What's a Site Map?

Site maps are organizational tools that help outline an overview of your website or project you are working on. Site maps are very similar to flowcharts; however the difference is that flowcharts represent a step-by-step solution while Site maps just show a top down view of pages.

Recently, I've been going through design concepts like Trevor goes through PB&J sandwiches. There's always been something that didn't quite click with my psyche, which would allow me to revise, reevaluate, and restart my design. Here are some tips I've uncovered that will help keep the design train rolling safely to its destination.

What are RSS Feeds?

RSS stands for RDF Site Summary, but is often referred to as Really Simple Syndication. RSS is a web feed format used to publish frequently updated information, such as news and updates. This information becomes syndicated automatically using web applications and content management systems, such as Wordpress and Joomla. The RSS format allows people to subscribe to these content feeds so that they can be notified of new content and view the new information quickly.

Over the last 10 years, Atomic has enjoyed numerous mutually beneficial strategic partnerships with PR firms and Media Buying agencies. These relationships are a win, win, win! The end client gets the expert advice and professional execution needed, without all of the hassle of coordinating consults, monitoring production, and responding to every little question a designer or developer might submit throughout the production process. Many times, they may not even know how to respond. Just one more benefit of utilizing an industry professional from a PR firm or marketing agency.

This internship has definitely come and gone with the blink of an eye! My final day was upbeat and full of bonding before I left the office. It's amazing how much I have learned in what seems to be such a short period of time. Here are the three things I think are most important to hand off to you future interns, or those just starting a new job. Enjoy!

If you have read The Secret to Search and have Search Engine Optimization down but you need to build up your social media presence to get even better ranking, you are in the right place. In the SEO blog recipe I wrote awhile back, I mentioned in that SEO and Social Media are becoming more integrated, so here is my recipe for a great social media campaign to add to your Digital Marketing repertoire.

If you’re like one of the 35 million Americans that have office jobs, the glare from your computer monitor and the sedentariness of the position eventually start wearing you down as the day goes on. If you're like me, energy isn't the only thing that begins to evade - creativity does as well. I have a tough time staring at a design for a prolonged period of time while maintaining peak creativity. Here are a few recommendations to enhance your work day and overall mental health.

Law Firms and their struggle to embrace Social Media

Almost three years ago, Atomic approached hundreds of companies and businesses regarding social media and their plans to participate in the social space. Many companies scoffed at the premise that social media could actually be a place where they could engage and influence their target audience, let alone move the coveted revenue needle. Nearly three years later, nearly every organization realizes the critical role social media plays in today's digital marketing arena.

The other day I was proud to sit in on my first face-to-face client meeting! Now it may sound silly, but I had knots in my stomach walking into the conference room. I didn't know what to expect, or how much I needed to say, or even where to sit! These nervous thoughts soon went away when the meeting took off, and I was ready to become a sponge.

Whether it's cars, internet, or technology, one selling point will always be the speed at which (these) mediums travel. Marketing companies will nearly always use these things to their advantage, even if it means directly comparing themselves to a top competitor. If you haven't looked into caching methods to speed up load times, now may be the time to do so.

I am sure everyone has heard the adage, "You get out what you are willing to put in." While this usually is applied to cars or a home remodel, it holds very true in the workplace.  The amount of work put into your employees is equal to the amount of work that you get out. This is especially true in a small business. I don't mean literally the amount of work you do for them, or wages paid, bonuses, etc, although those things undoubtedly have an affect. I mean the amount of "work" you are willing to put into your employees to give them that sense of team. The sense of empowerment and loyalty you can build within your employees is a force that can move mountains.

I'll admit when I started here at Atomic, my palms would not stop sweating. Now the term "intern" seems nerve-wracking. At first I thought: What will they think of me? What kind of tasks will I face? How can I help this company? I'm sure all of you fellow interns out there had some sort of butterfly in your stomach the first day. I've come to find my experience here very helpful for the future, and now the term "intern" is something to be proud of! Here are some tips that I believe are beneficial as an intern:

I’m back and we are going to tap the goldmine of information on maintaining a healthy list and comfort you on saying goodbye to your unengaged subscribers.

But You Have Already Talked About This Before…

Correct, I have written a blog before about the importance of maintaining a healthy list and getting rid of subscribers who care much less about you than you do them. Now I am going to advise you on how to go about giving them another chance and then smoothly transition them off your list if they are unresponsive.

Atomic recently signed up another restaurant as a new web development client. During our design consultation, the owner made us aware of one of his core concerns regarding their web presence. As we discussed the typical usage of high impact imagery, he noted that he didn't want any tricked up photography of food on his site. He preferred homegrown images with poor lighting and a lack of any professional photography elements.

As some of you may know, Atomic Design & Consulting will soon reach its' ten year anniversary, so this calls for a celebration! Currently, Megan and I are planning a 10-year celebration where Atomic's close family, friends, and clients will come enjoy a night of fun memories, and cheers to the next ten years! Now, it's easy to get lost in party planning while trying to keep up with every day work tasks, so here are some useful tips that I've found help keep things organized and working smoothly:

If you're a business professional, you probably have more than two email accounts you check on a regular basis. Even as a regular guy, I've kept my accounts separated, each relating to a specific facet of my life. I've got thousands of emails floating in my inbox – what can you do to ensure that I, and many others within your target market, will read your email?

