test

Zubird Consuting and Design - Website Creation and Theme Customization

RSS Graffiti 2.0 went live today. I’ve had beta access for awhile, but haven’t tried it out until just now. Just checked out their site and got a “Service Temporarily Unavailable” error, hopefully because they are being flooded with kudos. We’ll find out in a moment when I publish this post…it should go straight to Facebook. Will Graffiti be a beautiful thing or a chaotic mess? Stay tuned…

Zubird Consuting and Design - Website Creation and Theme Customization

YouTube, Twitter,  Facebook, Google+ and now Pinterest. The list of social sharing never seems to end. Everyone wants to get in on the action and for good reason; it is a good way to sell your brand, share your message or to collect more followers for whatever it is you do. For businesses this can be part of a winning marketing strategy, and if you are not in on the action, a huge loss.

Not all channels are created equal. Google+ has its advantages. So does Facebook though your mileage will vary depending upon your business. For more on that, I’ll send you on over to this article. Just remember that it is important to understand why one channel might be better than another for your business.

Back to Pinterest. I’ve been avoiding starting up yet another page for me or my business mainly because I just don’t have that much time on my hands. I knew that eventually I would need to do it so yesterday I signed up. That was all I had time for, but today I got back in there and quickly got lost in “Pinning” some of my favorite things. It’s addictive to say the least and I wondered why it took so long for a social bookmarking idea such as this to come about. After all, the web is visual. It is much more interesting to look at images than to read a long boring blog (heh, like this one). More than that though, is that it is really hot right now and is yet another channel to take advantage of to help promote your business.

Start Pinning!

Try out the two buttons below. I’ve customized them, each with a different message and image that can be added to anyone’s Pin Board.

Pin It Pin It

Now think about how you can leverage the interest in Pinterest for your business! While you are at it, check out the infographic below from Imbue Marketing to view the unique point of difference for each channel and which ones may be the best match for your business.

A Who’s who of Social Media [Infographic] (2012, Feb 13) from Imbue Marketing. Retrieved 15:03, Feburary 13, 2012, from http://imbuemarketing.com/2012/a-whos-who-of-social-media-infographic/

Zubird Consuting and Design - Website Creation and Theme Customization

Search Engine Optimization 101

If you are new to SEO, you may not understand all the fuss about SEO. As I’ve said in a previous post, it is important to design your website for search engines as much as for people, though doing so requires some different thinking. It truly is beneficial to make sure that your site is optimized for search engines and here is a quick (3 minute) video that explains, in simple terms, how SEO works. Though it covers just the basics, it provides newbies and non-techies with an easy to understand format. Produced by Search Engine Land and Common Craft.

Another great resource from Search Engine Land is a Periodic Table of SEO Ranking Factors. Here is an image of the condensed version. For the full version complete with descriptions, click the image or just go to the Periodic Table of SEO Ranking Factors page over at Search Engine Land.

Zubird Consuting and Design - Website Creation and Theme Customization

After yet another unwelcome “improvement” from Facebook, I decided to give Google+ a try. I must say that initially, I dreaded the thought of yet another profile to update and manage. My dread quickly turned to delight and amazement at the ease of user navigation and privacy control provided by the blissfully clean Google+ interface.

The never knowing what is or is not private, seems to me at least, to be a constant concern with Facebook. This lack of trust by its users is due in part by the always changing Facebook interface, not to mention the visibility changes imposed on Facebook user profiles and posts, intentional or otherwise.

Apparently, team Google was paying close attention.

I use a lot of Google products and though I am not a fan of all of them, most have easy to use navigation. Google+ is no exception. Google+ has easy to find (and fathom) user icons. The social structure is not unlike Facebook, it is just way more intuitive and easy to understand. Google+ uses circles to represent groups of people (remember Meet the Fockers “circle of trust?”). With Google+, there are circles of friends, family circles, acquaintances and so on. Of course you can make new circles too. Adding people to these groups is a breeze. You simply drag and drop your peeps into which ever circle (or circles) you want them to be included in.

Security settings are pretty straight forward too.

• Circle = your circles of friends, family and so on.
• Extended circles = Friends and Friends of friends
• Earth circle = Viewable by everyone

It is really all the same (as FB), but yet so different. The difference is that when cruising around on your Google+ pages and profile, you see the icons all over, instantly showing you how public or private each segment of your profile is. What’s more, you can instantly change what you don’t like. Didn’t notice that you have your email available to the world? Just click on that icon and change it.

Recently, Facebook did add an option as a drop-down where you can instantly change some settings in similar fashion, but the drop-down arrow is easy to overlook and frankly, after so many changes, I just don’t know that I trust Facebook anymore. And even with all the improvements to Facebook, digging around on Facebook seems like MORE WORK. Not that I don’t like to work, I just like to get paid to work.

Google+ also makes it easy to find information about the different security settings and does a good job of explaining how it all works in easy to understand plain language including scenarios and cautionary notes about who will see what. Head on over to Options>> Google+ Help and find what you need. Oddly though, the tab for the Google+ Privacy Policy is blank. Hmm…

Zubird Consuting and Design - Website Creation and Theme Customization

Zubird Consuting and Design - Website Creation and Theme Customization

If you’ve got multiple email accounts and are maybe on your third or fourth smart phone, you may have wound up with many duplicate contacts. I found a great way to get rid of them. This utility (called Scrubly) will go through them and clean em up for you, once and for all. Works with Outlook, Mac, Gmail and Google Apps and will backup your address book as well. Check it out, then come back here and let me know how it works out for you.

