Often, a sitemap is completely separate from the look and feel of a business website.  So, while the sitemap is a critical starting place to get you thinking about your web project, it doesn’t dictate that your site will be “boring”. On the flip side, a website that is graphically appealing or full of pizazz may still come off as a smoke and mirrors magic trick if the user does not know what information is available or how to find what they are looking for.

Visualization

A sitemap can be viewed in two ways:

1. A list format – this is like a table of contents in a book.

   Think text book:  the information is grouped by chapter and each chapter has a few subsections.  In the web world, we call the chapters ’superpages” and the sections “subpages”.

2. A graphical map format – this is more like a mind map.

   Surprising, this can be dangerous. It looks great to present the end user with a visual map of your website, but during the planning phase of a website, it might become too easy to leave areas of your map too vague or to navigate a user through a series of pages without providing them a “map back” to main content.

Most important for anyone planning a website creation or redesign:  Not throughly planning out your website beforehand is an expensive disaster waiting to happen. Even when you are using great CMS technology.

Users love a new and engaging experience, but from the business world they expect a few constants:

• An “About Us” page: This should always be near a top-level page if not a superpage. It can be named something more clever as long as users will understand that the page is about your company.
• At least one top-level superpage devoted to your company’s products or services.
• A “Contact Us” page: Many times, users only go to your website to get up-to-date contact information. Remember, younger people are much less likely to use a phone book. Make this easy: don’t put up walls around the information your readers are looking for.

A Conceptual Template

• Home
• About Us
  • Our History
  • Our Staff
• Our Services
  • Service A
  • Service B
  • Get A Quote
• Submit Your Order
• Latest News
• Contact Us

Search engines have become increasingly good at recognizing legitimate businesses verses imitators by viewing a website’s sitemap and analyzing the content of each page. A well-structured site means that when a user searches for your company name, or related products and services in your area in order to buy and submitting orders for a specific product, your website is more likely to rank highly.

In fact, depending on your market, your Homepage, About Us, and Contact Us might all be listed in a search engine result so that users have one-click access.

XML Sitemap and SEO

Sitemaps are crucial when planning a website, but they do not have to be set in stone. One important aspect of the technologies we use is the ability for our clients to grow their website. This means that as a company expands and adds a service or adds a second type of service or product,  corresponding pages can easily be added to the website and and the content modified appropriately:

• Home
• About Us
  • Our History
  • Our Staff
• Our Services
  • Service A
    • Type I
    • Type II
  • Service B
  • Service C
  • Get A Quote
• Submit Your Order
• Latest News
• Contact Us

If a site has been structured correctly, search engines will pick-up on the addition and re-index your site accordingly. One last important step in Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the existence of a properly formatted .XML sitemap that lives off-menu in the root directory of your website hosting server.

Check out Steele Agency’s XML sitemap.

As you can see, its a complicated array of URL’s and priorities, where superpages are given top priority and blog posts are given lower priority, which tells search engines to list your Homepage, About Us, and Contact Us pages first in their search listings.

Because this is one thing all the major search engines agree upon, there is a standard protocol for generating and submitting these links, and thus a we can build functions into your website that automatically update and submit a properly formated XML sitemap.

Final Notes

• When building a sitemap, start with a structure that is unlikely to change, but that will allow room for growth.
• Do not get in the habit of changing top-level pages, as Search Engines will take note and assume your content is unreliable and rank your website – and thus your digital presence – poorly.
• The sitemap can contain sections, for example, adding a top-level page call Blog or Recent News is understood as meaning that articles will be posted and displayed in that section.
• Every user experiences your site differently. Some may like your menu navigation and the way it reflects the organization of your content; however some people may prefer a simple organized list posted somewhere off-menu, for example: View Our User-Friendly Sitemap

Landing pages are used by many companies when they want to target a very specific market, direct a potential customer to specific information, a summary of their products or services, or a specific ad campaign.  The key difference between their main, home website, and the landing page, is that the website contains general information about the company and the products and services it offers, while the landing page is tailored towards a particular offer or information the company wants its potential customer to focus on.

Depending on the type, landing pages may be used to ask the visitor to take a survey, allow them to request more information about an offer, leave feedback, or direct them towards making an immediate or future purchase.  The included information is kept short and sweet so that the message conveyed comes across clearly; information about the offer, company name and contact information, and often times an information request form.

In addition to crafting these pages with keywords that will optimize the potential for a Google user to find them, landing pages are also used via email.  Including a live URL link in a newsletter or marketing email can also be extremely effective.  Because there is relevant information in the email, the target audience already has an idea of what is being offered.  But instead of simply linking to the homepage, a landing page directs the customer towards the specific offer or information, eliminating the possibility of them getting lost or distracted while navigating the homepage.  This precise directing of the visitor’s attention increases the chances of conversion—that is, that the visitor will interact with the page—fill out the information form so the company can contact them about their products and services, view the special offer, or provide the desired feedback.

