It’s LIVESTRONG Austin Marathon Weekend!

Marathon weekend is here! Upbeat Marketing is incredibly proud to be part of Team LIVESTRONG not only for the race this weekend, but for the greater goal of fighting and beating cancer. It was a joy to be part of this fundraising initiative, and we are happy to report that Team Upbeat raised over $1,400! Thank you to all who supported our efforts. Members of Team Upbeat will not only be running this year, but Suzanne and Sarah are supporting the seeded athletes as part of  Jack and Adam’s Bike Lead Team. We wish everyone a fantastic race!

Below is an email from our Team LIVESTRONG mentor Barbara Simmons. She has supplied a constant stream of inspiration for us, and we wanted to share her tips and thoughts along with Team LIVESTRONG’s success. Thanks Barbara!

“You have to wonder at times what you’re doing out there. Over the years, I’ve given myself a thousand reasons to keep running, but it always comes back to where it started. It comes down to self-satisfaction and a sense of achievement.”
- Steve Prefontaine

“A marathoner is a marathoner regardless of time. Virtually everyone who tries the marathon has put in training over months, and it is that exercise and that commitment, physical and mental, that gives meaning to the medal, not just the day’s effort, be it fast or slow.  It’s all in conquering the challenge.”
– Mary R. Wittenberg, president, New York Runners Club

“The marathon is a charismatic event. It has everything. It has drama. It has competition. It has camaraderie. It has heroism. Every jogger can’t dream of being an Olympic champion, but he can dream of finishing a marathon.”
– Fred Lebow, New York City Marathon co-founder

2011 LIVESTRONG Austin Marathon/Half Marathon video

The time has come…..to lace up your shoes and toe the starting line in the shadow of the Texas State Capital…a yellow sea of 623 Team LIVESTRONG runners…..taking to the streets of Austin…..showing cancer that we will NOT give in..…and kicking cancer to the curb with every step along the 26.2, 13.1 or 3.1 mile journey.

It is hard to believe 5 months have passed since my first e-mail…and during that time you collectively as a group raised over $275,000  and on pace to break our goal of $300,000.  The amount of money this team alone has raised is enoughto provide 28 $10,000 Community Impact grants across the country- providing regional support to cancer survivors through a variety of organizations.  AMAZING!!

Regardless of your individual results on Sunday, you are already a smashing success.  We are all there for a common cause – to support LIVESTRONG.

Team LIVESTRONG members will be running in yellow this Sunday, and many will be wearing “in honor of” or “in memory of” bibs, so be sure to support and cheer them on! For more information about race start times and routes, visit Your Austin Marathon.

To learn more about Upbeat Marketing, contact us at info@upbeatmarketingaustin.com or call 512-222-7141. You can also visit our website at www.upbeatmarketingaustin.com.

Sarah Holick

Upbeat Marketing – Sr Marketing Associate

Yelp says “Show Your Customers Some Love”

Yelp is emerging as one of the leading consumer review sites for businesses. It’s growing at 80 percent per year and is receiving high priority from the Google Search Engine.  Yelp not only helps businesses increase their SEO but also helps them drive traffic back to their company website.  A business can also respond to negative reviews to correct inaccurate statements. This helps repair negative experiences and lets Yelpers know that the business takes their critiques seriously! Yelp has outlined a few ways to help businesses show their customers that they take both positive and negative reviews to heart.

Show Your Customers Some Love

Valentine’s Day is almost here, so show your customers some love. According to the National Retail Federation, consumer spending this Valentine’s Day is expected to hit an all-time high of $17.6 billion. With that in mind, here are three quick ways to ‘engage’ your past and potential customers:

• Respond to your positive reviews Use this opportunity to thank positive reviewers and introduce yourself as the business owner. These customers already like your business, so here are a few things you should avoid: commenting on minor complaints, asking for other favors, and offering additional gifts which could be mistaken for a bribe.
• Post a Yelp Deal If you’re offering any discounts for Valentine’s Day, a Yelp Deal can help you seal the deal, so to speak, by giving potential customers the option to “buy now.”
• Create a Check-In Offer Consumers heart smartphones. Posting a check-in offer allows you to attract potential customers who are on the go and searching for your type of business with Yelp’s mobile app. Learn how to create one by clicking here.

Remember to stay active on the site. It’s an easy way to learn what keeps your customers coming back, and what you can do to entice new ones!

To learn more about using Yelp for your business, contact Upbeat Marketing at info@upbeatmarketingaustin.com or call 512-222-7141.  You can also visit our website at www.upbeatmarketingaustin.com.

