Lately, as I’ve met with many potential clients, this question has come up a lot.  I predict in 2012 most companies will move toward creating a mobile version in order to give their “on the go” viewers a better experience. Here is what your developer should and shouldn’t do to make your site mobile friendly:

• Do NOT build any part of your site in Flash. Flash is an outdated animation software created by Adobe. It not only doesn’t work on iPads and iPhones, it doesn’t work on Google. Yes, you read that right. If you use the new Google Instant Previews and you look at sites that have Flash, the boxes with the animation don’t show up. (More here. http://bit.ly/hQS3Al) If your entire site is done in Flash, including the navigation, you’re pretty much a goner.
• Keep it simple and don’t add too many buttons or choices on the home page. Don’t make your site is too complicated to navigate or use large images. The simpler the better. The faster it loads the better. Small buttons can be hard to navigate with large fingers on mobile devices. 60% of people expect the site to load in 3 seconds or less!
• Your phone number should never be a graphic or picture throughout the site. You really want to make sure that you put your number on your site as text so people can click on it on any device and call you immediately like this one (which happens to be ours!) 770 509 8797.
• Look for a mobile theme (or plugin if you use something like WordPress). There are many out there which will plug right into your current theme and make updates easily synch between the regular and mobile site. You can also build a standalone mobile site using WordPress or many other types of content management systems.

There are some good reasons for building an “m.yoursite.com.” Here are a few:

• Portions of your site give critical data to users such as news, schedules, events. These would definitely work in a stripped down mobile environment.
• You sell online. Mobile sites are great for helping you sell easily and quickly online. Keep in mind that your branding may not come through well on a stripped down site. Take a look at the Ebay site example in this post. You can see the www. site version on the iphone looks much more inviting than its m. partner.
• Your competition is already there. 40% have turned to a competitors site after a bad mobile experience with a regular site.
• Your site revolves around social networking, is an application itself, or is a blog. If people are using your site to perform a task or read your articles only, you might want to consider a mobile version.
• Bonus Question: Should I build a mobile site or mobile application? I would go for the mobile site because people will mostly likely use a search engine on their phone to find it. Applications can only be found in the iTunes App store or Android store, not using Google. Also, don’t just build an app because you think it would be “cool.” People expect applications to entertain, teach, create a shortcut or perform a task. If yours does none of these, don’t do it.

The nice thing is technology provides us with choices. There is a way to make “smart sites.”  The site itself can detect if its being seen on a mobile platform and can conform to the stripped down version. However, I like giving the reader a choice between the online site and the mobile version. Only you can decide if its worth the extra money to create a second platform for your site, but you might want to do some research of your users beforehand to determine if they will really use it. Think about your potential clients and where they would most likely surf the web. Ask yourself, will people actually use their phone to find me? Something to think about–there will be one mobile device for every person on Earth by 2015. Time for you to get in their pocket.

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Is video important for a business website? There’s no doubt about it. Savvy businesses want to capitalize on this effective marketing technique and are adding video to their websites and Social Media profiles in an effort to better communicate with prospective clients and customers.

These potential clients and customers are busy and don’t have much time to spend reading sales copy, but will take the time to watch a short video of a business that they are considering buying from. With video, businesses can engage customers in ways that motivate them to take action.

Video marketing works whether that business is a B2B or B2C. It allows companies to add a more human aspect because videos can feature the president or the owner of the company speaking to potential customers. As the old saying goes, people do business with other people. In other words, people like to buy from others they feel they know or have a connection. Through the use of videos, it allows the company to make a personal connection and seem more accessible. Videos show your business, product or service in a light that words simply cannot.

Another benefit of adding video to your marketing program is that videos allow a behind-the-scenes look at your corporation. So, for example, a potential client who is 1,000 miles away is still able to get a look at your warehouse operations or see a product demo. Video is also mobile so most video can be viewed on any device in any situation where the person has wifi.

