OSEKmedia, LLC Tucson Arizona Web Marketing, Tucson Website Design and e-Commerce Blog - Tucson Web Design

Marketing on Facebook - 6 Ways to Market your Company or Website

Wed, 12 May 2010 15:54:00 -0400

Marketing on social networks is not always that successful as Todd has pointed out, but there are sly ways to garner some success. Facebook has an interesting feature -- the news feed. Depending upon members' privacy settings, it will chronicle their activities and broadcast them to their friends. While some Facebook denizens loathe this feature, it enables people to find out what their friends are up to. From a promotion point of view, the news feed is a great channel for others to advertise a person's or organization's cause. As Facebook denizens interact with such entities, the news feed can broadcast such action to their friends. Further, they are also indirectly vouching for a cause making it more appealing, important, or hip for their buddies. Here are some tips on how to harness the news feed for peddling a product, person, or cause that will coax people to do things that are visible to others: (1) Create a profile -People cannot befriend anyone who doesn't have a profile. Further, create one for your "mascot." Many of my friends have added such icons to their buddy lists. I've searched Facebook, and Smokey the Bear doesn't have a profile. Why? (2) Host an event and post it -How about a costume party with a competition to see who can cross dress better than Rudy Giuliani? (3) Share a funny video or picture -Blendtec's viral "Will It Blend?" video series lends itself well to this tip. It even makes high-end blenders hip to younger folk. In fact, I like the one when glow sticks are liquified, and my Bivings colleague Erin brought it to my attention by sharing it via Facebook. -How about a reel of bloopers from TV commercials? (4) Post pictures -These could include candid shots of products, people, or other silly related items. If Facebook users are in these photos, either they or their friends can tag them, and these tags can show up on the news feed. (5) Post news articles -Offbeat news involving a person or organization is a great item to share. For instance, a lost dog was returned to its owners four years after it was MIA by a shelter about 1,100 miles away from its owners since they had a microchip idenfitification chip implanted in the pooch. The Associated Press article profiling this news even mentions the chip maker, Avid. If Avid had a Facebook profile, it should share this article via the site. [More]

How to invite all your friends on Facebook to your event the easy way

Tue, 11 May 2010 16:47:00 -0400

The newly redesigned Facebook has led inviting members to an event/group/page to an even more complex process. Why can't they just make a "select all" button? Initially I got tired of clicking several hundred times on all the pictures to invite people to my event, so I came up with this small piece of Javascript:


javascript:elms=document.getElementById('friends').getElementsByTagName('li');for(var fid in elms){if(typeof elms[fid] === 'object'){fs.click(elms[fid]);}}

Go to your event/group/page, click invite people and then paste this snippet in the URL field of your browser. Left-click the mouse in the URL field and hit Enter. Your invitations will not be sent yet, but all your friends will be selected. Click the "Invite" or "Send" button on the Facebook page to finally send the invites.

YES! Website Analytics For Small Business Websites

Wed, 24 Jun 2009 14:52:00 -0400

Do you have Web analytics installed on your small business Web site? If not, you should. How will you know how your Web site is performing if you aren't measuring the plethora of data available? Cost is no longer an excuse for not having Web site analytics. The free options are quite robust; Google Analytics, for one, is quite comprehensive. In addition, Yahoo last year acquired IndexTools, and has made a version of that available for free to its advertisers. Obviously, there's a learning curve involved in analyzing your data. But it's worth it because the analytics information will help you increase your conversion rate, maximize your ROI, and make more money in less time. Once you know what you should be looking at, your online business will thrive with just a little effort. You'll be less "in the dark" about what is and isn't working for you. Let's outline four of the more important metrics you should be looking at. Keep in mind -- depending on what you're selling and what action you consider a "conversion," these may vary a bit, but they're a good place to start. Conversions Conversions are the be-all and end-all for me. Are you making money, signing people up, sending people out (if you're an affiliate and you make money on advertising clicks)? Your traffic can be the best in your industry -- but it won't matter, if you're making zero dollars from that traffic? By measuring your conversion rate, analyzing sticking points, and clearing the paths to and through your sales pages, you're making sure your conversions are on their way to being the best in the industry. [More]

10 quick tips to help make your CSS coding pain-free

Wed, 24 Jun 2009 12:57:00 -0400

10 quick tips to help make your CSS coding as pain-free as possible. 1. Keep it Simple This may sound obvious but if you find yourself using complicated coding to achieve your design then you should think again about whether the feature you need is really necessary or if you're just thinking about your design and not your visitors. Too often designers get caught up in their own design and go to great lengths to produce a certain visual effect only to find later on that visitors find it either irritating or unusable. Complex code is usually the result of muddled thinking. Plan your layout logically and work from the outside in and from the top down where possible. Look at what containers you will need and break jobs down into smaller parcels. I usually start with a page wrapper and then progress logically through the header, navigation, main content and footers etc trying to preserve the flow of the document as much as possible. While good visual design is necessary to attract visitors you must still have good content and a usable and accessible site. If you find your html and css looks like spaghetti then have a re-think and see if you can simplify it. This will make it easier to maintain in the future and will often save code and bandwidth. 2. Don't use hacks unless its a known and documented bug This is an important point as I too often see hacks employed to fix things that aren't really broken in the first place. If you find that you are looking for a hack to fix a certain issue in your design then first do some research (Google is your friend here) and try to identify the issue you are having problems with. If you find its a known bug then 99% of the time there will be a known solution to this bug and you can safely use a hack if required knowing that you are fixing a bug and not just correcting bad coding. I couldn't count the number of times I've seen layouts using hacks when all that was needed was to control the default margins on the page (see next tip). 3. Take care of margins and padding on all elements that you use All browsers apply default padding and margins to most elements and the amount they apply varies quite substantially. Therefore you need to explicitly control the padding and margins on all the elements you use. This is covered in depth in this article "No Margin For Error". 4. Avoid using too much absolute positioning Most novices to CSS quickly latch on to absolute positioning because it is pretty straight-forward and does what it says on the box. However absolute layouts have a number of problems and the biggest problem of all is that absolute elements are removed from the flow. This means that when you absolutely place an element then it has total disregard to whatever else is on your page. It will overlap whatever was in that position and will take no notice of other content at all. The result of too much absolute positioning is that you end up having to control everything with absolute positioning and makes for a very rigid and inflexible layout. [More]

How do I repoint my domain name to OSEKmedia.com?

Wed, 01 Apr 2009 14:47:00 -0400

How do I repoint my domain name to OSEKmedia.com? Every domain name points to at least two name servers. The name server tells a Web browser where to find your website. Your domain name must be pointed to our name servers before your website will be visible on the Web. Repointing your domain name to our name servers takes approximately 24 - 72 hours to complete at which time your website will be visible on the Web. To repoint your domain name, you must log into your domain name account with the current registrar of the domain name and update the name servers to our name servers. Our name server information is as follows: Primary: ns1.lnhi.net (209.41.184.100) Secondary: ns2.lnhi.net (65.36.160.56) Tertiary: ns3.lnhi.net (65.36.160.18)

Cyber Monday Online Spending Up 15% from Last Year - $846 Million in e-commerce Sales

Wed, 03 Dec 2008 15:58:00 -0400

Cyber Monday sales were up 15% reaching $846 million, making it the second highest online spending day recorded, according to comScore. Earlier this week, comScore said that rate of growth for Cyber Monday sales have traditionally indicated the overall rate of growth for holiday spending in general. If that remains the case this year, that's good news. While the rate has certainly declined, it is still growing. [More]

Post-Cyber Monday Marketing Tips

Wed, 03 Dec 2008 15:53:00 -0400

Many of us have been waiting for "Cyber Monday" to come around and show its colors. The Monday after the Thanksgiving weekend is, of course, the online shopping version of "Black Friday," where brick & mortar stores offer deep discounts to kick off the holiday shopping season. As this is such an important time of year for e-commerce companies and a key indicator of how well the rest of the quarter is going to run, we must be very careful of how sites are maintained and operated during such times. I've written several times in the past about how overall site performance is a very important factor in your organic search campaigns and paid search efforts. Search engines like Google are trying very hard to maintain a level of quality that their users expect. A heavy load can lead to a degradation of user experience and will cause your paid ads and natural search rankings to vanish. Thus, enforcing a development moratorium is a great idea to make sure that the sites are performing well and won't go down over tinkering. Most large sites that work under Sarbanes-Oxley, or SOX, compliance won't allow any changes to be pushed to the Web site from Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, up until the end of the year, with all changes being backed up until a large release on January 1. While you're waiting to put out any new releases, consider investing more effort into other forms of marketing that may have an indirect impact on your overall SEO coverage. Videos can be a great source for driving visitors. Videos may drive a ton of traffic if the content is intriguing enough. When selecting your subject matter, don't make the video into a product advertisement. Take an example from Will it Blend? None of their videos initially tried to sell anything. You would never see anything about buying their blenders, but their compelling content drove 40 million dollars in blender sales. The key to placement: don't just upload the video to YouTube and let it go. Upload the video, tag it appropriately, and make sure the words you use are related to the information about your video and not fancy marketing terms that no one looks at. Imagine the difference between having a billboard in Times Square versus a cornfield in the middle of the country. Search keywords are very important to consider. After you post your video, make sure to write about it in a blog post and make sure to embed the material in the post. If you're sure this video is compelling enough, post it to Digg and see how people respond to it. Simply creating 30 accounts and Digging your same post on your machine will be seen as spam -- don't abuse it, it's a waste of your time. If anything, ask your friends to consider Digging the video. If they think the video stinks, no one else will Digg it, and it will get buried. Consistency is very important. You should always try to convey a message from the same person. This will drive trust to the person and can possible drive a consistent level of viewers to come back and see your antics time and time again.

Top 10 Search Terms in 10 Categories, October 2008

Mon, 03 Nov 2008 16:19:00 -0400

Below, the top 10 search terms by search volume.

Top 10 Search Terms by Category, Four Weeks Ending November 1, 2008 (%)
IT and Internet		Automotive Manufacturers
Search Term	Search Volume	Search Term	Search Volume
paypal	5.50	toyota	1.89
paypal.com	1.25	honda	1.76
paypal login	0.92	harley davidson	1.27
www.paypal.com	0.65	ford	1.17
people search	0.61	nissan	0.88
pay pal	0.51	hyundai	0.86
experian	0.43	honda motorcycles	0.79
auctiva	0.29	chevrolet	0.74
intelius	0.28	oreilly auto parts	0.71
bill me later	0.20	dodge	0.70
Movies		Net Communities and Chat
Search Term	Search Volume	Search Term	Search Volume
netflix	2.22	myspace	7.03
imdb	1.47	youtube	2.52
blockbuster	0.62	myspace.co	2.42
twilight	0.49	facebook	1.91
fandango	0.48	www.myspace.com	0.88
movies	0.43	my space	0.74
netflix.com	0.39	you tube	0.67
redbox	0.23	youtube.com	0.39
regal cinemas	0.23	facebook.com	0.33
cinemark	0.23	facebook login	0.29
Food and Beverage Brands and Manufacturers		Pharmaceutical and Medical Products
Search Term	Search Volume	Search Term	Search Volume
pizza hut	2.72	viagra	0.43
mcdonalds	1.45	cialis	0.37
pepsistuff.com	1.30	cymbalta	0.34
starbucks	0.81	lexapro	0.28
subway	0.75	bipolar disorder	0.24
dominos	0.73	lyrica	0.21
candystand	0.55	abilify	0.21
pepsi stuff	0.53	zenni optical	0.20
kfc	0.43	pfizer	0.20
betty crocker	0.41	merck	0.20
Blogs and Personal Web Sites		Broadcast Media
Search Term	Search Volume	Search Term	Search Volume
perez hilton	0.33	cnn	4.67
daily kos	0.33	fox news	3.26
we blog+kansas	0.21	msnbc	1.85
360	0.19	cnn.com	1.46
dailykos	0.18	news	1.05
perezhilton.com	0.17	cnn news	0.64
wise bread	0.16	abc news	0.63
just jared	0.15	bbc news	0.61
yahoo 360	0.14	bloomberg	0.51
michael savage	0.14	foxnews	0.50
Shopping Rewards and Directories		Travel Destinations and Accommodations
Search Term	Search Volume	Search Term	Search Volume
coupons	0.42	hotels.com	0.41
grocery coupons	0.25	disneyland	0.28
free samples	0.24	holiday inn	0.24
black friday 2008	0.21	carnival cruise	0.22
black friday	0.20	disney world	0.22
free stuff	0.19	holiday inn express	0.17
consumer reports	0.17	trip advisor	0.17
free coupons	0.13	marriott	0.15
mycokerewards.com	0.13	best western	0.15
mycokerewards	0.12	las vegas	0.15

View: Top 10 Search Terms by Category, Four Weeks Ending September 27, 2008

Top 10 Fast Moving Search Terms - October, 2008

Mon, 03 Nov 2008 16:15:00 -0400

This list features the search terms for the industry All Categories, ranked by largest relative increase for the week ending October 25, 2008, compared with the week ending October 18, 2008.

Rank	Search Term	Volume
1.	jennifer hudson	0.04%
2.	baby name meanings	0.01%
3.	free pumpkin carving patterns	0.01%
4.	cheapest places to live	0.01%
5.	oprah.com	0.01%
6.	glenn beck	0.01%
7.	pumpkin stencils	0.01%
8.	amber smith	0.01%
9.	samick om3	0.01%
10.	faith hill	0.01%

Source - Hitwise - October, 2008 - based on volume of searches.

How can I get visitors to my website?

Fri, 19 Sep 2008 17:24:00 -0400

Where does traffic come from? Now I'm not talking about that stuff we all get stuck in during rush hour. Website traffic is essential, if you have no traffic to your website you are not going to get anyone buying your products or reading your articles. Traffic is one of the key components of your website and is available in these three forms. 1. Pay For It. You can buy traffic typically using what is known as Pay Per Click advertising. The major names in this market are Google and their AdWords program and Yahoo Network Sponsored Search. There are many smaller companies around also but they all follow the same premise. You create your account, grab a bunch of keywords and create your adverts. You can define the amount you want to spend per click or per day, what geographical areas you want your adverts to appear in and even what time they should appear. When someone types one of your keywords into for example Google your advert will be displayed down the right hand side of the natural search results. If the searcher then chooses to click on your advert and gets forwarded to your website you will get charged for that click. The price you pay for each individual click depends on a variety of conditions such as how many other people are competing on that keyword. The more competition the more it costs to be higher up the ranks. The position you want to occupy. The percentage of people who click on your advert, the list goes on. Pay Per Click advertising can be very successful but has a steep learning curve, it is essential that you do lots of research into your chosen Pay Per Click vender and in the niche you are in. 2. Borrow It. This option is not for everyone, but in certain niches it can be effective. The first method of borrowing traffic is what is called link exchange. This is where you put links to another website on your site and they put links back to you on theirs. This can be beneficial as you can get traffic from a more successful website reasonably quickly. However this traffic is not always targeted. The second option in the affiliate marketing world is called a joint venture or a JP. This is essentially where you would contact another marketer or company who had products that complements yours. If they are interested they may send a mailing out to their list or put an entry in their blog alerting their visitors about you and your relevant products. The key things to remember about borrowing traffic is that you have to give something in return. This can make it tricky when targeting very successful websites. 3. Create It. Creating your own traffic is one of the best ways to start bringing people into your website. There are literally hundreds of ways to start creating your traffic but I'm just going to tell you about two of the most popular. [More]

Why Google Page Rank is Important in Building Traffic?

Wed, 02 Apr 2008 11:31:00 -0400

Why Google Page Rank is Important in Building Traffic For your website?

Google PageRank is important in building traffic to your website for a number of reasons. Before we discuss why, here is quick heads up on how it works. Page Rank is based on links between your site and other sites, in fact specifically between web pages, since it is links between individual pages rather than complete websites that interests Google. That is because Google lists individual pages and not domains. There is a formula that Google uses to determine the value of each link to your site, which is based on the PageRank of the web page providing the link and also the number of other links leaving that page. You can see the page Rank in the Google PageRank bar on the Google Toolbar - it is the green bar that shows a numerical value of 0 to 10 when you hover your cursor over it. This value is logarithmic, which means that if it takes 10 links to reach PR 1, then it takes a lot more to reach 2. If Google uses a logarithmic factor of 8, as it might do (nobody knows), then it will take 8 links to your site to get to PR 1, 64 to reach PR 2, 512 to PR 3 and so on. This is very basic, since, as I have stated, it also depends on the PR of the page providing the link and the number of other links leaving that page. Here are the top 4 reasons that in my opinion help to generate traffic and make you money: 1. The higher your Google PageRank, then the higher Google is likely to list you in the search engine results pages. Google take the view than the more other websites link to yours, then the more relevant your web page must be to the topic in hand, otherwise they wouldn't link to you. In fact, the links are to specific pages in your site, not to the site as a whole, which is why it is called 'Page Rank' and not Site Rank. 2. The higher the Page Rank, then the more relevant other people will consider any particular page on your website to be. They will feel more confident that if they visit your site they will have their questions answered and find the information they are looking for. 3. A high Page Rank shows that you have a high number of links on the pages of other websites. There is then the possibility of others clicking on these links to get to your website. 4. The higher your Page Rank, then the more people will want you to link to their website. That means that they too will be likely to visit your site. They will also offer you a reciprocal link if you want one, and that too will provide you with more exposure online. There are some factors you should keep in mind that could affect your Page Rank. The way your domain name is presented is very important. Take at look at these domains: www.mydomain.com, www.mydomain.com/index.html, domain.com, domain.com/index.html They are all different URLs that will lead somebody using them to your domain. However, search engine spiders see them all as different URLs, and if you use different ways to write your home page URL, then they will all be listed separately, and all be given a different Page Rank. Thus, the page rank for any one of them will be weaker than your page would have been if you had used only the one way to express it. Get into the habit of expressing your domain in only one way. [More]

Using the Advanced Features of Google Analytics!

