Posts Tagged ‘Angie Commorato’

Tomato Fish Marketing Announces New Strategic Partnership with A&G Digital Consulting

Friday, March 12th, 2010

tfm_ag_logo






INDIANAPOLIS, IN (March 11, 2010) – Tomato Fish Marketing, a marketing and design firm and a&g Digital Consulting, LLC, a web design and online marketing firm, announced their strategic partnership to collectively offer their clients a complete online business solution.  TFM and a&g will be able to help their clients improve their overall branding and increase sales conversions through quality leads through a combination of strategic online marketing planning and implementation.


About Tomato Fish Marketing
Tomato Fish Marketing is an Indianapolis-based WBE certified marketing and design consulting firm delivering a holistic approach to online marketing communications since 2005.  The goal of Tomato Fish Marketing is to positively impact the quality of marketing and design for non-profit and for-profit organizations through their TOMI System™ (Targeted Online Marketing & Implementation). This system provides a comprehensive approach to marketing with a focus on creating strong marketing foundations and qualified leads.  What the heck, you may ask, is a “tomato fish”?  Go to www.tomatofishmktg.com to hear their story and learn about their services.


About a&g Digital Consulting
a&g Digital Consulting is a marketing firm, specializing in web design and online marketing. Working with businesses throughout Indiana, they are able to bring over 12 years of experience in designing, developing and marketing websites.  The goal of a&g is to become the full service solution for the web and marketing needs for B2C businesses.  While offering a complete list of website design and development services, a&g focuses on the post-launch marketing, maintenance and tracking of their client’s websites. For more information visit a&g online at www.consultagc.com.


Contacts

Tomato Fish Marketing, LLC

Brooke DeRam, Owner

www.tomatofishmktg.com

317.259.4958

 a&g Digital Consulting

Angie Commorato, Owner

www.consultagc.com

317.417.7070

Tags: , , , , , , ,
Posted in a&g News | 14 Comments »

How to Claim Your Twitter Name

Friday, January 22nd, 2010

If you starting using Twitter late in the game, chances are that you may have missed out on getting your desired username. Twitter Counter now has a new tool, which will alert you via email if your username becomes available.

If you are not familiar with the Twitter Counter website, it is a great resource.  Use this website to find out all kinds of great information including individual twitter account stats, most popular accounts and lists and now and twitter account comparisons.  Recently, a new tool was released to allow you to be notified if your twitter username becomes available. There has been recent talk about an upcoming release of a number of old and unused Twitter usernames. When then is going to happen is not exactly known, but if you have been waiting for a particular name, now is the time to visit TwitterCounter.com.

Here is how it works:

Step 1: Visit www.TwitterCounter.com and enter the username in the box at the top.

step1

Step 2:  Click on “Claim this username” on the resulting page.

step2

Step 3:  Enter your email address and click “Notify me”.

step3

That’s all there is to it.  They will now notify you if and when your username is released.

Tags: , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Misc, Social Media | 4 Comments »

Fun and useful WordPress plugins for your blog

Monday, January 18th, 2010

As WordPress blogs gain in popularity, the extensive list of plugins continues to grow. Here are a few WordPress plugins that can be great additions to your blog.

1. WPtouch iPhone theme plugin: Are you unhappy with the way that your WordPress blog looks on your iPhone, Droid or Blackberry? This plugin allows you to view your site on your mobile device using an alternate iPhone style theme. This theme also allows the user to switch to your regular theme if they choose.

Download it at: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wptouch/

2. Sexy comments plugin: According to the description, this plugin allows you to “sexify your comments” section of your blog, including optional avatars, an Ajax comment preview and CSS override. There are lots of customization options and this plugin will save some coding time.

Download it at: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/sexy-comments/

3. My Page Order plugin: If you are not a PHP coder or don’t want to mess with the actual theme code, use this plugin to set the display order of your pages with a drag and drop interface. It’s easy to use and again, saves some coding time.

Download it at: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/my-page-order/

4. Google Analyticator plugin: This plugin allows you to easily implement your Google Analytics code to your blog, adding the necessary Javascript to the pages. It also allows you to pull basic stats through your WordPress admin.

