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Social media sites can be great tools to help boost visibility and networking resources for your business. If used well, popular sites such as Twitter, Myspace, Facebook, Yelp, Flickr, and Youtube can serve many marketing functions including publicity, advertising, and public relations.
In order for a business to best use social media sites they must define their goals and match those goals with the appropriate site, called a platform. Each platform has certain strengths. Twitter is great as a promotional tool; a business can increase publicity by posting updates about exciting events or new products in real-time. Myspace and Facebook can be used for customer service relations by allowing a business to respond to user questions and concerns. In addition, Facebook can be a great promotional tool as it is commonly used to post invitations to events and will update other users when new content is added to a page. Yelp, although less well known than aforementioned is a fast-growing extremely powerful social media site. By posting a profile with Yelp a business can get customer reviews posted on the site and increased SEO. Flickr and Youtube are distinct from other social media sites because they mostly host video and photo content rather than written. Both sites can be used to post advertisements and gain publicity through product and event documentation or a “behind the scenes” look at the business.
What all the sites have in common is that they are tools to help a business gain increased exposure and trust from their customers. Many businesses and non-profits have seen great results from social media sites. Examples include Starbuck’s Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Flickr accounts, and Target’s Facebook account.
Content management systems (or CMS) are software used to create and manage diverse content. They are designed to allow those with beginning programming knowledge to easily build a site and manage content easily. The software features tools like templates to help make the process streamlined and user friendly. Several different CMS’s exist including Joomla, Drupal, and WordPress. Each system has slightly different features giving them certain advantages depending on the users’ intent and familiarity with programming.
In terms of publishing blogs, WordPress is by far the most popular software. One of the most appealing features of WordPress is its user-friendly interface. Unlike Joomla and Drupal, a user needs almost no prior programming experience to start up a WordPress blog. In addition the software and support is free and it features over 90 themes and “blogs of the day” and tags to increase traffic. WordPress MU or (Multiple User) is also available to those who want to host a blog community. Through MU a user with a website can manage all the blogs within their “community” from a single centralized dashboard.
WordPress is also a good CMS for climbing search results. Blogging can be a great tool to increase traffic to a site. By using title and headline tags, and keywords in text descriptions of photos and links to other pages a user can attract a higher rate of visitors to the site. Blogging regularly is also an important tool to help guarantee a high traffic flow.
WordPress is great software for those who prefer the do-it-yourself route. If you can use Facebook or email you can use WordPress. The software makes it easy to optimize search engine results and is free to use.
Almost every day we are contact by individuals and businesses looking to develop entirely new websites and those looking to re-vamp their existing websites. One of the first questions people often ask is: “Should I develop a template-based website or totally custom website?”
There are several factors to consider when making such a decision:
One additional item worth mentioning is that simply purchasing website template file is only a first step to designing and posting a professional looking website. If you plan to customize the site files yourself you will need to be fluent in web programming and web development software.
A new world has emerged for web designers looking for greater font options. Until recently most web designers have relied on designing with a very narrow selection of fonts. Only a handful of fonts have been considered reliable for viewing in PC and Mac and the major Internet browsing software options.
That all changed dramatically yesterday, May 4th 2010, as a major New England font company made 2,000 of their most popular fonts available to web designers. Several other font companies have done the same or will be doing so soon.
‘Web fonts’ as they are known allow the designer to pay a per site font licensing fee, and install code from the font company which then displays the font to website viewer. It is not necessary that the viewer has the fonts downloaded on their computer as the font company’s code will bring it to the site for viewing.
This is an enormous move forward for web designers and their clients. It will certainly cause growing pains for some, but will also open a whole new world of web design. Finally web designers will be able to choose from a multitude of fonts, just as print-based graphic designers have done for years.
Want to learn more? You can get a good start at these sites: http://typekit.com http://webfonts.fonts.com http://http://www.monotypeimaging.com
We talked about website design and development with Content Management Systems in the last blog. We mentioned that Drupal was an example of a content management system but didn’t discuss any other options. Now that you know what a CMS is, you should also know that you have options. One of the major competitors for Drupal (mentioned in prior blog) is called Joomla and it will be the subject of today’s blog.
Joomla is a good choice for someone who is just starting out with content management. It has a very user-friendly interface and offers lots of unique features including caching, RSS feeds, printable web pages, news flashes, blog polls, search, and language internationalization support. Joomla also has a great selection of free and commercial design templates and themes. Like Drupal, Joomla is a good CMS to help you start a community with multiple users; it is also a great tool to help you start an online store. The most common drawbacks of Joomla are that it is not XHTML compliant and that it does not allow for multi-sites. If you would like to discuss in detail which content management system works best for your needs give us a call and we’ll provide some suggestions.
At SoCal WebWorx we offer services for sites of all types and sizes. If you are looking to develop a website with a large inventory of products we can build a content management system to manage your product information in the most efficient way. A content management system, or CMS, is software that allows us to create a database to store content within your website. One type of software we use to create these systems is called Drupal. Drupal is a back-end CMS system, meaning that it is the software that supports your site and makes it functional. Drupal is used by many high profile sites including Whitehouse.gov and Economist.com, and for good reason, there are several excellent benefits to using this content management system.
