Posted by Jon Baer on Tue, Jul 20, 2010 @ 10:46 AM
Lately, many of our web re-design projects involve migrating existing content from a database into a .net content management system. I spoke with a few of our certified Kentico trainers and web developers about the best way to integrate Kentico with a back end database that contains content that needs to be migrated to a new website.
Here are five tips:
- Prior to the migration, update your database by removing any pages that will not appear on the new website. The decision whether to include a page in the new website will be determined by the new site map.
- Assess the existing content and determine what document types will be needed in Kentico and create them. For example, you may want to use the document types for press releases and products and create custom ones. Generally, custom document types will have fields that match the tables in the old database.
- Place the design templates into Kentico. Templates are created using HTML, CSS and images.
- Write a script to automatically migrate this content into Kentico, utilizing Kentico’s API.
- Once the content is migrated into Kentico, you will be able to modify any of the existing copy and add new copy using the document types.
Posted by Jon Baer on Wed, Jun 30, 2010 @ 09:48 AM
We receive a lot of requests from people who are re-designing their websites to explain the benefits of building their website with a content management system ("CMS"). One of the CMS that gets mentioned a lot is Kentico, an off the shelf asp.net powered CMS. The questions people ask us about Kentico pretty much fall into a few categories, including:
- Editing and creating content - "how easy is it to use for a non-technical person?"
- Scalability and flexibility - "how scalable is it", meaning "what features does it have that will allow me to grow my site as our needs evolve over time?"
- Search Engine Marketing - "how does it help with/fit in with my search engine marketing initiatives?"
Because we have these conversations all the time, we decided to start the Kentico Implementation Group in LinkedIn as a way to pose and answer questions about the Kentico CMS in a group setting.
If you're interested in joining, or if you know someone who will benefit from the discussions we have on the Kentico Implementation Group, please do a search for "Kentico Implementation Group" in Linked and request to join.
Posted by Jeff Demers on Sun, Jun 27, 2010 @ 10:33 AM
In an effort to improve its brand in the minds of customers, Bank of America (BAC) has increased its spending on digital marketing -- but decreased its investment in traditional outlet including television and print.
Photo courtesy of petermcmahon.com.au
"We're not abandoning any of those forms of media," BoA head of marketing Claire Huang told an audience at Advertising Age's Digital Conference. "But we're realizing that digital not only allows you to provide information, you can have real, live connections. It's not just a flat little square box you have two seconds to look at."
Huang was responding to a query from panelist Tim Armstrong, the CEO of AOL, who also talked about his firm's branding activities. "When I first started at AOL, a lot of people gave me advice to remove the AOL brand from the company," Armstrong said. "I talked to a lot of different partners, and the fact is there's a tremendous amount of goodwill behind the brand, which was so unexpected. So we made a decision to stay behind the brand."
The two companies said the solution was to publish more online content (although using different methods). BoA is increasing its digital presence by harnessing internal efforts like new texting, Twitter, and webcasts rather than spending more on online advertising.
"Traditional advertising of digital like search and banner ads has shrunk a little bit," Huang said. "We're actually making our own content because we have the content experts." For example, Merrill Lynch (a unit of BoA) hired Charlie Gibson to talk about retirement planning on a panel discussion that was webcast from the company's website.
Armstrong also addressed concerns that such arrangements may cast a shadow on the journalism industry. "My belief is that when you hire a great journalist, you're hiring their network, and not just their Twitter network; journalists are networks themselves," he said.
AOL has recently hired many journalists from those recently laid-off by traditional outlets, and the company may be a reporter's haven. Still, Armstrong added that AOL is also planning content in response to reader requests -- a tactic that contrasts with the traditional model of journalism in which the editor and reporter are the experts.
"Content has been historically done in a vacuum," he said. "So we're continuing to work on it, so two months from now AOL will be very accurate at producing content. The investments we're making for improved use of technology for content will be a long-term net positive. I think we're a great place for journalists. We have church and state at AOL."
Posted by Jeff Demers on Sun, Jun 20, 2010 @ 12:23 PM
Twitter might seem like a waste of time and only a tool for friends to keep in touch. But Twitter is invaluable for business because the 140-character messages can include a website link shortened using websites like bit.ly and tinyurl.
Photo courtesy of culch.ie
Businesses can use these tools in a variety of ways:
- Driving Website Traffic. Tweets can be written to get readers to click on a listed Web address. Now, the exposure is doubled because tweets now appear regularly in search engines results from Google.
- It is Free. Creating an account does not cost a cent; the only expense is time.
- Staying Up-to-Date. Breaking-news events can spread throughout the world in a matter of seconds, so following Twitter users in your industry is a good way to keep abreast of the news while you are doing social-media marketing.