So, what about the statistics? Does video help improve your SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and your organic listings? You bet it does. One of the first reasons is that Google owns You Tube and videos are indexed very quickly. Adding video to your site can actually help it come up higher in search engine ranking.  It is important to put keywords in the description to help get ranked by search engines as well.

Got a Facebook Fan page for your business? Video helps with that too. Facebook no longer ranks status updates by the most recent. While their exact algorithm is unknown, it is true that video and images do help your page to rank higher in the status listings with your fans than those that don’t have it. Of course, the more exposure of this nature, the better.

Dos and Don’ts of a Marketing Video

Do:

• Keep is short – one minute and under
• Include pictures of your office, workers and satisfied customers
• Tie the message to your customer’s current state of mind (ex. Relate it to a holiday)

Don’t:

• Use copyrighted music
• Make a video where it is hard to hear or understand you
• Leave them wondering, “What next?” – Have a call to action

Technology has made it easier to than ever to create videos. Webcams can capture your message and there are several inexpensive video-editing programs on the market today. If you still don’t feel comfortable editing or making them yourself, try sites like Elance.com, Guru.com or Odesk.com. Whether your business is large or small, there’s simply no reason not to embrace video marketing.

Written by Bella Web Design contributor Malika Harricharan from blueskyvirtualassistants.com.

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This is a guest post by contributing Bella Web Design writer, Debbie Held.

So you’ve finally tackled that looming goal on your business’ to-do list: You’ve set up your blog.  The good news is that in all likelihood, people coming to your website are going to be looking to see if you have a blog. The bad news is that they will then click-through to see if you actually update it.

Hey, let’s face it: Scheduling your writing time can be difficult in your day-to-day world, even for those of us who get paid to do it!

Your blog gives you a unique opportunity to showcase your business, services, or even your personal opines and musings in a forum for immediate online publication. Besides, writing soothes the soul, and solid writing will never go out of style (no matter where it is published).

Not a good writer, you say? Neither are the majority of bloggers out there. In fact, the blogosphere has been so saturated with low quality writing that your own fairly decent blogging skills can make you a stand-out among readers.

Below, some helpful tips:

• Be concise and to-the-point. Folks today are really (way too) distracted to read like they used to. While they’ll skim many sites and bookmarks in a day, they’re just not likely to read verbose passages, especially on someone’s blog. Aim for roughly 500 or so words per post.
• Open strong. Grab their attention in the first 10 seconds or else they’re gone and not coming back today (or… ever?).
• Use bullets (like the ones you see here, for example). See first point.
• Create a routine.  Find a time that works for you, enter it in your calendar, and force yourself to work on those blog posts. As time goes on, the process will become easier and more enjoyable.
• Update your blog regularly. This is vital both for readership as well as Google crawler purposes. Three times a week is awesome, twice a week is satisfactory, once a week is imperative.  Your cool blogger friends will be happy to help, too, as this will provide them with added fodder and exposure for their own blog audiences.
• Keep reading/find your own voice.  As they say, “Practice makes perfect.” Keep reading the works of writers and authors whose voices you enjoy, but not just from the Internet, please. Newspaper and magazine articles are the real “go-to” source for proper writing style and form. While certainly not mandatory on your own blog, these articles can help you develop your own voice with continued practice.

Above all, don’t get hung up on too much of anything initially, other than getting some original (as in, yours and not copied from elsewhere) text posted to your blog on a routine basis. You can write about anything you want, really. Don’t get boxed in by anyone else’s vision. After all, isn’t that why you went into business for yourself in the first place?

Deborah (“Debbie”) Held is an Atlanta-based freelance journalist and business writer who has written nearly 600 articles for local, regional and national publication and does not always practice what she preaches. She blogs weekly for other people, usually in “ghosted” form, and she swears that this is the year in which she will tend to her own blog. She lives in Atlanta with her teenage daughter, her beagle, her Italian greyhound, and Gavin, the cat. In her rare snippets of free time, she enjoys knitting. Please contact her at www.debbieheld.com.

