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5 Benefits of Viral Videos – Online Brand Management

Mike Valentine — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 16:47:13 +0000

Viral video is simultaneously the most entertaining and the most infuriating element of online marketing. Let’s clear the air quickly: No one can promise you a viral video success. Ever. Viral videos succeed because the audience likes them and spreads them on to other people. If the audience doesn’t get it, the video doesn’t go viral, and there is nothing that can guarantee the response you want.

That said, there is every reason to continue developing video content with the aim of going viral. In terms of investment-to-value ratio, viral videos remain some of the most economical efforts a brand can put out for itself. If even one video you produce hits the entertainment nerve and goes viral, you’ve done your brand a world of good. Let us consider the success of one particular viral series to see some of the benefits available from this branding tactic.

Benefit 1 – Funny and Factual

Blendtech is a company with a fairly simple business model: Sell blenders so powerful and reliable that they will destroy just about anything you put in them. The company’s big success story came with the “Will it Blend?” series for its new high-powered blender. The videos are simple – a charming man with an amiable manner puts something unexpected and expensive into the blender and turns it into its constituent elements.

In very brief, powerful videos, Blendtech ended up demonstrating both that destroying expensive electronics in a blender is entertaining and that its blenders were incredibly powerful. People’s immediate reactions were, in order, “He just blended an iPhone!” and “I want one of those blenders.”

So a good video can get the information about your product out there in a compelling, dramatic way that can’t be argued with.

Benefit 2 – Cheap, Cheap, Cheap

Viral video is incredibly cost effective. The costs of many videos are incredibly high, especially for television advertising during prime marketing hours. Just consider the sheer volume of investment that goes into Super Bowl halftime commercial extravaganzas.

On the other hand, the Blendtech commercials apparently were shot on an utterly shoestring budget: perhaps $500 for a reasonable-quality video camera, the wages for a decent cameraman, the blender the company is selling and however much the gadget of the week cost. In the case of the iPhone Blendtech demolished, say $600 depending on where they got it. Either way, the production costs of the video probably didn’t exceed a few thousand dollars, and that’s at the outside.

Benefit 3 – Free Transmission

Once you have the video up and going, and people find it entertaining, you don’t have to devote much effort to keeping it going places. If it hits that funny bone like the Blendtech video did, people will show it off repeatedly to just about everyone they can, because they want to see other people laugh and enjoy it too. Just make sure the video has a dedicated YouTube or video link that people can reference.

Benefit 4 – Specialization

Have you ever looked at most commercials? They’re rather generic, and seem to cast their nets fairly wide. This is particularly true of infomercials, which try to make the whole of humanity into bumbling incompetents unable to pack their drawers, cut their food or clean their homes without the aid of some wundergadget. The result is bland pointlessness. On the other hand, a good viral video allows you to ignore all that and focus your efforts specifically on reaching a certain audience. Take Blendtech – they wanted to go after people who wanted a good, strong blender. They built an advertisement that therefore does nothing BUT promote the strength and efficacy of their blender, and does so in a shocking, eye-catching manner.

Benefit 5 – Entertainment

As we’ve discussed, the most important element in the Blendtech campaign’s success is its entertaining quality. People tuned into the videos because they wanted to see some guy demolish technology that hundreds of others were probably still waiting in the rain for. The commercials were short, exciting, funny and evocative.

Now, there’s an associated effect. Consider the reality of a blender: Is it really that entertaining? Are you actually going to use it to demolish your priciest electronics or devour your leftover garden rake? However, even if Blendtech’s customers aren’t going to do any of these things, they’ll still think of them fondly when they use their blender to crush up some stubborn ice for a daiquiri.

By putting out a good, entertaining video that goes viral, you’re creating the implication that your brand is itself entertaining and creative. Your audience will want to see what comes next, will want to share their favorite moments with friends. Most of all, they’ll want the thing that you’re selling because it was so funny.

