You've built your website, it's been working well for a while, but it's time for an update. Keeping your website the same for too long is like not updating the paint on your home. Eventually it starts to look outdated. Looking at your website as something that needs to be refreshed and updated is the best way to ensure you get the most out of your online presence.

A website re-build or re-design can be daunting and does take some level of planning to ensure it's a success.  Things that you need to consider are similar to the things that go into the design of a new website, such as target market, prioritization of goals, your overall image, etc. Here are some important steps to take when planning to update your website.


Assessment - What is currently working well on your site and what isn't?
If there are areas of your current website that are working well, and attracting clients, there is no use in changing it. Make sure you take a good look at the analytics of your site and any user feedback you have received. Make a list of the things that are working and make note of why they are working well. At the same time, take a look at the areas that are performing poorly and try to come up with ways that may help to improve them.

Goals - Think about what you are trying to accomplish
Having the best looking logo design, great graphics and a site that looks better than your competitors is great, however, if you do not have a website that aligns well with your overall business plan and goals, it makes no difference.
Ensure you have a clear idea of what you want to accomplish with the website (more leads, sell more etc.). At this time take a look at some of your competitors to see what they are doing that works. This will help you get creative with things that could be used for your own website.

Targeted Content - Are there areas/pages you can remove?
Having an over cluttered website is common. Oftentimes by reviewing the information on your website, you can come up with ways to simplify it by either removing pages, or combining some. Think about your audience, how they are using your website and what information is crucial. Getting rid of any "extras" will only help your clients better navigate your site. Alternatively or in addition to this, you may find that other sections and pages need to be added as your business develops. Things like a blog or image gallery are very common today and can increase the traffic to your newly designed site.

Visual Appeal - Do your photos and images need to be updated?
Having photos on your website that are several years old can really date your website, even if the overall look of your site is current. Getting new photos taken can truly update the look of your site and give in an "instant facelift". If you are using stock photos, take a look at some new images. You can use the images as a way to completely alter your business's overall impression and image, or stick with your current overall feel. The images you use are an integral part of your website and are just as important as the overall design.

Priority - Is a full redesign right for you, right now?
If your website is working well for you, creating leads and supplying customers with the information they require, a full redesign may not be necessary. Perhaps your site might just need some design updates to keep it current and modern. Make sure you consider all your options before jumping in to a full re-design.

Qualifications - Working with the right re-designer
Creating a new design and re-designing are two different things. You want to ensure you are working with someone who has experience with re-designs as oftentimes re-designs are more complicated than creating a new design.  If your site is complex and you want to keep some areas of your site while removing others, you need someone with the experience to ensure the process is smooth.

Ready to start your re-design/re-build?
Webnames.ca is well equipped to help you with your re-design through the Essentials Program. Essentials is designed to help you whether you want to re-design an existing website or launch your business on the Internet.

Learn more about Essentials, and see how it can help you with your business website.

March 24th, 2011 marked the 4th year for YVR Twestival, where Webnames.ca was a proud sponsor.

What is Twestival? Here is a brief history from the Twestival official website:

Twestival® (or Twitter Festival) uses social media for social good by connecting communities offline on a single day to highlight a great cause and have a fun event. Twestival is the largest global grassroots social media fundraising initiative to date. Since 2009, volunteers have raised close to $1.2 million for 137 nonprofits. All local events are organized 100% by volunteers and 100% of all ticket sales and donations go direct to projects.
Twestival was born out of the idea that if cities were able to collaborate on an international scale, but work from a local level, it could have a spectacular impact. Over 200 international cities from Buenos Aires to Bangalore, Seattle to Seoul and Hong Kong to Honolulu have participated in Twestival.

This year's Twestival in Vancouver took place at the Vancouver Lookout on Friday March 24th, 2011. The purpose of the night was to raise funds in support of Beauty Night Society, a non-profit Canadian organization that builds self esteem and changes lives of women and youth living in poverty through three streams of programs: wellness, life skills development and makeovers.

The energy at The Vancouver Lookout was wonderful, as everyone was coming together for the great cause. There were many wonderful sponsors for the evening and Mayor Gregor Robertson even stopped in to make a speech and praised the organizers for such a great event.

Webnames was a proud sponsor of the night, supplying .tel cards for all the swag bags handed out at the end of the night to all attendees.




The event was a huge success, raising over $8,000 for Beauty Night! Globally the Twestivals raised over $300,000 for their respective charities! Great job to everyone involved.

