Author Archive: Zeb Welborn

Zeb Welborn to be Installed as 2017/2018 Chino Rotary Club President

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Zeb to Become Chino Rotary President for 2017/2018.

The Installation of the New Board and Debunking of Melinda Robbins will take place on Wednesday, June 28 from 6pm to 8pm at Los Serranos Country Club.

Zeb Welborn is the Chino Rotary Club President for 2017/2018

Zeb Welborn – 2017/2018 Chino Rotary Club President

The Chino Rotary Club has committed millions of dollars to help the Chino Valley area since it was founded more than 90 years ago.

Will you join me on June 28 at Los Serranos Country Club for the Debunking of Melinda Robbins and my installation as President of the Chino Rotary Club?

The cost is $30 and will include dinner.

Let me know by emailing me at Zeb@WelbornMedia.com.

Thanks!

Zeb

Social Media and Online Marketing Workshops in 2017 by Welborn Media

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Zeb Welborn and Welborn Media are looking forward to another great year speaking on social media, digital marketing and online marketing workshops in 2017.

Want to learn how to write blogs, create successful email marketing campaigns, use Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram and other social media channels to grow your business? Want to learn a comprehensive strategy to get your business on Google? Want to learn how to manage your reputation online so your customers will choose you over your competitors?

Email Marketing to Get the Sale

Sign up for our workshops in 2017 and take your business to the next level.

San Bernardino County Workforce Development Board:

Workshops are free to attendees. 

Email Marketing to Get the Sale on March 30 at High Desert Americas Job Center – 17310 Bear Valley Rd., Suite 109, Victorville, CA 92395.

Register for Social Media Workshops

 

Create a Winning Internet Marketing Game Plan for Your Business on April 13 at the City of San Bernardino Economic Dvlp. Agency- Board Room, 3rd Floor – 201 N. “E” St., San Bernardino, CA 92401

Register for Social Media Workshops

Get Immediate Business Results with Google Pay-Per-Click Campaigns on May 25 at Ontario Chamber of Commerce – 3200 Inland Empire Blvd., Suite 130 , Ontario, CA 91764

Register for Social Media Workshops

The Right Way to Market Your Business on Facebook on June 22 at the High Desert Americas Job Center – 17310 Bear Valley Rd., Suite 109, Victorville, CA 92395

Register for Social Media Workshops

 

Inland Empire Small Business Development Center:

Workshops are free to attend: Sign up here

Internet Marketing Strategies on May 17 from 9:00 am-12:00 pm at the Carnegie Cultural Center, 123 D Street, Upland 91786

Internet Marketing Strategies on June 1 from 9:00 am-12:00 pm at the Temecula Valley Entrepreneurs Exchange, 43200 Business Park Drive, Temecula 92590

Internet Marketing Strategies on July 18 from 9:00 am-12:00 pm at the Riverside County Business Center, 3403 10th Street (first floor), Riverside 92501

Internet Marketing Strategies on August 9 from 9:00 am-12:00 pm at the Ontario Chamber of Commerce, 3200 Inland Empire Blvd., Suite 130 , Ontario, CA 91764

Completed 2017 Workshops:

Best Strategies for Business Blogging Success on February 16 at Ontario Chamber of Commerce – 3200 Inland Empire Blvd., Suite 130 , Ontario, CA 91764

Super Simple Secrets to Business Blog Writing Success

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My first website launched in 2010. I remember the feeling of excitement as my business could now be found on the world wide web by customers all over the world.

I imagined the phone ringing off the hook, more customers than I could handle and making my first million by the end of the year.

My sister and business partner, Lacey built The Tutoring Solution website. Fortunately for me she installed Google Analytics so we could track exactly how many visitors we had coming to our website.

The Tutoring Solution Business Blog Writing

At the end of the week, I saw my website had three visitors – likely my Mom, Dad and brother.

The harsh reality set in – this was going to take more work than I thought.