Hi I’m Sarah, What Do You Do?

We’ve all felt uncomfortable at a networking event at one time or another. Whether you’re solo in a room of strangers, you’ve been cornered by an overzealous salesperson or you’ve had trouble talking about your company, networking doesn’t have to be daunting or awkward. It can be fun, fruitful and genuine.

For starters, we’re in Austin! I’ve been in marketing for over 10 years, and never have I come across a friendlier, helpful place to meet people and do business than ATX. This city is chock full of savvy, smart people, many of whom are entrepreneurs willing to be transparent in their experiences. It is rare to come across someone who doesn’t want to help you and your business grow (even a competitor!).

Here are a few tips to make your next launch party, roundtable discussion or networking event easier and successful:

Go in with confidence. Have a strategy and have a goal, but leave your expectations at the door. Before you go, take time to think through what you want to get out of the event and what a successful event looks like for you. Then ask yourself, what are ways my business, my contacts and my skills can help this audience?

Don’t barge in, but don’t be a wallflower. Interrupting a conversation can be just as much as a turn off as appearing glued to the wall. If you are by yourself, and you’ve found someone or a group of two or three people you would like to interact with, wait for a break in the conversation and introduce yourself with a smile and an extended hand. If you are with a group, make the conversation appear welcoming by opening your posture and occasionally looking up from the discussion.

Once you are in a conversation, be sure to make introductions, make eye-contact, listen, offer praise or compliments and keep an open mind. You never know who you are going to meet! Don’t, however, expect others to return your outreach or the advice you’ve doled out. No one is indebted to you for reaching out!

Following up might be the most important part of attending the event. Email and handwritten notes are appropriate, but a phone call or face-to-face meetings are ideal. Make a first attempt the day after the event and then follow up a few weeks later if you don’t get a response. It can even be productive to stop by and meet them again. Learn from the people who follow up with you, and take care of those relationships!

Don’t forget a pen, your business cards and the intention to help others. And remember that most everyone in the room is there for the same reason you are: to make connections and learn! I hope to meet you soon!

Sarah Holick

Upbeat Marketing – Sr. Marketing Associate

PR & Social Media with The Pecan Street Festival

Upbeat Marketing is excited to be working with Pecan Street Festival this year!  We are honored to be chosen to manage the Public Relations and Social Media aspects of their Spring Show held the weekend of May 5th and 6th.  We will be working with local media in order to showcase the personality and culture of this Austin tradition and will keep vendors and event participants up-to-date on the latest news and festival updates.   Our campaign objectives include…

• Highlighting the positive economic impact to the Austin Community
• Creating a fresh and healthy perspective for the festival
• Showcasing the “Green” atmosphere
• Encouraging pet-lovers to attend and bring their own pets
• Emphasizing local non-profit partnerships
• Engaging the Latino and Spanish-speaking population

The Pecan Street Festival occurs twice a year and is a free event for all to enjoy.  Festival goers can expect to find local musicians and artists from all over the United States who display and sell their artwork. With 300,000 people attending each event, the festival is the largest art festival in Central Texas, generating $43 million in economic impact.  Every year, several local non-profit organizations are chosen by The Pecan Street Festival to benefit from the proceeds.

Join us on Sixth Street this year as we help celebrate the 34th year of the Pecan Street Festival on May 5th and 6th!  Visit The Pecan Street Festival website to learn more!

Pinteresting

Pinterest is a new social media website that allows people to organize and share anything and everything they find on the web.  It is basically a virtual pin board.  Pinterest allows people to “pin” the things that they see when they are surfing the web instead of downloading or saving the actual picture to your desktop.  Once an item has been pinned, the user has the option of organizing their pins into a pin board.  Board categories may range from wedding decorations, recipes, clothing, decorations for the home and much more!  Pinterest provides topics of interest for many different people.

Currently, Pinterest is used mainly as a personal bulletin board but just think of the possibilities for your business. A current customer or fan of your business or store may “pin” a product to Pinterest under one of their boards for all to see.  When a follower clicks on that item for more information it leads them back to the original website! What a great way to increase customer traffic to your website and improve Search Engine Optimization!

Businesses can also use Pinterest to run “Pin it to Win it” contests.  Fans compete for a prize by pinning products from this company to their Pinterest board in order to win a coupon or gift certificate.  This competition turns fans into brand advocates and at the same time they are promoting your products.

Pinterest is also a great Marketing Research tool.  Businesses can receive feedback from their followers and current customers by pinning new products or ideas.  Even though Pinterest Etiquette discourages self-promotion, it does offer the ability to add a $ sign to a description which automatically places a price banner at the top of the pin, inviting admirers to follow through to the product page.

