Social Media Marketing and A Small School in Bozeman Montana

By admin | Published: August 16, 2010

Mount Ellis Academy a small Christian School in Bozeman Montana has turned to Social Media Marketing to raise money for a new sewer system! With the $500,000 they would still need to raise $100,000 to complete the project.

The $500,000 will help this school tremendously and Kohl’s department store is giving away $10 million to schools across the country in celebration of the 10th anniversary of its Kohl’s Cares for Kids community-giving program.

Twenty schools will receive $500,000 each, decided through an online competition on Facebook. The top 20 schools that get the most votes on the site will receive the money.

Mount Ellis Academy has been going strong and is currently in 13th place with 20,782 votes! They are continuing to seek votes so that they can stay in the top 20 schools. According to Mount Ellis Academy Principal Darren Wilkins, the school made it to the top 100 schools in the nation in just two days. And now they are number 13.

That is the power of Social Media Marketing! A brand new way to look at how small businesses and schools market themselves. More and more business are going to online competitions such as Kohl’s to choose who they will assist. If you’re a business, school, medical facility or whatever it’s time to start thinking more serious about a social media marketing campaign of your own. You need to start building your following, Facebook and Twitter are the new word of mouth. How many people are you connected too?

Blast creative is helping Mount Ellis Academy by offering 3 months of Social Media Marketing and a Facebook Business Page design to one of the lucky people who votes for Mount Ellis Academy! Each person is given 20 votes and can use 5 votes for each school. A person can also “like” comments, Blast creative’s page or comment on a post to be entered as well. The drawing will take place on September 3rd.

To vote for Mount Ellis Academy, go to http://apps.facebook.com/KohlsCares/school/1194671/mount-ellis-academy. You can vote up to five times for Mount Ellis Academy. Watch what Social Media can do for a small private school in Bozeman Montana and what it can do for your business as well!

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The Internet-The Most Powerful Force in The Universe! By Brenda Segna and Blast creative

By admin | Published: August 7, 2010

by Brenda Segna and Blast creative

It’s a beautiful day outside, 83 degrees, my flowers are dancing in the sun and a cool breeze is fluttering about my office! Perfect working weather or a great day to escape to the outdoors! J First work then an afternoon walk now that’s POWERFUL!

Speaking of powerful, have you noticed how the most powerful force in the universe is the Internet. With technology today, blogging, article distribution sites and social media, the internet can make or break a business. Companies are interacting and responding more and more to their customers online. It’s made purchasing and interacting with businesses more personal!

And personal is good until you come across mean people! And we all know that there are mean people out there. I’d like to share about one of my clients-without mentioning any names of course. My client is in a touchy situation-he’s been attacked online and needs help cleaning it up.

The person who attacked him had one thread of truth in her statements. One piece of information was true, but she spun this wild tale that wasn’t true, she wrote a complete blog post of negativity and accusations. She rallied her network to join in on the attacks. Making my clients life pretty miserable for a few weeks now and unfortunately, writing your opinion online is not illegal.

Writing your opinion may not be illegal, but damaging a business is and if the business can prove that they’ve lost business because of what another person wrote, that person and their business can held liable. But even beyond that, take a step back and think about the other person’s clients/customers as they are reading what she wrote. She is being mean and negative, attacking a competitor online, is this how she wants to be portrayed to her clients/customers? To her online community?

My client did apologize to her and he even tried doing some online apologizing, but everything that he would post, she would be right behind him attacking again. So he chose to be silent, because the situation was getting completely out of control because of the type of person that he was dealing with, so he chose silence. Which I completely agree with, but unfortunately the online community doesn’t know what is going on and doesn’t realize that he did indeed apologize. The attacks have been brutal.

The person who is brutally attacking my client is doing more damage to herself by flying off the handle in the heat of the moment rather than contacting my client directly to try and resolve the issue. And she can be banned from some online communities for her behavior as is the case with the person that has attacked my client. We proved to one online community that her accusations were false and they deleted her posts. Now they have a clause in their guidelines-“any attacking of others online is not permitted and you will be banned from the site.”