I heard blog writing could help get your website ranking in the search engines so I committed myself to writing a blog post every day for six months.

My website starting showing up in the search engines, my phone began ringing off the hook, I took on more customers than I could handle and while not yet a millionaire, my businesses have averaged 50% growth over the last seven years.

Since that first website, Lacey and I have set up, built and executed blogs for ourselves, for companies we represent and helped new business bloggers get started with theirs.

Blog Writing by the Numbers:

Blog writing has grown my business, but it’s also become a critical tool for businesses large and small.

A good metric to determine the importance of blogging in the global marketplace is to see where marketers are spending their time, efforts and money.

In surveys conducted with marketers by Social Media Examiner, The Content Marketing Institute, Gartner and Socialeemedia, they found:

  • 45% of marketers say blogging is their #1 most important content strategy
  • 70% of business to business (B2B) marketers plan to create more content in 2017 than 2016
  • 28% of marketers have reduced their advertising budget to fund more digital marketing
  • Marketers who prioritize blogging are 13 times more likely to realize a positive ROI

In terms of making purchasing decisions marketing companies Stratabeat and Lenati found that:

  • 80% of business decision makers prefer to get company information in a series of articles versus an advertisement
  • 67% of the typical B2B journey is now done digitally
  • 90% of B2B buyers say online content has a moderate to major effect on their purchasing decisions

Marketers and decision-makers both agree about the importance of online content in the sales cycle. To thrive in today’s environment, a digital marketing campaign is critical.

Learn why having a business blog is important, how to get it started, how to create content, and how to make money from it.

Sign up for the Welborn Media email newsletter to receive our upcoming blog posts about:

  • Why Having a Business Blog is Important
  • How to Start Your Business Blog
  • How to Make Money from Blog Writing

On Thursday, Feb. 16 Zeb Welborn from Welborn Media will be speaking through the San Bernardino County Workforce Development Board at the Ontario Chamber of Commerce sharing his Super Simple Secrets to Blog Writing Success. If you miss this engagement, Zeb Welborn will continue to speak throughout 2017 on how to run successful digital marketing campaigns for your business.

You can sign up for these free business workshops here – 2017 Social Media Marketing Workshops.

Super Simple Secrets to Blog Writing Success

Leave comments below: Have you thought about writing a blog, but haven’t started yet? What’s holding you back? Do you have a blog online? What is the url of your blog so we can check it out? Do you have any questions about blog writing?

How Donald Trump Won the Presidency with Twitter

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“The only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about.” – Oscar Wilde

Regardless of how you feel about the election results from last night, you just saw our political system go through a drastic shift.

Our President-Elect, Donald Trump, made controversial statement after controversial statement throughout the campaign and – every time – our political pundits said he was done. He would not recover.

But, he did recover.

Not only did he recover, but he continued to make more and more controversial statements and each time his influence grew.

His campaign is a testament to the new age of marketing. The power of social media.

Donald Trump’s strategy was to make sure eyes, ears and minds were on him and only him.

His strategy worked and it will work for your business.

Trump’s campaign relied on one simple premise:

“There is no such thing as bad publicity except your own obituary.” – Brendan Behan

If you’ve ever thought to yourself social media doesn’t work, it’s a waste of time, or it can’t help to grow my business, Trump just proved you wrong. Trump used social media to persuade our country.

In a traditional campaign, any number of Trump’s controversial remarks would have doomed his run for the presidency, yet he thrived.

With each tweet, Trump defied conventional thinking and the reason it worked is because his controversial statements dominated the headlines nearly every day of the campaign election cycle. Nearly every late night talk show host, news anchor, newspaper, magazine and media outlet mentioned Trump on a daily basis.

The free press Trump received far surpassed the mentions of Hillary Clinton throughout the entire election. Whether good, or bad, Trump was on the minds of the American people and we have social media to thank.

As the results were being read last night, many pointed to the fact that this election would “rewrite the history books.” Its ramifications will reverberate throughout the future of political campaigns.

