Class Dates:

• Tuesday, January 24: 9am – 12pm (Twitter)
• Tuesday, February 7: 9am- 12pm (LinkedIn)
  
• Tuesday, February 21: 9am – 12pm (Facebook) NOTE: This date was originally set for January 10th and has now been changed to February 21st.

You will walk away knowing how to:

• Speak the lingo of the top three social media tools
• Choose and use those tools to help you grow or sustain your business
• Set measurable and reasonable goals for social media usage
• Establish healthy habits for making progress toward these goals
• Learn in a fun and collegial small group atmosphere where you won’t feel stupid asking questions!
• Following through on your plan with practice, practice, practice!!

Register now!

The Leadership Series event takes place November 17, 2011. Spend the morning with the editors of Inc. magazine, and the business leaders of the Small Giants community for an informative and inspirational program. In addition to the Choices & Challenges panel, enjoy breakfast and coffee, 2 keynote sessions, and roundtable networking. Click here to register!

Megan Cough joins the Whole Brain Group team in the role of Digital Marketing Specialist, managing integrated digital marketing campaigns, including social media, content development & blogging, search engine optimization (SEO) and paid search. Megan’s experience includes working in the Events Marketing Department for Borders Group, Inc., where she introduced the department to Twitter, and pushed the company into the world of social media for the first time. Since then, she moved from the brand side to the agency world, where she worked on social media and Pay Per Click (PPC) for clients such as MEDC Travel (Pure Michigan), Blio, National Association of REALTORS®, hiredMYway, and the Detroit Metro CVB.

Angelina Vergari joins the Whole Brain Group team as an Online Advertising Campaign Analyst, specializing in Search-Engine Marketing strategy and Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising. Through Pay-Per-Click account management & optimization, Angelina’s role is to increase web visibility for businesses, while improving their web traffic, and maximizing their ROI. Angelina has successfully developed & optimized PPC campaigns for a wide variety of local and national clientele, which has led to increased conversion rates, fresh leads, and increased sales for their businesses. Angelina has also worked for Eastern Michigan University, developing Google AdWords accounts for students and non-profit organizations participating in Eastern Michigan University’s hands-on search marketing courses.

“I’m really excited about adding these two great women to our team,” stated Marisa Smith, Founder of The Whole Brain Group, “Their skills and expertise have enabled us to offer more services that will drive even more business to our growing clients. Our right brains are energized by the results our clients are seeing from taking an integrated approach to their marketing efforts, while our left brains love seeing the numbers on their reports climb every month!”

About The Whole Brain Group

The Whole Brain Group takes a holistic approach to online marketing strategy, offering a variety of solutions to stay well positioned in the ever developing digital age. Our team of experts are committed to helping growing businesses develop and execute digital marketing strategies that complement company visions and turn them into sales results. We create websites that are mobile & search engine friendly, integrated with social media, and built with WordPress™ — so clients can control their own websites and quickly publish fresh content. We also provide consulting in social media, search engine optimization, and PPC advertising to maximize our clients’ website investment.

Using the Internet effectively is a critical piece of many small businesses’ marketing strategies.  The Michigan Small Business Technology Development Center (MI-SBTDC) is sponsoring “Marketing Malpractice: Avoiding Costly Web Marketing Mistakes” on October 11, 2011.  The event will include a panel of local experts, including web developers, graphic designers, and e-marketing professionals to discuss the do’s and don’ts of website design and e-marketing tactics:

• Megan Crosbie – e-Marketing Coordinator, Reinhart
• Alaine Karoleff – Project Manager, Inner Circle Media
• Ross Johnson – Owner, 3.7 Designs
• Joe Minock – Owner, Adrenaline Commerce
• Emily T. Penix – Project Manager, Whole Brain Group

Learn how to avoid costly mistakes and what a business owner can expect from their e-marketing.

Where: Quarter Bistro, Ann Arbor
When: October 11, 2011 4:30-6:30pm
Fee: $50 – including light refreshments and takeaway materials

For more information click here or contact your local Chamber of Commerce.  This informative session is part of a four part series brought to you in partnership with the MI-SBTDC of WCC and the Washtenaw Council of Chambers.