So, while once again we must reiterate that nothing in the world can guarantee you viral video success, there is every reason to devote part of your marketing efforts to developing entertaining, informative videos that can capture the imaginations of your target audience. All it takes is one success to get your brand out there in proper fashion.

— Enzo F. Cesario is an online branding specialist and co-founder of Brandsplat, a digital content agency. Brandsplat creates blogs, articles, videos and social media in the “voice” of our client’s brand. It makes sites more findable and brands more recognizable. For the free Brandcasting Report go to http://www.BrandSplat.com/ or visit our blog at http://www.iBrandCasting.com/

4 Ways to Use Social Media in Promotions – Online Brand Marketing

Mike Valentine — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 15:16:08 +0000

Social media marketing has earned its place as one of the fastest-growing, most competitive marketing fields in the history of advertising. People are gathering online in record numbers, finding and socializing in groups that cater to their interests; often, these interests neatly intersect with marketing and branding opportunities. The best social media tools combine simplicity with an extensive reach, allowing messages to target thousands of people in seconds, thus serving as an outstanding tool of brand promotion.

Briefly, here are a few of the more interesting and simple ways you can use social media to arrange a short-term promotion for your brand.

#1 – Flash Mob

A flash mob is an impromptu gathering of people arranged by SMS. Originally popular on message boards, the advent of texting and SMS powerhouses like Twitter has made flash mobs even easier to arrange. In the simplest terms, the originator of the mob sends a message to his audience, arranging a time, place and theme for a quick meeting and/or performance. Famous mobs have included zombie walks, unannounced pillow fights at major business centers and other assorted fun events.

As an example of using a flash mob for a brand, consider the following scenario: You own a café with a respectable Twitter following. You tweet out a time and place – say 2 p.m. in the park – and a short promotion code like ParkFrap. When everyone arrives, you’re waiting with a selection of your newest frappe drinks, and everyone who can give you a copy of the code gets a drink and a coupon for the next time they drop by the café.

This kind of arrangement takes a bit of preparation, of course, but the idea creates instant buzz, sticks out in people’s minds and can be an enjoyable time for everyone.

#2 – Couponing

People like to save money, and businesses like to make it. If your brand is tied into a business that offers product, you’ve probably already considered how to go about offering coupons to people. Social media offer many avenues to getting coupons out to people. Again, Twitter is an excellent tool here; in fact, there are several sites out there that are tailored to helping use Twitter for couponing. For example, http://twtqpon.com allows you to combine a short tweet and an image into a coupon for your customers.

However, Facebook is also a good tool for distributing coupons. If your brand has a Facebook group associated with it – and if it doesn’t, why not? – you can leverage the service as both a coupon and a promotional tool. For example, post a message with a new coupon that’s only valid if a follower brings a friend along. In this one step, you get two people into the store, sell some product and have a chance to sign up a new follower on Facebook.

#3 – Cross Promote

Sometimes you don’t necessarily have a large following of your own. This is obviously the case in brands that are just developing their online identity. They’ve signed up for the various social media services, but haven’t really gotten a big splash together.

This is where research and legwork come in. Let’s continue with the coffee shop analogy, since cafés seem to be a defining feature of the modern set. You could look up a group that tends to associate with cafés, such as writers. If you find a local writing group on Facebook for your area, consider posting a friendly message on their board, inviting them to come in for a weekly “writer’s day” in which members of your newly-formed writing club get a discount.

Remember, of course, the key rules of social media: be polite and respectful. These are people you’re talking to, people with their own agendas and desires, and they can sense insincerity like a shark smells blood in the water. Your offers must be interesting and credible.

#4 – Picture Perfect

Images are powerful things. A well-done image can excite the imagination and catch peoples’ attention in a way that text sometimes fails to grasp. Consider sending images designed to give people an association with your brand.