- Staying Informed. Following thought-leaders in your sector -- and even your competitors, clients, and partners -- is a good way to learn valuable information and the latest trends.
- Reinforcing a Brand. Highlight tweets with your ideas, opinions, and expertise will promote your brand among your followers. By making a great first impression, loyal followers will be gained.
- Staying in Touch. Twitter is a fast way to keep in touch with current and prospective clients. Since others can retweet (forward) your posts on Twitter, it helps with viral marketing.
- Sharing Information. Retweeting a message about something your followers would like is a way to build your reputation -- it shows that you are on Twitter not only to benefit yourself.
These are just some of the ways that Twitter can benefit a company, and the same principles hold true for other sites like Facebook and LinkedIn.
Posted by Jeff Demers on Tue, Jun 15, 2010 @ 08:19 PM
You probably already know that Google ranks websites with more inbound links higher in search results. You also probably know that links from higher-authority websites -- like those with a high Page Rank from Google -- build your site's authority as well.
But you probably don't know that certain categories of websites have an inherent value -- namely, government websites (.gov), university websites (.edu), and non-profit organizations (.org) -- because these sites are authorities in and of themselves. After all, a link from the State Department, Harvard University, or the Red Cross is better than one from a random blog even if it ranks highly.
It might be difficult to get a link from government or educational website, but it is easier to obtain one from a charity. Here's how.
First, most companies -- especially larger ones -- devote a certain percentage of their time and money towards community charities. Why not combine your efforts: help the needy, and market your company online as well.
- Visit www.volunteermatch.org. Non-profit organizations advertise their needs for volunteers here, and you can search by either locality or need. (For example, you can search in "Boston," or you can search by "SEO.")
- Research their Page Rank. Once you have a list of possibilities, look up the Page Rank of each website. Then, offer your services to a charity whose website ranks highly. Volunteer to optimize their website. Serve on their development (fundraising) committee. Make a good donation.
- Get listed on their website. Of course, you'll probably want to do this delicately -- after all, it's a charity. Many non-profit organizations have pages listing their partners -- sometimes even on the home page -- and they add volunteers automatically. Or, you may need to ask politely to be added. (Just confirm that the links are NOT "no-follow.")
- Enjoy the benefits! This is one of the few times in business when it is a win-win situation. Not only will you and your company be helping those in need, your website will also rank more highly in search engines. Good news for everyone!
Posted by Sunniya Saleem on Thu, Apr 22, 2010 @ 08:09 AM
In yesterday's article we discussed how Facebook's new technology can help businesses create meaningful brand experiences. And we discovered today that businesses have already jumped on the social brand experience bandwagon and are strategizing to successfully use this channel. Today, Mashable revealed in an article how Levi's (the clothing manufacturer) was one of the first businesses to successfully use Social Media and Facebook plugins to create a social brand experience.
A social brand experience adds a whole new dimension to online marketing and brand management. Previously, businesses could create online communities, websites, blogs, podcasts, have conversations online but now they can actually empower their customers to co-create meaningful brand experiences. By deploying successful online marketing strategies businesses can 'be social' and adopt practices which provide greater interaction between the brand and the customer. These channels provide opportunities for businesses to let their customers own the brand. Social brand experiences are a new and powerful way of creating brand loyalty and brand recognition quickly.
Levi's provides a good example of a social brand experience. Through their website levi.com they are letting their customers show their likeness towards a product share it with their friends on facebook. Customers can do this simply by clicking the 'like' facebook plugin on the site and the image of the product will be displayed on their facebook profile. The new plugin links the site to facebook and allows customers to have dual interaction. This enables the brand to promote it's products to millions to customers just by allowing users to share-in and co-create the brand experience.
Mashable quotes Jodi Bricker, Vice President of Digital for Levi's® Americas as stating that, "We're creating a new social shopping experience that will change the way people shop online and, frankly, make buying jeans more fun. We're excited to pioneer this new technology and help our loyal fans connect with our brand and share their favorite Levi's® products with friends."
Posted by Sunniya Saleem on Wed, Apr 21, 2010 @ 01:54 PM
The web is dominated by social media and social networks. Each day a new technology is revealed or a new network is launched. This progress shows the growing change and use of innovation to connect people worldwide. Last week, Twitter revealed that there were 105,779,710 users that used the micro-blogging platform. Facebook on the other hand revealed that it was opening up the platform to partner sites.
Today, Facebook revealed further expansion strategies on it's blog. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg expressed that Facebook is going to partner with Microsoft Docs, Yelp and Pandora. Through this partnership Facebook will open the platform to include integration between the services offered by the chosen partners. Where this may raise privacy concerns with the users, it does provide multiple opportunities for businesses.
