Places largely appeals to a younger crowd. Since it can only be used by those with a Facebook app on their smart phones, it eliminates many traditional consumers.

However, for companies attempting to reach the elusive younger crowd, those who spend little time listening to the radio, reading mailers or newspapers, or clipping coupons, these location based applications may become a gold mine.

If the customer is willing to allow a business to view their location, nearby businesses can instantly offer coupons or deal, grabbing the consumer at the point of making a purchase decision.

Businesses could also make offers to friends of those who check in, encouraging them to join their friends at a particular location and make a purchase.

Facebook has already announced its intention to allow restaurants and other retail locations to “claim” their locations. This would allow them to direct targeted advertising to frequent customers.

Need some ideas for some virtual offers you can make on location Facebook Places? John Jantsch at http://www.ducttapemarketing.com/blog/2010/09/07/5-ways-for-small-businesses-to-get-in-the-location-game/ has some ideas for using rewards programs, group buying, coupons via Goodle places, mobile coupon networks, or social location games to bring customers into your door.

With only a fraction of Facebook’s users even tuned into Places, you certainly don’t want to make it your primary source for advertising. But with a growing number of younger consumers “checking in,” you don’t want to ignore it, either.


We find that Sitecore offers flexibility, power, ease of use and constant innovation that serves our clients well.

In the fast-changing and evolving world of web content, it can be difficult to know if a particular WCM product is keeping up with the changes and spearheading innovative solutions.

However, a Gartner’s MarketScope analysis has again confirmed that Sitecore is not only a solid performer in the world of WCM, but is in fact a visionary and a leader in the market.

Gartner’s analysis examines factors such as the core services and products offered in a content management system, including the features and feature groupings, the quality of the offerings, and whether or not the features are native or offered through agreements with third party vendors.

They also consider the overall business stability of the organization, their financial vision and strategy and likelihood of continued support for their WCM product.

Other factors taken into consideration in the equation are market responsiveness, the product’s track record in the past, the quality and execution of the product’s marketing program, actual customer experiences with the product, and the functionality of the business organization itself.

In a comparison to 17 other content management systems, no other system beats Sitecore for its completeness of vision or its ability to execute it’s vision and make it happen in the real world.

Take a look at Gartners evaluation, and see if you’d like to put the Sitecore system to work for your online business. If so, our Sitecore specialists at WebDatamation can make it happen for you.

We’ve been using Sitecore for our own website and for client’s websites because of its incredible power and functionality. Now Sitecore has also been recognized by independent research firm Forrester Research as a top CMS.

Forrester Research points out what the experts at Webdatamation could tell you — the flexibility and power of Sitecore make it strong in areas where competitors are weak.

The system is excellent for ease in creating content and integrating the content into a site, managing the workflow, and integrating content.

Sitecore also gets high marks for its ability to effectively target sites and content, having a global approach, integrating numerous sites, and for its community controls.

Sitecore leads out in multilingual content and in providing the means for making a separation between content and the presentation. This creates a dynamic environment for delivering the message and for using graphics and text in other contexts for different purposes.

Webdatamation chose Sitecore in part because it is a powerful solution for both simple websites as well as complex, fully powered sites.

The features of Sitecore allow for a highly flexible website that can integrate all of the Web 2.0 features.  Marketing departments can add website content or sales information to a company site easily without a great deal of technical knowledge, and still maintain a professional and responsive site.

It’s simple to integrate any analytic tools  and other business software into the Sitecore system, and it’s compatible with ecommerce products so that customers and site visitors have a seamless and enjoyable experience on your site.

We also like Sitecore because of their constant updates, research and trend forecasting. We know that our customers will have all the latest tools at their fingertips as soon as they are available.

If you haven’t yet seen what Sitecore can do for you, contact us at Webdatamation and let us give you a glimpse.

iPhone owners are a desirable demographic for any business, but technology ones in particular. These customers like to see themselves as unique and creative, and they are generally early adopters.