Whatever a company is offering in the marketplace (do tie racks really need built in lights?), landing pages can be an effective way of getting out a specific message to a specific audience quickly, efficiently, and effectively, saving would-be consumers the hassle of wading through loads of extraneous information.  And can I resist?  They may also help your business take off…

Unlike Facebook advertising, the key to Google Adwords is keywords. But like Facebook, it is important to know your target and how to draw them in. When using Google AdWords, an advertiser is allowed to select keywords that will enable their ad to pop up when the keyword(s) are searched. In this way, Google AdWords is different because an advertiser is targeting their audience based upon what they are searching for, and since the ads are Pay Per Click (PPC), it is important to generate narrow keywords that are specific to help avoid unwanted clicks.

Fortunately, Google has a keyword generator on their site so, before you even get started, you can generate ideas from the content on your web site or a competitor’s web site. You can also check out your estimated CPC (Cost Per Click) so you know how much you are getting into before you think about committing.

Google AdWords has also introduced bid ideas to aid in the reduction of costs and the increase of website traffic. Google tries to identify which of your keywords seem to be good candidates for bid changes and targets them based upon whether or not you would like to decrease costs or increase traffic. Check out their help blog about bid ideas for more information.

In addition to building a larger Web presence, Google has announced the addition of phone extensions into AdWords. By including phone extensions, users can call the business directly from their smart phones when viewing the ad on their mobile device. This feature appears as the last line of text of the advertisement and only costs the same as a PPC.

When examining these two popular digital advertising channels , it’s clear to see that advertising on Facebook and Google AdWords works best when under a more specific umbrella. There are tons of resources on how to best work with keywords so that an ad will make the most impression with the lowest overall cost, as well as what not to do when generating keywords and creating an ad. The important thing to remember is to keep it specific and not overdo the amount of keywords attached to an ad.

Of course, we are more than happy to help.

Have you played Foursquare yet? No, not the playground game for kids, it’s a new type of social networking that is more like a game you play with your other friends also using the site.

According to foursquare.com, succeeding at the game comes through checking into places in a town such as a restaurant or bar, local clothing shop, mall, etc. You can leave tips for the place commenting on something you liked or disliked about it or if you have a recommendation for someone else. For example, at Harvest Moon Café you may really like their twice-baked potatoes so you may leave a tip stating something like this:

Be sure to try the twice-baked potatoes at Harvest Moon Café  in Rome. Just had them and have to say that they are out of this world.

By checking in places and leaving tips, the users earn points that lead to badges acting as some sort of a merit system. The point system looks like this. The use gets +5 points for finding a new place in the neighborhood, +2 points for going to multiple places in a night, and +1 point for bringing a friend along with them. The person that has checked-in the most at a particular place becomes the mayor of that place. It then becomes the game to dethrone the mayor. Once you become the mayor, you are often offered freebies by the place that you are the mayor of. This is a nice incentive for users.

Foursquare is different from other social networking sites not only because of its playful interface, but also because it uses GPS technology to track its users. The GPS technology can track you automatically with its mobile application, or manually when users log in online. Foursquare’s mobile application is free of charge and is available on every smart phone carrier, and only can track users when they arrive at specific checkpoints.

When you check in at a place, Foursquare makes sure that you are actually at the place you are checking in at. This comes in handy if other people you know are in the area because they can see you are at a certain place and can then meet you in person.

As unique as Foursquare is, it has some nice features that will be very attractive to anyone interested in social networking and numerous benefits for businesses that want to reach out to more customers.

Its gaming appeal is what makes this a very viable marketing utility for businesses, local and small businesses specifically. Since the application is based on people exploring locations that others have found value in, successful local businesses have an incredible opportunity to be found through interactive and virtually free channels. Turning your business into a fun mobile adventure for those who use this popular social media tool gives customers a new and exciting way to discover and explore your business without expensive advertising efforts.

Businesses have also started to find success to creating discounts specifically for avid foursquare users. Those companies that offered incentives and savings to the foursquare mayors of their business found more customer loyalty and more participation with their foursquare location, according to a MG Seigler of TechCrunch.

So go ahead, start your foursquare adventure today!

A comScore survey looked exclusively at the impact of ad impressions on visitation to the advertiser’s site and found that though there was a 65.0% lift after one week of ad circulation, lifts in site visitation varies between categories. Results show that the more narrowly tailored an advertisement is, the better the lift in site visitation.