Download it at: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/google-analyticator/

5. Broken Link Checker plugin: If you are not regularly checking your blog analytics, be sure to download this plugin. It will alert you to any broken pages or images on your blog. No one enjoys the dreaded 404 error.

Download it at: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/broken-link-checker/

These are just a few of the nearly 8,000 plugins available. To shop the full list, visit the WordPress plugin directory.

Angie Commorato is a indianapolis based web consultant and web designer and owner of a&g Digital Consulting, LLC.

Tags: , , , , , , ,
Posted in Blogging, Social Media, Website Marketing | 4 Comments »

Promote Your Existing Business Commercials on the Web

Monday, December 14th, 2009

Check your stack of CDs on your desk. Do you have any disk laying around with TV commercials, infomercials or other business videos that you have produced for your company? If so, they could be bringing in more traffic to your website through online video promotion and marketing.

1. Get Your Money’s Worth for Your Video Production: If you have already paid to have a commercial produced for television, ask your media company for a web-ready version of your video. You can not only upload your video to YouTube to promote, but you can also add the video to your company’s website, business blog or email marketing campaigns.

2. Invite Your Existing or Potential Customers to Watch Your Commercials: If you are currently collecting opt-in emails from your website or have opt-in emails from your existing customers, send an email, inviting them to watch your commercials. You can either direct them to your uploaded clip on YouTube or to the media section of your website for added exposure. If you are not using email marketing, contact us to find out how you can send email marketing messages to thousand for customers for less a penny an email.

3. Use YouTube to Save Bandwidth on Your Website Hosting Account: Every time a website visitor views one of your videos on your website, you are going to be using bandwidth from your monthly website hosting allowance. However, if you were to add your clip to YouTube and embed the clip in to your website, you will be using Youtube’s bandwidth. This is a great option for small businesses who may not have unlimited bandwidth available.

3. Always Tag Your Video Posts on YouTube: When you upload a video to YouTube, you will see a field for tags. These tags are very important because they help visitors to the site find your video clip. Try to think about what your customers would search to find you and don’t forget to separate them with a comma. We recently posted some clips for a jewelry store in Logansport, Indiana, which is a smaller town. Here is an example of the tags that we used on their clip:

Tags:
Arnold’s Jewelry and Gifts, Arnold’s Jewelry, Logansport Indiana, Rochester Indiana, Rochester jewelry store, Logansport Jewelry Store, Indiana Jewelry Store

To view their clip, visit http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g7ATRrjnKOM

4. Use a Press Release to Promote Your Video: If your company video is something that is particularly newsworthy, consider writing and releasing a press release with a link to your online video clip. Search for press release sites that will allow you to post your press release for free to gain added exposure. Keep the search engines in mind when writing the press release and incorporate pertinent keyword phrases for your business and products or services.

5. As Always, Post A Link to Your Video on Your Social Networking Sites: Add a link to your online commercial on any of your company’s social networking accounts including your Facebook business page, Twitter account, LinkedIn profile and other accounts that you may have.

For more information about how to promote your videos on the web, online video production or how to set up an email marketing campaign, contact Angie Commorato at www.ConsultAGC.com.

Angie Commorato, an Indianapolis web designer and online marketing consultant, is the owner of a&g Digital Consulting, LLC. She offers website marketing consulting and web design solutions for Indiana businesses, as well as businesses across the United States.

Tags: , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Email Marketing, Website Marketing | 2 Comments »

Free Tools to Better Your Paid Search Campaigns

Monday, December 7th, 2009

As more and more businesses turn to paid search to generate cost effective leads, the resources are not always available to cover expensive software subscriptions for keyword research. This is where the free keyword and advertising tools from Google can come in handy.

Google Sets

Google Sets is a free tool which can help to expand your search phrases for your businesses. This tool allows you to enter up to five keyword phrases which pertain to your business. You can then choose a small set, which will generate 15 or fewer items, or a large set, which will provide a much more extensive list of phrases.

In my experience, you would not want to cut and paste the list of results to your pay per click campaign because the results are not always going to be exactly what you need. However, the results can help you come up with extended keywords and phrases to add to your paid search campaign.

