Tint-Network

Which marketing method is working for you?

Bob Toovey — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 09:50:07 +0000

The time and effort you put in to your marketing is time well spent. However, are you sure that you are reaching your target audience? Are Facebook fans coming to your site and making pre-sales inquiries? You update Twitter as often as you can but are they site visitors and asking questions?

Your analytic’s will give you important information about your site visitors. Where they came from and what they typed in to search engines. However there is one thing you can do that is easy, direct and should answer the important question.

All you have to do is ask.

On the contact form, you need on extra question – How did you hear about us?

If they make contact by phone then ask - How did you hear about us?

Why not record the answers and try to work out the most popular method of discovery, which marketing method is driving customers to your site.

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Sunday reading: the big mix

Bob Toovey — Sun, 19 Feb 2012 08:30:55 +0000

Are you a site designer? Stripes are still common on ‘web 2.0′ sites and can be very time consuming creating backgrounds with them. Stripe Generator makes it easy and ensures they are seamless, what ever the angle.

If you are a community manager or looking after your companies social media presence then you should already be aware of this, Facebook to Release Timeline for Brands This Month

Collecting customer shopping habits powers many marketing campaigns. This story about Target in the USA is an interesting read with a twist in the tale, How Companies Learn Your Secrets

Another site for website designers is geekchix.org and their post, A Collection of Printable Sketch Templates and Sketch Books for Wireframing should prove very useful.

Karen Skidmore of CandoCanbe.com has just published her new book on Amazon, Shiny Shiny: How to Stop Being a Social Media Magpie. Looks to be a good read if you want to know more about social media and how to use it.

More great reads can be found in the Tint-Network bookshop. If you want to discover handy websites and posts then join the Tint-Network Facebook page.

Have a great Sunday!

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Does your email address stink?

Bob Toovey — Fri, 17 Feb 2012 08:30:26 +0000

Your email address that you use to correspond with your current clients and future propects might have a really bad smell. Your email address may well be really stinky!

Do you find that emails go unanswered, people not getting back to you?

Do you use an email address that goes with your domain name? No? Then your email address stinks!

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Read the rest of Does your email address stink? (334 words)

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How to add a favicon to your website

Bob Toovey — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 08:30:17 +0000

Favicons are the tiny images that you often see in web browser tabs and address bars. If you bookmark a web page then the favicon is included with the page title.

The reason sites have them is part of branding, helps people remember the site and keeps consistency. It’s an easy thing to do and takes minutes to get done.

Convert an existing image

The favicon is in a picture format called ICO, the full filename is ‘favicon.ico’. You can use animated GIF’s but not every browser supports it (yes Internet Explorer is the odd one out). Instead of creating a new image and converting it to the correct format, there is a website that helps you by taking an existing image, like a PNG file

htmlkit.com has a converter for images to ICO format. You then download a ZIP file that contains the file you need.

By converting an existing file you don’t have to spend time creating something new and you keep the branding the same.

Using the favicon file

How you use the favicon.ico file depends on the site you have.

Your site starts in the root directory (not in a sub directory)

For non blog sites, upload the file in to your root directory and add the following lines between … tags.

This HTML snippet instructs the browser where to get the images from.

Your site starts in a sub directory

For non blogs with an automated redirect, there is not much you can do. Upload the .ICO file to your root directory as many browsers will attempt to locate the file and if found, it will use it.

If you have a page that will take you to your main site then you can modify it with the HTML snippet.

For Blog sites (sub directory or not)

If your blog start in the root directory (your blog is the primary site) then upload the .ICO file in to the root directory. As above, browsers should detect the file and use it.

However to ensure that it is found, your really need to add the HML snippet (see above) but WordPress makes that difficult for those who prefer not to mess around with code.

You can use a plugin like AmberPanther Favicon for WordPress. You can download it direct from WordPress or from the plugins section on your blog. It will add the required HTML code to the WordPress header.

