Social Networking

Mon, 31 Mar 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Topicguru.net defines social networking as, “a phenomena defined by linking people to each other in some way.” We have all heard of the social networking websites such as MySpace, Facebook, Clasmmates.com, and Yahoo 360. You may have found the majority of people are using these websites to meet new friends, but a growing number of people are using them to network virtually with other businesses, and to find new customers.

Join a Group

I grew up 10 years before the early years of the Internet, but I was still young enough to remember using Bulletin Boards to communicate via the computer with other people as my kids and family due as second nature. Now message boards, forums, or groups offer a way to focus a discussion on a particular subject. Yahoo has a great service where you can join or start a group about anything. I have joined ones that are specifically geared towards business owners. Not only can I “talk” to other business owners, but I can also post links to my website and blog, mention any specials or services we offer, and generally describe my business without annoying anyone. Of course each group has rules as to the frequency of such postings, so read all rules before you join.

MySpace and YouTube Aren’t Just for Teens Anymore

More and more small businesses are posting commercials on YouTube. Search for car dealers and you will be amazed how many dealerships post commercials. The benefit to them is that they can get a longer commercial for a lot less expense than going through traditional media outlets to advertise. The great thing about YouTube is you can then link the video to your website or other websites. If your video is creative enough it may become viral and get emailed everywhere so that people can see it. You have an advertising vehicle that is networking for you 24/7.

It seems like everyone is on MySpace, so why aren’t you? You can have a website that is listed in a directory that is browsed by over 100 million members. You can link in your company website, and become part of a global community. Who wouldn’t want that kind of exposure for their company?

Search Engine Rankings

As the Internet grows it becomes more and more important to have your website linked on quality websites. This helps to increase your rankings in the search engines. Using social networking to list your company name and website link, adds more information for the search engines to add to their directories, thus improving your page rankings.

How Professional is Social Networking?

You make social networking as professional as you want it to be. That is the great thing about social networking, you control your image. If you choose to use professional language, present a professional profile, and display professional photos you can’t help but let potential clients know that you are a professional.

The world of advertising has changed tremendously with the growth of the World Wide Web. We need to learn to use the virtual tools available in conjunction with our traditional advertising. Social networking is a perfect way to do this.

New Site Launched!

Tue, 01 Jan 2008 00:00:00 -0800

Hi everyone, we've just launched the new site for design B studios, using the open-source SilverStripe platform. Let us know what you think in the comments.

Coming Soon - Branded WordPress CMS

Fri, 08 Feb 2008 00:00:00 -0800

One of our designers has been working hard to customize a theme for our wordpress cms (we also use SilverStripe). The new WP theme will be called designBpress... I know, very creative... and can either present branded as our website, or we can customize it to be branded as the client site. Either way it is a nice touch and we will have screenshots up soon. Thanks to Tamara for her hard work!

Holy Deliverance Site Launched

Mon, 03 Mar 2008 00:00:00 -0800

Last week we launched a new website for Holy Deliverance Church of God in N.C. You can find it at www.hdcog.org. You can also see a screenshot of the site in our portfolio. This integrates a music player and Shopify eCommerce solutions using PayPal, each as no or low cost. Another creative solution we tested was to use the eCommerce intigration as a means to accept online donations through PayPal... each donation increment is a "product" so to speak, just with out related shipping costs. The organization will simply have to track this for accounting. If it's use grows, we will consider a paid solution for more dynamic donor ability such as Groundspring or ServiceU, until then, this will grant us the ability to test while still having the ability to fully automate the merchant ability. Streaming and MP3 video is in development now, along with a calendar and Google Map mashup.

On Site Training Trip

Thu, 28 Feb 2008 00:00:00 -0800

Rodney and I traveled to Fayatteville, NC on Thursday morning. We met at Miracle Temple and held a training seminar for their new site. We had a wonderful time and the reception for both us and the new site could not have been better. I agreed to be their webmaster for the next year as we have many other associated projects that will come in the future. I believe we are going to make these in-person trips to each client.

designB studios on boxedcss.com

Thu, 03 Apr 2008 00:00:00 -0700

designB studios listed on http://www.boxedcss.com/?paged=8, currently voted 8.5 out of 10 - we would love more votes to be featured as the site of the week!

