In recent news the number of people using their mobile device to access news and information on the Internet more than doubled from January 2008 to January 2009. And it comes as no surprise that Mobile Social Networking saw a 427% in 1 year.
As this trend grows it will surely become something to keep an eye on for opportunities in Internet Marketing, and at the least productivity. I know I couldn't be near as productive as I am today without my Blackberry.
Another consideration is creating a mobile friendly web site to go along with your existing site. I have created a few in the past, a good example being a local restaurant. Mobile Internet users tend to search for things on the go, so a restaurant having a mobile friendly web site, hours of operation, menu and directions to their location is a no brainer.
Food for thought while enjoying the Spring weather and brainstorming on creative marketing ideas!
NetworkedBlogs has launched a new application that allows you to promote your blog on Facebook and to discover new blogs in the process. Combining your efforts on Facebook and Blogging by using this great new application is sure to gain you more exposure, visitors and followers.
Features
Show a thumbnail image of your blog on your profile
A visual blogroll on your profile to promote your blog and blogs you like
A directory of blogs organized by topic and geographical locations
Read blog articles inside Facebook
A discussion forum about everything related to blogging
A community of like minded people to connect with and learn from
Facebook users discovering your blog through this application have easy one click tools to invite friends and share your content. And as Facebook now has real time feeds applied to users pages, these actions are even more viral as the action is posted for their friends list to discover.
Despite this article dating back to 2005, after reading it again today I discovered that from a marketing and search engine perspective it has yet to have been out-dated.
Todays blogs have much more than the article mentions in terms of technology you can take advantage of. Built in RSS feeds allow you to syndicate your blog posts to targeted areas around the Internet. Incoming RSS feeds can be utilized to keep your blog content fresh and updated while you are busy running your business. Interactive Widgets give you and your readers easy to use tools to communicate encouraging participation and communication.
But the 10 reasons mentioned in this article still apply today.
If you have yet to create your blog, have a look at my portfolio and consider having me help you get up to speed in the blogosphere. *Save 25% through May!
I've mentioned RSS in blogs and articles a few times, so I thought I'd post a list of directories specifically developed for promoting your RSS feeds. In a little less than an hour you should be able to submit your feed to all of these, each link opens in a new window/tab for convenience.
As a web designer and developer, I have a handful of browsers to test sites for compatibility. But which browser do I use on a daily basis? I've switched to FireFox for productive reasons, some of which you may find useful for your online tasks.
1) Tabbed Browsing and Save Session
Browsing with tabs has been a real time saver. I generally have several windows I have to work with. My Twitter Dashboard, Web Site Editor, the web site I am working on, Gmail, and an active search. Rather than having that many windows open to switch back and forth to, I simply click between tabs.
Save Session is great. If Firefox unexpectedly closes, you don’t have to spend time recovering data or retracing your steps through the Web. If you’re in the middle of typing an email, you’ll pick up where you left off, even down to the last word you typed. Session Restore instantly brings back your windows and tabs, restoring text you entered and any in-progress downloads. With the Save Session on Exit feature added, I can close FireFox at any stopping point and return to that exact place when I return, including all the tabs I had running at the time.
2) Ad Block Plus
We are all annoyed by all those ads and banners on the internet that often take longer to download than everything else on the page. Adblock Plus is a great plugin that gets rid of them. You can right-click on a banner and choose "Adblock" from the context menu — and the banner won’t be downloaded again. With a filter subscription, even this simple task will usually be unnecessary: the filter subscription will block most advertisements fully and automatically.
You might also note that you can set Ad Block Plus to allow ads on specific web sites you choose. Quite often the related content on certain web sites can be important and relevant to your interests.
3) Customization
FireFox allows you to install Add-on's that can improve your productivity as well. For example, as I work throughout the day online, I have Add-ons that alert me to events that may require my attention. There are Add-on's that track your bids on eBay, alert you to updates on your favorite web sites, give you a live feed of activity from all of your social networks and more.
4) Security
An independent study shows that, in 2006, IE users were vulnerable to online threats 78% of the time. Firefox users? Only 2%. Over time Explorer has been attacked by so many threats that rumor has it, version 8 may be the last Explorer browser offered. With Microsoft seemingly always a target for hacks and cracks, FireFox has been a much more comfortable browser to use in my opinion.
5) Productive Features
One-Click Bookmarking allows you to bookmark, search and organize web sites quickly and easily. You can view web pages faster, using less of your computer’s memory. Smart Location Bar let's you find the sites you love in seconds — enter a term for instant matches that make sense. The Password Manager allows you to remember site passwords without ever seeing a pop-up.
And those are just a few. Using FireFox in combination with many online tools from Google and other parties, I can manage to fit what used to be a 12 to 14 hour day into an 8 hour day based on improved task management, automation, ease of use and speed.
Google's Chief Economist, Hal Varian, explains the AdWords Ad Auction and how your max CPC bid and quality score determine how much you pay for a click on Google.
Just as this issue of Promowear Magazine arrives, starting today Facebook users will start to see the new homepage, which is designed to make it faster and easier to create multimedia updates and receive instantaneous feed items from your network. It was also annouced today that Facebook has surpassed 190 million users, and are just weeks away from 200 million.
The news feed stream will now include real-time items being shared by your friends, so you can get instant glimpse of the social activity happening in you and your network. As I mentioned in this article, I recommend importing the RSS feed from your blog or website, and creating a page for your business.
Edit March 13, 2009: At the time I wrote this issues article I had no reference to demographics, I stumbled across some today confirming my predictions.
Providing your visitors with social media sharing buttons provides them one click access for sharing your content. I can add social media sharing functionality with buttons that compliment your site for just $35.00!
