Archive
New site launches for those seeking professional counseling
We are very pleased to announce the launch of our latest client’s website, Balanced Professional Counseling Services. Opting for clean lines and specific imagery, the site is meant to allow for an ever-growing expansion of content through a dedicated blog, associated social media, via Facebook and Twitter, and an attachment to an adjoining podcast. Chris McDuffie, LPC, has been working in the mental health and social services field since 2003 and became fully licensed in the state of Georgia as a Licensed Professional Counselor (LPC) in 2009. He currently is an adjunct professor of Psychology at Shorter University and also works for a behavioral hospital.
Balanced Professional Counseling Services is aptly named, too. Chris believes in a balanced approach to work and life and will help those struggling to find that inner balance within their own lives. AJS Productions was pleased to have been selected as the business partner for this endeavor and we anxiously look forward to seeing the content portions of this site continue to grow over the years.
If you are looking for someone to talk to about challenges in your life, we would like to encourage you to give Chris a call today.
Developers using boilerplates may not give you the bang for your buck
Go Social. Go Everywhere.
Is your website designed to maximize your SEO?
First, let’s start with, what is SEO? Search Engine Optimization (“SEO”) has, as it’s goal, a focus on maximizing the visibility of your website on a given search engine’s un-paid search results. Said another way, let’s say you are looking for a local electrician to do some work around your home. Most web users (and today, who isn’t?) will pull up their internet browser, go to a search engine they prefer (Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc.) and type the words: residential electrician in (city name). As soon as you hit enter, a list of websites will show up and there will likely be page after page of companies and web pages that contain the words “residential”, “electrician” and your city’s name. The first few are the “paid” results and can be bought by businesses to always be at the top — these are often flagged with a different color or a highlight. The rest of the results are displayed based on an algorithmic formula that each search engine utilizes to try to put the best results first.
Generally speaking, the earlier, or higher on the displayed list of results, the more frequently that site is visited and referenced by internet users. And, like a self-fulfilling prophecy, the more visitors that click on your site, the better chance your site stays high on (or climbs) the list of future search results. SEO can target all kinds of searches, such as a content search, image search, local search, academic search, news search or industry-specific search.
At AJS Productions, our strategy is to know how those search engines work, understand the terms people like to use when searching for a website (such as actual key words, terms and phrases) and to optimize the content on our client’s website. Optimizing each web page of a given website may include editing its content, HTML and other coding, meta tags and removing any inhibitors to the indexing activities used by search engines. To aid in building the strength of our client’s web pages, we also leverage many typical social media elements, like Facebook and Twitter, to ensure each site is referenced in multiple locations, contains both inbound and back links and creates a web of multiple paths to drive users to the customer’s online site.
The effort to build SEO isn’t a one-time activity. Designing a site with SEO strategies in mind is more than just writing content with key words; it requires constant vigilance and updated content to ensure the search engine crawlers continue to find relevance to the website. Refreshing pages, adding new content, proper image tagging, adding URL links that cross-reference relevant sections of the website are a few activities that need to be employed continually to ensure staying relevant on search engine results.
Our proven methodologies have been employed on many of our sites and continue to drive revenue to our clients’ businesses. If you feel your business could benefit from a consultation with us, we would be happy schedule a time to meet with you and see how we might be able to optimize your current site. And, if you have yet to implement your own internet marketing and advertising strategies, understand that many development houses employ boilerplate design templates, stock language and work from a one-size-fits-all approach.
Our business model is exactly the opposite!
We utilize best practices website development and design and customize our offerings for each of our clients. We take the time to learn your business and build each solution from scratch to ensure we not only have the best site possible for the investment, but also provides the tactics and strategies necessary to maximize search engine optimization.
It’s never too late to be what you might have been
We take the time to get to know our clients and their business. Through several early joint application design (“JAD”) sessions, we spend time identifying your objectives and clearly defining functional requirements, while helping you to understand how to maximize an online presence, driving clients to your door. We strive to deliver the quality and complexity of much larger design firms, but with the small-to-medium business budget in mind.
To us, it is far more important to be your partner, working together to grow your business, than to take a detached approach where you become just another work order number. We take pride in knowing that we spend face time with our clients whenever possible to make sure they know we feel a personal investment in their web success.
Come visit our site and see why AJS Productions might be the website development and production company you’ve been looking for.
Go Social. Go Everywhere.