designB studios on noupe.com

Tue, 04 Mar 2008 00:00:00 -0800

designB studios was listed on noupe.com... http://www.noupe.com/page/4. It's on page 4 under "70+ Visually Impressing Header Graphics" and we are #64. The Smashing (Mag) Header Graphics Contest inspired noupe to create this showcase of outstanding headers. There are some nice graphics shown, so its cool to make it with some of these.

designB studios on smashingmagazine.com

Mon, 24 Mar 2008 00:00:00 -0700

designB studios was mentioned for its design angles on Smashing Magazine... http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2008/03/26/grid-based-design-six-creative-column-techniques/

designB studios Adds Learning Page

Thu, 03 Apr 2008 00:00:00 -0700

designB studios has enhanced its site by including a page called designB studios University. This will provide the novice or client a great quick education into web design, buzz words and ideas. We recommend that all of our clients and potential clients visit this page on the site at http://www.designbstudios.com/university. If there is a subject here you would like to see, please feel free to comment below and we will definitely include it.

Welcome Jon - Database Expert

Fri, 18 Apr 2008 00:00:00 -0700

We have a new consultant who will be working with us... Jon Bruno. Jon is an expert in database design which is a great addition to the team. Please read his profile on the About Us page!

25 Top Design and Development Links

Thu, 01 May 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Here are some awesome resources, enjoy.

• http://www.digital-web.com/
• http://www.456bereastreet.com
• http://www.ajaxian.com
• http://www.blitzagency.com
• http://veerle.duoh.com/blog/
• http://webworkerdaily.com/
• http://www.quirksmode.org/ (cross browser problems)
• http://meyerweb.com/eric/ (css)
• http://www.w3schools.com
• http://www.cssdrive.com
• http://www.dynamicdrive.com
• http://www.smashingmagazine.com
• http://snook.ca/ php
• http://www.wait-till-i.com/ (javascript)
• http://www.subtraction.com/
• http://www.artlebedev.ru (top design firm in russia)
• http://www.sitepoint.com
• http://www.htmldog.com
• http://forums.devshed.com/
• http://bhggraphicdesign.com/blog
• http://drawn.ca/
• http://www.designspongeonline.com/
• http://www.webmasterworld.com/
• http://www.askdavetaylor.com/
• http://ilovetypography.com/

designB studios on designshack.com

Fri, 02 May 2008 00:00:00 -0700

designB studios site design is now featured on design shack at http://www.designshack.co.uk and then /design/designbstudios.html

SEO Importance

Sun, 18 May 2008 00:00:00 -0700

People not involved in website optimization often have difficulty to understand search engine optimization and the different methods that are involved. If you have to explain the basic SEO concepts to your boss, the following list will help you:

1. Link building is very important

Links are like votes for a website. The more votes a website has, the better the rankings. designB can help webmasters to get as many links as possible.

2. There are different link types

Search engines consider the relevance of the links. Links from unrelated websites don't help as much as links from relevant websites. A link from a website that has many inbound links for itself counts more than a link from an unpopular website.

designB can help you to get links from relevant websites.

3. It's important to continue link building, not just one effort

It does not help to get more links than your competing web pages. At least one of your competitors will continue to build links and pass your website. For that reason, it's important to know that link building is an ongoing activity.

designB can keep track of the websites that already link to you and it helps you to find new links on a regular basis.

4. Buying links can get you in trouble

Search engines don't like paid links because they consider the links to your website as editorial votes. Google has officially stated that it considers paid links as an attempt to game the system.

Google penalizes websites that buy links. Even if Google cannot automatically find all paid links to your website, your competitors might report your website.

Do not buy links but use designB expertise to get high quality organic links.

5. Redirects can cause problems

Redirects have been used by spammers in the past and some search engines still have difficulties with that. If you have to use redirections on your website, only use 301 redirects.

A 301 redirect is the only server side redirect that is defined as a permanent redirect. That means that search engines will follow the links and pass the links from the old URL to the new URL.

designB will run a search engine spider simulator and find out if your web pages use the wrong redirects.

6. Duplicate content can cause problems

Search engines want to return as many different results as possible in their results. That is why search engines only list one copy of a document in their search results.

For that reason, you shouldn't promote more than one domain for the same website and you should have unique content on your web pages.

Near copies are also considered duplicate content, for example, when the same article is listed on more than one website.

7. Why your web pages must be optimized

Search engines use complex software programs to index web pages. These web pages analyze the text on a web page to determine what it is all about.