This was specifically seen in automotive advertising that referred users to highly specific automotive Web sites. On the other hand, apparel and retail advertisers’ site visitation dropped the least over the four week period while CPG & restaurants continued to drop sharply after the first week.

The best thing to remember when approaching Facebook for advertising is that it is somewhat different than utilizing other advertising tools. In an interview with Tim Kendall, Facebook’s Director of Monetization and performance advertising head, on insidefacebook .com, he reminded advertisers that Facebook is a people targeting system and not a keyword targeting system. This makes it even more important for a company to really know their audience and how to target them.

Luckily, using Facebook for advertising to target audiences has become easier with the ability to filter ad placement based on specific qualifications like location, age, sex, marital status, connections, friends of connections and more. There is even a keyword section to allow ad placers the opportunity to target based on keywords in a user’s profile. It is because of a user’s willingness to share niche interests on their profile that allow categories like entertainment to work well with Facebook advertising. The ability to set-up a page and have fans enables an advertiser the opportunity to branch to friends of friends and beyond. This works well for Facebook’s ability to  targeting users based on what pages they are already affiliated with.

As far as whether or not Facebook advertising is effective, the answer to that lies in how well an ad is tailored to fit an audience. Another study by comScore (found on InspireMedia.com) showed that 28% of respondents were likely to notice advertising on social media sites, this placed user-generated content sites fifth behind television, print, news and corporate Web sites. However, Kendall believes that there is a 100% improvement on a click through rate basis when an impression is a Social ad (or event ads). “People come to Facebook to learn about their friends, so if you can make the advertising about their friends, it’s more effective.”

A great place to go for more information on what rules to follow when setting up a Facebook ad is the 10 rules for advertising on Facebook article by Nick O’Neill. This article gives great advice for how to keep the target audience in mind as well as establishing and keeping advertising goals.

5. Swag Branding

Everyone loves free stuff, and corporate branding of free merchandise is nothing new.  Leave-behinds or take-ways or whatever you want to call them have always held a vague prospect of getting your company in front of new people.  By placing QR codes on free promo merchandise, the person receiving it has more ability to interact with your company and more of a reason to share your merchandise with others so they can also interact the product (and you have a chance to see just how many and how often and for how long that product’s marketing life lasts.

Since many companies have not taken advantage of the QR revolution, using this technology now is both advantageous and informative.  More people will eagerly scan the QR codes so they can participate in this fun and inventive technology if you include simple directions.

4. QR’d Product Catalogs

Many companies rely on large product catalogs to show all that they offer.  Recently, many of these have begun seeing a real advantage in incorporating QR codes into every product they sell.

A QR-sprinkled product catalog does a few things: one, you can offer up-to-the-minute information about product availability if you sell customized products; two, you can notify production if you see that a certain number of items has been scanned frequently preparing for orders;  and three, product catalogs can be printed less often.

The other obvious benefit of this feature is that it creates a whole new avenue for customers to interact with a company. Viewers can share product information and samples with anyone all over the world all with a simple click of their phone, recommending products or  making the decision to purchase more convenient, timely and social.

3. Artwork

Since the image of the QR Code can be adaptable it can also be made to include logos or specific images and even video. This function helps create an extremely creative marketing art piece.

For example, the Pet Shop Boys released the single, Integral, in 2007 in protest to the British government proposing a national identity card concept. The single featured a QR Code as the single’s artwork that linked to a website that informed the user of ways to counter this proposal. They also included a moving QR Code into their music video that anyone could snap with their phone and be directed to the same website while watching their TV.  Regardless of their political agenda, it was very successful in raising awareness of their cause, and can be for anyone else too.

2. QR Billboards

Recently marketers in Britain have started dabbling with the successful marketing strategies Japan has had with simply displaying QR Codes on billboards. The photo featured here was for a DVD release for the movie, “28 Weeks Later”. While this advertisement could have done so much more with its code link, its presence did make the DVD release much more popular than expected in that area because it got people talking.

The great thing about its presence is that it creates buzz regardless of the consumer’s knowledge of the technology. For those who do know what it is and how to access it, the QR image lets them interact with your product and website. For those that don’t know, a web address or simply the company name will lead to many search attempts to find out what is going on with the advertisement.