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What once was considered a fad for early technology adopters is now rapidly coming into mainstream social and mobile media. What is this massive opportunity getting so much attention these days? It is called location-based services (LBS) and now is the time to get involved in this game before your competitors do. Currently the majority of experts view foursquare as the industry leader. Now is the time to give foursquare some attention and learn how it can help your specific business needs.  Here are some tips to consider for your business:

If you have a business that uses a physical location to sell products and services to your customers (ideally, B2C), you should consider the following:

• Claim your venue immediately!
• Once you claim your venue, make sure that all of your venue information is correct and complete (ie address, pin on the map, Twitter handle, website link, phone number)
• Create a special or two in order to gain exposure and buzz for your business.
• Visit your venue page’s statistics in order to better understand who your foursquare customers are (ie who visits the most often, what time the day customers check-in)
• Check to see which of you recent visitors have a Twitter profile (tweet those who visit)
• Engage and respond to followers
• Follow-up to make sure your current foursquare (specials) campaign is working and meeting your overall marketing goals – adjust as appropriate!

If you have a company that does not have a true brick-and-mortar presence, you can still use foursquare to reach, engage, an influence your target market, you should consider the following:

• Create a foursquare brand page
• Fill out all of your brand information (ie name, add a suitable picture)
• Connect your social media profiles (Twitter and Facebook)
• Add tips to venue pages where your products are sold or services rendered
• Create foursquare lists to group your tips together and tell a story
• Check-in if you have an event that your brand is promoting / attending
• Share your lists and foursquare activity with your followers on Facebook and Twitter

By playing around with these evolving LBS tools, you will have a competitive advantage over those who sit back and remain inactive in this sector. Mobile is gaining a great amount of steam these days, and now is the time to jump aboard.

This post contributed by foursquare expert user Dwayne Kilbourne. Dwayne can be found at http://dwaynekilbourne.com.

More foursquare resources:

AboutFoursquare.com http://aboutfoursquare.com/

#4sqCHAT http://twitter.com/4sqCHAT

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SEO is short for Search Engine Optimization; a method of analyzing, tagging and creating online content so that it can be found organically via search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing. This is highly important because, even though you might have an attractive website with relevant and unique content, if no one knows about it, or it doesn’t pop up on the first page in the organic listings, then no one will be able to find your site unless the read about it or hear about it from another source. 90% of web traffic comes from search engines so this should be a very important part of your overall strategy.

How do you know if your SEO is low or not working?

• Traffic to your site is at a minimum.
• Little to no communication from viewers.
• No one says they found you on Google, Bing or Yahoo. (You should be asking every prospect how they’ve found you!)

How do you practice excellent SEO for your website?

• Get the word out about your website using social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube.
• Make sure all content is fresh, up-to-date and visually appealing.
• Tag, tag, tag and tag again!
• Ensure your titles have good keywords.
• Find higher ranking sites in your industry to link from. The sites MUST be relevant to what you do or those links won’t do a bit of good.
• Hire a specialist who knows exactly how to research what keywords people are actually using to find your type of site.
• Check your index and ranking in search engines using Google Analytics or search for your website by using site:yourwebsite.com. How many pages are returned? If it’s a low number, you have a problem.

If you are not utilizing proper SEO techniques, chances are that your website is not being notice by new clients. Word of mouth is a great tool, but it can only go so far. By knowing how to execute strong SEO skills, your website can reach a whole new audience and expand your client base with very little work or expense. More on SEO here.

Written by Sarah Bailey, Bella Web Design copy writer.

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We’re taking a detour from our usual format to present our audience with a great PDF resource guide for parents of teens who use social media. Feel free to download Social Networking Sites, A Parent’s Guide from the Federal Trade Commission.

