What percentage of consumers find local goods and services on the web?

1. 1. A. 75%
   2. B. 97%
   3. C. 66%

I’ll give you a moment . . .
Take your best guess!

What percentage of business owners have claimed their local business listing on a search engine?

1. 1. A. 53%
   2. B. 45%
   3. C. 37%

Do you think you know the answers?

If you attended our Let’s Put Wheeling on the Map workshop, you already know the answers!

Previously we introduced you to Google’s GYBO program when we hit the road and helped Frederick, MD and Charleston, WV businesses get on the map. This time we took the program to our own backyard!

We love our hometown of Wheeling, WV and were eager to hold a Wheeling GYBO (Get Your Business on the Map) workshop to assist our local small business owners in getting on Google Maps.

We weren’t the only ones excited about bringing this program home. Several local organizations helped us spread the word and make this event happen! A huge thank you and shout out to:

• West Virginia Northern Community College
• Weelunk
• WTRF
• Wheeling CVB
• Wheeling Area Chamber of Commerce

Check out the rest of our photos from the event.

At the workshop, we shared some mind-blowing statistics!

97% of consumers find local goods and services on the web, while only a mere 37% of business owners have ever claimed their local listing on a search engine.

I’m not referring to just any search engine either; I’m talking about the big one! You’ve probably heard of Google once or twice before, haven’t you?

Direct Online Marketing is a certified Google Partner in their Managed Agency Program. We were thrilled to once again partner with them for this awesome program. With help from the above organizations, we reached several businesses and helped them claim and optimize their Google listing.

Some of the awesome non-profit organizations and local businesses included:

• The Vagabond Kitchen
• Wheeling CVB
• The Children’s Museum of the Ohio Valley
• Sandscrest Conference & Retreat Center
• Easter Seals
• Wheeling Country Day School
• Mmm…Popcorn
• King’s Daughter Child Care Center
• Comcast Spotlight
• Gabriel Project of West Virginia
• Engineered Foundation Solutions

Look them up!

The event began with our president, Justin Seibert, giving an overview of how search engine marketing can help small businesses grow. I then had the pleasure of speaking to the group specifically about Google My Business.

Moving forward, we plan on holding more of these events, not only in Wheeling but in surrounding areas as well. We also plan to hold open office hours in the near future where business owners will be able to stop in to our office to have our digital marketing experts assist with their listing.

Be sure to stop by often and follow us on social media to keep up with all of our upcoming events!

If you are local, please join us on Monday, October 12th for the Wheeling Area Chamber of Commerce Lunch & Learn. We will be presenting and exploring search engine marketing further.

Hope to see you there!

The post We Helped Put Wheeling on the Map! appeared first on Direct Online Marketing.

First, let me give a little background about myself. I’m from Grafton, West Virginia, a small town around two hours southeast of Wheeling. I grew up in Grafton and lived there until I was 18, when I moved to Morgantown, West Virginia to attend West Virginia University. I graduated from WVU in both 2012 and 2014, first with a Bachelor’s of Science in Sport Management and then with a Master’s of Science in Integrated Marketing Communications.

In my spare time, I am a sports fanatic. I love almost any sport and will watch any type of sport on TV. My favorite teams are WVU of course, and then the Atlanta Braves, Cleveland Cavaliers, Cincinnati Bengals, and Pittsburgh Penguins. I love to play golf, even though I am horrible and I’ve been trying to make myself enjoy running, but that’s an ongoing struggle.

I ended up at Direct Online Marketing after spending almost the entire summer searching for a job. When I saw the posting online for a Search Marketing Associate, it seemed almost too good to be true. A marketing job that was actual marketing and not sales? I was amazed I could find something like that in West Virginia, especially after I had been applying to jobs all over the country for months. I filled out the application and sent my information out and the next day I had a response and a phone interview set up. After my phone interview, I had an in-person interview and here I am!

My first day at DOM was honestly uneventful. It was a day full of paperwork and meeting new people. For the most part, the entire first week was uneventful. Since I had never done any type of search engine marketing, I couldn’t just jump in and start doing actual work. There was a lot of studying to become Google AdWords Certified, but I learned a lot while studying for those tests. It was during the first or second week that I found out what my first responsibilities would be and I won’t lie, I was a little nervous about them.

I quickly found out that I had nothing to be nervous about. Everyone at DOM is so helpful and the office really has a team feeling around it. It seems like everyone is in this thing together, which is a little refreshing in what has become a mostly me-first world.

