2007 July | flyte blog: small business web marketing blog

Archive for July, 2007

Ogunquit Beach, Maine Blog from the Meadowmere Resort

Tuesday, July 31st, 2007

If you’re looking for information on what’s going on in Ogunquit Beach, Maine, look no further than The Meadowmere Blog.

Allyson Cavaretta has taken the reins for The Meadowmere Resort and started a blog about everything that makes Ogunquit Beach so special. She’s been starting restaurant reviews, talking about wedding locations, museums, and other fun activities for tourists and locals alike. She’s also called attention to some underhanded behavior by online booking agent Travelnow.com.

Since Meadowmere Resort was Maine’s first (and perhaps only) certified environmental leader hotel (more on that here), Allyson also blogs about environmental issues as well.

Business Blog Design & Marketing
A lot of the design elements for the Meadowmere Blog came from their current Web site, which is important in continuing and extending their brand. Flyte also added an email subscription so that blog visitors could receive upcoming posts delivered right to their inbox. More savvy readers can of course subscribe to one of the several RSS feeds available at the site.

Since this is a business blog, we’re looking to direct visitors over to the Meadowmere Resort Web site for the featured packages, Ogunquit events, and to check room availability.

If you’re interested in learning more about Ogunquit Beach, Maine, or what it means to be a green hotel, be sure to check out The Meadowmere Blog. If you’re looking to vacation on the Maine coast, be sure to keep The Meadowmere Resort on your short list.

Rich Brooks
Business Blog Design & Marketing

Posted in Business Blogs and Blog Marketing, Web Site Launches | No Comments »

Adding an RSS Feed to Your Blog or Web Site

Thursday, July 26th, 2007

We’ll be launching a Web site and blog for a new client in the next couple of weeks. One of the things the client wanted was to keep their home page fresh by feeding snippets from their blog on a regular basis.

In doing some research into this, it seems there’s a number of ways to accomplish this feat, including javascript, PHP, ASP and other solutions. In fact, I found a whole slew of ideas from the ever helpful Robin Good and his post RSS To HTML – How To Convert RSS Feeds Into Published Web Pages – A Mini-Guide.

As Good points out, javascript is perhaps the easiest method to implement an RSS feed on one’s Web site, but comes with one caveat: since the javascript code you add doesn’t actually include the text from the feed, the search bots don’t pick up that content, just the visitor to your page. However, if you’re the author of the blog and Web site, I don’t see this as a major problem, since your blog is there to warm leads and feed them to your site for conversion.

Good offers a number of free and paid services in his post, and is worth checking out if you’re still mulling your options.

We chose Feedburner’s BuzzBoost, which is free for all Feedburner accounts, which is also free. Every day I’m more impressed with Feedburner’s offerings, and my only concern is that I’m becoming too dependent on them, from their great feed options, their email signups, their feed options, their stats program and more. They were recently purchased by Google, however, so I guess they’re not going anywhere.

Using BuzzBoost was easy. A couple of clicks on some configuration items and the javascript was generated. I just need to add the following to any Web page:

<script src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/FlyteWhatWorksOnline?format=sigpro" type="text/javascript" ></script><noscript><p>Subscribe to RSS headline updates from: <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/FlyteWhatWorksOnline"></a><br/>Powered by FeedBurner</p> </noscript>

And away we go:

If you’re looking for a way to drive more traffic to your blog from your Web site or to keep your home page fresh with info, BuzzBoost or one of the other RSS to HTML options is just what you’re looking for.

Rich Brooks
Feed Me, Seymour, Feed Me!

Posted in Business Blogs and Blog Marketing, Web Design & Development, Web Marketing | 2 Comments »

What’s the Difference Between a Dash and an Underscore?

Wednesday, July 25th, 2007

Now, nothing. At least as far as Google is concerned.

Previously, Google had treated dashes and underscores differently in URLs. For example, a URL of yourdomain.com/classic-cars would be read as "classic cars", while yourdomain.com/classic_cars would be read as "classiccars".

For most Web site owners this won’t make a big difference, but it does seem to show that Google uses URLs to some degree in their algorithm for ranking sites.

How might this affect you? Well, if you’re archiving your newsletters to your site, it would be better to use a keyword rich URL (i.e., /tail-fins.html) as opposed to the date you posted it, (i.e., /20070724.html).

For more on this dash v. underscore change check out Hyphens & Underscores Are Now Treated Equally in Google.com (which, ironically, can be found at http://www.seroundtable.com/archives/014260.html.

Rich-Brooks
Dashing

Posted in Search Engine Marketing | 1 Comment »

What Harry Potter Can Teach Us About Good Web Design

Monday, July 23rd, 2007

Don’t worry, you won’t find any spoilers here.