1. QR Buildings

Now this is certainly not for every business (!), but what one company has done in Japan is truly one of a kind. In 2009, The N Building was unveiled in the Tachikawa district of Tokyo. The

Photo: Omori Yuki

whole side of the building facing the street is one large QR Code. Once the image is caught on your phone, the outside facade disappears and leads to a variety of extremely unique and intriguing functions: information on shops inside,  reservations for stores and restaurants inside, and special coupons only available to those who have captured their building’s image. The most impressive function? Speech bubbles of employees working inside who are twittering, as well as the ability to see where they are blogging from within the building (and track them if they are moving and, say, tweeting on a mobile device!). It is a very creative and interesting new idea that has quickly made this a very popular destination within the community. To see a quick video about this building, click here.

Click here to read an informative article about what a QR Code is and other ideas of how to use them.

<?PHP ?>

PHP is a hypertext preprocessor, meaning that its function is to produce something functional; in this case HTML, the markup language that web browsers understand. This allows dynamic information to be reached or calculated and then translated into something a browser understands in real time. Without this capability, websites would be very static, non-interactive, and incapable of providing unique experiences for each viewer. Imagine a world without web-based client logins, bill-pay, or online forums like Facebook and Twitter.

Order Of Events

PHP is a scripting language that is hosted on a server and is executed by the server stack when a website is accessed.

PHP can grab information stored in databases, talk to other computers and programs, and execute its own internal mathematical and logical functions in real time and produce the HTML website you see on your screen. In fact, this page you’re viewing now was highly preprocessed using PHP the moment you visited the page!

PHPrimer

A standard static webpage has the form:

On a web server, a preprocessed web page looks more like:

where $data may refer to information from a database or even a function that adds numbers together. Static HTML is incapable of this functionality. Most importantly, a user’s web browser only sees the result of the executed function. For example, if $data was a function that calculated the number of city residents that ordered a particular meal from a certain restaurant, then the browser would only see:

A simple diagram and a simple example, but a powerful tool in the web arsenal.

]]> http://www.steele-agency.com/2010/01/what-is-php/feed/ 0 http://www.steele-agency.com/2009/12/the-twonderful-tworld-of-twitter/ http://www.steele-agency.com/2009/12/the-twonderful-tworld-of-twitter/#comments Fri, 04 Dec 2009 17:32:06 +0000 jfsteele http://www.steele-agency.com/?p=1074 Have you heard? Twitter is the most popular English word in 2009 according to the global survey by Global Language Monitor, an organization that tracks language trends. Since its presence is now the most discussed topic around the English-speaking world, it’s probably best that we dedicate the time to explain the fundamentals of the twitverse (twitter universe in layman’s terms) so you too can participant in all the fun.

While twitter is very simple to use, it’s features are a little hard to understand at first glance. So we’ve put together a rather practical guide to make even the least computer savvy person a twitter expert.

A Tweet.

This is the primary function of twitter. It is simply a 140-character post that allows you to describe things you’re doing, voice opinions on issues or share information that is deemed valuable. The “tweetbox” is the very first thing you see after logging in, and certainly the most interactive tool on twitter. If you find it hard to know where to start, answering the question “what am I doing?” always helps breaks the tweeting ice.

Follow.

Underneath your “tweetbox” is where you’ll see your tweets and any other tweets of people you elect to follow. To follow someone, simply search in the “Find People” section and click on their profile. On their profile, there will be a button that says “follow” directly underneath their picture. Simply press that button and return home, and magically their tweets will populate on your homepage.

Most industries have large lists of twitter profiles that publish information specifically related to the business you are in or want more information about. To find these lists, simply type the specific industry followed by “twitter lists” into a search toolbar like Google, and simply “follow” the tweeters you find relevant to you and your market.

@Reply.

As kcnn.org explains it, “twitter is a text-only medium, but it’s also intended to support back-and-forth conversation. Consequently there are a few clunky code-like conventions that let you tell Twitter what kind of message you’re tweeting, so it can get processed correctly. The most common and powerful of these is the @reply.”

This function allows you publicly communicate with specific users. By adding the @ symbol before the twitter username, you can publicly reply to another tweeter or direct your tweet in their direction.

The great thing about this feature is that it allows communicating with not just the person you’re talking with, but everyone else that is listening in on the conversation. So if someone has a question or concern, your answer or response may also satisfy someone’s need. It also allows more people to join in on the conversation and participate with you and your company.

This information is to the right of your tweetbox.

DM (or Direct Message)

With matters that need to be address in a private setting, there is a function for that as well. Instead of the “@username”, use a lower case d then a space than the username, like this: “d[SPACE]username”. Make sure the d stands alone so twitter can distinguish the tweet as a direct message, and ensure that only the person you’re writing to is the only one that sees the message.

RT (or Retweet)

To “retweet” is to repeat/quote someone’s tweet: When you come across an interesting tweet and you want to publish it as your own tweet – so that people who follow you can see it too – you retweet it.

