Media Components Blog : Web Design for Philadelphia & Bucks County Areas

Microsoft has a really cool new technology they showed off at the TED conference.

For more information go to http://labs.live.com/photosynth/

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Thanks to C.C. Chapman for the heads up on this cool event in Doylestown PA, we had a chance to personally experience the power of FiOS.

We met Jim, the blogger and moderator of 2pointhome.com, who hooked us up with a Flip Cam that we used to produce this Viddler Video. Please visit their website to see the great things they are doing for families in need of technology makeover.

We also snapped a few photos that can be viewed on our Flickr.

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Social Media Networking is rapidly evolving, and the buzz in the blogosphere is spreading into business world. Several of our clients are asking how to leverage the power of social networking and use it for marketing purposes. Today we will discuss Facebook, and how it can be used for business.

Social networking is all about communication and engagement and Facebook is the place to be if you are trying to capture attention of the masses. The growth of Facebook is phenomenal!

Some Facebook Stats:

Users have grown by nearly 300 percent to 18.5 million since last July. Half those users log in every day–making Facebook about eight times better read than the New York Times. There are more than one billion photos on the Facebook site. 600 million searches each month using a 200-gigabyte search index, featuring real time updates.

More detailed Facebook growth statistics can be viewed here.

With the masses flocking to Facebook, many businesses starting to look into using the platform to market their businesses and engaging with potential customers. Here are several tips we recommend doing to get your business into Facebook:

1. Sign up to Facebook and invite your co-workers. By having your employees engage and interact with other members your company will build presence and personality. People tend to trust individual more then just a company.
2. Create a Facebook Group. Here you can invite all of your employees, friends, and anyone on Facebook who would be interested about your company and services. Here you can start message board discussions, post photos, videos and attach links to relevant company news.
3. Import your RSS feed from your blog. Your company should have a Blog (if not, we can set one up for you) that updates your readers about news and events surrounding your company. There is a great feature on Facebook that allows you to automatically import your blog posts as notes, and then they are syndicated through the Facebook newsfeed to all of your friends. Import your company feed and post it on your profile.
4. Create a Facebook Application. Since Facebook opened up its platform to third party developers, thousands of new applications have been added to Facebook. 14 million people interacted with Facebook Applications in August. Applications are also highly engaging; capturing more time per session than any other activity on the site. While building a Facebook application will require programming knowledge and time commitment, it can also pay be rewarding for your company. In recent news, TripAdvisor wants to acquire Facebook App for $3 Million is a great example of how Facebook application development can make you money.
5. Spread the Word on Facebook. After you created a profile, group or an application, the best way to promote it is by posting a comment or a note on your friends & co-workers profiles. After all Facebook is social utility that connects people with friends and others who work, study and live around each other.

When you get a chance, check out a new Facebook Application we created:

To sign up to facebook visit: www.facebook.com

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Internet Overview

You hear a lot of people talking about the secrets to success on the Internet and how easy it is to make it big. The TRUTH is that just like any other business it takes hard work and dedication to become successful ON and OFF the Internet. What should you expect from your web site? How will people find your site? The answers to these questions really depend on only two factors.

• How much time and effort are you willing to spend creating a compelling sales oriented web site.
• How much time and effort are you willing to spend marketing - getting the word out about your products and services.

The Internet has changed a lot in the last few years. The amount of competition for customers is tremendous and the way customers are finding sites is fundamentally changing. To get noticed, your site MUST stand out from your competition.

How will people find your site? - Recent Changes

The top few listings on all of the major search engines are now being taken by paid advertisers. These listings generate about 95% of all the search engine traffic. We see this trend continuing. What does this mean to you? It means that if you are depending on the search engines to generate business you will likely need to choose paid advertising as an option. It can be extremely affordable and profitable.

BUT: These changes don’t eliminate all of the other opportunities that are available to you. There are literally thousands of places and ways to advertise your business. Your web site is JUST like a phone number. The more places that it is listed, the more likely it is that someone will call. Review all of the setup steps to learn how to setup your site and use it as a marketing tool.

Marketing/Sales

In other words - Don’t rely on the search engines to keep you in business. You need to develop a comprehensive marketing strategy to get potential customers to your site from a wide variety of sources. These sources should include search engines, web directories, paid advertising, links from other sites, and non-internet based marketing. There are many ways that your customers can find you and not all of them are soley through the Internet. Don’t limit your opportunity.

If you would like a FREE - Website Consultation, please contact us.

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