The other thing this other company claimed was that they couldn’t remember how they stumbled upon the information. If you’re going to lie, remember what my grandma used to say, “the truth always come out in the end.” And it has in this case, the “other company” had placed an ad on Craigslist to outsource some of their business and my client applied. They were reviewing my clients company to send them work. hmmm…

Seems Grandma is always right! However, even though we’ve had a few things removed, there is still a ton of cleanup that needs to be done. So we take it one post at time and continue to do damage control. My client has been praised by literally thousands for his class in dealing with the situation! My advice to everyone is to be careful what you post online-if you choose to post your anger and frustration-remember that your clients and customers are reading what you post as well. Reputation works two ways, you may be angry at the person/company and want to let the world know, but be careful how you do it, it could come to bite you in the end. Be kind and show respect! If you have to be more forceful to get results, be careful what you post online. Never let your anger show online-it’s not good business!

And that is the end of my good business tip for the day, now off to the gym to workout and then outside to enjoy the beautiful sunshine-it’s calling my name. Until next time…


For more information please contact Blast creative and Brenda Segna!

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Facebook Contest August 2010

By admin | Published: August 3, 2010

For our August Facebook contest, we’d like to award 3 months of Social Media Marketing to one of our followers. In order to get your name in the drawing, you must “Like” our page, “Like” our posts or let us know what you think about our posts! At the end of August we will put the names of everyone who participated into a hat and draw a winner. Each “Like” or comment will get your name in so “Like” or comment on a post often!


Social Media Package

Social Media Package
The Social Media Package for small businesses. Package is great for the sole practitioner or small, one-person business, ie: sales people, insurance agents, realtors, doctors, lawyers.

Find & Request Friends (20 per day max)
Make posts daily
Encourage Commenters
Engage with Network
Invite Fans
Answer Emails-on Social Media sites and direct them to you.
Funnel Leads to You
Promote up to 2 outbound links
Customer Service by Email

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Legal Issues Online from Blast creative and Brenda Segna

By admin | Published: July 26, 2010

Legal issues online are arising more and more! Anyone can start a blog and pretty much write what they want! They don’t have to check their facts or even contact the person/business they are writing about! They can just go on the attack and call themselves “Outspoken” without getting their facts straight.

What can you as a business owner or individual do? The first thing that I instruct my clients to do is to contact the person/business directly and ask them to remove the article or comment. But honestly, if they have already attacked you without contacting you, they aren’t going to budge. There are cybercrazies out there who have no morals, values and definitely no integrity!

A recent point in case was the incident that occurred with Agriculture Department employee Shirley Sherrod. Someone misinterpreted the facts and went online to destroy this poor woman and her career. It worked for a bit, she was even fired from her job for the allegations made against her! But when the truth came out, Shirley Sherrod was offered her job back and received an apology from President Barack Obama!

For most of us there is not always a happy ending as there was for Shirley Sherrod. And I feel for her, the judgment and harassment from people who didn’t get their facts straight either. You see once someone writes something on the Internet and people start reading it, they take it as the gospel truth! And that’s when things can turn ugly!

So if you are experiencing something like Shirley Sherrod did or someone who claims to be “Outspoken” has attacked you, contact them first. If that doesn’t work, then you need to find a lawyer/attorney in the same city as the business/person. If the person is residing in Canada and the business is in the US, you can find an attorney in the city where the business resides.

You need to prove that you’ve lost business because of article posted. And you’ll need sworn affadatives from everyone involved. If you’ve received threatening emails, save them. Get copies of your phone records-you can contact your phone company and they will send you a sealed copied that can be used for evidence and opened by the court.

It’s a lot of work, can be costly, but in some cases it may be your only course of action to get the perpetrator to seize and desist! And if you’re going to court, I would strongly recommend that you have a restraining order placed against the person/business not to write about you in the future.

It may seem extreme, but ask Shirley Sherrod or anyone who has ever been attacked online from someone’s blog post it if it’s extreme. They will tell you “NO!” to do whatever it takes to protect yourself from these hateful, mean “Outspoken” people who have no problem destroying people online! I hope that helps. Until next time…

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Blast Creative, Brenda Segna and Social Media Marketing

By admin | Published: July 26, 2010

Are you still unsure whether or not Social Media Marketing is right for your business?

The best way to answer that question is to simply say, if you have a business, then you need to be going Social Media Marketing! No if’s, and’s, or but’s about it! Traditional marketing is a thing of the past.

Do you still need to do radio, TV and print ads? Absolutely! But if you’re on a tight budget then you can skip those and go directly to Social Media Marketing-go where the people are! Traditional marketing has changed with the times and with the people.

More and more business like Microsoft, Coca-Cola, Pepsi, the White House, Time Magazine, the New York Times and the list goes on and on; they have all hired Social Media Directors and spending part of their marketing budget on Social Media Marketing.