If you can create a clever, functional or fun app for the iPhone, either free or paid, and connect it organically with your company and your company name or logo, then you will have a great match that will build not only your brand and brand loyalty, but will connect you to the iPhone community.

If you don’t have the expertise or understanding of development but want to reach the iPhone market, come to Webdatamation with an idea for an iPhone app, and let us take it from there.

Apple is a proprietary company, and all apps for the iPhone are sold in the Apple Apps Store. You can offer an app for free, or you can charge for it. There is no charge to you if you offer the app for free, and if you charge, then Apple keeps 30 percent of the sales price and you keep 70 percent.

There’s another possibility as well – give away a stripped down version for free, then charge a fee for a more developed, feature filled version.

It’s not a bad deal in many ways, since you set your own price for the app, you pay no hosting fees, Apple will send you a revenue check each month, and you don’t need to open a credit card account or worry about marketing.

Apple has a development program, Software Development Kit or SDK, that developers use to develop iPhone apps. Third party programs are out there that streamline the development process, not just for iPhone, but for android as well.

Games, from simple to more complex, are the top apps for the iPhone. With its high resolution screen and accelerometer, the iPhone is the perfect mobile gaming device. Weather, shopping and radio programs are also popular.

Smartphone apps are a great way to get your name out into the hands of the techy crowd and do some fun and subtle promotion of your product and site that people voluntarily bring into their lives. It’s a win for marketing and a win for your customer, so iPhone app development is a great way to go.

For businesses that consider their website and their customers who contact them online to be an integral part of their business, using a content management system is only logical. It will allow those businesses to provide a seamless, high quality online experience that open source or low-end solutions simply can’t provide.

For many of our customers, their website is a strategic part of their business. The added security and performance features of a CMS allow these businesses to focus the website and the usability features that make the customer experience truly superior.

By giving developers and content providers a simple to use and intuitive system, a CMS allows the marketing department or the sales department to create website content and design elements of the site. These professionals understand the customers and their needs better than developers or IT departments. With a CMS, the control goes to the people with the ideas, not only to the people with the programming expertise

The easy integration with business applications also provides a great opportunity for businesses to provide a better integration of Customer Relationship Management software and Enterprise Resource Planning software, as well as any analytics tools.

Because you, the company, are in control of the content and the programs and tools that you use on your site, you are able to better tailor your customers’ experience on your website, offer them seamless integration of eCommerce products and Web 2.0 feature, and fully optimize your site for search engines, so current and new customers can find you easily.

With so many advantages for developers and for the end customers, its easy to see why Content Management Systems are increasingly popular.

We think we offer you the best possible CMS with Sitecore. While there are still features they can improve, as we’ve mentioned here before, overall they provide a powerful program that is fully scalable so it can grow with your company. It’s also easy to use and forward thinking, constantly updating the product and forecasting the next trend, then responding to it.

Their “Gold” partner status with Microsoft ensures continuing support for all its best features.

If you haven’t utilized the power of a great CMS to provide your customer with the best possible experience online, I’d suggest giving it a try today.

The traffic in search engines like Google, Yahoo or MSN is massive. You will have to go that extra mile in order to break through this traffic, and make your passage smooth. I will now discuss some of the points in brief that you should keep in mind when you plan to optimize your website for search engines.

With the increase of web traffic in large amounts on the information superhighway, listing of your webpage with a higher rank on any search engine involves a lot of research and to some extent, expertise. So make sure that apart from this post, you look around some other, similar posts so that you are very well acquainted with the process of SEO. I would advise you to get suggestions from an expert if your website involves a niche list of viewers and you are very particular to move up the ladder faster.

While optimizing your website for search engines, most often you tend to snazz it up with a lot of graphics and flashy animations. What you forget in the process is that your website will take more time to load compared to others. This may lurk off visitors from your site. Avoid the use of images and graphics that take time to load. Have an easy to load design for your website to increase the hits for your site.

Another important thing is that; make sure you study the existing competition. First, make a list of keywords that defines your product (or service) the most. Additionally, come up with as many keyword combinations as possible. Think from a viewer’s perspective. Think about the process in which viewers will use keywords to gain information about a particular product or a service from a search engine. After you have prepared an exhaustive list, use them in different meaningful combinations and search those words using the most popular search engines like Yahoo, Google and so on. See the number of matches you get for the keywords you are interested in to judge the competition. Always keep in mind that your website must have content which matches the keywords, because ultimate content of your website is what the search engines give priority to.

So, is there anyone who wants to optimize his or her own website for the search engines? Well, do not waste any more time and start with your SEO plans immediately, as, the higher the ranking of your website in the search engine pages, the better the prospects you will see in your business!

This method is critical for successfully connecting to people, especially online when you have no physical cues to tell you about a person. In essence, you have to lose your own identity at first, in order to get a better idea of how to best connect to someone new. When you approach a potential link partner, you know very little about that person except for a few clues picked up in the analysis of the site that he or she controls. Your best bet is to pick up that information as quickly as possible, because you have a very limited amount of time to make or break that connection.
Personas makes use of the ethnographic method in SEO and are intensely valuable. This process helps you learn about your audience and mindset, and the resulting personas can help you to compare the output of your efforts to the target market in question. It’s commonplace to use personas in areas like usability and social media, but they also can be a tremendous help when written specifically for link development. An audience IS an audience, after all.

Writing personas

To get started on writing a few personas, you have to think about your target audience for link building, in the same way that you’d think about it for anything else related to marketing. Who are these people, what are their age groups, what is their “culture”, what will speak to them and open up the connection in a positive manner? If you’re in doubt about your target audience, talk to the owner of the site you’re working on. Once you get basic information, start to dream up a few actual people who fit the profiles that you have, and flesh them out as much as you can.

A typical persona should contain as much identifying information as possible without being so unique that it cannot be used to speak to a larger group. That’s the tricky part, but you can overcome it by imagining common characteristics of users (they like punk rock) rather than specifics that will only fit a tiny percentage of your audience (they like early Avail). Start out by identifying a few different segments of your audience, writing a persona for each. Once you have these, take one and read it until you can get into the mindset of it, and write your link request accordingly. Remember that this persona represents your target link partners, so make use of language and references that this group will respond to, and adjust as needed.

Sample persona

Below is a persona created by one of my link builders for use on a restaurant review site:

Caren is a 43 year old mother of 3. Her children are 15, 17, and 21. Before having children, Caren obtained a degree in elementary education and taught until her second child was born. Since then, she has been a stay at home mom. She has been in charge of cleaning, cooking, carpooling to and from soccer and rugby practices. Her oldest child is attending a university in the city. Her husband is the local family doctor and can still be found making house calls. Caren’s happiness comes from her family and baking. She bakes often and makes the occasional trip into the city to check in on her oldest child.

This persona does make use of some serious specific. However, that’s just so we can get into the mindset of knowing how to approach someone like Caren. If you take the basics, you’ll see our target market for link building here, which is a woman in her 40s who wants a few restaurant suggestions for when she’s in the big city every now and then. We hope to approach the Carens of the world in such a way that they will find it in their hearts to link to our site. Thus, we probably aren’t going to speak to them as if they’re college-age males who are heavily into sports. We also can make more informed decisions on other relevant sites to approach for link building once we’re in Caren’s mindset, as we think about other interests that someone like Caren might have. Once you have the basics (woman in her 40s making a few trips to the big city), you’re well on your way to identifying other types of interests that Caren might have. Armed with this information, your link building efforts should be just the slightest bit easier.

If you want to see some excellent graphics and analysis explaining Web 2.0, subscribe to Ross Dawson’s blog, Trends in the Living Networks.

A New Conversation

Social networking has removed many of the obstacles that got in the way of better understanding prospects and customers, and serving them. Here are a few insights from trying to stay up with how Web 2.0 is changing how companies interact with prospects and customers:

• Overbalance the scales with offers of knowledge, not sales hype. Instead of blasting out PDFs that tell prospects how great your company is, think about setting up weekly webinars where you invite in an industry expert that freely shares their knowledge of what’s working in the area your products, services or software deliver value. Before you dismiss this as just for the Fortune 1,000 realize that industry experts need PR coverage too and often you can get them do these in exchange for promoting their practice.
• Define a Web 2.0 strategy now for your company and start executing on it fast. The two best bloggers in this area are Josh Bernoff and Charlene Li of Forrester who write Groundswell. These two authors, through their analysis of social networking and the Web 2.0 landscape, continually show how transparent and more connected previously isolated social networks, both in private and commercial areas, have become. What also emerges from their analysis is that when Web 2.0 technologies are used for connecting with customers, sales hype is dead. Informative, knowledgeable content that solves a complex question or problem for a customer is all that matters. Blogging to deliver solutions to customers in the form of knowledge generates real leads. It takes some companies a year or so to see any sales from this, yet it is hardly time wasted. These companies have changed how relevant they are to customers by delivering significant value without first asking for an order. Sales follow knowledge.
• Consider your own YouTube University. Getting a channel on YouTube to upload videos that can be inexpensively produced is another approach to gaining a reputation as a company willing to share knowledge with potential and present customers. The development of your own YouTube University also needs to have periodic updates, fueling new traffic in the process. It’s a fairly large resource commitment to make, yet getting your best product experts onto your own YouTube channel can increase your company’s credibility across the industry and with prospects.
• Work with any channel, technology or services providers to offer them participation in your trade shows and events, and vice versa. This works well as many partnerships have overlapping customer bases, yet have their own unique market segments as well. Developing this type of partnership significantly reduces the costs of trade shows and increases face-time with prospects, a critical part of lead generation.
• Understand that Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) AdWords is only as effective as your landing pages, lead management process and continual managing of keywords. Google has delivered some exceptional tools in this area during 2008, including the ability to optimize a landing page design by testing it iteratively before its launched. This is the largest lead generation strategy for many technology companies, and their continually improving of landing pages and key words generates significant results.

Knowledge Is Power

I’ve not spent years studying lead generation, yet what I have seen is that many companies are still doing very well with leads despite news about the economy this year.I’m convinced it’s because they have worked very hard using the strategies discussed here to get and stay relevant to prospects and customers. They’re delivering more knowledge, value, insight and intelligence than anyone else.

As a result, they’re trusted more and sales happen. Lead generation cannot be reduced to a series of causal factors; it all begins with trust in your company. In a Web 2.0 World, earning and retaining that trust is much more about offering insight and knowledge first.

A company should redesign their website for many reasons. For a company the decision to redesign a website may be more compelling than for a personal website or community website. A small company may have budgetary constraints that prevent a redesign of their website. However the increasing role played by online marketing on the success of a business will in most cases justify expenditure.

Some of the reasons a company should redesign their website are quite obvious when you visit the company’s website. Whist some of the reasons may not be as evident. A company that sells services to other businesses will have a different design and lay-out to a company that directly targets end consumers. As such different companies are guided by different factors.

Some of the reasons why a company should redesign their website are discussed below:

Outdated design

A company’s brand is affected by the design of their website. Like with any other things, a website’s design can become outdated with time. The design trends 5 years ago were different to the design trends now. A company with an outdated website will present the wrong image to its prospective e customers who visit the website. A company’s website should reflect a modern design in line with the present times in order to gain a competitive advantage.

The design does not represent your market

A company’s website plays an important role in establishing its brand. When users visit a company’s website they form an impression about the company and its values. If your company’s website does not portray the desired image for your company then it should be redesigned in a way that it does. The design of the website should be based on the expectations of its target audience. Different websites target different customers. The website of a business to business company is guided by different design objectives to a website that sells directly to customers. If your company’s website design does not reflect the needs of your specific market then it probably requires a redesign.

