Part of any good marketing plan is to create a positive buzz in the industry that you are. When people talk about your marketing after days or months have past you know you've created something substantial. An agile company needs to quickly adapt to change. Our own marketing efforts need to change as when you target big publicly traded companies that seems to have endless supplies of cash you need to be creative in everything you do. Recently we have been adding clients from these large publicly traded companies and learning a lot from these clients. Each new client we bring on we always ask what made you switch and choose us over X, Y, and Z. We always ask what is their definition of success and failure as everyone has a different opinion on each. This knowledge helps us in giving recommendations for other companies that we have aligned with to further help drive traffic and increase their business.

We hear your struggle, feel your pain, and we are making a solution for you so that your unique story can be heard. Everyone has a story and many haven't been able to be heard. Not because they don't have a good story or because it's not worth hearing. For many it's because to get a story heard you either have to know someone or you have to "pay to play". Those that know JM2 know we think that is not right and we're making a game changing announcement about how stories are told.

I saw an old friend today who helped make JM2 Webdesigners & Marketing the growing agent of change in Northwest Indiana. While up at the local coffee shop writing blogs, working on social media accounts, making new websites live, adding new features, and adding some green padlock (SSL) security to the new websites I saw was Eric Zosso of Zoseco Co-working and seeing him made me think of where our company has come from the idea stage in the fall of 2012 when the idea of starting a business was still a pipe dream. Each and every Sunday is a day of reflection on where we've come, what happened in the past week, and what we have coming in the upcoming week. It's a time to look at three ways small business can start out.

Debate as much as you want regarding organic search engine optimization or SEO versus paid advertising or PPC and you will find out it is a hot topic with people fighting on both sides of the fence that one is better than the other. A third option we see all too much is to be completely lazy and do nothing as you've vested so much money that you expect that money to also be heard by the search engines that you didn't even pay because your site is just "that great". The question comes down to which one will work best for your brand, your timeframe, target market, what your budget is, how patient you are, and whether you have truly great content. We've re-written this several times and are going to lay the pros and cons to each.

Today you do not hear the phrase I will give you more and not expect you to pay more for it. Businesses raise prices as payroll increases, costs increase, etc. but rarely do you see more being provided and the prices not increase. We do raise our prices every so often like other businesses but we always add value without raising costs throughout the year as well. We do this as we want to see the small businesses that choose us see growth in their business. To be fair and honest we are increasing our prices in 2018 but that is for the sake of payroll as our team deserves it as they are rocking it which you can tell by what I have below!

Just a week ago Twitter rolled out to everyone the new standard for tweets of 280-characters. We are a year away to see what the true impact of this increase in 140-characters will do to all of us in communicating on Twitter. We still believe that short and sweet is the best way to reach most audiences as we are all actively busy with work and our personal lives. Doubling your character account can do a lot to your overall marketing strategy and we're going to take a look at some of the major items we are already doing for our clients.

We believe that small business truly makes our communities grow. They have heart, passion, raise their families, and are 100% committed to our communities. We believe big business is important but will never be as vested in our local community as much as small business. To that end we look for ways to improve small business search engine optimization for small business whether you are in Valparaiso, Merrillville, or in a big city like Chicago. These SEO techniques work for every small business.

Being able to be different, to live your dream, and make a difference in the lives of small businesses is what I strive to do on a daily basis. From my home town in Chesterton Indiana and now in Valparaiso Indiana I have changed the way small businesses grow. To many they don’t understand who we are, what we do, or how we do it. I want to give a quick look into what an entrepreneur is. For many, you will think we’re crazy. We are not. We are the agents of change in what we do. Whether you are in web design and marketing like I am or if you are doing the next big thing. An entrepreneur is someone that wants to make a difference in this world.

Consistency is the foundation for success in all aspects of life. The constantly repeating, almost instantaneous execution of a perfect golf swing or a piano master performing a near-perfect rendition of Chopin's piano concerto comes from years of repeated practice until perfection.

We are often asked why we work with small business and nothing else. That wasn't always the case but small business is what we only work on now and the answer is quite simple. Small business make up 3/4 of the businesses within the United States which is a large group of businesses to work with. Five years ago, we went straight to the big box stores for everything as we were selfishly looking at just saving a few pennies (literally just pennies). As we saw spending these pennies on a small business were not only possible but made us happy and we established relationships with these businesses. This change happened and was our wakeup moment when we started our own web design and marketing small business in Michigan City Indiana. Our eyes opened, and we started to "see the light" of what was really driving the American economy. It isn't these large stores but the small business that invest in our local communities that made our communities grow.