Check Out Our New Website!
It’s been a long time coming, but we have finally launched our new website! Same address, different look. While our previous site got the job done, we saw a lot of areas that could use improvement. The two biggest goals for the new website were to offer a better mobile view and a more user-friendly navigation set up. As you’ve probably noticed, our magazine is jam-packed with awesome news and stories. This gives us the fun challenge of presenting it in a clean and readable way, both in print and online. We’re pretty proud of our print layout, but with people also accessing our content on their desktops, tablets, and mobile phones, we knew it was time for a facelift.
One of the most significant and necessary changes was organizing our navigation into two menus—a general menu and an editorial menu. In our general menu, you’ll be linked to our About Us page to get to know the team, you’ll find information about advertising in the magazine, you’ll be able to check out upcoming community events on our event calendar, and you’ll also find links for submitting your news, subscribing to receive your own free copy of the magazine, viewing past issues, and checking out testimonials from our amazing clients! Our editorial menu is where users can access content from the magazine. The new website offers more subcategories to get users where they want to go faster. For example, we run a lot of special features throughout the year such as Supporting Nonprofits, Joining Organizations, Employing Lincoln, and Women-Owned Businesses. Now, you can find these all as sub-heads within our editorial navigation. The new website also links to all our social media platforms, including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, and YouTube. We’re really excited to give our readers a better online experience when they visit our website. We are committed to being #PrintProudDigitalSmart!
I want to extend a big thank you to Maly Marketing for their execution on our new websites (Lincoln and Omaha). Steve Maly and his team, especially Christine and Dan, were great to work with. They remained patient with us throughout the process as our small-but-mighty team had to shift our attention back and forth from busy deadline schedules, but we got it done! In the coming months, we will continue to work on refining the copy on all our web pages and keeping our event calendar up to date. Our goal is to be a hub for the major business and organization happenings in Lincoln!
I’m very proud of my wonderful staff for how they continue to step up and overcome obstacles as they come. It seems like every day there is something new! As many of you probably already know, our talented writer Diane Gumaer moved to McCook, NE with her husband for his job. During her year at Strictly Business, she formed great relationships with the team and our clients. We are very grateful to have had Diane on board and wish her all the best in her next chapter! Stay tuned for an announcement on who we have brought on to fill her shoes.
My current team consists of Hannah Hundley, Dillon Crawford, Meg Crawford, and our four new interns: Katie Koso, Grace Kane, Cassie Kahrer, and Quynn Kennedy. Hannah is our editor and director of operations. Hannah has been at Strictly Business for about three and a half years. She wears many hats for the company! In addition to running my inbox and calendar, she also contributes to writing efforts and working closely with our Art Director Dillon to lay out the magazine. Being the social butterfly she is, Hannah’s favorite part of the job is planning events such as our Friends4Lunch and Friends4Drinks networking socials, along with team bonding and client appreciation outings! Dillon is creeping up on a year with the company. We are very blessed to have Dillon’s easy-going attitude in the office, plus he creates great ads and client spotlights in the magazine. Dillon is now officially married to our social media guru, Meg. (They actually got married the weekend after this issue went to the printer—so a big congratulations to them!) Meg is a very skilled graphic designer. She has done a fantastic job of giving our social media platforms a vibrant, cohesive look. She is also responsible for scheduling out posts for our major editorial pieces and our clients with the social media add-on. Lastly, I’m thrilled to have some awesome new interns this year. Katie and Grace have joined the team as writing interns, assisting with press releases, client spotlights, restaurant exposes, sourcing, and proofing. Cassie and Quynn work more closely with me as sales interns. They make lead lists to call on, and then they try to set up meetings for me. They also assist with keeping the event calendar on our website updated. You might see them out with me at a networking event!
Speaking of events, I’m so happy to see more community-wide events take place. Weddings are on, sports are on, concerts are on—this is great news for our local businesses! As our businesses are starting to flourish again, so are our nonprofits. In this issue, we have our Supporting Nonprofits feature where you’ll find pages full of the wonderful organizations in Lincoln. If you’re looking for ways to give back or get more involved in something greater than yourself, I guarantee you’ll find one that grabs your attention. Nebraska’s nonprofit sector provides about 10% of private sector jobs in our state. When we pitch in to help nonprofits, we’re helping our communities and neighbors and keeping a culture of humanity, art, and philanthropy alive. Thank you to the nonprofits in this month’s feature that chose to partner with Strictly Business to allow us to share their mission with all our readers!
A couple more things to look forward to: In August, we are planning on doing another Employing Lincoln feature. This is something we started last year and it’s gained a lot of momentum, so much so that we’ve decided to make it a quarterly thing instead of just biannual. Please reach out to us if you want to be listed among the great places in Lincoln to work. A consistent message we are hearing from businesses is that they are hiring, and everyone is fighting for good talent. We can help you stand out. Strictly Business will also be putting together a first-ever Building Lincoln feature. We’re calling out to all engineers, architects, contractors, designers, etc.—basically any business that is contributing to Lincoln’s growing landscape.
As always, thank you readers and clients for your ongoing supporting. Don’t hesitate to reach out to me if you’re interested in partnering with Strictly Business to promote your business or organization!
28 Years!
In addition to the exciting launch of our redesigned website, this month is also our anniversary month and we are celebrating 28 amazing years. Looking back at the history of Strictly Business, the magazine actually began as a monthly coupon book lead up by Shayne Zutavern and his colleague Mike Branigan. They eventually saw the need for a business publication in the local marketplace. After overwhelming support and positive feedback from the community, Shayne decided to shift the focus towards creating “Lincoln’s Business News & Marketing Magazine” and, in July of 1993, the first issue of Strictly Business was introduced. Paige Zutavern joined the leadership efforts shortly after and took on the title of sales manager. This role allowed her to fulfill her natural ability to form connections and build relationships while promoting something she felt passionately about. It was her dream job. Together, Paige and Shayne have taken Strictly Business to great heights, and they still run and remain actively involved in the company today.
Just like the business community in Lincoln, the magazine’s distribution list has grown and changed over the years. We started out direct-mailing to 6,600 businesses in Lincoln, and now Strictly Business goes out to over 10,000 businesses. We also generate a large online reach with over 152,000 page views a year. Not to mention, our sister publication in Omaha, which launched in 2007, is distributed to over 15,000 businesses and generates over 251,000 pages views per year. We’ve made big strides in the past couple of years to up our social media game as well, including rolling out a new social media add-on for clients and hiring a part-time social media strategist.
We’d like to thank our audience for their continued support, not only of Strictly Business itself but of the businesses we feature. After 28 years, we still stand firm on the belief that “It’s not what you know, it’s who you know…AND WHO KNOWS YOU!” We’re grateful for the opportunity to not only promote local businesses, but to give a deeper look into those businesses and the people who run them. A huge thank you goes to our clients who trust us with their marketing dollars, especially the ones that have been with us for many years! We have a few of clients that have been advertising for over 20 years and over 50 clients who have been with us for 10+ years. We’d like to give a special shout out to Rick Krueger, who has been advertising with Strictly Business since the magazine’s first issue.