If you’ve read the Harry Potter series, you know how creative these books are. How the plot twists can dupe even the most experienced readers. How the characters grow and continually surprise us. How the stories are funny, scary, emotional and nerve-racking by turn.

Let me ask you, though:

What side of the book is the binding on?
What letters of the alphabet does J.K. Rowling use to tell the story?
What color are the pages? The print?
Are the pages sequential?

What’s fascinating about Potter isn’t the formatting of the book but the ideas within it. So why do so many Web site owners toil under the belief that they need to reinvent the wheel when it comes to Web site design?

Good design is about making your Web site easy for visitors to use…especially ones who are there for the first time. Don’t spend your creative juices coming up with a novel method of navigation…it will just frustrate and turn off most of your visitors. Instead, go with a clean, professional design that promotes your business, and use your creative on content that engages and persuades your visitors to take action.

Rich Brooks
Muggle

Posted in Web Copywriting, Web Design & Development | No Comments »

How to Catch People Stealing Your Copy

Friday, July 20th, 2007

This happens so often, maybe I should make this a monthly column.

Yesterday, during a blog consult, a client asked me if there was anything to prevent people from stealing her copy. I told her not really, but using Copyscape you could at least find the culprits. To show how it worked, I typed in the URL for our Web site, http://www.flyte.biz, in to Copyscape’s search bar. A few seconds later we got the results.

Besides the ones I had gotten used to seeing up there was a new one: Emarketer Associates, Inc., run by Mark Roscoe. As we–my clients and I–reviewed his site on the overhead projector we just had to laugh. Most of my home page–word for word–had been taken from our home page. Other parts were taken from other sections of my site.

I contacted Mark via email and asked him to remove the offending copy. Although I didn’t hear back from him I did see that he updated his home page–in letter if not in intent. For example:

"Your Web site is the hub of your marketing universe" became "Your Web site is the centerpiece of your marketing efforts." (originally found here: www.flyte.biz/web-design/web-sites/)
"Whether you call it Internet marketing, Web marketing or online marketing, the goals are the same…." became " It doesn’t matter what you call it – Online marketing, Web marketing, or Internet marketing, the goal is the same…." (originally found here: www.flyte.biz/internet-marketing/)
And "You don’t need a Web site, you need a Web strategy" became "Your Business Doesn’t Need a Website! Your Business Needs An Online Marketing Strategy." (originally found at www.flyte.biz/)

Mark didn’t contact me to apologize, or pretend it happened by accident. This isn’t a case of "great minds think alike." He just stole a bunch of copy off of our Web site and passed it along as his own. Since he’s down in Richmond and King William, Virginia, there’s not much I can or want to do.

Except call him on it.

(more…)

Posted in Business Blogs and Blog Marketing, Web Copywriting, Web Design & Development | 4 Comments »

Go Global with New Media at the Blog World Expo

Thursday, July 19th, 2007

I’m pretty stoked.

I’m going to be presenting "Go Global with New Media" at the Blog World Expo with fellow blogger Des Walsh. Des is a business coach and an evangelist for blogging and new media in business and government. And, keeping with the global theme of our talk, Des is from Australia! (For my fellow Americans, that’s the land mass at the bottom right of your world map.)

The thing is, Des and I aren’t exactly sure what the hell we’re going to talk about. We wanted to have some back and forth as we fleshed out some of our ideas, and then Des suggested we do this in a public forum. Basically, we started a blog for Go Global with New Media and we’re looking for your input.

We’ve discussed what tools are available for businesses who want to go global. Certainly, the Internet has flattened the world to the point where even small businesses and solopreneurs can go global. Books like The World Is Flat by Thomas L. Friedman and The 4-Hour Workweek by Timothy Ferriss speak to that.

VoIP and Skype have made international calls and video conferencing free or nearly free. Tools like Yugma let me share my desktop (and lets me take control of others’ desktops) from half a world away. Then there’s meta-verses like Second Life where people can meet, share ideas and even do business. Podcasts, blogs, MySpace, YouTube, LinkedIn…the list goes on.

So we’re enlisting you: what does going global with new media mean to you? What do you want to learn about? How would you like the information presented? Stories from the trenches or the view from 20K feet?

If you have some thoughts, please visit us over at GoGlobalNewMedia.com and let your voice be heard. And who knows, maybe you’ll even get some business out of it.

Rich Brooks
Vegas, Baby!

Posted in Business Blogs and Blog Marketing, flyte news | No Comments »

Kennebunkport, Maine Blog: Captain Lord Mansion

Thursday, July 19th, 2007

Kenneburnkport, Maine, is more than just the summertime hangout for the Bushes. It’s a beautiful resort town on Maine’s southern coast, featuring great restaurants, shops and beautiful bed and breakfasts.