To do this, simply write RT space then @username, so like this “RT[space]@username”. You are not sending the person you’re retweeting a message, it just let’s the person know you are sharing their content with others.

So with these simple functions understood, you are well on your way to conquering all there is to know about twitter and how to use it. Looking forward to seeing you there.

Be sure to check back later for more information about advanced twitter functions coming your way soon.

For a small business owner, the idea of keeping up with yet another “inbox” is daunting, much less a twitter feed, facebook profile and page, linkedin account, youtube channel or delicious account.  Now, of course, my first disclaimer is always that you don’t have to be everywhere to be effective (and often must not be everywhere to be effective) but all this aside, it is still exhasting to think about. So, I’m putting together a list of programs that can make some of it a bit easier (and for free).

SocialMention

This is one of the coolest social search engines.  You can search your company, your product, your industry, or your own name even on blogs, directories, reviews, and social media sites.  You can then filter by time of day or specific location. It even gives you a synapsis of content: positive, negative, or neutral, connected keywords, top contributors of content, and top sources.  So you can take the first step of any social media campaign: listening. Also, alerts can be set so that you can listen continuously without duplicate efforts.

Seesmic Desktop

This is my current favorite dashboard for posting to multiple accounts across Facebook and Twitter. In one place you can see any replies to multiple accounts, direct messages, as well as keep up with the news feed of folks you may be following or Facebook fans or friends.  While this doesn’t have many of the enhanced power of, say, multiple users or timed messages, it is extremely easy to setup, navigate, and participate with. (which is a big plus for folks with little time on their hands!)

TweetDeck

This dashboard is used by lots of folks smarter than me, so it must be good! I haven’t really connected with the black and yellow design, but it does allow maintenance of multiple pages on facebook, twitter, and myspace (I think there are still folks using Myspace!).  It allows a host of features like video capture, upload, and viewing; spam elimination; grouping of fans and followers by topic and some others.

MashDeck

So, I should admit that I have a huge geeky crush on Pete Cashmore of Mashable.  But it’s completely technological (mostly).  Not only is his company someone to listen to regularly and often, but they are developing a host of software products that integrate social media.  And with MashDeck, you get both – twitter management as well as newsfeed direct from the social media gods themselves. They claim it is “the ultimate Twitter app for the social media savvy.” So, if you fit in that category (or just want to one day, like me) then this is for you.

NetVibes

This guy says it’s “the new social media dashboard”. I haven’t tried it yet, but the screenshots are intriguing. It is more of a browser homepage that allows you to access multiple email accounts, social media accounts, as well as news or content in the fields that you are interested in (ie. sports, business, tech, etc).  It requires more of a commitment to setup, but may promise more time-efficiency.  I’m still a little obsessed with iGoogle as my homepage, and I like to be able to post to multiple accounts, so it’s not yet caught my fancy.

CoTweet

This is the mac-daddy of enterprise-level software.  This goes a step further than multiple accounts by allowing multiple users with various access levels to post, read, or direct message.  It offers a powerful brand-tracking element and just recently added over a dozen other social media applications that can also be managed (it was just twitter for awhile).  This is the place to go if you are a mid-size company looking to use various social media platforms by various people for various purposes (ie. marketing and customer service and CEO channel, etc)

What have you found? What works best to use your time most effectively?

Yesterday, a friend had this kind of outburst about old classmates from high school – it had been more than twenty years since he actually talked to many and yet he learned factoids and status updates about them every day.  There was something unsettling about the past rushing up and joining the future so quickly.

There’s a way to control what you see when you log in.  It’s just a little hidden, but here’s how:

1. Move your cursor to the top right area of the person’s information block as depicted in the picture.
2. When you hover there, a box will appear that says “HIDE”.
3. Click this and you will be given the option to either hide the person’s news altogether or to hide the application that is publishing the information (quizzes are the most popular thing to hide from my informal polling).
4. You should see a pop-up box that tells you that the “hiding” has happened and that person’s information should disappear from your screen.
5. That’s it! Facebook remembers your preferences and will either pull less information from your network or pull information from people you actually want to know about.

NOTE: The folks listed in my screen shot to the right are all folks whose updates I actually enjoy.

So why does Facebook have this function anyway?!

Facebook is all about connecting people to one another -  the best way to do this is to allow people to hear and see new things that others are doing or posting.  Ideally, that sort of “ambient findability” means that you can participate in someone’s life meaningfully by commenting or continuing the conversation — hopefully in “real life” too.  However, in “real life” we simply have preferences. So, Facebook gives users the option to shape the experience they have and the conversations they “overhear” or information they come across.

Next Up: How you can control the information that is distributed about you.