Our CEO, Desiree Scales, gave a talk today to Woodward Academy about keeping teens safe online and preparing them for college. Social media can be quite effective when used responsibly. Here are a few talking points:

• Parents should monitor activity if at all possible and talk to their students about how they would use social media. If they aren’t ready, don’t push.
• Teens can use social media to share their accomplishments. Leave a footprint of awards, activities and milestones that will impress.
• College research is a great use of social media. It gives them the ability to talk to department heads, students and other people who have experience with the institution.
• Parents should be role models to their students in their own usage of social media.
• Get family involved and have older members friend the student and have dialogue with them. They should also be watching the students activity and report back to parents if anything is amiss.
• Teenagers in a creative field can use YouTube, Flickr and other image and video and sharing sites to share their work.
• If your teen isn’t responsible or shows bad judgement, communicate and talk it out. Don’t accuse, be open to their reasons and make a judgement call over access after the talk.
• Parents should make it a point to learn how to use all the social media platforms themselves so they can have educated and effective conversations about privacy settings for each tool and how to use social media effectively.

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If you connect to the world in any fashion during the day—Internet, radio, TV, newspapers—it’s hard to avoid hearing or reading about the impact of social media. It seems like its being used everywhere for both silly reasons and the profound, whether it’s Charlie Sheen tweeting his latest thoughts or Arab citizens reshaping their societies. It’s certainly reshaping the way businesses work.  If you’re just getting started with social media or if you haven’t made the jump, here are some things to think about.

First, understand the differences between the “Big Three.” Twitter is like a cocktail party with small, simultaneous conversations going on all at once. Facebook is the place where people get to know you better or know your name, your face, your interests, your goals. LinkedIn is the most “professional” and business-oriented social media channel, like a worldwide Chamber of Commerce.

With this in mind, consider these points.

• Social media is an incredibly useful tool for businesses. For some, it’s an absolute necessity. But it’s not for every company. If your business deals directly with consumers, then it’s probably a great idea to have Facebook and Twitter accounts. For example, a restaurant or a camera store could use their social media to keep customers up-to-date on trends or discounts. If you’re running a business-to-business operation, think through the steps in the next bullets.
• For service businesses—say, an accounting or engineering firm—social media is a great way to stay in touch with your customers. Obviously you don’t want to discuss confidential information, but you can use social media to point out interesting articles, provide links to developments in your field that might be of interest to your customers, or keep your regulars posted about social events where you can meet in person.
• Some companies actually don’t need to worry about developing social media networks. Typically, they have very well defined offerings that remain relatively stable.  For example, it’s unlikely that a plumbing supply company needs social media; it’s customers know exactly what’s being offered, and they’re not likely to be looking for the continual stream of information that is so much a part of social media. However, if they want to stand apart from other plumbing companies, they might want to blog about maintenance and other home or business plumbing issues and then share those posts on social media channels.

Here are some other interesting statistics on the quick, meteoric rise of the use of social media in business:

• From December 2009 to December 2010, users with a biography listed on Twitter increased from 31 percent to 69 percent. (Pew Research)
• 22 percent of Fortune 500 companies now have a public-facing blog that has at least one post in the past 12 months (comScore)
• Social networking site usage grew 88 percent among Internet users aged 55-64 between April 2009 and May 2010 (Pew Research)
• LinkedIn has grown by an impressive 100 percent from last year, it now has over 100 million users across the globe. Interestingly, 56% of these users are from outside of the US.

Keep in mind the characteristics of the three main social media channels discussed above. Build a strategy that makes the most sense for each, whether it’s a quick keeping-in-touch message (Twitter), building a richer picture of your business (Facebook), or making connections (LinkedIn).

In our next post, we’ll talk about some essential do’s and don’ts for social media.

Written by Terence Finan of http://hightechmarketing.us.com and Desiree Scales, CEO of Bella Web Design, Inc.

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Our Bella site looks great on all devices!