Returning a final time to our café example, consider taking a picture of some fresh cinnamon rolls that just came out of the oven and quickly uploading them to your preferred social media service. This requires a bit of work to make sure the picture looks appetizing and appealing, but isn’t too difficult. Post that picture up along with a message about how they come with a free cup of coffee between 10 a.m. and noon, and you just might have a rush on your hands.

Even if you don’t have mouth-wateringly delicious pastries to offer, any brand benefits from visual associations. When you go to make a post in your blog or SMS, include a link to a relevant picture as often as you can. This will help people associate your brand with colorful thinking, with interesting things to look at, and the like. Text can appear awfully drab, so do what you can to brighten it up a bit.

Five Reasons Your Blog Needs a Ghostwriter: Building Brand Identity

Mike Valentine — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 14:00:14 +0000

A ghostwriter is any writer who creates content for a project that will be presented under another name. As you are traveling in a bookstore, you might marvel at the sheer volume of works certain names such as Tom Clancy put out. In many cases, these books weren’t written by a single writer but rather many and then published under the big name. This arrangement is a good one for many writers, as it allows them to get work and valuable writing experience, while also benefiting the larger name by allowing more work under their aegis to get out.

Your blog might just benefit from hiring a ghostwriter for the same reasons. Every blog needs a writer to direct it, and blogs do best when guided by one or two voices in a consistent direction. Sometimes, however, the originator of a business or idea isn’t the one who can best capture that direction, and that’s when you should turn to a ghostwriter.

In no particular order, here are five reasons that many blogs choose to hire a ghostwriter for their content.

Reason #1 – They Can’t Write Appropriately

This isn’t referring to whether their content is polite or not, it simply refers to whether the “idea man” behind a project can generate content that fits the aim of the blog. Suppose, for example, you have someone who knows all about the world of competitive cooking as seen in Iron Chef. He knows the competitors’ ranks and accomplishments and wants to use the blog to promote interest in competitive cooking – even, perhaps, in his own cooking school.

The problem is, he can’t write in a way that catches the eye. His writing might be too technical, or rely on obscure factoids that don’t really do much to inspire the reader’s imagination. A ghostwriter, on the other hand, is all about the writing, and one of the best talents a writer can have is the ability to take someone else’s ideas and rephrase them in exciting, evocative language.

Reason #2 – Lack of Time

Many of the big blogs seen on the web weren’t startup ventures, but rather grew out of a company that already existed. Many companies have seen the success of blogs in other ventures, and have chosen to add one to their own site, much the same way they chose to add a website to their business when the web first got popular. This is a natural evolution and response to a changing market, and is not a bad idea. On the other hand, the owner is usually concerned with other issues and does not have time to devote to writing a blog.

In such cases, the natural step is to hire a ghostwriter. You want the articles to continue to go out in your company’s name, since the idea of the blog is to promote the company, but don’t have time to do it yourself because you are justifiably busy. A ghostwriter can build a solid blog post in about an hour of work, and then move on to their other projects.

Reason #3 – Intermediate Perspective

There is a great deal to be said for being familiar with your product and your brand. You get to know subtleties and rhythms of the business that no outsider could appreciate. The problem is, your perspective is entirely different from that of your customers. They can’t get into the nitty gritty of your brand in a way you can.

In cases like these, the value of a ghostwriter lies in linking the outside views of your audience with the inside views of the company. You can communicate your passions directly to this writer, who can marry them to a perspective of those on the other side of the glass. Their intermediate presence crucially bridges the gap between brand and audience.

Reason #4 – Brand Protection

Writers are a notoriously prideful lot. Some of the fiercest legal battles are over intellectual property rights, and justly so. Creating a written body of work is a tremendous effort, and having it stolen or infringed upon is a terrible offense. On the other hand, a branded blog is not about the individual writer, it’s about the brand and what the brand represents.

By definition, a ghostwriter doesn’t take credit for their work. The work is put out in the name of the brand, or the site’s owner, as a means of projecting the brand forward. The ghostwriter is willing to take their pay without putting their own creative name on the work, which will benefit your brand because there isn’t an intermediate step. If you let one ghostwriter go, either because they move on to new things or you decide you need a new creative direction, there isn’t necessarily an indication of this to the outside world, and the brand’s voice continues.

