Out of the Fog Marketing

We are proud to announce the opening of our third technology marketing agency office. This time our new office is in Roseburg, Oregon -centered between the tech hubs of Silicon Valley and Portland. Our headquarters will remain in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

Read the press release.

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Labels: ann arbor business, Michigan business, oregon

We just completed a website for Cobb School in Oregon using the WordPress platform and a custom theme. The site is for an elementary school that needed a easy to learn content management system for multiple authors. As a nonprofit, they could not afford a custom content management system.

Designing a basic site using WordPress is fairly straightforward. There are hosting companies, such as A2 Hosting that offer 1-click WordPress installs. In working with WordPress we found a number of advantages and disadvantages:

Advantages

• For the most part, WordPress is easy to learn and use for folks that do not know coding. The one exception is tables, which do demand a bit of HTML coding knowledge.
• WordPress keeps a revision history of each page which is great for novices and their webmaster alike!
  
• The image editing options are excellent. Being able to downgrade an image size within the application saves much time.
• Novice editors really liked the "preview before upload" capability.
  

Disadvantages

• In the theme we used, some aspects of the theme rendered differently in Internet Explorer compared to Firefox and Safari. For example, we could create true orphan pages by selecting a "private" publishing option. Privately-published pages show up on Firefox, but do not on Internet Explorer This was not a shocker and our developer was able to create workarounds in most cases. In our case, we hid orphan pages under a section that's not frequently visited.
• You can upload images directly from your computer when editing a page, but you have to upload documents such as PDF files directly into the Media Library.
  
• In the theme we selected, the homepage is considered a theme element and therefore, does not keep a revision history. Also, the homepage does not allow for visual editing. It must be edited in HTML.
• The theme we selected did not have a true "blog posting" section, so we had change a real estate listing section into a blog section.
  

So lesson learned, choose your theme carefully. We actually purchased a pretty high-quality theme on ThemeForest, but it was still not perfect. Your webmaster or marketing agency may have to tweak the theme for it to meet your requirements. But overall, WordPress is a budget-friendly content management system that's easy to use.

Labels: a2hosting, web 2.0 design, wordpress, wordpress themes

Microsoft today announced that it will add live updates from micro-blogging service Twitter to its Bing search engine results. Google also announced plans for live Twitter updates integration in its search engine. At the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco, Microsoft announced it has access to the public Twitter feed and released the Bing Twitter search beta for U.S. residents. Google promised to roll out Twitter integration in its search engine "in the coming months". In addition, Microsoft has inked a deal with Facebook and Google is said to be in talks with them.

Yusuf Mehdi, senior vice president of Microsoft's online services group, said, "We are going to get access to all of the public Twitter information in real time." Bing will also get the Facebook status feed at a later date. Sheryl Sandberg, chief operating officer, Facebook, said, "We are giving Bing a feed of data made open to everyone. No money exchanged hands. We are not trying to make money on data."

Bing Twitter search sees the text of a Twitter update and any shortened links tagged with it. Domain names are displayed after the shortened links mentioned in the Twitter update. However, Bing Twitter search only shows Tweets that happened in the past week.

This is the first attempt of the search engine giants to show real-time information in search results. Stay tuned to see how both Google and Microsoft will roll this search functionality out of beta. If you do not have a social media strategy, it's time to get cranking.

Labels: bing, facebook, google, search results, SEO, twitter

Last week we reported that ICANN(Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) will be allowing customized top level domains starting sometime in 2010. ICANN is instituting the change to allow more visibility and intuitiveness to domain names. After all, what does a “.com” mean to most people? A .nike would be much more intuitive.
ICANN is reviewing its application process and will soon announce when in 2010 the customized top-level domains will be available. However, it's not going to be as easy as buying a .com or .org domain name. The ICANN application process will require the following

• Business plan - including how you will maintain the domain over a 5-year period
• Policy overview
• Extensive documentation of community support (if the domain is for a community site)
• A competent and stable technology provider for registry services and hosting

So this is not going to be a minor or cheap undertaking for most companies. There is going to have to be a large budget and commitment to the project.

Labels: 2010 domains, domain registration, icann

I'm participating in Blog Action Day today, so I won't be talking marketing or SEO. Today's topic is climate change.
When I lived in Ann Arbor, Michigan, I used my car only once a week for grocery shopping and maybe 2-3 times per month for outdoor adventures or out-of-town client meetings. By virtue of the town's great pedestrian and bike-friendly paths and a thriving downtown, my husband and I both walked to work for 3 years and I walked my daughter to preschool every day. That's everyday - even in Michigan winters.

Now alas I find myself in Oregon suburbia and I'm in the car all the time it seems. The "downtown" of the town in which we live has amazing historic homes but we don't feel it's a safe environment for our young daughter which is a complete shame. I encourage everyone in a similar situation to get involved with Main Street revitalization efforts. Imagine how we could affect the climate if everyone could walk to work at least 3 or 4 times a week.

Labels: blog action day, climate change

If you're looking for a more direct and personal way to interact with consumers, instead of
sending them to your company's Facebook page or Twitter profile, what could be
better than an entire section of the Internet devoted solely to your brand?

That is exactly what you'll be able to get in early 2010 when you'll be able to grab a .brand instead of .com. Your company name can replace the .com! Imagine our emails coming .[your brand here]. Or your emails coming from you.[yourlastname]! Will Nike launch branded communities on a .nike domain? Can your company create an engaging microsite on .[your product name]? Whether you are a brand owner, technology company or healthcare organization you need to know how this upcoming domain registration change will affect your brand.

We will let our blog readers know exactly when these domains will be available and how to grab them. Stay tuned.

Labels: 2010 domains, branded domains, domain registration

Our client SVS Vision is selling cookbooks at their 50 optical centers or by calling 800-SVS-4600. All proceeds go to the Coats for Kids Foundation. Eat well and keep a deserving child warm this winter!

Labels: coats for kids, corporate giving, svs vision

An IBM study is predicting the end of advertising as we know it. It floors me that IBM has an Institute for Business Value that probably used a six-figure budget to tell us things we already knew. 18-24-year old use iTunes? Duh. The traditional ad agency is a dying breed? Of course. We've been predicting that traditional advertising agencies have been declining for years. That's why boutique ad agencies and tech-savvy marketing firms are thriving.

I will give them that the scenarios make the report more interesting especially for folks outside of ad agencies. It's worth a quick read even if just for the pretty graphs.

Labels: ad agencies, ibm, marketing report