I had an interesting conversation recently about a local newspaper and why it should have a web site.

The argument was that the average reader age of this publication is possibly just a little less than 200 years old. No reader is going to stop using the paper and get online and look at the site instead.
Of course, I argued that the current readership doesn’t have to drop their newspaper and take up reading online. This is what prompted this post

The first thing I ask my clients is, “why do you want a web site?”. This is a question that either prompts a puzzled, perplexed or thoughtful look or a knee-jerk answer.
Sometimes I hear “because the boss said so” or “because PR said so” or even “because we don’t have one”.

I often either don’t get an answer or am told “everything!” when I ask “what do you want it to do?”.

Your site can be either of two things. It can be a source or a resource…. or something of both.

Your site is a source:

Readers come directly to your site for information, they type your address in their address bar and read what you have to say.
eg. I use IMDB a whole lot – I go to the IMDB.com site and search for movies, actors, etc. etc. for me, IMDB.com is a resource.

Definitively you’d call this Direct Traffic.

Your site is a resource:

If you were to fire up Google and search for ‘Tattoo Text’ or ‘Facebook badges’ TechBurgh would be one of the first sites in the search results.
I created TechBurgh.com as a resource. Mostly for me but you’re welcome to use it too. I needed somewhere to keep my information and handy links. It’s a resource and is accessed by internal or external searching. More than 65% of all traffic to TechBurgh is from search engines, proving my point (and that I know a little about SEO )

This is called search engine referral traffic.

You’re both?

Wikipedia is a great example of how sites can be both sources and resources. If you use a search engine to look for pretty much anything, Wikipedia will have an entry in the top few search results.
There is a lot of direct traffic to Wikipedia too. Users type in the Wikipedia address and use the site as a reference.

Which do you need to be? Well, it’s a good idea to have in mind whether you want to be a source or a resource. It’s something of a objective.
In the case of the newspaper it has pretty much been decided already. Yes, the current readership isn’t going to solely access the site alone to get their news, however there are many, many people all over the World who will search for something online that will happen to have been written about in the newspaper and will show up in a search result or will be linked to from another site.
There would be such a mass of information from a business such as a newspaper that it would be such a shame not to post it online and make this resource available to the global population.

Try not to think just of your target audience whether it is online or offline. Think instead of the broader picture. Think or your potential audience.

If you know me, you’ll know that I’m a big Woopra advocate, I love my iPhone too. Wouldn’t it be great it there was some way to bring the two together?

There soon will be! The fine folks at Woopra are developing a Woopra iPhone app.

I use Woopra as one of my main analytics engines and have done since it was in private beta.

As it stands, the app looks really great – giving you a live look at visitors to your site on an animated screen with the ability to look at what individual users are doing on your site.

There’s way to much to go into in a post so watch the video below to see how the app works and check out Woopra.com to learn more about Woopra

See more here

A quick, simple , one column Wordpress Compatible theme.

Black and grey with a text only menu under the header image.
Click here to download

This is a Sponsored Post written by me on behalf of LeapFish Inc. All opinions are 100% mine.

I came across this terribly dramatic video about where Internet Search has been and where it might very well be going.
We live in a society of instant everything, and although it’s close, web search isn’t quite instant.  Web search isn’t live, it’s not quite…. real time.

We need it all now. It’s been proven time and time again. Celebrity deaths, natural disasters, man-made emergencies and more. We want all the information, we want “live on the scene” we want people tweeting, we want steaming video and more. You and I are pushing the media to do it all more instantly if at all possible.

The Internet in it’s essence was always individuals, businesses and groups posting information to the World Wide Web. It still is. What changed though?
Well, we’re not looking at grandma’s cookie recipes, uncle Mo’s conspiracy theories, text based chat rooms and bulletin boards and more. We’re looking at sharing the information that is now. We’re sharing current and instant.

The Internet evolved and you pushed that evolution.

Look at Facebook and Twitter – they don’t ask “what did you do?” or “what have you done?” Twitter asks “What’s happening?” Facebook asks “What’s on your mind?” they’re looking for doing types of words, active words, now words.