Reason #5 – Flexibility and Freshness

Ghostwriters in the plural sense can do a blog good, too. If you maintain more than one at a time, you can ease the wear and tear that is associated with writing on the same general subject. Writers are like horses; you don’t want to ride them to death on the way there if you expect to get home. And since writing can be done anywhere, by anyone, anytime, you can cast your net far and wide in search of the two or three writers you need to best communicate your message.

– Enzo F. Cesario is an online branding specialist and co-founder of Brandsplat, a digital content agency. Brandsplat creates blogs, articles, videos and social media in the “voice” of our client’s brand. It makes sites more findable and brands more recognizable. For the free Brandcasting Report go to http://www.BrandSplat.com/ or visit our blog at http://www.iBrandCasting.com/

Common PC Driver Errors And How To Repair Them

Mike Valentine — Sun, 22 Aug 2010 16:08:48 +0000

Findings of a recent survey show that a majority of Windows users are unaware of the importance of keeping their drivers up-to-date. The absence of this knowledge leads to poor performance of attached hardware and frequent driver errors.

In this article, we discuss the steps you can perform to fix and prevent driver-related errors. We also discuss the following topics in this article:

What is a driver, it’s importance, and why it is necessary to keep drivers up-to-date
How to update built-in, as well as third-party drivers

Driver – A definition

Drivers are software that make communication between your computer and hardware possible. All hardware devices require a driver to function properly and each type of hardware device requires a particular type of driver to carry out its functions.

In case your drivers are outdated or not installed correctly, you may experience frequent errors, such as the airgcfg.exe error and face performance related issues.

How to update drivers

When you buy a new PC, it comes equipped with most common drivers. These are referred to as built-in drivers. Drivers that are added when you install a new hardware, such as a new audio card are referred to as third-party drivers.

Built-in drivers – To update built-in drivers, regularly install new Windows Updates. To ensure that new Windows updates are automatically installed on your computer, simply keep the built-in Automatic Update feature enabled.
Third-party drivers – You can update your third-party drivers either manually or with the help of a good driver update software. To update third-party drivers manually, visit the driver manufacturer’s website and install the new available updates. This approach, as you may guess is tedious. You can make the driver updation process simpler by installing a reliable driver update tool. Such tools automatically install new driver updates and security patches, as and when they are released by the driver manufacturer.

Resolve driver-related errors

To resolve driver-related errors, simply update your drivers. If the error still persists, then uninstall and then reinstall the concerned driver.

In most cases, driver errors should be resolved by now. If the error refuses to go away, perform the following additional troubleshooting steps:

Run a malware scan – Malware programs, such as virus, worms, trojans, and other variants may delete or change the file association of driver files, such as the alcwzrd.exe file and cause errors. Run a complete malware scan on your PC using your security software to resolve such driver-related errors. Experts recommend that you run the malware scan twice to ensure no threat escapes detection.
Clean your registry – Issues in your registry may also lead to frequent driver-related errors. That is why it is necessary that you regularly clean your registry to ensure its stay in good health. Cleaning the registry is easy, all you require is a good registry-maintenance software. Install a registry maintenance tool that is compatible with your Windows operating system and use it to clean, as well as perform other essential registry maintenance activities.

Simple Fixes For Windows EXE Errors

Mike Valentine — Sat, 21 Aug 2010 16:10:48 +0000

Problems on a Windows PC may become frequent if you do not perform essential PC maintenance tasks regularly. A simple error, such as an exe error may evolve into a colossal issue if you do not take quick and definite corrective measures.

The key to fix and prevent common Windows errors is to regularly perform maintenance tasks, use the right protective and maintenance software, and take timely action when errors appear for the first time.

