Charles Sipe is an SEO Specialist/SEO Analyst based in Seattle Washington. I am co-founder of Sparkplug Digital, a Seattle online marketing agency. We help clients primarily with optimizing their sites to attract more qualified visitors and utilizing social media to build lasting relationships with customers.
If you would like to meet for coffee or have questions about anything I can be reached at csipe84(at)gmail.com.
[Charles Sipe] worked with Dream Dinners on implementation of a new social marketing strategy, providing extensive research and an inventory of relevant keywords, then recommending the best ways to integrate those findings into our web content and meta descriptions. We learned a great deal and are well on our way to experiencing success.”
-Ruthann Tobiason Marketing Manager Dream Dinners www.DreamDinners.com
Working directly with Charles Sipe, significantly helped OneAccord through landing us on the first page of Google for key search terms that our target customer is seeking. I highly recommend his services to companies who want to be found online.
-Jeff Rogers, Managing Partner OneAccord Partners www.OneAccordPartners.com
Email me at csipe84(at)gmail.com for a free basic SEO audit of your website or to request a proposal for a SEO project.
Companies I have helped with SEO in 3+ years include:
There is a battle brewing between the social media “purists” and the social media realists as to how important measurement of social media ROI is.
This was brought up at the recent Social Media Club Seattle event when social media legend Jason Falls took the stage to argue for social media pragmatism. He made a lot of good points like how at the end of the day business success depends on whether you sell more stuff (or services). He quoted an apartment building owner who says that if a social media tactic is not resulting in new customers then he stops doing it. Falls argues that there is nothing wrong with putting call to actions in your social media, like a big call to action banner on your blog that says “Now Accepting New Clients” or a Twitter link to your product page or landing page.
But is this short-sighted thinking when it comes to a marketing medium that revolves around relationships and being social?
On the other side of the fence are thought-leaders like David Meerman Scott who argues that no one ever asks what the ROI is of a front desk receptionist or the people who do lawn maintenance in front of your office.
Ian Lurie, from Seattle-based Portent Interactive writes the following in the book Age of Conversation 3: “Did you consider ROI before you decided to be courteous to customers?…Ponder the ROI of answering the phone?…You did it because you just knew it made sense.”
Albert Einstein makes a good point when he said “Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.”
If Zappos based all decisions on ROI, they might not offer free return shipping, or surprise overnight shipping, or superior 24/7 customer service. These are all expensive activities that are extremely difficult to measure in their direct relationship to sales. However, Zappos has a long term approach and CEO Tony Hsieh knew that having the very best service and wowing your customers was a competitive advantage. An advantage that led to their company surpassing $1 billion in sales.
I think that it makes good sense that talking to your customers, listening to their feedback, and other benefits of social media will help your business in the long run. However, if you need to support your marketing activities with data, there are definitely ways to do this like measuring sales from a call to action like Jason Falls recommends.
Here is Jason Falls’ great presentation at SMC Seattle:
In Delivering Happiness, Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh describes his journey in building Link Exchange which sold for about $200 million and Zappos which was recently acquired by Amazon for about $1 billion. The book is written like an autobiography and is very honest and open. You learn some interesting things about him like how he [...]
I am currently reading Delivering Happiness which discusses how Tony Hsieh applied principles of happiness to build a billion dollar company, so I wanted to revisit some of the recent happiness research that is really fascinating. Here are my favorite presentations on happiness research.
Watch it on Academic Earth
Lecture on Happiness by Dacher Keltner from Psychology [...]
Listen to first third of The Little Big Things by Tom Peters for Free! http://bit.ly/92LIKN Wed Jun 30 15:18:08 2010 via web
I just drank some phosphoric acid (Shasta soda). Tue Jun 29 17:33:59 2010 via web
[...]
The 7 Keynote MBA: How to Save 2 Years and $100,000 / video business
MarketingCharts: charts and data for marketers in web and Excel format / marketing
4 Reasons to Fire Your Digital Ad Agency / read
FastCompany.com – Where ideas and people meet | Fast Company / entrepreneurship business
BuddyPress.org | Home / wordpress
Diigo [...]
Last week, the Seattle Chamber held the Smart + Simple Strategies for Small Business conference which featured author and psychologist Rom Brafman. Brafman co-wrote the book Sway: The Irresistible Pull of Irrational Behavior and just released a new book, Click: The Magic of Instant Connections.
If you are a small business in Seattle, I highly recommend [...]
One of the key indicators that an SEO campaign is moving the needle for your business is the return on investment. According to Investopedia ROI is calculated by the formula:
(Gain from investment)-(Cost of investment)/(Cost of investment)
While it can be difficult to measure the exact amount of value that is generated from a specific SEO campaign, [...]
Dale Begg-Smith, Moguls Skier, Is an Internet Mogul, Too – WSJ.com / readit
10 Best Free Minimal WordPress Themes | Freebies / wordpress
15 Impressive and Beautiful Uses of WordPress | Inspiration / wordpress
Design And Marketing Blog / onlinemarketing
Useful Online Calculators For Almost Every Educational and Life Need / education
Voodoo Doughnut: [...]
RT @FreshPeel: “Finding the right work is like discovering your own soul in the world.” –Sir Thomas Moore about 21 hours ago via txt
Marketing Like Drug Dealers: Marketing Ideas From Rework http://bit.ly/9V1YWR 3:53 PM May 27th via web
[...]
Rework is a great book from the founders of the successful web company 37 signals. I really like the contrarian ideas from the book like “how drug dealers get it right” because it is great to get a fresh perspective on business. I also like how Jason and David get straight to the point and [...]
Just received a copy of Age of Conversation 3: It’s Time to Get Busy. I wrote a page from the last 2 editions of Age of Conversation. This year my chapter is titled “How to Convince Your Boss on the Importance of Blogs”.
Check out Age of Conversation 3 at Amazon. There are about 200 authors [...]
The following post has been republished from Cool Marketing Stuff.
This is a great presentation by Simon Sinek about how some organizations are able to achieve so much more than others with seemingly the same amount of resources. Why did no one buy Gateway’s flat screens or Dell’s MP3 players? The following video, which [...]
Here’s an article I wrote for Cool Marketing Stuff:
Prolific podcaster, writer, and all around nice guy, Joseph Jaffe recently released his third marketing book entitled Flip the Funnel. This book mainly focuses on the idea of flipping the sales funnel to focus marketing on existing customers. The reasoning for this shift in marketing strategy is [...]
This is a really fascinating documentary about one of the most incredible minds in the world. He is a savant, which is a person who is able to perform incredible feats with their minds. He was able to learn Icelandic in a week, and memorize Pi to about 20 thousand digits. What makes him unique [...]
@ryanapeterson Yes I do implement the 4 hrs of alone time for work #Rework Does your company have any iPod Apps in the App Store? 32 minutes ago via web
@tristawinnie I agree. Pete Carroll is [...]
Lessons Learned from Seth Godin – Sources of Insight / marketing
Seattle’s Internet Business Community and Directory, Net News, Interviews, Jobs and Events / seattle
Is It Better to Buy or Rent? – Interactive Graphic – NYTimes.com / realestate
Unboxed – Lean Start-Ups Aim to Find Customers Quickly – NYTimes.com / entrepreneurship, readit
Ajax [...]