Monitoring what people are saying about you or your business online is more important now than ever. Luckily, it's also become easier than ever as more and more great Social Media monitoring tools are becoming available. There are many tools out there to choose from, but here are 5 free ones that you should be using to monitor your brand and keep tabs on your social media buzz.

Social Mention - http://socialmention.com
Social Mention is a search engine that offers real-time social media search and analysis of chosen keywords. It searches through a multitude of platforms including blogs, events, news, videos and more. It shows you the metrics around various keywords and the overall "sentiment" (positive, negative, neutral). It provides you with graphs outlining top keywords, top users, top hashtags, allowing you to monitor anything. This includes but is not limited to, your brand, the city you live in, products you use etc. You can also get code for a free keyword monitoring widget.

Plancast - http://plancast.com
Plancast lets you filter through events happening anywhere through keywords. You can subscribe to get an RSS alert on any new event that matches the keywords you select. Keep track and monitor events happening in your area, competitor events, or conferences and tweetups that you may want to attend. This is a great tool to stay 'in the know' in your specific field of expertise. 

Watch That Page - http://watchthatpage.com
Watch That Page allows you to monitor your own page, Wikipedia, or any site for that matter. It lets you know when any new content (comments, forum posts etc.) has been posted. You'll receive an alert the moment any changes are made. This tool will help you stay on top of all new posts to your site and react in a timely manner.

Twitaholic - http://twitaholic.com
Twitaholic is a tool that lets you see where and how you rank among the other twitter users in the world, and in your own city. It gives you your basic stats and let you see the other most popular users in your geographic area. A great way to quickly see who the tastemakers are in your geographic area or other parts of the world.

Woopra - http://www.woopra.com
Woopra is a Web analytics tool that gives you data about how your users are interacting with your website. It allows you to see where the visitor came from, their location, the actions performed and then where they go next. While there is a free version of Woopra it is very limited, there are two low cost paid versions (bronze and silver starting at $4.95 per month), which will allow you to segment your visitors, and track trends over time as well as offering some customized reports.

If you are looking for new ways to monitor what's being said about you and your brand online, these are some great tools to get you started!

We haven't talked about group coupons in a while and I thought it would be nice if we did, as there are some interesting things happening in that industry.

Many of us subscribe to many different deal sites: ethicaldeal.com, LivingSocial.com, Grooster.com etc.  There are new entries in to the burgeoning Group Coupon industry all the time and it's difficult to keep up with them all.

OneSpout to the rescue.  They are a daily deal aggregator that captures all of the group coupon deals that are going on in your city.  This alleviates the need for you to subscribe to all of the deal companies and wade through that pile of email every day.  

Looking at the OneSpout roundup for Toronto, there were deal companies I had never heard of like FabFind.com, Dealicious.ca and MadDeal.com.  One of the nicest things about this site is that they are showing deals that you still have a few days to purchase. Those might have been lost in your regular email with the onslaught of new deals that you get every day.

But what if you are deal nut and have gone crazy buying every coupon under the sun and now you don't know what to do with them?

That's where Lifesta comes in.  Lifesta is an Aftermarket for group coupons. You can sell your coupon at the price you paid for it or less (if you want to unload it fast) and Lifesta takes a cut.  

Got coupons for Christmas that you can't/don't want to use - you can sell them off here and your family never need be the wiser.

The great thing about the explosion of the group coupon phenomenon is that they are literally EVERYWHERE. You can and should take advantage of that.

Going to Boston this summer and are crazy for horses - you can get a cheapie riding lesson

Jetting off to Edinburgh - you should have bought the Al Dente deal when you had the chance

Is Spain more your scene? The Madrid Groupalia  is offering a one night getaway to San Lorenzo de El Escorial

Let's take advantage of the daily deal craze before it goes the way of the pogo stick, pogs or MySpace. 

Recently, I wrote an article on group coupons that was posted on this blog.  It was tweeted at 8:45am on November 17th.  Then it got covered up by another tweet quite quickly which got me all bent out of shape.

So the marketing department kindly tweeted about it again at 3:45pm on the same day so that they no longer had to hear my complaints.

The click difference between the two tweets was startling.

The tweet at 8:45 am Pacific/11:45 am Eastern said:

New on Webnamesblog.ca: "Improving on the Group Coupon Phenomenon - Winning Deals for Consumers and Retailers"

The link to the blog post got a total of 3 clicks and only 1 on the first day it was posted.