If a keyword is mentioned in the right places and in the right frequency, search engines will consider the web page relevant to that keyword. If a keyword is mentioned too often, search engines might penalize a website because it looks like a spamming attempt.

designB can tell you where and how often you should use your keywords on your web pages so that the web page gets top 10 rankings on Google.

8. Keywords are the key to your success

It's important to choose the right keywords for search engine optimization. Single word keywords can be very popular but they seldom lead to sales. Industry specific keywords can be so special that no one searches for them. The perfect keyword is targeted, has a high search volume and leads to sales.

designB can find the best keywords for your website.

Search engine optimization is not rocket science but it requires some work and ongoing efforts. If you understand the basic SEO concepts, it's easier to get top 10 rankings on Google and other major search engines. Please Contact Us to help.

Page Ranking Worth

Mon, 19 May 2008 00:00:00 -0700

High rankings on Google can make the difference between an extremely successful online business and a total failure. The position of your website in Google's search results can make or break your business.

But how much exactly is a top ranking on Google worth? What can a top ranking on Google do for your business?

FACT: Paid search results are worth $37.7 million per day!!! (That is unbelievable... but true).

Google published its earnings last month. Google-owned sites (i.e. mainly the search results) generated revenues of $3.40 billion in the first quarter of 2008 (that's about $37.7 million per day).

Advertisers wouldn't pay Google so much money if they didn't profit from it. The dollar amount indicates how much it is worth to be listed on Google's first result page. And these numbers only represent the value of the paid search results.

FACT: Listings in the natural search results, opposed to paid advertising and listings, are worth even more!

An iProspect study showed that 60.5 percent of Google, Yahoo!, MSN and AOL users selected a natural (unpaid) search result over paid search result as the most relevant on a sample query. 60.8 percent of Yahoo! and 72.3 percent of Google search engine users chose a natural search result as the most relevant.

That means that you will get many more clicks with an natural search engine listing than with a paid listing.

In addition, studies by Enquiro and iProspect revealed that 60.5% to 70.0% of users trust organic results while only 30% to 39.5% of users trust paid results.

WOW: In late 2007, information about an internal Google tool that assigned dollar values to the search results leaked. It turned out that the Google tool was used by members of the AdWords sales team to help prioritize new customer acquisition.

Overall, Natural results deliver a higher return-on-investment ; a listing in the natural search results is worth much more than a listing in the paid results as it is lasting and will not turn on or off with your check writing ability.

FACT: Web surfers click natural search results much more often
FACT: Web surfers trust natural search results more
FACT: Although natural search results generate the most amount of targeted high quality traffic, there is still a great deal of companies that continue to spend their entire marketing budgets on pay per click advertising instead of investing in natural search engine optimization.

FACT: Optimizing your websites for high rankings in Google's natural search results provides a much better return-on-investment than pay per click ads. The value of a listing in the natural search results quickly pays for the investment you have to make in natural search engine optimization.

Web Design And SEO

Tue, 20 May 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Do search engines care about the design and usability of your web pages? Does it make a difference whether your web pages are easy to navigate or not?

A recent patent application from Yahoo indicates that search engines might take a look at your web page design. The document includes a long list of factors that search engines can consider to determine the usability of a web page.

Why can usability be important to search engines?

The Yahoo application contains a short paragraph that explains why search engines might consider the usability of web pages:

"It can be important to make web pages easy and pleasing to use, which can be particularly important for web pages it is desired to monetize. [...].

If such web pages are not easy and pleasing to use, the money-making potential of those web pages can be jeopardized. One conventional indication of whether a web page is easy and pleasing to use is called 'clutter.'"

Web pages with good usability usually have a higher conversion rate than cluttered web pages. Web pages with good usability often have a higher quality than other web pages and search engines try to return high quality web pages in their search results.

Which factors can search engines analyze to determine the clutter of your pages?

