I’ve hated it so long I can barely remember why I started not liking it. I think it comes down to the fact that back before it could export PDFs, there was no way to get your content to another format and have it resemble your original vision. Since then, Microsoft has added the export to PDF functionality, which has made my life (and the lives of those who used to send me Publisher files) easier. At least I can take a PDF and do some manipulation to it. But, what if you don’t have Publisher and can’t convert your files to PDF?

Enter Zamzar

Zamzar offers free online file conversion of various file types, including Microsoft Publisher. I have been using this site for a few years now and it has been very helpful during those times when I have to get a file converted out of Publisher.

Right from their home page, you can upload your file, choose the format you want to output in, and they will email you a download link when it is finished processing. It’s incredibly easy!

How are the results? For the most part, they do what I need, which is usually just getting the basic graphics and text out of the file. But, see for yourself:

On the left, the flyer has been converted from Publisher to Word. On the right, a PDF created from Publisher directly.

As you can see, it’s not a perfect process. Most of the issues stem from missing fonts on my system that the Publisher file uses. But, I can edit the document and I don’t have to type the entire form over!

If you can get a PDF from the original Publisher file, that is your best bet. But, if you can’t for some reason, look into Zamzar for your quick conversion.

We started with the existing content and built out a basic website. Once we had that, Marilyn and the other Open staffers were able to get us photos, marquees and new text to create a site that really showcased the event. This year we have added a few small features to the site, including a new basic mobile version of the website.

The Llano Crawfish Open is the Texas Hill Country event you don’t want to miss.  There’s great food, live music, a golf tournament and much more. It is April 20-21 in Llano. You can check out their website at llanocrawfishopen.com.

Go join them this weekend for a lot of fun, good music and great food!

The Arc promotes and protects the human rights of people with intellectual and developmental disabilities.

Over the last 60 years, The Arc has grown and adapted to the changes that people with disabilities face across their life span. Through the decades, The Arc has seen several name changes, advocated for the passage of state and federal legislation on behalf of people with disabilities and established a broad network of  state and local chapters that range from small voluntary groups to large, professional organizations.

This is a short “case study” on one person who knew the value of getting something online quickly & cleanly and how fast you can have a C3 Standard website up and running:

On Monday, April 9, I received an email from a business colleague and friend, Marilyn McCray, letting me know that a colleague of hers, Karen Millican, might be interested in a simple and easy to manage website.

I emailed Karen to let her know I would be interested in helping her out. We scheduled a meeting for Wednesday, April 11. We talked through what she was looking for and the C3 Standard package sounded like a good fit. All she would have to supply is a Word document with her text and any photos/logos for the site. She already had most of it done, so that evening she sent everything she had to me. Her site went live Thursday, April 12.

We went from complete strangers to a full website in less than 4 days. Sure, the site needs some tweaks (which we will be doing today), but instead of a dead link when someone types in her domain name, she has a nice, simple website that will be easy to update and edit. More importantly – it is online now, not a month from now.

You can see her site at http://www.karenmillican.com

The first question is should you have digital business cards. Although this article is a little over a year old, I believe it explains why digital cards are a good idea quite succinctly. It lists the 6 reasons why you should replace your cards, which include my two favorites:

• Never run out of cards. Ever left your business cards at home or back at the hotel room? Started to hand out cards but didn’t have enough? Had to put a line through inaccurate information and handwrite in the new? Look through your pockets for a prospects card only to discover you lost it? Having an online card solves these problems.
• Remembering the place. The online version of your business card can tell you the location from where the card was received.

If this is something that interests you, you’ll need some sort of application to create and distribute your digital business cards. Cardcloud is easy to use and available for the iPhone and Android platforms. You can create different business cards with different contact information for just about any situation. Here’s how I use Cardcloud:

• Personal - For any friends, parents of my kids’ friends, church members, or just about anything where I need someone to have my personal phone, e-mail address, twitter and Facebook accounts.
• Business - For all current and potential clients, vendors, etc. This one includes my business e-mail, phone, Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn accounts.
• Scouting -This one includes my Scouting title, personal phone number, Scouting and e-mail address.

Now, when I’m out in the world and I run across someone I want to give my card to, I open up the iPhone Cardcloud application, tap the card I want to use and tap “Send”. I can then either have the recipient type in their e-mail address, or I can type it in for them. My business card, plus an attached v-card, are sent to the recipient. Cardcloud keeps a record of the e-mail address I sent the card to and a location where the card was given. It’s great and I automatically get a record of the recipient’s e-mail address to use later. And it’s all free.

I still keep paper business cards on me in most business situations, but having 3 different business cards on me at any given time makes sure I am ready for any situation, business or personal, to make sure I never miss a contact opportunity.

Cornerstone Builders Supply Custom Cabinetry would relish the opportunity to assist you in personalizing your home office, media room, study, library, powder room or any other living space. Our extraordinary design flexibility and endless variety allow you to put your own unique touch on each and every room.

Chad and the rest of the team at Cornerstone Builder Supply were great to work with. They came to us with a simple, but often repeated problem: they liked the design of their website, but it was incredibly difficult to keep updated. We kept their existing design, adapted it to fit WordPress, and added photo galleries not only showing their finished work, but also the wide selection of cabinet and door styles they have available.

Although their site is a work in progress (yes, there are a few pages that still need content from them), we are happy with how it turned out and hope Cornerstone Builder Supply’s online presence continues to grow.

You can see their website at http://www.cbsupply.net

Ronald McDonald House Charities – Provides comfort and care to children and their families by supporting Ronald McDonald Houses in communities around the world.

While Ronald McDonald House Charities cannot make medicine taste better or take away painful treatments, we can help lessen the burden and ensure more than 4.5 million families a year have the stability and resources they need to keep their child healthy and happy.

When my oldest son was going through some medical issues, we had to travel to MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. Every time we go, we pass by the Ronald McDonald House in the Texas Medical Center. We’ve never had to use them, but knowing they are there is a great source of comfort.

As part of our C3 Standard website initiative, we are offering to donate $5 of every monthly hosting payment to the charity of your choice, which includes the Ronald McDonald House Charities, Susan G. Komen for the Cure, Humane Society, The Arc, charity: water, National CASA and Make-A-Wish Foundation.

Tweriod (http://www.tweriod.com) will analyze your Twitter followers and tell you what time of day the majority of your followers are posting on Twitter. Think of it as knowing your Twitter “Drive Time” hours. Their free service is fairly robust, but if you are looking for 7 day a week, 24 hour analysis, you can get that starting at only $2.50.

There are two basic components to a content management website:

1. the site files
2. a database

The site files

This is the part of the website most of us are used to seeing. Before content management systems became commonplace on the internet, websites were done in “static” HTML for the most part. A website coder would use an editor to create individual pages for a website and upload them to a server for viewing on the internet. If you wanted to move to a new server, you would grab everything on the server and move it to your new one and you would be back up and running.

If you look servers running WordPress (my content management system of choice), you’ll notice a list of files with a “.php” extension, rather than the “.html” one of static websites. These PHP files contain instructions on how to create the pages you see in your browser, but do not contain the content itself; that is mostly in the database, which we’ll get to shortly.

If you copy everything visible on your server from your current host, you will get all of the php files, your custom files (themes, plugins, etc.) and some of your content (mostly images you have uploaded). These files by themselves are not going to allow you to recreate your website.

The database

The database is the real content of your website. This is where most of your text, links, website preferences and image references will be kept. With all popular content management systems, there is some sort of database and you will need a backup of it in order to move your website. You can not get to your database through your FTP account or web browser directly. You need to use a control panel for your server or a plug-in built into your existing website; this is not your “normal” type of file and will need to be exported/backed up differently than other files.

My favorite to use for WordPress is xCloner, which will back up both your files AND database in one ZIP file. You can then take that file to most web hosting companies or webmasters and they can upload your site with a minimal amount of effort.

