Below is a list of our January Training opportunities.

1. Market Like a Sniper with Google Adwords - 3 Hour Course at Ceili’s Irish Pub in Downtown Vancouver. If you are paying for advertising on Google and want to save some money and get better results attend this training.
   January 13th 2pm - 5pm Cost $149.00
   Read more about the Google Adwords training
   
2. Explode Your Growth with a Blog - 3 Hour Course at Ceili’s Irish Pub in Downtown Vancouver. In this course you will learn to setup your blog if you don’t have one and learn why blogging is still important and what topic will make your blog a success.
   January 15th 2pm - 5pm Cost $149.00
   Read more about the Blogging Course
   
3. Build a Site Google Loves! - 3 hour course at Ceili’s Irish Pub in Downtown Vancouver. A website with no traffic is like a storefront with on front door. We will teach what google looks at when they visit your site and how to get your site to show higher on Google list
   January 20th 2pm - 5pm - Cost is $149.00
   Read more about the SEO Training
   
4. SEO Essentials Bootcamp - 2 Day SEO Bootcamp in Downtown Vancouver. **Limited to 6 people** Spend 2 days learning the detail what it takes to get higher ranking for your website + all attendees will receive a personalized action plan for their website.
   January 21st & 22nd - Cost is $1000 ** $900 before January 15th.
5. Marketing with Online Video - 3 hour course at Ceili’s Irish Pub in downtown Vancouver. Each participant will receive a FREE Flip Video camera ($169 Value) and learn to create, post, and promote videos online. Video is an effective way to build relationships online.
   January 27th 2pm - 5pm - Cost is $225.00
   Read more about the Video Course
   
6. **NEW** Reachd Lunch & Learn - 2 hours at Ceili’s Irish Pub - Lunch is included! Steve Jagger and Rodney Bartlett will both be on hand to answer your questions at our lunch and learn session. This is an opportunity for you to begin implementing what you have learned in past courses
   January 28th 12pm - 2pm - Cost is $50.00
   Read more about the Lunch and Learn
7. Social Media Guided Tour - 3 hour course at Ceili’s Irish Pub in downtown Vancouver. Learn about some of the most popular social media websites like, Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn and how you can use these sites to market your business.
   January 29th 2pm - 5pm - Cost is $200.00 Read more about the Social Media Training

Each month we offer our Bundle pricing. Register for all 5 of the 3 hour courses for $499 and save $373.

I look forward to meeting you at our upcoming training. If you have questions please contact Reachd

Have a profitable 2009!
Rodney Bartlett - Lead Instructor

I’m spending the holidays in the states. Actually hanging out with family in a midwest town of 500,000 - Wichita, KS. I’d like to tell you about my brother in law. Don’t worry this is not a deeply personal blog post but is actually about your business and adversity you might be facing in marketing your business.

My brother in law, we’ll call him Nick (his name is hard to spell and would be even harder for you to pronounce) is a chiropractor in Wichita. His business is small and growing. As I talked with ‘Nick’ I asked “has the economic crisis in the states caused his business to slow.” He said, “no, not really… but the strike at the aircraft manufacturer had cause some of the striking employees to lose their insurance and in turn they were not coming into the chiropractor.”

Currently the strike has been resolved but another aircraft plant is talking about a strike and another aircraft plant has just entered a round of layoffs. Those of you in Vancouver don’t know this but the local economy here is very heavily dependent upon aircraft manufacturing. When one of the plants goes on strike or experiences cut backs many small businesses suffer.

I scratched my head and thought about how to help Nick. If people don’t have jobs or money to pay.. how can he use this to help build his business?

Then I had one of those “Ah ha” moments. I realized that if people weren’t going to Nick’s clinic they were also not going to all of his competitor’s clinics as well. Everyone on the picket line at the strike were potential customers because during the strike all of them were without insurance and all of the ones that typically go to the chiropractor were skipping out on their chiropractic visits.This adversity is a great opportunity for him to grow his business.

What is my recommendation to my brother in law?

Offer a free chiropractic adjustment to each of client’s that are on strike and ask his client’s to invite three co-workers to come down for free adjustments as well. The strike will end. People will go back to work and will have insurance again and will be able to pay for their adjustments. I have talked to a few of my Brother-in-law’s clients and I’ve actually visited the clinic myself and know that his bed side manner and care is top notch. During this time of difficulty for his client’s offer them something to ease the pain and they will be customers for life and allow them to give something to their friends and he will win them as well.

Sorry this blog post has nothing to do with Google, or Adwords or Blogging. I just want to encourage you as you face the close of this year and make plans for 2009 to see adversity in your business as a potential opportunity to succeed. When facing adversity either offline or online, your competitors are also unsure of what to do, but if you take the adversity given to you and turn it into your friend, 2009 could be your best year yet.