By adopting the social web mantra and opening up the platform, Facebook is giving businesses the opportunity to reach out to millions of its users and create individualized brand experiences. Mark Zuckerberg stated that, "This next version of Facebook Platform puts people at the center of the web. It lets you shape your experiences online and make them more social. For example, if you like a band on Pandora, that information can become part of the graph so that later if you visit a concert site, the site can tell you when the band you like is coming to your area. The power of the open graph is that it helps to create a smarter, personalized web that gets better with every action taken.
We think that the future of the web will be filled with personalized experiences. We've worked with three pre-selected partners-Microsoft Docs, Yelp and Pandora-to give you a glimpse of this future, which you can access without having to login again or click to connect. For example, now if you're logged into Facebook and go to Pandora for the first time, it can immediately start playing songs from bands you've liked across the web. And as you're playing music, it can show you friends who also like the same songs as you, and then you can click to see other music they like."
Social networks like Twitter, Foursquare, Facebook, Digg and Linkedin have changed the way we interact online. With these additional changes proposed by Facebook, the Social Web is going to become the hub of online interaction. It will enhance the interaction between businesses and their target audience. It will help brands create experiences that can be translated into social media. And it will enable them to share these experiences successfully with their target audience.
In another blog post from last week, Facebook enhanced the technology behind it's pages. Now business pages can be connected to individual user profiles. By doing this Facebook enables businesses to monitor conversations about their brand closely. It also opens up a whole new level of interaction and lets businesses adopt strategies to capture the mind share of their target audience.
Posted by Sunniya Saleem on Tue, Apr 13, 2010 @ 07:56 AM
People have always asked two questions with relation to Twitter: How can Twitter make money? And can I promote my business on Twitter? Twitter Co-founder Biz Stone answered both these questions today and announced the official launch of "Promoted Tweets" - the paid advertising program by Twitter. "Promoted Tweets" has been launched to first display ads in search results and later in the feeds of individual user accounts. These ads will also be promoted on Twitter based third party sites like TweetDeck, twirl, TwitterBerry and Tweetie.
Co-founder of twitter Biz Stone announced that, "We are launching the first phase of our Promoted Tweets platform with a handful of innovative advertising partners that include Best Buy, Bravo, Red Bull, Sony Pictures, Starbucks, and Virgin America -- with more to come. Promoted Tweets are ordinary Tweets that businesses and organizations want to highlight to a wider group of users."
Twitter has slowly become one of the most popular sites on the internet, in 2009 Twitter had 75 million users on its site. Currently, it has become one of the most talked about social networks and micro-blogging sites. From trends to news twitter leads the industry in many ways. Twitter's paid advertising program has been launched just in time for the AdAge digital conference and the Chirp conference hosted by Twitter.
AdAge provides further insight into the launch of "Promoted Tweets" and gives a synopsis of Twitter's Chief Operating Officer Dick Costolo's statement. AdAge reveals that, "Unlike search ads on Google, Bing or Yahoo, there will only ever be one Twitter ad displayed at a time. Marketers will be able to use them to start conversations, such as Starbucks' "Tell us something a barista did to make your day?" Starbucks could buy keywords to keep its question atop a search that turns up those results. Film studios could use promoted tweets to get the word out before opening weekend, and then to participate in the dialog about the film after opening night.
Twitter is rolling out promoted tweets slowly over the course of the year; initially on Twitter.com, and then to Twitter clients, which can include the ads and get a cut of the revenue. Ultimately, Twitter could syndicate results to Google or Bing, though no deal is close to making that happen."
"Promoted Tweets" seems like a great opportunity for both businesses and consumers. With this new business model Twitter can help filter unnecessary and random tweets, giving businesses a chance to reach out to a greater audience. Before this both Facebook and Linkedin have individual paid advertising programs on their sites to help businesses get more exposure.
Posted by Sunniya Saleem on Mon, Apr 12, 2010 @ 07:42 PM
Today, I met Mike Volpe (@mvolpe), VP Inbound Marketing at Hubspot and it was a very educational experience. Having moved here recently I have been trying to expand on my network of friends, colleagues, industry experts etc. Social media marketing is both an online and offline endeavor. It is all about forming that link, that connection with individuals whom you interact with daily in the online space. And as I mentioned in my last article inbound marketing channels have helped me connect to many people, discuss industry specific issues and gain greater insight. Mike Volpe is one of those few individuals who have helped me expand on my knowledge of inbound marketing.
The reason I call this article 'the inbound marketing story' is that today's meeting stemmed from online interaction with an industry expert. Having taken the inbound marketing exam in February, I started following a number of people from Hubspot on Twitter. One of them was Mike Volpe. Mike and I started discussing the latest in tech gadgets on twitter. The discussion went from iPad to HP netbooks to eee pcs to coffee.
