Athens-South Visual and Graphic Design

The Year of 360º

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iPhone + Pano2VR + Facebook 360º linkedin-360-400

 

Photography has evolved with new technology that can enhance the interpretive experience. It’s now possible to look at landscapes from a new 360º perspective with embedded photos and informational “hot spots”. FaceBook now interfaces with some 360º images. I shot this with a iPhone 6S, and stitched it with the Google Street View app. It was output with Pano2VR.

  • 3D minié ball was extruded with PS 3D and embedded in a Pano2VR patch
  • Output was Equirectangular .jpg file (8704 × 4352 px)
  • WordPress Website / Genesis Theme
  • Pano2VR 5.0
  • Google Street View App
  • iPhone 6S
  • Tripod with a MeFoto camera mount

As I look at new camera’s, the iPhone 6S is still the best bang for the buck for outdoor 3D . For indoor, or close-quarters shots, the parallax error induced by the position of the iPhone camera lens creates distortion of linear lines. The best results are with a DSLR and a camera mount with a fixed nodal point. Nodal Nija has a good one for around $350 USD. The Giga Pan Pro has an automated robotic tripod mount for $1000.

3D Virtual Tour of Franklin, Tennessee

#virtualtour #franklin

Graphic Design

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Graphic Design for Websites:

This design took 1.5 hours to develop. My creative design rate is $45 an hour for existing clients.

bourbon-ad

In addition to the print ad, I developed a 815px by 315px FaceBook banner image to complement the online magazine advertisement (1/2 hour).

facebook-banner-ad

Claim your business

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Claim your business on the internet:

How to get started in SM management. Most of this is free and easy. Occasionally, some of these services will solicit you for an upgraded account.

  • Google+ Local (former Google Places) – search for your business and claim it (connects with Google Maps)
  • Alexa – search for your business and claim it.
  • Yelp – search for your business and claim it (sometimes they will try to sell you an upgrade)
  • Bing – search for your business and claim it
  • Map Quest – search for your  business and claim it
  • POI – GPS submission site (Garmin, Magellan, Navman, Route 66, TomTom, Nokia, Destinator and others)
  • Open Street Map
  1. POI – GPS TeleAltas
  • Manta – search for your business and claim it
  • City Search (City Grid) – apply for a listing
  • Four Square – search for your business and claim it
  • Merchant Circle – search for your business and claim it
  • Super Pages – search for your business and claim it
  • Yellow Pages – search for your business and claim it
  • Local – search for your business and claim it (they will try to sell you an upgrade)
  • Infousa – search for your business and claim it
  • Yahoo (Lycos) – search for your business and claim it
  • Yellow Bot – search for your business and claim it
  • Localeze – search for your business and claim it

Social Media:


Set up your Facebook Page and invite friends. After you get 25 friends, you can claim a name (e.g. http://www.facebook.com/FranklinBooks)
How-to on Facebook pages:

Auto adding YouTube to your Facebook page:

Set up TweetDeck on your desktop to monitor your Twitter / Facebook / LinkedIn and any search terms you choose:

Register with all social networks using Ping.fm:

Make sure you add your profile pick, website address, and edit notifications when creating each account. Don’t forget to get your Ping email and SMS number so you can easily Ping out information via emails and text messages. (Also remember that you can name your accounts using your SEO keywords to better optimize search engines finding your brand.


Product & Service Branding:


Decide on your brand name and register your domain at Hostgator and Twitter. Make sure you check the Trademark database first as well.

Register your name with other web services to protect the name and increase brand awareness:

Grab the Yahoo account and most important the Gmail email address for your name: (landmarkbooksellers@gmail.com). The reason you get the Yahoo is so that you’ll also have the Yahoo owned Flickr account.

Logo and Advertising Design:


Get a cool logo and great ads for an amazing price:

Be “The Expert” in your field:


Become a source of information for your brand (“thought leadership”) by learning as much as you can:

Add blog feeds to your reader by finding the most appropriate at the #1 blog searcher:

Monitor your subject and brand with automatic alerts:

Creative Marketing

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mail-chimp-header

A press release, a camcorder and a mike…

 

Making a big splash for your business does not have to be expensive.

Last saturday night, one of my clients was lucky enough to be selected as one, of only three liquor stores in the greater Nashville area, to get a celebrity appearance by the Discovery Channels ‘Moonshiners’ Stephen Ray Tickle. The Sugarlands Shine appearance drew hundreds of fans that waited for hours to meet the largest legend of Franklin County Virginia, since the Bondurant Brothers (Lawless – 2010).

They sold over four cases of shine that night and got a live remote from the local Wilson County News.

I miked a friend of mine, and shot about three hours of video that ended up with a couple of great sound bites. One of the questions we asked Tickle, mirrored a popular YouTube video made of him talking about “Beer or Bacon”. Positioning the video with the correct key words, landed it #2 (organic ranking) the next day. Having our videos imbedded in the client’s website, spiked traffic over 400% in 24 hours. Fans also came to the website for a free download photograph of themselves with the celebrity.

Cost for the Project:

  • Press release (2 blasts) – $90
  • Video Shoot (3 hours) – $135
  • Editing (3 hours) – $135
  • Website embedding (1 hour) – $45
  • Social Media Submission (2 hours) – $80
  • Total Project Cost – $485 plus tax

Previously, I have produced a body shop video on about the same budget. As of today, it has over 9000 unique views on YouTube. Changs Tae Kwon Do school video has around 2,500.

I will be increasing my creative marketing rates at the first of the year. If you would like to lock down the cost of a project at my current $45 per hour rate, contact me soon!

