Elk River Online Business Mastermind Group

Does your company have a business website that is nothing more than just a digital brochure?

If someone clicks the email link on your website will they get a reply within 24-48 hours?

Do you know where your website visitors are coming from, how they find you online?

If someone wrote something about you or your business and posted it online would you know about it?

Do you think there is NO WAY you would ever have time to manage accounts for your business using Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter?

Do you think you would need to become a “Super Geek” to put video on your business website?

If these are some of the questions that you have pondered or said yes to as you read them you may be a candidate for the Elk River Online Business Mastermind Group. We meet the second Wednesday of each month to share ideas, questions, frustrations, tips and tricks that real business folks like you need help with to build your online face of your business.

There is no cost to join us for the two hours (unless you want to buy me a coffee or a blueberry muffin) each month at Caribou Coffee in Elk River, Minnesota. My purpose is to share ideas among each other for what works and what does not work in the online world. As a Mastermind group we can help each other. Even with 16 plus years of working with computers, computer networks and building websites I don’t have all the answers… but together we can help each other.

Come on out and join us on the evening of June 9th for a hot cup of coffee or any other favorite drink.

The monthly Elk River Online Business Mastermind Group meets from 7:00 – 9:00pm at the Caribou Coffee shop next to Office Max in Elk River off Hwy. 169… just down the road from Cub Foods.

Bring a friend or business partner along. Forward the link to this page to them.

Be sure to leave a comment about coming to the meeting to let me know if you can make it or not.

My topic for the Elk River Online Business Mastermind meeting at Caribou Coffee is, “How To Create and Market With Internet Videos.”

For those business people who want to learn how to do this themselves a great video camera to get is the new Kodak Zi8 Pocket Video HD Camera. I have a link to it over there —>>> on the right if you want to check it out. Besides giving super HD quality video and being easy to download to your PC or Mac computer, the Zi8 has a 1/8 microphone jack and comes with a replaceable rechargeable battery.

Here are some of the specs on the Zi8 camera. You can click on the link on the right to learn more about it and to order one also. [Full disclosure, that is my affiliate link from Amazon]

The KODAK Zi8 Pocket Video Camera captures every experience in stunning 1080p HD video. Stay in focus while you’re on the move with integrated image stabilization.

• Capture HD quality 1080p video with 16:9 aspect ratio
• Plenty of room for more—record up to 10 hours of HD video with the expandable SD/SDHC card slot that can hold up to 32 GB[1]
• Make audio awesome—the external microphone jack lets you record in stereo
• Get a new perspective—take amazing 5 MP 16:9 widescreen HD still pictures

I can teach you how to create and edit videos for your business website or, I also offer services for creation and marketing for you. For more information about to use video to promote your business Contact Me.

Topic this Month – How To Create and Market With Internet Videos

Do you promote your business or products using Television commercials? If you answered no to that question I would suspect the reason you do not use TV ads in your promotion toolbox is cost. High production costs for doing video and the expense of running ads on TV stop many businesses who would probably benefit from doing advertising on television.

If your advertising budget does not allow for local or national television ads you should be looking at a new and better way to promote your business or product using the Internet and streaming video either live or pre-recorded.

Look at this…

The Nielsen Company reported yesterday that total video streams for November 2009 were up 17 percent year-over-year in the U.S.

There were 138.4 million unique viewers of online video that month. They watched 11.2 billion video streams, or about 81 streams per viewer. Viewers spent 200 minutes per viewer — on average — watching online video.

Not surprisingly, YouTube was the top online brand ranked by video streams for November 2009 in the U.S. 106.9 million unique visitors watched 6.8 billion streams on YouTube that month. Hulu ranked second, with 12.5 million unique visitors, who watched 656.6 million streams. That’s not a typo. YouTube dominates the category by that much.

If you were saying to yourself that no one would watch your online video commercial, you might want to re-think that. And if you think there may be something to the idea, come on out to my monthly Elk River Online Business Mastermind Group meeting this month.

I will be talking about how you can create and market video over the Internet to get business leads and sell products or services.

Come on out this Wednesday evening March 10th and join us for a  hot cup of coffee or any other favorite drink.

The monthly Elk River Online Business Mastermind Group meets from 7:00 – 9:00pm at the Caribou Coffee shop next to Office Max in Elk River off Hwy. 169… just down the road from Cub Foods.

Bring a friend or business partner along. Forward the link to this page to them.

Be sure to leave a comment below about coming to the meeting.

What is all this SEO (Search Engine Optimization) about and how can I do it for my website?

How do I pick keywords for my website that people are searching for?

How can I get more visitors to my website?

What tool can I use that will quickly drive traffic to my website?

This month I want to share with you some tips and ideas that can help answer these questions and others related to how important it is to identify what people are searching for on the Internet and how to make your website stand out in front of them for those search terms.

I will also be showing you how to properly link up keywords on your website pages and blog posts so that your pages get found and indexed by the search engines like Google.

Come on out this Wednesday evening February 10th and join us for a  hot cup of coffee or any other favorite drink.