In every debate, Facebook and Twitter were mentioned – they even had a selfie spot at my polling place.

Donald Trump Social Media Strategy

Those engaging in discussions on Facebook and Twitter permeated news feeds and those who proactively supported or endorsed either candidate influenced our election.

If you’re active on social media you’re an influencer. You have the ability to persuade others to your way of thinking in today’s connected age. If your business is active on social media, you have the ability to persuade your customers to choose you over another company.

And when they choose you, you have the ability to generate a “base” of followers who will overwhelmingly support you and your brand. So much so, that they’ll take to Twitter, to Facebook and to other social channels to tell everyone just how great you are.

Do you want to succeed in our new economy? Copy Donald Trump and use social media to grow your business.

Sign up for the Welborn Media newsletter for tips and tactics  – http://welbornmedia.com/email/

 

 

Zeb Welborn’s Upcoming Speaking Engagements in 2016 – Social Media for Businesses

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Welborn Media and Zeb Welborn will be speaking multiple times before the end of the year on how to use social media to grow your business. Our sessions are hosted by the San Bernardino County Workforce Development Board or the Inland Empire Small Business Development Center.

All of our social media courses from now until the end of the year are free to attend.

Zeb is presenting on a variety of topics from social media basics,  utilizing LinkedIn and marketing technology to grow your business.

Check out the workshops and find one(s) that works for you. Please let us know which ones you plan to attend.

If you’d like to learn more about online marketing but the following courses are not appealing to you, let us know what courses you’d like to see in 2017 by filling out this 2-Question Survey.

 

Zeb Welborn Speaker at San Bernardino County Workforce Investment Board and the Inland Empire Small Business Development Center

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October 13th • 10:00 am – 12:00 pm

Effective Use of Social Media: A Hands On Approach

Ontario Chamber of Commerce
3200 Inland Empire Blvd., Suite 130, Ontario, CA 91764
Zeb Welborn, shares his knowledge of using google analytics to monitor and improve your website and online marketing efforts.

Hosted by San Bernardino County Workforce Development
Please register at: https://socialmediaworkshops2016.eventbrite.com

October 19th • 9:00 am – 12:00 pm

Internet Marketing Strategies

Ontario Chamber of Commerce
3200 Inland Empire Blvd., Suite #130, Ontario 91764
Zeb Welborn, shares his knowledge on Internet Marketing Strategies

Hosted by Inland Empire Small Business Development

November 1st • 9:00 am – 12:00 pm

Marketing Technology to Attract Customers

City of San Bernardino EDA Board Room
201 North “E” Street, San Bernardino 92401
Topics Zeb will cover: Social Media Marketing; Blogging; SEO

Hosted by Inland Empire Small Business Development

November 10th • 10:00 am – 12:00 pm

How to Use Your Personal Network to Grow Your Business on LinkedIn

Ontario Chamber of Commerce
3200 Inland Empire Blvd., Suite 130, Ontario, CA 91764
Facebook is for everyone. Twitter is for connecting with experts or people trying to become experts, and LinkedIn is for your business contacts. Learn how to use your LinkedIn personal profile to connect with others in your industry, build a better business, and target customers using features on LinkedIn. Learn how to use LinkedIn as your digital rolodex; how and why you should update your profile regularly; Use LinkedIn groups to reach more customers and build influence in your industry; and target connections in your industry/potential customers using the LinkedIn search tool.

Hosted by San Bernardino County Workforce Development
Please register at: https://socialmediaworkshops2016.eventbrite.com

November 16th • 6:00 pm – 8:30 pm

Marketing Technology to Attract Customers

Apple Valley Chamber of Commerce
16010 Apple Valley Road, Apple Valley 92307
Topics Zeb will cover: Social Media Marketing; Email Marketing; Blogging; SEO

Hosted by Inland Empire Small Business Development

November 17th • 9:00 am – 12:00 pm

Marketing Technology to Attract Customers

Temecula Valley Entrepreneur’s Exchange
43200 Business Park Drive, Temecula 92590
Topics Zeb Will Cover: Social Media Marketing; Email Marketing; Blogging; SEO

Hosted by Inland Empire Small Business Development

I’m looking forward to sharing what I know with local business owners. Reply to this email to let me know which session(s) you plan on attending.