Sat, 29 Mar 2008 00:29:00 -0400

Since Google Analytics was launched in 2005 it has become one of the top analytics packages for small to medium sized websites. Growth was initially slow due to the frustrating waiting list system initiated by Google to avoid over stretching their servers. Now that the waiting list has been removed anybody can sign up to use this great service. The user interface had a major redesign in May 2007 and a lot of the features we love have become hard to find. This guide should help you find your way around the new system. I see a lot of comments on the forums asking whether Analytics can do X, Y and Z. In most cases it can do it but people just don't realize it. As webmaster of several large sites I have been using GA for around a year now to track a huge number of variables. In this post I will go through a few of the more obscure interactions that GA can tack on your site. Tracking exit clicks, banner clicks and RSS feed subscribers Have you ever wanted to know how many people clicked on a particular link or banner on your site? You may wish to find out how many people click on an affiliate link, how many people from a certain country click on your banner advert or even the number of visitors from Digg that clicked to sign up to your RSS feed. [More]

Create and Publish your Website with Adobe Dreamweaver

Fri, 28 Mar 2008 23:38:00 -0400

The following article explains how to publish your site using Dreamweaver. Dreamweaver is a program developed by Macromedia/Adobe used to create websites. The website is usually created locally first and then published to the web server.

To initially create your website locally, please follow these steps:

Note: This only needs to be done the first time you create your website. 1. Open Dreamweaver on your local machine. 2. From the Site menu select Manage Sites. 3. Click New. 4. Enter a name for your website. 5. Choose if you will be using a server technology like ColdFusion or ASP.NET. 6. Select Edit local copies on my machine. 7. Enter the path to the folder you would like to use to store your website. 8. Click Next. 9. Select FTP as the method used to connect to your remote server. 10. Enter the necessary information: * Hostname: enter your domain name or IP address * Folder: this field can be left blank (Windows accounts) or enter htdocs (Linux accounts) * FTP login: enter your FTP username * FTP password: enter your FTP password 11. Click Test Connection to ensure Dreamweaver can connect to the server. 12. Click Next. 13. Choose if you wish to enable checking in and checking out of file. This option is recommended if multiple people will be working on the pages in your website. 14. Click Next. 15. Click Done.

To publish your web site, please follow these steps:

[More]

How to connect to a MySQL database in PHP, JSP, PERL, COLDFUSION

Fri, 28 Mar 2008 23:26:00 -0400

How do I use a connection string to connect to a MySQL database? A guide for Linux users. The following article explains how to use a connection string to connect to a MySQL database. The syntax of the connection string will vary based on the programming language you are using. Below are sample connection strings for PHP, ColdFusion, Perl and JSP. The code snippets can be added directly to your code. In the following examples, please substitute your information where the following data is referenced:

* : enter the MySQL server that you are assigned to, for example, mysql4.safesecureweb.com
    * : enter the username provided for your database
    * : enter the password provided for your database
    * : enter the database name provided for your database
    * : enter the DSN name (ColdFusion only)

PHP


', '', '');
if (!$link) {
  die('Could not connect: ' . mysql_error());
}
echo 'Connected successfully';
mysql_select_db();
?>

ColdFusion

Perl


#!/usr/bin/perl

use DBI;

$db = DBI->connect("dbi:mysql:","","")
or die("Couldn't connect");

$db->disconnect;

[More]

How you can send email using Coldfusion and CFmail

Fri, 28 Mar 2008 11:15:00 -0400

How do I use the CFMail tag to send mail from my ColdFusion pages? The following article explains how to use the CFMail tag. This tag allows you to send email messages through your website. This tag is available for use on all of our shared Coldfusion hosting accounts. The syntax of the cfmail tag is very simple. Within the tag you add the pertinent information including the to address, the from address, a subject line and the server name. The server name will be localhost. The message of the email is placed between the cfmail tags. Below is an example of the CFMail tag for versions of ColdFusion starting with ColdFusion 5.0 CFMail tag using Coldfusion 5.0



Email Message

CFMail tag using Coldfusion MX 6.1 / 7.0 / 8



Email Message

Coldfusion MX 6.1/CFMX 7/CF 8 allows for SMTP Authentication by use of a username and password. The username and password must be a valid email address from your mail account.