Try it now at http://labs.google.com/sets

Google Ad Preview Tool

If you are a Google pay per click advertiser, how many times a day to you find yourself searching your keywords, just to find out who might be bidding against you? If you are monitoring your placement, as well as competitor placement, Google’s Ad Preview tool is something that you should be using. When you continuously run a search for your bidding keywords, without clicking on your ads, Google may determine your own ads are irrelevant to you and stop showing them to you.

Try it now at https://adwords.google.com/select/AdTargetingPreviewTool

Google External Keyword Tool

I have always used Google’s External Keyword Generator when I am formulating my list of keywords and keyword phrases to target for a search engine optimization campaign, as well as my paid search campaigns. This is a scaled down version of the tool that is available to you when you log in to your Google Ad Words campaign, but if you are not a Google advertiser, you can still use the tool to not only generate ideas for your other campaigns, but also export the results in a easy to manage form. If you are a Google Ad Words advertiser, log in to your account to use their keyword generator. It is much more in depth.

Try it now at https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

Angie Commorato is an Indianapolis web designer and online marketing specialist and owner of Indianapolis web design and marketing company, a&g Digital Consulting, LLC.

Tags: , , , , , , ,
Posted in Misc, Pay-Per-Click Advertising, SEO (Search Engine Optimization), Website Marketing | 2 Comments »

News Featuring a&g Digital Consulting, LLC

Monday, November 2nd, 2009

Following her passion

Former Logansport resident helps businesses with Web design and marketing.

by Denise Massie
Pharos-Tribune staff writer

Ever since Angie Curts-Commorato was 7 years old, she knew she wanted to own a business one day.

Growing up, the former Logansport resident spent time in her father’s business, the Gallery Home Furnishings. She recalled the times she would beg her dad, Mike Curts, to take her to work with him on the weekends.

While she didn’t specifically have an Internet-based business in mind, that is exactly what she started.

“I actually wanted to be a veterinarian until my junior year in high school,” she said. “In 1996, I went on the Internet for the first time and thought ‘this is the coolest thing.’”

Curts-Commorato graduated from Logansport High School in 1997 and Purdue University in 2001 where she majored in computer information systems.

“I went to school for computers because they didn’t have anything for the Internet,” she explained.

After graduating she worked for five years at a company in Indianapolis to gain experience.

“That job is what prepared me to do this,” she said.

In March, she finally decided to quit her executive management job to pursue Web design and marketing full time with new business, a&g Digital Consulting. Curts-Commorato decided she wanted to give the business and her customers full-time attention.

“I love it,” she said. “I’m a true geek. I love technology.”

Curts-Commorato wanted to branch out on her own full-time the last couple years, however she said different reasons kept coming up to stop her from going out on her own.

“Everyone told me the timing wasn’t right,” she said. “We’re in the middle of a slow economy.”

Despite what others said, Curts-Commorato had the drive and determination to give it a try.

“I don’t think I second guessed myself, until I pulled the plug,” she added. “It was scary and it’s still a little scary, but I never questioned it.”

Curts-Commorato lives on the northeast side of Indianapolis, but she serves customer throughout the state. She especially likes to work with Cass County businesses, since she is originally from the area and has family here.

The business offers customers a variety of services from Web design to marketing. For example, Curts-Commorato can design a Web site and than market it.

Her focus is on small- to medium-sized businesses, which typically do not have an in-house Web design or marketing departments. She is able to develop affordable Web sites and online marketing packages to fit the budget of businesses.

“I always say you can have the best Web site, but if the customer can’t find it than it’s not working,” she said.

She also designs logos and print designs for customers.

“My customers need a lot of things,” she said. “It keeps me busy, but it’s nice.”

As the sole owner of the company, Curts-Commorato also has a team of four additional workers for larger projects. Her team consists of two designers and two developers. When focusing on smaller companies, she is usually able to complete the project on her own.

Curts-Commorato works with all budgets and is able to work within a specific price range.

If a business is interested in her services, she will meet with the owner face-to-face in order to get a feel for what the business does and to see what the business looks like.