Yahoo's patent applications provides a list of 51 web page elements that can be analyzed to determine the clutter of a web page:

Total number of links
Total number of words
Total number of images (non-ad images)
Image area above the fold (non-ad images)
Dimensions of page
Page area (total)
Page length
Total number of tables
Maximum table columns (per table)
Maximum table rows (per table)
Total rows
Total columns
Total cells
Average cell padding (per table)
Average cell spacing (per table)
Dimensions of fold
Fold area
Location of center of fold relative to center of page
Total number of font sizes used for links
Total number of font sizes used for headings
Total number of font sizes used for body text
Total number of font sizes
Presence of “tiny” text
Total number of colors (excluding ads)
Alignment of page elements
Average page luminosity
Fixed vs. relative page width
Page weight (proxy for load time)
Total number of ads
Total ad area
Area of individual ads
Area of largest ad above the fold
Largest ad area
Total area of ads above the fold
Page space allocated to ads
Total number of external ads above the fold
Total number of external ads below the fold
Total number of external ads
Total number of internal ads above the fold
Total number of internal ads below the fold
Total number of internal ads
Number of sponsored link ads above the fold
Number of sponsored link ads below the fold
Total number of sponsored link ads
Number of image ads above the fold
Number of image ads below the fold
Total number of image ads
Number of text ads above the fold
Number of text ads below the fold
Total number of text ads
Position of ads on page
According to the patent application, Yahoo might also consider the presence of animated and flashing ads and the average ad luminosity.

What does this mean to your web pages?

Good website usability can greatly improve the conversion rate of your website. If your website gets many visitors but only a few sales then it might be that your web pages are too cluttered and that you have to improve your website design.

Google has a similar patent application with the name "Detecting and rejecting annoying documents" so it seems that good website design becomes more and more important if you want to get high search engine rankings.

The HTML code of your web pages must make a good impression to search engines. If search engines find that your web pages don't have the right content then these pages cannot get high search engine rankings.

Web Design Complications

Tue, 20 May 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Are you sure that your website visitors understand the text on your web pages? If your web pages are difficult to understand, confusing. clustered or too busy, you may not keep your web audience attentive, thus preventing a fair opportunity for strategically placed calls to action. In short you may be depriving your site the ability to be appealing, interactive or profitable.

The readability of your web pages influences your calls to action!

Less Is Typically More

Many websites use technical language that is very difficult to understand for the average web surfer. In addition, some webmasters like long and complicated sentences.

Long and complicated sentences are not a sign of professionalism. They just show that the author of the sentences doesn't care about the readers.

The more complicated the text on your web pages, the more likely it is that a web surfer leaves your website. Web surfers are impatient people. If they have to labor to understand your web pages, web surfers will go away to find an easier site than yours.

How to check the readability of your web pages

There is an official standard that you can use to specify the readability of your web pages. The Flesch Reading Ease test is a United States governmental standard to determine how easy a text is to read. It measures the approximate level of education necessary to understand the web page content.
Higher scores indicate that the text is easier to read, and lower numbers mark harder-to-read texts.
designB can check the readability of your web pages. In addition to many other factors, designB can calculate both the Flesch Reading Ease Score and the Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level.
A high Reading Easy Score means that a text is easy to understand. The Grade Level shows the number of years of education that are required to understand the text.

Make sure that your web pages are easy to understand and do not require too much work from your website visitors

Make it easy to understand your web pages, make it easy to navigate them, make it easy to buy on your website. The easier your website is to use, the more you will sell.

Design Complications 2

Fri, 23 May 2008 00:00:00 -0700

As a follow-up to my previous posts on Design Complications, here are several design recommendations for creating web content that remains usable by the widest possible audience while helping ensure that the content gets indexed and crawled. Credit for this information goes to Dr. T.V. Rayman, Research Scientist, as posted on Google Webmaster Central

Avoid Spurious XMLHttpRequests

Pages that enable users to look up information often use XMLHttpRequests to populate the page with additional information after the page has loaded. When using this pattern, ensure that your initial page has useful information on it -- otherwise Googlebot as well as those users who have disabled scripting in their browser may believe that your site contains only the message "loading..."

CSS sprites and navigation links

Having meaningful text to go with navigational links is equally important for Googlebot as well as users who cannot perceive the meaning of an image. While designing the look and feel of navigational links on your site, you may have chosen to go with images that function as links, e.g., by placing <img> tags within <a> elements. That design enables you to place the descriptive text as an alt attribute on the <img> tag.

But what if you've switched to using CSS sprites to optimize page loading? It's still possible to include that all-important descriptive text when applying CSS sprites; for a possible solution, see how the Google logo and the various nav-links at the bottom of the Google Results page are coded. In brief, we placed the descriptive text right under the CSS-sprited image.

