Brown Couch Consulting

Let’s get down to business. Here is where we’ve been, what we’ve seen and what we thought about it.

Archive for May, 2009

Google, please find the real me

I just attended a seminar on Email Marketing and Search Engine Optimization.  Ha!  I can see how you can fit email marketing into a 3 hour presentation (and Zak Barron did a good job on this) but it’s rather difficult to fit SEO into a 3 hour presentation.  Nick Stamoulis of Brick Marketing did the presenting for this part.  I really liked Nick – you can see that he is really passionate about his work and enjoys it (a rarety in these days).

Here is an interesting tit bit on email marketing that I didn’t know.  What do you think is the ROI on an email marketing campaing?  $10?  $25?  Guess again.  It’s $48, which means that for every $1 you spend, on the average, you can get about $48.   That is of course on the average, and would only work with a well executed email campaign and would vary by industry.

So, what did Nick teach us about search engine optimization? It turns out that a good website is just like a good piece of cheese – properly aged and well care for.  The longer your site has been posted and active – the better.   The more friends you have on the web (i.e. relevant links from trusted sources that lead from and to your site), the better.  The cleaner your site is to the eye of the Google behemoth, the better you’ll rank. 

It also turns out that Google (and search engines and machines in general) like logic, clarity and order.  It’s not just good programming practice to clearly name your files and folders, but it’s necessary for google.  It makes sense, right?  Even humans can’t always figure out that famonbch.jpg is really family-on-the-beach.jpg.

No comments

Announcing new clients

Brown Couch Consulting is pleased to announce two new clients – Village Green Renewal and Shannon Law Offices.

Village Green Renewal is a handyman shop in Brookline Village owned by Seth Barrett. Seth started the store in 2008 and has already been reviewed by the Brookline Tab and CNN. Brown Couch Consulting created a website for Village Green Renewal and is helping publicize the store in the local community.   Look for this in our portfolio pages where we will espouse on the brilliance the shop and the site.

Shannon Law Offices is a small law office, also in Brookline Village, owned and operated by Christopher Shannon.  Brown Couch Consulting has been hired by Mr. Shannon to create a web presence for the practice, starting with a website.

1 comment

Well, now we have a face

I wrote in the previous post about the challenges of defining what a consulting firm does for its customers.  Having solved that problem, I moved onto another.  How to represent myself?  Post a picture to the site or not?  Finally, I decided that since my business is very personal – and we pride ourselves on that connection with our customers, I should have a picture posted.  So, here is my first professional headshot.

Daria Mark, Principal, Brown Couch Consulting
Daria Mark, Principal, Brown Couch Consulting

This photo was taken by Gretje Ferguson (who is also a client of Brown Couch).  Gretje partners with a makeup artist to offer a business headshot special for $300.  Check Gretje’s blog for more info.

To most people, the idea of getting your picture taken can be daunting.  Especially if this image is to serve as your business profile.  I have to give Gretje a lot of credit.  Not only did she make me feel comfortable during the whole process, but she also captured the image that best represents how I view myself.  And for that,  I am very grateful.
No comments