Moving Back To The Blogger Platform

Our business blog, brandstorming, is moving back to its location here on the Blogger Platform. The brandstorming.com domain, which has been of real value to us, is being converted into a products website for selling social media to small business.

We'll keep this name, and update the blog regularly, but it will be a new feed - and one dedicated just to Durbin Media.

So for the Durbin Media blog, you should be following http://durbinmedia.com/brandstorming, and for the small business blog, you'll be checking out http://www.brandstorming.com, which also houses our social media training store, Store.brandstorming.com.

That has series of products that we developed to round out our service offerings. For those now confused - this is what Durbin Media now represents.

1) An interactive marketing firm
2) Social Media Headhunting
3) Training DVD's for Recruiters and Small Business.

We'll be adding the Venticafe later in the year - products Franki has created, and the Social Media Headhunter will add a payrolling service for JobsinSocialMedia.com once I get the paperwork cleared.

Now if we could just get that cloning device...

Social Media Training Products

Part of our marketing strategy has been the training of recruiters in using social media. We've run blogging boot camps and personal training sessions, along with webinars and speaking events, but we've finally completed the first step in our grand vision.

Back in February, I launched Social Media Headhunter, a recruiting site I used to place social media candidates with companies. We've been building that brand, and focusing it on the social media world, adding handles for smheadhunter at sites like Twitter.

The site has just added a store where you can purchase training DVD's for LinkedIn, Facebook, and SEO. These DVD's are focused on the recruiting and staffing industry, and the quality is simply fantastic. We've set the store up on the Shopify network, authorized a gateway for credit cards, and are turning on the affiliate program with Share-A-Sale in the next few weeks.

I have over twenty titles in the works, and the delivery and process is going to blow your mind. There's nothing like this out there, and the difficulty in putting together a product like this is enough to deter competitors from competing on quality. Plus, my content rocks, and is 100% unique from my own experiences.

Franki has plans to add another store for the Venti Cafe, and we'll be launching a third store for brandstorming, covering other super secret products. Also remember this blog is no longer the main site.

The St Louis Marketing Recruiter Launches

Bob Bishop is a St Louis based marketing recruiter who just joined the blogosphere, and he's on the fast track to success (okay, he's a client who went through some training).

Seriously, though, Bob is a quick study who's picking up on social media tools as a way to connect with clients and candidates. As a retained executive search recruiter, Bob, who also goes by G. Robert Bishop, has developed a reputation for excellence, and if you ever have the chance to visits his office, be sure to check out the artwork. It's like spending time in the studio of a famous person.

Plastic Surgery Blogging

One of our clients is Renaissance Plastic Surgery in St Peters. This practice has three doctors and is known for quality control. Their challenge was to update their website, add and understand a blogging component, and lay out a basic marketing plan for newsletters, seminars, and local market advertising.

The site is up, and the look and feel is modern, but also filled with calls to action, as the primary purpose of the site is to drive phone calls and email contacts for those interested in surgical and medical spa procedures.

The Renaissance Plastic Surgery blog has been up and running since May of this year, and it's content is a mix of doctor's writing, local content, and thoughts from the staff. The blog is built on Typepad, and has several authors who take turns writing and linking to stories of interest. It is not simply a marketing ploy. The blog is designed to make the practice more aware of local matters, questions people have, and provide a platform for anything they do in the future.

Ultimately, the goal is all the same. Get more clients into the building who are already comfortable with the doctors and the staff. Humanize the process and explain the advantages of Renaissance over the competition without having to sell.

Durbin Media Projects

Just some things we're working on.

Sendouts has launched their blog on applicant tracking systems. I'm actually using their software to power my client data base for SocialMediaHeadhunter.com

TalentDrive is continuing to work on their strategy of one screen, all job boards technology. For recruiters, this is a easy way to manage your resume databases.

Renaissance Plastic Surgery is writing a blog about St Louis and their cosmetic surgery practice. If you're looking for a plastic surgeon , or considering getting some cosmetic surgery done, this is a good site to read up on their work.

Franki is still going strong at LifeinAVenti cup, a style and fashion blog, and I'm still writing on StlRecruiting. New writers have stepped in at Kansas City and Charlotte Recruiting, but Seattle is about to be used for hiring recruiters in Seattle.

And of course, our regular St Louis social media branding and marketing blog can now be found at brandstorming.com

Track Employees With GPS Software At FoxTrax Online

One of our SocialMediaHeadhunter clients is FoxTrax Online, a GPS tracking outfit that works with employers to track vehicles in real time with GPS units and software.

Many times, companies think they are in a product business, but they are really in routing business, as their success depends on knowing where their employees are and what they're doing.

Contractors can use the system to monitor when employees arrive at client sites for timecard and billing purposes.

Delivery Businesses can use the GPS software to determine best routes to save gas and time for standard deliveries.

Plumbers, HVAC, and anyone else with a truck can use the system to make sure that employees are where they said they were, when they said they were.

For more on GPS Tracking for Businesses, check out the FoxTrax site.

Social Media Consultant St Louis

Just added a page to our brandstorming blog on our experience as Social Media Consultants in St Louis.  

Franki is also launching her high-end shopping site called Venticafe.com

Social Media Headhunter

Don't forget this blog has moved to the Durbin Media Group company blog at http://brandstorming.com

The updates to the video and photo-editing software community at the Flektor Blog are complete, and we're now working on adding a social network, forums, and promoting the content of MySpace and Flektor Users.

TalentDrive is launching a series of commercials and a demo to launch their product, TalentFilter, a resume aggregator that allows recruiters to search all job boards for resumes simultaneously and on one screen. The project is resume software as a SaaS.

Netshare continues to put out high quality content for executives in the 100K+ range. If you aren't reading Kathy Simmons, you're missing some of the best writing in the recruiting blogsphere. And if you're an executive looking to improve their network or find high-paying jobs, you should be part of the Netshare community.

Keenhire has launched, and the blog is focused on teaching behavioral interviewing and assessments for matching candidates. If you don't understand how to use benchmarking to sell more staffing, one of the seminars by Margaret Graziano is right up your alley.

Situational Marketing is the mobile and e-mail marketing blog for Blast Companies, which recently launched an online store for small business to run their e-mail, text, and voice broadcast services in a simple DIY platform.

Jim Durbin is releasing a series of webinars at Hireability on using social networking to recruit. His first kicks off May 21st with a webinar on using Facebook to recruit, and notes on MySpace, Ning, Twitter, LinkedIn and blogs will follow.

Jim also launched the SocialMediaHeadhunter blog, which aims to connect social media candidates with clients looking to hire experts who can run full-scale social media marketing campaigns. He hires corporate bloggers, community managers, web analytics, traffic managers, SEM and SEO experts, and social media consultants. He will cover more of the marketing space at BlogCaseStudies, where he invites social media consultants to list their successes.

Sendouts.com is also getting into the social media space, launching the Sendouts blog in May to showcase the use of social media for staffing firms. The blog will focus on helping third party recruiters make money.

Franki is still hard at work at LifeInAVentiCup.com, writing about style, fashion, and beauty. And politics can be found at 24thstate.com, a Missouri political blog covering national and statewide politics from St Louis.

All of this and more can be found at the Durbin Media Group website.