The tweet at 3:45 pm Pacific/6:45 pm Eastern said:

Are you loving or leaving group coupons? Here's Lisa's take on how the group coupon phenomenon can be improved on:

The link to the blog post got a total of 22 clicks over two days.

We could look at the best time of day to post and what time zone most of your followers are in etc - but I would rather look at the content of the tweet - which one is better?

The first tweet tells you it's on our blog and it has a fairly dense title. It's off-putting in that it shouts "I could be a long and boring article".

The second tweet is friendly and speaks directly to the follower. It assumes the follower has an opinion about Groupon and their ilk. It assumes everyone on Twitter knows about group coupons full stop.

The word "take" suggests that the article will be short, snappy and have a controversial bent.

By asking a question in the tweet, you are starting the engagement process - the follower clicks the link, reads the article and hopefully leaves a comment. Maybe they retweet or reply to the original tweet.

The general rule of thumb is, if you have something interesting to say, post your tweet twice in one day so you can hit both East and West time zones.

My rule of thumb is, if you have something interesting to say, make your tweet inviting and conversational and your followers will engage with it.

Read Lisa's recent articles about Group Coupons:

• Improving on the Group Coupon Phenomenon - Winning Deals for Consumers and Retailers
• Retailers and Group Coupons - Should you participate? One Gal's Opinion

For disclosure purposes, I subscribe to every group coupon program that is available in Vancouver. I do this, not because I am cheap, but because I like to keep an eye on what is happening in the group couponing industry.

The business model for group buying should be:  volume purchases of goods should allow the manufacturer to produce it more cheaply and then pass those savings onto the consumer.

An example of this is books. The book store pays 40% less of the cover price for a book. If the book is $10, the book store pays $6 to the publisher. If a bookstore takes the book as non returnable, they get another 50% off or so.

If the book store is Amazon and they need a million copies of "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo", they call Penguin and say we want the book for $3 a copy for a million copies. Penguin then talks to their printer and for a million copies they can produce the book for $1 each copy so they say OK. Amazon then sells the book for $6 and everyone is happy, especially the consumer who did not have to pay the $12 cover price.

Groupon and their imitators, tend to offer group buying on services rather than goods.  For the most part the coupons are for spas, laser hair removal, restaurants, fitness classes and local attractions. The deal is "on" when enough people have purchased the coupon. The coupon companies take up to 50% of the face value of the coupon.

Groupon says it is "a city guide, a social tool and the best way to experience your city without paying full price." It is unlikely that it matters to either the coupon company or the service provider if the deal sells to one person or to 250 people.

The service provider will not be able to benefit from scale of service as they have not been able to produce their service more cheaply and capitalize on volume. The benefit to the service provider is break even, coupons not being redeemed and advertising exposure to new customers. For many of the service providers it is a money loser.

Let's turn our attention now to you and me - the consumer.  If you are savvy enough to have subscribed to Groupon, you have probably signed up for LivingSocial and Grooster and maybe a few others.

At this point however, coupon fatigue is setting in. Another mani/pedi deal? Another Laser Hair removal deal - how hairy do they think we are? More yoga deals in some difficult to get to location? As cheese shop and movie tickets deals get further and further apart, it is likely that we will see people unsubscribing and the sales begin to flatline and then fall off.

Where "service provider" couponing may be this year's big thing and next year's "no thing", group buying is a fantastic opportunity for companies that produce a consumer good.

Let's say you are a bike company like Norco, Brodie, Kona, Rocky Mountain or the always adorable, CCM from Canadian Tire.

You could offer your own group buying product - a 26 inch mountain bike with cromoly this and titanium that - for only $200 if 300 people plunk down their credit cards.

You can source that volume of parts for a much cheaper rate than you would normally get them for this bike that is specifically being made for this group.  4 weeks later you ship out the bikes to the new owners.  The new owners got an awesome deal, you sold bikes that only cost you $50 to make for $200, and you did not have to give $100 to a coupon company.

Now that's the way group buying should work! It would be nice to see this alternative approach develop in 2011 and offer real value to both consumers and manufacturer-retailers alike.

Make sure to check out Lisa's last blog post, Retailers and Group Coupons - Should you participate? One Gal's Opinion, for more information on the Group Coupon Phenomenon.

(Above image from: http://www.letsdeal.se/)

  

We launched our Search Engine Optimization service last month and I wanted to give you a taste of what I learned from our (frankly) brilliant SEO consultants.

There are some fast and easy things you can do that should garner you noticeable improvements in your search engine ranking.

