNot Web’s SEO clients who already have a blog or article section on their website and just want to add content to it.   To find out about becoming an SEO client or for pricing and details, contact Kammy by phone or email.