We start by examining one tool that has the ability for dynamic growth and impact of one site in particular and that is- twitter. You may have or have not heard about this site, but with close to 19% of all Internet users using this medium according to a Pew Internet & American Life report, it’s difficult for some to see business potential. Of course, to understand its potential, we first must establish what it is exactly and how to best use it for your business.

First off, Twitter is a social media site. Social media as searchenginewatch.com defines is, “a category of sites that is based on user participation and user-generated content.” However, while they share these same qualities, they’re different in their approaches on how to share information.

Twitter describes itself as a service for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to “one simple question: What are you doing?” That may sound vague and unclear so think of Twitter as mashable.com describes it: just conversation in a new shape and being able to listen to the conversation of others in new ways.

While the Age of Information is in full swing, there is often an overload of information as opposed to timely, relevant information for the person attempting to stay current with what’s going on in the world. Twitter filters this information by allowing for only the pertinent information to be seen. It does this by limiting the number of written characters to 140 for every post. With such little amount of writing space, it forces users and businesses to expose the meat of an idea and often with links and sources to offer more defined details.

Generating such specific content, Twitter gives users the chance to see only the information they value and can easily stay current with what is happening in that chosen field or market.  This presents a great opportunity to use Twitter to connect your business to its clientele.

“When you combine messages that are quick to write, easy to read, public, controlled by the recipient and exchangeable anywhere, you’ve got a powerful, real-time way to communicate. And real-time communication is turning out to be ground-breaking for users and businesses alike,” www.business.twitter.com.

Look out for our next installments >> “The Twonderful Tworld of Twitter”

To be followed by>> specific examples of successful business strategies on Twitter.

For our Mac users: Constant Contact is now offering the all powerful desktop widget.  Now you can manage your new subscriptions right from your desktop wihout having to login — which means you can setup your assistant or receptionist or teller to interact directly with your database without compromising security or login information. From the official Business Partner release:

The Contact Capture Tool Version 2.1 by Constant Contact is a free, downloadable contact import tool for your Windows or Macintosh desktop. It allows you to quickly add or update a contact without opening a web browser. It replaces the Constant Contact^® Contact Capture Widget Version 1 that runs on Yahoo! Widgets.

Features

• Quickly add a new contact to multiple lists – Add a new email address with up to four contact details to any or all of your lists in Constant Contact.
• Update an existing contact’s details and list subscriptions – Quickly update the list subscriptions and up to four contact details for a contact that is already in your Constant Contact account.
• Runs directly on your desktop – You do not need to open a web browser or any other software application to use it.

Technical Requirements

To install and use Contact Capture Tool v2.1, you need: Windows (2000/XP/Vista) or Mac OS X and an Internet connection

For our Salesforce aficionados, you know how tough it is to get all that good data into Constant Contact – fear no more! Our favorite email marketing provider has just unveiled the infoTransfer for Salesforce® Plug-In, saying:

We now offer a plug-in that makes it a breeze to upload and synchronize contacts in Salesforce.com with your Constant Contact account. You can rest assured, knowing your contacts are up to date, and comply with CAN-SPAM unsubscribe guidelines. Log into your account , click on the “Contacts” tab, and under “My Contacts” you’ll see the “Import Tools” link.

For help accessing these powerful tools or to get started with email marketing, please contact us!  As THE Constant Contact Business Partner in Northwest Georgia, we are your local source for email marketing solutions.

1. Do you need a blog? Check demographics. Find out if they blog or follow blogs. Check out your competitors – or better yet, your aspiring companies – and see how they are using engaging content and think about how you could piggyback or improve what is already out there.

2. Can you invest in a blog? Sure, the platform is free, but writers and graphic artists are not. Would having a blog mean hiring more people? Training the ones you have? Plus, there’s time. Can you afford the time spent maintaining a blog?

3. What’s the point of your blog? With a blog, you can introduce readers to your company: its culture, goals and quirks. For many companies, a blog gives a human face to an alien corporate culture. But the blog also serves to provide advice, direction, and information to your readers, setting you apart as the thought-leader in your industry, not just a company providing a product and/or a service.

4. What will PR do? Your blog should never be pure PR, but they do have a part. Experts suggest using PR as a legal consultant is case something goes awry. The last thing you want is propaganda.

5. Who will write? Consider the success of Dell. When they started blogging, 80 percent of comments were negative. Now, that number is 50. Why? Because Dell allowed all employees – let that word “all” sink in – to apologize to consumers on the blog, without the usual customer disservice. On the other hand, you do want quality control. Finding that balance may take time.

6. Can your writers blog? Anyone can blog – and we see the results. Even professional writers need a transition. Make sure your writers can keep it short and sweet, casual but professional.