In this article, we reveal the tested ‘3 questions approach’ that you can use to resolve common exe errors on your own.

Ask yourself the following questions in the sequence they appear when you are faced with exe errors, such as the msnmsgr.exe error.

Is my computer infected?

Any computer connected to a network or the Internet is susceptible to malware infection. At times, even after the best efforts, malware programs may still gain entry into a PC, causing frequent errors, like the fdisk.exe error.

Unfortunately, malware programs don’t inform a user if his/her PC is infected. So, it is you who need to take the onus and remain aware to any signs that may point to possible infection. Symptoms of malware infection may include:

Frequent system errors
Frequent system or software crashes
Failure to run or install/uninstall certain programs
Delay in Windows boot or shut down process
Frequent system restarts without any apparent reasons
Drop in system performance
Frequent system freeze ups

In case your computer shows any or all of the above symptoms, immediately run a thorough malware scan on your computer. Before you run a malware scan, update your antimalware software with the latest malware definitions and disconnect your computer from any network, as well as from the Internet.

Are my software files updated?

Outdated files are another common cause of application errors. Besides frequent errors, running outdated software may leave your computer vulnerable to security breaches and slow your computer’s performance. To resolve exe errors and strengthen your PC’s security, download and install the latest software updates on the system. Depending on your software, you may use either of the following methods to keep your software files up-to-date:

Use the built-in Update tool – If your software comes with an Update tool, the job becomes easy. Use the tool to install the latest updates automatically.
Manually update software files – You can update software that does not come with an Update tool by downloading the latest available updates from the software manufacturer’s website.

Is my registry clean and healthy?

Without a healthy registry, a Windows PC is destined to an untimely death. The registry is perhaps the most critical component of the Windows operating system, without which it just can’t function. As the registry works in the background, an average Windows user often remains unaware of its role and importance.

Problems in the Windows registry are the root cause of various application errors, such as the eshell.exe error and PC performance-related issues. That is why it is imperative that you regularly clean your registry.

Install a reliable registry cleaning tool and use it to clean your registry, as well as to perform other registry maintenance activities.

Building Brand Identity: How Wikipedia Defines Branding Success

Mike Valentine — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 15:30:59 +0000

It is instructive and inspiring to take a look at the people who have succeeded in your field. Whether it’s an attempt to learn from their mistakes and victories or just a pause to reflect on the admirable accomplishments of another, studying the work of those who’ve set the benchmark can inspire reflection and spur us on to greater heights.

The world of branding success stories is one of the most fickle, given the rise of the web. Every day, there is more new information generated and discarded than has existed for most of human history. Trends and fads come and go with ever-increasing speed, and things considered hilarious and exciting baffle people just a few months later. Then there are successes that fundamentally change the way the world sees things. They become so ingrained that everyone wonders where they’d been the whole time.

Wikipedia

There is not enough good in the world to say about the Wiki project. Those who would criticize it for lacking accuracy and scholarly rigor have totally missed the point. Wikipedia is the spirit of what the web is meant to be. It is cooperative, self-correcting, open to interpretation, controversial and dynamic. Ever changing and yet extremely distinct, it represents the purest expression of what the web can and is meant to do. People are talking about Web 2.0, but it’s honestly already here in the form of the Wiki.

Wikipedia is a simple idea, one so straightforward that it could be imagined it shouldn’t work – an encyclopedia free of charge, open for anyone in the world to edit. It shouldn’t continue to exist, by all logic. The internet is full of trolls who will eagerly fax sheets of black paper to people they’re displeased with, over and over until the receiving machine runs out of ink and seizes up. What in the world is to stop them from vandalizing the heck out of every Wiki page they come across, a fate that many other Wikis indeed have succumbed to?

The answer is that Wiki has taken its audience seriously, appealing to its sense of pride and self-interest.