Add this important feature to your site today!
Design and Install Social Sharing Functionality to One Web Site or Blog
While I am just about done with John Kuczynski's new web site, taking the time to create a blog for John made a nice addition to his online presence. Johnny has a lot of fans as one of the most popular and winning American dart players, and those fans like to follow his tournaments and achievements.
I sensed a bit of frustration from him in regards to updating the Internet. John was spending quite a bit of time updating his fans on MySpace, Facebook and his own web sites. By creating this blog and utilizing the RSS feed, John can now simply post once and the other sites are automatically syndicated with the same post.
If you are interested in a blog for yourself feel free to contact me.
As an artist and designer, achieving a level of satisfaction with any client comes with the expectation that quite often we will disagree when it comes to our design ideas. That comes with the territory and applies to logo design, branding, advertising and all other forms of artistic expression.
However when it comes to creating a web site and designing for the Internet, there are certain boundaries and guidelines that a designer should conform to in order to please the most important element of the project - your web site visitors.
Believe it or not the most specific disagreements I have experienced have come in the selection of fonts. As you know there are thousands - maybe millions of typestyles to choose from. But when applying that design choice to the Internet, the truth is you should select from only a handful.
Short story is, you can apply any font to your web pages that you like but if the user visiting your web site doesn't have that same font installed on their system they won't see it. It will default to whatever font their system has been set to use in the event that a font is missing.
There is also the given fact that not everyone uses the same size monitor, uses the same monitor resolution settings, or even has the same strength of vision. Having said that, the readability of your font selection comes into play as well.
Reflecting on these technical tidbits of typestyle trivia, I managed to dig up a great article and survey from my bookmarks that explains things in detail and presents a great visual example of what can happen if an unwise font selection is made.
I have mentioned and/or discussed in depth the subject of RSS feeds (Real Simple Syndication) in many of my articles, as well as suggesting RSS to clients frequently. More often than not the subject appears to create hesitation, confusion or the feeling that I am making suggestions on too high of a technical level.
I was reminded of that scenario when I stumbled across this video from Google, and decided it would be beneficial to include it here with a brief how to blog post for anyone who wants to get their feet wet and test the waters of syndicated information.
Let's start the video clip:
The first step of course is to login to your Google account and add Google Reader. You will find this by going to Google, clicking on "My Account" to the top right of your screen, then scrolling down to "Try Something New". If you don't see Google Reader there, click on "More >>".
Once you have added Google Reader you can start adding RSS feeds to it. There are a couple of methods to adding feeds.
One method can be utilized while you are browsing the Internet. If you find yourself on a web page, blog or news site of interest you will usually find an icon something similar to the icons pictured to the right of this paragraph. Other times it is a text link like the one I have at the top of this blog. These links and icons vary from site to site, but after a few glances you will begin to become more familiar with them. When logged into your Google Reader account you can simply click on the link or icon and the following page will allow you to click on "Add To Google Reader". All set!
The other method is to manually add an RSS feed. To add a feed manually you will need to know the feed URL. The easy way to grab the feed URL is to right click on the link or RSS icon and select "Copy Link Location". You may then go to Google Reader, press the "Add A Subscription" button and paste the URL into the field.
Google Reader also allows you to search for feeds you may be interested in directly from your Google Reader page. You can also organize your feeds into folders by selecting "Manage Subscriptions" in the bottom left corner of your Google Reader screen.
An example of how to take advantage of RSS would be to reflect on how you read your local newspaper. I tend to breeze through the front page news rather quickly, then dig out the sports page and occasionally the metro section to see what's happening in my neighborhood. In an online world using RSS feeds, I simply subscribe to the RSS feeds "Front Page", "Sports" and "Metro" from my local newspaper.
I also categorize my subscriptions by keeping them in folders within Google Reader:
Sports: The sports feed from the local paper, the Dallas Cowboys feed along with the rest of my favorite sports teams, Indy Car Racing etc.
Business: I subscribe to many industry related news feeds, stay on top of search engine happenings and follow blogs that keep me in touch and up to speed with what's going on in my field of work.
News: Simply put, I drop all of my news subscriptions there.
Darts: All things dart related.
If you're catching on you're beginning to see that I can log in to Google Reader in the morning and absorb all the news and information I need for the day within a few minutes rather than browsing through bookmarks and links for an hour or more. In addition I can select feeds to be sent to my Blackberry for news on the fly, alerts that are critical to any of my web sites or just to have something nearby to read if I'm stuck waiting for a meeting to get started.
Once you get the hang of RSS you can then start enjoying not only a faster paced gathering of information, but also begin to understand how RSS can benefit your business, provide you with Internet Marketing channels or simplify your daily work routine in some way.
For readers with a few more minutes to view video tutorials, the Google Reader Help Channel has a few more clips that should clear up any other questions.
In recent news the number of people using their mobile device to access news and information on the Internet more than doubled from January 2008 to January 2009. And it comes as no surprise that Mobile Social Networking saw a 427% in 1 year.
NetworkedBlogs has launched a new application that allows you to promote your blog on Facebook and to discover new blogs in the process. Combining your efforts on Facebook and Blogging by using this great new application is sure to gain you more exposure, visitors and followers.
Do you have social media sharing buttons on your web site or blog?
If you find yourself on a web page, blog or news site of interest you will usually find an icon something similar to the icons pictured to the right of this paragraph. Other times it is a text link like the one I have at the top of this blog. These links and icons vary from site to site, but after a few glances you will begin to become more familiar with them. When logged into your Google Reader account you can simply click on the link or icon and the following page will allow you to click on "Add To Google Reader". All set!