The advent of social media has changed the way we view advertising and customer interaction on the internet. We are constantly seeing more jobs being created for those that specialize in managing a company's social media and those that handle a company's public communications. Below are some jobs that will likely soon be common, and the relevant skills that may be required to perform those jobs.

Cyber bullying has been a common topic of news lately due to the increase in teens being victimized, the growing number of stories of tragic implications, and the release of  new controversial anti-bullying films.  I decided that it is my turn to speak up about this rapidly growing new form of harassment.

Often times the importance of office etiquette and encouragement can get lost in all the social media and email marketing buzz. A few weeks ago, Monroe hosted our weekly Friday discussion where he stressed the importance of optimizing your surroundings for a better work place. It's true that a successful business starts when you're surrounded by a happy work environment and while maintaining proper office etiquette. Here are some things to consider while optimizing your own office environment:

Yesterday, I spoke on a social media panel and was asked a very good question; "What is the one social media platform my business needs on to get the biggest bang for my buck?" It is probably the number one thing that all the newbies in the social media realm want to know, and it's not all together a bad question. It is a very expansive marketing field with plenty of bells and whistles that can be placed on your social media tab, so it can be easy to get overwhelmed. So how do you sort what you need from what just looks cool?

The answer is, it depends.

Occasionally we welcome bloggers from other industries and companies to post information we feel will be helpful for the readers of our blog. We hope you find this information useful and encourage you to share your opnions in the comment area at the bottom of this blog.

We would like to welcome a guest blogger from Encryptics®, Tricia Adams. If you are sending sensitive information over email or your mobile device, see what you can do to keep your data and information safe. If you have further questions about this, you can find out more on the Encryptics® website.

Have you noticed lately that the Target television spots rarely ever display the name "Target" anymore? They just show their well executed creative, then display the red bullseye-like symbol at the end of their commercial and everyone knows exactly which brand it is. Why is that? Well yes, millions of dollars in advertising budget doesn't hurt, but there's more to it than that. It is also a result of Target's marketing team doing an incredible job of building their brand and maintaining their brand integrity.

As an intern, I'm given various tasks every day I come into the office. Now, one would think the intern gets all the "dirty" work, but my experience here at Atomic Design & Consulting has been rather enjoyable! I've learned the tricks and trades of social media along with properly networking with others to expand brand awareness.

TV. Radio. Print. All these have been traditional marketing channels to get your product or service in the consumer's mind, but do they still hold up in the modern world, and do they produce more results? 

Occasionally we welcome bloggers from other industries and companies to post information we feel will be helpful for the readers of our blog. We hope you find this information useful and encourage you to share your opnions in the comment area at the bottom of this blog.

We would like to welcome a guest blogger from Encryptics®, Tricia Adams. If you are sending sensitive information over email or your mobile device, see what you can do to keep your data and information safe. If you have further questions about this, you can find out more on the Encryptics® blog.

It goes without saying that your nonprofit needs a Facebook Page, Twitter handle, Google+ and LinkedIn profile. Here are a few tools you need in your marketing tool box to affectively market your nonprofit to the millions of internet users just waiting for a cause like yours to propagate their browser. Best of all they are all no cost or low cost to your nonprofit.

Humans are incredibly visual creatures, although I probably don't need to tell a fellow human that. Our eyes catch an image and are immediately drawn to it. There is just something about pictures and photos that provoke immediate emotions and responses, and words just can't keep up.

I have been a huge proponent of picture with posts, and I'm clearly not the only one. I love posting photos, I love looking at photos, and I have seen the stellar results of posting photos for clients first hand. On one client's Facebook account, I saw an average of 10X the amount of interactions on posts with a photo. Don't just take my measly research for it though.

As a social media manager, a big part of my job is writing content. This year I have heard several presenters at SMCDallas and Explore Dallas say storytelling is the way to go and a great place to start with your content creation. That's all fine and great, but is it really practical?

Atomic Design and Consulting runs into folks everyday who have had a website built in the last decade. Nearly all of them do not keep their site up-to-date and since web design has changed tremendously even in recent years, their site now looks aged, is hard to navigate, and is just sitting there collecting dust. Below you will find 5 good reasons why keeping your website up-to-date is important.

The practice of hitting the spacebar twice after each period in a paragraph is not necessary, not correct, and is now considered bad practice with today's typographic options, especially on the web! Yet we still receive materials from clients that include two spaces after each period, and removing these extra spaces increases the time required to place content on the web.

We all know the economy's not in the best shape. The adage "you have to spend money to make money" still remains intact, but what if there were more cost-effective solutions to get your name(s) on the map?

The entrepreneurial spirit is a powerful element in today's world. Ok, I admit it. I've been watching a lot of 'Shark Tank'. But, it still doesn't change the fact that creativity and mental strength are still effective facets of a healthy business. Here are a few ideas to boost awareness, broken down by budget.

A wise man once said: "Define your goals and engage people."

Now I'm not just quoting Atomics' very own Jackie Bese because I want some brownie points, they wouldn't hurt, but when I heard him speak these words they were like fire burning into my brain. Now don't worry, I'm still alive, just more focused on the importance of impressions and word-of-mouth interactions.

SlideShare is a great place to share your presentations with the world on topics from traditional marketing, technology, business, social media, and just about anything you have a presentation on. Recently SlideShare has turned up the heat with their new tool for sharing presentations, Zipcasts.

Like many people out there, I was and still am a little skeptical of Google+ as a social network. There is no doubt in my mind that every business needs to be on this platform but, I think Google+ may fall under the ever blurring lines of SEO as opposed to Social Media. I am however becoming a huge advocate for the Google+ search options as well as how they integrate into my search on the regular Google homepage.

You're a business; you send your marketing campaign every month with some really good information. You get a lot of opens, but what happens after your subscribers open the email? If you don't know the answer to this question then we need to talk.

Every day I encourage more and more people to devote additional time to their LinkedIn profile for a myriad of reasons. However, today I will focus on just one critical reason for connecting with as many people possible on social media. I currently have approximately 1,100 connections on my personal profile. Each day I get messages from LinkedIn regarding various activities. A few weeks ago, I received the following startling message from LinkedIn.

Jackie Bese, Partner of Atomic Design and Consulting, is presenting at Social Savvy Seminar this afternoon.

We all know and love Twitter. We have seen how useful it is in communicating, marketing, and as a news source. Twitter is not just a local or national tool though, it is worldwide. Up to this point, we can read tweets that are in English, unless you were privileged or gifted enough to have learned another language. I do know a few words in several languages, like most people, but certainly not enough to decipher a message. That doesn't matter anymore.

In today's economy the right website look, feel and user experience is crucial to securing new business. This is especially true for nonprofits. Nonprofits are faced with unique challenges in their efforts to gain PR, new members, donations, sponsors and volunteers that for-profit companies seldom face. Take note of these key factors and you are sure to have a more pleasant buying experience.

Budget:

Have one. Your website is a 24/7/365 representative of your organization. "You get what you pay for" rings true here. Often nonprofit directors are tempted to let volunteers handle the development of their entire brand to potential donors and sponsors or they will call around to small one-man shops with one hand while clutching the budget in the other. Fundraise specifically for the website development or find a sponsor to underwrite the cost of the site. In return they receive exposure on the site for a determined amount of time. Not to mention the tax write-off.

Go pro! This is when you need to create an RFP and get it out to respected web development firms in your area. Find firms that develop in a platform that will be easy for your staff to update like Joomla or WordPress. Interview each firm and ask many questions. Ideally your organization will be in a "relationship" with the selected firm for many years and you will want them to be as passionate about your program as you are.

Barter for services. Here is an opportunity to get a professional site developed while controlling the budget. A good firm is happy to barter services for exposure but never ask for a one to one trade. If there is no cash value on the contract you might find the developer places your site in their "low priority" stack. Offer a fair amount of cash and trade and you will both come out ahead.

Design and Functionality:

Expect multiple design concepts with clearly different looks. Give them time. 5-10 quality design concepts will take 2-3 weeks. When it comes to design remember this, "A camel is a horse that was designed by a committee." Assign a 1-2 person team to oversee the design selection and site construction.

Most nonprofits have multiple events in a year and are constantly changing information. It's important to have a good content management system (CMS). Joomla or Wordpress are among the best and are both very user friendly.  Both will allow your staff to easily update the site from any computer. Your specific functionality needs like member areas; payment processing and event calendars will determine the best platform for your organization.

Benefit to Donors, Members and Sponsors:

Let's not forget who is paying the bills here. Be sure to include areas on your site to showcase, promote or thank the companies and people that support your cause. Built in rotating banner manager systems are great tools to help you manage advertising and sponsor areas on your site. These areas can easily be overdone and the purpose of the site can get lost. By rotating the image out it will allow you to feature multiple sponsors in the same area while keep the site design and layout clean. Don't forget to use areas like this for self-promotions in the rotation as well.

Marketing your Nonprofits:

The design and development was just half the battle.  Now you need to get exposure of your brand and cause to the millions of internet users on multiple search and social platforms. Take advantage of free or nearly free online tools. Build a Free Facebook page and start engaging your audience. Sign up and build profiles on Twitter, Google+ and LinkedIn.  Hootsuite is a helpful tool to manage your social networks in one place. Hootsuite also offers a discounted rate for nonprofits.

Google for Nonprofits offers free or discounted rates for Google Apps, Free Adwords advertising and Premium YouTube accounts to nonprofits just to name a few.

Running a nonprofit is both challenging and rewarding. Hopefully these suggestions will help you market your organization; gain more donations and most of all help the end recipient of your program or services.

I wish you the best of luck!

Stephen Brown
Managing Partner
Atomic Design and Consulting

Many people tend to take security seriously when they first set up their site. Unfortunately, they fail to realize that security must not only be implemented, but also maintained. As a result, many people find their websites getting hacked as a result of not maintaining security. Hackers will set up scripts to send out mass emails, distribute malware, or simply deface the site. Here, I will describe two easy ways you can keep your website more secure.

We have displays near registers with things we may or may not need, solely on the premise that the consumer will buy it. Let's face it. We're an impatient people that thrive on instant gratification. We want everything now, and if it's not now, as soon as possible. With that said, it's almost mind-boggling to see the amount of companies still utilizing Flash in a generation afflicted with happiness priority syndrome. Here are four reasons why Flash simply isn't dazzling anymore.

Here are some quick notes we are taking while out at Explore Dallas today. We will come back and expand on these (and make more sense of them) later but wanted to share for those that couldn't join us for the event. If you are on Twitter the two hashtags that are being used the most are #Explore and #ExploreDFW. 

Enjoy. 

Below are my notes from the sessions I went to at Explore DFW. At the end of the day, I will do an entire recap, stick with me and feel free to comment and add your thoughts below!

Top Reasons People Unsubscribe

In a study performed by Mashable Business, the top two reasons consumers unsubscribe to a company's marketing campaigns are:

Emails came too frequently - 54%

The content became to repetitive of boring over time - 49%

This leads us to believe that maybe sending an email out every Monday reminding our subscribers that it is 'Burger Night' again isn't such a good idea.

With that said, what can we do to revive subscribers that are simply not engaged with our campaigns anymore because we beat them to death with offers and repetitive information? Below are some fresh tips to help recapture their interest and save them from being the one that got away.

This is a short outline to keep in mind when managing and developing your website from start to infinity. These five tips will help you stay ahead of the game and avoid unnecessary roadblocks in the future.

Most of us are still abuzz with interest over the recent string of infamous Super bowl commercials released this past Sunday.  It's amazing how these clips can elicit a wide array of emotions from us in just 30-60 seconds:  Make tears well up in our eyes, grip our sides in laughter, pause and commend their cleverness, or make our hearts grow 10x their normal size (ether from the swell of a heartfelt moment or the call of the fast foods).  These commercials give us so much, and now they ask for something in return. Your participation.

Goals

What is the primary goal of creating your website? What are the secondary goals? For many businesses, the primary goal of creating a website is to facilitate business operations or create conversions, and the secondary goal is to inform visitors about what the organization does and how effectively it is done. Keep these goals in mind throughout the entire process of building your site, as it will help keep the project within scope and also increase the effectiveness of your site.

Create a Facebook iFrame fan gate using Classic ASP code

As a social media marketing professional you will often have the desire to present different creative content based upon whether a visitor to your Facebook page is already a fan or someone you are trying to convert to a fan. This process of displaying different content based upon a user's fan relationship with you is often called a "fan gate" for Facebook pages.

So the question becomes "How to make Facebook pages show or hide content based upon a visitor being a fan or not a fan."

I have a degree in Advertising and all through college people would mix up Advertising and Public Relations, and with good reason, they are only slightly different from an outsiders view. Thanks to social media, the two are becoming even more intertwined.

Atomic has now been in business for more than a decade. Through the years, we've conducted countless web development consultations with marketing managers and business owners alike. One takeaway from this experience is, nearly 80% of our prospects have failed to invest the proper time into evaluating their search optimization needs and how it relates to the success of their new and improved web presence.

Bloggers are the unsung heroes of the internet world. When you can't figure something out, simply conduct a search on Google and you will find at least one blog to lead you through it with infinite wisdom. Bloggers are the silent helpers standing patiently by until called upon, and the relationship is certainly mutualistic. You need the blogs, and the blogs need you.

For those of us who use email campaigns as a way to keep in touch with our customers, the struggle has always been getting them to first open, and then participate in our emails. Atomic is relied on to provide insight and expertise on how to improve this advertising medium and we are going to spill the beans on how to make your email campaigns more effective.

For starters, email has become one of the very few things which most all of us check and read on a daily basis, if not hourly. It can reach us at home, at work, or even on our mobile devices. In addition, most senders have been given permission, or encouraged to forward their electronic offerings on to us. Very few alternate forms of marketing offer the powerful solutions email provides. From conversion strategies which allow recipients to move forward in your process, to robust analytics tracking regarding the performance of your campaign and what actions recipients took next.

When I was a kid the 90's, computer systems were north of $1,000, hard drives were pushing 200MB, yet the internet was piquing interest around the globe. One of the few companies I remember providing internet access was AOL Online. Few people believed the internet was more than it was, yet AOL believed in it enough to provide a consumer-based hourly service. I was one of the privileged youth to embark on the quest of 28.8k connection speeds to stream cartoon images to my Windows 95 powered system, but little did I know how the internet would evolve into a marketing giant.

If no one has introduced you to the addictive website whenparentstext.com, let me be the first to welcome you to endless hilarity. While I was perusing one day, I came across this gem of a text conversation and couldn't help but think this is exactly what some businesses are doing to their social media audience.