Yes, the Internet was always…’created’ by people, content was published in forums and on web sites. Online content is so much more… personal now. It’s far more accessible than it ever was. Links spread like wild-fire, information changes hands. Sources ask questions, initiate conversations and make things happen. The public is doing a better job of driving the media. In fact, the media is reaching out to their public for the news.

This all has to be indexed. There has to be some form of cataloging all of this now information, doesn’t there?

Search engines, in their simplest form, haven’t changed a whole lot over the past 10 years. Type what you’re looking for into a box and get a page with a list of results – as they see fit to give them to you.
Don’t get me wrong, search results are faster, more accurate, and overall.. better now than they ever have been. Search engine indexing is great and I make a living telling people how to look better to search engines, but the box and results principles are still there.

Search engines have to change, there has to be an evolution in search. Search engines have to step it up another notch and look at what is happening now. It’ll be remarkably difficult but it’s possible.
Look at Twitter for example. Wouldn’t you want more authoritative tweets to rank higher on search engines? wouldn’t you want results to look at conversations on your chosen topic? How about considering information coming from professionals in an arena rather than someone just making an off-handed comment?

Where do you see search going? what do you want to see in the Search Engine of the future? are aggregation services like leapfish going to move in where search engines are dropping the real-time ball?

NEW YORK, March 5, 2010 — Let’s face it: craigslist’s
heyday as a vital and useful marketplace is past. These
days, nearly all that remains is a haven for spam, a mass of
confusion and red tape for legitimate users, and a fading
realm of influence. It’s high time for some improvements on
the "community marketplace" theme to make it more suited to
today’s truly global community and economy. That is the
perspective of http://www.GlobalListings.org, a new forum
specializing in global, national, or multi-area classified
ads that says it has arrived to fill the void.

While craigslist.org states, "If your ad is equally relevant
to all locations, your ad does not belong on local
craigslist sites at all," GlobalListings acknowledges that
there are many valid reasons for posting on a national or
even multi-national scale. If a business or service is
international in scope – or could become so in the future –
why limit its potential?
Imagine that a consulting firm needs to hire a fantastic
copywriter, but doesn’t care whether they telecommute from
London, Miami or Sydney. Or perhaps an artist or artisan
living in Madrid is seeking to sell products that can easily
be shipped anywhere in the world. While craigslist only
allows local ads by its very design, the GlobalListings team
understands and supports the idea that much of today’s
business is conducted on an international scale.

GlobalListings offers solutions to many of the problems that
have long plagued craigslist. Instead of polluting the
database with millions of low-quality ads that only attract
more spammers, GlobalListings feels that the time visitors
invest in posting and searching needs to yield results. With
quality built into the system and the cost per ad depending
on the circulation area, spammers are automatically
discouraged, and commerce has room for exponential growth.

Ads placed on GlobalListings can be set to remain online as
long as they are relevant, rather than needing to be
re-posted frequently – a fix to another key craigslist flaw.

"For Sale" listings on GlobalListings.org are a
cost-effective alternative to using eBay, a major craigslist
shareholder.

"There are thousands of postings on the Internet where
disappointed craigslist customers vent out their
frustration, so we took it upon ourselves to develop a
better platform," said Alex Konanykhin, the President of
KMGi, an internationally acclaimed interactive production
company. Founded in 1997, KMGi has provided online solutions
to such clients as Intel, Google, Boeing, Molson Coors, CNN,
DuPont, General Electric, Macromedia, Pfizer, Aventis,
Verizon, Volvo, Accenture, Energizer, CBS, MTV, Best
Western, Washington Post, and Siemens. KMGi also owns
various online portals including BidsFromLawyers.com,
AllPublicists.com and SyndicatedNews.us.

The world may be feeling smaller these days, but with
classified ads on GlobalListings.org, every business has
limitless room to expand its horizons.

It may not have occurred to you that there is such a thing as natural SEO. Webmasters use natural seo services because they are mainly interested in ranking websites high while staying in the good graces of search engines. If you are thinking along the same lines, this concept can work for you.

You can understand it better by taking a look at the basic idea behind optimization. Clearly, the point of building a website is to have it discovered and visited by people. You can ensure that this happens by having your site included in the indexes of search engines and by having your site ranked.

Robots that crawl websites for search engines are given the tasks of indexing and ranking. In their eyes, your position depends on the quantity and quality of sites that carry links to your site. Robots are more likely to judge your site positively if you have more of these quality links. Because of this fact, professional SEO services take pains at generating lots of excellent links.

A straightforward framework for optimizing a site can then put a lot of stress into creating back links. There are some common ways of doing this. You can leave your links in forums, blog comment fields, article directory resource boxes and website directories. These are ways that generally meet the seal of approval of search engines. Keep in mind though that aggressive link creation methods can be dangerous to your site.

Before you start making links, you should first imagine how unnatural it will appear for your site to suddenly have thousands of links in a blink of an eye. What is even more abnormal is when the members of this army of links all have the same text. It may not be possible for us to crack the exact algorithm that search engines follow but unnatural methods of generating links might create the impression that you are trying to cheat the indexing and ranking system. This is why you need to think about natural SEO.

The most recommended optimization techniques by seo expert services are those that try to mimic nature. You simply don’t want to apply methods that will support the suspicion that you are cheating. Doing so can lead to severe repercussions such as losing your chance to get indexed or ranked.

The theory that holds up genuine optimization is uncomplicated. What you need to do is to insert links with different anchor texts into quality sites at a gradual pace. If you are creating links in articles meant for article directories, you need to further ensure that the content around these links offer valuable inputs for readers. This will result in links that do not seem as if they were automatically generated.

Natural SEO can seem like a foreign idea. It doesn’t take much to see though that it is crucial to your optimization efforts. The best optimization strategies are those that don’t happen overnight.

Everyone take a breath.  How much technology, information, statistics & convenience do we need?  Will be living in the world depicted in movies such as Wall-E, Idiocracy and Surrogates?  Do we need more so we can do less?

I have to admit that I was hesitant to guest write for a blog called Techburgh.  I poked around here and found things that I never heard of and will never use. I see references to technological wizardry that I will never understand.  Then, I had an ‘Aha’ moment.  If Andy walked into my world and looked around at over 400 bottles of American craft beer, listened in on my meetings where we discuss pairing chocolate beers with raspberries and cashews, or infusing an American craft beer with bourbon soaked oak, he might be a bit overwhelmed with it all too.  He might be interested to learn a little more, but he’d be satisfied by just tasting the final product, rather than worrying about the sources and the methods used to bring that amazing beer to his taste buds.

I took those concepts above and shook them around in my snow globe of a brain, which led to a bit of personal growth on my part, or at least personal acceptance and understanding of just how technology has improved my quality of life. I am old enough to have owned an Insta-matic camera with a big square disposable flash bulb.  I had a Walkman that was just a transistor radio and a cassette player.  As a teen I fought to use the one telephone in my household which was on a 25ft cord enabling private conversations in closets and on porch roofs.  I am also old enough to remember that my dad’s cars were all rear wheel drive, and that he would ‘can’ cucumbers, peaches and tomatoes to last throughout the winter.  Today, I will gladly admit: I love my digital SLR, my satellite music on my XM Roady, my smart phone, front wheel drive and traction control, and the convenience of a fresh vegetable being a just few miles away year round.

So yes, change is good, new technology save lives, entertains us and helps us do the tasks we must do just a bit better.  Now, enter the idea of social media, (which is what this blog is supposed to be about) location based services, cell phones that are smarter than their users, and placing your most important and previously, private thoughts all over the world through something called twitter or facebook.  Again, I was hesitant. Wow, everyone can hear me think!  This is a change that might not be so good for some.  I will sit on the sideline here and see what this is all about.  I don’t really want to be texting instructions to the staff, or accepting their texts for call offs.  I surely don’t want to know whether they are playing Mafia Wars rather than working.  I don’t want to be a spy or voyeur in this world, nor do I want to be spied upon.  Can I get past this? Is forty-five the line for me, to say “Go ahead technologically advanced world, pass me by.”  Is this a mid-life crisis?  Will I have to hire a social media coordinator? What is a social media coordinator?  Do I need an IT person?  Wait, what does IT stand for again?

