the Marketing stuff

A coincidence

Mario Canamar — Sat, 18 Feb 2012 15:50:06 +0000

Life is full of coincidences. Without thinking, you look around a class room and see a girl, except that this girl will end up being your wife, mother of your children and your life, what if you hadn’t looked up? What if you hadn’t kept in contact with that friend who happened to see her again at a marketplace and in passing mentioned you and things just progressed from there?

The detective in the novel suddenly remembers that an association in a witness’ mind of a name she wants to protect refers to a store that closed and he, the detective, coincidently knew about. And that breaks the case! What if he hadn’t seen the store? Remembered it? What if the witness had associated something else?

A woman answers a knock and a family is standing at the door holding a bag of presents for her children. The despair the parents’ were feeling are diminished and Christmas is saved. A family that cares is created by a simple act. What if the presents had not arrived that day? What if the family hadn’t been home at the time the presents were delivered?

Life if full of little coincidences, some call it luck, others just coincidence and others still, destiny. It is only when we look backward that we can see the connections, the series of strange coincidences that take us down a specific path.

Coincidences are a touch of the divine, call it luck, God, destiny, karma, or random happen-stance. We are the result of many tiny coincidences. From the moment we are conceived to our last breadth we are bound by things we can’t and definitively don’t control. We try to and normally, we can influence our lives, but the reality is, we are just a leaf floating on the lake.

How to install Gnome Shell themes in Ubuntu 11.10

Mario Canamar — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 00:46:22 +0000

As easy as just two simple steps. Of course, this assumes you have already installed the Gnome Advanced Settings panel (gnome-tweak).

First add Satyajit repository by openning your terminal and typing (or copying from here) the following command:

sudo apt-add-repository ppa:satyajit-happy/themes

Once the repository is added, just install the Gnome-Shell User Theme Extension:

sudo apt-get install gnome-shell-extensions-user-theme

This last command will enable an option in the Gnome Advanced Settings panel go to “Shell Extensions” and enable the “User Themes Extension”. Logout and log back in. At this point there should be a new “Shell Theme” option that allows uploading of new gnome-shell themes which can be found at GnomeLook.org.

Easy!

How to add Facebook Videos in your Website

Mario Canamar — Mon, 29 Aug 2011 05:30:52 +0000

Facebook allows for videos to be uploaded to any account and it is easy and convenient for many users. However, Facebook does not offer a simple way to embed them in your web pages or website like Youtube, Vimeo or other video sharing sites do. Facebook does not officially provide an embedding code, so for people who want to embed a Facebook video on their blog post or web page, there is no readily available way to do it.

So, to view Facebook videos you have to be logged in and you can’t share them if you find something interesting. Or so it has been.

That is no longer the case, below you will find a way to embed Facebook videos in your website.

So, how to embed Facebook videos in your website?

First, open the video in the right page, usually by clicking on the link provided next to the title or the video itself on the wall.

All videos uploaded on Facebook have a unique ID that you can find in your browser’s address bar (its the code after “?v=”).

Copy the code (like the one in the picture) and replace the xxxxx from the code below with it.



xxxxx" />
xxxxx" type="application/x-shockwave-flash"
allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="300" height="200">

Take the embedding code and put it into any web page on any website and your Facebook video can be seen from anywhere, just make sure that the video is visible to everyone in your Facebook privacy settings and you’ll be sharing FB videos in no time!

EDIT: This also works with the iframe codes for videos by replacing the xxxxx from the code below:

xxxxx" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen>

Adding Youtube videos in Joomla 1.7

Mario Canamar — Thu, 25 Aug 2011 13:30:21 +0000

Sort of gave the trick in the title. Inserting Youtube videos in Joomla 1.6 or Joomla 1.7 (sort of our flag systems along with WordPress), the only thing that needs to be done is clear all the filters from the content editors on the articles manager options. So, if the filters get in the way of adding videos, why are they on to begin with? Filters prevent adding malicious or damaging code into the articles of the Joomla website as well as ensuring the output of the code from the WYSIWYG editors is as clean as possible. However, for advanced users or when there are not many administrative users, the filters tend to get in the way.

So, if you want to add a video from Youtube, Vimeo, Viddler or even Facebook (see the trick to adding Facebook videos), it is necessary to eliminate the filters from the editors.

Embedding videos in Joomla requires a plugin, module or component and that is the method used in Joomla 1.5 series, however, for Joomla 1.6/1.7 there are still no good add-ons that enable this functionality in a simple way. So, for now, to embed videos the next steps need to be followed.

1. Turn off the WYSIWYG editor from the Global Configuration on the Dashboard

Go to Site -> Global Configuration and choose the Site sub menu/tab.

Change your editor* to “No Editor” in the Site Settings area on the “Default Editor” options.

2. Changing the Article Manager Options

Using the administrator menu go to Content -> Article Manager.

On the top right corner of the screen, where the article manager icons are, click on the Options button.

3. Article Manager Options Screen in Joomla 1.7

A modal window will appear on screen with all the article options. click on the Text Filter tab. Once there, locate the “Super Users” or the users’ group you wish to grant the video embedding option and under Filter Type choose “No Filtering” and then click on Save & Close.

Once this is done, it should be possible to add any code into any Article such as videos from Youtube with the regular embedding code.

This also works really well with the Artof Editor plugin.

Once you are done embedding the videos you can enable the filtering again (be careful not to open and save the articles with the video or they will be filtered again).

Search Engine Optimization… what?

Mario Canamar — Thu, 07 Jul 2011 15:50:22 +0000

We online marketers and web world people like to think our language is as universal as music. However, majority of people, even people who use the internet fairly regularly, have difficulty understanding the whole concept of “online marketing” or ideas like “search engine optimization“. But what are these concepts really?

Speaking of ranking, pagerank, algorithms, links and even engaging copy designed to help Search Engines, all these concepts sound to most people like language from another planet. Sure, once its explained it all makes perfect sense.

Online Marketing: The art or study of promoting a product, service, business or idea using the internet and its different technologies. It sums the understanding of people’s behaviours online as well as the technologies and strategies required to attract the public and generate specific actions.

Search Engine Optimization: Google, Bing or Yahoo don’t show the same thing everywhere. However, it is possible to influence them to show specific web pages for specific user searches and generate traffic related to that term (be it a name, product, service or concept), given that enough interest exists in the market. Or simply put, the art of getting your website up on search results.

And even with those definitions, it sometimes isn’t clear enough. First of all, using Google, most people don’t think about how it works. A general principle is that we don’t need to know how electricity works to turn on a light or plug in a TV. Understanding that, it helps to show an actual search and where websites show up and exactly what “ranking” means. See below:

CualliOhtli.com ranks number one for that specific search. It also ranks high for many other searches that bring visitors to the site. That is SEO, getting websites up there, on top of the competition.

Anywho. My point is that no matter how much we think it is pretty standard to know these things, the reality is that most people don’t know much about them and we need to keep that always in mind.

Should you hire Search Engine Optimization for your website?

Mario Canamar — Mon, 06 Jun 2011 14:29:12 +0000

Or don’t wait until your competition out-ranks you, hire that SEO right now!

Really. Search engine optimization is an extremely important element for your website. Back in 1994, when there were a handful of websites, SEO was meaningless (doubt if it even existed beyond getting the proper domain name). In 2011, launching a website that is not search engine optimized with clean code, proper tagging, well written, etc, will only mean you are spending money to have a pretty brochure that only the people you give the domain address will see. Its not bad, you can use it in your printed materials to give people more information online. However, most businesses want their websites to be a strong sales tool that gets them prospects and customers.

If you want your website to be found online by the people who can buy from you, this shouldn’t even be a question.

Ok. But how does it work?

Search Engines (Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc) use algorithms to determine if a website is relevant to a specific search term. What they are really trying to accomplish is guess what the person wants by reading the search term used. Search Term and Keyword Phrase is what you type in the search field (see image below).

When you click Search the Search Engine reviews the database of sites in the servers nearest to you and determines which are the most “relevant” to your term. Relevancy is a big thing for SEO and Search Engines. When a website is “relevant” enough the person searching is happy. If the person is happy, said person uses the search engine more often driving up possible sales of advertising for the SE (Search Engine) and importance.

You can attain high relevancy by ensuring the content on your website is readable by the “spiders” or programs that register the information displayed and in code. Flash is a big issue here. Flash is what some designers use to make sites dynamic and animated. Some designers use it for menus and other page elements and this is a problem. Spiders “crawl” your menus and links and find the other pages. If the menus are Flash, then the spider sees it as an image and nothing gets found. Spiders only read text. Google and Adobe (the owners of Flash) have reported working hard on improving readability of Flash content, but it has been years and it still is not very good. So, for the time being, stay away from Flash if what you want is a website that ranks. I do know ways of getting ranked with Flash and have successfully ranked 100% flash websites in the past, however, it is expensive and most of the time, not worth it.

Another element is Links. The activity of generating links pointing to your site from other sites is called Linkbuilding. By far the most tedious and time consuming task of SEO. You may find software that does the job automatically, but results are usually very low. The links generated are of poor quality and most are garbage. The best linkbuilding is manually done by an expert SEO (Search Engine Opimtizer).

Generally speaking, that is SEO in a nutshell.

It sounds rather simple, do I really need to hire someone to do it?

In principle, it is simple. However, in each element there are many other little factors that affect the effectiveness of the work. Moreover, doing it wrong can get your site banned from search engines (its happened to some big corporations in the past). A ban in a search engine means you will NEVER be found, no matter what and that is much worse than not doing anything at all.

Hiring an expert search engine optimizer is an investment worth your money. Good optimization will land you on top of the competition and it may even open markets you were not even aware of resulting in more sales and better business for you.

Should I hire a crafty student to do it?

If you are ready to invest a lot of time learning the ropes of SEO and tracking his work while not paying attention to your business, go ahead. If you don’t want to become an expert yourself and teach someone to do the tedious part of the job, then don’t. You’ll probably get subpar results or even negative penalties up to a full ban.

Be weary of newbies and wannabes too. Many people instead of looking for a job, think that web services are rather comfy and try to start a business doing SEO. Stay away, most are experimenting on you and will probably not give you the results you need.

Hire professional SEOs with experience, preferably international experience (doing SEO for different countries) as these people would normally know a bit more than local SEOs and have proven experience with Search Engines in many different ways. Also, highly recommended, hire content writing for your website, which is better obtained from the same SEO firm as they will ensure the content is optimized for humans AND search engines.

Is the Guelph Mercury mocking local Charities?

Mario Canamar — Fri, 13 May 2011 14:21:25 +0000

I was recently browsing through the Guelph Mercury’s website. I was trying to find some contact information and did find it in http://www.guelphmercury.com/contactus as well as other interesting stuff.

As me and my wife are involved with charities and do some work in the non-profit sector, the link to the Guelph Mercury’s Donations page attracted my attention (even though I was there for other purposes). It states the following (this is an exact copy of their page):

“The Guelph Mercury provides non-profit community groups with donations of cash as well as in-kind support. Click here for more details.”

That seems very nice and all for a company like the Mercury, however, if you click on the “click here” link you will find an interesting surprise (that may change in the future, so I have included here a print of the page as it is right now).

So, once you click on more information about getting support or cash donations from the Guelph Mercury you get to a page that shows the picture of an older man who looks rather pale. What could the Guelph Mercury’s intention be? My first reaction to it was to think it is some kind of joke on people asking for money for charities, I assume they get hit with a lot of requests for funding.

And whether it is a joke or not, this kind of “errors” are nothing to laugh about in your business. So, is the Guelph Mercury playing a little joke on Guelph’s charities? I doubt it. However, this lapse is something that shouldn’t have happened at all, specially for an organization as the Guelph Mercury. This is a cautionary tale of web mistakes and blunders.

This is another example of how your IT and web presence should be very well cared for. The devil is in the details they say, and this is just the case. People from programmers to designers need to be very careful of too many details, however, when people think of the web, most only think its a matter of drawings and words. And while the basis is images and text, there is much more to it than just posting and pasting and it can get very complicated for even the simplest details.

Even if your web people are very good, always be very vigilant and review the work. There have been many examples of IT people having funny blunders that affect big companies and even of disgruntled employees who make a mockery of their previous employer while making a very public joke with their web presence. The web is no laughing matter, specially when the joke’s on you!