Remember, whenever you can, “Pin it!”

Kylie Long

Upbeat Marketing – Marketing Associate

Content is King

I’ve been saying that “Content is King” for years.  In fact, I’m pretty sure I came up with this phrase (although I’m sure that’s debatable).  And now, it appears that the whole cyber world agrees.  With the last Google update, the Google Panda Update or Farmer Update, this point was proved 7 times over.

In this Panda Update about a year ago, Google made it clear that for them to rank sites well, they’re looking for sites to have original content that is well written. [Certainly, Google’s goal was also to banish inappropriate site practices that people were using to rank well, but the point remains.]

Why does Google want good Content? Why is Content King?

It reduces, evaporates, boils down to the fact that Google and all search engines are looking for authority sites. If someone searches “what do honey badgers eat?” then search engines are going to look for the authority site on honey badgers.

Point 1: The number of indexed* pages a website has is one of the factors that is considered by search engines as to a website’s authority.

More Content = More Pages = More Authority

*All search engines have a cache or “copy” of the internet, but they don’t cache (index) every page out there. There has to be something, even just a little something, on a page for them to include it in their index.

Point 2: Having good content will help build external links.

If you want to rank well on search engines, you need to build external links (other websites pointing back to your website by including your website link). If you have good content, not only is it going to help your efforts to get people to link to you, but you may find that sites are linking to you without you even trying to get them to do so! “Wouldn’t that be something special, wouldn’t that be a wonderful thing!”

Point 3: More Content provides opportunity for more keywords.

Every time you write an Article, Blog Post, or even Tweet, you have the opportunity to include keywords to communicate the topic of your page and/or website to the search engines. The more consistent you are with this, the easier it will be for the search engines to understand – and they will reward you with rank.

Point 4: It’s just good for your brand, anyway.

You want to communicate to your customers, clients or patronage. They’ll have questions and issues about your product or service anyway, so why not be proactive about addressing it. It will save you time and money in the long run.

Point 5: Content doesn’t take vacations or lunch breaks.

Without need for vacation time or a lunch break, content will always be online communicating and helping your site rank.  It’s brilliant!  The only cost to you is creating the content (and if you can do it yourself, then it’s nearly free!) and getting it added to your blog or website.  In most cases, you can just send your new content to your web developer, and it shouldn’t take much time at all for them to add a page.  If you have an internal blog or Content Management System, you may be able to do this yourself.

Point 6: It gives you assets to share via social media.

If you’re using social media, which we believe you should be, then you’ve run into the same predicament that every business does: “What do we share today?”

If you’re generating content, it gives you something to share and helps you establish yourself or your company as the expert at the same time. Don’t just self promote, share something relevant. Your networks and audiences will love you for it.

It’s common to give an excerpt, while sharing a link to the rest of the content. And look, then you’re generating traffic too.

Point 7: Only the best sites are doing it

Even with all these points (which are not secrets), most companies, especially smaller ones, aren’t creating enough content. And it’s okay if you haven’t been. But ‘tomorrow’ is not the solution, it’s ‘Today!’ You want to compete? Content is your weapon. And better yet, there’s no defense.

Whether you create content for an internal or external blog or for your website, we hope that you’ll put this suggestion into practice!  Contact Upbeat Marketing at info@upbeatmarketingaustin.com or 512-222-7141 to learn more about improving your search engine rankings, and be on the lookout for more blog posts about creative ways to add content!

Seth Kuhn, Online Marketing Shepherd (Specialist)

Diva Night with TX Running Company – Women’s Wellness & Shopping!

Attention Ladies! Upbeat Marketing and Texas Running Company are teaming up to bring the ladies of Austin a healthy, informative and fun shopping night! Have you made health-related New Year’s Resolutions? Do you need help getting 2012 off to a healthy, energized start? Join us for Diva Night on January 25th from 7-9pm at Texas Running Company’s Downtown location.

Come as you are and bring your friends! Post-run, post-work or pre-night-out, Diva Night will be a casual setting with shoe and bra fittings,  networking, complimentary chair massage, food and beverages, raffle prizes, goodie bags and of course fabulous vendors.

Our Prima Vendors Include:

CryoStudio
Nike
Austin Bodyworker
CW-X
Austin Family & Sports Chiropractic
iGnite Your Life
MyFitList
Capital OB/GYN Associates of Texas
Austin Woman Magazine

Be sure to RSVP to the Facebook Event, and we’ll see you there! http://www.facebook.com/#!/events/257974174265031/