Her biggest challenge r so far is adjusting to the freedom the job provides. She does not have set hours or have to go to an office daily. This allows her to spend more time with her family.

Managing her new full-time business is also rewarding, especially since Curts-Commorato knows she is building something she can do for a long time.

Her main goal, other than building a strong business, is to make enough money to buy a large farm for her family.

No matter how large her business may grow, Curts-Commorato wants to remain the only person meeting with others for consultations.

“I love what I do,” she said. “I wouldn’t have started the business if I didn’t.”

• Denise Massie is a staff writer at the Pharos-Tribune. She can be reached at 574-732-5151 or denise.massie@pharostribune.com

New business

Name: a&g Digital Consulting LLC

Phone: (317) 417-7070

Web-site: www.consultagc.com

Blog: www.commorato.com

LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/commorato

http://www.pharostribune.com/business/local_story_296165041.html


Tags: , , , , , , , ,
Posted in a&g News | 2 Comments »

Don’t Let Web Analytics Intimidate Your Small Business

Tuesday, June 30th, 2009

In a time of tightened budgeting and online, knowing all about your web visitors is more important than ever. Many hosting platforms offer website traffic statistics but tracking your conversions is usually not something that is offered by these applications. While there are many great statistic software applications available for purchase, I often recommend Google Analytics to many small businesses for several reasons. Google Analytics can be implemented fairly easily in to your website, by placing a chunk of code on every page of the site. After the site is confirmed, you will be able to access your site visitor information, down to the city of the visitor. The best part? Google Analytics is free.

There is a learning curve to the program and information overload can happen if you don’t know where to focus your attention. If you want to start with a general overview of what is happening on your website, I would recommend monitoring a few specific categories.

1. Unique Visitors: I often hear businesses discussing “hits” on their websites and using that for a gauge on how they website is performing. This number can highly overestimate the popularity of your website. A hit is registered whenever one of the many files on your website is loaded. For example, a single page in your site might have 10 images, as well as 2 script files within it’s code. This page could register 12 or more hits from one single visit to the  web page. For that reason, I monitor unique visitors. This number will provide a more accurate way of monitoring the number of people who come to your site, excluding multiple visits from the same computer.

2. Referring Sources – Having spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on marketing during my career, I consider the referral data on your statistics to be very important. The referring sources will be able to tell you who is sending you traffic. This can be very valuable if you are spending company time exposing your business to the social networking marketing mediums, or more importantly, paying for display and paid search marketing.

3. Conversion – This is the most important statistic that you are going to monitor, hands down. You can drive all of the traffic in the world to your site, but if they are not turning in to a customer, then you have some work to do. Google Analytics allows you to place some code on your site at what you consider to be the point of conversion. For most businesses, this is the order confirmation page, which thanks them for placing their order. However a business’s goal may be to drive an online information request lead or to drive a phone call. In these cases, placing the code on the contact form confirmation or on the contact page itself can give you an idea of the interest in your particular conversion. Either way, if you are getting the traffic without conversions, it is time to dig deeper in to your site to find out what is happening. In these cases, bounce rates and average time spent on the site by a visitor can get you pointed in the right direction.

For more information on conversion tracking on your website, contact Angie Commorato at blog@commorato.com. Angie is an Indianapolis based web consultant and owner of the online marketing company, a&g Digital Consulting, LLC.

Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Misc, Web Statistics & Tracking, Website Marketing | 1 Comment »

Indianapolis Online Marketing Blogs

Wednesday, June 10th, 2009

I have recently launched a few online marketing blogs, one of which went live earlier today. www.IndianapolisImport.com was created to drive business to my husband at the Infiniti dealership where he works. He is going to be using the site to increase the search engine traffic to their store’s website, as well as drive online leads to his email. My online marketing plan for this website is going to be using a combination of Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, email marketing and online video to drive Infiniti business to the dealership. We will be adding new posts to the website a few times a week, using search engine optimization to target some of the top Infiniti keywords. I will post some results once the site starts appearing in Google and Yahoo.