See you soon!

Zeb Welborn

How I Almost Became the Chino Hills Powerball Lottery Winner

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Chino Hills Powerball Winner?Chino Hills Powerball Lottery Winner?

Growing up in Chino Hills since 1981, I’ve seen the city grow from a cow pasteur to a robust suburban town. I’ve personally witnessed a tremendous amount of growth in both Chino and Chino Hills in my lifetime. As the Chairman of the Board for the Chino Valley Chamber of Commerce I can see that that success and prosperity will continue.

One of the coolest things that happened as a result of the Powerball win is how it showcased the way our city came together to support something that put our city in the spotlight for at least a few days.

As a child, I’d try to convince my parents to let me ride my bike to the 7-Eleven so I could get some snacks or a Slurpee. I grew up within a bike rides distance of the place that sold a winning ticket to the largest-ever lottery prize.  And that’s pretty cool.

The first time I played the lottery was last Saturday, where I bought one ticket for what was then the largest lottery purse in history at $900 million.  On Wednesday, I bought my second for the $1.5 billion jackpot.

In addition, the President of our Sunday Bowling League, Doug, organized a lottery pool and purchased tickets on behalf of our bowling league.

I didn’t watch the lottery live, but I got messages from family and friends not long after telling me to check my tickets. They had heard the news that a winner was sold in Chino Hills.

Instead of a 1 in 275,000,000 chance my odds improved drastically to 1 in Chino Hills.

I carefully checked my ticket.  I didn’t match a single number. Unfortunately, I bought it at the Circle K gas station across the street from that 7-Eleven.

Then I remembered I still had a chance with Doug.

My family (who also bought into the bowling pool) and I, waited by the phone hoping Doug would call to tell us the good news, or the more likely scenario, the bad news.  But, we didn’t hear from Doug, and so wild speculation began.

As time wore on, it became more and more likely in our minds that we would be declared the winners for various reasons:

  1. The winning 7-Eleven is on the way from the bowling alley to Doug’s house
  2. The winning 7-Eleven is the closest place to Doug’s home to buy lottery tickets
  3. We hadn’t heard from Doug
    1. If Doug did have the winning ticket, we’d assume he’d make sure to consult legal counsel on how to proceed with distributing the winnings to our bowling league
  4. Doug nor any of his family had posted anything on social media.
    1. Everyone in Chino Hills got texts from family and relatives outside of Chino Hills asking if we’d won, so many of us took to social media to let people know we were losers.
    2. What would you do if you won the lottery?  Probably disappear from social media.
  5. As more and more of our Chino Hills family and friends came to social media to let others know they were losers, the odds went from 1 in Chino Hills to what felt more like 1 in 10 that we were the $1.5 billion lottery winners.

On Sunday, we headed to bowling as we do every Sunday night, only this time we were on the lookout for big news vans and television crews, there to catch our excitement as Doug announced that we were indeed the Powerball winners.

As we entered the bowling alley, Doug, a plumber, was outside making a phone call where he was talking about water heaters and other things a plumber would discuss, clearly a ruse.

Finally, Doug ended his phone call and came inside just before bowling began. I asked him one simple question:

“So Doug, are we millionaires?”

He reached into his pocket and threw down lottery tickets paper-clipped together and said, “You have no idea how hard this week has been. We didn’t win.”

As it turns out, Doug did buy our tickets at the 7-Eleven in Chino Hills as we had suspected, but not the winning ticket. As of now, we didn’t win the Powerball . . . Honestly, we’re still hoping Doug is holding out on us waiting for a more opportune time to tell us that we’re all millionaires.

