Thanks to those of you who attended today’s Brown Bag Lunch sponsored by the Pleasant Hill Chamber of Commerce. I was able to cover a lot of ground in terms of Online Marketing topics in a relatively short amount of time. Please feel free to contact me with follow-up questions and feel free to download PDF copy of the presentation to review at your leisure.

The lesser known Caribbean island of Anguilla is home to the new Viceroy Resort, which features a hotel and villas that set new standards for the concept of “casual elegance.” Each villa has a infinity pool and each hotel room as a spa on the balcony — in case the ocean is too far to go to get wet. View the Viceroy Anguilla 360° Virtual Tour »

360Village created a virtual tour of their model villa as well as photographed the property, then under construction, to aid in sales. As each villa and hotel unit has a unique ocean view, panoramic images were created to have on file for prospective buyers to see what “their” view might look like. 360Village partnered with Los Angeles-based Still Water Interactive on the Viceroy project.

Situated on the island of Anguilla, a territory of the U.K., complete with driving on the “other” side of the road, the international flavor of the island, the outstanding cuisine, the uncrowded beaches, and also the proximity to the island of Saint Maarten, combine to make Anguilla a favor Carribean destination for those not needing a stimulus package.

360Village announces the launch of a new web site showcasing a vacation rental home in South Lake Tahoe - Camp Mohawk. The web site features a 360Village virtual tour, a photo gallery that leverages the beautiful slideshow capabilities of Flickr.com, and a simple interactive Google Map.

The property is located in close proximity to skiing, Lake Tahoe, hiking, biking, boating and a variety of other Tahoe amenities and the owners were looking for a clean site to show it off, including nice photos and of course a virtual tour. They also wanted to be able to maintain an occupancy calendar themselves, so we integrated free a Google Calendar into the site. It might make a great lodging choice for your next Lake Tahoe trip: www.CampMohawkLakeTahoe.com

360Village worked with The Brookeside Group in Boston, Massachusets to develop a multimedia Web-based training tool for insurance company inspectors. The “micro-site” has 360° images, videos, photos and maps. Students will access the micro-site via an intranet or it can be stored on a local drive. Web-based training tools of this genre have a number of advantages over run of the mill PowerPoint presentations. They can be viewed on any computer with a Web browser and they have a familiar point-and-click graphic user interface that has zero learning curve. Navigational elements embedded in the tool allow the user to jump around quickly without having to go slide by slide to find what they’re looking for.

View Two Sample Screen Captures from This Training Tool »

Le Jardin Academy on the Hawaiian island of Oahu is a K-12 private school with a beautiful campus and fantastic resources for its students. With the additions of a new high school building and spectacular gymnasium, their admissions staff needed a way to show off the campus online. The views from the upper portions of the school include the pacific ocean and rugged peaks of the Windward side of the island (where President Obama vacationed), perfect for a Total 360° virtual tour.

Le Jardin’s staff worked with 360Village to photograph the campus over a three-day period to catch students “in action” in classrooms, computer labs, and recess as well. In place of a campus map, the online presentation utilizes an aerial photograph with hot spots for users to click and access 360° images and updated aerial photos.

360Village has completed a virtual tour for the California State University at Sonoma in Rohnert Park, California. The tour showcases the beautiful apartment living options for the 2,400 students that live on the 270-acre Sonoma State campus.

360Village modified a pre-existing artistic campus map as a base for the online implementation. The result is a professional, yet affordable, web presentation.

View the Sonoma State Housing Virtual Tour here »
 

360Village has launched a new web site for San Francisco Bay Area Landscape Contractor Bazan Landscaping. Bazan Landscaping does design-build work as well as installations for customers with plans produced by landscape architects and designers. They do everything from concrete for hardscapes to irrigation for sod and slate tile for patios — and the quality of their work is outstanding.

360Village worked closely with owner Hugo Bazan to ensure his first web site showed off the beautiful landscapes Bazan creates through high-resolution digital photography. The photos not only enhance the web site but have a number of marketing uses Bazan Landscaping is using them for, including brochures, slideshow videos to show at trade shows, and postcard mailers.

The new Bazan Landscaping web site follows the principles of good Web 2.0 layout and design including the Universal Home Page Formula^sm discussed in my book Web Site Marketing Essentials, written specifically for non-technically-minded small business owners such as Bazan.

This may turn out to be a valuable free Webinar, but judging from the advertisement I received in my email box today it ain’t lookin’ that way. PRWeb is a highly reputable provider of press release distribution services. They know what they’re doing in that regard, but not so much when it comes to search engine optimization (SEO, a.k.a. “Online Visibility”) apparently.


The ad above reads “Increase Your Online Visibility Using PR” — a bona fide strategy. However, the ad itself is a less-than-stellar example of how to increase one’s online visibility. We human types know that “PR” is short-hand for “public relations” but search engine robots aren’t so smart. Typing out the other 14 characters is very worthwhile when it comes to search engine optimization and online marketing efforts. If you’re a touch-typist like me, you probably won’t even notice the extra keystrokes.

Ponder the following ancient Haiku, recently discovered on the wall of a cave in France:

      My web site I like.
      Should raise visibility.
      Don’t Abbreviate.

In a feature article listing 21 low-cost ways to boost a small business’ marketing, the #1 way is through Blogging. In other words, it’s not just about having an online presence anymore. A web site full of static content isn’t going to cut it, given the thousands of web pages that are added to the Web every day and the search engine robots’ propensity to go for fresh content.

For more tips, check out the rest of the article online at Entrepreneur.com:

Get Noticed — Shine a spotlight on your business with our 21 low-cost marketing moves »

Thanks to the California Downtown Association (CDA) for inviting me to speak at their 2008 Statewide Conference in Santa Rosa today. CDA members include downtown business associations, local government economic development and chamber of commerce professionals, and private sector planning consulting firms. They’re tasked with making downtowns more vibrant and more attractive to consumers as well as businesses looking for space — keeping downtown commercial spaces occupied is a big win-win in other words.

In addition to discussing the new Pleasant Hill, California Interactive Community Guide, which showcases restaurants, hotels, shopping districts and area amenities with customized Google Maps, photos and 360° virtual tours, we discussed the various ways CDA conference attendees could enhance their own web sites with “sticky” content, keep those sites updated with fresh content and attract more virtual eyeballs. Hopefully that will aid in attracting more people, and businesses, downtown.

For anyone interested, you can download a copy of the online marketing presentation as a PDF below: