Be Seen Web Design

Web Directions North Conference

alicia — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 04:01:00 +0000

Now some of you may know I was headed to Web Directions North these past few days. Now I am back home and of course ready to go back to work.

I posted a couple of posts back over at Xemion.com about the speakers. If your interested take a pop over.

http://www.xemion.com/blog/web-directions-north-day-two-48.html
http://www.xemion.com/blog/web-directions-north-day-one-46.html

Social Media Marketing Truths

alicia — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 05:56:00 +0000

Glen Allsop wrote a great post titled:15 Fundamental Truths About Social Media Marketing over at Search Engine Land and once reading I noticed I agreed with almost everything he stated there.

I especially like his style of writing, where he keeps things simple. I aspire to write like him - although I know sometimes I don't.

In summary, Glen talks about understanding the social media site first before trying to promote your own business and that you need to really use the social sites to fully understand him.( We covered this earlier in this blog)

Glen also talks about results are guaranteed. So don't assume success. In my opinion social meda marketing is much like search engine optimization. It's not too hard, anyone can do - it just takes time and patience.

He also mentions that social media is only one way of marketing. It is not a whole strategy. As any big business exec will tell you never put your eggs in one basket. In order for your business to be succesful you need a whole marketing strategy.

You never know... some people

alicia — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 05:13:00 +0000

You never know - what you're going get from some people. Yes this is a random thought.

Today I was surprised to find out a fairly well known design firm who is doing work for someone I know uses a student to produce there work.

Surprising here is how I think it works. The marketing and project managers produce pitch the project, very well in fact. As they have done many pitches. They marketing manager and project managers, come up with a great idea. They pass it to the graphic designer - who works within the same company. Once approved by client the design firm (supposed design firm) then passes it to a student to code. Which inevitably looks like a student coded it.

The end result, client is not satisfied with their website and the design firm loks stupid. Now why? I am not sure why a great design, now looks like garbage because that great idea now is nothing without a great design to showcase it.

It honestly just surprised me.

I found this out after doing some research on the company. Of course the company does not reveal to the client that they will be outsourcing the coding.

This post is obviously off topic, but I need somewhere to complain!

The lesson for small business owners: make sure you know the design firm you are dealing with.

Tweako - social media marketing site

alicia — Sun, 27 Jan 2008 04:03:00 +0000

Tweako is a social media site. And it works much like Digg but with a twist. Digg basically asks you to submit a link to the story. You are able to provide a title, description and a link to the original source.

The twist of Tweako is that every post or submission is approved by an editor. Tweako actually prefers to have articles submitted as opposed to links to news articles. Which benefits you as a user.

Currently Tweako gives user 30% of adsense revenue. Meaning that by submitting content to tweako you will get paid. Tweako is a user centered website, in which it actually pays to be a user.

The disadvantages obviously are that your content has to be original and grammatically correct ( which we all know is not my best quality) . So to submit content to Tweako would take some time and planning - not much like the other social media sites.

But just how tough is it to get content and traffic from Tweako. I am going to do a little experiment. I am going to submit my latest article - Contribute CS3 - A review and see how long it takes to get approved and then if I receive any traffic.

I will give you an update in a month.

How to build a powerful, inspiring and effective website with Michael Linehan

alicia — Sun, 27 Jan 2008 03:16:00 +0000

On Tuesday, I was at a Manger's Toolbox Event hosted by The Vancouver Board of Trade. The event was titled: How to build a powerful, inspiring and effective website with Internet marketing guru Michael Linehan, owner of Marketing Alchemy.

In his speech he talked about many of the basics of search engine optimization for the small business owner. Of most he was correct and I did enjoy about 90% of the speech.

One of the things he discussed is that not everyone is an internet marketer. Many people believe that because they promote their own website that they can be web designer/internet marketer. He said that just because you know SEO and you can built links your not an internet marketer. Personally I about 50% agree and 50% disagree.

His point is that if your internet marketer - thats what you do 100% of the time. My point isthat if you do SEO, SEM and anything that has to do with website promotion you are marketing on the internet. And are preforming the duties of an Internet Marketer.

Now here is where it gets tricky. Within internet marketing their is sub categories such as Social media Marketing, Search engine marketing etc... Now what does that mean to you as a small business owner?

As a small business owner you do not have to be versed in all of these professions. As a small business owner - you just need to know that basics. You need to know the basics of having your website optimized (meaning on page optimization), you need to know how to build links and understand how the search engines work. You should be familiar with the basics of social media marketing as this is fast becoming the new way to market online.

Having just the basics done as a small business gives you an edge on the competition - as Michael Linehan stated, You would be surprised to see how many of the large corporations websites' are not optimized.

* I wrote a post over at Xemion.com about why it's important to attend conferences - if you're interested take a peek...

Follow Up Marketing

alicia — Sat, 26 Jan 2008 17:44:00 +0000

Some of you may know that I am a subscriber of WebProNews. I have been getting their news letter for a few years. Amazingly, it's one of the few I have not unsubscribed from over the years. I always seem to see new posts that no one has written about in their newsletter. I usually see things I haven't seen in the other 50 blogs I subscribe to.

Anyhow - on to my point. I opened up my email today and started reading their newsletter. And saw any interesting post about follow up marketing. I thought it could be interesting as I don't usually see a lot of discussion about follow marketing around the web.

If you know of any good resources, please let me know.

In this edition of their newsletter, they have sent a link about the Follow Up Marketing download. One of the things they say is 99% percent of people, don't follow up. And hey I am definitely guilty of that. I find following up very difficult, just because I find I have no time or I just don't know what to say sometimes. I am going to download the free e-book for sure and thought I would pass this on to you.

If anyone has any comments on it, please let me know.

Promoting you blog

alicia — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 04:38:00 +0000

So now you have a blog, you have written some posts. And you have a RSS feed for your blog. Now it's time to start promoting your blog. You want people to know about it right?

Step One is to get some links in to your blog and the first thing we are going to do is get your blog listed in blog directories.

You should always do a search for blog directories in Google, in case any new blog directories have popped up.

Here are some of the blog directories you should be listed in:

2 Rss http://www.2rss.com/index.php
All-Blogs.net http://www.all-blogs.net/submit.php
Answers http://www.answers.com/
Blawg http://blawg.org/
Blogcode http://www.blogcode.com/
Blogarama http://www.blogarama.com/
Blogbib http://www.blogbib.com/
Blogbunch http://www.blogbunch.com/
Blog Catalog http://www.blogcatalog.com/
Blogdigger http://blogdigger.com/
Blogflux http://www.blogflux.com/
Bloggernity http://www.bloggernity.com/
Bloghop http://www.bloghop.com/
Bloghub http://www.bloghub.com/
Blogintro http://blogintro.com/
Bloglisting http://www.bloglisting.com/
Blog Pulse http://www.blogpulse.com/
Blog-search http://www.blog-search.com/
Blogtopsites http://www.blogtopsites.com/
Bloguniverse http://www.bloguniverse.com/
BoingBoing http://boingboing.net/
Contents Matter http://www.contentsmatter.com/
Easton Web http://portal.eatonweb.com/
Feeds4all http://www.feeds4all.com/
Feedage http://www.feedage.com/
Feedboy http://www.feedboy.com/
Feeds Farm http://www.feedsfarm.com/
Finding Blog http://findingblog.com/
Fyber Search http://www.fybersearch.com/
Globe of blogs http://www.globeofblogs.com/
Gobignetwork https://www.gobignetwork.com/
iBlog Business Directory http://www.iblogbusiness.com/
Industry-blogs http://www.industry-blogs.com/
News Gator http://www.newsgator.com/
Pressradar http://www.pressradar.com/
Rateitall http://www.rateitall.com/
Read Ablog http://www.readablog.com/
Search4Rss http://www.search4rss.com/
Small Business Blog Directory http://blogsforsmallbusiness.com/
SmallBusiness.com http://smallbusiness.com/
Syndic8 http://www.syndic8.com/suggest_start.php
Technorati http://www.technorati.com/
Topix http://www.topix.net/

This is list is a work in progress and will be constantly updated.

Rss Feeds

alicia — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 06:06:00 +0000

Today I am going to start with some assumptions.

1. You read the last post
2. You read my article

If you haven't done #1 or #2 start there.

Now in my article, I talked about RSS feeds and how you should use them to keep track of everything is going on in the blogosphere. The next thing I chatted about was how to set up a blog. Again I am going to assume (you know what they say about assuming) that you have or will be shortly setting up a blog. If you are still on the fence - hop over to Xemion.com and read my post on Which blog for me?.

Once you have a blog set-up you are going to make sure that people can get your newest blog posts easily. The first thing you need to do is make sure you have a feed for people to read using a feed reader - just like I suggested you do using Google Reader.

Blogger makes this easy... It automatically creates a feed for you in xml. It's called an atom feed. Now if you look on this blog, at the bottom you can subscribe to this blog, if you click the link it shows you the feed and then you need to click one more link called "subscribe to this feed" then it adds it basically in your favorites. If you are using IE7 (which you should be) - open the favorites panel and click feeds. The feed will now be located there.

But thats only one way.

The most universal way is to create an RSS feed. And surprise, surprise it's easy! Visit http://www.feedburner.com/ sign up for an account and then enter your url for you blog and burn a feed. Feedburner will now give you the url for your new RSS feed. Use this url to get people to subscribe...

How to get started in the social mediasphere - or so I call it.

alicia — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 04:24:00 +0000

Social media marketing for small business' can be daunting when you first think about using t to market. But in reality it's easier than all of the traditional methods. It's cheaper.... and it's easier to measure the results.

Some of the advantages are:

It's easy to measure your results.
You don't have to have a big corporation to succeed with social marketing.
Easy to create great awareness for your company
Is also used in conjuction with a SEO plan.
You don't need a large staff either.

Now what are some of the cons?

If you try to pretend you are someone you are not. Bloggers usually figure it out an expose any lies.
Anyone can say anything they want. So if you create an enemy in a blogger. Chances are they are going to blog about it. Hint: Be nice to bloggers!
It's hard to keep up with everything that's going on around you.

To Follow up: I have written an article titled:

First Steps in marketing your business using social media

I hope this helps everyone get started in social media marketing - it's a great way to keep your business in the spotlight.

Getting started in Social Media.. for small business

alicia — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 04:21:00 +0000

This week I am attempting to write an article on How to Market Your Business using Social Media. It will soon be available for you to view. In the meantime if anyone has any comments, please comment.

The first step of course...

Is understanding what social media is..

Social Media is... as defined by Wikipedia:

Social Media is the democratization of information, transforming people from content readers into content publishers. It is the shift from a broadcast mechanism to a many-to-many model, rooted in conversations between authors, people, and peers

But really and in layman's terms - Social Media is where conversations happen, where communities are created and where the people (not just the webmasters of the world) start collabarating creating something together.

Ok.Ok. Thats my definition.

Now really social media is websites like facebooks, digg, reddit, wikipedia etc...
Its a website or place in which people can interact. For example on Digg.com users can digg articles, which in turn pushed the article ( or content ) to the top. Thus creating the content - like wikipedia described social media as.

Now everyone knows what social media is..

Let's familiarize ourselves with social media.

Take a 15 mins to visit each of the following websites, create an account - and contribute...

1) Digg.com - http://www.digg.com/
2) Small Business Brief - http://www.smallbusinessbrief.com/index.php
3) Facebook - www.facebook.com
4) Wikipedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/

Now that you have visited, added and collaborated on each of these sites, you'll see how easy it is. But before you go - I want you to go with one rule in mind, don't just spam... add only ,if what you are adding can be helpful to others.

Summary

The best thing about Social media marketing for the small business owner is that it basically free and all it takes to do it is some creativity and time.

Check back on Thursday for more on social marketing.

RESULT - You're now familiarized with social media sites and the idea behind it.

Blog Topic

alicia — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 06:23:00 +0000

As you may know... I have neglected my blog and website for about a year now. Not working on any SEO or marketing. I have written my first article in over a year for a blog on xemion.com just recently. To get my brain thinkng about SEO, I decided to buy another book. I need to read to get my brain moving.. So I bought an ebook sold on seobook.com - so far it's a good book.

One of the things the book talked about was having a consistent topic for your blog, whether it be link building, link bait, or seo. So I thought about the blog from last year. And I realized I was all over the map with that blog, but most of my topis where information for small business website owners. So topic for this blog is such.

Ideally, I will post 2x a week with some good information and possibly an article. The the posts can vary to how to build links , software reviews, website reviews, etc... Make sure you subscribe.. if you are a small business website owner.
RESULT: Blog topic chosen.
Now I need to think of a topic for the next post

Our New Site!

alicia — Thu, 27 Dec 2007 03:24:00 +0000

Ready to launch - January 15th, 2007
Check back here for latest updates, including new articles, newsletter, etc....

New Design �??Mane Threadz Show Wear launch! �?? December 15, 2007

alicia — Thu, 27 Dec 2007 03:17:00 +0000

Be Seen Web Design launches www.manethreadshowwear.com Mane Threadz Show Wear is a Lower Mainland based business specializing in horse show clothing and accessories, who is revamping their web presence. We were very happy to make it a launch a creative usable website to showcase all of Maria�??s great products, this website will for sure give her an edge on her competition!

New Design -Jullin O�??Scheaur Vocal Studio launch! �?? October 1, 2007

alicia — Thu, 27 Dec 2007 03:15:00 +0000

Be Seen Web Design launches www.jullin.ca Jullin o�??Scheaur Vocal Studio is a Richmond based vocal studio, who is just launching their online presence. We were very happy to make it a positive entrance into the online world