Scrubly | Duplicate Contact Remover from Bob Thordarson on Vimeo.

Zubird Consuting and Design - Website Creation and Theme Customization

Where did my business page go?

In early December of 2010, Facebook launched a new profile and initially, folks were invited to take it for a spin. Later, they just flipped everyone over, no unlike button offered.

The new profile has things moved around a bit and for the most part, I am indifferent to most of these changes as I am not a big user of Facebook. However, business owners should take note of one particular snafu.

Normally, one creates a “page” for their business from their personal Facebook profile. If you have created such a page, you might not have noticed that since the new profile has been implemented, the link to your business page has moved. But where to? If you have entered information about your businesses or past work history, you will now find it at the top of the page, like so:

If you have not entered that information, go do it. Then come back to your profile. Nice, there’s the link right? Not so fast. Go ahead and click on that link. You might end up with something like this:

Yeah, that’s what I thought too.

So I set out to find a solution and I did. It involves installing a browser web developer plugin, finding your page id, activating the form fields (through the plugin) and replacing the id that exists on the “community” page with your official id.

Anyway, I’m posting a couple of links that I found that helped me get my business link straightened out. There are two solutions, if the first one doesn’t work (it did not for me), then you have to work out the plan B. Here they are:

Plan A: http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=492294115008&set=a.208729010008.138466.42328360008&comments&ref=mf

Plan B: http://www.wchingya.com/2010/10/official-facebook-page-employer-link.html

Every time Facebook has made a change, it has caused confusion and disruption—and more work. Unfortunately, now that everyone has joined the Facebook frenzy (and really, you sort of have to), this is especially true for businesses.

Let me know if this has helped you. If it did, please go like my Facebook business page!

Zubird Consuting and Design - Website Creation and Theme Customization

So you have a new website, you’ve sprinkled in a bit of SEO, maybe got a Facebook fan page or Twitter account going. Now it’s time to sit back and reap the rewards and watch as your stats go whacko, right? Not so fast.

Have you considered your online reputation management (ORM)? Many people don’t. These days, ORM is essential, especially for business owners. I’ve found The Online Reputation Management Guide from Outspoken Media to be an excellent resource and would like to share it with you (I am just nice that way ).

Consider this segment from the post:

Why do you need an online reputation?

If you don’t control your brand online, someone else will. Consider recent advancements on the major search engines in:

• Universal search
• Personalized search
• Enhanced search results
• Rich snippets

There are more opportunities than ever before to quickly rank negative or slanderous results. If you don’t protect yourself, someone can easily post a comment, make a video, create a blog post, file a complaint, promote your competition, develop a hate site and more. Or even worse, an angry employee will leave the company with revenge on their mind and reek havoc with yours. Managing your online reputation isn’t shameless promotion, it’s a means of defense and best practice.
The Online Reputation Management Guide (2010, April 23). In Outspoken Media. Retrieved 10:25, April 23, 2010, from The Online Reputation Management Guide

So off you go—go read that post (also available for download as a pdf) and let me know what you think. Is your ORM good, bad or just plain ugly?

Zubird Consuting and Design - Website Creation and Theme Customization

Have you ever wondered why there are so many places popping up online where you can build a website without any html or coding experience? So many beautiful, sexy designs for free (only if you sign up with a hosting package, of course) that you can “click and build yourself—in just minutes!” Wow! “if it sounds too good to be true…”

An exercise in profit-making for the web host, the goal is to rope in as many monthly (or yearly) subscriptions as possible. An inexpensive website solution may be very attractive to consumers and small business owners on a tight budget, so they sign up for the monthly or yearly deal of the day to get the good deal on the website.

Unfortunately, many of these “click and build” sites don’t offer templates that adhere to web standards or coding best practices. And, if a web host can capture the sign ups of hundreds of thousands of people at $10 or $15 per month, why should they care if your template isn’t up to snuff? After all, they didn’t build it. Web hosts that allow template designers to post their invalid products on their sites are doing a great disservice to the average Joe’s out there, not to mention, mucking up the Internet for everyone else in the process.

And that’s just it. Most average Joe’s out there don’t know the difference between templates that are web standards compliant and those that aren’t. Why is that? Well, probably because most people don’t know what web standards are, let alone why they should be used.

I have spent a great deal of time touting the benefits of web standards: to bosses, co-workers and friends, and family members. Sometimes it is really hard to bend an ear. There really are lots of good reasons to stick with web standards, not the least of which is that it gets you more website traffic.

I could go on but why, when there are so many good examples out there already? Here are three I found that I feel explain (in plain language), good business sense for using web standards.

Ten reasons to learn and use web standards

Web Standards: Where the ROI is

The Business Benefits of Web Standards

Well, how do you know if your website is up to standards, Wendy? I’m glad you asked. Just copy and paste your url into this validator. If it is all green and tells you there are no errors, go give your webmaster a big hug (she might prefer a big tip instead). But if it is red, and proceeds to puke out 120 errors or so, go fire your webmaster.

That was just the HTML validator. Now try the CSS validator.

So how did you do? Wasn’t that fun?

Cheers!

Wendy

Zubird Consuting and Design - Website Creation and Theme Customization