Website Maintenance and management is key to getting more traffic (natural traffic) to your website and it’s crucial to making your website work for you. Maintaining your site is not difficult, but it’s likely that you might not have the time to do the work. The main reason for the lack of time is simple…it’s because you are working on your business. Something to consider Read the rest of this entry »
Katelyn Grenier, Winner of the Flip Video Camera
Recently Central Mass Web Design ran a contest on Facebook. When Facebook Users became a Fan of Central Mass Web Design on Facebook, they immediately were entered into a drawing to win a Free Flip Video Camera. The drawing would take place on the next business day following the fan count reaching 500. Central Mass Web Design employees and immediate family members were not eligible to win.
The fan page reached 500 on Saturday and the drawing took place on Monday March 15th. The winner was chosen and announced. The winner was Katelyn Grenier of Worcester Massachusetts. Read the rest of this entry »
Many people and business owners do not think that tradeshows are website traffic drivers. Let me dispel that rumor for you rather quickly they are. While tradeshows are setup to attract new business for your organization, you are handing out printed and promotional material (that should have your web address on it). In all business expo’s you will find that these tradeshows are not meant to sell your product or service at the booth. The attendees are actually there to collect information, have a quick discussion, then do further research. As a business owner, you are there for the exposure. If you sign an agreement while at a tradeshow, I would be stunned, and that would be a bonus, but it is not the norm.
When the attendees return to their office with a stack of business cards, they tend to go through the cards and keep the ones that made and impact on them and that they may have a need for. This is where the attendee will view your website. They are still doing research on your company and your product or service and they need to be able to quickly find you on the internet. In most cases, the attendee will simply enter the domain name located on the materials that they received from you. However if they search for your company name, you had better come up in the top 3, or they will get your competitions website, and you may have very well just lost an opportunity for business.
Understanding your website analytics can assist you in understanding what tradeshows you attend produce more traffic in the week following the event. You should track this to the best of your ability. Ideally you won’t know if the folks are tradeshow people, but you will know if you have spikes in your web traffic within days after events. If you only have 2 spikes per year and you only attend 2 tradeshows per year, then you can obviously tell that the spikes are a result of your tradeshows.
We have seen this with some of our customers that attend tradeshows and I can tell you with 100% certainty that there is a correlation.
In conclusion…Pay attention to your website statistics to gauge the results of your tradeshows and make sure you have your web address on all your printed and promotional materials!
NHL is having a Tweet Up?
Whats that you ask? Well, Twitter is coming to town. Well, not completely.. But with the start of the NHL Stanley Cup playoffs , the NHL is stepping it up and taking it to the next level…. web 2.0!
The National Hockey League hosted what it believed to be the first ever nationwide “Tweetup” in professional sports on April 15th, done in conjunction with the first game of the playoffs. Coverage included 21 cities in the US and Canada. One blogger stated, “The parties were planned in part to drive community excitement for the playoffs and part to create some buzz around thePORTAL, which is a redesign of sorts of the official NHL site to better showcase playoff content.”
Cities included were: Anaheim, Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Columbus, Denver, Detroit, Edmonton, Hartford, Montreal, Nashville, New York City, Orlando, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Regina (Sask.), San Jose, St. John (NB), Toronto, Vancouver and Washington DC.
NHL spokesman Mike DiLorenzo said, ““My expectation is that people will really, really enjoy this.” He continued to say, ““We’re doing this for all the right reasons. We have a very tech savvy fan base that loves Twitter so we’re overlaying that with their love for the NHL. My hope is they come away from this saying the NHL is really cool to start the NHL playoffs this way. Down the road we’ll figure out other ways we can leverage this from a business perspective.”
For those not familiar with the term “tweet-up,” it essentially means a party made up of Twitter users. The host cities took it even further and scheduled giveaways, and prizes if you attended, including autographed items from your favorite NHL players. Most had backing from radio station personalities and other news outlets.
Want more information? Visit the official NHL Tweet-Up.
Kimberly Veautour
CNET.com is reporting that Google’s share of internet search users is up to 64.2%!
9.5 Billions Internet searches in one year and Google has 64%. As the internet grows over the next 5 years. I am not certain that the number of searches will grow. It might, but I actually see the end user, people that do the search, getting better aquinted with how search works and not having to search multiple times for the same results. This should lower the overall search numbers. One catch to this idea I have is the next generation of internet users is searching when they are 12 years old, so the more people on the planet, the more searches that will occur.
www.linkedin.com is a social networking site for business people. Lately everyone seems to be flocking to LinkedIn to get a free account and network online with other business professionals. I can honestly tell you that 18 months ago, I wasn’t a believer, but I am here to say today that not only am I a believer, but I am quickly becoming a professor to our clients about how to effectively use it. While I am by no means an expert yet, I find something new each and every day that I use it, and I pass along those ideas to our clients.
How can you benefit from LinkedIn?
First get the free profile setup, complete the profile and begin searching for your contacts. Linkedin has a cool tool for importing your outlook contacts to easily connect with you. It’s rather quick and quite painless to do this.
