2013 State of the Group

Hawaii Web Group’s year in review – By Chris Norberg, Project Manager

2013 HWG TRAFFIC AND SOCIAL REACH

Here at Hawaii Web Group, we believe in being transparent. This is why we’ve decided to issue a yearly “State of the Group” to let our clients/ohana know where we stand as of January 2014. (see State of the Group 2012.)

2013 was a big year for us at Hawaii Web Group. Our focus shifted massively towards social media, which has lead us to open a new office in Paia Town with more staff. Below you’ll see what we’ve been doing with our own personal Maui social media accounts each year. (These numbers include the sum of all our own personal accounts. Ex. Twitter has 9,828 followers across all of our Twitter accounts.)

NEW WEBSITES BUILT IN 2013

MolokiniCrater.com – Loads of information, a fun flash map, and great infographics help make this a must-see for those booking snorkel/scuba trips.

RoadToHana.com – Responsive, simple, and filled with great photos, video and custom maps make this the best group of pages about Hana on the web.

MauiSurfing.com – A simple, responsive site to share our love of surfing on Maui.

TwinFallsMaui.net – One of 2 sites we’ve built for outside clients this year, this site helps inform the masses about one of Maui’s most popular sightseeing spots.

NatalieBrownPhotography.com – We recreated our head photographer’s website with WordPress so that she can share posts about recent shoots.

MauiInformationGuide.com – Much of this years (and last years) efforts went into rebuilding this site to make it responsive and new. It also has a new blog at www.Maui.bz.

MauiGuide.com – We’ve begun building this review website. It’s slated to publish in mid 2014.

OUR SOCIAL REACH

CONTENT MARKETING

With more staff, we are now able to produce a large volume of quality content (video, photo, research, articles, infographics, blogging.) We’re putting a lot of attention on EPIC POSTS. One successful example is the Top 50 Things to Do in Maui Hawaii. This post was #2 in Squidoo for Travel and reached #48 overall. It was viewed tens of thousands of times in the first few weeks and helps to promote many of our clients. We can do this for you too!

SOCIAL MEDIA MANAGEMENT

With the success we’ve had using social media for our own purposes, this year marks the first year where we have helped take over and handle client social media. Using our experienced staff, our clients have less of a workload on their backs while we grow their accounts, increase brand awareness and engage with potential customers.

OUTSOURCING

We still have yet to hire anyone off of the island of Maui. All of our staff reside and work on the island of Maui, Hawaii. We believe its important to keep jobs within our own State.

OVERVIEW

All in all, we’re very happy with what our efforts have produced in 2013. It’s been more work than we’d ever imagined, but the feedback from our clients and our increased numbers above make us feel like it’s all worth it. How do we do it? The old fashioned way with a lot of HARD (& SMART) WORK. We believe that nothing worthwhile comes from shortcuts. We build the best content possible and focus on our visitors. If they’re not happy with what we give them, the page (or site) will come down. Overall, we want our impact on the web to be positive in a way where our visitors appreciate the work we’ve done and share it with friends.

We’re looking forward to sharing our numbers again for 2014!