#1 quick win - The Title Tag.
Your website's title tag is the first piece of real estate that Google indexes. If it just says Benson and Sons you've given the engines nothing to work with and unless people already know about you, it doesn't say what you do. But if you say "Benson and Sons -Winnipeg Area Private Investigators and Bail Bondsmen",  you've told the search engines where you are and what your business does.

#2 quick win - Words, Words, Words 
Google loves words and primarily indexes words. Your landing page should have at least 250 words on it and some of those words must be the key search terms that you want to be found on. So for Benson and Sons I would suggest the landing page have something like this:

"Benson and Sons is a Winnipeg based private investigation firm that also specialized in bail bonding.

Our certified investigators and bondsmen are discreet and are available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Bonds and investigations no longer need to be the embarrassment they once were! You can make inquires by phone, email, online or in person. Our process is simple. Once you contact us we will get back to you within the hour. We will listen to your problem and come up with a solution plan that can be acted upon quickly.

No bond is too high and no investigation too small.  Bail for a loved one falsely accused of being the Kissing Bandit? We've got you covered. Would you like us to find out who the real Bandit is?  Our state of the art undercover and online sleuthing will complement your solicitors work.

We take all manner of payment for our bond and investigation services - credit card, mortgage lien, high performance vehicles, estate jewelry and the like.

We service Winnipeg and southern Manitoba as well.  Call Benson and Sons today. Our satisfied customers all say the same thing "I have never had my bail bond and private investigation needs handled so quickly and efficiently".

Should you need us to work in any other province; we will gladly assist one of our many professional associates in those provinces who are certified bondsmen and investigators. At no time will we hand off the work to another company.  Your satisfaction is our only goal."

The key words that they would be found on would be : Winnipeg, bail, bond(s), investigator(s), investigation.

This block of text uses the key words organically.  It covered off what we do and our location. Both of these are essential to being found.

Our resident filmmaker Rami, shot to the first page of Google (from page 4) on the term Vancouver Cinematographer by changing his Title tag. It had been Rami Films Personal Portfolio and then became Rami Films Vancouver Cinematographer.

He also made sure that he peppered his blog posts with the two words and then added those posts to his blog roll on his main page at www.ramifilms.com.

Our SEO service consultants can help you figure out which words you should be trying to be found on. They can tell you how to use the description fields for your pages and the alt tags for your pictures.

They'll look at your competition and figure out what you can do to leap over them in the rankings. They'll teach you about links in and links out.

So give us a call today and we'll get you set up with a consultant ASAP. And if you want some snappy copy for your website we can help with that too! Just give us a call.

Building on its history of exceptional support for its customers, Webnames.ca is proud to announce our new professional services arm, Power for Small Business.


Under Power for Small Business, we are now offering a new service called Essentials, which provides clients with everything they need to succeed online, including:

• Custom designed website
• Web strategy
• Search engine optimization
• Twitter
• Website analytics
• Personalized training on the above applications

For small business owners, organizations and individuals, Essentials allows you to take the first critical step towards achieving your business goals.

We ensure that your website follows best practices; we teach you how to increase your website traffic and engage with your target audience; and we position you for continuous future growth.

Through our consultations, personal tutorials and documentation (all included with the program), we will train you how to maintain and update your website, as well as use social media effectively to each more prospects. And of course, if you would rather have us maintain your website for you, we have flexible and affordable maintenance options available.

Complete program information on Essentials, including customer feedback and additional services is available on our website.
 
It's an exciting time over here at Webnames.ca! Understanding your needs is what we've always done best and we developed the Essentials Program based on your feedback about wanting a complete online solution.
 

Call 1-866-976-9835 for a free Essentials consultation and find out how we can help you - in a brand new way!

There is a new game in town and the name of that game is Group Coupons.

Group Coupons is an email subscriber based system of offering deep discounts on a product to consumers ONLY if enough people purchase the coupon.

The major player in this market is Groupon. Groupon started in 2008 and has really taken off in late 2009 and now 2010. Their success has bred a host of new players such as Grooster, Good News, Living Social and Ethical Deal.

The group coupon value to the consumer is clear - half price or better on goods and service. The value to the retailer is a little less clear.

If you have a good, say jewelry, and you normally sell it for $50, the likelihood is that you paid $25 for it. Now you offer a Group Coupon of "$50 of jewelry for $25". Your coupon company takes half the $25 collected from the consumer and you get the other $12.50. That is a clear loss of $12.50 to you.

When faced with the math, Group Coupons look like a bad deal for retailers.

