Out-Smarts Marketing Services

The sun is shining, the daffodils are blooming and Spring is in full swing.  If these weren’t enough reasons to be cheerful then here are some more on the Internet front.

The main reason to be cheerful this month is the release of the latest WordPress blog software - version 2.5.  I only started using it today but so far so great - my spacing problems have been resolved as have my cut and paste issues.I am looking forward to finding out what other goodies version 2.5 brings.  

Another discovery this month was the ThoughtFarmer knowledge sharing solution.  Aimed at providing organisations with an Intranet portal that enhances knowledge sharing and collaboration, ThoughtFarmer combines the best of wiki technology with social networking to allow organizations to deploy a unique and highly usable portal.

Suitable online invoicing systems are few and far between.  Some are good at handling expenses, others good at tracking time but I haven’t found one that does both well, one that is easy to use, customizable and can link to Paypal. Canadian online invoicing provider Freshbooks may just be the solution.

Looking for any easy way to involve your visitors on line?  PollDaddy is a great code generating tool that allows you to create a poll on your site (you define the question you want to ask and the answer criteria). Simply cut and paste the code to your web site and start polling your audience.

Another easy way to enhance your site and make the user experience more enjoyable is to add forms. Wufoo simplifies this by giving you a catalogue of templates to choose from (everything from customer surveys to registration forms).      

Thanks to the ZDNet blog for this very apt cartoon. Same could be said for many company websites too.

A while back it was the in thing to set up a web site that would act as a brochure, telling people who happened to visit what you have to offer. It was nothing better than a flyer in the mail. The days of the static web site done, finished, caput okay!

These days its all about interactivity and collaboration. Its easy to make websites more dynamic and to involve your audience rather than communicate at them. There are thousands of widgets out there to allow you to question is are you doing it? Go on - interact with us - you know you want to…..

Marc Canter former rock and opera singer now focuses on social technologies.  He says he’s visionary and has an uncanny ability to correctly predict the future - time will tell.   His main point is that all software needs to become social.  We need to be taking advantage of the social and open nature of technology now to extend beyond traditional realms of software.

He works with Bell Canada to create a site that takes advantage of social sharing to promote Bell’s music and movies.  He predicts Bell Canada will be an openID broker.There’s no real compelling reason to do this right now but it will be way of future.

I haven’t captured half of what Marc said so you should check out his aforementioned blog and his PeopleAggregator company.

Nice job Marc!

By this I mean Google juice and not pictures of hunky models. Here are 10 great ways you can easily improve your search engine positioning without putting your hands in your pocket and without having to be a SEO technodweeb.

1. Update your site regularly - this may seem obvious but many corporate sites rarely change.

2. Post a video - it can be short and sweet but has the added benefit of enhancing your image.

3. Add a podcast - we did it this week and you can too. Our traffic has gone up by about 50% since. Coincidence? I think not.

4. Label your images - most sites don’t bother but this is viable real estate on your site, use it. Image titles should relate back to your keywords and offering for maximum impact.

5. Use Google’s webmaster tools - make sure your site is crawled regularly, submit your sitemap (okay I concede you might need a technodweeb for that) and identify any problems so that you (or your technodweeb) can fix them.

6. Get bookmarks - book marks are like links the more you have the better. Hit on employees, partners and colleagues to bookmark your site.

7. Comment regularly on relevant blogs and always remember to insert your url correctly.

8. Spend some time developing a keyword map for your products and services so as to identify the most effective words to use and those to avoid.

9. Use bold and headings to identify key terms in your text.

10. This one should be first on the list but it seems so obvious I almost left it out. In case you haven’t done so, remember to submit your site to Google and other search engines otherwise there’s no hope whatsoever.