Do you know of any of the “A list” celebrities who don’t use Social Media? I don’t, Oprah, Ellen, Jay, they are all using Social Media to interact with their fans. When was the last time that you were on Facebook or Twitter that you didn’t click on a link to read more? Everyone is doing it!

So if billions of people are using Facebook and Twitter, what should you be using? Where should you be targeting a portion of marketing budget? Social Media Marketing! Social Media Marketing can assist you in reaching your targeted audience; it can increase sales and ROI!

All businesses should have a Facebook and Twitter account. I typically recommend doing MySpace as well-there are still a significant amount of people who use MySpace and who knows, they may make a huge comeback one day! If you have videos then definitely use YouTube. Foursquare can be good as well for Social Media Networking! Plaxo is great for your contacts; you get instant updates on your friends or businesses via Twitter.

For great Social Media information besides my blog of course, you can go to Mashable.com! There are so many online tools available to assist you and your business with Social Media Marketing that there really isn’t any reason why you shouldn’t get started today!

If you don’t have time to do Social Media Marketing yourself, don’t have the resources to hire someone full time or just feel like you’re too inexperienced, then hire a Social Media Marketing company to do it for you.

The point is that your business needs Social Media Marketing and it needs it today! Don’t keep putting it off, because the changes are coming rapidly and if you haven’t even started, you are just going to have more and more work to do to catch up! Until next time…

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Online Reputation Management by Brenda Segna at Blast Creative

By admin | Published: July 18, 2010

For any business, online reputation management is so important. All it takes is one for one person to attack you online to cause irreparable damage! The problem is that people believe everything that read online! A person can skew the facts to make themselves look good and you and your business horrible!

And then what happens is that you are stuck cleaning up the mess and in today’s online world of social websites  like Facebook and Twitter, the damage can be farreaching!  Inevitably there are two sides to every story, but unfortunately whenever someone starts a smear campaign, it’s the first voice people hear and the world takes it as gospel. People don’t bother to get the facts for themselves before they make a judgment, they just take the word of what is printed on the web, no matter how skewed or one sided it is!

And comments like, “I’m not really sure how I stumbled upon this, but…” are just a way of hiding the truth! Your competitors get angry when you come out on top and so they stoop to low levels to attack you! And typically, there will be one thread of truth in what they say, but people don’t know  that either! All it takes is one blog post to destroy a small business or leave you doing damage control for months!

If your reputation is attacked online, don’t retaliate! Be honest and if the person or company that you are dealing with is full of anger and hatred and you just can’t get anywhere with them, then you have two options. The first is to take legal action against the company and the second is just to start doing damage control! Regardless of whether or not you seek legal action, you will need to start damage control immediately. 

Start posting positive responses to all of the negativity. Stay above the attacks! I am a firm believer that the truth always comes out in the end. And I don’t believe in trashing people or businesses online! I believe that you need to contact people directly and try to resolve all issues and/or indifferences!

When people tell you that they are outspoken, realize that there is a difference between outspoken and mean and vengeful! And the other thing that you need to realize is that with the world of Social Websites and Networking, there comes a network of people who are going to jump on the bandwagon of negativity without getting their facts straight either.

I am stunned at how far some people will go, emails, phone calls, even contacting children. Contacting your clients and trashing you and your business. It can very quickly get out of control. You can’t control all of the people online! But you can be responsible and realize that you need to take accountability and be careful with what you post online! And you should never personally attack anyone online because it will only come to bite you in the end.  If you are looking for someone to help with your Online Reputation Management, then contact Brenda Segna at Blast creative today! Until next time…

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Blast creative’s Facebook Contest July 2010

By admin | Published: July 18, 2010

Okay everyone, in order to run a contest on Facebook without violating Facebooks rules and having your page banned, is to run the contest OFF FACEBOOK!

Blast creative’s Facebook Contest

Like our page, like our comments and/or respond to a comment! All participants will have their name put into a drawing and at the end of the month the winner will receive a FREE FACEBOOK page design!

So start “liking” and “commenting” and GOOD LUCK everyone!

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Blast creative and Brenda Segna Talk About Backlinking

By admin | Published: July 18, 2010

The most asked question that Blast creative and Brenda Segna receive is what is backlinking and do I really need it?