Bob Henderson
866.500.7746
athens-south.com
bob@athens-south.com

Local SEO by Yoast

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Website management for local merchants:

WordPress Local SEO by Yoastmarker

(Retail Price: $68 per year) Local SEO plugin – Included in all Athens South Site Management Plans

A great website management tool for local merchants that want to stand out from the crowd. Want to make sure your company website ranks high in Google in your local community? Want to be found by patients or customers in your neighborhood? And: want to improve the usability of your site by easily adding your location and opening hours to your website?

Yoast Local SEO plugin for WordPress helps you to set up your website in a way that will rank higher in Google for your local community. Above that, it largely improves the usability of the contact page of your website.

Higher ranking in local search

Searching in Google (or any other search engine) for a hairdresser or a dentist will result in a list of hairdressers or dentists in your local community. So, local search appears to happen spontaneously! However, in order to give a (high) ranking, Google does need to know the exact location of your business. Above that, Google needs to know what type of business you provide.

Yoast Local SEO plugin provides Google and other search engines with the exact information it needs to show your company website in the local search results. Whether your company has only one office, or multiple locations, Local SEO plugin will make sure it will appear in the local search results.

local-seo_opt Improving usability
Yoast Local SEO plugin largely improves the usability of the contact page of your website. It allows you to:

  • Insert Google Maps – This extra functionality will make it easier for your customers to (physically) navigate to the location of your company.
  • Insert address(es) of your company – Yoast Local SEO plugin makes it easy to show your company address(es) in a clear and uniform format, while adding all the necessary technical markup for search engines.
  • Insert opening hours of your company – Yoast Local SEO plugin makes it easy to show your opening hours in a clear and uniform format.
  • Insert a store locator – The store locator will allow customers to easily find the nearest location of your company. Customers can fill in their home address and a list of the nearest locations of your company will appear.
    These features will make your contact page look a lot better! Just take a look: read more

 

Pinterest for Business

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pinterestAccording to comScore, Pinterest is the fastest-growing websi­te of all times. I’m not surprised at all. It’s addictive, it’s beautiful, it’s inspirational and it’s easy to use. As it’s already been said, Pinterest is how we want our world to look like. But even if you’re not a day dreamer, I’m pretty sure you can easily spend some 20 minutes digging into beautiful photos, sticky infographics, DYI images, etc. In fact, social media users are spending more time only on Facebook. According to recent research, the average user is spending 89 (some insist 98!) minutes monthly on Pinterest…. read more

Monitoring Social Media

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Do you have a choice?

Too many business owners my age (54) seem to think that social media (SM) is a game for “kids”. They are making a huge mistake if they don’t understand the business side* of Facebook, Bing and Google+.  Additionally, a large percentage of people engaging in SM use their mobile devices to find what they’re looking for on-the-go. 15% of Google searches are done on mobile platforms and 20% on Yahoo. Not only is it a convenient way to find what’s close to you, it also displays customer experiences that others have had.

If a business has not listed their establishment on Yelp, Google Local, Foursquare, et al., anyone with access to the Internet can put them there, and rate their experience.

Many financial institutions in particularly, are weary of engaging in this medium for fear of grabbing a tiger by the tail. Since banks in particular have been beat up pretty bad in the media they seem to fear a running dialogue will foster even more venting by the general public. In my opinion, this is an exaggerated perception. But weather or not one decides to engage with SM, they should, at the very least, listen to it. Take a look at “mission control” that the big guys are using.

* I run across small businesses all the time that have set up their business on their personal Facebook. There is an easy way to fix this.

More about Bob Henderson on Google+

Bad Reviews

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Bad Yelp Review

A merchant called me last week regarding a bad review they received on Yelp,  wanting to know what he could “do about it”.  I almost responded: nothing.

The structure of unfiltered reviews with Social Media can cut both ways. It’s great for consumers, it’s great businesses that provide top quality service, but what do you do when you’re unfairly criticized by a sour customer? No matter how well you run your business, sooner or later someone is going to get ticked-off about something.

My immediate response to the client was there’s not much you can or should do if you can’t resolve the gripe. Take a deep breath. It’s best to just thank them for the business and the feedback. It’s easy to be misunderstood in this medium, and a bad situation can easily get worse, so it’s good idea is to keep your response short, polite and very general in nature.

Bad City Search Review

Last year I had another client get slammed on City Search by an unhappy bridesmaid that she had done a dress for. The details that I received suggested that there was a bad experience at the wedding that had more to do with the customers anger, than way her dress fit (she had declined to try it on when she picked it up the day or two before the event).

My suggestion was to let it go. The bridal shop had dozens of great reviews and this was the first one in the shops long history. Against my advise, they hired an attorney. The lawyer waited a few months in order to let things cool down and drafted a very conciliatory letter that actually resulted in the review being deleted by the customer. This could have gone either way, and in my opinion the expense was probably not worth the trouble and the risk of another “cyber attack”. The bottom line was, with or without the ding, the shop still had a 5 out of 5 star rating.

Another reaction many merchants have is to call in all their friends and fans to layer good reviews, trying to push the bad one down. Sounds like an effective idea, but this can back-fire too. In this ever evolving social media word, SM’s are getting savvy to ploys like this and will sometimes recognize the tactic and remove ratings that don’t look natural.

Improper Angies List Review?

A web designer friend of mine did a trade for their SEO and some body work for his car. He subsequently gave them a glowing review for the auto paint job on AngiesList.com. Apparently Angies List identified him as the web designer for that shops site (probably from the IP address), pulled the review and warned them not to do it again. Even though the review was authentic, it appeared that the collision center was writing their own reviews.

For more information on customer reviews check out: https://biz.yelp.com/support/responding_to_reviews

More about Bob Henderson on Google+

 

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