IndyCarBuyer.com is another site that was originally created to drive traffic in to a Chevrolet dealership in Indianapolis. The blog was indexed very well in both Google and Yahoo and the traffic was continuing to build every day. At the time of this post, the blog was appearing #1 in Yahoo for the search term ‘Indianapolis Chevrolet’. Recently, the site has been converted to a website to post news and specials for a variety of car manufacturers, not just GM. As the site gets re-indexed, I will be monitoring the progress in the search engines, but I expect some good results.

I am also getting ready to start a new blog for a move management company in Indianapolis, called Relocation Strategies. Recently nationally WBE certified business owner, Melissa Brown, will be using the blog to drive business to their website through case study updates and general news and information pertinent to her client base. I will be working with her business to optimize their posts and get their website ranked in the top of the search engines. Look for that blog to be posted to www.Relostrategies.com in late June.

Blogs can be a great way to drive organic search engine traffic to your website. For more information on how you can start blogging, contact me at blog@commorato.com.

Tags: , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Social Media | 1 Comment »

How to Make Your Pay Per Click Campaigns Successful

Thursday, April 30th, 2009

If you have ever felt like the sole purpose of your pay per click campaigns is contribute to the wealth of Google and Yahoo, you are not alone. Many businesses long for their website to appear at the top of the search engines and they set up a paid search campaign to make that happen. However, after their ads go live, they continue to spend money without seeing the increase in sales.  Here is some advice that I can give pertaining to these kinds of campaigns and what it takes for them to be successful. This advice is targeted toward Google Adwords.

1. Target Your Ads by Location – If you are located in Indianapolis, Indiana and sell new cars, you probably won’t want your ads showing in California. Only choose Indiana ad placement, or better yet, target the Indianapolis area only to further stretch your spend. Lets say that you offer residential moving service in the Midwest. You will want to target Indiana, Ohio, Illinois, Michigan and any other states that you can serve, but you will want to deactivate all other states. Otherwise, you will be paying for customers to see your ads and you won’t be able to service them when they contact you.  I even advise customers who would like to sell within the entire United States to choose a few states to target, evaluate the results and then expand accordingly. Pay per click advertising can get very expensive and this will allow you to get better exposure for your money.

2. Adjust Your Ad Times – Google Adwords allows you to choose the days and times that your ads will display. If your customer typically want to speak to someone about your products or services, you might consider only running your ads during your business hours. I had a customer who had 90% of their website sales happen over the telephone. However, they only had phone sale staffing Monday-Friday from 10am-5pm. We were able to adjust their ads to show during the week, during those hours only. If you are a true ecommerce website which can take online orders 24/7, you can choose the days and times that you would like your ads to appear. I have seen trends within different industries to where certain days of the weeks will convert better than others. To determine which days are the best for your products, you will need to test your campaigns and adjust your targeting based on the results.

3. Have Analytics Available – It sounds so simple, but so many businesses don’t realize the importance of  being able to monitor the source of your website sales. To be able to gauge the effectiveness of your paid search ads, be sure to have some website statistics installed on your website. Google Analytics is a free statistics program that will help you analyze not only the traffic coming to your website but also the impact of your keyword ads. The analytics program will allow you to place a code throughout your website to track conversions at a keyword level. This will allow you to disable under-performing keywords and/or target more of your budget towards the better keywords.

4. Search Engine Optmization – You can always pay to be at the top of the search engines, but the ideal mix of search engine marketing lies in a little paid search and a whole lot of search engine optimization. Once your site is optimized and your website is appearing in the top results, your cost per aquisition will more than likely decrease significantly. It is important that you work with a company that has enough knowledge to get you top ten results for the major search engines. Once those results are achieved, maintain an on-going relationship with that business. Search Engine Optimization is a very reactive form of online marketing. Once you see your website sitting in a top slot in the search results, your competitors are going to take notice and do what they need to do to take back their position.

For more information regarding pay per click campaigns, contact Angie Commorato at blog@commorato.com.

Tags: , , , , , ,
Posted in Misc, Pay-Per-Click Advertising, SEO (Search Engine Optimization), Website Marketing | 1 Comment »