Committed to Your Success,
Rodney Bartlett - Lead Instructor

Over the year we have had the privilege of working with and for a few amazing people. We enjoyed a great lunch at Quattro’s and took some time out yesterday to say thank you to a few people that have helped make 2008 a great year for Reachd.

Pictured Above : Steve Jagger (bottom left) is the co-founder of Reachd and Ubertor. Next to Steve is a Vancouver Realtor, Tom Everitt. Ian Watt a big supporter of our training and someone that has been to all of our courses at least twice is next to Tom. Next to Ian is.. me (Rodney Bartlett) lead instructor at Reachd. The owner of LePetite Spa in Vancouver Nancy Mudford was next to me and helped me pick out my wife’s Christmas present during lunch. Thanks - Nancy. Gillian Shaw, digital life writer for the Vancouver Sun joined us and next to Gillian is Mark Reid the General manager for Ceili’s Irish pub where we hold our 3 hour courses. Shane Gibson, sales trainer and author is sitting next to CEO of Build Direct, Jeff Booth (bottom right)

Thanks to these people for joining us and for those of you that attended our training this past year. Unfortunately they didn’t have a table big enough at Quattro’s for all of you

Yesterday we wrapped up our training schedule for 2008 with our 3 hour Social Media guided tour.

The first 3 months of the 2009 training schedule is up for you on our website. Register now to and make plans to invest in the future of your business for 2009 and beyond.

A couple things to highlight as we wrap up our 2008 training.

1. Even though our training for 2008 is complete, I will still be writing blog posts and offering tips here.

2. Tonight we are a part of hosting a large meetup in Downtown Vancouver. Join us to network with other business professionals and for a chance to win a free seat in some of our 2009 training. This meetup is a combination of the Vancouver Real Estate Tech Meetup, Vancouver Young  Professionals Meetup, the Sales performance meetup, and the Third Tuesday group.

3. Get some one on one consulting before the year comes to a close. I will be making myself available on Thursday, Dec 18 and Friday Dec 19th to chat with you about your business. Let’s talk Google Adwords, SEO, Facebook or any marketing question you like. Please email me today to book a one hour session to talk about your business.

New Training Opportunity for Next Year

2 Hour Lunch and Learn. In 2009 we are providing a new opportunity for you to learn. Actually it is a new opportunity for you to work. We will be hosting monthly Lunch and Learn’s. You bring your laptop and your strategy and questions. We will provide the space, the internet and the lunch and give you time to work on your website and ask questions. Our first lunch and learn is scheduled for Jan 28th - Book your spot and apply the things you have learned. The lunch and learns are only availble to people that have attended our bootcamps or all 5 of the 3 hour sessions.

Continue investing in your business and you will see results.

Rodney Bartlett
Lead Instructor - Reachd.com
rodney (at) reachd.com

That is what Gary Vanynerchuk told me when I interviewed him in Seattle. Do the math on that statement quickly. 5 episodes per week and almost 150 episodes that is 30 weeks or 7+ months of pumping out video content before Gary tasted his first viral video.

In case you are wondering this post is not about how to make a viral video. The purpose of this short note is to encourage you to keep working, creating, and posting your content online.

Another example of the importance of persistence and growth is Ian Watt.

As of today, Ian has posted 220 videos on his website. Ian talks about real estate topics mostly focused on Vancouver’s Downtown core. His videos are one to two minutes long and presented in a fun, casual, and honest manner. Are all of Ian’s videos a huge success? Has he always had his signature ending which he is now known for around Vancouver? I pulled two of Ian’s videos and posted them below so that you could compare his growth over time. One is from 9 months ago and the other is from one day ago. Watch both videos and compare the style of the two. Notice how Ian’s style has changed and how he has grown more comfortable in front of the camera.

Did you notice the evolution? How did the ending of first video, compare to the ending of the second video?

My point here: Get started. This is the most important and difficult step. Start doing something to promote your business online and keep working in that direction. Ian is at video 220 and now he is going to be speaking at the Inman conference in NY, which is a huge conference for the real estate industry. He also is looked upon as an expert by some of the local media. Why? He made some videos packed with good content. He lets his personality show on the videos and he persists in putting the videos up each and every day.

Thanks Ian for your example and for investing daily in your business online.

I’ll leave you with this question.. How are you investing in growing your business online?

I’ve had a few emails and questions about linking and building links so I’d like to offer a few linking definitions here just so everyone knows some of the different in’s and out’s of linking. Primarily we are talking about in bound links (IBL) with this post - that is someone linking to your website.

First, why are links important? Links are like votes for your website. Remember - Google is basically a machine and although the machine is very smart it needs a little nudge from human’s to help it sort out which sites are most valuable. Links tell Google, “Hey, check out this site. It is a good one” But not all links are created equally.

