Holloway Lake Association was using the difficult Yahoo site builder and needed help implementing a calendar, automated membership requests and various other items. This subdivision association hired us to provide a new, fresh look, simple self-editing features, hosting and support.

You can see their new site here: http://www.hollowaylakeassociation.com

This client needed their contact forms revamped and stable hosting. With many multiple language websites, content updates and refinements are always needed.

Ahhh… we are looking forward to the traditional long weekend that ends the summer!

We will begin our vacation on Thursday afternoon. Yet, if you are a client for over a year, you know that while we don’t work, per se, we ARE available to resolve email issues. We monitor the status of our servers 24/7/365 and will know if they need a reboot (even before you!)

Have a great weekend!

If you have a business or organization, you already know that being “found” in Google is critical. Did you know that in March 2010, Facebook  exceeded Google in the amount of usage? That is an incredible fact! Google remains the number one search tool, but Facebook accomplishes things that Google cannot. Facebook builds upon your existing networks of friends and acquaintances.

1. Use Facebook to develop relationships in your network. Facebook is all about “making connections” with those who are your friends and those who are interested in your business.
2. Place ALL pertinent contact information in your profile. As you would with a website, make sure you include your website address and phone numbers. Unfortunately, there is no place to put your email on the page.
3. Create interesting notes for your Facebook page. Much like the popular personal quizzes, take an opportunity to post notes of interest.
4. Use your status to give valuable information. You can use your status to link to your latest blog posting, latest events and projects.
5. Post pictures. Give a “face” to your organization! Let people see who you are and what you are doing!
6. Relationships over sales pitches. Remember, people like to connect with other people on the basis of interesting and helpful information. Sales information is absolutely important. However, if you ONLY have sales pitches, you are not engaging with your fans. There is a comment feature for your statuses. Write your status to encourage comments.
7. Use your logo or identity as your image. This reinforces your branding.
8. Create a Page to embed your status feeds on your website. Choose a Page over a Group.¹ If you intend your page to be long-term, then a page allows for more long-term advantages.
9. Promote your Facebook presence through your website, business cards and overall advertising material. Above (in point 5), I already noted the advantages of using Facebook to promote your website. Use your current advertising to promote your Facebook page.
10. Above all, if you are going to have a presence in Facebook, do not let it go stale. Keep it fun and interesting! Let’s face it, if something does not interest you, you will not keep doing it. Let your creative side show!

Now that I have written the “top 10 ways to use Facebook,” I see that I need to take my own advice!!!

Connect with Evmikna Graphics on Facebook here! http://www.facebook.com/evmikna?ref=ts

In the movie, “Field of Dreams,” the statement is made that if a baseball field was built, people would come. That fictional movie’s axiom does not hold true for websites. As a website development company, we have fierce competition. Steady, ongoing, consistent work is needed to capture important niches. As the owner of a website, you realize that this is true of your own niche. People know that the internet is not going away so they are vying for the top spots in the search engine results. Anyone who wants to retain their market share for their products/services will quickly see the need for a website. However, many people unfortunately have the false impression that “if they build it, they will come.”

Myth 1: If I build a website, I will get visitors.

We have been building websites since 1997. It used to be that all you needed to do was put content on a site and you could easily rank it if you did some minor things. The competition was not there and the search engines were not as intuitive as they are today. Google, the “Mother of all Search Engines” serves up the best results because it is interested in giving the best sites prominence. You can no longer simply just build a site and move on. You need to make your site the best, authoritative source of information for your niche. That requires an intentional pursuit.

Myth 2: If I build a nice looking website, I will get visitors.

As a graphic designer, I wish this was true. While good design is important, poorly developed sites frequently populate the best results in Google. When you search for sites, they all look the same: they have a title, 250 character description and URL. People are visiting your site, not because they see its design, but its description. A nice looking website DOES help people stick around and glean information from your site. So, focus on both, clean and informative.

Myth 3: I am not able to get decent rankings, therefore I will not get visitors.

Let’s consider an opposing idea. Many people think it is too difficult and too late to have an effective website. Every week I sit down with current and new clients to discuss various niches. I am amazed at the fertile, pristine, untouched ground available. The internet is big enough for all of us and there are plenty of gold mine niches.

Summary: If you have a website, it takes a consistent, dedicated effort to promote a site. Simply building a site and letting it go “stale” is a waste of time, effort and money. Don’t let the fictional axiom “build it and they will come” set the wrong expectations. Rather, commit yourself to the axiom, “Build it AND PROMOTE it, THEN they will come!”