If your blog is in a sub directory (e.g. site.com/blog) then the only thing you can do is add the plugin and upload the .ICO file to the site root and the blog root.

I use a redirect to take people to the blog (tint-network.co.uk/blog) from the root directory (tint-network.co.uk). The only way I could get the .ICO file to be used by the browser was to upload it to the root directory. Currently Chrome, Firefox and Opera all detect and show the favicon.

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Not all that glitters will produce gold

Bob Toovey — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 08:30:32 +0000

There seems to be a new social network making itself know every so often. The most recent being Pinterest. We have Facebook, Google+, Twitter, LinkedIn and many others (see 15+ Social Networks You Wish You Knew About!). Can your business be on all of them?

To cut a long story short, no. Pick the networks that suit you best and concentrate on them. In my humble opinion, choose a max of 3. The reason for this is time, namely your time spent updating them. Why put the effort in on sites that won’t work well for you?

To make a social network really work for you, you have to commit to it. Regular updates and interacting with your fans or followers, automated services help but are no replacement.

Don’t let let them get bored or feel you don’t care anymore. There is nothing worse than walking in to a shop where the staff avoid you. Do you want to give that feeling on your chosen social networks?

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Pinterest, new and exciting but is useful for business?

Bob Toovey — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 08:30:21 +0000

The latest social networking site that everyone is talking about is Pinterest. It was started back in December 2009 but since March 2010 it has been in closed beta. Currently you need an invite to gain access.

The fuss is all to do with the amount of visits per week – 11 million. Well that and how it treats affiliate links, I won’t discuss it here but you can find more about it on llsocial.com.

If you don’t already know about Pinterest…

Pinterest lets you organize and share all the beautiful things you find on the web. People use pinboards to plan their weddings, decorate their homes, and organize their favorite recipes.

Best of all, you can browse pinboards created by other people. Browsing pinboards is a fun way to discover new things and get inspiration from people who share your interests.

The site is mainly focused on images but you can ‘pin’ video as well.

How can a business take advantage of this new site?

Just because it’s the latest shiny social network it does not mean every business can benefit from it. Remember it is an image based service. Business’s most likely to benefit are,

Photographers
Painters
Web shops with cool photo’s

Well any business that has great photo’s that show off products or works or art.

You can ‘pin’ from a downloadable tool bar for your browser or you can bury small snippets of code in to your web page (see their Goodies page).

The thing that is makes it exciting for business is that ‘pinned’ images carry information of where they came from. Click the image and you visit the site. Great images will be viewed, shared and generate traffic. With 11 million users per week, it could bring an awful lot of visitors.

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Sunday Reading: My favourite posts this week

Bob Toovey — Sun, 12 Feb 2012 08:30:34 +0000

Sunday again and time for a little light reading. Here are a few blog posts that caught my eye this week…

8 SEO Tips That Take 15 Minutes or Less
“While a long standing concerted effort toward SEO can pay off big down the road, don’t forget that sometimes there are quick tasks that can turn the needle.”
How to Be Your Own Webmaster and Unleash Your Entrepreneurial Spirit Again
“When it comes down to it, as entrepreneurs and business owners we do what we do because we like control. We want to be in charge of our own destinies.For the first part of the web explosion, this ability to ‘take charge’ was ripped away from most of us. Literally, the ‘paint brush’ was snatched right out of our hands.But the time has come for all of us to start painting again. Just like my ecstatic client Jason, who is by no means a ‘techie’, we can all benefit from this technology and get back to doing what we do best…”
Firefox Keyboard and Mouse ShortcutsNot really a blog post as such but I thought it worth mentioning for all you Firefox fans. A very large selection of keyboard short cuts for Windows, Mac’s and Linux users.

If you want something more substantial to read then take a look our very own bookshop.

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5 improvements that can increase readership and keep them around for longer

Bob Toovey — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 08:30:18 +0000

I like to experiment with my sites design to see what effect it has on visitors. For each change I make, I check my analytic’s to see if visitor counts go up or down. So far I have found 5 changes that have helped to increase visitor counts and possibly page views.