As I was reading an article this morning on my iPad a ZDNet article popped up about “Record iPhone/iPad/Mac Sales for Apple in Q1.”  Over 24 million iPhone and iPad devices were sold this Christmas. That’s more than 46 million iPhones sold in 2010 alone and iPad sales are expected to more than double this year. Based on this information and watching the popularity of the iPad when it was launched, we realized a long time ago designing websites that worked on these devices is critical. If you’re talking with other web firms, make sure they are following the same rules we’ve put in place. If they aren’t addressing the subject of ensuring web compatibility for your site, you might want to think twice. (The best test of this is to see how their own sites and portfolios look on an iPad/iPhone. You’ll know quickly if they are even thinking about this if they haven’t even taken the time to make their own sites web compatible.) Here is what we follow as our guidelines:

Flash is Dead (until they reinvent it). Flash is no longer considered a web compliant medium. If you have flash on your site, the iPad and iPhone will not show it. You’ll end up with a site that has empty space where the animation should be. Worse, if your whole site is in Flash, it will be completely invisible and no navigation will  render the site useless. Flash also doesn’t work on Google Instant Previews where you can see a site’s design in the results before you go to it. All you see is empty space.

Websites Designed Like Applications. This is already happening to sites you visit on a regular basis. Look at Twitter’s recent major design transformation on an iPad or iPhone and you’ll see what I mean. The whole site looks like an application and is even better than it’s official iPad app, in my opinion. On the other hand, apps are designed more like the websites they represent. It’s all a matter of branding. Branding should be consistent including colors, logos and layout between both an app and its website.

Navigation is Widgetized. If you look at an iPad application, you know exactly which buttons to push to get to where you need to go. Same with websites being designed to work on these platforms. There are more sections of information with larger buttons to get you where you need to go on websites which are iPad compliant. No more little text links to deal with which are hard to navigate with large fingers.

Video is Sexy, Images are Beautiful. Site owners are investing in tools which will enable them to create HD video and images to set their site apart from the pack. Everyone knows it’s the images that really make a website shine. If your images are blurred, don’t kill your chances of making a good impression. Delete ‘em! Video will also continue to make strides on sites as it is a natural on the iPad and iPhone. A professional video on your site will impress more visitors than just plain text. If you can speak the words, why not videotape them being spoken by a company representative, or better yet, the owner? It will make a much more lasting impression.

Fluid Width Design. The iPad has no RIGHT way of viewing websites. That means you can view it either in landscape or in the portrait mode. But for the designer that means two completely different layouts for which to design. It is for this specific reason that the iPad highlights the need for smart fluid width design.

So my question to you is, have you viewed your site on an iPad or iPhone yet? Are you afraid to see what you might find? I would encourage those who don’t own these devices to go to the Apple store and take a look. If your own site doesn’t represent your company well on all popular platforms, you might think about hiring someone who can can change that.  (You might also look into creating an application that can further help your customers, but that’s another blog post forthcoming. Stay tuned!)

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Organic is the new buzzword. You hear it in the grocery store, read about it in magazines and now its even popping up in conversations about search engine submission.

Here at Bella Web Design, Inc. we specialize in getting our clients into the “organic” listings in Google, Yahoo and MSN. Organic listings are better than Pay Per Click for many reasons. The biggest one is the dreaded “click fraud” or cases in which competitors mercilessly click on their competition’s pay per click links in Google in order to force them to lose a lot of money on fake clicks.

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I started blogging in October of 2006 and I’ve never looked back. That’s four years of posting great, educational information for my audience almost every week. It helps that I hold a journalism degree, but there are more business reasons why I’ve kept it up all of these years. With the launch of our new site, I found another opportunity to repackage some of my ideas and wisdom and share them with you here on our new custom WordPress site.

When I started blogging, I immediately saw the blog come up on the first page of Google within a week and I knew I was on to something. I had found another way for my clients to market their business and get their sites in the search engines. I also knew that sharing my expertise with my audience made me more credible.

Our original blog has spurred the creation of our podcast/blog www.thebellabuzz.com about a year ago which has now reached over 25,000 subscribers/friends/fans.

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