For every troll who hops onto a Wikipedia or Wikiquote article and scrawls quotes calling the moral and social behaviors of the editors into question, there is someone else who is incredibly well-informed about that page, backed up by both a number of authoritative sources and a deep pride in their work. Vandalism is steadily defeated through pride and reversion, and the sheer scale of people who want a good, quality resource.

In allowing anyone to edit, and treating those edits as matters worth discussing on cooperative terms, the Wiki project has ignited a sense of pride in people. Now they want the articles to succeed; they want to see their hard work displayed on the front page as a featured article.

Additionally, the Wiki project chose an iconic visual aesthetic for itself: White background, clean lines, plain text and simple images. Yes, anyone can edit a page as they like, but the project rewards pages that comply with its style guides and presentational standards. So whenever someone says “Wiki,” people imagine that little puzzle-globe logo, the way a page is set up and the little blue edit tabs in the corner.

Of course, one of the best ways to judge the success of a project is to judge that of its emulators. So for comparison’s sake, let us consider a relative newcomer even to the open-source editing style: TV Tropes.

TV Tropes

A trope is a rhetorical device. The damsel in distress is a trope, as is the idea of having just one bullet left in the final sequence of an action film. They aren’t exactly clichés, though they can become so. Rather, they are patterns that people have learned to recognize in conversation, argument and entertainment that form the basis of all communication.

TV Tropes is a website based on two ideas: First, tropes are awesome things that deserve discussion, admiration and study, and second, everyone has something to contribute. The site does not use the Wiki format, but does have an open policy on allowing people to comment and post about the tropes they find interesting.

Pages on the TV Tropes site range from those discussing a specific trope to those showing a film or book and listing the tropes present in it. All are freely editable.

The success of the TV Tropes project may not be measurable monetarily like Wikipedia’s or other more commercial ventures. However, the project has become intensely popular all the same. It has the same “well, I’ll click one more link” popularity that Wikipedia had cornered for itself, and the same “I can talk about what I like here and be taken seriously” appeal as all open source projects. People reference tropes in casual conversation on message boards, and it’s creating a communal language.

That really is the key behind these two projects – brain extension. They’ve taken a good idea and brought it into the common discourse, allowing people to communicate with each other. People can discuss differing myths from literature, and realize they’re talking about the same trope, even if it’s not the same story. People automatically click to Wiki for information if they need some quick discussion material. For those who want to take a lesson from the Wiki style of success, remember that it emphasizes not the product, but the way the audience is using and sharing words, language and information.

Creative Conjuring for Your Writing Team

Mike Valentine — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 14:53:57 +0000

Let us suppose for a moment that you have made the decision to hire a permanent, in-house writing team as opposed to seeking out writers on a more per-contract basis. The advantages of this decision are numerous, of course ˜ for one, you get to grow a team with a focus on your business so they grow more and more aware of it as time goes on, benefiting from long-term exposure to what you have them writing about.

However, now that you’ve got them, what’s the best way to maximize their creativity? Having a dedicated writing staff is a fine thing, to be sure ˜ but in order to get the most out of the investment, you need them to produce solid, creative and reliable content. It doesn’t matter if they produce entire reams of articles if the material produced isn’t worth reading.

This is something broadly known as a meta-concern. Meta means “alongside” or even “outside.” A meta-concern is a matter that isn’t immediately related to your primary purpose, but can have significant implications all the same. Time spent helping your writers be creative is time you aren’t spending on direct branding efforts. However, it can pay off in solid support and respect for your brand in the long term. To that end, have a look at a handful of techniques that have been demonstrated to help spur productivity and creativity in your writers.

Let them Own the Project

Group brainstorming is creative asphyxiation. Yes, it will result in a quick sampling of several different ideas, but none of them will be particularly well developed. Creativity is an odd little thing. When it’s highly personal, as in a project one or two people own to work on specifically, more effort gets invested into it out of a sense of pride and desire. When control (and therefore responsibility) of the matter is spread around, however, there’s a sense of disconnect.

