About

Hi, I’m Tom Heatherington, author of the SEO & Social Media Marketing Guide. This project has actually been in development for almost two decades. Nearly twenty years ago I pioneered the Internet business by co-founding of one of America’s first ISPs.

My first Internet company was called called PICnet. It was responsible for many Internet ‘firsts’ such as streaming audio, multi-domain hosting, online site creation and wireless email (to PDAs & pagers). PICnet’s customers included companies such as Frito-Lay, Virgin Records, the Texas Rangers Baseball Club, but our primary focus was helping small businesses learn the basics of Internet marketing.

This interview from Bloomberg TV was from the book tour of my first Internet Business Book, The Complete Small Business Internet Guide.

Fast forward a few Internet years…

Although the basics of good web design and creating great content have not changed, almost everything related to online marketing and promotion is new – and emerging technology. Just five years ago, Facebook, Twitter, Squidoo, LinkedIn, YouTube, ‘social networking’ and other Web 2.0 sites didn’t even exist, yet today they are critical components of a well-executed marketing strategy.

Hundreds of billions of websites with trillions of webpages make it necessary to incorporate these ‘social’ sites into your marketing mix to attract traffic to your website. Onsite and offsite SEO can literally mean the difference between zero traffic – and your website becoming your primary sales channel.

In my first book, I focused on site design and basic marketing procedures that were necessary back then. Today, we play in a vastly different, highly complex world. A great web design, dynamite page copy and the best products or prices are worthless unless you are utilizing the tools required to generate traffic to your website.

“Build it and they will come” is a great tag line for a movie, but it will not get you far on the Internet of 2010. Today you have to build it, optimize it, get links to it, promote it and attract traffic methodically or you will fail.

The SEO & Social Media Marketing Guide is the result of nearly 20 years of online marketing experience. I know what it takes to optimize a website and market that site effectively online. My book shows you every important tactic you need to attract targeted traffic organically, build a loyal following of customers and prospects, and how to market to your social network of contacts.

Regardless of whether you built your website – or paid $10,000 to a web design company, you will profit from the knowledge and strategies I lay out in this book. You build it… I will show you how to get them to come for a visit… and keep coming.

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The Webunet Group was created in 1998 to coincide with the release of this book. Webunet is an Internet marketing, SEO and online business development firm. A few clients include:

DIY Network’s Maureen Gilmer, gardening expert, syndicated columnist
Allegiance Telecom
Harley-Davidson of Dallas
Drew Bledsoe, QB Dallas Cowboys
Valley Recycling, and many others

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Oh BTW, I am currently working on a new book about the new social network, Google+. This book will show how to use Google+ for business. At this writing, Google+ has only been public for one month and is still in its ‘beta phase’, but it promises to be a serious contender to Facebook. If you want to be alerted when my book is released, sign-up to my newsletter.