Click to Enlarge
The image shows how the back-end Administrative Panel was customized to meet the client’s requirements. As you can see the editing functions are streamlined, easy to use and allow for extensive site access and client additions and revisions.
If you think a web-based Content Management System might help your business better showcase and manage its products give us a call at 949.360.9636 to talk about your options.
Over the past several years we’ve found that many clients make the very expensive mistake of taking a “do it yourself” approach to website writing. After all, they reason, who knows their business better than they do? Unfortunately, writing your own website is rarely a good idea.
In fact, we feel so strongly about the difference that professional writing can make in the success of your website that we’ve brought a professional copywriter on board our “virtual” team. Please join us in welcoming Linda Coss to the SoCal WebWorx family!
The Importance of Writing to Sell
Why do we strongly recommend professional copywriting for our clients? Because marketing writing – or writing to sell – is a learned skill, quite a bit different than writing a memo or an essay. While chances are slim that you really know how to write to sell, Linda is an accomplished marketing professional who does this day in and day out.
At SoCal WebWorx we can create a beautifully-designed and easy-to-use website for your business, and then drive traffic to this site with top-notch search engine optimization. But once your potential customers arrive at your site it’s the words that will need to do the heavy lifting of selling visitors on your products or services and motivating them to take action. If the words miss the mark, you’re missing out on a lot of potential sales.
Spending money on a professionally-designed site and then using ineffective and possibly poorly written text is just being “penny wise and pound foolish.”
About Linda Coss
Linda Coss is a freelance marketing writer who specializes in writing targeted and effective words that don’t merely inform – they appeal to the readers’ needs and emotions to engage and sell. Her 15 years in the marketing field include writing and editing everything from websites and newsletters to e-blasts, brochures, articles, and much more. Because Linda brings a wealth of experience and expertise to every job we are certain she will be an asset to both our firm and yours.
At SoCal WebWorx we’re big believers in the importance of search engine optimization (SEO) for your website. After all, it doesn’t do you much good to put up a website if it can’t be found. Your company’s website should not have the internet equivalent of an “unlisted number”!
To help you make the most of your website we’ve put together a collection of 76 FREE SEO Tools for search engine optimization, analysis, and research. These tools make it quick and easy for you to perform a wide variety of SEO-related tasks.
Some of the tools that we think you’ll find the most useful include:
Need help making the most of all this information? Give us a call. We’re here for you.
One way to increase Internet traffic to your webpage, resulting in more potential business, is to introduce landing pages, also known as lead capture pages. These pages, which appear when a potential customer clicks on a link or advertisement, are specifically designed to address a target audience and get them to perform a desired action. They can be optimized to encourage several actions including clicking (which will lead the visitor to another page on your website), purchasing, providing information, telling a friend, learning something, and leaving a comment or post. Landing pages are optimized to display keywords which correspond with terms entered into search engines.
Landing pages improve the visitor’s experience on the website. They are useful in boosting efficiency by establishing target keywords and in converting visitors. Rather than leaving visitors confused and unable to find the services and information they’re interested in, landing pages provide an easily identifiable link to direct users to the most useful page raising the chances of conversion.
Aside from a higher conversion rate, landing pages are useful in increasing overall traffic. By creating several landing pages which cover specific topics and locations, you increase the number of keywords that link to your website. Once you have established these niche pages you can increase traffic by adding content to your page. Adding more keyword headings, keyword text, and keyword links caters to potential customers’ subject interests and captures a wider selection of searches. By combining keyword headings and keyword links you can multiply the number of search-phrases your site will capture.
In summary, landing pages are optimized content pages on your site. They are designed to improve the visitor’s experience through efficiency and increase traffic by broadening the number of search-phrases that will link to your site. Once you have established your landing pages you can track their results and focus on search-phrases that will capture the most traffic.
Websites are the cells that keep the organism known as the Internet functioning. If you and your business want to be part of the information age, then you need a website. It’s as simple as that. Creating a website, however, may not seem quite as simple to those who have not done it before. In reality, though, it’s not hard to create your own website and start using it to generate business. You just have to take things step-by-step.
Starting a Website Step One: Coming up with a Domain Name
The domain name is essentially your website’s address and your brand. It tells potential customers what your site is and where to find it. You should take your time to create the right name that really gets your point across. A good domain name is succinct, unique and to the point. Avoid double letters or words that are tough to spell, or phrases that are tough to remember. Hingesswingsplendiferously.com may seem like a clever name for your door-selling website, but it’ll be tough for traffic to get there. WeSellDoors.com is much better.
Starting a Website Step Two: Getting a Hosting Plan
Hosting plans come in a number of varieties, and different hosts offer their own features. You’ll be interested in a plan with plenty of bandwidth and disk space, of course, but if you’re just starting out, then your main concern will probably be price. A budget hosting plan will only run you a few dollars a month, and it’s probably your best bet in the beginning. More expensive hosting plans mean that you rent the entire server, or the server is partitioned so that your portion of the server functions as its own distinct server. In most cases, you don’t really need these things for your first website.
Starting a Website Step Three: Creating a Great Web Design
Once you’ve got the hosting and domain name web hosting out of the way, it’s time to design your website. You can do this on your own using a program like DreamWeaver, which doesn’t require specialized programming knowledge to use, or you can get a professional web designer.
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