BRN

WHO WE ARE BRN is a group of like-minded business professionals who work together to foster relationships, make introductions, share advice, and support each member's business-to-business work. We're an informal but serious bunch - after all, it's about making business happen but that's always best when you're enjoying yourself, too.

Our organization accepts non-competing members who agree to play nice, help each other, make every effort to attend our twice-monthly meetings or events, and strive toward the success of other group members. We believe highly in professional ethics and hold ourselves and other members to standards we can be proud of.

We welcome visitors and would love to meet you. Contact us to learn more about what we're all about.

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Acquire -> Engage -> Maintain August 25th, 2009 by etapley My everyday work (often fueled with a healthy dose of techno) involves helping people and businesses build a successful web presence. That’s not all, of course, but it’s the major thrust of what I do and, in general, there isn’t a good framework used for this. I don’t mean a technical framework, mind you, but a business framework. My clients focus on less important details (Will there be a “home” link? Where? What color?!) and not the fundamentals, like how the site is going to meet measurable business goals. So I’ve created a framework. It’s not rocket science but it helps keep people on track. In general the components are: Acquire: Determine how you’re going to get visitors to your site and what number you need to reach your goals. If you want 10 contacts per month and it takes 100 visitors to get a contact you need a plan to get 1,000 visitors to the site, otherwise your goals are toast. Engage: Once a visitor gets to your site what will they see? It’s not about colors, photos, or even the details of the text, the key is understanding what your visitor needs and building a site that will convey that message. Want them to call you? Make that clear. Engage them with your content, presentation, and the actions on the site. Maintain: This is where people fall down. You’ve done the hard work of setting up a site, driving traffic to it, and encouraging them to take an action. Now what? Keep in touch! Use LinkedIn or Facebook, send out email newsletters, blog, tweet, whatever works for you. Just maintain and grow that connection you’ve worked so hard to create. Keep these things in mind – how you’re getting visitors to your site, what they’re doing once they get there, and how you’re going to maintain the relationship – and you’ll see continued success and reach your goals. Posted in Marketing \| No Comments » How Search Marketing is like Car Safety August 18th, 2009 by etapley Building a car is a complex process with a large number of variables to incorporate, foremost amongst those is following safety guidelines and ensuring the vehicle protects passengers. Safety isn’t a box that’s put in the car after it’s built, or something to worry about on the assembly floor but not in the design studio. Safety is a core element of any car and, as such, must be considered at every stage of the process: planning, design, assembly, testing, and even marketing. (Forgive my gross simplification of the automobile industry, I’m a web geek, not an auto engineer.) But what does this have to do with search marketing? Search marketing is to your website what safety is to a car: a core principle that must be addressed at every step in the process. You need to plan for effective search marketing from the beginning. It must be an end goal that’s considered during the design of the site, writing site text, coding the site, adding a blog, developing a linking strategy with associations and other organizations… in essence, it’s as vital to the success of a site as safety is to a car. Minus the insurance, of course. Search marketing is core. Consider it at the beginning and filter every aspect of the site through that lens. The result will be a stronger, more audience-focused site that generates leads and new business. Enough of that and you’re off to the dealer for a new ride. Posted in Marketing \| No Comments » Exercise for the win! August 14th, 2009 by etapley I was recently asked to give some business advice. I thought about it for quite a while – first of all, I’m not that old, so I haven’t accumulated much wisdom worth sharing. But I have opinions, so I could find something to say. What, then, could I suggest that is unique and has real value? Then it hit me – entrepreneurs, for the most part, don’t exercise enough. We’re all bogged down in our daily routines, we push aside our own time for our businesses, and we let other things take a higher priority. But this seems to be exactly the wrong approach. Exercise is great! It improves our energy, attitude, general well being, focus, sleep patterns, gives us time to think about things when we’re away from the task itself… it’s almost the perfect thing to do. So you want some business advice? Exercise. Posted in Business Advice \| No Comments »	Business Advice (1) Marketing (2)

Acquire -> Engage -> Maintain

How Search Marketing is like Car Safety

Exercise for the win!