As the days went on, I found myself with more and more responsibilities which was a welcome difference from my first week or so. The days seemed to be flying by because of how busy I was. I didn’t hate it, though, I was learning so much from every task that I had been given. Even now, I learn so much from doing each task.

So far, my favorite thing to do has been search queries. It may not seem like the most necessary thing, but there is a lot to be learned from what your customers are searching for. There is always a chance of finding a funny search term, which lightens up what can be a slightly tedious task. I really don’t have a least favorite thing to do yet. Everything has its own importance and I haven’t come across anything that gets under my skin too badly.

The past two weeks have been a big change from my first month here. I have my own campaigns that I am taking care of, and even though I am still being walked through some aspects, it makes me feel like I am a trusted member of the team now. It’s nice to feel like I am needed. Not saying I didn’t feel that way to begin with, but now that I am understanding the job and everything that is involved in it, I feel like everyone trusts me to be able to get whatever they need done and in the correct manner.

When I first got hired, I wasn’t sure how all of this would work out. Like I said, it seemed too good to be true, but now I see myself staying at Direct Online Marketing for a long time. The knowledge and experience that I have gained in such a short amount of time makes me excited for the future. I’m sure I’ll be back on our digital marketing blog sooner rather than later, sharing more information about what I have learned and things that are important to me and Direct Online Marketing as a whole.

The post The Beginning: My First Weeks of Search Marketing appeared first on Direct Online Marketing.

We’re looking to boost our paid search marketing staff and have openings for experienced pay per click folks, entry level positions, and college students looking for in-semester or summer internships.  If you’re looking for work in the exciting paid search marketing field and like the prospect of working with industry leading companies from all over the United States, check out what we have to offer.

Each offers a terrific opportunity in the Wheeling, WV – Pittsburgh, PA market.  If you’re a superstar and can help us continue to provide our clients with outstanding results and grow our company, I encourage you to apply.

The post We’re Hiring: Paid Search Marketing Openings appeared first on Direct Online Marketing.

For those of you not aware of the term “embargo,” I can empathize. The first time I sent out a press release, I had no idea what I was doing. More often than not in life, I have learned via trial by fire, which makes for a toasty, charred backside. By dumb luck, persistence, or some combination, I got an actual editor from a real publication (Time?) on the phone. I explained to her that we had a press release coming out and I wanted to give her early notice, but that they could not yet print anything. She said, “You mean it’s embargoed?”

Well, I had two choices: 1. bs my way through it. This probably could have easily been done, since her tone clearly indicated an affirmative response was appropriate. Or 2. say “huh?”, tip my head to the side, and let her hear the rocks fall out and hit the floor.

Of course I chose #2! “I’m kind of embarrassed, but this is my first time doing anything like this and I don’t know what that means.” She then very politely explained to me that “embargoing” a press release means floating it out there to news editors (or these days, bloggers) so they could have advance notice to do a story before the general public gets wind, but that they can’t actually release any stories until a certain date. And then she wrote the most beautiful story about my press release and asked if she could be the future Mrs. Seibert.

All of that is true except for the last sentence. She didn’t take my follow up call and probably laughed with her friends about the rube she just got off the phone with. Or I think too much of myself, she forgot about the call as soon as she hung up, and went about her day. Just like Second Thoughts (Anyone know where I can find this video online?).

West Virginia Marketing Series

So back to my current news. Some partners and I are putting on a pretty progressive executive marketing workshop series around West Virginia this spring all over the state: up North in Wheeling and Morgantown, in the eastern Panhandle in Martinsburg, and on down to Charleston and Huntington.

Among the techniques discussed will be search engine reputation management, blogging, social media, and a lot of other forms of marketing and client relation tactics. We have some special guest speakers lined up and a really solid day, complete with live feedback on the marketing efforts of people in our audience. I’m sure I’ll speak about this more over the coming days, but in the meantime, check out the site to learn more: Next Generation Marketing.

Oh, and if you’re reading this post, Time reporter…call me. Please? I just want to know what I did wrong. Like you’re so good. Who needs you anyway? Not me. No sir, not Justin Seibert. I’m doing just fine. (Seriously, I’m here for you – call, email, twitter, smoke signal.)

The post Marketing Series Coming to a (WV) City Near You appeared first on Direct Online Marketing.

As the History of Burnley & Pendle buses site explains:

There followed a period of “bus wars” with intense competition on the “main line” routes. Victoria coaches soon pulled out also Blackburn Transport and Tyrer Tours were “bought off”. In an attempt to stave off the competition five ex. London Transport Routemasters were acquired in 1988 and painted red & cream in an “Eastenders” livery. Each bus was given a name from the TV soap. These were Dirty Den, Queen Vic, Wicksi, Dot Cotton & Albert Square.