Next time you need to change hosting companies, make sure you get all of your content and you’ll have a smoother transition for your audience.

Disclaimer

This is a fairly generic overview of the content management system structure and your website/server may have different structure.

Snap Fitness in Leander

Using assets from their corporation and from the gym themselves, we were able to put together a complete website to compliment their existing corporate website. Although the corporate website is more visible on search engines, their local site allows them to show not only the company’s offerings, but also their specific gym services.

One of the interesting things about this website is that it includes one of our video editing projects. The video on the front page of the site was created by us from client-supplied raw video and music. And having that video on the site really makes an impact.

And just like almost all of our client sites, they can edit their content using the built-in content management from WordPress. Check out their website at http://snapfitnessleander.com

charity: water is a non-profit organization bringing clean and safe drinking water to people in developing nations. 100% of public donations directly fund water projects.

We have a lot of talk in Central Texas about needing rain and low lake levels. It got me to thinking about places where the amount of water we have would be considered a blessing. Having clean water is something a lot of us don’t really think about; it’s always there when we turn on the faucet or hose.

charity:water aims to make the reality of clean water happen for developing nations. They have some amazing videos on their website that explain what and how they do what they do. Go check them out.

Having clean water is such a basic need and I am a big fan of any organization that tries to make that need easier to meet and that is why they are one of the charities that our C3 Standard website customers can choose to support with their monthly fee.

Learn more about charity:water or donate directly to them.

That is the single biggest question I hear from people after they find out what I do. My answer is usually “How much traffic do you currently have?” Most of the time they don’t know.

I explain that search engine optimization is great, but if they don’t know who is viewing their website and what they are looking at when they are there, they don’t know what their next step should be. What if they have thousands of hits, but no one who goes to their site actually does anything? No call, no e-mail, no sale.

Instead of focusing on getting to the top of search engines (yes, I know it’s important, but stay with me for a minute) what about getting some basic data first. This is where analytics come in.

On every site that C3 builds, we attach Google Analytics, allowing us daily monitoring of web traffic, page views, traffic sources and a bunch of other data. With our C3 Standard website, we also offer the option of mailing you weekly reports showing your website traffic and what your visitors are looking at.

Once you have your “analytics program” in place, then you can tell the players that are coming on to your field.

Earlier this month, we launched a new website for the Four Points Chamber of Commerce that reflected their more focused requirements, including tighter integration with their existing chamber management software. Although it is an ongoing project, we are really pleased with the current results.

We used an existing template with some modifications and some custom post types to create areas for the Board of Director, Ambassador, and Committee biographies. This is also the first time I have had a chance to use a plugin for button creation (I’ll be talking about it soon).

This current version of the site has been in the planning and development stages for about 3 months and will take another couple of months to fully complete.

When someone uses their smartphone to browse your site, they want to feel like their are browsing on their phone, not fighting your existing desktop site.

There are a lot of ways to create a mobile site, including some that are extremely quick to implement. If your website is not mobile friendly, it should be.

4 Rookie Mobile Marketing Mistakes to Avoid

Photograph by Enokson

I could not agree more with this post. If you are looking to increase overall page views, get visitors to return to your website regularly, and build your authority in what you do, writing on your website can help greatly.

Writing for your website is like a new workout routine: you don’t need to be amazing at it on the first day; you just need to build the routine. There are a lot of easy ways to get that routine going and build a simple, but strong, writing habit for your business, and that begins with being able to easily write on your site. We can help make it easier to add your new content to your website.

Why You should Blog for Your Small Business.

Photo by west.m

Some folks may be reluctant to put ANOTHER social media avenue in place, but I think this article makes some compelling arguments for starting a Google+ page.

I’m hoping in the near future, they will open up the API for Google+, allowing more application development. Having one application to manage Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Google+ would be excellent.

