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.

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.

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.

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.

Are you on Facebook? Do you have a Fan page or Facebook Group?

Lately a big focus for me has been Facebook. I’m busy building my first Facebook Application (you guessed it, I’m not doing this myself but outsourcing it) so I’m learning more about the tools and systems Facebook uses. I have also been using Facebook to setup an account for our church. What! Using Facebook for a church? Yupers I am. We have a youth ministry focus at our church and many if not most of the age group we are working with spend lots of time using Facebook.

But Facebook is not just for the young and not just for posting information about how your day went or playing games like Mafia Wars. Real business people are helping to build their businesses using Facebook. Come on out and join us Wednesday evening at 7pm at Caribou Coffee and discover how you can use Facebook too.

Please post a reply in the comments area below if you will be attending. Thanks

Here it is Labor Day, tomorrow is back to school time for our youngest son. Where did the summer go?

This week I’m busy getting ready for the 4th annual Midwest Internet Marketing Super Conference presented by my friend and business associate Jeff Mills. The conference starts this coming Friday, September 11th and runs through Sunday the 13th. Thursday I will be heading down to Bloomington to setup the audio/video gear but I will be taking time out Wednesday evening for our next Elk River Online Business Mastermind Group meeting at Caribou Coffee in Elk River.

I hope you will join me and bring a friend along too. We meet at 7pm until 9pm when the close the shop. I will be sharing about how to setup an online business using WordPress and a shopping cart program that does not have a monthly charge like most do. This can be used to sell digital or physical products. If you want to learn how this works please join me at 7pm this Wednesday evening.

Please post a reply in the comments area below if you will be attending. Thanks

I’m sitting here at Caribou Coffee this morning posting this note about this month’s Elk River Online Business Mastermind meeting that will be here this Wednesday, July 8th from 7-9pm.

I will be talking about how you can start and operate your own television station over the Internet to promote your online or off-line businesses.

I look forward to seeing you this Wednesday evening at Caribou Coffee in Elk River.

Henry