But you can mitigate that loss. What if you only offer your highest margin product? You paid $10 for Object A. You regularly sell it for $80. You coupon it for $40 - you get $20 and you still make $10.

You could make a decision to go for the loss.  You know the true value to your company is that the email went out to 40,000 or more consumers and then it got posted on Twitter and Facebook and the email got forwarded around to non subscribers. None of these people ever knew you existed and now they do.

Yesterday I got the Groupon for a cheese shop. I had a conversation at lunch with a friend who works in my building and we were talking about food and he said "I got this thing forwarded to me today about a deal on cheese".  I said I knew and then we talked about the cheese shop and expensive yummy cheeses. That same day, I went to the beach after work with another friend and she said  "Did you see the Groupon today for the cheese shop?". Two friends who don't know each other both mentioned it to me and now we're contemplating a cheese tasting party. Now that's effective email marketing.

If you choose the loss, put a reasonable limit on how many coupons you are going to sell - say 40 or 50. I've seen a few of the spas hit 1400 coupons and I know it will take them ages to service all those people.  Will the experience be good enough to bring that consumer back again?  How will the coupon activity impact the spa's current clientele? Will everyone wind up with rushed appointments and difficulty booking their next appointment even a month in advance?

For Service businesses, I recommend a limit of 250 coupons. You know you can service that number without upsetting your staff or your current clientele.

Restaurants seem to be the big winners in Group Coupons.  Like the Entertainment Book, these Group Coupons get consumers to restaurants that they would not normally go to. Diners are going to spend more than the value of the coupon and the margins on food and alcohol are pretty good. Put a limit on the number of coupons that can be redeemed per table and add an expiry date for the coupon and you are good to go.

You may also want to factor in the "unredeemed" coupons. If you sell 1000 and only 700 get redeemed, it could make up for the loss. A friend said that she can't remember all of the Groupons that she has. She's got "unredeemed" written all over her.

In summary here are my recommendations for retailers and Group Coupons:

• There is a huge value in the email/viral marketing and getting to new consumers who have never heard of you.
• Retailers with low margins should limit their coupons to 40 or 50 - high margin retailers, the sky's the limit!
• Service based businesses should limit their coupons to 250.
• Restaurants should limit the number of coupons accepted per table and apply an expiry date.
• "Unredeemed" may mean money in your pocket.

Further Reading & Case Studies

Groupon marketing results study - Phillip Greenspun Blog

Shops grapple with fallout from group coupons - MSN.com

When I used to think about Foursquare, my mind would go to rubber balls or squares drawn on pavement. Now the first place my mind goes to when I hear that term is social media.

So What Is It?

Foursquare is a location-based social network that connects you with your friends and syncs with your other social media like Twitter and Facebook. However,  unlike Twitter or Facebook, Foursquare is about sharing the places you visit (restaurants, clubs, venues, retail stores, etc.) and recommending them to other people..

The application allows you to share your physical location with friends. So, when you walk into a bar or restaurant or store, you "check-in" (Foursquare's term) on your cellphone or mobile device, and your friends cansee where you are on a Foursquare map.

Foursquare engages a local audience by encouraging them to explore their neighbourhoods and cities and rewards them for doing so.  

By combining friends and city guide elements with game-like technology, Foursquares' members earn points leading to "Mayorships" and can uncover all kinds of bonuses for not only trying new places, but going back to old favorites.

Playing the Game

As a Foursquare user, you can earn points every time you check-in at a location, unless you check in to the same location repeatedly. Foursquare encourages its users to step outside the box, awarding more points for visiting new places, trying new things, or going to multiple venuesin one night.  After the network has been built a user can earn points for giving recommendations and crossing off their "to-do" list ( a virtual "note to self" about what you should do or where you should go next).

The goal of the game however is not just to try new locations or revisit old ones, you need to claim these locations, and by doing so earn points towards a "Mayorship".  Becoming a mayor gives someone bragging rights for being the person who comes to a specific location the most and as businesses know, customers love being rewarded for visiting places they genuinely like. 
 
(Congrats to @Yarbo on Twitter who became the new Mayor of Webnames.ca yesterday!)

For your mayorship, you're not just competing against your friends; you're competing with everyone in your location that week (because on Sunday at midnight, the scores are all reset to zero- Monday is always a new game). Are you beginning to see how this can be good for business?

