5 THINGS SOCIAL MEDIA CAN’T DO
Despite the numerous benefits that social media can bring to a business or individual, there are many misconceptions about what it can and can’t accomplish. Far too often, unrealistic expectations lead to disappointment. Knowing what social media can’t do will make it easier to harness the power of what it can accomplish.
5 THINGS SOCIAL MEDIA CAN’T DO:
Replace A Marketing Strategy
Social media is powerful, but it isn’t a stand-alone substitute for a marketing strategy. Effective marketing strategies can and should incorporate social media elements. However, simply launching a StumbleUpon account or Facebook Page isn’t going to cut it. (more…)
New Demo Reel for Omni Advertising
Here is the new demo reel for Omni Advertising, based in Boca Raton, Florida
Social Media Marketing and OsmonicAir.com
As we all try to keep on top of technology and try to bring in more visitors to our websites it seems that there is always another method to try. By now most of us know that site like FaceBook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and MySpace are huge. These social networking sites allow people to interact with each other almost immediately. Is it no wonder that businesses are now using these sites to connect with their customers?
Creating and keeping up with one of these accounts does require a little time but they’re pretty easy to use. Maintaining multiple accounts is another matter.
About a month after OsmonicAir.com went live we realized that the site needed to bring in more clients. The SEO methods we used were working fine for organic search results but we knew they could be better. With the help of Bruce Muir of IDS Partners, we made some design changes to the site, and added a blog. The client then decided to bring in Brookstone Marketing Group. Brookstone offers several packages for online marketing, including pay per click campaigns and Facebook and Twitter setups. I’ll be interested to see what kind of traffic is generated through these methods in the coming months.
Osmonic Air now online
OsmonicAir.com is now online. Osmonic Air is a local small business that installs HEPA Air Filtration and Central Air Vacuum systems. Although HEPA filtration systems have often been used for hospitals, manufacturing and the Aerospace industry, they are being installed in homes more frequently now due to the growing concern of Indoor Air Pollution, otherwise known as IAP. IAP can contribute to many health issues, such as asthma, and other respiratory diseases. IAPs range in size and shape. Human hair, dust, dust mites, pollen, mold, and tabacco smoke are just a few types of IAPs.
The HEPA filtration systems Osmonic Air installs in your house are built to the same standards as those used for industries and businesses. True HEPA filters can remove as much as 97% of IAPs as small as 0.3 microns. These filtration systems are installed so that they trap the AIPs which flow through your homes air conditioning and heating system. This method allows the filters to keep the IAPs from recirculating through your house.
In addition to HEPA filters, the use of a Central Vacuum system can also aid in reducing IAPs. Particles trapped in carpeting or resting of floors can become airborne when walked over or picked up by air currents. Vacuuming frequently can reduce the amount of IAPs on your floors and carpets. The problem with most common portable vacuums is that their canisters are not airtight and might release the IAPs back into your home. Central vacuum systems are a better solution, since the debris is carried out of the house through a sealed system and deposited into a canister outside of homes air system, usually in the garage.
For more information about how Osmonic Air can help you protect your home and family from Indoor Air Pollution, visit their site, www.osmonicair.com or call 704-200-4001 to schedule a In-Home consultation and Free Indoor Air Pollution test.
Brews, Blues & BBQ
Here is a pic of the stage at the Brews, Blues & BBQ festival in Uptown Charlotte, NC from last Saturday.Sportsman’s Daily now all Wordpress
SportsmansDaily.com static version
I’m a little late in getting this posted but, a couple months ago I was asked to convert the html version of The Sportsman’s Daily over to a Wordpress templated site. The site was already using Wordpress for it’s blog, but the client’s wanted to re-design the blog to resemble the main site, thereby carrying over the design and enabling them to maintain and update the content themselves.
My first thought was, “What about all the work I already did on the site?” I had spent months creating the original design and another six months maintaining it for the client. Then I realized that converting the site again would give me another challenge to overcome and more skills to add to my arsenal.
Objective #1 was to take the ’static’ html design and adapt it to the ‘dynamic’ design employed in Wordpress websites. Luckily Wordpress has extensive documentation as well as a very active community forum. Sure, there were some hits and misses along the way, but in short time I was able to figure out what needed to be done. Some of the bigger hurdles was figuring out how to edit some of the php code to do what I wanted to do. Why a hurdle?? Because at that point I knew nothing about php. I’m still not a php guru but after completing this project I felt pretty good about getting around the basic php code.
Some of the major goals in the design was to take the header and the two navigation bars and bring them into the template. This actually proved easier than I thought. I just had to find the correct php pages and place the html code into the appropriate places. Of course I had to edit some of the original Wordpress template html and css code to make sure that everything worked correctly. Integrating my css into the template css proved tricky, but I eventually got it going.
