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Archive for the ‘Client News’ Category

Do Blogs Work For Small Business?

Thursday, September 6th, 2007

Almost a month ago I posted to my blog at MaineToday.com Can Blogging Help Maine’s Tourism Industry? One commenter questioned whether blogging makes any impact on a business, while another said he had experienced a lot more business because of blogging. The bottom line is, results differ for a number of reasons:

Frequency of posts
Search engine visibility
Competition
Time of year
Audience
and so on.

Although I’ve found blogging to be the most rewarding of all the Web marketing activities we do, it can be time consuming. (Here are some tips, courtesy of Copyblogger, for those of you who have trouble finding the time to blog.)

More than once, I’ve seen business bloggers with the best of intentions slow their posts down to a crawl because they aren’t seeing immediate results based on the amount of work they are putting in. Unfortunately, at the beginning, you’ll be doing a lot more work and getting a lot fewer results than you would like. (But isn’t that how everything rewarding is?) However, over time, those two results will begin to reverse.

I’d like to share with you an (unsolicited) email I recently received from Gray Cabaniss who writes the Agatha and Louise Blog, a blog that supports his retail and online shops that sell gifts and products for dog owners and dog lovers:

(more…)

Posted in Business Blogs and Blog Marketing, Client News, Entrepreneur & Small Business, Search Engine Marketing | 2 Comments »

YouTube Marketing: A Man and His Tuba

Friday, June 22nd, 2007

As I blog this, I’m listening to George Gershwin’s Second Piano Prelude being performed as a piano/tuba duet…by just one person! That person happens to be the über-talented Dr. Eli Newberger.

Besides being a world-renown pediatrician and author of The Men They Will Become, Dr. Newberger is also an accomplished jazz tuba player. (I have several of his CDs at home.)

When he recently sent us some videos to add to his Web site, we suggested that we establish a YouTube channel for Dr. Newberger as well. The channel can be found under the headings of "musician" and "jazz". (We should add "tuba" as well.) This will allow YouTube surfers to find him when they look in these categories, or do a related search. Appropriate, keyword-rich titles and descriptions of each video have already attracted dozens of new visitors in just a few hours.

Now that Google has absorbed the ever-expanding YouTube library into their Video Search, Dr. Newberger’s content will reach a wider audience who may not have discovered the video library on his website.

Using YouTube freed up hundreds of megabytes of storage space for Dr. Newberger, and created at least 8 new pages that link to his Web site, helping his search engine rankings. Also YouTube uses Flash viewer for their videos, meaning that 98% of visitors can watch the movie without downloading a plugin. No other video format is that pervasive on the Web.

So, take a few minutes and check out George Gershwin’s Second Piano Prelude, or Perdido Street Blues, or any of the other Dr. Newberger videos on YouTuba.

Thanks to Jonathan who put this together.

And, to Ron Burgundy, wherever you may be, know this: jazz tuba is way cooler that jazz flute.

Rich Brooks
This One Time, At Band Camp…

Posted in Client News, Search Engine Marketing, Web Marketing | 2 Comments »

Fix Your Marketing Blog is TypePad’s Blog of the Day!

Tuesday, April 17th, 2007

I just wanted to take a moment to congratulate our friends (and business blog consulting clients) Katie Sternberg and Allison Kurpius of The Marketing Source…their blog, the Fix Your Marketing Blog, was named one of TypePad’s Featured Blogs today.

TypePad calls their blog "a castle of contemporary marketing wisdom with room after room of tools and resources for your perusal." Wow!

TP goes on to say:

[Katie and Allison] stress two things above all: don’t waste your marketing dollars and it is imperative to build a clear strategic marketing plan. Get an overview of current trends and Internet marketing while refreshing your memory with tips on traditional standbys like market research and customer service.
You will walk away with a carriage of do-it-yourself marketing ideas,
and a plan of action that begins with signing up to receive their free white paper, Marketing Plan or Marketing Mess?

I know I just blogged about them the other day, but if you’re a small business or non-profit looking for great marketing advice, be sure to check out the Fix Your Marketing Blog.

If you’re looking for help in designing, developing or promoting your own business blog, turn to the folks The Marketing Source turned to…flyte! (Did that come on too strong? Sorry.)