As we welcome in the New Year, we also usher out the old and get ready for a whole new bag of social excitement. Like every year, as we make the change on our calendars, we naturally phase out certain things we did from the year before and adopt new habits, tools, and information. Similar to how we phased out acid washed jeans and big jewelry, in favor of stone washed jeans and even bigger jewelry. The social media marketing trends this year will set the precedence for the way we do business and how we communicate in our modern digital society. So get your New Year's horns and glasses out one more time as we explore the trends that we can expect to see this year.

 

We are on our 10th year in business and have marketed our business using many techniques. Today I want to talk about an item that can last longer than most marketing efforts and that is promotional items such as branded pens, shirts, mugs, and related items.

First, I must first credit for the idea to write this particular blog to a company named GoPromos. GoPromos very wisely got involved with social media marketing (we love this stuff) and sponsored a Podcast that I listen to called Marketing Over Coffee. (Great podcast for marketing people by the way)

If you're a Facebook user, you probably know of Facebook Places. Facebook Places was a feature that allowed you to check into your location along with tagging the people you were with at that particular location. However, this means you probably also know that Facebook got rid of this a few months ago. The main reason for this? Foursquare. Foursquare is a location based social network. It allows you to check-in at locations, leave tips about the place, get specials/offers at certain businesses, earn badges, and become the "Mayor" of locations you check into constantly. This network existed before Facebook implemented their location-based feature and Facebook could never quite compete.

Don't call it a comeback because they never left! It looks like LinkedIn is about to see a whole lot more traffic. LinkedIn has started allowing businesses to post status updates like Facebook Pages, which begs the question, how is it different?

You may have heard people spout out website terms such as Joomla, Content Management System, Open Source, conversion strategy, site analytics, on-page optimization, SEO, social media integration, blogging, YouTube channels and wondered how they all correlate to your needs and more importantly your bottom line.

Snowmaggedon, Earthquakepocalypse, #Irene, Heat Wave 2011 – these are all terms I've seen scrolling through my Twitter feed over the last year as Mother Nature has unleashed her fury on the us. It's been anything but normal this year, especially in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. This year alone we've been battered with ice storms, high winds and tornados and a record-long heat wave!

I've always been fascinated with weather – I took a Severe and Unusual Weather class in college, submitted weather pictures of the day to David Finfrock when I was in elementary school and even considered a career in meteorology (my lack of interest in math and science though led me in a different direction). However, my friends have come to call me Weathergirl Ashley as I am always in touch with the day's forecast. The secret to Weathergirl Ashley's success though – Twitter.

Twitter has become my number one resource for learning about weather events and what's going on in my neck of the woods (and yes that's an Al Roker reference).

 

So you have your Facebook page and your Twitter page so social is all covered. You have some guy constantly working on the back end of your site making sure your keywords are perfect and you have a decent amount of backlinks out there. You should definitely be ranking first on Google now, right? Well, maybe not.

Search Engine Optimization is becoming a more involved way to advertise because you now need a mixture of things to happen for you to rank first on any search engine. So, let's get this stew going shall we?

Buying items "previously loved" is a great practice to partake in ecologically, economically, and otherwise. I mean, you're covering at least 2 of the 3 R's of recycling. #winner! You can go on many public forums and buy anything imaginable; the possibilities for hoarding are boundless.

Many of these sites have become forbidding due to fear of the unknown and society's tendency for paranoia. This is especially true with Lifetime scaring us with cinematic thrillers like the Craigslist Killer movie. I know these are true events, and buying from strangers is definitely a time to proceed with caution; but what about buying from your friends?

People whom you know and trust, went to school with, dated...maybe even recognize from Facebook? Now that is more acceptable. Your friends, or people your friends are friends with, would never hurt you...well, that's the idea anyway. What I do know is that I am a recent fan of Facebook marketplace, (regardless of the fact that is has been around for some time now) and the Oodle app that puts thrift store style shopping at my fingertips anytime.

Another summer has come and gone and for me, that means the end of summer internships. For the past three summers, I've brought on and managed six very different interns.  As the interns get younger and I reluctantly get older, I've realized the way college students and recent graduates view internships has changed since I was a college student looking for work. At the end of the day, the goal of an internship is to gain real-life experience that the intern can use to help them find a full-time job upon graduation. From an employer perspective, the goal of an internship is to have an extra set of hands on staff to increase productivity and to provide insight into the field you're working in. With these goals in mind, I've come up with the following tips for making the most of you and your intern's time:

1. No matter how long you've been out of school, times have changed. Whether you're from the class of 2010 or 1910, there's something out there that's different from when you were in school. Make sure your job descriptions are up-to-date and targeted towards the proper schools and departments.

2. Have a task list ready every day. There's nothing worse than the feeling of scrambling for tasks for your interns to do. Even if it requires getting to work 20 minutes early, make sure you have a clear list of items and goals for your interns to accomplish that day, week or month.

  

Today, I conclude my very first internship.  Working for Atomic Design and Consulting has completely and totally changed the way I think about life after school.  With a (very generic) major in advertising, there are many things I could do with my life post-college.  Now, I'm not going to go out, graduate, and immediately join a social media marketing firm... but it wasn't till I participated in this internship that I even realized that my passion was in writing.  More specifically, writing blogs.  Put me in front of a computer and I can write about anything.