Priorclave North America wanted to keep the previously established Priorclave brand, but give it a face-lift and make it specific to the North American division.  We took inspiration from the UK branding and redesigned Priorclave’s print and marketing pieces with a Whole Brain Group designed next generation logo.  This branding phase included design and printing assistance with letterhead, business cards, envelopes, and more.

Priorclave’s website is also integrated into SalesForce, a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tool, so leads are directly tracked and input for the sales team.  Priorclave and the Whole Brain Group will continue to work together towards future marketing efforts.

Visit the Priorclave North America website by clicking here!

Saline Lectronics is a leading PCB assembly house in Saline Michigan. They came to the Whole Brain Group for a “website makeover” — looking for a site that was easier to keep updated, and whose image matched the growth and success of the company.

In addition to refreshing the design, Whole Brain Group revamped the website’s navigation by implementing drop-down menus to make each page of the website much easier to find.  Since Saline Lectronics had a well-established SEO strategy, Whole Brain Group migrated their key words and tags within the website’s content, and made sure that Google Analytics and AdWords campaign data were uninterrupted.

Saline Lectronics can now update their content quickly and easily, and add new pages as their company grows and evolves!

Visit the new Saline Lectronics website

Marisa Smith, President of The Whole Brain Group, highlights our competitive advantage, biggest accomplishment, and toughest challenge in this video made by Chase Ink™ at the Inc. 500 Conference in Baltimore – September 2011.

On Wednesday, October 12 at 1pm we will present a joint session, “Developing a Tablet Application in a Changing and Challenging Industry” at the Internet User Experience Conference in Ann Arbor, Michigan.  The session will cover the challenges, approach, results, and ongoing efforts in the XanEdu mobile app project.

Audience members will leave with tips and tools for:

1. Creating an application that is “co-designed” by consumers whose feedback shapes the creation application
2. Implementing feedback into features that support the transition to digital
3. Tools that make learning more efficient and engaging

As many industries are now trying to find a way to connect with consumers via tablet devices, this session has relevance that relates to a wide variety of areas.  The best practices shared have a wide range of implementation to the development of an application for almost any company.  The speakers will share real life examples and case studies, such as the largest MBA iPad pilot program at NYU’s Stern School of Business.

Speakers:

• Tyler Steben, Senior Vice President of Product Development & Marketing at XanEdu Publishing
• Marisa Smith, President of The Whole Brain Group
• Dave Koziol, President of Arbormoon Software

Together, these speakers share their ideas for practical design, creating a strategic vision, and implementing future thinking into an award-winning product.

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IUE2011 is a conference that spotlights effective and compelling designs for web and mobile sites and applications, and teaches methods for dramatically improving today’s user experience. The conference goal is to foster improving today’s user experience for web, tablet, and mobile sites and applications, and the internet as it is utilized in transportation and other situations and environments.

The conference achieves this by bringing you some of the most compelling speakers and the most experienced and effective trainers in the field of user experience today. The conference also invites a broad range of companies and professionals to showcase contemporary web, tablet, and mobile sites and applications, and to demonstrate significant improvements and redesigns.

This combination provides the most complete package of internet user experience design training, case studies, business success stories, and real-world examples assembled anywhere.

Registration for IUE2011 is now open.  The conference will be held October 11-13, 2011 in Ann Arbor, MI.

Presented by the Eastern Michigan University College of Business, the event will provide concrete steps for business owners and marketers to find web leads and convert them to customers. Attendees will spend a half day with colleagues, the region’s top search marketing professionals, and members of the region’s premiere, university-based search marketing program.

You’ll learn…

• How to assess your website’s current and potential revenue drivers
• How to attract the web visitors most likely to become customers
• How social and mobile platforms present real opportunities for your business

About the Eastern Michigan University Search Marketing Program

EMU Professor Bud Gibson started the search marketing program at Eastern Michigan University just a little over three years ago, in January 2008, in collaboration with Google, Ann Arbor. Students work with non-profit recipients of Google AdWords Advertising Grants enabling them to build out and manage campaigns with spends of up to $10,000 per month.

Building on this foundation, the program has grown to three undergraduate and one masters level courses:

• Google AdWords and Landing Page Design
• Landing Page Optimization
• The Web Marketing Practicum
• Integrated Marketing Communications and Search Engine Marketing (masters level)