In todays ever changing society sales managers at venues are constantly being rotated, each time requiring you to meet with the new sales manager and try and gain their trust all over again.

I decided to create a Resume, and it ended up doubling as a nice marketing piece for my preferred vendors which are listed as Professional References.

See my 1 page PDF at http://www.thedjrebirth.com/index.php?option=com_fireboard&Itemid=0&func=view&catid=89&id=251

Membership Required – but it’s FREE!

Tired of the existing Facebook Design?

Who believes in Randy Bartletts 1% Solution?  I do…

YOU WILL NEED:

• Graphics Program:  Adobe Photoshop, CorelDraw, or other.
• Time:  Approximately 30 minutes to perfect your image
• Skill Level: Medium.  (Gen know how of creating an image, and uploading a profile photo)

Lets change:

By adding larger (200 x 600 pixel) Profile Photos.  This size is called Skyscraper Banners in web lingo.

Now see how the above can change your page…

And now my example of my page…  Notice how since my face is on the Profile Image/Skyscraper Banner at 134 x 172, it makes a perfect Thumbnail next to my posts.

Using free services such as TwitterFeed and Ping.fm, you can effortlessly syndicate the articles you publish to your Twitter page and Facebook wall (as well as countless other social networking sites) using your blog’s RSS feed. If you do not yet use Twitter and Facebook for your business, consider setting up accounts. These are two great methods for communicating with clients and prospects, while further spreading the word about your professional services through the power and reach of social networking.

As you know, DJ Intelligence is also fully integrated with MailChimp, a leading broadcast email provider, so you can send mass emails to your past, present, and future clients. Using your RSS feed, you can set up an “RSS-driven campaign” to automatically email your clients the day after you publish an article to your blog. This is another great way to stay in contact with your client base. If you do not yet use MailChimp to send broadcast emails, consider signing up and integrating with your DJ Intelligence account.

To find out the URL of your DJ Intelligence blog’s RSS feed, visit your blog’s home page and click on the “RSS” icon. The URL which appears in the address bar after you click the “RSS” icon will be the direct URL of your RSS feed. If you have any questions or need our assistance, please contact the DJ Intelligence support team anytime 24×7 at http://support.intelligenceinc.com

So the only question that remains is, what will you blog about? Share company news & information, author and publish articles pertaining to your company or industry, tell stories from past events, share client testimonials, or post any other important information you wish to share with your customers and potential customers. The possibilities are endless. If you do not yet use DJ Intelligence for your business, please sign up today and start reaping the rewards of blogging!

Did you digg it?  http://digg.com/music/Year_End_Charts_The_most_requested_songs_of_2009

MARKETING TIP: Use this list at Bridal Shows to reiterate to your client that you use reliable sources, and are current with the music their guests will want to hear!

Here’s the shortcut key points to getting your website ranking higher:

(1) Choosing Keywords – What keywords are you targeting?   If you’re looking up “Robert Starkey’s Wedding Entertainment” then of course I’m going to show up as listing #1, 2, 3, 5, 7, 9 and 10 (figuratively speaking).  However, a client isn’t likely to find a DJ in that manner, they’re more than likely going to use their city, event type, and the initials “DJ” or words “Disc Jockey” — ie. “Lake Havasu Wedding DJ”.

(2) Keyword research – Google offers an awesome realtime reference to keywords you enter, and even offers alternatives.  Are you targeting the right keywords?  Find out here: https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

(3) Ranking Results – Is a competitor ranking higher for a keyword then you are?  Visit their page, and count how many times they are using that keyword.  Then, include it just 2 or 3 times more than them.

Final note before I leave you today — Google is checking relevancy of keywords throughout the site, and making sure it is inline with your <TITLE> tag (what shows up at the top of the browser window next to the browser icon).  Make sure your content is all relative to the keywords you are trying to target, and KEY: “Only try and target 3 – 5 keywords, don’t try and target to many or you may find your spreading your site thin.”

Until next time,

Robert Starkey

I was recently alerted to DJ E Motion’s (Rob Nadigel) “DJ Sampler” APP he designed that is now available. This particular APP is a sampler that helps with transitioning from one song to another whenever we’re performing. Most of the samples are 2-5 seconds long and range from “Swooshes” to “Sirens.”  These can be looped and downloaded straight to your computer if you’re into DJing digitally.

In speaking with many DJs, offering your prices online seems to be a preference of choice which, varies from company to company.  I want to take a moment to share with you “Three (3) Different Ways To Make Your DJ Intelligence Quote Generator Work for YOU!”