Update: Mr. Phil Andrews replied to my message about this strange error and he has stated they will get it corrected. Kudos to the Guelph Mercury for reading people’s emails and taking care of business. However, at the end of business today, the error is still there… let’s see how long it takes them to fix it.

So… what’s the offer? Or strategies for a downward market

Mario Canamar — Thu, 28 Apr 2011 12:30:25 +0000

Took it while shopping for groceries the other day, this is a great offer no one can resist. 1 pack of wieners for $3.49 or 2 for $7!

As a matter of fact, most of the store was offering “discounts” and “special offers”. I’ve noticed that in this particular store, they normally have a rotation of offers to keep products circulating. In this way, you would have the store brand products with a discount this week and next week it would be the brand name ones.Discount doesn’t have to be great, just enough to show a special and keep customers looking for them.

However, in recent times most stores are going “discount crazy”, including this particular store. Mind you, not that the offers are really great, most just return things to the no discount price they were a couple months ago, such is the nature of inflation. Some, like the one here, are not even a real offer… you pay 2 cents more!

Is this a sign of the times?

Virtuemart and the impossible Modules

Mario Canamar — Wed, 20 Apr 2011 13:00:03 +0000

Geekspeak alert. The following is a horror story about playing with Joomla, VirtueMart and its PHP files. May this help anyone looking for a solution to the itemID problem in VirtueMart. The following may not be a perfect solution, however, in the particular situation it worked like a charm and continues to work.So, on to the story. Recently, a client and friend of mine had been trying to get a Joomla VirtueMart installation to work. His designer/programmer and him had been trying to fix it for some time and their end client was very precise about having a carousel with each category’s products scrolling in said category’s products’ page. This meant that they needed an instance of the the module with each different set of products scrolling on every page related to a category.

Now, this doesn’t work in Virtuemart as expected. For some reason, it kept showing only one of the carousel modules on every single category. The designer/programmer and my client were at their wits’ end after trying various modules, setups and menus. When I looked at it, I noted that the itemID was the problem as it wasn’t adapting to each category and thus, just showing the same carousel module on every category.

So, the problem was it kept generating URLs with a default itemID for all menu items and showing the same carousel for all categories. To find a solution I would have to dig deeply into the VirtueMart code.

It turns out that VirtueMart has a failsafe to generate a base itemID URL when no itemID is available. Most of the time this is not really necessary and in my client’s case, it wasn’t. So out with it. Hard problem, seemingly easy solution (just need to find it though!).

The culprit (for those who need to know) is this little file: (home folder)/administrator/components/com_virtuemart/classes/ps_session.php

The code removed (just delete it):
$Itemid = “&Itemid=” . ($tmp_Itemid ? $tmp_Itemid : $this->getShopItemid());

It is supposed to put the shop item ID when no item ID can be found, however that is not the case as it takes all perfectly functional IDs and trades them for the first ID available in the menu. The result, the same modules on all categories instead of the modules you want displayed.

So, once that done, the system began showing the proper modules in each category and managing the site became much easier.

Copywriting for money

Mario Canamar — Tue, 12 Apr 2011 14:30:57 +0000

…or how to get people to give you money with your copy

When writing for anything that has the goal of someone giving you money, tell them why they should do it. We as buyers are only interested in your product or service for selfish reasons… what is known as the WIIFMs (or What’ s In It For Me).

There are way too many businesses that forget this rule and leave this all important messaging to the most hidden pages of their websites. When someone visits your site you have about 10 seconds to tell them in a convincing way that you are what they are looking for and why should they choose you.

Image via Wikipedia

So, always remember to state clearly and quite visibly what your business is and does (usually in the form of a slogan or mission statement, even images do the trick if used properly) and to tell people why you are the best option out there in a simple and clear way.

This is where the WIFFMs come into play. Remember that when telling people why they should buy from you is not about how pretty or how much effort you put into developing your product or service, your copywriting (content) should focus on valid client motivations or WIFFMs. Find what drives your clients to buy from you and state those reasons clearly on your homepage and through all your website’s copy / content (users may land on any page, not just the homepage).

If you need help doing the copywriting and stating clearly why people should buy from you, maybe its time to consider hiring a professional copywriter, preferably one that is specialized in online marketing.

So, go out and happy writing (or actually, typing).