Google search results with CSS enabled

Google search result with CSS disabled ("Google" sprited image lost, descriptive "Google" link remains)

Use unobtrusive JavaScript

I have talked about the concept of progressive enhancement when creating a rich, interactive site. As you add features, also use unobtrusive JavaScript techniques for creating JavaScript-powered web pages that degrade gracefully. These techniques ensure that your content remains accessible by the widest possible user base without the need to sacrifice the more interactive features of Web 2.0 applications.

Make printer-friendly versions easily available

Web sites with highly interactive visual designs often provide all of the content for a given story as a printer-friendly version. Generated from the same content as the interactive version, these are an excellent source of high-quality content for both the Googlebot as well as visually impaired users unable to experience all of the interactive features of a web site. But all too often, these printer-friendly versions remain hidden behind scripted links of the form:

<a href="#" onclick="javascript:print(...)">Print</a>

Creating actual URLs for these printer-friendly versions and linking to them via plain HTML anchors will vastly improve the quality of content that gets crawled.

<a href="http://example.com/page1-printer-friendly.html" target="_blank">Print</a>

If you're especially worried about duplicate content from the interactive and printer-friendly version, then you may want to pick a preferred version of the content and submit a Sitemap containing the preferred URL as well as try to internally link to this version. This can help Google disambiguate if we see pieces of the article show up on different URLs.

Create URLs for your useful content

As a webmaster, you have the power to mint URLs for all of the useful content that you are publishing. Exercising this power is what makes the web spin. Creating URLs for every valuable nugget you publish, and linking to them via plain old HTML hyperlinks will ensure that:

* Googlebot learns about that content,
* users can find that content,
* and users can bookmark it for returning later.

Failure to do this often forces your users to have to remember complex click trails to reach that nugget of information they know they previously viewed on your site.

How To Choose an Email Marketing Vendor

Tue, 17 Jun 2008 00:00:00 -0700

How to Choose an Email Marketing Vendor

Email marketing can give you significantly greater response rates than direct mail marketing at 5% to 10% of the cost. With the execution of an opt-in email marketing campaign, you can see new and increased sales faster than previously believed, keep your current customer base interested, understand your current and prospective clients' wants and desires, and significantly improve sales.

HTML email marketing, when done correctly, is an incredibly technical and complicated process. Yet, email marketing services can be done for a very small amount of investment. Anyone with a mail server and some inexpensive software can send a broadcast email. One could even send out tens of thousands of emails per day by sticking names in the "to" or "bcc" boxes of Outlook Express or a similar email client.

However, there is a tremendous cost in lost revenue when opt-in email marketing is done in a simple and cheap manner. With the Internet-wide problem of viruses, spy ware, and spam (also known as unsolicited commercial email), ISP's, companies, and individual computer users have developed a virtual fortress that blocks the vast majority of unwanted email. Even opt-in email is blocked during the imperfect process of protecting inboxes from spam.

You can expect to see response rates become 2,000 times better when comparing the worst html email marketing technologies and networks to the best.

So when looking for an email marketing company, make sure your email campaign is sent through an Email Service Provider that answers the following questions:

Will your email get through at the ISP, IT department, email box, and personal challenge-response levels? Run a deliverability audit of your email marketing company's system. Do they monitor your delivery rates, have means to improve them, and remedy problems? Remember that most spam filters do not send out a bounce notification to the mail server - they simply "eat" the email. Therefore, if your email marketing company tells you that you had a 95% successful delivery rate, your numbers were probably lower.

Is your email legally compliant? The Can Spam Act of 2003 enacted by Congress strictly regulates all forms of commercial email. Your message must have various technical and content requirements in order to meet Federal law. Violations of the Can Spam Act have penalties of up to 5 years in prison and millions of dollars in fines.

Will recipients of your message see it in the format/design that you intended? HTML email marketing and messages with graphics have been proven to have the highest response rates, yet not everyone is able to receive an HTML message with graphics. Various email recipients will see your message differently depending on their ISP settings, personal settings, email client settings, and anti-virus software. Can your email marketing solution automatically sense which version of a message to give each individual recipient on your email list?

Is your email marketing company black listed, white listed, or neither? If your email marketing provider fails to follow the strictest standards and latest protocols for sending email, odds are that they are black listed and a large percentage of your email is simply being "eaten" by spam filters. There are numerous public black-lists that you or your email marketing company could be on (Spam Cop, S.P.E.W.S, XBL, CBL, RSL, DSBL, and SpamHaus just to name a few), as well as any major ISP's internal black lists.