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How to Run a Facebook Contest for Your Business +Case Study at Local Golf Course

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It’s the new year and I hope many of you have decided to make social networking a priority. With that in mind I want to share something with you to give you a little kick start on your Facebook page.

Contests for free stuff are cool.

Not only are they cool, but they are a great way to create word of mouth marketing at your business.

Read on to find our how you can run a Facebook contest for your business. Earlier this month we ran a Facebook contest for our client and here’s how we did it.

The Contest:

This client is a local golf course and they are currently in the process of renovating their putting green.  The course invested a lot of money to improve the experience for their golfers. They wanted to let as many golfers as possible know about it.

Our Facebook contest announced the upgraded putting green and the copy for the contest went something like this (picture below):

“Contest for Free Golf:  If you could name our NEW putting green . . . What would you name it?

The comment with the Most “Likes” will win a Free twosome of Golf, Monday – Thursday, AND our Favorite Comment will also win a Free twosome Monday – Thursday.

Contest ends at 5pm PST on Friday, November 21.

Good Luck!”

The Anatomy of a Great Facebook Contest for Your Business:

  • Contest is Easy to Enter – The contest needs to be easy to enter.  This contest is super easy to enter.  All they need to do is leave a comment to name the putting green.
  • Rules are Simple – The simpler the contest is, the more likely people are going to enter it.
  • Compelling Picture – There needs to be a unique, authentic and compelling picture to make a great Facebook contest. Pictures stand out much more than plain text.
  • Valuable Prize – The prize needs to be something your clients/customers want. Don’t get caught up, the prize doesn’t need to be anything over the top. I’ve seen other local golf courses give away 10 free rounds of golf to a contest winner or more, but a free twosome is all a golf course needs to get massive engagement on their Facebook page. Think about what fans of your page specifically would want — not what any person anywhere would want.
  • Clear End Date – Make sure you identify the end date of your contest.
  • Promote – Be sure to promote the Facebook contest for your business in as many ways as you possibly can.  For this particular contest the golf course announced it via their email newsletter.  Other ideas could be to inform customers at the point of sale, on the phone, and on your website.
  • Boost It – We knew this Facebook post would be popular so we boosted it.  Boosting a post on Facebook means Facebook will show it to more people.  For this contest we boosted the post by spending $5. A minor investment for a significant increase in exposure.

 

In the first comment to any contest post you should include the following disclaimer:

“By entering this contest, you agree to a complete release of Facebook from any or all liability in connection with this contest. This contest is in no way sponsored, endorsed or administered by, or associated with, Facebook.”

Now that you know how to create a killer Facebook contest for your business, let’s take a look at the type of results you can expect from running one.

The Results:

At the start of this contest this particular Facebook page had 883 “Likes.”  Just 4 days later, their Facebook grew by 47 Likes to 930.

The contest itself reached 2,976 people, was liked 33 times, commented on 111 times, and shared 15 times.  From all posts, including shares, the post had more than 339 likes, comments, and shares – 78 total likes, 241 total comments, and 20 shares.  The post was also clicked on 409 times.

For a Facebook page with less than a 1,000 followers, those numbers are pretty darn good.  Nearly 3,000 people saw this and better yet, more than 400 people engaged with this one post.

By the Numbers:

  • 47 New Likes – 47 new golfers exposed to golf course content for life.
  • 2,976 People Reached – 2,976 people physically saw this post
  • 1,741 Organic Reach – Post reached 1,741 people for free
  • 1,235 Paid Reach – Paid $5 to boost the post which went to 1,235 more people
  • 33 Likes on the post itself
  • 111 Comments on the post itself
  • 15 Shares on the post itself
  • 339 Total Likes, Comments and Shares after considering shared content
  • 78 Total Likes
  • 241 Total Comments
  • 20 Total Shares
  • 409 Clicks on the post itself

Follow Up:

The benefits of running a Facebook contest for your business don’t end there.  A great contest leverages the experience of the participants and winners of the contest.