1) Pricing Up-Front: To do this, including your pricing alongside of the package/option description. This allows a potential client to add the pricing up themselves if they choose to not submit any information.  This then allows you to know that any leads you DO receive will be higher qualified and likely to book, as the Price Objection is no longer an issue.

2) Behind the Scenes Pricing: This is the manner in which this tool was created to work – The customer provides their information, selects the package that best fits their needs, adds some options, then upon submitting is able to view the quote in real-time on screen even having the system send a copy via email to them just as fast.

3) On The Call Quoting: For those that feel they wish to only provide a price AFTER they have spoken to someone – this solution is for you.

Simply bookmark the Quote Generator form in your favorite web browser.  Then, when a caller calls in, you will have all the questions to ask (event date, time, location, etc) on the screen, you can then discuss packages with them while your selecting the agreed upon package on your computer, click the tick box to send a copy of the quote to the customer via email – and at the same time, the system triggers off your customer auto-responder which might say, “Thank you for your call – it was a pleasure to speak with you today…”

FOOD FOR THOUGHT — [submitted by Jeffrey Mufson, a DJ Rebirth Member]:   Have you thought about doing a take-away pricing structure?  You can see an example of this which I created to re-iterate Jeff’s idea, as found at http://tools.havasuweddingdj.com/quote/index.asp?ID=Event_Lite

—

The Quote Generator is only one of over a dozen tools offered by DJ Intelligence.

While flash looks great, it does not always serve to the advantage of you or your clients unless planned properly. Most web designers like to create a whole screen flash with creative menues and actions based on what you do on the screen, where they drop the ball is often times they do not make an HTML counterpart for those that can not or choose not to view a flash website.

If designing a website in flash, it is recommended that you design flash headers, sidebars, or footers, and layer them around a standard HTML content main window. This gives the search engines content to index your site from, an option not made possible by a strictly flash website.

The above method also allows you to insert iFrame code, one of the preferred methods of tool integration amongst DJ Intelligence subscribers as the tools become part of your site, not an outside set of tools which you can only link out to – as flash requires you to. Another drawback to a strictly all flash website.

Remember that the trick to SEO is in structuring your website copy to contain keywords cleverly written into intelligent, thoughtout, but respectfully keyword packed. This only plays, again, with flash headers / sidebar(s) / footer and a plain HTML content center.

Hope this provides some informative insight.

1) Remove any direct links to your email address from your website. 98% of the time, this method of making your email address available usually revolves around the ever so popular  MAILTO: tag which is largely recognized by the spam bots searching websites on a daily basis.

2) Use of a contact form with CAPTCHA. A large percentage of contact forms on websites these days, process the information submitted behind the scenes, ensuring that your email address is never exposed.  An example would be the Contact and Message Form as available through DJ Intelligence.  CAPTCHA is the method of asking the submitter to verify they are a human by copying the letters and numbers randomly displayed on screen.

3) Use of Image to display Email Address. If you feel that you MUST have your email address visible, typing it out on a graphic file such as .

For testing purposes, I have placed the Friend Connect on my Wedding Website at http://www.HavasuWeddingDJ.com – as well as http://www.OutsideTheBox.biz (lower left of page). Feel free to add yourself if you wish to play around with this application.

We’ve all seen “Guest Books” and “Graffiti Walls”, as well as even “Rating” applications – this takes all that to a whole new level.  While most of our websites probably will not be utilizing these tools, there are more to come as developers adapt to this new technology so I encourage us all to stay informed. Other advantages will come in to play by being able to pull the persons Name and other available information, and insert it right into the content of your website, once they do log-in.  Imagine:  A client visits your website, joins your site as a member/friend, then immediately they see that the message on screen in your sales copy addresses them by name — “Congratulations on your upcoming Wedding Julie” — and all they did was log in.

Facebooks has Friend Connect too, just to keep you ahead on this technology. While Facebooks has the “users and the momentum” as stated by TechCrunch contributing author Erick Schonfeld in his article, I believe personally that Google has the larger following, and with the ability to login once through one application and immediately be logged into the rest all at once, plus Google’s “Google Checkout” for some websites – it would not suprise me if you start to see Google pull ahead on this, as they were the first to develop it in the first place (just last to make it publicly available – Google’s was in Invitation Only Alpha Testing up until its Beta Release as spoken about in this article).