What can the Olympic Games, Lindsey Vonn, Rachel Flatt and you have in common?

Millions are arm-chair athletes watching the Olympics, some are reading results in the newspapers or likely on various websites, and many others are commentators.  You like to know what’s up with hard news, results, and take time to dabble around the web to learn about your favorite Olympic athletes.   OK, so you’re not a downhill skier, speed or figure skater!  Athlete or not, you can still get on board and create your own website, get creative, and share your talents and excitement with others. Get ready, get set, and go create a website of your own in preparation for your company, event or the next Olympics.

lindsey-vonn-olympic-downhill-gold

Please join Phil Percuoco and Boston Web Creative on Thursday, February 4th at 12:00pm-1:00pm for the Underground’s presentation at the New England Grows Conference. It is at the BCEC in South Boston.  The conference is for members only of the green industry in New England. For more information regarding the conference please click on New England Grows Conference.

Are you presently unemployed, underemployed or feel like it is impossible to find a job in this economy? Do you have skills and experience that separate you from the pack? Have you posted your resume online with very little results? Have you dabbled a little in social media and find yourself over your head? Philip Percuoco of Boston Web Creative will explain how you can create a web presence for yourself to help aid employers in finding you. He will explore creating your own personal website as well as how to connect it to the social networking world–including Facebook, Twitter and blogging–in order to give your presence on the web an important boost.

The meeting is free and open to the public. Pre-registration is not required.

Phil’s presentation begins at 7 p.m. and is sponsored by the Hills Church Networking Group. The Hills Church is located at 207 Washington St. in Wellesley Hills. The Assembly Room is on the side of the church, next to the main parking lot.

*Wicked Local Wellesley
Posted Jan 14, 2010 @ 02:09 PM
Last update Jan 15, 2010 @ 06:32 PM

Often I hear from my customers how do I back up my content on my blog. So I did some snooping today and I found the below tutorial on the wordpress.org site. You will need access to your ftp information and some knowledge of how the blog is set up to do this by your self. Please if you are not comfortable leave it to the professionals.

Create a Regular Database Backup

Every post and page you write in WordPress is stored in a MySQL database. There aren’t separate files for each page or post. It’s important to regularly back up your database in case something goes wrong (such as with a rogue plugin or a misguided upgrade attempt). You can manually back up your database by using a tool like phpmyadmin, but it’s much easier to simply use the WordPress Database Backup plugin.

To create a regular database backup schedule:

• 1. Download and install the WordPress Database Backup plugin.
• 2. In your blog’s admin panel, go to Manage > Backup.
• 3. In the Backup Options section, select Email backup to and then enter your email address.
• 4. In the Scheduled Backup section, select Once Weekly.
• 5. Select any tables you want to include. These tables refer to data from any plugins you’ve added, not to your posts and comments.
• 6. Click the Submit button at the bottom.

Each week, you’ll receive an email with your database. The database is light and won’t take up much space in your email program. If your site ever crashes, you can restore your entire site’s posts, pages, categories, and tags (but not images) through the database file. Images are stored in wp-content/uploads folder

Now more than ever, company marketers are challenged with improving performance with fewer resources and shifting marketing budgets from traditional to digital tactics like SEO and social media. There are significant benefits from combining search engine optimization and social media marketing tactics ranging from increased social network discovery via search to the ability to attract links for improved SEO.

Implementing a social media marketing program without optimizing content is leaving money on the table. Useful social content (blog, video, images, audio) that cannot be discovered via search is a lost opportunity to reach an audience that is looking.

1. Find the Audience:
Understand their behaviors, preferences, methods of publishing, and sharing.
Most companies that are involved with the social web in the channels where their customers spend time have a good sense of where to start. Get involved.
2. Define your objectives:
Objectives are often driven by marketing or sales, and SEO has long been directly accountable to substantial improvements in web sales. Social media is not direct marketing. The role of SEO in a social media effort is to directly influence discovery of social communities or content via search.
3. Establish a game plan:
The game plan for reaching objectives in a combined SEO and social media effort will often focus on content and interaction, since it is content that people discover and share. Whether a keyword-focused strategy for reaching goals means publishing new content or creating an opportunity for consumer-generated content, it must involve proactive promotion and easy sharing ability.
4. Creating a strategic mix:
The strategic mix for a social media marketing effort is based on doing the homework of finding where the desired audience spends its time interacting with and sharing content. Much of the content creation and promotion for a social media marketing effort happens within the strategic mix and optimizing content for keywords.
5. Measure your goals:
Leveraging both social media monitoring services as well as web analytics can provide marketers with the insight to improve results. Marketers can use specific measurement tools to monitor the effect of their social web participation as well as the search engine performance of SEO efforts.

Extend the value of your investment. By involving SEO insight in a social media marketing effort and vice versa, marketers, public relations and advertisers can extend the value of their investment. Well optimized social media content marketing efforts can attract new network participants via search and help increase sales.Advertisers and companies that fund social media campaigns can continue to realize the traffic benefit from optimized interactive content long after the campaign has ended.