Objective #2 was to redesign the left content column. The static site had employed a area inside a iframe to display the four most recent stories. This was a real PITA to maintain, since it actually rotated five individual pages inside the iframe. Since the client’s would not have the photo editing tools to resize pictures, or the ability to edit outside of wordpress, an alternative was needed. The basic Wordpress template already lists posts in chronological order, but the client wanted to have a section above the posts to display a the most recent story in the “Breaking Sports” category. They also wanted a section below that to highlight some feature posts. I tried using some pre-existing templates, like the Magazine template, but wasn’t getting the results we wanted. We finally compromized by not including the features.
Since the redesigned site went live, The Sportsman’s Daily’s numbers have started to rise again. I was then asked to create a “After Dark” template. This proved to be a lot easier as it only needed the header edited and some of the side panel.
Mission accomplished! The client’s are happy that they are now able to update the site themselves. In the process I got the opportunity to learn some PHP and how to create a Wordpress template. Of course, now that I’ve learned a little PHP I find myself wanting to learn more. Ah, technology! “Learn or Become Obsolete” has become my mantra.
Muse Hauling
Last week I was contacted by Robert Muse, owner and operator of Muse Hauling and Grading here in Denver, North Carolina. Robert contacted me because, like a lot of local small business owners, he is currently experiencing a downturn in business due to the economy. And, like many other business owners big and small, he needs to be careful with how he spends his money. He has tried newspaper advertising and the yellow pages, with very little effect.
A lot of my website design business is through word of mouth. That is how Robert found me. After a brief consultation we formed a plan to create a small website to target his primary business services: Clearing and Grading, Hauling, Demolition, Retaining Walls, and Concrete & Brick work. Richard pointed out a couple of sites he had seen for me to reference and I went to work.
The design process went relatively quickly and in a few short days I had a comp for Richard to see. Except for a couple of small item he was please with the design. A few days later I had the site cut up and the html pages and CSS files ready to go. All in all the site was up in less than a week.
Of course, getting the site posted to the web is just a small part in the battle against the search engines. I followed all of the guidlines posted by Google and the SEO “experts”, including descriptive page titles, metatag description and keywords and the robots.txt file. I also submitted a xml formatted sitemap to Google. Then I submitted the site to MSN and Yahoo as well as the DMOZ.org directory. Now the wait begins to see how long it takes to get indexed into the search engines.
Since my last post I’ve learned a couple more things about SEO strategies. After watching a online webinar I realized that I had already been following a majority of the points presented. Such as graphically designing a site to focus on priority items. Using larger text for more important things. Using unordered lists (bulleted) for navigation and high level lists. It was no shock to me that perhaps the most important thing is a descriptive title for your page. It doesn’t make sense to title your page Welcome if your selling shoes or boats now, does it?
Some of the things I didn’t know, or may not have realized were important, included using broader words in keyword phrases. For instance, use a plural of a word and Google will automatically associate it with a non-plural word search. Don’t over repeat keywords in your text, using only 1-2 keywords per page. And when it comes to inbound links, quality over quantity will win out every time.
Search engine optimization is a big hurdle in getting your site on the first page. It is a ongoing process that is often confusing and sometimes aggravating. Following the guidelines helps ensure that your site will have a fighting chance of being placed higher in the search engines.
Sportsmans Daily Site Redesigned
If you are a sports junky you might like to visit the newly redesigned and recently posted SportsmansDaily.com. Sportsman’s Daily is a satirical look at todays sports written as news articles. The site is the brainchild of my good friend Tom Alexander and Charles Epstein. SportsmansDaily.com covers all topics on all of the sports, including baseball, basketball, football, hockey, soccer, horse racing, boxing / martial arts, college sports, and more.
The first edition of SportsmansDaily.com launched about two years ago and quickly began seeing a large volume of visitors. However, earlier this year just before the superbowl the website was a huge swell of visitors after they published an article entitled Gisele Bundchen: “If the Pats Lose I’ll Run Naked Though Mid-Town Manhattan”. Within hours the site was overrun, nearly closing down the server. Although daily visitors don’t always spike with the same volume the site still enjoys a pretty impressive number of visitors.
So when Tom and Charles approached me to redesign the site I was stoked. Although I have designed a number of sites, this site would be getting noticed on a much larger basis than others.
The plan was to keep the site a static html site that Charles and Tom could maintain themselves with the least amount of hassle. The site had to also include a blog, a forum and a chat room application so that the Sportman’s Daily community could contribute and interact. We began the preliminary design in late June ‘08 and quickly came to a design template that would allow the visitor to quickly find the latest storys as well as archived version.
