Wow—can’t believe how fast the summer is going! We’ve completed some new projects recently, such as a website and blog for political candidate and former Mayor of Darien, Georgia, Kelly Spratt (www.SprattForChange.com). We’ve also completely revamped the billing interface for Magic-Call-Button.com, our own proprietary product.

In addition, we’re in the planning stages of our new Gateway To The Golden Isles publication, and creating a 100% dynamic website for AltheaDx.com. We completed phase I of this custom, mostly static site back in the spring of 2010, and will morph to a customized Joomla content management system in phase II.

Add to all this a new e-commerce project, Wild Hearts Pet and Seed, a site with the objective to offer top quality bird seed and specialty pet food.

Meanwhile, Gateway To Sedona (GatewayToSedona.com) is enjoying excellent traffic and search engine position, although we can see first hand how real estate there continues to suffer, along with some shocking bankruptcies among top players in the tourism industry.

At Trade Winds Advertising, we believe it’s essential that businesses not only have a solid online presence with good search engine optimization, but they must also reach out in meaningful ways to their target audience on a regular basis. That means revving up their social media presence and connecting with  customers and visitors in a way that appeals to THEIR direct interests.

Here’s a tip: if you do business online, second-guess your email marketing plan from time to time, and pay attention to personalization and segmentation options (i.e., don’t always send the same email to your entire list).  Choosing email software that allows links to be tagged using Google Analytics tracking code is also a very good idea. Here is a fairly complete list of web-based email marketing programs:

http://www.softwareshortlist.com/software/email_marketing_directory.html

Here’s wishing everyone a very happy Fourth of July, 2010!