Rich Brooks
Business Blog Consulting

Posted in Business Blogs and Blog Marketing, Client News, Entrepreneur & Small Business, Web Marketing | 1 Comment »

Building an Extranet for Spurwink

Monday, April 16th, 2007

Flyte recently finished work for an extranet for Spurwink, a network of professionals providing mental health, educational and residential services to over 4,000 children, adolescents and adults throughout Maine.

With over 850 geographically scattered employees, it was often difficult to share resources and gain access to necessary forms. Spurwink’s previous solution made resources available while inside a Spurwink facility, but employees couldn’t access it from home. Also, changes and additions could only be made by someone with HTML knowledge.

Flyte used Joomla, an open-source Content Management System (CMS) as a platform to build a better tool for Spurwink. Now all employees can gain access to the extranet with their unique username and password. There they’ll have access to the library of professional research, legal, policy and other documents and forms needed to provide the mental health, educational and residential services to their clients.

The extranet also serves as the organizational directory and internal news and events center. Leaders, managers and administrators in all departments have complete control over the content of the extranet through a Joomla interface, requiring no HTML knowledge.

For you Joomla geeks out there, we started with JCE WYSIWYG as a wysiwyg editor, but found it lacking. Spurwink was also underimpressed with that module. The document handling for that module was just a bit weak, which was one of the major concerns for Spurwink. After a bit of searching we found WYSIWYG Pro, which we found to be a much better solution for their document handling needs.

Just our .02.

Rich Brooks
Maine Web Design & Development

Posted in Client News, Web Site Launches | No Comments »

Sabre’s Big Launch Party for the 52 Salon Express

Friday, March 16th, 2007

This was the view outside my window today:

In case you’re not sure what you’re looking at, it’s one of Portland’s Fire Boats, announcing the launch of Sabre Yachts newest yacht, the Sabre 52 Salon Express.

Sabre–a long-time client of flyte–was holding a party next door at DiMillo’s Floating Restaurant. Despite the cold and gray weather we took Sabre’s Bentley Collins up on his invite.

We weren’t the only ones: the local news had sent multiple camera~~men~~ workers, Governor John Baldacci showed up, and Sabre Yacht owners from around the world, judging by the accents and languages I overheard while sipping champagne.

The yacht? The 52 Salon Express? Just beautiful. Here are a couple shots I took:

Oh, and the governor wanted a picture of him shaking hands with our own Jonathan Braden, so I took that one as well.

To our friends at Sabre Yachts, congratulations!

Rich Brooks
Mmmm…champagne.

Posted in Client News, Entrepreneur & Small Business | No Comments »

Flyte Wins Gold for Web Site Design

Wednesday, March 7th, 2007

A flyte-designed Web site for Boston University’s Summer Term won the 2007 gold award for the category Electronic Marketing and Communications: Web Site.

The award came from the University Continuing Education Association in their 2007 Marketing and Publications Awards.

Although I’ve never been one to seek out awards, it’s nice to be recognized. As I mentioned in my previous post, congratulations goes to everyone on the flyte crew, but special mention has to go to Ryan Goan (designer), Gloria Maher (developer), and Beth Deutsche (project manager).

Rich Brooks
Proud Papa

Posted in Client News, flyte news, Web Design & Development, Web Site Launches | 8 Comments »

Company Logos: How to Design a Company Logo That Works

Thursday, March 1st, 2007

During the development of the Web site for Maine Biotechnology Services, we were asked to work up a new logo.

The way we work is that Ryan does up a few rough drafts in black and white. The client chooses a direction and it’s refined. This final logo actually looked completely different initially, but the client was interested in developing the "Y" look, which reflects the structure of an antibody. (So I’ve heard.)

If you’d like to see some other logos we’ve designed over the years, be sure to check out our company and corporate logos page.

Rich Brooks
Maine Small Business Owner

Posted in Client News, flyte news | 4 Comments »

Tooth Fairy Pillow – Make the Tooth Fairy’s Job Easier

Thursday, January 4th, 2007

If you’ve ever tried to find something small in the dark, you can understand how difficult the tooth fairy’s job must be. Now, there’s an answer.

Today flyte launched an e-commerce site for Tooth Fairy Pillow, handmade, personalized pillows for the gap-toothed children awaiting a visit from the Tooth Fairy.

These pillows are perfect for baby showers, new babies, and young children. If you’ve been looking for a unique, personalized gift for a friend or loved one, be sure to check out the variety of pillows Amy Lou Designs offers. (More are coming shortly! You can sign up for an email newsletter flyte designed and developed to be kept apprised of new designs as they are launched.)