As a marketing professional with a Twitter handle, I practically live for getting new followers and being retweeted by "big wigs."  This is one of many reasons why I quickly began exploring Klout when I heard about what it does.

Klout measures your "Standard for Influence." If you ask Wikipedia, Klout "provides social media analytics that measures a user's influence across their social network[s]. The analysis is done on data collected from sites such as Twitter and Facebook and measures the size of a person's network, the content created, and how other people interact with that content."  In short, it measures how much people listen to you and care about what you're saying.

We have been keeping a close eye on all of the changes that Google has been releasing to its search algorithms as well as the famed Google Panda Updates. If you're not familiar with this update in particular, it was Google's attempt to penalize sites that were using scrupulous ways to achieve high rankings. Results are a changing, keep reading.

As an intern at Atomic DC there are a lot of great things that I'm getting to learn about and do for the first time. One of my many "first timer" experiences was last night as I attended my first Social Media Club of Dallas meeting. Our office has been slowly getting more and more excited for this event as it drew closer, but I had absolutely no idea what awaited me.

Last night I experienced my very first social networking night through the Social Media Club of Dallas.  Though I didn't do as much networking as originally expected, I learned loads.

I first arrived (incredibly overdressed, mind) and stood in line awkwardly trying not to step on anyone's toes...literally.  After receiving my name badge, drink ticket, and free book (Content Rules by C.C. Chapman) I shuffled off to the side and stood in my comfortable circle of friends.  Was I supposed to just walk up to people and introduce myself?  Was I supposed to wait for them to come to me?  I did neither.  I found a chair, sat down, and started skimming through my new book.  Rather fascinated, I looked up and discovered everyone was being herded into a theater.  Oh, okay!

I have followed Harry Potter faithfully since the beginning.  Ever since I picked up the first book, I've been sucked into the comings and goings of wizards and witches at Hogwarts.  With the advancement of technology and the passing of time, the Harry Potter world has grown to include seven books, eight movies, a theme park, an online world soon to be released, and an overwhelmingly large fan base.

With the release of the last movie in theaters today­, a large chunk of the needless advertising is being done online on social media sites.  With a movie like this, all advertising does is add to the excitement.  Fans do the rest.

That said, the Pottermore announcement was done entirely online.

At the end of June, Google launched a a beta version of their new social media service called Google+ in order to compete with other social networks like Twitter and Facebook. Since that time, it has garnered enough attention to attract over 10 million people to the service. You heard right... over 10 million Google+ users in about 2 weeks. That makes it the fastest growing social media service of all time. With this explosive growth comes innovative approaches to social media, while also breaking free from the limitations imposed by other social networks. Say goodbye to character limits and say hello to animated GIFs!

We posed a fun little trivia question on our Facebook page yesterday asking everyone...

How many website maintenance updates they guess we have done in the last five years?

A) 2,500
B) 5,000
C) 10,000
D) 15,000+

Creating an official Facebook Page for your company or, if you’re an agency, for your clients, is important. A Facebook Page can show involvement, give helpful tips and most importantly can help generate leads.

Step 1:

Go to the Facebook homepage and click on the “Create a Page for celebrity, band or business” option.

As a college student, life can be pretty difficult.  Juggling summer courses, two internships, a weekend babysitting job, and keeping up with a full-time family certainly keeps life interesting.  After balancing all these activities taking place over the course of two months, the very last thing needed is additional stress.  Aside from all the time management skills you learn (and you DO learn them…quickly), there is always the opportunity to learn and grow in all areas of knowledge.  I guess that knowledge is one of the major contributing factors to my two hour visit to the AT&T store last weekend.

Have you heard of Pinterest yet? If not, you will soon! This social cataloging site is quickly breaking into the social media world allowing users to bookmark and share a collection of people, places and things they love. I stumbled upon it after clicking on a friend’s link and quickly found myself trying to get into the invite-only (for now) site.

So what’s all the fuss about? Pinterest allows you to “pin” items to categorized pinboards that you can share with your social network. The site was founded in 2010 by Ben Silbermann and Paul Sciarra in San Francisco and is currently receiving millions of new pins each week. So what are all of these people “pinning?” Their blog encourages users to “organize and share things they find beautiful on the web” and gives examples of users using the site to plan weddings, organize recipes or just to save items that inspire them.

      Social Media is a great outlet and tool for businesses, especially small businesses, but I do not see it taking over advertising because it can’t stand on its own. Think about it, would you let another media take your entire budget and only advertise on TV? Imagine all the people who use DVR and miss your message!

Atomic Design & Consulting is in need of an intern to join our team to assist with social media and SEO for our wide range of clients!

Tasks include but are not limited to:

-          Creating content and brainstorming ideas for campaigns
-          Monitoring social media accounts, trends and news
-          Scheduling content for multiple accounts
-          Some administrative tasks

 

 

The West Plano Lions Club invites you to help us celebrate our Charter Night!