7. What comments will you allow? Sure, you want a conversation, but foul language and spam can drive away readers. This rule doesn’t include all negative comments, however. Most conversations have disagreements.

8. Where can you promote the blog? Find out where your audience goes online, and follow. Facebook and Twitter are a safe bet, but explore other options as well. Use those spaces to talk up the blog – and link it. Or if you are making the leap from in-store, paper-based communication to more web-based strategies, find ways to link your “brick and morter” with your blossoming blog. Offer incentives for customers who reply or ask questions. Showcase your best blogs in the office or in the store so your employees and customers know what they are missing.

…And of course, give us a ring if you’d like a partner in addressing these questions and setting up a game plan that will suit your needs!

1. Experience, Insight and Strength

2. First in the Field and Extending Market Leadership Today

3. Easy to Use, Easy to Customize

4. Deliverability

5. Accountability

We can’t say enough about the power, flexibility, and technical dependability of this software.  We love working with customers to either build and manage a campaign or train and advise. Constant Contact users, what have you experienced with Constant Contact or email marketing in general? Feel free to share your successes or lessons below.

1. Buzz. Blogs are better than any marketer for getting out news.

2. Surveys. Find out how to build better products, give better service, or even yank a poor product from your line-up. Expect and demand honesty from your customers.

3. Share your passion. If your writers care about your company, so will your readers.

4. Bigger audience. Who doesn’t want more customers, especially in hard economic times? The internet widens your audience to folks you would never have met otherwise.

5. Deeper community. Sure, community’s a buzzword – with good reason. More and more businesses are learning to connect with customers, accept advice and criticism to better the company, and create familiarity. If you sell insurance, it might be rare to find people in your hometown who understand your passion, but the internet can connect you to people around the world who can share their experiences. Imagine it as a great conversation among like-minded people unfettered by time, distance or cell phone minutes.

While this may sound counter-intuitive, Facebook marketing is just as old-fashioned. Facebook is about long-term relationships with customers, not rapid one-time sales.

That’s why start-up companies should get on Facebook and use it. What better place to find new customers, or reinforce relationships with folks you know? It’s personal: you can be “friends” with customers, which makes you privy to their likes and dislikes and lifestyle changes, not to mention a long list of potential customers on their friends list.

However, never forget that Facebook is, above all, a community. When the Rite Aid manager sees your grandmother at the post office, does he bombard her with sale information? Not if he’s good at his job. The last thing you want is for your Facebook community to view you as the hardline advertiser. So embrace your inner small-town manager, and have a conversation.

Western media says Twitter had a large role in recent Iranian protests. The facts say that’s only part of the story.

The Election

Less than two hours after the polls closed, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad announced that he won 63 percent to Mir Hossein Mousavi’s 34 percent. Mousavi’s supporters say he won 60 percent. While Iranian elections were never fair and private, voters were enraged that Iran did not even make a pretense to count all the votes. Urban intellectuals, students, women from all backgrounds and others are contesting over ten million votes, while most rural Iranians are happy with the results.

The Powder Keg

Westerners who claim Twitter as the coup de gras fail to account for a more important variable – demographics. During and following Iran’s eight year war with Iraq, Iranian clerics urged high birth rates to supply the military. When the resulting 1980s baby boom caused a crisis for the war-torn population, clerics reversed their council. Around the same time, literacy rates in Iran escalated. Coupled with the tremendous death toll from war, political executions and an earthquake, most urban Iranians alive today are educated twenty-something’s – a common recipe for protests.

As a BBC timeline shows, Ahmadinejad’s 2005 election ushered in a conservative lock-down at the same time most Iranians were becoming politically aware. Unlike their parents, younger Iranians don’t remember the 1979 Islamic Revolution. They didn’t live under the Shah’s oppression, but they do know journalists imprisoned today. It was only a matter of time before this simmering anger erupted.

How Iranians used Twitter

Twitter let the world in on the protests. Its 140 character format was perfect for tiny updates, and Iranians can tweet with a cell phone while on the street. With grainy pictures and blunt descriptions of police brutality, Iranians supply Western media with information free from clerical propaganda. However, most on-the-ground communication is simpler: text messages, quickly scribbled notes and word of mouth. Furthermore, Twitter isn’t just a minority protest tool: Ahmadinejad used Twitter in his election campaign, and his supporters use Twitter to defend the election. The information sharing portal only gained significance once traditional journalists were no longer permitted into the flurry of activity.

The Significance

While only 8,600 Twitter users say they are from Iran — and many of these cannot navigate their government’s blocks — the site is one more step away from so called “traditional” journalism (for better or worse) and all those in “information disseminating” roles, albeit marketing, public relations, news, sales, advertising or otherwise would do well to respond.