5 Reasons Google+ Is Worth It For SMBs.

Photo by lisaschafferphoto

I’d like to start with 2011. It began with quite a big decision, which was to put PB&J Advertising on hold for a while and work with The Citren Group (known at the time as American Technology Systems) in Liberty Hill and their in-house web designer and developer. It was a great opportunity to work with the team there and learn a lot about process automation, which is something I really enjoy.

Toward the end of the past year, Citren became a victim of the economy (in spite of our best efforts) and I began to look at beginning work on PB&J again. I quickly realized that PB&J was more about overall marketing and advertising and that I was more focused on website design and development. That focus led me to C3 Design.

That brings me to 2012, where I start with no resolutions, only a focus: to deliver websites back to their owners. I’m constantly hearing stories of websites not updated and the reasons are as varied as the websites themselves. I want to change that beginning today.

How do you want to change your online presence this year? How will your part of the internet help your business grow?

What is the difference in sizes?

Sure, your camera can produce digital images that print beautiful 4×6 prints, but do you need all of that image information when you are showing that same image online? No. Your camera resolution refers to the number of pixels in an image. For example, an image that is 2048 pixels wide and 1536 pixels high contains 3,145,728 pixels, which is the same as saying 3.1 megapixels. And that size looks great when printed 4 inches x 6 inches, because your photo printer will most likely print out at 300 pixels per inch, which means the perfect image size is 1800 pixels by 1200 pixels. A computer monitor only uses 72 pixels per inch, so that same 3.1 megapixel image shows at (approximately, depending on monitor settings) 28 inches x 21 inches, which is most likely way too large for web viewing. So how can you take your original image and resize it to efficiently show on your website, but not lose any image quality? You’ll need to resize it.

Resizing Your Images

The first thing you will need to find out is the size you want it to be. Most image resizers will show you a preview of the new size, so you can get a good idea of your final size before you create the new image. If you already have an image in place on your site, you can usually right-click on the image and click “Properties” and it will show the image size. Different browsers have different ways of showing this information: some will say “Inspect Element” or “View Media Info”, but all should give you the final size of your image.

Once you have your correct final size written down, you can resize your image. If you have programs such as Adobe Photoshop, Google Picasa, or iPhoto available, you can use them to resize images easily. If not, here are a few online resizers you can try out:

http://www.picresize.com – will let you rotate and add simple effects to your photo
http://www.shrinkpictures.com – a little more limited, but very straightforward
http://www.resizr.com – will let you resize photos already online or from Facebook

Once you have your new resized images, replace your original image from the website using FTP or other uploading software (check with your webmaster for more details).

An Easier Way

Some newer websites that use content management systems (such as the ones we create) will take care of the resizing as you upload the image to your website. This can be a huge convenience, as you rarely have to think about the image size – just take your photos and throw them on the site and let the software do the work for you. After all, that is what technology is for, right?

Resizing your images to the correct size for your website helps give your site viewers a better experience and will help them focus on your site’s content, instead on it’s loading speed.

We came up with a specific schedule and compelling designs beginning in June of 2010, traditionally the beginning of their slowest time of year, and began sending out e-mail marketing every two weeks. We also came up with themes for each e-mail to increase audience attention to each communication. We also segmented the existing mailing list into categories by brand & total sales. This gave us target markets to which the e-mails were tailored.

By using a consistent approach with new messaging on each e-mail and targeting commercial and retail markets with different messaging, we saw an initial increase of sales by $30,000 within the first two months, netting an 8 times return on investment and an estimated increased profit of 25%.

An interesting side effect of the increased e-mail marketing was an increase in customer service requests and even purchases that were sent to the companies as replies to the initial sales e-mail. This allowed the Customer Service and Sales Departments to respond to customers who would not have otherwise contacted the company.

Consistent, compelling e-mail marketing allowed this client to deliver value-added messages to it’s existing customers, while keeping the costs to a minimum. This allowed for an increased return on their investment over traditional mass mailings and flexibility to increase or decrease their messaging cycle as sales and supply saw fit.