Foursquare for Business

Take me as an example. I recently moved to Vancouver, a big-ish city in which most people stick to their neighborhoods - Kitsilano, Main Street, Gastown, Yaletown, North Van, West Van - you get the picture. I already have a circle of friends in Vancouver who are on Foursquare. As a user, I can add tips for other locals to know where go in a 'hood and what not to bother with.  Before I even check out a new place (which Foursquare encourages me to do  ... remember new places equal more points), I already will have an idea of what to expect from what other people are saying about it.  A business can develop some serious word of mouth advertising through Foursquare these days.

As Foursquare continues to develop, so does the way businesses are using it to interact with customers and potential customers. Similar to Yelp, businesses can encourage their patrons to post reviews and also offer rewards to their customers. A café or shop can let its community know they are "in the game" by registering on Foursquare and adding their mailing information to the list for free Foursquare window decals. From there a business can promote itself by rewarding customers with discounts for checking in or even freebies like Starbucks, Sports Authority, Ben and Jerry's and Whole Foods have done.

To cite a local example, Granville Entertainment Group recently did a promotion that saw them raffle off Canucks tickets to FourSquare mayors who visited the company's Doolin's Irish Pub on a specific evening.

For businesses, the simple act of recognizing customers as "regulars" can better their relationship with them and encourage repeat customers. Since joining Foursquare, some Starbucks have seen a 50% increase in check-ins at locations and AJ Bombers (a Milwaukee burger joint) has seen a 30% increase in menu item purchases (Foursquare Blog, 2010). How is this possible? Well, Foursquare isn't exactly fringe anymore. This past spring it surpassed 1 million registered in April 2010, and since then has it has only picked up momentum! 
 
So why not get in the game? Not only is Foursquare a good way to connect with new customers and reward returning ones, like Twitter it has become an important tool for monitoring your brand and keepting tabs on the competetion. Sign up and play a part in growing a community around your business.

Learn More

Learn the lingo at Foursquare? An Introductory Guide by PublicRelationsblogger.com

Join in by visiting Foursquare's Business Page

Visit the Foursquare Church for news and articles 

  

The 6th annual Northern voice personal blogging and social media conference took place this past Friday and Saturday at the University of British Columbia. I attended once again; although I was unable to go on Friday, Saturday's experience was no less awesome.

The conference got a LOT bigger this year, and as such the organizers moved into the high-tech Life Sciences building on the UBC campus.  This building was great for the talks, and Q&A style portions of the conference as the lecture theaters are fully equipped.  They had crazy projectors, and one of the rooms even had a built in PA system with  microphones set up at each seat; very nice!

This year's keynote speaker Chris Messina put on a charismatic and impassioned talk about the open web, where the Internet heading and what the Internet can become.  His style incorporated interesting personal anecdotes and observations from the industry at large.  

Then, there were the sessions, and really only two of the Saturday sessions stuck in my mind.  The first real interesting one was "A Four Letter Word For Sex", which I won't describe much more then that, as the topics were a little on the taboo side. Yet, the subject sparked a very interesting Q&A session, with some smart and provocative questions for the panelists. Funny enough, one of the panelists couldn't make it, as they came down with Mono.

Also new to this year's conference - the Northern Voice organizers filmed everything to make it available online. In fact they streamed most of it live as it was happening. So if you missed the conference, but wanted to hear the speakers, fret not because it all will be available online in a little while. In the meantime, you will have to make do perusing Flickr sets and photos submitted to the Northern Voice Flickr group.

If you missed Malcolm Gladwell's presentation at Vancouver's F5 EXPO on April 7th, here's a chance to participate in a second screening.
 
Many people disagreed with Gladwell's perspective on social media. His mile wide and inch deep philosophy may be accurate, but he failed to look at the benefits of a mile wide network for business transactions. Stressing the need for deep relationships, Gladwell feels these are essential for revolutions. Are weak ties enough to drive your business forward?
 
On Thursday, April 29th social media enthusiasts and Gladwell fans will gather at Ceilis Irish Pub for a screening of Malcolm Gladwell's presentation, followed by an interactive debate/discussion on the future of social media and what it means to business.

Here are the event details:

Cost: $20 or $22 at the door. Includes light appies and drink.
When: Thurs April 29th
Where: Ceilis Irish Pub 670 Smithe St. (Granville & Smithe)
Details: http://f5series.f5-expo.com
 
Can't attend in person? Sign up to watch the debate via live stream from anywhere in the world (and chat with your fellow online attendees). Online version of the event takes place on Mingleverse.com. Register here: http://mingleverse.com/mingles/1172!
 