The latter comes as a result of two phenomena. First, there’s the lack of privacy it causes. Some of the ideas creative types put forward are very personal, representing the best of their own minds. Exposing their best to others is intensely difficult at times, so a group setting can hinder them out of modesty or shame. Second is the shared laziness of a group. In short, when the work is spread around to many people, no one person pulls quite as hard on their share. The work will get done anyway, after all, so what’s the point of putting forth more effort?

Instead of forcing intellectual exhibitionism through group sessions, share your particulars with small teams or, even better, with individuals if possible. Give them the parameters, ask them for their input and let them put their effort into the task. Let them own the project, and you will be more likely to get their best work.

Work Individually, Edit Collectively

Very few writers can edit or revise their own work. The best ones can, but there are few who couldn’t benefit from a bit of critical advice from another source. When the article or project is done, hand it off to an editor not directly involved with it. Let them help refine what the team has put down. The creative portion being complete, this technical portion allows for more dispassionate, cooperative analysis that can really make a project shine.

Bring in New Blood

There are two ways to go about making sure your team stays fresh creatively, both along the lines of “new blood.”

The first is exposure to new ideas. Your writing team is hopefully very widely read. People who study and read in more diverse circles are more likely to come up with the clever and creative ideas you most need from them. Part of this will come from reading their coworkers’ projects in the editing process, but make sure they’re spending part of their time reading materials and articles of many sorts, be they literary or factual.

The next is exposure to new people. Sometimes a writing team needs an outright boost from a new party. Even if you’ve hired your permanent, on-staff writing team, consider hiring the occasional project out to freelancers of a certain level of experience. This can have the effect of taking the workload off your standard workers, exposing them to new ideas or serving as an impromptu job interview.

Listen to Them

Writers are a notoriously picky lot. Yes, there is a benefit in making them stick to the grind and show some initiative, but there’s also a great value to catering to some of their needs. Make sure to listen when a writer mentions a concern they have. Your input might make all the difference between an acceptable article and an outstanding one.

If you’re going to go to the trouble of having a writing team on-staff, you have to make the effort to bring them into the staff proper. The rest of the team might not understand why some people are being paid to just tap keys, and you need to foster the relationship between them so that the crew knows these writers are giving them good press. Connect; listen, network and you’ll have the team you need.

How to Setup an eCommerce Webshop

Mike Valentine — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 14:37:32 +0000

Ok, you’ve made the decision to set up your own Webshop and you’ve got the products that you want to sell but how do you go about it? Where do you start? There are several different aspects that you need to consider, the main ones are -

Domain Name
Hosting the site
eCommerce Webshop Software
Site Security
Loading Products onto the site
Receiving Customer Payments

Domain Name To go back to basics a domain name is the name by which your site is known on the web, when you type in the www address of the website that you want to visit you are typing in that site’s domain name. To have your own Webshop you must first purchase your own domain name, then you need to associate that domain name with a physical ip address on the internet, which leads me nicely onto…

Hosting the Site The software for your Webshop needs to physically reside on a computer which can be accessed via the internet, once you’ve chosen your software it needs to be running 24 hours a day on a computer somewhere.

Here you have the choice of whether you run your Webshop on a dedicated server or you can share space on a server with other websites.

But whatever you choose you also need to be able to associate your domain name with the physical (ip address) of your server i.e. the dns settings, this would normally be managed by whoever registered the domain name for you but you do need to be careful with this as it could badly affect the smooth running of your Webshop, its really important that whenever somebody types in your domain name (url) that your website is ALWAYS available.

You also have the choice of whether to run on a Linux Server or a Windows Server, in general there are more options available for Linux and as another generalisation software for Linux is available at a lower cost than Windows software, but as in all things though there are exceptions and there is some very good windows software available at competitive prices.