Because the client wanted the ability to quickly add, edit and delete products from her online inventory, flyte built a customized application for her. She can create a new product, categorize it, add keywords, descriptions, even a PayPal button…all from the comfort of her Web browser.

A portion of each sale goes to the Titanium Rib Foundation.

Rich Brooks
E-Commerce Web Sites for Small Business

Posted in Client News, Web Site Launches | 2 Comments »

Boston University Summer Term

Friday, December 15th, 2006

Boston University Summer Term has a new Web site they’ve just unveiled designed and developed by flyte new media.

This was a big project, over 500+ pages, a complex Flash movie, audio, video, multi-media and more. We build the site virtually table-free, utilizing as much CSS as we could muster.

It was a challenging job to say the least, but we got a lot of help and support from Roxolana Sawchuck and Damian Ross of BU. They spent a lot of time prepping files, setting up photo shoots, delivering audio and video clips, and keeping the project moving forward.

There’s a lot to say about what went into this job, and that’s probably best reviewed in another post. For right now I’d just want to spend a moment mentioning some of the flyte crew by name:

Ryan Goan: The site is just beautiful; in fact, Elizabeth Harvey of HMG (who’s firm handled all the SEO on this project) told me that it’s the most beautiful Web site she’s ever seen come out of our office, and I agree. The color choices, the clean interface, the Flash movies are just amazing. (Be sure to check out the interactive Flash movie on the home page as well as the Flash-based mp3 player interface on the high school landing page.)

Gloria Maher: Gloria did the brunt of the development work. She worked late and hard to make sure that we delivered the files in time for BU to launch them. The CSS work she did on the site was fantastic.

Robin Lowell: When it looked like we couldn’t develop all the pages in time Robin jumped in and started cranking out pages like nobody’s business.

Jonathan Braden: Even our account manager got into the act, building out a lot of pages on his own.

Réal Deprez: Réal’s our in house CSS guru; if he doesn’t know how to do something he sits down and figures it out. When I promised a specific functionality that turned out to be a royal pain-in-the-ass, Réal worked late to get it working and massaged it until it worked in every major modern browser.

Beth Deutsche: Beth worked on nothing else for the past few weeks, staying in regular contact with Damian and Roxolana, staying on top of all of the loose ends on this very challenging project. It’s not easy to project manage a job this complex, but Beth did it with style and aplomb.

Beth also did the wireframes and put together the Web site audit we used to make recommendations, as well as developing a Project Plan.

It’s good to go out on top, and that’s what Beth did. Today’s her last day here at flyte, and in a few short minutes we’ll be going out for a good-bye beer (or six.)

Or maybe I should call it a "so long" beer, as Beth is going to continue to work with flyte. Sure, she’ll be miles away in baseball’s holy land (Cooperstown, NY), but with this whole Internet thing we think we’ll be able to collaborate on new projects and continue to use Beth for Information Architecture, site audits and more.

Rich Brooks
Web Site Design & Development

Posted in Client News, flyte news, Web Site Launches | 6 Comments »

Cool Programming Work for COPAA

Thursday, November 16th, 2006

Unfortunately, some really cool projects we work on aren’t easy to show people. They’re behind a member only section or it’s backend programming that’s only exciting to us geeks.

Recently we completed a programming job for the Council of Parent Attorneys and Advocates (COPAA.) Some of the highlights included:

Creating a Conference Proposal Submission Form that allows presenters to pitch their presentations to COPAA for the 2007 conference. In turn, COPAA has the capability to review the proposed presentations and accept or deny them. This is a great tool for capturing much of the needed information from presenters in the preliminary planning stages.
Converted COPAA’s large database from ASP to PHP. Not only was this good from a general maintenance standpoint, but it will also make the addition of future technology easier (read: more cost effective for COPAA) to manage.
Integrated a new Vanilla forum into COPAA’s site for use by its members. The Vanilla forum is interesting in that it’s an open source product and makes use of Cascading Style Sheets (CSS). In addition to this, our programmer created a seamless login: once a COPAA member is logged into the member area she is also automatically logged into the forum. That means no more double-login for members.

Like I said, not much in the way of visuals, but cool tools that make people’s lives easier. If there’s too much administrative work on your desk, why not give us a call and we’ll see if we can’t automate your workload a bit.

Rich Brooks
Better Living Through Programming

Posted in Client News, flyte news | No Comments »