I remember them quite well as they ran the bus route near my house. But, as soon as they arrived, they’d disappeared again. Not a weary, wistful goodbye, no nothing.

Anyway, a good few years later, my buddy disappeared off to Hungary. I remember him ringing me one day from Budapest to tell me that he’d spotted the Dot Cotton bus hanging about in the carpark of some dubious Hungarian drinking joint.

The next thing you know, it’s frontpage in our local newspaper with fond testimonials from the locals, my buddy having contacted the local paper and taken some photos.

And so we come to Wheeling, where today’s front page story in The Intelligencer is a spurious tale about buses. Apparently, the local Ohio Valley Regional Transportation Authority has just starting flogging its clapped-out bus fleet on eBay. Maybe other transport authorities have been doing this for years, but The Intelligencer were “unable reach other transit officials for confirmation at the time of press.”

If you can cut through the dull details of how many miles each respective bus had on the clock, you’ll detect an attempt to politicize proceedings by faintly decrying the perceived lack of transparency in these online sales. Although, it isn’t too tricky to work out why noses are slightly out of joint once it’s been explained how the OVRTA used to sell their buses via sealed-bid auctions having advertised the auction in – yes, you’ve guessed it – the local newspaper.

Yet again, the online world of ecommerce trumps old media as even bus authorities in Wheeling are open to the idea of needing a more competitive marketplace offering better returns to sell their rickety stock.

The two they managed to get rid of on eBay today brought $10,890.46, but there’s no mention of how much a bus used to fetch under the sealed system.

It makes a change hearing about local authorities playing it clever for once. Not that you’d guess as much with the barbed last lines of the article:

Anyone can bid on a bus up for auction on eBay, including the Ohio County Commission, which is contemplating providing bus service from Elm Grove to the county’s new retail development site, The Highlands. There has been some contention on the OVRTA board about whether the bus company should provide service to the site. Some say it may be fiscally irresponsible to do so, while others say they simply want a trial run to test ridership.

Because of the OVRTA board’s inaction, county commissioners are expected to consider purchasing their own bus — possibly one of those being auctioned by OVRTA on eBay — to begin a trial run to The Highlands.

Ouch! That’s almost as catty as Eastenders.

The post eBay: Where Rickety Old Buses Go to Pasture… appeared first on Direct Online Marketing.

Or lyrics to that effect.

It seems to go without saying that every waking hour is taken up by somebody or other wishing to pay either us or Wheeling a visit. The memory of languid weekends with my feet out-stretched waiting for the back of my knees to seize up just prior to the onset of pins and needles is a distant one.

Then again, I didn’t exactly do much Sunday afternoon.

And valuable leisure time after a week’s work is one thing all those young snappers out for their prom, or homecoming, or whatever reason you give these kids to go out looking like modern day Crystal Carringtons, will soon be looking forward to.

Everywhere you turned there were couples and groups dressed with a certain glorious awkwardness that only younger folks possess when trying to be adult. And the whole of Wheeling seemed to be swarming at around 6pm with the blighters.

Fortunately, we weren’t privileged to a full night of the proms as we went for a full greyhound card at the dog tracks.

$4 for a Bloody Mary – now that’s what I call progressive.

Now we don’t do the prom thing in the UK, so I don’t understand the cultural significance of it other than references to it in every single American show / movie I’ve ever watched. It seems as if it’s one of those things that must seem earth-shatteringly important at the time and incredibly lame once you look back on it twenty years later.

You know, a bit like twitter and facebook. (I jest!)

But, I wonder how many of the young gentlemen with their prom dates tried the Bret Michaels pulling technique as displayed in the finale of Rock of Love. For those not in the know, Bret Michaels was / is the lead singer of soft rock combo Poison during the 80s and he’s now trying to find himself the love of his life via the medium of his own TV show. Week after week he’s had to whittle his bevy of beauties down one after another until he got down to his final two.

His second finalist had to endure the old here’s-how-you-save-me-from-ceratin-death-should-I-happen-to-go-into-a-diabetic-coma routine by showing her how to inject insulin into his right buttock.

And how it worked like a charm as she managed to claim first “prize” of Bret as prospective boyfriend.

Now swizzling a girl out of her virtue isn’t that much different to various marketers trying to swizzle you out of your advertising budget with some new fangled social media tool that you’ve never heard of let alone tried.