You also need to make sure that things like database backups are taken care of and that you can load site certificates etc. (more about that later)

eCommerce Software Now that you have your domain name and you have your server (or hosting service) and the two work correctly together you need to consider which eCommerce webshop software to run, as mentioned previously there are two main directions to go in i.e. you could either decide on Windows or Linux. Once you’ve made the decision of the operating system then you have a huge choice of the different Webshop software and these can range from free software (with limited support) through to software which costs thousands of pounds per year.

There are some very good free applications available such as Magento and OsCommerce but generally with these you’ll be on your own when it comes to installing and running the software. You’ll then need to install and configure your software to get it looking exactly the way that you want it to. As well as the layout you will probably also need to do things like setup your payment methods, delivery options, countries that you want to deal with and tax codes.

Site Security There are two aspects to this -

You need to prevent your site from being hacked and your customer’s details from being stolen.

In the UK generally you need to be registered under the data protection act which sets certain standards on how the data is protected.

You also need to make sure that whenever your customers type in sensitive data such as passwords or credit card numbers that there is a layer of encryption between your customer’s PC and your web server, so that nobody can be watching the data which is being routed to your server to capture the credit card numbers etc.

To make this happen you need to make sure that your server can support an SSL connection and you need to purchase and install a certificate onto the server which will re-assure your customers that this secure connection is happening.

Loading Products Onto the Site So now you’ve got your server and it works with your domain name and you’ve loaded your software what’s next? You’ve probably got a few hundred (or thousand) products to load up onto the site.

Firstly you’ll need a digital camera, because you’ll need to take pictures of all of your products that is unless you’re very lucky and the product’s manufacturer can supply you with these.

First you should try to work out a category hierarchy, usually the Webshop software will allow an unlimited number of categories for you to group your products under.

Don’t forget that your customers will use these categories to navigate your website so it’s a good idea to spend some time on planning this properly, then for each product you’ll need to come up with a description that you need to type in using the software you’ve purchased and you need to upload the picture that you’ve taken. Once that’s done your newly added products will be on your website

Receiving Customer Payments Obviously you’ll need some way of getting the customers payments into your bank account.

Paypal is very good for this as they accept most of the major credit cards and bank cards and it’s usually quite straightforward to set up in most Webshop software applications. For the customers its not quite so simple and I find that a lot of customers don’t have a Paypal account and really cant be bothered with the validation that they need to go through to set one up i.e. they are just looking for the box where they enter their credit card number.

There are many other very good Credit Card payment providers around who offer payment methods and generally it just a case of finding a payment provider who can process payments to your bank account AND work with your software, as the communications between the Webshop software and the payment provider can be quite complex.

So that’s it, you’re ready to go, simple really

About The Author: Select Development design and develop software for ecommerce webshops, they have a unique approach and provide the complete service for online ecommerce websites Ed Mandell Founder and Director of Select Development has been developing software for ecommerce webshops for over 5 years. Learn more by visiting http://www.selectdevelopment.co.uk

FaceBook Recommendations Plugin for Blogs

Mike Valentine — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 15:57:05 +0000

FaceBook has a feature that is not talked about much compared to The “Like” feature and that is the “Recommendations” plugin, which lists out pages your visitors are likely to be interested in on your website. This is incredibly valuable in that it puts pages from your site in front of users based on the pages that have been “Liked” most on your site. The problem for me is that there is no ability to comment directly about those pages – so it take another plugin to post comments into the status updates of all friends connected to everyone who makes those comments. Seems like the two should be connected.

Twitter Job Alerts: Video How To

Mike Valentine — Sat, 14 Aug 2010 16:08:33 +0000

Looking for a job? Want an easy and private way to get those jobs sent to you via Twitter? Here’s a video explaining how to follow @job_alerts (from CareerBuilder.com) on Twitter and get Direct Messages to your phone and/or email account attached to your Twitter account. Great service for anyone looking to expand their career options. The video below explains the free service.

Try searching for a job using LinkedIn, Social Media – Twitter search we’ve got an article outlining a few great methods – or try our Google custom SEO Job Search Tool. (Hint: you can change the type of job easily)