As I wrestled with just how much was enough, along comes another player to this game, foursquare.  Here, this is really creepy stuff… Oh, good, this is exactly what I don’t like about this all, right in a nutshell.  Why does anyone need to know this stuff?  What is the benefit? Why do I care if someone is picking up their dry cleaning or buying shoes?  Why would I want to tell anyone what I am doing and when?  I hope most everyone is too busy for this one. It’s gonna #fail.  Ha, ha, slang and a hash tag is creeping into my everyday lexicon.  What is going on?  I think I am actually getting caught up in this.  (I hope I don’t use an emoticon before this is done.)

As a business owner, I realized I never accept status quo and I have to push the envelope daily, these social media leaders do the same.  By the time I am done writing this there will be a new gadget or widget, a new platform, and we will all adjust.  I had to hop in.  I don’t want to be on the outside looking in.  My personal makeup won’t let me.  So here I am with a fan page, a few twitter accounts and now a foursquare ‘special offer.’ Most all it is for the business, but some of it is personal, too.  I just put the foursquare application on my phone last week to understand it better, and I have to admit, it is fun.  I am already the mayor of something!  It’s not too creepy.  If someone is going to creep on you, they can do it with or without social media.  And hell, let them creep away, if they have nothing better to do.  If you’re talking, you ought to want someone to notice, right?  If you are bothering to type your innermost thoughts, check in, post a picture of your dinner, voice frustrations or give advice, someone better be on the other end of the ‘conversation.’

So hop right in, if you want, understand it or don’t.  I am glad it is there and I don’t need to understand API, GPS, or 3G to get by.  I just need to understand that there are many new ways of communicating out there, and that I, personally, love to communicate and that my business needs these channels to grow.  Thank you ‘technogadgetry’ for giving me new avenues to share my thoughts, my living history, and a few swear words and emoticons.  Oh, and the benefits from a business stand point are endless.  Here is a living billboard!  Social media has given us a free method for reaching a targeted audience, a way to embrace your fans, followers, and mayors. No matter what you call them, they are your customers.  You ought hang out your sign in this virtual world, or the train will not stop at your station.

So the next time someone stops for just a minute, hopefully they will be checking in on foursquare, shouting something to someone, and adding something new to this world, and if you do your part right, it may just be about you or your business!

You can find Chris on twitter @uncapd, her business, Bocktown Beer and Grill is there too: @bocktowntaphot Search Facebook for Bocktown and become a fan.  Check in on foursquare if you make it to her restaurant located just moments off the Robinson Town Centre exit and give her a shout.

Chris Dilla is currently working on opening a second Bocktown Beer and Grill in Monaca, Pennsylvania.  She’s dreaming of five restaurants in the area, and a future where she actually has time to blog, consult and play with her dog, Growler.  She secretly hopes someone will get around to inventing a usb port for her brain, so she doesn’t have to sit and type it all out.

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Within the last couple of weeks, Google purchased a site called Aardvark, it’s an interesting buy. Naturally, as soon as I saw the news I signed up for Aardvark.

Aardvark is something of a networked, crowdsourced, question answering engine.
“Ask me a question and I’ll find someone to answer”

And it does. What happens is, you ask Aardvark a question on their site, Aardvark finds people to answer your questions and gets the response back to you.

You have the option of signing up for Aardvark and what you feel you can answer questions about. When it receives a question that you might be qualified for, Aardvark reaches out to you via email, IM, iPhone App or by tweeting @Vark, you want to or can answer the question.
Of course you can answer or pass on the question. Users can ask questions again and again et.

It’s great!

Aardvark was actually started by an ex-Google employee and it really is quite brilliant.