I was very excited about meeting Mike as I had seen him on Hubspot TV, had read his articles on the hubspot blog and had been talking to him on twitter. He was this contact on my screen whom I loved sharing ideas with. Meeting him offline meant taking the whole online marketing experience to real life. And a part of me wasn't sure how this experience would translate. After having waited two weeks I finally met him today. And I was impressed at how down to earth he was and with what ease he translated the whole inbound marketing experience from the online space to everyday life.
The important thing I gathered from today's meeting was that inbound marketing ethos and guidelines need to be communicated and established across the board - from our online activities to our everyday life. There needs to be a point where it all comes in sync and reflects the same brand attitude. Come to think of it the 'online space' is just a channel where we can further our everyday activities and businesses. It provides us with opportunities to reach out to a wider audience. And helps us create platforms which enable us to interact without having to be physically present in the same room. But if someone was to ask what inbound marketing would like if moved from the online space to the real world? I would say it would very much look like the hub of activity at the Hubspot offices.
The Hubspot offices seemed like an interactive maze to me where everyone was busy communicating on some level or another. From an outsiders point of view this communication was very much in sync. Even though each individual was carrying out his/her own task yet it all came together under one umbrella. It was hard to set rigid boundaries around groups or to say that one part was different from another. To be honest it was reflective of how hubspot carries out their online activities. They may do different webinars, have different twitter accounts, write different blog posts but they all speak the same language - the language of inbound marketing. The culture at their corporate offices reflects this too. What was most amusing was that I saw copies of the 'inbound marketing' book by Brian and Dharmesh on the desks of their employees too.
Posted by Sunniya Saleem on Thu, Apr 08, 2010 @ 06:42 PM
Two or three decades ago it would have seemed impossible for a local business to be seen global. Or to have an audience in a part of a world which you had never visited. True, the internet eased up communication for businesses but Social Media added a whole new dimension to it. It allowed businesses, marketers and entrepreneurs etc. to connect to customers, have conversations and close deals over platforms like Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin. I remember attending a webinar by Hubspot where they showed a case-study of how they had gotten a deal through Twitter.
I encountered something similar recently - an inquiry from a marketer in Asia who was interested in finding more about SEM. I was excited because we got to exchange so many ideas, talk about strategies and discuss issues specific to our regional industries.Social media helped us break the boundaries and limitations of traditional marketing and helped us connect.
I contribute to many different marketing groups on Linkedin and follow some interesting people on Twitter. Working on these platforms has enabled me to connect to 'potential clients' and build rapport with industry experts in the online marketing industry. Today, I am connected to people worldwide - in places like London, Amsterdam, Dubai, Korea, Pakistan, India, France, Italy, China, South Africa etc. I have never visited many of these places but each day I talk to many incredible people. We share a common interest and a common goal. We may live in different time zones, we may speak different languages but social media connects us in ways that were never possible before.
Social media has made us "globally social". Sometimes we don't realize the power of this medium, or the ease with which it allows us to form valuable connections. Connections that have slowly filtered in our everyday lives, connections that are very important and allow us to carry out business worldwide. In many ways social media has broken down cultural and national boundaries and united us all under a common umbrella. Social media allows businesses to experiment with innovative strategies and helps them extend their reach.
It's particularly useful for businesses and allows them to market to a wider audience. One of my neighbors runs a salon for women in her house. She is quite successful and has a huge clientele. But what's most interesting is the fact that all her clients are referrals from Social media networks. The only place where she markets her business is on different social networks. She tweets regularly, updates messages on her facebook page, gives tips on her blog and has fresh content on her site regularly. These inbound marketing channels help her reach out to hundreds of women weekly.
Many can argue that small businesses are most likely to benefit from Social Media Marketing. That's not true - social media is all about being social and forming connections. It's about building links (with humans and not websites). Social media marketing practices can be used by all types of businesses: small, medium to large and even multi-nationals. It's all about knowing that you can connect to the world through social media. A good example being Kodak - a company that revamped its brand identity and leveraged success through Social Media. Now is the time when businesses need to realize the potential of Social Media and jump on the social media bandwagon. Your customer is out there you need to be there too.
Thanks to social media I have friends in every corner of the world. I learn something new each day - for instance today I read on the Google blog about the discovery of the rare humanoid fossil, I found out about launch of the new Adobe Creative Suite on Twitter and came across three new connections on Linkedin.
The world of Social media offers endless possibilities and through Social media we are creating a global culture that transcends the boundaries of race, color, creed, gender, religion etc.