The monthly Elk River Online Business Mastermind Group meets from 7:00 – 9:00pm at the Caribou Coffee shop next to Office Max in Elk River off Hwy. 169… just down the road from Cub Foods.

Bring a friend or business partner along. Forward the link to this page to them.

Be sure to leave a comment below about coming to the meeting.

The first Elk River Online Business Mastermind Meeting of 2010 will be on Wednesday night January 13th starting at 7:00pm.

I have some cool new stuff to show you about using Social Media Marketing tools like videos and Google Voice. Watch as we make an Amimoto video like the one below.

Be ready to give me a video testimonial for my new Mission Springs WordPress Web Hosting site.

Bring your questions about Facebook, Twitter, Yourtube videos and all so that we can all share about our experiences good or bad with using Social Marketing tools.

We meet from 7:00 – 9:00pm at the Caribou Coffee shop next to Office Max in Elk River off Hwy. 169… just down the road from Cub Foods.

Bring a friend or business partner along. Forward the link to this page to them.

Be sure to leave a comment below about coming to the meeting.

Do you have an existing website that could benefit from having pre-recorded or live video on it?

Are you wondering about how Social Media Tools like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and YouTube might be used to help increase traffic to your website in 2010?

Do you like to write about your business or hobbies and think that maybe setting up a Blog would be a good place to put your writing skills into good use on?

These are just a few of the many topics that I will cover in my new weekly live streaming video training that I will present FREE here at the Elk River Online Business Mastermind Group website. Watch for more information on the starting date and times for these live Internet broadcasts.

You may have watched my Live Streaming Video from the new NorthStar Commuter Rail Train in November. I will be using the same technology but unlike that video, which was streamed via my Blackberry cell phone at less than half the normal video frame rate, I will be broadcasting from my office over my Charter Broadband connection so it will be a much higher quality video feed.

Let me know if you have a topic that you want covered during one of my broadcasts. You can leave a comment below.

If the snow lets up and the roads get cleared off on Wednesday afternoon I hope you can join me for this month’s Elk River Online Business Mastermind Group meeting. People have been asking me lots of questions about how to setup new websites or, how to get a “website makeover” for an existing website that is not doing much in the way of helping to get business and sales.

This month I will be talking about using WordPress and all the great tools that go with it to build business websites. I will also be showing off my new WordPress Hosting Website.

I hope the weather cooperates and we can all get together on Wednesday, December 9th.

We meet from 7:00 – 9:00pm at the Caribou Coffee shop next to Office Max in Elk River off Hwy. 169… just down the road from Cub Foods.

Bring a friend or business partner along. Forward the link to this page to them.

Watch my LiveStream.com streaming video channel for a demonstration of how to use remote live streaming video over the Internet. On November 14th my wife and I attended the Grand Opening of the new Northstar Commuter Rail from Elk River Station to the new Target Field Station in Minneapolis. This is a recording of the trip from that day.

If you are interested in learning how to add pre-recorded or live video to your website, please contact me.

This coming Saturday, November 14th will be the Grand Opening of the new Northstar Commuter Rail system in Minnesota. Elk River is one of the locations with a station for the new commuter train which begins full service from Big Lake, MN to Minneapolis, MN on Monday, November 16th.

Our family has received free tickets to the Grand Opening Event on Saturday to ride the Northstar Commuter Rail train from the Elk River Station to the Target Field Station in Minneapolis and visit the new Target Field Twins stadium ballpark.

I plan to try out the WiFi system on the Northstar train and, if all goes well, provide Live Streaming interviews with a few of the passengers and perhaps some folks that will be riding the Northstar train each day to work. You will be able to view the video on the Home Page of my Elk River Mastermind website… if it all works.

Although I will not need the daily commuter service provided by the Northstar train, as I have my office in my home, I do look forward to taking occasional trips into Minneapolis on weekend outings with our family using the Northstar train. I might also use the Northstar and the connecting Hiawatha Line Light-Rail service to travel to the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport. I used this service about a year ago riding the Northstar bus from Elk River into Minneapolis and then taking the light-rail to the airport. That worked pretty slick and the cost was less than driving and parking there.

I hope you will take time to visit my website this Saturday from about 11:30am to about 3:00pm to checkout my live video stream.

Opps, almost didn’t get this up here for a notice for tonight’s meeting. Actually, I did already do this last week but you don’t see it now as I moved my whole website from my old hosting account to my new one at HostGator.com. I posted the new meeting notice after I already backup the files for the move and didn’t remember to not add anything until the move was done. I know… I should know better than that. LOL

So tonight I want to share with you ways to make yourself and your business Famous with Video. Below are the links to the websites that I will be sharing and doing my show-n-tell on. I hope the WiFi at Caribou Coffee is working nice tonight so we can see how the video works here.

LiveStream.com

UStream.tv

Palm Springs Studios

We meet from 7:00 – 9:00pm tonight at the Caribou Coffee shop next to Office Max in Elk River off Hwy. 169… just down the road from Cub Foods.

Bring a friend or business partner along. Forward the link to this page to them.