In addition, your email marketing provider should have white list agreements with major ISP's and white lists. This will make a huge difference between your email getting through and your email being stopped by a spam filter.

Does your email marketing company allow you to get a dedicated IP address? Even if your email marketing partner's network is not blacklisted, the bad activities of their other clients could cause your email to be blocked if you are sending out through a shared IP address.

Is your email sent at a proper speed per ISP and is your host Sender ID compliant? Some ISP's will assume that you are sending spam if you send too many messages per minute to their email servers. Your PBM firm must account for this. If they fail to study the major ISP's blocking algorithms and update their sending procedures accordingly more and more of your email will be blocked.

In addition, your message must be Sender-ID complaint. Microsoft released the Sender-ID update in 2005 and many ISP's are gradually integrating it as a mandatory component of a successful email delivery.

Is your database automatically updated in real-time for various types of bounces and unsubscribe requests? Many ISP's will assume that you are sending out spam and block your email if they receive too many attempts for delivery to invalid email addresses from your mail server. It is critically important that invalid email addresses are automatically purged from your email list in real-time. A company offering email marketing services should also be able to differentiate between a soft bounce, a continuous soft-bounce, and a hard bounce in order to ensure that you do not lose valid email addresses. In order to cut down on spam complaints, you need to remove recipients from your email list as soon as they unsubscribe from your database.

Can your email marketing solution track the activity of your recipients and all sending statistics? Every campaign that you send out should be able to track open rate, successful deliveries, unsuccessful deliveries, bounces, removal requests, and click-through statistics. All of these factors are critical in measuring the successes and potential problems that your email campaign may run into.

Can you automatically track the activity of each recipient on your email list, automatically segment your database in useful ways, and send automated/triggered messages beyond the basic "batch and send"? The more you segment your campaigns and find out the wants, desires and behavior of your recipients, the more successful your campaigns will be.

Can your email marketing company advise you in regard to your copy and template for both content-based spam filters and salesmanship? The content of your message such as font size, font color, wording, and text-to-graphics percentage can have a significant impact on spam filters. In addition, certain types of ad copy and keywords are proven to elicit a desired behavior from your recipients. Subject length, from name and from email address can also have a significant impact on the success of an email campaign. If your permission based email marketing firm has a lot of experience and knowledge in these areas, your email campaigns will be much more successful.

In summary, when looking for an email marketing company it is important to analyze your cost per website visitor and the volume of visitors that you are bringing to your website per email sent. Sending out an opt-in email marketing campaign for a few pennies per email is very inexpensive when compared to the financial benefits gained from effective email marketing services. It is far more costly to under-utilize a database by sending out 100 emails and only having 30 be successfully delivered than to pay a little more and have 98 out of 100 emails successfully delivered.

designB studios launches MySpace Page

Sun, 15 Jun 2008 00:00:00 -0700

www.myspace.com/designbstudios

designB studios launched a new MySpace page today to 1) show how easy it is for a novice to use third party FREE solutions to brand your corporate MySpace page and 2) to gain access to the vast world of social networkers who can spread the word about designB studios. Please take a look at our MySpace page at www.myspace.com/designbstudios

New designB studios Tshirt

Wed, 02 Jul 2008 00:00:00 -0700

It's summer, and hot, so it's tshirt time. Please tell me if you would like one!

Leveraging Social Networking

Wed, 13 Aug 2008 00:00:00 -0700

What is a social network?

A social network is a structure comprised of nodes (which are generally individuals or organizations) that are tied by one or more specific types of interdependency, such as values, visions, ideas, affinities, etc. The resulting structures are often complex.

Since humans have an inherent need to connect, relationships within a social network are described in terms of nodes and ties. Nodes are the individuals within the networks, and ties are the relationships between these individuals. There can be many kinds of ties between the nodes. These can vary from families up to the level of nations, and these relationships play a critical role in determining the way problems are solved, organizations are run, and the degree to which individuals succeed in achieving their goals.
(Wikipedia)
What are social networking sites?

Social networking sites are platforms for people who share similar interests to form communities and communicate with each other. These websites provide opportunities for people to connect, build online profiles, and share content in varying formats – messages, photos, music, and videos.

The trend of social networking on the Web began with people wanting to reconnect with friends, but these sites focus on entertainment, news and politics, professional networking, consumer product reviews, dating, and more. In the present day, companies are recognizing the potential for profit in social networking sites and seeking niche networks to communicate with.
Why should it concern your organization?