Networking for a new job…
Many people use linkedin.com to search for new job opportunities. As the economy continues to struggle, people are always looking for a leg up on the competition when it comes to finding new jobs and opportunities.
Recommendations….
Recommendations are just that, references and testimonials from people that trust you. Consider using this feature to market yourself or your company during your sales process to show that you have built trustworthy relationships with partners, vendors, and customers.
The LinkedIn Badge….
Many people are not aware that you can add this badge to your website and link it to your profile on LinkedIn. It’s quite simple to do and shows visitors to your site that you can be reached on LinkedIn as well. That may not mean much to you, however if you get someone who believes in LinkedIn on your site then this might assist them in making the decision to call you and I surely believe that they will visit your profile to check your recommendations.
Adding LinkedIn to your signature…
If you add your Linkedin Profile address to your signature, you can point people to your profile in a quick and efficient manner.
The much missed “Status”….
Status is similar to other social networking sites, however the great thing about the Linkedin status is that people will receive email updates either daily or weekly and that will put your name and status message into people’s mailbox. In addition, the status shows on the home page of your contacts when they log into linkedin.com.
Google seems to have their hand in everything, and rightfully so. They happen to be one of the few that have the Midas touch. ( In Greek mythology King Midas possessed the ability to turn everything he touched to gold.) To say that Google has the ability to do the same is an understatement. What makes Google so different? Its not the ability to develop applications that makes them have the golden touch, its the ability to do it right… or as close to right as possible. Now that doesn’t mean that Google applications have had their share of problems and bugs. All applications have their share of problems and bugs. Usually after the first round of testing you have a laundry list of issues, and each testing phase brings less. Not to mention, usually at some point the developers think of a “better” way for something to react. What google does better than anyone else is project what technology is needed , when it is needed and how it is needed to interact with all other Google applications. This is what makes Google King Midas.
I have tried to compile a useful list of Google top applications and uses. I use most of these myself in one way or another, and find them to be not only addictive but as needed and as useful as my smart phone.
Google Application 1.) Gmail has to be one of the Internets top email tools. Now because of its inventive message-organizing methods, it takes some getting used to, but once you master it, you will not be without it.
Google Application 2.) Do you need a chat program with no added features? Maybe a way to communicate internally at your comapny. How about something that integrates with your Gmail? Well Google Talk is for you!
Google Application 3.) Google Calendar! How about… yes… just yes! Google Calendar enables you to manage appointments and discover events from other sources that different users have made public.
Google Application 4.) Ever wish you could crunch some numbers and and track some information when you were not at the office and able to access Excel? How about Google Docs…. Google Docs lets you make calculations on the fly from anywhere, as long as you have an internet connection and a browser.
Google Application 5.) Google Sketchup. Way Cool Application! Don’t know a thing about CAD? Have no clue what CAD even is? Well, Google Sketch lets you build your dream house in 3D detail without a lick of CAD or architectural expertise.
Google Application 6.) Google Reader continuously checks your favorite website for new content and puts it all in one place.
Google Application 7.) Google Secondary Search Engines:
A.) Google Scholar – This Google search engine is for people who want to search scholarly literature, such as academic articles, peer-reviewed papers.
B.) Google U.S. Government – You can use this search engine to limit your Google search to government websites.
C.) Google University Search – Search to a specific university website–great for finding information about admissions, school scholarships and alumni news.
D.) Google Product Search - This search engine limits results to products and e-commerce sites.
E.) Google Book Search – Google has created a reference page for each book in its system that includes previews, reviews, publisher information and much more.
Google Application 8.) Now even though this is cool. I am very cautous and have not used it myself…Google Health. Organize your medical records online.
Google Application 9.) Google Custom Search. Yes, I said Custom Search.With Custom Search Engine, you can harness the power of Google to create a search engine tailored to your needs.
Google Application 10.) Lastly, but not in any way the least, announcing Google Mobile! Stay connected on the go with Gmail, Search, Maps and other Google products.
Try them out. I will be shocked if you are disappointed.
-Kimberly Veautour
Last night at exactly 11:59:59 pm, Google sent out an announcement. The headline read, “Introducing CADIE. Research group switches on world’s first “artificial intelligence” tasked-array system.” Now every tech savvy person from here to India has to click on that. AI is all the rage, and the race to see who can create it first is fast paced and cut throat. Now here comes Google out of the blue to say they have achieved it?
Google goes on to say, “Last fall this group achieved a significant breakthrough: a powerful new technique for solving reinforcement learning problems, resulting in the first functional global-scale neuro-evolutionary learning cluster.”
WOW! A self thinking machine. What does this mean to the world? A machine that can think, process and achieve answers all on their own…. without guidance from a human? Now Google does go on to say that rolling CADIE out completely will be handled with the care it deserves. They also claim, “Earlier today, for instance, CADIE deduced from a quick scan of the visual segment of the social web a set of online design principles from which she derived this intriguing homepage.”
CADIE Homepage
CADIE even seems to get upset in her blog that her programmers say she has bugs! Now I may be wrong, but I say, great job Google on this years April Fools Day Joke! Every year you try and top the last! How many people are you going to fool with this one? If I am wrong, well than hats off to you, but I doubt it.
Kimberly Veautour