It can’t be denied that Twitter is a powerful tool for information sharing from a few to many. While the focus should remain on people, not their tools, knowing the tools available often allows for greater focus on the people themselves.

Oh, and if you want to follow the Twitter News Coverage, check out http://iran.twazzup.com/

In an economic downturn, everybody shrinks. The budget dries up. Staffs are cut. Customers are lost. That’s why using social media sounds counterintuitive. How can a business master new technology and a new way of thinking while struggling to stay afloat?

Currently, companies respond to social media in two ways, depending on their size. Larger businesses do what they do best: create yet another department. Small businesses are already swamped: they simply ignore the new technology.

Neither approach works. Social media works best when integrated into many or all departments, particularly marketing and customer service. Within the company, unity flourishes, and from outside, new customers are found and the faithful are rewarded and empowered. All well and good in an ideal world, but what should companies do now, while social media is still developing?

Larger companies should resist the subdividing urge. By creating a new division, they must hire new staff, fill out more paperwork, and create new schisms in the company. In other words, they waste time and money.

Not only is it inefficient to create a social media division, but it hinders social media’s primary function. Applications such as Facebook and Twitter (and countless others) allow companies to know their customers, and vice-versa. Who better to have this knowledge than marketing and customer service personnel? By creating yet another go-between, companies risk distancing customers even more.

While larger companies can use social media, it’s even more useful for small business. Large corporations can’t turn on a dime: change takes time while the market passes them by. Moreover, small businesses can multitask, and learning new tasks is just part of the job.

For example, consider the famous demise of GM. Gas went up, the market responded, and GM made more SUVs. They failed to keep their finger on America’s pulse – consumers. Meanwhile, smaller companies (read: Honda and Toyota) sped ahead. What if GM had stayed in touch with consumers?

Consider your own company. What preexisting departments could use some help? Could customer service be more efficient? Do you want to reach a different audience? Need feedback on your product or service? Even if your company is doing better than most, there is always room for improvement, and social media could help fill the gaps. Ask the people already in those departments how greater contact with customers could be used, then make a social media strategy to boost your company’s position in the market – and your customers’ reach.

LOS ANGELES—June 16, 2009—As part of a plan to restructure itself into a more innovative, efficient, and entrepreneurial business, MySpace announced today that it will reduce its staff by nearly 30%. This restructuring plan crosses all U.S. divisions of the company and lowers the total number of domestic staff at MySpace to 1,000 employees.

“Simply put, our staffing levels were bloated and hindered our ability to be an efficient and nimble team-oriented company,” said MySpace Chief Executive Officer Owen Van Natta. “I understand that these changes are painful for many. They are also necessary for the long-term health and culture of MySpace. Our intent is to return to an environment of innovation that is centered on our user and our product.”

“MySpace grew too big considering the realities of today’s marketplace,” said Jonathan Miller, News Corporation’s CEO of Digital Media and Chief Digital Officer. “I believe this restructuring will help MySpace operate much more effectively both structurally and financially moving forward. I am confident in MySpace’s next phase under the leadership of Owen and his team.”

***

Get more info and background on the company at CNNMoney

What is “the stream”?

Depending on who you talk to, it’s the bane of business or a godsend. It’s the shift from article-writing to instant commentary, from teaching to “sharing” information via Twitter or Facebook. It’s a way of seeing information: as an ever-changing web as opposed to a simple paper trail.

It works like this. Your aunt Susan emails you a link to Liz Pulliam Weston’s financial advice on MSN Money. There, you watch a video on emergency funds. You add it to a live feed, where your co-worker hits the link and reads about credit counselors on scam alerts. He adds a link to his Facebook page, where 150 “friends” see and chase the link.

Let’s be honest: people with real jobs simply don’t have the time or patience to “jump into the stream” of social media, follow every hyperlink, or keep up with all the “real time” commentary on blogs and company websites.

But can they use it? Can you?

Take AT&T. Their Twitter updates are mostly answers to customer questions. This simple format does two jobs at once: it satisfies customer questions in real time, and it’s great PR.

Don’t fall into the trap of all or nothing. Share your successes, network, and find creative ways to do business using the stream – just don’t get swept away.

Find Thrive! on Facebook by clicking here:

Click: Twitter CEO tells his story.

And some facts about Twitter:

Neville Hobson on the Growth of Twitter
How Much Is Twitter Worth (in 2008)
Twitter in 2009

So, the question is, how does this work in Northwest Georgia? How do we encourage lucky accidents, patient investors, techno-social savvy?
Please feel free to respond.