A WordPress Newbie Sets up her First WordPress Website!

Here at Webnames, we are bullish for WordPress.  We're helping any and all of our customers get their webhosting set up so it can take a Wordpress install.

My personal website was done in WordPress but I had the help of our web designer to get it up.  So yesterday I thought I might take a stab at setting up a WordPress site myself and making it rock with cool plugins.

I had Max help me with webhosting database setup and the initial php configuration for WordPress.  The webhosting set up was a little tricky and thankfully Max knew all the best practices for the .php edit (to avoid getting hacked). (By the way, Webnames.ca provides free, managed WordPress installs to its webhosting customers.)

Download the latest version of WordPress from www.WordPress.org. Edit the wp-config-sample.php  (call support for help) and save it as wp-config.php and then FTP the contents of the downloaded WordPress folder up to your new website.

WordPress prompts you for a couple of things like a password and Blog Name and then you're ready to download a theme.  I picked the Constructor theme and downloaded it while on my new site.  It self installed - so that was easy.

Now I wanted to add my Twitter stream o' consciousness.   I chose to "add new" in  the plugins menu item and searched for Twitter.  A bunch of options came up, I reviewed them and "installed and activated" one of them.  I edited it so it used my Twitter account and then I previewed my web site.  Nothing. Hmmm.

Now I was reduced to reading the readme for the plugin.  Turns out I need to "add the widget to the sidebar". Hmmmm.  But I downloaded a plugin.  How was I supposed to turn a plugin into a widget?  After much Googling and head scratching it turned out that the plugin was already a widget.

So I went into widgets and dragged the Twitter widget into the section called sidebar.  I previewed my web site and my twitter feed was there!  But it was unattractive.  I went back to the well and downloaded a new twitter plugin called Xhanch that also was a widget ( I catch on fast), dragged it into the sidebar, deactivated the old widget/plugin and then I had a much more attractive twitter feed.

With my new love of plugins/widgets I downloaded one for Delicious (smartly called Delicious for WordPress) and it put itself in the middle of my blog.  Which was weird. I had to move it to the sidebar and I would really like it to go somewhere else but I don't know where or how to get it there.  So I need to work on that bit of it.

I added a page (easy) and then installed my .tel contact info as an iframe.  That was easy as it was just a piece of code that was on the Telnic website that I plopped on the new page. It came up perfectly.

Inserting a video seemed like the next cool thing, so I downloaded a non widget plugin called Smart YouTube, and read the readme on how to use it. I found a YouTube video I wanted to embed, followed the instructions and the video popped up like magic.  I was totally into the WordPress swing.

Then I couldn't think of anything else to do other than change the colours, which I did and then promptly changed back as my new choices hurt my eyes.

From stem to stern my fiddling around took about an hour and half and I got a tricked out and I must say, somewhat ugly website.   But fixing the look will be what the next hour and half will be for!

Resources:

Here are some "Best of WordPress Plugins" lists from 2009 and 2010 that  you might want to check out when planning your WordPress Blog or Website:

Business 2.0 - 30+ Must Have WordPress Plugins

Mashable - 20 of the Best SEO Plugins for WordPress

Site Sketch 101 - The 15 Best WordPress Plugins to Use in 2010

 
 

I do a lot of research on the trends in Social Media and where its future may lay.  Professional marketers bang on and on about how it is time consuming for companies to be involved in social media with no clear return on investment.

Large and small businesses are jumping into social media for more transparency and engagement with their customers but most have no way of justifying the headcount that comes with participating in this sphere.

I don't tweet for work (well not often) but I do have a personal account.  Currently I follow 190 people/companies and about 180 follow me.  I follow 2 friends and my sister and the rest is made up of other artists, art bloggers, eco nuts, work related people, random people I found to be funny, 3 celebrities, many food columnists and a whack of Vancouver neighbourhood tweeters.

I think of this stream that comes in, as digested news and musings from people I don't know, but over time like and trust as we have similar ideologies.

When I see a post from one of the art bloggers about the gallery openings in town this weekend I think (a) I could go to this one or that one and (b) thank you for taking the time to find out what is happening and sending it off to me so that I did not have to do the painful research myself.

Some of neighbourhood tweeters I follow will alert me to some food event or farmers market or some such.  I didn't have to do a thing. 

Tonight I am making a grilled cheese sandwich that I found from a link to the Grilled Cheese Academy (www.grilledcheeseacademy.com) that was posted by someone I follow.