Among all age groups, Internet users are increasingly visiting social networking sites. Our experience shows that a social networking site becomes the de facto portal for the user, the center from which they maintain their primary social contact. An average user visits regularly and spends considerable time on the network checking their messages, replying to emails and comments on their message boards, writing journals, adding pictures to their profiles, inviting friends to join, and more.

According to Forrester Research, one in five online young adults in the United States use a social networking site on a daily basis. Nearly half of online adults in the United States are social media users, participating in at least one online social activity. As these sites become even more prevalent, these numbers are sure to rise. Not joining the conversation in these existing online social networking communities is a missed opportunity to reach a captive audience.
How can social networking sites benefit your organization?

Social networking sites have emerged as a communication medium for users. Powered by user-generated content, social networking sites provide a new channel for consumers to connect with one another. Organizations can leverage these connections through simple efforts, such as:

* Providing relevant content to existing communities within social networking sites
* Starting a group for your company that employees can join and outsiders can “friend”
* Exploring targeted advertising opportunities that link to content on your own website, or within the social networking site
* Creating a widget, or organizing a promotion around an existing application

Some benefits of exposing your brand on a social network are:
Connect with current users and prospects to build brand awareness

Most social networking sites provide a platform for dialogue and interaction within the users’ networks. Reaching out to users in such a setting will allow the organization to form deep connections and capture marketing insights. Tracking trends and ongoing conversations allows an organization to hear from their consumers directly about topics that matter to them.
Promote traffic to your website

Social networks by nature grow virally. Providing compelling content to the right niche on a social networking site will drive traffic to your website when members invite everyone in their network to read it. This creates an opportunity to engage users who may not be your organization’s regular audience, but who have heard about your business from a trusted source.
Brand reinforcement and promotion: Create brand advocates and increase awareness through interaction

Often, when a member interacts with another member –whether adding them as a friend or commenting on their profile-- they receive e-mail notifications for all of these activities. If your company forms a group on a social networking site or organizes a promotion around an existing application, these emails remind the member about your brand and your website with each interaction. Since most sites allow members to choose if they want to receive these notifications, they tend to be positively received.
Create opportunities for knowledge-building and generate interest in your content

A popular feature on networking sites, "shared bookmarking" allows members to save links to their favorite online content and automatically share them with their friends. If a user reads your content and bookmarks it on their social networking site profile, you have gotten a word of mouth recommendation that will generate interest in your site.

Tracking the users who have bookmarked your content can offer insight about your customer base, or perhaps more valuable, a target market that you have not yet reached. You’ll have access to their likes and dislikes, favorite movies, books, music, websites, activities, and more. You can use this data to your advantage (showing the appropriate respect to the users' privacy) when planning marketing and brand building activities.
Conclusion

Social networking sites present an unmatched opportunity to build brand loyalty among your existing customer base and leverage their networks to spread the word about your products and services. If you approach these sites with the right content, strategy, and tone, the results will be apparent in increased website traffic, brand awareness, and ultimately revenue.

Resources and References
http://megabluewave.com/blog/archives/category/social-networking
http://wikipedia.org

Website Strategy 101

Wed, 13 Aug 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Web strategy is the determination of how a business or organization’s web presence will manifest its overall business strategy. Whereas a website can accommodate the needs of its users and contribute to a company or organization’s bottom line without a pre-defined strategy to follow, informed pre-planning and thoughtful execution of that plan can only increase your odds of success.

Many of our projects at designB Studios involve helping clients understand the need for a solid web strategy and working with them to formulate one that provides both immediate and long term direction. Comparing the creation and execution of a web strategy to a well played game of chess generally gets the ball rolling.
What's at Stake

For many companies, organizations, and government entities, a website is not only a method of communicating information, it is central to the business. For example, a retailer that sees 30% of its sales happen online would be seriously impacted by the failure of its online storefront, perhaps to the point of bankruptcy.
Preparation

Because chess involves complex thought and forward thinking, a player preparing for an important match is well served by studying the opponent, in the hope of understanding his or her reasoning.