Search Engine Optimization

I have been redesigning a few websites recently. On each of the sites I have been adding a 404 page. ( see example at my website http://www.bostonwebcreative.com. If the site had pages previously and you have moved them so they do not exist it is a good idea to create a error 404 page. This way if someone has booked marked your page they will not go to a blank page with a stale error 404 code, they will still be on your website.

Here are the easy steps to create and install a error 404 page.

Step 1

On your root folder create an .htaccess file and place this code on that page.
ErrorDocument 404 /error.html

Step 2

Create a blank page with the name error.html

Step 3

HTML/ CSS out your error.html page to look like the rest of your site.

Step 4

add some sort of graphic or text to show that it is a 404 error.

Step 5

FTP up to the server.

I recently read the book titled Accidental Billionaire:The Founding of Facebook A Tale of Sex, Money, Genius and Betrayal, from the author of the book ” Bringing Down the House,” Ben Mezrich. I am not sure if just because both of these ideas started in the heart of Boston but these two stories I find to be very intriguing.

I wanted to touch on the founding story of Facebook and recommend it as an interesting read for all of you who are interested in understanding social media and how it was started. The concept and idea is so simple, which is one of the reasons why social networking and media have changed lives and companies today.

If you are interested and have some time, I would recommend reading this book.

Accidental Billionaire

Ive always been interested in the analogy between cooking and design so I was really excited to see that the August issue of Print Magazine is titled “The Food Issue”. It is dedicated to the current trends in what consumers find most important in their food choices and what they find appetizing in current times.

There are so many parallels between designing and cooking. Food can look delectable but taste horrible or the opposite. Design can look great but serve no function to its user. Both art forms are done for someone else’s “consumption” if you will. You cook and design for a certain audience or for certain tastes based on many factors. If you add too many spices or too many ingredients that don’t work together it ends up a big unpalatable mess. Both arts are a delicate balance.

Now-a-days there is growing concern over whether the food we consume is safe and won’t give us e coli or salmonella poisoning or if it has been genetically modified and will cause problems later in life. Today the beauty of food is more about where it came from and if it local, safe, and organic, not how fancy your radish flower looks. Food magazines are more likely to do a spread about backyard BBQ’s with seasonal local produce and the farmers that produced it as opposed to a spread of pretty pictures of  highly styled plates of food. The trend is to show how organic, wholesome, and easy the food is. From the earth to your plate with the least amount of fuss as possible.

Again, it’s easy to see how you can find inspiration for design in everything, including food trends. Organic, easy and wholesome food is just that; simple ingredients that taste good and are good for you. The current trend in web design is all about usability; how the “consumer” uses the web site and interacts with the information presented. The clearer and more organic, or simple the better. Its all about getting the user to interact dynamically in their own unique way with what you have designed for them to use. Web design is no longer about how pretty what you see on your screen looks, it is about showing the user how the information can be manipulated by them to suit their likings.

It is often that clients I have installed blogs for feel tempted to press the link at the top of their page “upgrade to the newest version of wordpress 2.8 “. In almost all cases the person doing the upgrade only presses the button but neglects to read or follow the small print. If you are going to upgrade to a new version of wordpress please remember to include these steps as well. In some cases I have seen the blog seize up and lock you out. Also make sure the person installing your blog gives you “administrative” access to your account.

Step 1 – Backup your MySQL database. ( You may need to contact your web host to help you to do this )
Step 2 – Upgrade WordPress – click on the button ” Upgrade Automatically”.
Step 3 – Upgrade your PLUGINS also.

If any of this is above your head contact your web designer and have them handle it for you!

Check out Boston Web Creative’s latest e-commerce site…. KAI NATION !

Many companies and individuals think that once you have a website setup and uploaded to the internet, the customers will automatically follow. One of the key aspects and potentially the hardest part of understanding e-commerce is; how do you find your customers and how do your customers find you ?? In most cases this seems like a simple answer, but it takes strategic implementation, a targeted marketing plan and focus.

Having a website is only the first step in creating your business – increasing traffic and visitors to your site should be the next priority. These services are designed to drive targeted traffic to your website – the end result – increasing your bottom line! Here are a few of the basic tips to get started with SEO and SEM once you have created your online store.

1 – Utilize Search Engine Optimization

2- Pay Per Click: Pay Per Click search engine placement is the only guaranteed way to hold top placement in the search engines. Anyone who has the budget and is willing to spend what it takes to be #1, can be!

3- Link Building-Meta Tags: The major search engines, including Google, now track the number of incoming links to a website in order to determine the website’s popularity. The website is then given a corresponding Page Rank, which is used to help determine search engine rankings.

4- Analysis: The most important part of web marketing is to work with a company that you can trust. They need to be able to analyze your website and understand where the traffic is coming from.

5- Utilize all social networks: Add +SHARE buttons to your site.

6- Add a Blog: A blog is a great way to create a relationship with your customers. It also creates a sense of following on your site.

7- Email Newsletters and Press Releases: Targeted HTML E-mail campaigns are one of the lowest priced and easiest ways to increase customer retention and repeat sales by keeping in touch with your existing customers.

8- Build a customer/VIP e-mail database: Another great way to keep in touch with your very important customers.

E-commerce is expected to grow 12% in 2009… go get the market share !