Follow & No-Follow Links - No-Follow is an attribute given to links which webmasters don’t want the search engines to crawl. You would also use no-follow if you don’t want to pass pagerank off to a certain page you are linking to. More about page rank here and stay tune for a future posts on page rank. No-Follow was introduced by Google because many webmasters were running around to blogs and submitting comments on blogs to get links. N0-follow was introduced to ignore those links. No-follow is most often used, in social media websites, (facebook, youtube, etc) and on blogs (especially in the comment section). If someone is linking to you, generally you do not want them to use No-Follow.

Reciprocal Linking - This is a link that is the easiest to get and one that some directories will require for you to get a link in their directory. A reciprocal link is where website A links to website B if, website B links to website A. While there is no known penalty for reciprocal linking, you will find there there is little value add regarding an increase in rankings. The one positive to reciprocal linking is traffic. If a reciprocal link in a directory brings quality traffic to your website, then it could be worthwhile. Generally speaking reciprocal links are not valuable.

One Way Text Links - These types of links are by far the best for your website. Links from a quality website with steady page rank will be the best “vote” for your website. You can grab some of these links from high quality directories, talking with your partners (other businesses that you work with) and colleagues in other locals (if your business is bound by geography.) The emphasis here is on quality. Please be careful of link farms and in general stay away from sites that look questionable.

Getting votes or links to your website is never a completed task. One important part of getting links is to be link worthy.

1. Build a quality website in which all the links work and images load properly

2. Add some content that is valuable to your visitor. As the owner of a few websites, I would be more likely to link to your site if you are providing some valuable meaningful content for visitors.

I trust those linking thoughts help you. If you do power down your business for Christmas, I would encourage you to sit on the couch, crack open the laptop, fire up “It’s a Wonderful Life” and look to build some quality links to your website. That is what I will be doing over the break

If you have questions or comments, drop a comment by clicking on the comment link above this post.

All the Best,
Rodney Bartlett - Lead Instructor

The video above tells the story of an interesting conversation I had with one of the participants in our intermediate SEO Bootcamp yesterday. He mentioned that he found our site by googling a certian term. After finding the site he came back 2 weeks later and found that we had new content on the site. Finding new content on the website impressed him and prompted him to then come back to the website again. He also mentioned that, fresh up to-date content was one of the things led him to sign up for one of the courses.

The Tip - Keep the content on your site fresh and up - to - date. Your visitors will like it and Google will like it as well.

All the Best,
Rodney Bartlett - Lead Instructor
Reachd.com

Yep you read that right a gnat. Those annoying little bugs that seem to never sit still buzzing annoyingly around your little ears.

According to Tubemogul Research 10.39% of user click away from a video after only 10 seconds and more than half leave your video at the 1 minute mark. I pasted a graph below from the tubemogul website to better show the point.

Video Attention Span Provided by Tubemogul

What does this mean for you?

1. The first 10 Seconds are critical. If you are going to promise something in the title of your video, you’d better deliver right away or you viewer might take off.
2. Keep those videos short. If you are giving a how to or a tip, focus around 1 specific topic. If you find yourself deviating from the topic then make another video. Only 10% of the video viewers made it to the 5 minute mark of the video.
3. Place your call to action early in the Video. For example, if you video is 2 minutes long, you will likely end with some sort of conclusion or call to action at the end of the video, right? Well if 1/2 of the users are leaving your video after 1 minute, then 1/2 of the people did not hear what you want them to do next. Find a way to get that call to action in early and then repeat it at the end.

I’m going to be teaching about online video next week - Let me know if you’d like to join us and grab somemore video tips.

I was meeting with a student at from one of our previous training sessions. She had actually attended both the SEO Essentials course and the SEO Intermediate course. During our conversation she said, “I’ve gotten 4 major deals from my website in the last year!” That may not sound like much, but the reality is that she had never gotten any business from her website prior to that. Needless to say I was pumped. I realized… “I have a great Job!” My job essentially is to help other people succeed in their business. I get paid to help other succeed - that Rocks!

What about you? What do you love about your job? Look forward to hearing from you.

There is a lot of talk about duplicate content on your website. While there may not be a penalty for duplicate content there is also no reward for your site publishing content over and over in multiple places within your domain name. Watch the video below for further explanation of duplicate content issues to consider.

Article Marketing is one topic that people often discuss relating to duplicate content. Article marketing is writing an article and then submitting it to multiple sites. This is used as a way to promote your expertise, promote your website, and receive in bound links. Articles that you syndicate will not be penalized and it is a great strategy for promoting your website. You can learn more about article marketing at our upcoming intermediate SEO Bootcamp.

For now keep the content within you site unique and relevant to the user and you won’t even have to worry or think about a duplicate content penalty.