Make your font size bigger

Screen sizes and resolutions vary, from tablets starting from 800×480, netbooks with 1024×600 to desktop computers with 1280×1024. If you have small text then it will look fine on most netbooks and laptops but when the resolution is high it will be unreadable. Yeah you can adjust the browser to make it look bigger but that can be a hassle for many.

Just by increasing your font size by one or two levels, you can make the writing so much easier to read. Visitors will appreciate it by reading more than just the page they landed on

Get the contrast right

Newspapers are generally black writing on a white background, it makes them easier to read in most light levels. If the contrast for your text is all wrong then visitors will not become readers. Make sure the text is clear, readable and in suitable contrasting colours.

Line spacing

Again, this is to ensure that the text is readable. Give a little more space between each line so that the text is easier to follow with the eye. Visitors won’t hang around if reading is difficult.

Use large images

If you have a photo in your post, make it large. Especially if it’s before the text of the post. it will help to catch the eye. You may want to experiment a bit because you don’t want to make the image too large that it spills over to the right hand column (if you have one).

Use sharp and clear images

Make sure the image you use is clear, sharp and in focus. If it contains writing, make it readable. I hate it when a picture contains text and I can’t work out what it says. I bet others feel the same too. Quality images that summerises the post can make the whole thing look much more profesional.

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How to cope when spammers hit a post (or how to switch of comments per post)

Bob Toovey — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 08:30:26 +0000

One of my clients has a post on their WordPress site that is being commented on by spammers almost hourly. Some times multiple comments are being left with in minutes. This is becoming a real pain as I don’t want them to accumulate as deleting them becomes a chore. If this is happening to you then this is how to prevent it.

After searching Google for a few minutes I found the answer and it appears to be built in to the WordPress framework. If it’s not built in and only part of a theme then please let me know.

What we are looking for is to switch of comments per post. We don’t want all posts to be affected, just the one the spammers are favouriting. Look at the top of the post edit screen and look for the ‘screen options’ tab top right.

Click the tab and a whole load of new options will appear.

Click on ‘Discussions’ then you can click on ‘screen options’ tab again to hide the box. We now get 2 new options under the text editing section.

Make sure that ‘Allow comments‘ does not have a tick against it (no tick, no comments).

Ensure that ‘Allow trackbacks and pingbacks on this page‘ does have a tick (just leave it alone as it should be already enabled).

And that’s it. The change in the screen options is applied to all all posts that you edit. Each post can now be set to allow or not allow comments.

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3 things to do before the weather kills the Internet

Bob Toovey — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 08:30:42 +0000

With the weather in Europe causing a mild panic, lots of rural areas are losing electricity and Internet connections. The last thing a company needs is to loose contact with customers and find it almost impossible to get products shipped. Instead of letting the weather control the situation, here are a few things you can do to for when it all goes wrong.

Go to where the Internet is still working

Grab your laptop and make sure it is fully charged. Check that the software is all up to date and it’s ready to go. If your Internet connection fails, you can take your laptop to a friends house or even a local Internet cafe.

Many Internet providers (at least in France) allow you to login to another Router on their network. The same codes that give you WiFi access to your router make work on another router that is from the same provider. Try it before you need it to make sure it all works.

Be honest with your customers

If you have a blog for your business, now is the time to warn them of potential problems. Be upfront and honest and they will understand. Explain the weather situation and how it may affect product deliveries or services that you provide. Mention it on your business’s Facebook page and in email newsletters.

Can you rely on your smartphone?

Most smartphone allow you to browser the web, send and receive email and have apps for Facebook and Twitter. Check to make sure your contract allows enough hours or data usage so that in emergencies you can use it. Wifi is most often free but if there is no electricity or Internet then a 3G connection may be required. Costs can mount so check to see what you are allowed to do and upgrade it you need to. Downgrade later when the weather improves.

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