Flyte recently launched a blog for one of the more romantic bed and breakfasts in Kennebunkport, The Captain Lord Mansion.

Rick Litchfield is the Captain Lord innkeeper and resident blogger. He blogs about events, food and drink, and places to check out in Kennebunkport. Recently he wrote about vacations for foodies, wind sculptures at the Maine art gallery, and scenic sailing trips on the Schooner Eleanor.

In short, he’s doing what every good innkeeper should do: being a great resource for his guests and other tourists in his town. He’s just leveraging that knowledge by publishing it in a blog.

Rich Brooks
Business Blog Design

Posted in Business Blogs and Blog Marketing, Web Site Launches | No Comments »

ADHD & Marriage Blog

Wednesday, July 18th, 2007

Every relationship–especially marriage–has its own challenges, and those challenges can be intensified if one or both spouses have ADHD.

Well, now there’s help. Flyte recently launched Dr. Ned Hallowell’s Marriage and ADHD Blog, co-written by Dr. Ned Hallowell and Melissa Orlov. The blog addresses the issues of ADHD & marriage along the lines of:

What are common themes in marriages with ADHD?
What strategies can be used to improve these relationships?
How can struggling couples get their marriages back on track so both partners can thrive?

The tone of the blog is helpful, and since Dr. Hallowell has ADHD and Melissa Orlov is married to a man with ADHD, there is a real authenticity in the writing, and a lot of their personality and personal struggles show through.

If you or your partner have ADHD this is a blog worth checking out.

Rich Brooks
Business Blog Design & Development

Posted in Business Blogs and Blog Marketing, Web Site Launches | 5 Comments »

Email Marketing Needs A/B Testing

Tuesday, July 17th, 2007

I recommend Constant Contact as an email service provider to our clients looking to do email marketing. I feel they have a great product and a competitive price, and their customer service cannot be beat. However, I always tell them my one pet peeve with Constant Contact: no a/b split testing.

What is A/B testing?

It’s when you test two similar versions of the same (in this case) email blast. You randomly split the group into two groups, a & b, and deliver a unique message to each group to determine which message is more effective.

For example, you may send the same email out, touting your new vanilla ice cream. One group gets a subject line that says, "Creamiest French Vanilla Ice Cream Available Now" and the other reads, "Lowest Prices on Vanilla Ice Cream Around!" You can then test version A against version B to see which has a higher open rate, click through rate, and even conversion rate.

As a Web marketer, a/b splits are a necessary tool of the trade. I feel naked without it.

Let’s Get Constant Contact to Add A/B Testing

Recently, Constant Contact talked about the importance of A/B testing in their own email newsletter, so it’s even more incredible that they don’t offer it! Let’s change that. If you are a Constant Contact customer, you can let your voice be heard. Follow these instructions:

Login to your Constant Contact account
Click on Get Help in the top right corner. A new window will open.
Click on the Home tab in the top left corner.
Click on the Provide Feedback link near the bottom middle of the page.
Enter the info and select New Feature Request
Request A/B split testing!

Constant Contact offers great customer support, so I’ll be surprised if this doesn’t put this on the fast track for getting done.

Thank you for your support.

Rich Brooks
Split Personality

Posted in Email Marketing, Web Marketing | 3 Comments »

How to Use Flickr Images at Your Blog…Legally

Friday, July 13th, 2007

Nothing snazzes up a blog like some nice, juicy photos. If you’re not a particularly talented photographer, there’s always Flickr, the photo sharing site. However, just because these photos are up on the Web for all to see doesn’t mean you have the right to use them on your blog, especially if it’s a business blog (read: for commercial purposes.)

The best way to make sure that you’re following the wishes of the photographer who snapped the shot you like is to start at Creative Commons.

What is Creative Commons? To crib from them (which I believe is the goal here:)

Creative Commons provides free tools that let authors, scientists,
artists, and educators easily mark their creative work with the
freedoms they want it to carry. You can use CC to change your copyright
terms from "All Rights Reserved" to "Some Rights Reserved."

We’re a nonprofit organization. Everything we do — including the software we create — is free.

Sweet. So how can you determine quickly if there’s a nice photo you can use for "toothbrush", "love" or "jealousy"?

Start at search.creativecommons.org.
Type in your search term.
Select "Search for works I can use for commercial purposes."
Select (if you want to) "Search for works I can modify, adapt, or build upon."
Click the flickr tab.
Click "go."

Within the frame you’ll see the results from flickr that match these requirements. Flickr by default organizes results by "most relevant." I suggest changing this to "most interesting," as these results are more…interesting.

Once you find a photo that meets your needs click on it. Scroll down that page and in the right column you’ll find a link that reads: "some rights reserved." Click on this to find out if there are any strings. Mostly you’ll find that people want you to link back to them.