Be sure to announce and recognize the contest winners as soon as you can with a comment on the contest post.  Be sure to ask them to send you a direct message with their contact information.  Don’t forget to get their email address so you can add them to your email list.

Then, use their profile pictures and announce them on your main Facebook page giving them some recognition but also reminding your Facebook following that if they check your posts they can win fun contests.  This will give you an opportunity to advertise and market to your audience moving forward for free.

Now your contest post gets even more visibility.  In this post we reached an additional 495 people with 143 post clicks, 15 likes, 8 comments and 1 share.

The final thing you want to do is send an email to the winners.  This email will let them know how they can claim their prize and, if it makes sense, ask them to take photos of their happiness with their prize and your business. This is the email we sent to the winners of this contest:

Subject: Congratulations on Winning A Free Twosome at (Golf Course)!

“(Name),

Congratulations on winning a free twosome of golf at (Golf Course).  We hope you enjoy your experience here.

If you’re interested, please take photos of your round and share them with me so I can post them on our Facebook page.

Thank you for participating!

Zeb”

An even better email to send out would be something like this:

Subject:  Congratulations on Winning A Free Twosome at (Golf Course)!

“(Name),

Congratulations on winning a free twosome of golf at (Golf Course).  We hope you enjoy your experience here.

If you’re up for it, we’d love to play golf with you and use some of the photos from our round on our Facebook page.  May we join you?

Totally understand if you’d like to play golf without us.  Either way, just let us know.

Thank you for participating!

Zeb”

If they did invite us to join them for a free round, it would have been a great opportunity to take lots of pictures that we could have used to post on the Facebook page for months to come.  It also gives these customers a chance to become loyal to your brand.

If you can’t find a way to take photos of the winner enjoying their prize, send the first email and hopefully they will send you a picture of them with their prize and you can use that to promote your contest (and your business) even more.

Interested in learning more about running a Facebook contest for your business? Contact Zeb at (909) 973-9089 or email at Zeb@WelbornMedia.com

Bonus Content – Don’t Miss Out

Exclusively for members of our email list we’re sharing even more information on how to run a Photo Contest, the actual results we achieved, and how you can run your own photo contest. Sign up now to get all the info about a Facebook photo contest we ran for another client of ours where we reached 2,972 people, and collected multiple photos from our Facebook followers. Photos that we were able to use to promote the business even more.

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Scrapbook Owner Jennifer Davis Recommends Welborn Social Media

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Welborn Social Media & Scrapbook Expo

Jennifer Davis recommends Welborn Social Media:

We hired Welborn Social Media in June 2011 to help us develop our Twitter presence and advise us on how to increase our followers on Facebook and build interaction on our page among our Facebook users.  From the very beginning, Zeb and Lacey demonstrated their passion and expertise for building a strong online presence for Scrapbook Expo.

Since starting in June, Welborn Social Media has taken our Twitter following from a couple hundred to over 5,000 followers.  According to Twellow, we are now in the top 15 of all scrapbookers on Twitter.  They started a biweekly Twitter chat called #Scrapchat which is producing some fantastic results.

After getting to know Zeb and Lacey, we have been extremely impressed with Lacey’s web design and graphic design abilities. I’ve given her projects with specific instructions and she always goes beyond my expectations. I’ve started giving her projects with minimal direction just to see what she comes up with. She’s always spot on, she understands our brand and I am a huge fan of her work.

Lastly, we have been so happy with the work Welborn Social Media is doing for us we constantly encourage our exhibitors to hire them to help develop and enhance their social media presence, design professional emails and create logos.  Every time we refer Zeb and Lacey to our exhibitors we consistently hear that not only did they do an amazing job, but they did it cheaply and timely.

We truly feel our business has improved because of Welborn Social Media and would be more than happy to provide any feedback or answer questions you might have when dealing with Welborn Social Media.  We can not recommend them highly enough and would encourage anyone looking to grow their business to hire Zeb and Lacey to build a healthy online reputation.