Updating content on the website is not easy

It is more important to update the content on your website today than it has ever been before. The market today is driven by information. It is important for a website to provide up to date information to its customers. It is a common practice today for a company to offer independent information on their website in addition to information about the company and its products. Building an online community around your customers is becoming increasingly important to the success of a website. Companies are increasingly using their website to provide additional information and services that provide added value to their customers and offer a reason to visit their website.

If your company’s website does not allow you to update content easily, then it is time to think seriously about redesigning the website in a way it can be updated with ease. Many powerful content management systems freely available today allow easy updating of websites along with many additional features that can add value to a company’s website.

Lack of interactivity and marketing opportunities

A company’s website should provide a marketing and public relation opportunity. A company’s website should allow the company to interact with existing customers as well as prospective ones. At a most basic level a company’s website should allow it to manage customer requests and also collect information on prospective customers.

Today a company has to rely increasingly on the internet in order to remain competitive. Commercially successful company websites often offer a range of features on their websites that allow them to interact with their customers in addition to information about their products. Companies have successfully used features on their website to encourage participation from customers. These include customer registration and login to access additional services; request a call back option, newsletters, email enquiry form, blog, and forum. Different businesses follow a different strategy based on the market they target.

In most cases the scope of static websites is fairly limited. In order to have a commercially successful website a company needs to adopt well thought of strategy for their website. If your company’s website lacks interactivity and does not present an effective marketing and PR opportunity for the company then it is missing out on opportunities. If the website is scalable then additional features could be integrated without a complete redesign. However if it a static website then the chances are that a complete overhaul and redesign will be required.

Now what?

Here are 10 title tag formulas that balance SEO and marketing and hopefully avoid wrestling matches in the boardroom:

1. [product name] – [company name]. If you’re selling products and you know your customers search for the product names, put the product name first, then the company name. Unless the product name is 125 characters long, in which case you have a whole other problem.
2. [article title] – [company name]. Worst case, put the article title first, then the company name.
3. [company name] – [product name / article title]. If the marketing VP just won’t back down, fine. Put the company name first, and remind them that you’re going to slam a drawer on their fingers when, 4 weeks from now, they come in to your office asking why the rankings haven’t improved.
4. [custom title] – [company name]. If you really have a nifty content management system, you can edit your title tag separate from your page or article title. Put that custom title first, then your company name.
5. [keyword] – [company name]. If you’re a one-product or one-service company, put the keyphrase that’s relevant to that page, then the company name, like this: Buggy Bumpers: Ian’s Buggy Emporium. Use a different phrase on each page! Repeating the same word again and again is a bad idea.
6. [keyword] – [product name] – [company name]. If your product name, company name and target phrase are all short, you can string them all together like this: Buggy Repair – Tune Ups – Ian’s Buggy Emporium. I try to keep my title tags under 60 characters.
7. [really cool sales phrase]. Remember, your title tag is what shows up in the search snippet. Come up with a great selling phrase like ‘Buggy repairs while you wait’. You work in the keywords and might talk the VP of marketing into leaving your title tag alone.
8. [company name]. Give them what they want, watch the rankings implode, and after you’re fired you can laugh at them from afar. I don’t recommend this.
9. [category] – [page or product name] – [company name]. This will almost certainly be too long, and get truncated in the search results. But if you have categories that are also search phrases, this is a nice, automated way to generate title tags throughout an entire store or collection of pages.
10. [ ]. You can always leave nothing in there at all. See number 8.

I used dashes to separate elements of the title tag. You can use dashes, colons or even pipe symbols (‘|’). As long as you separate the phrases, you’re fine.

And remember to keep your title tags under 60-70 characters. Less is even better if you can get away with it.

A few other posts worth checking
Search Engines are Structured Thinkers
The Easiest SEO Booster: Heading Tags
Choosing an SEO-Ready Content Management System

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