This scam is not new. In fact, it has been going on for years even after the courts have stepped in. If you receive the letter below from the Domain Registry of America, toss it. It is misleading and gives the false impression that your domain name will not be renewed.

This letter states that this particular domain name (grayed out) will expire on April 22, 2010. In fact, the domain name will not expire since it is set up on an automatic renewal with GoDaddy.

Domain Registry of America calls this a renewal. The wording is misleading and I consistently get calls from my clients. What the Domain Registry of America is doing is, in fact, a domain name transfer. The FTC has stepped in and filed this injunction.

Perhaps this letter now satisfies the legal aspects. However, it does not change the situation that they want you to pay more for your domain name than necessary. Domain names currently cost about $10 a year through GoDaddy/NameCheap…

Okay, don’t let the title scare you! This is a problem EVERY one will face eventually when they work with websites.

I recently worked with a client who had an error that prevented him from posting new information to his website. The error said: “XML-RPC Response Parsing Failed: Operation could not be completed. Extra content at the end of the document”

This client was using MarsEdit. An excellent blogging software for the Mac.

We spent some time trying to find this “extra content.” However, when looking at the code, we could not find it. It was hidden very well. This person copied text from PowerPoint and pasted it into MarsEdit. Why would that cause a problem? Enter Microsoft…

This is not another one of those blog posts which disses Microsoft Office. It is an indispensible software package, but it is known to create issues when copying and pasting into websites. The reason is, Microsoft Word (and its siblings) uses hidden code to send documents to a printer. If you have ever copied a paragraph from Word and pasted it directly into a website, you may see a bunch of code that misbehaves. Sometimes, this code is elusive and you cannot see it.

If you get this error or your newly published content to a site is scrambled, hidden or simply messing up your page, then you need to refrain from copying and pasting directly from a Microsoft product.

How do you overcome these errors?

You can either retype the material directly into the website editing program. Or, if the material is too long, then copy the material and paste it into a program like Notepad (Windows users) or  TextMate for Mac users. Once pasted into Notepad/TextMate, copy it once again and paste into your website.

Or, you need to upgrade to Microsoft Office 2007. I have tried to replicate these errors using Office 2007 and it appears that Microsoft has “cleaned up” the extra code issue.

Why does this help?

Text editors do not bloat the code of your document with margins and printer codes. When you paste Microsoft material into one of these editors, all of this extraneous code is stripped away. Note that you will lose your bolding and italic.

Conclusion

When you publish a page on your website and you notice that the page simply will not behave. Understand that the problem may be related to copying and pasting from an older Microsoft product.

Receiving 100s of emails daily can create a nightmare! If you are like me, you dread the menial task of deleting, sorting and handling of these emails.

For some time now, I have used a great system that combines the same principles the relate to physical mail.

Here are a few tips that will help you with an inbox that is out of control.

1. Make sure you have a good spam filter. Handling spam is an absolute time waster.
2. When you get email, try to handle it only once. If the request takes less than a minute for response, then it is the best practice to handle the request immediately. Revisiting emails that require minimal action causes that email to become an unnecessary time waster.
3. Microsoft Outlook provides a way to flag important emails with a color so you can go back to it. You may find that only a handful of a 1,000 emails really require this flag.
4. About once every 4 months, I clean out my inbox. I go back 30 days delete everything older. Voila! Now you have accomplished a great deal! If you have a good handle on steps 1, 2, and 3, then you have little concern about losing good emails…
5. At this stage, I can go through the last 30 days in a matter of minutes.
6. It is my practice to leave 6 months of deleted emails in my delete folder just in-case I lost something important or overlooked something.

These are my suggestions and they have worked well for me. Do you have any to add?

Did you know that editing your website with a phone is now possible? With an iPhone, Android or Blackberry you can do just that? With well over 100 clients, we specialize in teaching website management. This is critical. While we do provide contracted services to make updates, many like to have a more “hands on” approach.

An effective website is one that is updated frequently. Making frequent updates can be costly if you contract. Since our website programming provides a very user-friendly option, consider our company for all of your website needs.

Want more information or have questions, please call or email!

The Water Lilly: Pond Supplies

We have a client who wants to sell pond supplies throughout the United States.

The Water Lilly
8340 South State Road
Goodrich, MI 48438
810-240-1515
thewaterlilly1@gmail.com