Social Media Helps Web Design Firm Stay on Top

Phoenix, Arizona – April 7, 2007 – By taking advantage of blogging and other social media, the owners of Phoenix-area Web design firm Forty have, in just a few years, turned it into one of the most popular firms in the state and established name recognition around the world.

Social media (made up of a variety of online resources for communication and community) can seem daunting to business owners not familiar with it, but Forty's partners James Archer, Aaron Post, and Dan Ritzenthaler each have over a decade of Web experience behind them, having started well before now-common institutions like Amazon, eBay, Google, YouTube, MySpace, and even Microsoft Internet Explorer even existed. That experience gave them the skills they needed to turn social media into their primary marketing tactic.

Because Forty was bootstrapping on a tight budget, it was obvious that the firm wouldn't be able to rely on traditional advertising and marketing methods to get the word out. So, the partners turned to blogging and online networking.

After it grew from a side project to a full-time business in late 2004, one of Forty's first blog posts was a list of predictions for Web design trends in 2005. Within weeks, James Archer found himself being interviewed by National Public Radio as a result — not to mention receiving thousands of links from other blogs, all driving traffic to their business Web site.

The steady flow of links and discussion about Forty continued to boost their search engine rankings naturally—rather than relying on artificial search engine optimization techniques. Today, they regularly show up at or near the top on Google searches for "Arizona web design" and "Phoenix web design," and are one of the few web companies to crack the top 100 Google search results for the broad phrase "web design" itself. (As of this writing, they appear in the top 50 results for this term.) Also, by regularly posting useful and provocative information about business and design on their corporate blog, they receive regular waves of traffic from social bookmarking sites such as Digg and del.icio.us, resulting in additional visibility and traffic.

As a result of their social media marketing, Forty's website (www.fortymedia.com) has received more than 250,000 visitors in the past year. According to Alexa web traffic statistics, the company is not only easily out-pacing its local competitors, but is even receiving more traffic than most national Web design firms as well.

To help other business owners better understand how they can take advantage of social media to promote their business as well, Forty has recently launched Social Media Design (www.socialmediadesign.com), a division that will focus on explaining and promoting social media to small and medium-sized businesses.

ABOUT FORTY

Forty is a high-end web design, web development, and branding agency based in Phoenix, Arizona. Forty specializes in building professional-grade interactive strategy solutions for companies around the world.

CONTACT INFORMATION

James Archer, CEO
Forty Media Corporation
Phone: 602-325-3229
Email: james@fortymedia.com
Web: www.fortymedia.com
Blog: www.fortymedia.com/blog