We here at AlterImaging, are all about making things easier and more streamlined.
We ran into an issue a week ago and decided No More!
When building a website and adding in JQuery functionality. It makes no sense for you to host that JS on your server. Google hosts these scripts for you, (isn’t that nice of Google?)
Welcome to AlterNation! Today we’re talking personal branding with social media- what it is, and why it’s important.
Personal Branding is a pretty new concept for regular people. In reality though, it’s simply a new form of reputation management; one that takes place online. Put simply, personal branding is marketing the brand of you. There are plenty of reasons to want to do this, ranging from simply wanting to expand your career options, to a major campaign of trust for a brand. To some the idea of personal branding may seem unnecessary, but to others, especially freelancers, personal branding is massive.
[powerpress]
There’s something great about taking something intangible like a website and creating a design that looks like you can reach out and touch it. Take a look at some web designs based on notebooks.
[note: we took down the screenshots because some of these sites had either changed or requested that we do so]
Foursquare is a location-based game and social networking platform. To clarify, you check into places you go, get points, unlock badges, see where your friends are, and sometimes find specials and deals. Foursquare has made setting up a business account extremely easy, and they give business owners a lot of power. All you have to do is go to their page for businesses to get started.
For businesses, Foursquare is like a modern update of old customer loyalty programs. So instead of giving customers a card that gives them a free sub after 12 subs; you give them a special after 10 checkins. People can compete to be the mayor of your business, the person with the most checkins in the last 2 months, and you can give the mayor an extra prize. The goal is to give people enough incentive to keep returning to your business, time after time. Since you have the freedom to set rewards, you might want to give people incentives at every 5 or so checkins. That way people won’t be turned off by the amount of checkins it would take to become mayor, or lose interest after an initial reward.
Welcome to AlterNation! Today we’re talking location-based services!
2009 saw the rise of location-based social applications, such as Foursquare and Gowalla, which have tremendous potential for businesses. Though barely a year old Foursquare has nearly 1 million users. Gowalla, its main competition has about 150,000 users. April 16, 2010 was declared Foursquare day by the company via Twitter, and Manchester, New Hampshire declared official “Foursquare Day” in the town.
[powerpress]
We preach blogging for business pretty relentlessly, and while there is a lot of information (read: endless) on how to blog, there isn’t a lot to help you if the product or service you sell isn’t particularly interesting. Keeping this in mind, I picked three examples of boring professions or industries, and outlined the challenge of blogging for them, and the solution that can be implemented. Without further to do:
Plumbers
I picked plumbers, because let’s be honest, banging around with pipes and crawling under houses has very little appeal. Plumbing is a profession where writing conventional articles really wouldn’t work for the average person. The goal of blogging as a plumber is to build trust, so that when people are Googling for a local plumber, they are drawn to you above everyone else. Sure, a few “how to fix a leaky sink” articles are fine, but I think if you want to produce compelling copy you’ll need to tell stories.
Welcome to Alternation! Today we’re talking Twitter search!
It’s common practice to monitor your brand on Twitter, but Christopher Penn has written about what he calls“Three nearly guaranteed Twitter moneymaking words”. Wordiness aside, his suggestions are really great. He says “recommend“, “suggest“, and “anyone” are the words, and that they should be used in combination with eachother and with the product or service your brand offers. He mentions how this is like search marketing a decade ago, and how extremely long-tailed searches were used to drive high conversion rates. In the same way as “What is the best veterinarian in Topeka” get people to specific results, Tweets asking “Can anyone recommend a good vet in Topeka” give you an opportunity to gain a customer. If you are searching for keywords included in this sort of query, all you’ll need to do is wait for people to ask questions, then answer helpfully. While the effectiveness won’t be the same for everyone, the point remains the same: brand management isn’t the same as Twitter search marketing. Monitoring your brand is often better suited to after-the-fact customer service and satisfaction, and while it’s important, it won’t drive sales like query monitoring has the potential to do.
[powerpress]
Welcome to AlterNation! Today we’re talking WordPress; what it is, why it’s great, and how you can make it better. For the uninformed, here’s a description of WordPress pulled from WordPress.org: “WordPress is a state-of-the-art publishing platform with a focus on aesthetics, web standards, and usability. WordPress is both free and priceless at the same time.”
[powerpress]
6 Reasons why WordPress is amazing:
Social media can be a scary place for a lot of old school marketers to jump into. With the ability for consumers to have direct access and commutation directly with companies, a lot of marketers are on edge. They are tiptoeing their way into the social media space and testing the water before they dive in. Better safe than sorry is their mantra. And their mantra is wrong.
With Social media being so new to the discipline of marketing and the communications industry, there is massive potential to capture market share by being first.
Here is the big secret: There are no best practices for social media. What works for some companies will not work for others, even if the exact same tactics are used.
Chances are you’ve read some of the big social media blogs, like Mashable and HubSpot. These are great blogs, no doubt, but what about the internet’s vast collection of other social media blogs? I went hunting for quality blogs that weren’t as well known but still had excellent content, and no surprise, I found a plethora of blogs. After glancing through a mountain of sites, I picked out some of the best that I found. Here’s a collection of hand-picked blogs that feature excellent content, unique opinions, and a tremendous amount of information about all things social media.
Kim Woodbridge: (anti) Social Development
From About: (Anti) Social Development is about WordPress, Social Media, RSS, Lifestreaming, Twitter, and online tech resources. Here, you’ll find tutorials, useful tools, and fun online resources.
ViperChill: Viral Marketing
From About: Hey, I’m Glen. I help people build remarkable websites that gain traffic through viral marketing. Read More
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We're Alter Imaging. A Charlotte-based web design and advertising agency that produces consistent results for both domestic and international clients. Companies choose us because of our in-house talent, our commitment to quality work, and our dedication to their success. Take a moment to find out why we're consistently ranked a Top 25 Web Design company.
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