Backlinking is one of the most important things that you can do for your web site! It’s where you place links on other sites that point to the most important pages on your web site! It’s one of the quickest way to help your websites page rank to increase and to get indexed in better in the search engines.

One of the advantages of Social Media Marketing is that it allows you to place backlinks on your Social Media pages that point to the various pages of web site. Every time you post you should be adding a link to your site! This a GREAT addition to backlinking! You are already there, you are already posting and you simply take 10 seconds to add a link!

Watch for an upcoming post on how to manipulate your links on Facebook to add keywords and the significance of changing the description that pops up with the link! Until next time…

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Blast creative and Brenda Segna Talks About Mean People Online

By admin | Published: July 17, 2010

Blast creative and Brenda Segna wanted to share with you today about Mean People Online! The world wide web has opened new doors for all of us. Most of it fun and exciting! But every once in awhile something comes along that makes you wish that sites like Twitter and Facebook weren’t around.

The Social Media Sites themselves aren’t bad, but how people behave on them can be down right mean and rude! People feed off each others anger! If someone gets upset on Twitter, the negative comments, the hurt and damage can be endless! You don’t have control over what other people are going to do, so be careful what argument you join into and what you say.

If you have an issue with another person or company, don’t be MEAN, especially if you OWN a business! It is always good business practice to contact the person and/or company directly! Do NOT launch an all out attack online without going to the person and/or company first. Request corrective action and find out all of the FACTS before you do irreparable harm to a person and/or company.

And if you do choose to make your grievance known online, then realize that you have no control over who sees it and how they respond. Face it, their are some psychos out there in nice people clothing! And don’t be MEAN!! In your correspondence, don’t rip the person/company apart over and over again and then blame them for everything. Take ownership of your own actions. Realize that there are two sides to every story and accountability needs to be taken on both sides!

If you find that you’ve done something to another person and/or company whether consciously or unconsciously, take ownership of it. BE HONEST! The majority of REPUTABLE companies will come to you directly and won’t publicly humiliate you, they will try to resolve it quietly and peacefully. But if you do come across the rare company/person who thinks that they are right and you are wrong and just won’t budge, then you’ll need to deal with the public attack as well.

Should you go online and retaliate-ABSOLUTELY NOT! Two wrongs don’t make a right and it will look bad for you. Do you need to answer online to the accusations? I would say that it depends on who you are and what the circumstances are. If you are BP, definitely, you need to answer online and publicly, the sooner the better!!

Each situation needs to be dealt with on a case by case basis to decide what needs to be done and what is the best way to handle it. Blast creative and Brenda Segna firmly believe that honesty is the best policy and in order to resolve conflict in a professional, peaceful manner, you should always go to the person first and you should never, never be MEAN and RUDE! And don’t contact innocent 8 year old’s and 12 year old’s telling them that this person/company is terrible and shouldn’t be in business, children/family members should never be dragged into it! Don’t send thousands of emails and get everyone you know to do the same! Don’t contact the person/companies clients and air your grievances there! In the end it will just make you look bad. And lastly, don’t *69 your number and make hundreds of nasty phone calls. Be a GROWNUP! Be PROFESSIONAL!

Social Media and the Internet has made all of our lives easier and can be soooooo much fun! I have enjoyed both immensely! I love what I do and all of the people that I am fortunate to work with. I am thankful and blessed with a great family and network! I just know that this next year is going to be my year! Till next time…

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How Do I Get To The Top of Google?

By admin | Published: September 19, 2009

How do I get to the top of Google? Not a day goes by that I don’t get asked that question at leat once. And the answer is always the same, ongoing SEO. SEO, search engine optimization, you can’t get to the top of Google without ongoing SEO. It’s difficult when a designer tells a website owner that all they have to do is create a site and put it out there in the world wide web.

That could not be any further from the truth. There are millions, billions of sites out there, if you want to get to the top of Google or any any search engine for your specific keywords, you will need to do more for your site then just let it sit out there in cyber space and pray to the Internet gods that you’ll make it to the top of the list.

There are a number of things that you can do as far as SEO goes, write articles, get banklinks, write press releases, be active with social media and social bookmarking, just to name a few. And don’t forget directories, they can be very valuable. Work your site just like your business, do Internet marketing, SEO and anything else to get your site where it needs to be.

Getting to the top of Google, isn’t difficult, but it is time consuming. It won’t happen overnight, but it will happen if you work it and market your site. For more information on Internt Marketing, SEO and getting to the top of Google, please contact BLaST creative today!

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