Shane Eubanks – Internet Marketing Specialist

08/22/06

I have to say that the people I work with at Fee / Hedrick Family Entertainment Group are amazing. Because of them, I don’t see working there as a “job”…they honestly make going to work incredibly enjoyable. I had an overwhelming reminder of that today as I had a HUGE surprise for me at lunch. A few of us typically go to lunch every Wednesday and some of them wanted to eat at The Alabama Grill today. As we walked in, there was a massive table where about 30 employees were sitting. I thought they were having a meeting, but all of a sudden they started clapping and cheering when i walked around the corner. I was puzzled at first and then I saw “Congratulations” on a banner, a chocolate cake made by the executive chef of the company’s catering division, and a rather large giftbox. I suddenly realized they were all there for me!

Kathy Turner, the Creative Director of the company, had organized this massive get-together to celebrate my recent graduation, upcoming wedding, and impending departure from the company to start my new life in GA. I have never seen this many people in the company together in one place at the same time…ever…not even the Christmas Party! I was completely floored. People from at least two theaters, three shows, and three businesses showed up…over 30 people in all! The president and vice-president were there along with general managers, marketing and sales directors, etc etc. A lot of great things were said and it’s something I’ll never forget. The people that came and that I work with every day are simply amazing. I love them like family and hope that the career I take in GA will have people that are just as great. Kathy has been an incredible person to work with and the company is extremely fortunate to have her as their Creative Director. I just can’t say enough about her and the rest of the staff!

As for the giftbox…well…I went to open it up and it was FILLED with dollar bills! I thought for a minute that it was tissue paper, but I then realized it was real! Everyone had pitched in to create this huge box of money. I just don’t know how I’m going to get this thing through the teller window at the bank…

Whew…WHAT a day! The money was a great gift, but the amount of people that showed up and signed the card meant so much to me. I know everyone had a ton of things going on at each business in the company and knowing they took time out of their day to be a part of this is simply amazing. I’m still floored. So yeah, this was one of those moments when you realize just how much an employer likes you! It’s a day I’ll never forget.

08/21/06

Project Description:

Having lived all of my life in Pigeon Forge, TN I often got asked by visitors where the best places to eat, see, shop, stay, etc are. Having answered these types of questions more times than I could count I decided to create a website in my spare time with reviews of some of the most popular places in Pigeon Forge. It was a way for me to answer common questions about the area, but it also was my “playground” to test out search engine optimization strategies and various conversion techniques.

What I came up with was Inside Pigeon Forge and it quickly dominated Pigeon Forge related searches in search engines and was even ranked #1 in Google for just “Pigeon Forge”. It had an email subscriber list that quickly grew to tens of thousands of visitors wanting more information. Its sudden domination led to many companies offering to buy it from me…and one day I took one of them up and sold it off in March of 2009 for an undisclosed amount. This was a website that I started for practically nothing more than a domain registration fee and my spare time and ended up being one of the largest ROI projects I’ve ever worked on!

Project Details:

Inside Pigeon Forge was created with the following:

• WordPress
• Adobe Photoshop
• CSS, PHP, mySQL

08/21/06

Project Description:

My fiance is a second grade teacher and has an amazing gift of coming up with ideas for her classroom that make teaching more effective and fun. I convinced her to share these ideas with the rest of the world by starting her own blog. I then put together a layout and design that fit her target audience (female teachers of primary and elementary grades). The main image of the female teacher at the top of the page is a stock illustration from iStock. I used it to somewhat keep a theme throughout the site with the colors and graphics. As for the logo…who says Comic Sans doesn’t work well any more?!

To make sure she got something in return for her hard work, I monetized the site with Google AdSense and a handful of relevant affiliate links.

The site is optimized for search engine traffic with dynamic page titles, descriptions, keyword, header tags, and more. Each article is written with keyword research to find the best words and phrases to use for optimum search engine traffic. The extra 10 minutes spent doing keyword research for each article has helped tremendously. I’m starting to think I’ve created a monster…not the site…HER!

Project Details:

My Teaching Ideas was created with the following:

• WordPress 2
• Adobe Photoshop
• iStock Royalty Free Illustrations
• Google AdSense
• Commission Junction
• EditPlus
• CSS, ASP, Access

08/9/06

Project Description:

My fourth project for the Fee / Hedrick Family Entertainment Group was to redesign the website for The Blackwoods who host the Blackwood Breakfast Variety Show at The Black Bear Jamboree Theater. Their original site (seen in the before and after link below) was fairly modest and in need of an update to go with their current image. They had new photos, marketing material, press releases, etc that they wanted to get online and needed a dynamic website that could provide that.

I turned to WordPress to base the content management system on so they could post current news and press releases with ease. I then started with the excellent K2 theme for WordPress and designed a scheme for it that matched the Blackwood’s current marketing material.

The new site features:

• More color
• Flash slideshow on the first page (static images on the rest)
• Five latest news storied on front page
• Dynamic list of their upcoming shows (driven by a simple text file…big thanks to Christopher Bourque of XK3 Media for hooking me up with the script that does this)
• 30 second commercial embedded as a Flash file on their Breakfast Show page
• Tons more search engine optimization, which is already bringing so much more traffic to the site

Click here to see the before and after screenshots.

Project Details:

The Blackwoods was created with the following:

• WordPress 2
• K2 Theme
• Adobe Photoshop
• Flash 8
• EditPlus
• CSS, ASP, Access