Then again, to a lot of people just dipping their toes into the world of Web advertising, many of the terms and concepts seem quite alien and confusing. And why would you want to throw more good money at another marketing channel that you aren’t overly sure about in this current climate.

You’re probably thinking of spending less overall as opposed to increasing your budget.

But, as with all advertising and marketing spends, it should be about better returns on what you spend as opposed to spending as much as you can afford and seeing what sticks.

The simplest distinction between various forms of online advertising and marketing and offline efforts is that potential customers and clients are looking for you. Well, maybe not you exactly, but for somebody who can offer particular services. People are searching for you or the services and products you similarly offer, opting in to receive information in the form of email, or subscribing via RSS to hear about what you offer.

The customer is in control of what they want to consume and when they’d like to receive that information. It’s literally at their fingertips. There’s no marketing genius in the idea of making TV advertisements more intrusive and less targeted than they already are by turning the volume up.

We’re now entering a time where you can do potential customers a favor by presenting them with the information they crave.

Online, they’re already switched on and reaching out instead of reaching for the remote and switching off.

The post Between a Rock of Love and a Hard Place. appeared first on Direct Online Marketing.

Now I’d hardly define myself, or anybody else in our little group as hardened gamblers, but a little flutter once in a blue moon never hurt anyone. Now I’ve never been greyhound racing prior to Saturday – only horses – and my good wife had never been to either. While I enjoy a good day at the races I simply don’t know enough to start plotting form graphs or to start conversations with old pros about the going and ‘double-handfuls’.

I go off ‘signs’, or gut reactions – I only bet on things that have some form of meaning. I know it’s completely unscientific, but it’s always worked. And I mean ALWAYS.

So, we leafed through the program, chose our signs and set about betting. The third race was going to be our clincher as one dog had something to do with my nephew and there were a couple of others that had themselves a hidden meaning. I sent Steph up seeming she’d put the previous bet on that had won to place a box trifecta (or whatever they’re called) and in they all romped.

The day was paid for.

We even managed to stretch it out to the evening’s entertainment at the Vaudeville. Although, $15 a ticket to watch a schoolteacher living his Eric Clapton fantasies and a dwarf Elvis impersonator singing Del Shannon songs could be thought of as a little steep. But, it was ‘entertaining’.

Especially when Elvis first entered the building and somebody had left the microphone stand at a normal height. Watching Tatoo in a jumpsuit up on his tiptoes almost upstaged our fantasy (Wheeling) Island flutter earlier in the day.

And before you start asking whether I could do any better, I can and I have. Having played in front of a couple of hundred people before now in the world’s premier punk karaoke / Elvis tribute combo, I feel more than qualified to pass comment. Or, perhaps I should say the world’s only punk karaoke / Elvis tribute combo.

But, one has to applaud the theater being open for anything. The building itself is fantastic. And if the owner just so happens to be Elvis, then who are we to quibble if that’s what he wants to do with his building. I probably applaud the theater even more!

Now even though these two things might not be the first thing I’d want to do every weekend, I still had a whale of a time at both and I’d gladly go again.

Now the thing is, how would anybody from outside of Wheeling know about these two bits of entertainment? Let’s pretend you’re a tourist and you’re planning a trip to these parts, or you just so happen to be passing through. I presume you might do a search online for hotels and then you’d find out at the hotel itself what was on. But, if the decision to visit Wheeling depends on what’s going on prior to you arriving then what do you do?

You search online, that’s what.

Finding stuff to do in Wheeling actually isn’t that difficult to search for. But, trying to find out what’s going on live is. Wheeling has much more going on than you’d give it credit for, and Stephanie’s tour guide patter as she drives around is becoming quite polished. There’s no way you’d struggle having some form of interesting weekend in Wheeling. There are good places to eat, drink, visit and there’s great scenery and even greater people.

However, I just wish the place would show off a bit more online. I wouldn’t say it if I didn’t think it was doing itself a disservice by not doing so. I don’t think there’s a town alive that doesn’t understand the unique power of its name as the url. But, I see plenty of confusion in the sites themselves. I think you can tell a lot about a place by the state of its ‘main’ Web site. Everybody jumped on board a while ago, but plenty seem confused by what their site is there to do.

For a town or city’s image, a bad Web site is like a town center full of garbage. I’m not saying you need to spend billions on flash enhancements or other fancy tricks, but it needs to be clean and cohesive as well as an information hub for visitors and natives alike.