I've had people suggest names for a new art co-op I'm starting.  I've suggested a hotel in Italy to another.  I read tons of the articles that work related people post and always find something relevant that I can apply to my job.

At the F5 Expo earlier this week, Malcolm Gladwell said "The first and most significant fact about the Internet and all the social media technologies that have been spun out about the Internet, it is an engine of weak social ties and not strong ties." [Read the article] I don't disagree, but when good recommendations come streaming at me in easy to read chunks, then those "weak social ties" become valuable to me by their quality and timeliness.

The upshot of Twitter?  "I told two friends, and they told two friends and so on, and so on...."

I like getting recommendations.  I like giving recommendations.  As a business you should be hoping that someone is recommending you to me or that I am recommending you to them.

Here is a "big picture" look at what happened on the Internet in 2009.

This data was gathered and reported on by the cool folks over at the Pingdom blog, Royal Pingdom. A complete list of the references for this data is available below, so attention stats junkies, get ready to bookmark!

In the words of the people at Pingdom, "prepare for information overload, but in a good way." 

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Email

90 trillion - The number of emails sent on the Internet in 2009.
247 billion - Average number of email messages per day.
1.4 billion - The number of email users worldwide.
100 million - New email users since the year before.
81% - The percentage of emails that were spam.
92% - Peak spam levels late in the year.
24% - Increase in spam since last year.
200 billion - The number of spam emails per day (assuming 81% are spam).

Websites

234 million - The number of websites as of December 2009.
47 million - Added websites in 2009.
Web servers
13.9% - The growth of Apache websites in 2009.
-22.1% - The growth of IIS websites in 2009.
35.0% - The growth of Google GFE websites in 2009.
384.4% - The growth of Nginx websites in 2009.
-72.4% - The growth of Lighttpd websites in 2009.

Domain names (Our personal favourite!)

81.8 million - .COM domain names at the end of 2009.
12.3 million - .NET domain names at the end of 2009.
7.8 million - .ORG domain names at the end of 2009.
76.3 million - The number of country code top-level domains (e.g. .CN, .UK, .DE, etc.).
187 million - The number of domain names across all top-level domains (October 2009).
8% - The increase in domain names since the year before.

Internet users

1.73 billion - Internet users worldwide (September 2009).
18% - Increase in Internet users since the previous year.
738,257,230 - Internet users in Asia.
418,029,796 - Internet users in Europe.
252,908,000 - Internet users in North America.
179,031,479 - Internet users in Latin America / Caribbean.
67,371,700 - Internet users in Africa.
57,425,046 - Internet users in the Middle East.
20,970,490 - Internet users in Oceania / Australia.

Social media

126 million - The number of blogs on the Internet (as tracked by BlogPulse).
84% - Percent of social network sites with more women than men.
27.3 million - Number of tweets on Twitter per day (November, 2009)
57% - Percentage of Twitter's user base located in the United States.
4.25 million - People following @aplusk (Ashton Kutcher, Twitter's most followed user).
350 million - People on Facebook.
50% - Percentage of Facebook users that log in every day.
500,000 - The number of active Facebook applications.

Images

4 billion - Photos hosted by Flickr (October 2009).
2.5 billion - Photos uploaded each month to Facebook.
30 billion - At the current rate, the number of photos uploaded to Facebook per year.

Videos

1 billion - The total number of videos YouTube serves in one day.
12.2 billion - Videos viewed per month on YouTube in the US (November 2009).
924 million - Videos viewed per month on Hulu in the US (November 2009).
182 - The number of online videos the average Internet user watches in a month (USA).
82% - Percentage of Internet users that view videos online (USA).
39.4% - YouTube online video market share (USA).
81.9% - Percentage of embedded videos on blogs that are YouTube videos.

Malicious software

148,000 - New zombie computers created per day (used in botnets for sending spam, etc.)
2.6 million - Amount of malicious code threats at the start of 2009 (viruses, trojans, etc.)
921,143 - The number of new malicious code signatures added by Symantec in Q4 2009.

Data sources:

Website and web server stats from Netcraft.

Domain name stats from Verisign and Webhosting.info.

Internet user stats from Internet World Stats.

Web browser stats from Net Applications.

Email stats from Radicati Group.

Spam stats from McAfee.

Malware stats from Symantec  and McAfee.

Online video stats from Comscore, Sysomos and YouTube.

Photo stats from Flickr and Facebook.

Social media stats from BlogPulse; Pingdom (here and here), Twittercounter, Facebook and GigaOm.