The newly revised SportsmansDaily.com was officially launched in early August with a brand new group of bizarre and though provoking sports storys. The guys are also regularly blogging about whatever comes across their mind along. Soon the chat room application will go on line, and in the coming months the second season of The Sportsman’s Daily Radio show will begin posting brand new spots.
The value of Blog
As part of my job description with Omni Advertising, I am in charge of writing a blog for their main website, OmniAutomotiveAdvertising.com. It was my suggestion that we start the blog as a strategy to increase our presence on the internet, ramp up our google rankings and develop more incoming and outgoing links to the sites.
According to many of the guidelines, a blog is an integral tool to higher google rankings. Sites such as WebSiteGrader.com advise that the inclusion of a blog will increase your overall score. Prior to starting the Omni blog site, the main website had a very low score, somewhere around 20/100. After adding the blog, and following the other guidelines, the score rose to 53/100! Now, six months later, the site scores 72/100!
Of course, a blog is only a tool. A means to a end, the end being more visitors to your site. While many pages on a website are very rarely update, a blog can easily updated on a regular basis. If your blog is interesting and attracts attention you’ll see a increase in your sites traffic.
Keeping the blog up to date is the challenge. As you can tell from this blog, my last entry was in April. Finding something new to write about can be difficult if you’re not a prolific writer. Writing something that people will find interesting can also be a challenge. Since I write the Omni blog, I spend a lot of time finding suitable topics for that site and tend to neglect this blog.
So, if you want more visitors and higher search rankings, write a blog! It’s worth it.
Is Your Site Accessible?
Last night I attended the Adobe Charlotte Users Group meeting. Guest speaker, Christian N. Abad of Accessible Computing, Inc., gave an animated presentation on the topic of web site accessibility. Accessibility, in this case, refers to how accessible your website is to people with various handicaps or disabilities who use alternative methods to read the content on websites.
I found the timing of this meeting to be right on as I have been researching accessibility over the past month for some of my own projects. In my research I discovered that most ’sighted’ people, like myself, don’t often think about this subject. We take in multiple sources of information in a single glance.
But not everyone can rely on their eyes for information. This is certainly true of the blind, who often rely on screen readers to surf the net. These machines do exactly what you think. They read the web page, one word at a time. And they do it in a certain order. If a page is not designed for accessibility, finding the information you want could be frustrating to say the least.
Blindness is not the only disability targeted by accessibility. Accessibility addresses issues dealt with by people who are colorblind, or have trouble distinguishing contrasting colors, people with limited use of their hands, or suffer deafness or dyslexia, people with cognitive or neurological disabilities, or even age related disabilities.
In response to these issues, the WW3 came up with a list of accessibility guidelines. In 1998, Congress amended the Rehabilitation Act, Section 508, to require Federal agencies to make their websites accessible to people with disabilities. Simply said, any site receiving money from the federal government are now required to follow the Section 508 guidelines.
So why should your website follow these guidelines. Besides the fact that this would make your site accessible to handicapped people, these guidelines also make your site easier to navigate for everyone. If someone can find what they are looking for right away the odds are that they will continue to use your website and will use your services. The guidelines also help you when it comes to search engine optimization, which will help people find your site to begin with.
Throughout the meeting I found myself nodding in agreement to many of the guidlines Christian mentioned. Many of them seem to be based on common sense, like having navigation links at the top of a page. I was pleased to realize that I already implement many of these guidelines in my design.
Dang Good Graphics
I am very happy to announce the official formation of Dang! Good Graphics LLC. After a long period of procrastinating, researching how to incorporate, more procrastinating… I finally decided the time had come.
When I began researching how to incorporate I was a little intimidated by the sheer number of resources I found on the internet, most of which were difficult to interpret. I had all sorts of questions like, “Do I really need to incorporate?”, “What is the best way to incorporate?”, and “What type of corporation is best suited for my business?” I Googled “North Carolina Incorporation” and quickly found tons of information from the state government. Did that help? A little. But I still had tons of questions. And how much was all of this going to cost.
Then a couple people told me to go to LegalZoom.com. I filled out a short form and in no time I had filled out all the paperwork I needed. And it cost me a heck of a lot less than if I had gone to an attorney. Even when I had more questions I just dialed up LegalZoom and they answered them for me. Of course, they can not answer legal questions, so I may wind up going to an attorney for the more difficult questions.
So Dang! Good Graphics is now open for business!
Increase Your Sites Ranking
One of the ways to increase your sites rankings is to, a) have a blog on your site and, b) get the blog listed in a blog directory like Technorati. If you are curious about how your site ranks with the billions of other websites on the WWW, check out WebsiteGrader. This site will perform an analysis of your site and offer suggestions how to improve your score. Topics include: On-Page SEO: meta tags, Headings, Images, Interior Page Analysis, and Readability Level; Off-Page SEO: Domain Info, Google PageRank, Google Indexed Pages, Last Google Crawl Date, Traffic Rank, and Inbound Links; Blog Analysis, Blog Ranking and more.