In fact, done properly, your town’s image can be greatly enhanced by a great Web site. And it’s extremely cost effective to boot.

For example, you could have a Flickr gallery where vistors could upload their vacation snaps, tag them accordingly, and Wheeling, in all its visual splendor, can be seen by all and sundry in high resolution loveliness.

And the cost? Free, or at most $29.95 for a year-long premium account. With the premium account you can even set up multiple galleries displaying things like you winning at the dogs, or golfing, or getting tipsy. You photo it, name it and tag it, you can show it.

And you can integrate it fully into your site or blog and even geo-tag the photos in such a way that the pictures can appear on a googlemap of either specific locations in Wheeling or where the tourists who took them originate from. If they just so happen to have been taken from a place that has a Web site then that can be displayed as part of the information. And that doesn’t cost extra either.

For me, these things are so simple, basic, cheap and tremendously usable. And the user is what it’s all about. But, they also help you to be found more easily in search engines, i.e., image searches.

Hardly a gut reaction gamble, is it?

The post How Come I Never Saw Elvis Leaving the Building? appeared first on Direct Online Marketing.

I fondly bid my adorable lady adieu yesterday morning safe in the knowledge that she knew to make sure that the back computer room was to be hooked up and that the tv had to have enough cable so we could plop our big telly against the long wall so as to reduce window glare.

Yes, these are the things that keep me awake at night. I know, life is tough.

Anyway, Steph rang the installer to see what time he was coming round and he said anytime between 12 and 4. With that being a decent enough window, I’m sure she contemplated a quick forty winks; but any thoughts of that were soon dispelled as he rang back asking if he could come round right away.

Anticipating his prompt arrival, Steph hurriedly decided to whisk an offending garbage bag that I’d forgotten to take out last Thursday (forgive me, I’m not from round here) and hide it up the stairs on the next landing up.

The rustle of the bag as it dropped was accompanied by the sound of the apartment door closing behind her. Doors closing behind you aren’t uncommon, nor are they problematic, unless you’ve kept the lock on and don’t have your keys on you.

Being something of a sharp-ish tack, she thought to ring the landlord, but wasn’t carrying her phone. Now she’s fairly calm in a pressure situation is our lass, and instead of panicking she went downstairs and asked the guy whose apartment is directly beneath us if she could make a call to our landlord on his phone. Kindly he agreed, and while she was making the call, the cable guy arrived.

Letting him in, apologies were offered and understood as to why he was unable to catch Steph on her phone – we don’t have a doorbell, you see – and she explained her predicament. She also had to mention that she was unable to get hold of the landlord.

Things weren’t exactly looking good for my evening of blazing fast internet speeds interspersed with bouts of high definition televisual wizardry. However, while Steph was explaining all of this to the cable guy and hoping for a swift return call from the landlord, our downstairs neighbor sidled up to the pair of them to inform them that he’d managed to get into our apartment with the aid of a screwdriver.

This obviously solved the immediate problem but also presented us with another. We now know anybody can pop into our apartment with nothing but a blunt instrument.

So, for anyone who is interested, we live in Steubenville.

At least the cable fella could get down to business. And some business. We have two cable outlets, one in the living room and one in the back room. Unfortunately neither work. Not only was this diagnosed by cable guy, but also confirmed by his manager who had to be brought into proceedings. As we all know, that’s always a bad sign.

Their only recourse was to wing some kind of temporary set-up until they could get in touch with the landlord to work out exactly how they could go about connecting everything properly. And some temporary set-up it was. They’ve managed to run a cable line up two stories, through our kitchen window, round the back of the fridge and into the living room.

At least the slightly ajar window allows the whiff from the garbage bag to escape.

Now I have to say that the tv is coming in crystal and the HD is as good if not better than my cablecard set-up up Cleveland way. Not only that, but we now have infinitely more HD content than we could possibly have dreamed of.

Go, Wheeling Comcast!

In order to use the internet, mind, I had to plug in my laptop via a four-foot ethernet cable coming out of one of those slightly bulbous all-in-one modem thingies. This meant I was forced to not only watch that slightly bizarre hybrid of ‘Who Wants to be a Millionaire?’ and karaoke, but my whole field of vision was taken up by some squeaky geek girl butchering ‘Walk Like an Egyptian’ by The Bangles.

Ah to be fourteen again. If there’s anything that might spark an alpha male death battle round here it might be Susanna Hoffs popping into the office. Although, saying that, I hardly think she’s going to be overly impressed by one guy looking like he’s had mouth surgery by Laurence Olivier in Marathon Man and another who keeps applying camomile hand wipes to his pinkies due to a poison ivy golfing incident.