In business, the opponent is the competition. To succeed against competitors, an organization must set aggressive goals and drive toward better bottom line results. Companies are constantly evaluated by their ability to meet business goals, and to achieve progressively higher goals as the business grows. Like the chess player preparing for an important match, setting realistic goals for a corporate or organizational website involves knowing the industry and its key players through first-hand engagement. We commonly gain this insight through interviews with internal stakeholders, external experts/industry watchers, and a representative sampling of the audiences to be served by the website.
Planning

After learning as much as possible about the opponent, the chess player formulates an informed plan of engagement. Of course, there is an implicit understanding that the game may warrant quick thinking and a change in strategy.

In determining a web strategy all inputs are considered. Feedback from stakeholders, external research, end-user input, and existing site analytics (if applicable) are evaluated together with business goals and performance targets, yielding an initial plan. At the very least the plan indicates how to take the first step, but with the understanding that ever changing industry and technology trends, as well as the evolution of user expectations and behavior, may result in tactical adjustments to the strategy (and ultimately to the website). A web strategy must be tailored to the organization and industry/sector, but some common attributes are:

* Consistent extension of the brand across the site or across multiple web properties
* Awareness of your site's distinct audiences, how they will be engaged, and prioritization of content/functionality for their needs
* Identification of conversion paths for each audience type, and how they lend to greater business goals (e.g. increased sales, lead generation)
* Financial sustainability plans for the site (addressing the need for advertising, sponsors, etc.)

Execution of a Web Strategy

The big day has arrived! The chess player begins the game by progressively engaging the opponent as the two sides meet in the center of the board. Pieces are carefully moved so that they have one or more pieces protecting them.

On the web side the “big day” is not only the day the site launches, but every day there after. Progressively engaging users means bringing them further into the experience and getting them involved. For example, initially a user may start as a casual visitor to a site…soon after that user may find something they value, and return to the site often for that information…and eventually the user may register with the site and, if the website provides the capability, purchase an item from it. Users may merely be interested in your site’s content (e.g. newspaper sites), the products offered (e.g. an online retainer or travel consolidator), or might be interested in engaging by providing their own insight and perspective on an issue. Providing multiple types of content and functionality enables contextual crosslinking, where one topic leads to related information of a different type elsewhere in the site, increasing the user’s efficiency.
Adaptability

The skilled chess player is able to adapt to the changing conditions of the game and the opponent’s moves. If conditions change significantly the initial plan created beforehand may be referenced only for the longer term goal of winning the game.

Despite the amount of time and effort that went into creating the website’s initial representation, the team managing the site must be diligent in collecting and reviewing site analytics and, where appropriate, tactically react to that information. Adaptability can also mean the ability for the website to automatically react to the user’s recurring usage patterns and provide an altered experience for that user. For example, the BBC website asks users to establish simple preferences and identify their location so that appropriate content can be served. Though web team-initiated changes or automatic adaptability may involve only small changes to the website, the more fine-tuned the experience, the more likely that users will be satisfied.
Gaining an Edge

Inevitably, as moves are made, pieces go unprotected or sacrificed and attrition begins. One player gains an edge over the other, “check” is called once and then multiple times and one side begins to fall.

Gaining an edge in the online world means innovating beyond the competition or otherwise attracting site visitors and “conversions” (when online activity contributes to the business’ bottom line, such as through online purchases). One or a handful of sites may begin to excel while others falter. The travel industry is an excellent example of how multiple, competing sites constantly strive for the upper hand through online innovation. Eventually one may win out the way Google did over its search competitors. Remember HotBot, Altavista and the like? There names aren’t synonymous with “search” today the way Google’s is.
Checkmate and Beyond

In chess the ultimate goal is checkmate -- when one player locks the opponent’s King into a position from which it cannot escape or be protected. Checkmate spells victory for one player, but only in that game. The victor’s title must be successfully defended in future matches.

Checkmate online is the conclusive victory of one site over all others in its space (whether by the lack of competitors or the identification of a clear leader having the vast majority of market share). eBay won the battle over online auctions, but is challenged regularly for the title by newcomers with variations on the auction model.
Conclusion

The time-honored game of chess holds many lessons for online enterprises and how they address their constituents and overcome the competition. Winning at chess and establishing a successful web strategy demand forethought and familiarity with the rules of the game. Trends on the Web fluctuate as new technologies become available – but some best practices are here to stay. An organization should invest time in carefully planning a web strategy before rushing to implementation. In our experience, taking a user-centered approach –balancing user needs with business objectives—is the best way to ensure that the web strategy is effective, and the player will be around to compete another day.