To Flash Or Not To Flash
Should you design your site in Flash? This has been an area of controversy ever since the first flash based websites hit the internet back in the mid ’90s. When I first started using Flash 2 back in 1997 it was basically used as an animation tool. Sites like GaboCorp, (archived version here) and Eye4u, began using flash to build websites that used cool motion graphics to create seemingly seamless web experiences. While these sites were impressive they did have their detractors.
Almost from the moment flash sites started springing up there were people putting them down. Why? Well, they went against the convention at the time. People like Jakob Nielsen didn’t like flash because it “constitutes a usability disease”. To some extent that was true. Flash designers came up with new ways to present their vision. It didn’t always follow conventional thinking. Navigation was often difficult, to say the least, if it was there at all. As quickly as people had begun to praise flash the opposite happened. Long ’skip intros’ became a websites downfall.
You can still find websites with skip intros. The experimental sites are still there. A lot of ‘designers’ still use flash for their portfolio websites because of the ‘wow’ factor. But not all flash is bad. The current version of 2Advanced is a great example what fash can do today. Of course I still like version 2, and I am amazed at how far flash has advanced in the last ten years. And sites such as CityCenter.com have merged flash and video for a high gloss presentation.
Flash still has it’s place on the web but it still presents some obstacles. The main problem would be the inability of the search engines spiders to see inside of flash. If the spiders can’t see it they can’t index it which means the site won’t show up high on the search query. If you want visibility, your probably better off not using flash
If you really want to have some flash content, why not use it sparingly. A introductory animation on the home page can still make a great impact. Slide shows and product showcases can be presented using flash. Video presentation using flash can often be downloaded faster than QuickTime or WMV video. Just look at YouTube!
I am not against flash. Far from it. I am a flash fanatic. But flash is not always the best way to present your product on the web.
Shopping Cart Options
During the past week I have had about four inquiries about adding shopping carts to websites. Now I know that in the past I have talked to some web designers who all said that shopping carts were a pain to deal with, so I was somewhat hesitant to dive into shopping carts. What I found in my research was both encouraging and not so.
With my clients I tend to host their sites on IPower.com servers. I’ve used IPower for over 7 years and, for the most part, I’ve been very happy with them. I noticed that they have a ShopSite shopping cart already available with their accounts. And, it is free of charge with the ipower hosting for up to fifteen items. But of course nothing is free as I found out as I researched a little further.
In order process credit cards on your shopping cart orders, you must have a merchant account and a payment gateway account. Luckily ShopSite has a list of preferred providers that can set up these accounts. The merchant account transfers money to your bank account. The gateway account processes credit card transactions. Most of the companies I researched were charging $15 – $25 per month for a merchant account and $10 and up for a gateway account. Some companies also charged additional fees. And then there are the transaction fees for credit cards. Some of the companies charge 2.2% and $0.20 and up per transaction.
Beware of companies that charge set-up fees, annual fees, cancellation fees and long-term contract fees!
Of course there are other options to sell items online. I often see sites that use PayPal. PayPal offers no monthly fees, no set-up fees and no cancellation fees and their transaction fees range from 1.9% to 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction.
Google also offers their Google Checkout option which charges 2% + $0.20 per transaction. If you have a AdWords account, for every $1 you spend on AdWords each month, you can process $10 in sales the following month for free through Google Checkout
So, should you set up a shopping cart to accept credit cards or use a service like PayPal or Google CheckOut? One consideration is the processing time. If you set up a gateway account the processing is usually completed immediately. With PayPal and Google CheckOut, the order is placed while the customer is online, but the processing happens afterwards meaning there is a delay before the process is complete. Also, using one of these options requires that both you and the customer open an account to use these services. Some customers may not want to open accounts so this should be a consideration when weighing your options.
If you are thinking about selling items online there are many ways to do so. If you want to set up a shopping cart on your site, first make sure that your server is set up to do so. Does your hosting company already have a shopping cart option? If not, can you integrate a third party software solution into your account. Do you have a merchant acccount or do you need to open one along with a gateway account? Or could you use PayPal or Google CheckOut? And, can you afford the cost of online transactions?
Whichever option you choose, make sure that it is the best choice for selling your product.
New site design
As you probably noticed, the new BarryPavel.com website design has now gone live!! I feel that this redesign is more streamlined than the previous version. I decided to go with the black background to bring more attention to any of the graphics on the page. Additionally, I decided to add some more content than in the previous version. I’ve even brought back and rewrote my bio which I had on the site a couple years ago. Hope you enjoy!
