Marketwire Debuts New Brand; No One Cares.

I got an email last week regarding a 'Brand New Look for Marketwire'. Marketwire is a newswire (think PRNewswire, Businesswire, etc.) that is admirably trying to differentiate themselves. According to their boilerplate: Marketwire is a social communications company that provides everyone, from Fortune 500 enterprises to start-ups, with powerfully simple solutions: global press release distribution, industry-leading social media monitoring and analytics, and a fully integrated marketing communications platform for content creation, optimization, distribution and measurement. From a design perspective, I love their new logo and brand identity. It's beautiful and modern. And their new vision is smart... the problem is, they are still a newswire. The reason people use newswires is to get the word out. To broadcast news to the masses. That's a good thing right? Businesses still want tha... Keep Reading

Categories: Web Tips & Advice 

Know Your Customer: Data Analytics and Customer Relationship Management

Every day, faceless users are delivered to your website on a cloud of information. By harnessing this digital intelligence into recognizable patterns, one can effectively combine the power of web analytics with the psychology of consumer behavior - even if you cannot see them. The key is metrics. Think of it this way: if users are carried on an invisible river through thousands of websites, data is the current driving them. We are reminded of the creepy (yet incredible) Target example, where the company's data mining experts managed to guess that a 16-year-old girl was pregnant before her parents. While large companies like Target employ teams of professionals to analyze metrics, the technology is available to everyone. Weblift's CEO, Pedro Sostre, published these tested analytics methods in a book (Web Analytics for Dummies), which essentially outlined his routine for success. Today,... Keep Reading

Categories: Analytics  Web Tips & Advice 

The Importance of Focusing on What's Important

Companies understand the importance of harnessing the social marketplace to promote and otherwise advertise their products and services, but many are uncertain as to which social networks to engage.  With so many sharing platforms available (Facebook, Twitter, Digg and Stumbleupon, to name a few), it's understandable that one might wonder which one deserves the most stock. We tend to hear the same frantic questions from many of our clients: Which social network sharing buttons should we include on our site? Facebook? Twitter? Google+? How about LinkedIn? At this point, we advise our clients on the importance of focusing on what is most, well, important. While companies have the option to involve themselves in many different networks, they need only worry about those that are the most effective, those that result in a high number of shares by users. In this way, businesses are onl... Keep Reading

Categories: Web Tips & Advice  Social Networking 

Facebook Timeline for Business: Cover Photos Have Rules

Facebook's Timeline for Business has a ton of new, easy-to-use features to help owners advertise their businesses in the social networking marketplace.  Along with these new features are a few rules of practice, which are meant to keep the consumer safe and informed when engaging with companies on the Facebook platform. Gone are the days when businesses could essentially "force" users to "like" their page before content would be displayed.  In its place, owners find a highly visual, informative virtual storefront where the cover photo is a new front door. To fight back against phishing and scam artists, Facebook has given the following list of cover photo design rules, which essentially limit the possibility of deception (per Facebook's pages product guide as of February 20, 2012): "*Cover photos cannot include: Price or purchase information, such as “40% off”... Keep Reading

Categories: Web Tips & Advice  Social Networking 

Pinterest Experiences Growing Pains - Service Inundated with Spam

As Pinterest continues to grow, greedy phishers and scam artists aim to capitalize on the service's still-soft platform. Dozens of reports have poured in, complaining of everything from half-naked pictures of women promoting fake weight loss regiments to food images claiming recipes if you "follow the link." Pinterest officially acknowledged the problem on April 13, 2012 with this post, giving users tips on how to report inapproprate pins.  Since then, the post has received over a hundred responses with suggestions from users on what they'd like the ability to do, including: blocking "@" mention requests report entire profiles as spammers or bots block "bit.ly" links from Pinterest entirely block their own profiles from public view block their entire site from anyone trying to repin a photo To accommodate, Pinterest made the following available: Ability to report sin... Keep Reading

Categories: News  Web Tips & Advice  Social Networking