Launch of Coalition to Prevent the Misuse of Alcohol site
Being involved in website design puts us in contact with so many different businesses and organizations and we could not be happier with our depth and breadth of capabilities to serve each of those unique clients. Beyond the sites themselves, though, our involvement has grown with some of these organizations outside of the bounds of simple client-consultant roles. Such is the case with the Coalition to Prevent the Misuse of Alcohol.
When we first were contacted by Scott Sherwin, Project Coordinator for CPMA, it was actually a simple invite to bring a “media” person onboard to be part of their Community Action Team. Over the weeks and months of serving to aid the mission to prevent early onset alcohol use in minors, reduce ease of access to alcohol by minors and prevent binge drinking for those 21 and older, it became clear that we needed to leverage every aspect of the internet and social media.
It is our pleasure to announce the latest site to lauch from AJS Productions — www.preventalcoholmisuse.com. This project required the coordination of several team members and a time-line meant to coincide with the launch of their media campaign entitled, Rethink the Drink.org. Three PSAs were shot (all of which can be seen on the website), a billboard and newspaper campaign went up and the website all launched on December 09, 2012. In fact, one of the PSAs will be shown in the local movie theatre before every showing of every film for the next few months.
And, our involvement with this worthy endeavor will now move into a couple of areas: the ongoing development of the Youth Action Team section of the website and the design and launch of a dedicated website for Rethink the Drink.org. In a way, by being a part of our local community and wanting to help prevent the misuse of alcohol by both minors and college students, an opportunity to leverage our skill set became apparent to both the client and us.
We want to also point out that this initiative is not anti-alcohol. In fact, it is about the proper and legal use of alcohol! Many of our developers and project managers at AJS Productions have minor children and whenever we hear of a tragedy involving the misuse of alcohol, it reinforces our determination to utilize the internet and social media to help teach and educate both parents and youth alike.
Please take a moment to share this with those friends and family members you know with children, if for no other reason but to maybe get someone to rethink before they drink — or allow their children to drink. You don’t have to be looking for a website developer to share this message. It really does apply to almost everyone.
And, of course, if you are affiliated with a non-profit, a civic organization or a small-to-medium business, consider reaching out to AJS Productions for a free consultation to determine if we might be the website development house you’ve been looking for to breathe new life into the mission of your business or organization. It is our pleasure to continue to serve, not only our clients, but also our community.
AJS Productions. Go Social. Go Everywhere.
Coalition to Prevent the Misuse of Alcohol – http://www.preventalcoholmisuse.com
A 20+ year business greets social media with inaugural website
AJS Productions is proud to announce the launch of a website for a another small business in NW Georgia. Hardwood Flooring by Flores has been in existence for over 20 years and have relied solely on word-of-mouth for their business growth. During economic upturns, this mode of marketing has been more than sufficient to supply a steady line of customers to their door. However, since the economic downturn that hit the housing marking in late 2008 and the following collapse in 2009, business has been thin.
After riding it out for the last three years, they knew it was time to embrace social media. When we first met with the owners, we wanted to reflect the quality of workmanship inherent to every job taken by Hardwood Floors by Flooring. Pictures are the key and so we built the site with the ability to have the owners post new albums in their gallery. This gives them the flexibility to show each of their latest jobs from start to finish without crowding the home page of the site.
They also know how important social media has become in the last few years, but didn’t want to spend all of their business hours keeping those outlets updated. By partnering with us, we were able to give them a one-button solution to updating a business Facebook page, their Twitter account, the news section of their website, while also providing a headline update to their home page of their website. This allows them to spend the bulk of their time doing what they do best – custom flooring and tiling solutions for home and business.
If you are looking for someone to transform your home or office, we want to encourage you to contact Hardwood Flooring by Flores today. And, if you are ready to take the leap into social media with your small-to-medium business, why not get in touch with us today?
Go Social. Go Everywhere.
Contact us today at www.ajsproductions.com for a free consultation.
The King’s Knit-Wit just went live
One of our latest clients is a small startup that has been in its brick-and-mortar store for just four months. In a world of mass merchants and big-box stores, The King’s Knit-Wit chose to find an unfilled niche and capitalize on it. We all know the economy has taken it on the chin for just about the last four years and many are having to change not only their spending habits, but also how to get more for less.
In our own corner of the world, we run into so many family’s who have begun to grow larger and larger vegetable gardens to off-set the rising cost of fresh vegetables. Similarly, some of the more archaic professions are starting to make a resurgence, like canning, sewing and knitting.
This last area is where our latest client has focused the bulk of their business — knitting. The King’s Knit-Wit provides something for everyone interested in knitting, from the novice to the seasoned expert. Providing raw wools, tools, patterns and even live training, this mom-and-pop operation has seen knitters as young as 8th graders to folks as old as 80 come through their shop.
