Dream Systems Media Blog

Today I read a post by Matt McGee - 5 Ways Negative Reviews Are Good For Business - I just want to expand on one of them here, but hat tip to Matt for posting this.  It really is worth a read!

The point I want to take a closer look at here is: They help you make better business decisions.

You don’t set up a business hoping it receives tons of negative reviews.  My guess is most (legitimate) business owners that have a ton of negative reviews are truly sad about them, and didn’t set up their business planning on getting them.

Where I think businesses do fail:

Reputation Management negaative reviews, Reputation Management, reputation monitoring

We decided to move the corporate office to the Mountain Point Office Plaza at Thanksgiving Point. We love visitors so please stop in and see us at:

Mountain Point Office Plaza
2940 W. Maple Loop Suite 201
Lehi, UT 84043

For our clients outside of the Salt Lake City area, here are a few pictures of the new office space:

Outside shot of Dream Systems Media Offices

This is David Mink's office.

Credentials are on the wall!

Gorgeous mountain views from the second story offices.

The Dream Systems Media conference room.

The Chief Kahuna himself, Andy Melchior, sits here.

View from the office.

More amazing views from the office.

General Dream Systems Media, Mountain Point Office Plaza

Yelp - For Local Reviews

Local marketing bliss is what I want to share! For those of you who own a local business, how would you like to get your business on the first page of Google today? In most cases, you will achieve top 5 results with out any real SEO! What if I told you, that you could achieve these types of rankings without having a website. You would jump on the opportunity right? Of course you would, so here are instruction on how to capitalize:

I, like many other people own an iPhone and have downloaded the Yelp app (a local review service). This app has an amazing feature that allows you to search for businesses and reviews near you. What I have discovered is that most local businesses are not even listed, nor are there any reviews. I had a blast over the weekend reviewing all the places I ate at during a little trip. (Most of these businesses did not have any reviews prior to mine.) So, if you own a local business, even if you do not have a website, you need to get your business listed and reviewed on Yelp.

Local Marketing local advertising, Local Marketing, yelp

About a month ago I had a conversation with an old school mate that found me via Facebook. It has been about 14 - 15 years since I last spoke/saw/did anything with this guy. We mostly just talked about what I do for a living, but it was interesting for me to hear his thoughts and ideas about our industry (and how he thought he did the same thing for a living). I have to admit the conversation was a bit irritating, and I ended up having to tell my old friend I had to .  I  can’t remember the reason I gave him, but the real reason was I was two seconds away from losing it and really giving him a piece of my mind!

SEO Internet Marketing, Marketing, online marketing, SEO

Will Scott, Search Influence

Every once in a while I have the good fortune of meeting someone that turns out to be a pretty good friend, and during SMX West 2009 I had the opportunity of meeting Will Scott (Search Influence), an amazing individual who I now consider a great friend!

Will and I talked about a number of things related to Internet marketing and life, and we soon found out that we had a lot in common.  At one point we had such an interesting chat about Press and SEO that it made me want to interview him, and share it with all.  What an amazing industry that allows us to meet so many interesting people from all over!  I really hope my readers will take just as much away from this info as I did.  Sometimes I often overlook the power of press, and Will did a great job bringing it back up to one of the most important categories of marketing for me!

General

How Do I Get More Followers On Twitter

I’ll get right to it - I am always getting asked how to get more followers on Twitter, which to be honest I think is funny because I really don’t think I have a “TON” of followers myself. However; I am sitting close to 1100 followers and feel I have a pretty good idea of how to make Twitter work for business and marketing purposes.  I want to help those who are asking me this specific question understand how I got, and continue to get more followers on Twitter.

Experiment Time:

Before I get to answering the question, I was wondering what other people who follow me on Twitter get asked the most.  It appears my number one question is not the number one question of most of the people following me.  Most of the people following me seem to get the “WTF is Twitter” in some form or another!  Check this out:

Twitter how to get more followers on twitter, Twitter

Brandon Buttars

A long time friend of mine, who also happens to be a web developer recently took some time to answer some questions for me.  He and I have noticed there is a huge communication gap between most web developers and SEOs/Internet marketers.  We feel that the web developer thinks that they know how to build the site “good enough” without talking to an SEO, and the SEOs assume the developers don’t have a clue about marketing online.  Both are wrong. You each bring something amazing to the table and need each other.  I think we need to have some better communication from the very start and to kick things off, and get you thinking differently - here is my interview of Brandon Buttars, web developer.

SEO Brandon Buttars, Internet Marketing, SEO, web developer

I just had to take a snapshot of this picture and share it because I thought it was cool. Our very own David Mink’s likeness is being used on the banners pitching SMX Advanced next month in Seattle. I have seen the banners for a while now, but it only hit me today that the guy in the snapshot was David! I think that’s pretty cool! This picture was taken at SMX West 2009 (which Dave and I spoke at), and I am pretty sure that another one of DSM’s crew took the picture.   Greg Lindblom in fact (lostbro1 on Twitter) was the guy responsible for the picture and apparently SMX took the image off my Flickr feed. So the question is, where is the credit/link love for Greg? I guess this will have to do! Nice picture Greg! Now only if we were actually speaking at SMX advanced … haha

David Mink dave mink, David Mink, SMX, smx advanced, smx west 2009

Local Search

I got distracted today and the result of that distraction is this post. I was curious about something dealing with local search and the SERPs - so I decided to do a little comparison. The four major search engines I compared are Google, Yahoo, MSN and ASK. I wanted to find out how their specific local programs compared to one another when searching for non geo-targeted terms? I wondered if I would get any usable results without using a geo-modifier? The following screen-shots are going to explain the title of this post much better then any of my words can. I am also pretty sure that including ASK as a major search engine is a choice I will regret later on, but then again it is the official search engine of NASCAR (and that’s got to count for something, right??)!

Local Marketing google local, local, local advertising, Local Marketing, local seo

I had a great conversation a few days ago with a programmer friend of mine who works for a major company (but wants to be working for himself). We were chatting about business, Internet business, making money and particularly about how to find products to sell online. My friend made an interesting comment that struck me me so much that I wanted to write a post about it.  I am doing my best to remember his exact words, but more or less, here is what he said:

I am just having a hard time figuring our what kind of a business to start that has not already been started.  I mean, do you think I could really create a product that would sell online?

Business Business, Internet business, reinvent the wheel, starting an online business