For example, if you were to ask Aardvark where the best hot dogs are in Pittsburgh, Aardvark would find someone who lives in Pittsburgh and can answer questions about food rather than throwing it out into the ether and hoping for the best.

You might think “Who would want to answer questions for free?”. It’s surprising. Of course I’ve answered a few in the past couple of weeks. Others are surprisingly responsive too.
I asked a simple question to give it a shot – “what do you know about Pittsburgh” – and got 4 quality responses.

I hope that eventually Aardvark will find itself integrated into Google somehow – It would give the search engine great… person power.

Give it a try – check out www.vark.com

Read more here

If there’s anything that the Social Media Community likes to do in Pittsburgh it’s put together a good get together.

There are regular TweetUps in and around Pittsburgh and they’re always a blast!

@PGHTweetUp has put together a calendar of what’s happening where and when so that everyone is on the same page

Check out the calendar below and be sure to add it to your SmartPhone.

LONG BEACH, Calif. – March 4, 2010 – For 11 years in a row, The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has selected Epson printers to speedily print thousands of high-quality, borderless credentials for the 82^nd Annual Academy Awards Ceremony airing on Sunday, March 7.

“I rely on Epson printers to produce thousands of credentials for high-profile events every year,” said Deborah Cahn, manager of Credential Operations for the Academy.  “Epson printers cater to unique and demanding printing needs like ours.  Instant-dry and smudge-resistant inks are a necessity to quickly print credentials as people wait in line, and the WorkForce 40s have been flawlessly churning out color badges for years.”

The WorkForce 40 is a compact, single function printer designed for high-volume printing, with speeds up to twice as fast as competitive models¹. The WorkForce 40 offers sharp laser-quality black text at speeds of 15 black/9.3 color ISO pages per minute.² The new ISO/IEC 24734 industry speed standard.  We Believe was created to provide an unbiased comparison of specifications across manufacturers to help individuals, small business owners and corporate buyers make smarter purchasing decisions. In addition, it offers built-in Wi-Fi and wired networking to share and print files from virtually anywhere in an office area.

More About the WorkForce 40

• Cost-Efficient Printing: The WorkForce 40 is ENERGY STAR compliant, uses up-to-three times less energy than a laser printer³ and includes double-sided printing capabilities for increased paper saving.⁴ It also uses four-color individual ink cartridges for replacing only the color that is needed, and extra high-capacity black ink cartridges are available for high volume tasks.
• DURABrite^® Ultra Ink: Epson’s exclusive all-pigment inks produce laser-quality text and stunning graphics on all media types. The ink offers smudge and water resistance⁵to protect important documents, fade resistance on plain paper that is rated up to six times longer than leading competitive prints⁶, and is highlighter-friendly on plain paper.
• Advanced DX3^™ MicroPiezo^® print head technology: Epson’s print head technology features smart nozzles that can each produce and precisely place three sizes of ink droplets, as small as two picoliters; this technology is also featured in large-scale printers used by leading commercial and industrial companies across the globe to deliver innovative digital, photo lab and textile printing products and services.

“We’re thrilled that Epson WorkForce printers were again requested by the Academy to deliver the fastest and best print quality,” said R. Craig Allen, product manager, Consumer Ink Jets, Epson America, Inc.  “The WorkForce suite of printers and all-in-ones are engineered for small business customers and the line provides the best printing, scanning and image output tools critical to small business success.”

For more information, please see the WorkForce 40 fact sheet or visit www.Epson.com.

About Epson America Inc.

Epson America Inc. is a leading provider of an extensive range of printers, 3LCD projectors, scanners and point-of-service printers that are renowned for their high quality, functionality, innovation and energy efficiency. Epson America is a U.S. affiliate of Seiko Epson Corporation, which employs more than 70,000 people in 106 companies around the world. Seiko Epson is committed to its ongoing contributions to the global environment and for the second year in a row has been named to the Dow Jones Sustainability World Index, an indicator for leading companies in economic, environmental and social criteria.

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