Join us on Tuesday March 22nd at the Allen Americans Game and support your community. Atomic continues our focus on serving the communities we work in... Your ticket price ($25) includes the following:

• Ticket to the game
• FREE Parking
• Appetizer buffet 
• Soft drinks
• Cash bar
• Silent Auction Door Prizes
• The knowledge your helping support your community!

View the PDF Flyer for the event

 

Social media is obviously becoming a must have for businesses across the globe. It has become such a big deal that riots and wars have broken out around it. And who knows this market better than the ones who have been on it since they were teens? The ones who grew up in a world where it was normal to share each detail of their lives with anyone who would listen; the ones who made the medium what it is today. These kids are now getting to the age where they are fresh out of college and ready to take on the real world and the real world is trying to learn what we, the recent college grads, already know.

Warning: Please look up and become familiar with the term “Scathing Sarcasm” prior to reading.

1. Post something on your wall every 30 minutes to ensure people get to see your awesome icon every time they look at their news feed.

 2. Never answer anyone who posts on your wall. Your wall is all about you, it’s not a place for helping people and answering silly questions like “Where can I buy your awesome product?”

3. When someone posts a negative comment on your page, just delete it. No one will notice and point it out to all your followers. Promise.

It depends on who you ask, and many people don’t give it much thought. However, a name is very important when it comes to branding yourself or your company. It can also have a huge impact on search results if your name or brand does not consist of common names or words. For example, do a search for Jackie Bese on any major search engine. You will not find any results on the first page that are not our Jackie Bese.

When you play a game of strategy, like Chess, you must think about each move and how it impacts your other pieces as well as your opponent’s position. You also have to think about your opponent’s potential move and try and see the board from their vantage point. The better you are at this, the better your odds are of winning the game. So think about each moves it relates to your Online Marketing.

We have been working with Social Media marketing as a tool to help grow business for quite some time now and we have learned some pretty important things about getting started in social media. In fact, some of them have been underscored this week with a few clients that tried to go it their own. We want to be a resource to help protect companies from themselves when it comes to navigating these “new” waters of social media and have compiled the following list of 5 biggest mistakes we see in regards to companies’ social media marketing efforts.

Have you ever just really wanted a good beer but aren’t sure where to go and what to order? Well have no fear – we’ve compiled a list of brews and venues that will help you make a decision in no time.

Our first picks come from beer connoisseur Brian Dilworth who doesn’t own a prized plate from The Flying Saucer's UFO Club only “because the beer snob in me told me I’d have to drink Coors Lite and Miller Lite to achieve that goal and that just defeats the purpose of going to the Saucer. Otherwise, I’ve probably reached that plateau years back just by drinking most anything new or different.”

O Hootsuite, with your cute little owl
I love the way you schedule content
But sometimes you can be foul

You started off as my favorite social media tool
But then you decided to start charging me
And I started referring to you as a fool

I understand that you need to make a buck or two
But as a small business employee
the dollars in my budget are few

You take the time to look nice for that meeting to impress your clients and you research like a mad man to be sure you have the most up to date information to give your clients. You toil over hours of content to be sure your message goes out the way you want it, and then you check the impressions on Facebook and only 20 people saw your awesome post. #fail

If you have a Fan Page I am sure you have seen the Facebook impressions that have started to show up. I was curious about these since some of our clients have way more impressions than fans sometimes even over 10 times the number of fans. So, where do these impressions come from?

With the New Year fast approaching, I figured it would be appropriate for me to take the time out to cover the 2010 trends in search that will likely continue to increase in 2011. The ubiquity of smart phones has contributed to an upward trend in mobile searches, while Google and Bing's move towards more personalized search results has driven the trend towards local and social search.

Local Search

A major shift occurred in the world of search when Google localized its search engine with the introduction of Place Search late in October of this year. The announcement was significant because Google Places listings for businesses began taking precedence over other search results. As you can see in the picture below, the search results for the query “pizza” list local pizza establishments above other websites related to pizza. This development shook up the world of SEO, sending SEOs scrambling to localize their optimization efforts in order to regain top rankings in Google’s SERP. In its blog announcement about the shift, Google said its “goal is to help you feel like a local everywhere you go!” With this being the goal of the search leader, expect for search to become more local in 2011.

2010 has been anything but boring when it comes to the world of social media. I’m no Barbara Walters, but here are the Most Fascinating Social Media Events of 2010.

Haiti
Even though it was almost a year ago, the images of Haiti’s destruction following a 7.0 magnitude earthquake are still haunting. The journalists who arrived first on the scene began relaying images of not only destruction, but also the great needs that Haiti needed to survive. Journalists like NBC’s Anne Curry sent out a Tweet saying, “@usairforce find a way to let Doctors without Borders planes land in Haiti: http://bit.ly/8hYZOKTHE most effective at this.” Thanks to her Tweet and communication with the Pentagon, the plane was able to land. Her Tweet was even named The Most Powerful Tweet of 2010 by Twitter.

When sending a newsletter, most of the time we just rush our message and send it ASAP. You have information that you want your customers to know about immediately. Before you send it out there’s something that I want you to think about, and that is, Frequency. Now that word can mean a lot of different things but when it comes to Email Marketing, it refers to number of times per month you email your clients and how often you repeat the same information.

