Happy New Year to all our clients and staff!

This New Year’s Eve, our staff came in to a nice view of a quiet, snow-covered Union Square. Check it out…

As the Founder of Blue Fountain Media, I want to wish our clients, our staff and our good friends a very Happy New Year.

2009 was a watershed year for Blue Fountain Media.  This past year saw us double in size, expand offices twice, and bring in many new areas of expertise.

The year saw us work with a wonderful group of clients- both old and new- on a variety of interesting and challenging projects.

Some of the highlights of 2009 include:

• Blue Fountain Media was awarded  a 5-Star Dun and Bradstreet Rating
• We won awards for design, marketing and e-commerce
• We earned recognition by the Web 2.0 Expo as the embodiment of “The Power of Less”
• We were singled out by About.com’s Google expert for our SEO expertise
• We successfully delivered sophisticated projects for clients like the NFL, OppenheimerFunds, Granite Transformations and the United Nations.

We are looking forward to ever greater success in 2010.

Again, wishing you all a very happy and healthy new year!!

Gabriel Shaoolian
Creative Director

If you’re reading this blog, you probably know that Blue Fountain Media is a leader in web design and development (even Google says so). You probably know that online marketing—including search engine optimization and social media marketing—is the fastest-growing part of the company.

What you might not know is that everyone in the marketing department, from analysts and copywriters to project managers and the department directory, started out as an intern. We’re actively hiring interns for 2010.

Are you ready?

We’re looking for enough skills to contribute from day one, plus the potential to join our team full-time. We have some exciting new projects coming up in 2010, and we’re getting ready to take them on.

If you’re interested, you should have all of the following skills and characteristics:

• An interest in online media and online marketing.
• A blog, Twitter, podcast, Youtube channel—something that shows that you’re active on the Internet.
• Good writing skills (you should be able to inform, convince—and effortlessly sprinkle your prose with high-value keywords).

You should also be able to do at least one of the following:

• Code in HTML.
• Code in PHP.
• Design in Photoshop.
• Create the kind of attention-grabbing content that finds its way to the homepage of Digg, Reddit, and Delicious.

The internship starts in January. Internships typically last for six months, after which they generally lead to a full-time offer. After the first few weeks, we’ll help you specialize in one of the major components of SEO: on-site analysis, link-building, social media, or copywriting. The compensation for this internship is $500 per month, with frequent raises for interns who demonstrate skills.

To apply, send a cover letter, resume, and a writing sample (e.g. a blog post, school essay—anything over 500 words) to careers@bluefountainmedia.com.

2009 has been yet another amazing year for Blue Fountain Media. As our business continues to grow exponentially, so has our staff.

To accommodate our ever-growing team, we’ve just opened a second office at 200 Park Avenue South! Just down the hall from our main office, the new space is home to our crack marketing and communications teams. For the meantime–at least–we all have a little more leg-room and elbow-room.

With more room to think, our marketers should continue to produce some amazing results. One of the highlights of 2009 was the results our SEO experts achieved: we now rank #1 for the Google search “website design company.”

Our new space has been arranged specifically to allow for a fluid interaction between the communications and marketing departments. We also have some extra space that will allow us to accommodate the anticipated future growth in 2010.

A great feature of the new office is a spectacular view of Union Square. As you can see, it looks festive with a fresh blanket of snow from the most recent nor’easter.

Blue Fountain Media reached across state lines to participate in the North Jersey Innovates conference.

The conference, presented by njentrepreneur.com, brought together nearly 200 executives from companies across the tri-state area and was covered by MSNBC’s J.J. Ramberg, who also spoke at the conference.

Jon Gelberg, Blue Fountain Media’s Director of Communications, moderated the panel “Social Media Strategies,” and was joined on the panel by Audrey Wu, President of GlobalWu Communications and Stephanie Noble, Owner of Paden Noble Consulting.

The three provided advice to businesses on the use of a variety of social media tools, including Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. The discussion was a lively one, with many in the audience sharing war stories about their company’s successes and failures in strategizing and implementing social media marketing plans. The panelists offered some step-by-step practical solutions, but warned the attendees that any social media marketing program requires time, resources and expertise to execute well.

Along with the conference, NJInnovates featured an Exposition Hall where, many companies, including Blue Fountain Media, were represented. Representing Blue Fountain Media at the Expo were Asya Alshansky, a member of the Business Development team, and Kevin Horton, a member of the Account Management team. They answered questions throughout the day and discussed solutions to a variety of companies’ website design, developing and online marketing needs.

Jon Gelberg is just one of several Blue Fountain Media experts available for speaking engagements. CEO Gabriel Shaoolian has spoken on a variety of subjects relating to website content, design, development and marketing. If your company or organization is looking for a speaker, please contact us at 212.260.1978.

I surf the Internet at limitless speed—flying from one page to the next, with an attention span of less than a second. I probably surf through a couple of thousand pages a day. And this got me thinking: What is the first website that I constantly pull up when I turn on my computer in the morning?

I know my answer is going to sound like a cliché, but Google is my starting point. I really have no direction; I let news find me through Twitter and blogs—completely different from 3 years ago when the New York Times was my homepage.

I asked my peers the same question:

What’s the first website you pull up when you turn on your computer? Why?

Mary Elise | Account Manager

It’s between these three:
Ted.com for inspiration and interesting discussions.
Inc.com for latest business news and innovative start-up ideas.
Deviantart.com for visual stimulation and creative inspiration.

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Alhan, our Director of Marketing, is on a mission to cycle his way from New York City to Florida. He started last Thursday and is more than half-way done.

Where is Alhan now? You can track his progress with real-time updates from Alhan himself on his website.

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I’ve lived in San Francisco and currently live  in New York City–two of America’s  foodiest cities. “Live to eat, not eat to live” is a slogan I hold dear and in combination with the Food & Wine Festival that is coming up got me thinking, I’m really obsessed with food–okonomiyaki, Burmese curry, Pork Buns (chasu bao), and of course bean-curd Pad See Yu (and YES, I am trying to get you hungry!). So I asked my colleagues:

What’s your favorite cuisine?

Alhan | Director of Marketing

Turkish. It’s one of the most diverse in the world. It’s spicy, and healthy – in moderation. One of my favorite dishes – it’s not very original, sorry – is Adana Kebab.

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During my spare time I love to cook, seek out the next great beer (most recent find was a Sixpoint Express I had at Pacific Standard), draw/sketch, and to develop my own photographs (even though I haven’t done that in a year or so). And it got me thinking–outside of work what are some of my collegues’ hobbies? So I asked my colleagues:

What are some hobbies or something unusual that you are passionate about?

Lonnie | Designer

In my spare time I like to paint, draw, play video games (Earthbound–w00t!), practicing and studying Japanese, and I know it’s nerdy but am absolutely unabashedly passionate about Dungeons & Dragons.

Alhan | Director of Marketing

I am an avid cyclist (used to live in the Alsace region of France, a great place for cycling). A month ago, I began Muay Thai (Thai Boxing). So far, I’ve been going at least 4 times per week. I also play pickup soccer at least once a week. Other than that, my hobbies include domain name buying, video editing, and learning new languages.

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A world traveling musician who loves all things noise, Jonathan (our newest Account Manager) and I sat down to talk about tattoos, traveling, and music.

So Jonathan, where are you from?

Born and raised in CT (not the rich part though).

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