Now, I’ve no idea whether the decency of my connection is due to its haphazard cobbling together, or if it’ll be even better once they’ve got unfettered access to the walls of the apartment. My point is that it has impressed me so far. I’ve read an article or two about why West Virginia shouldn’t roll out high speed internet everywhere. I’d like to see what happened to those people who wondered whether the phone should be ubiquitous all those moons ago.

While I’m thinking on – what was the spirit of the Pony Express?

As Frank S. Popplewell puts it:

“From the days of ancient Persia to dawn of modern industry, horse and rider served to bind together the provinces of monarchy, empire and republic. No state long survived its inability to promote the dissemination of knowledge and information among its people. In mid-century America, communication between St. Joseph on the fringe of western settlement and goldmining communities of California challenged the bold and made skeptical the timid. Into this picture rode the Pony Express. In rain and in snow, in sleet and in hail over moonlit prairie, down tortuous mountain path . . . pounding pony feet knitted together the ragged edges of a rising nation. From these hearty souls who toiled over plain and mountain that understanding might be more generally diffused, a nation spanning a continent was ours to inherit. In the spirit of the Pony Express it is for us to bequeath to those who shall follow, new trails in the sky uniting in thought and in deed.”

Need I really say more?

The post The New Pony Express appeared first on Direct Online Marketing.

It at least beats the time I stood for the national anthem at Jacob’s Field and did a full 360 trying to work out where the flag was.

I don’t know whether I need a citizenship, self-awareness, or eye-test.

To say your fireworks go off with a bang is not only a statement of the obvious but also a slight understatement. The last time I felt such a blast in my pants was after a banger went off in my trouser pocket when I was knee-high to a grasshopper.

The Oglebay show wasn’t too shabby, but the one on Wheeling Suspension Bridge, that I could watch by dangling out of my bathroom window, was an absolute humdinger.

I’m not used to such whopping local shows.

In the UK we do have a fireworks spectacular on the 5th of November – otherwise known as Bonfire Night. But, they aren’t a patch on what you Americans offer up for Independence Day. Our displays tend to flirt more readily with danger as rockets screech into crowds or career into terraced houses – sometimes crowds of terraced houses. We struggle with space and the local funding. We can’t all go around letting 900 million dollars go up in smoke you know.

So, on behalf of everyone here at Direct Online Marketing, I’d like to wish you all a happy 4th of July and hope it was as remotely entertaining as mine was.

The post Happy 4th of July! appeared first on Direct Online Marketing.

It’s quite common for most natives to be slightly ‘down’ on their home parish. If we’re being honest, it didn’t take much for me to up sticks and leave my home town of Nelson in the UK and immigrate to the States. (Well it did – three years waiting for a visa if truth be told.) People of Nelson tend to be a tad surprised when ‘outsiders’ tell them what a pretty area they’re in and I’ve seen one or two similar looks since being in Wheeling. Sometimes, as a native, you can be a bit too close to a place to see the woods for the trees.

As a place Wheeling resonates with me personally as it has a certain bygone charm harking back to an era where heavy industries ruled. It’s also set in some delightful little rolling hills with some interesting buildings casually thrown around for good measure. It’s much different to vast swathes of America I’ve been party to; it isn’t just a series of flat sandy concrete shopping malls as far as the eye can see.

A few trees, a river and Victorian homes on hills, while they may remind me in some part of Blighty and are more than a pleasant backdrop, aren’t the only reason for me coming to Wheeling – it just made it easier.

If I’m being honest I think I may have taken this particular job irrespective of where it may have been. Having spent the past three and a half years teaching myself SEO and running quite a successful and well-known business blog, The Tinbasher, the idea of coming to Wheeling and working for Direct Online Marketing seemed too good an opportunity to pass up – something of a no-brainer (not me, but the job). Not only did I have the opportunity to continue with my business blogging, but also the chance to develop my organic SEO skills and learn a few new tricks as well.

So, you’re going to get a dose of me and a dose of Justin as we continue the digital marketing blog in the manner to which you’ve become accustomed. You’ll still be getting your valuable fix of information relating to online marketing and sales whether you’re a business owner, marketer, amateur or pro.

Once I’ve got my head round the backend, we’ll also be allowing commenting – doesn’t that sound magnanimous!

In the meantime, if you have any suggestions just drop me an email at paul@54.236.248.236/dom.

The post What On Earth Brings You To Wheeling? appeared first on Direct Online Marketing.