There are 3 things about Frequency that you want to ask yourself:
1. How often do we send newsletters?
2. What day and times are the best to send?
3. What exactly are we sending and what is the goal of that message?

The simple answer is yes, but the real questions should be, “Where does your business need to be in the social media scene?” If you are selling watches out of the trunk of your car, Foursquare may not be the place for you. But I will say this, if you aren’t on some social forum, you are missing out on millions of opportunities and just because you don’t participate, doesn’t mean your business won’t be talked about. Why not lead the conversation?

Ever been annoyed by seeing not-so-great websites gain more traffic than your brilliant website, because they rank higher in organic search results? Well, thanks to the mid-November introduction of Google Instant Previews, a feature that allows Google search engine users to preview websites before visiting them, superb SEO might not be enough for a website to gain high traffic from its rank at the top of Google’s search engine results page (SERP).

As a result, two changes in the world of search are apparent: (1) content on websites will become more important for gaining traffic and the impact of SEO will be limited, and (2) online advertisers may see a decline in the effectiveness of their AdWords ads that are displayed in SERPs.

I bet a lot of you are thinking that the two cannot work together and that Facebook is a threat to the Email Marketing world but, that’s not a fair assessment. If used in the right manner the two can work very well together. Both are critical tools in establishing a connection with your audience and they can feed off one another.

Companies commonly refer people to “like” their Facebook page within their email campaigns. As well as offering a “join our newsletter” opportunity in the other direction. Promoting your Email Marketing list on your Facebook fan page will bring you more subscribers and increase your opportunity to reach your audience and remain top of mind with them.

If you use Joomla, then use probably already know about Akeeba Backup. This tool will save you from many headaches involving backing up complete sites. You can select certain files, select only database, select only files, or the whole thing at once. There is one more VERY IMPORTANT use for this tool...... SERVER MOVES.

These days, almost every business has a web site to promote and grow their business. The question is: how do they intend to utilize it? How will they remain top of mind and keep their current and potential customers informed about their latest trends and offerings? More importantly, how can they encourage their target audience to come back to their site and drive revenue? One of the most highly targeted and cost effective ways to accomplish this is, Email marketing. Is your company still using direct mail? Do you   do any marketing of your web presence at all? If so, I’d ask you the simple question of “why”? Email marketing allows your business the opportunity to communicate special promotions, upcoming events, or share any critical information with your target immediately and at a lower cost.

In this new world of geo-location, there are plenty of options to be sure all your friends know where to find you. Foursquare, Gowalla, Loopt, Yelp, and recently Twitter and Facebook have even gotten into the location-based arena. So, here’s how to play the game.

As a web developer, it is important to stay on top of the latest tools and techniques in the development community. Rapid Web Development is not so much a development as it is an evolution in efficiency. As web developers take on more projects, they must continually find ways to improve their efficiency so they can move on to the next project sooner.

The most important tool that web developers use is the IDE, the Integrated Development Environment. This is where all the "code weaving" takes place, and it is what makes rapid web development possible. While many developers may be happy using Adobe Dreamweaver, my IDE of choice is JetBrains WebStorm. It is free for educational and open source purposes, but a personal license is $69. This is very reasonable, considering Adobe's Dreamweaver is $400 and is not as powerful or as customizable.

Free publicity is an inexpensive marketing tool that can help to increase the awareness of a company, and consequently the sales of its goods and/or services. It's especially useful for small businesses, which have fewer resources at their disposal. However, larger companies have been better able to land mentions in the press than smaller companies, because they’re able to hire public relations firms to assist them in doing so. Now, a free social media service called  Help a Reporter Out (HARO) helps to level the playing field. A small company has the same opportunity as a large company to be covered by well known media outlets, thanks to HARO.

 

How many times have you gone on Facebook and looked up a business that you were interested in and the first thing you see when you go to their page is boring content or worse, no pictures? There are no pictures, no deals or specials and the page is all together lacking a personal touch. It is a social forum after all; going to someone’s page should be like walking into their home or office. This is where an FBML tab can help.

Last week, Google rolled out Google Instant, a new search feature that predicts users’ queries as they type and shows and updates results as they continue typing. According to Google, its instant search provides faster searching, smarter predictions, and instant results for its search engine users. Prior to instant search, Google users had to type in a full search term and click the search button to view search results.

In the aftermath of this announcement, the internet was abuzz with talk of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) – the process of improving the visibility of a website or webpage in organic search results – being dead as a result. Many, like Steve Rubel, expressed this belief by arguing that “optimizing will virtually be impossible” because Google users will now be able to tweak their searches in real-time and will no longer see the same search engine results pages (SERPs) for a query. 

Social Media is obviously the most talked about online opportunity today. Leveraging information through various outlets and increasing organic search engine performance. Fortune 500 companies have spent millions of dollars on content creation. They’ve invested in creative and quality video production, customized Facebook pages, guest bloggers, and more. All in an effort to get their message out to their audience before the competition does. Hopefully generating an abundance of traffic and exposing new targets to their brand.

Where the rubber meets the road is “conversion”.