They pride themselves on always having a fresh pot of coffee or hot tea ready and plenty of space to sit down and enjoy learning and practicing this age-old craft. Many of their patrons are learning they can make clothing for a fraction of the price at retail stores, while gaining the added knowledge that their creation is a one-of-a-kind.
Because of their business model and product focus, we chose to embrace a look and feel that harkens back to the Renaissance drawings and images of a time gone by. The client wanted a rich burgandy background with design elements that made you feel as if you had been transported to the days of Shakespeare.
If knitting is your thing or you just want to see if this might be the hobby you are looking for, swing on by their shop and say, “Hello!” And be sure to LIKE their Facebook page, follow them on Twitter, and sign-up to follow their blog. Their focus may be on a old-world craft, but their outreach is 100% focused on social media.
This website design was a nice departure for us from some of the more technical and modern sites we’ve been delivering. That’s one of the reasons so many of our clients have enjoyed working with us; we listen to what they want, while consulting with them on how best to achieve their business results. In this way, we truly create the sense of a partnership. We’ve said this over and over: We do not look at our clients as simply the next work order.
If you have a business, are you doing all you can to leverage the tools available to you to market your offerings to the public at large? If not, AJS Productions may be the website designer you need. Our focus on big company solutions at the small-t0-medium business budgets will get you the results you are wanting. Contact us today and let’s get started toward making your online presence a driving force for your bottom.
With AJS Productions, it’s time to Go Social. Go Everywhere.
Your website is up — now what?
Almost every business, from the one-person garage-based operation to the full-sized corporation with multiple offices, knows they need a website. And, since the dawn of the dot.com revolution, almost every business does. But a website isn’t a replacement for marketing or sales or advertising. It is a powerful, 24/7 virtual street sign for your business, but like any street sign, it marks a destination, not the journey.
Put another way, in the real world, your street address is the ‘X’ on the treasure map — it marks the spot for your customers. But an X on a piece of paper devoid of any landmarks, coordinates, cities, or labels would be as useless as a menu of prices without any descriptions of the entrees themselves.
Clients don’t just need to know where you are, they must know how to find you. They may look you up in the phone book. They may ask around the office or their neighborhood for suggestions. Or, they may look you up online. In all of these cases, they have a need and are trying to find you. The question is, how easy are you making it for them?
Beyond having up-to-date content, pretty graphics, cool fonts, and easy-to-navigate menus (a topic for another day), if you haven’t optimized your site and aren’t spreading the word, your sign will remain lit at the end of an empty street.
At AJS Productions, we leverage the best in social media integration to ensure we are helping you to get the word out to anyone looking to find you. We link your blog, your newsletter, Facebook, Twitter and your website together along with a host of other sites based on your business needs, like YouTube, Flickr and more. This makes it easier than ever to get information out to the public at large.
Yet, with all of these tools, have you done all you can to maximize your reach? Is your website address on your company letterhead and business card? Do you have links to all of your social media components clearly displayed on your website? Do all of your emails and electronic communication contain your website address in the footer?
Let’s go one layer deeper.
What about your employees? Have they LIKED your business’s Facebook page? Do they follow the company on Twitter? Are they subscribed to your newsletter or blog? And, most important of all, are they helping to spread the word by sharing recent posts or retweeting specials? Are they forwarding newsletters or sharing blog posts? Does everyone in your business know they are a vital and integral piece of your marketing and advertising team?
Ultimately, during each phase of developing an online presence, you increase your odds of capturing the attention of the would-be client who is desperately seeking your services. Having a website is better than just an advertisement in the phone book. Optimizing your site makes your web presence more readily found over those that aren’t. Integrating with social media gives you the ability to reach out even further without incurring any financial expenses, save for the time and effort it takes to put out updates, newsletters and blog posts. And at the point of this inverted pyramid are your employees, who provide the best word-of-mouth reference to all of their friends, family members and followers with a simple click of a button.
So, are you leveraging all of the outlets available to you and your business to attract clients? Have you built and optimized your site? Have you fully embraced social media integration? Is your website listed on every advertisement, email, business card, and letterhead? And, finally, do your employees understand the critical role they play in marketing?
To help you in your quest to maximize your reach, AJS Productions can consult with you on how to take your online presence to the next level. Are you ready?
AJS Productions. Get big-house development practices with the small-to-medium business budget in mind. Cartersville, GA.
Go Social. Go Everywhere.
