Regards,
Omar

It merges personal writing, instant publishing and creativity. Blogging matters.

Why?

Because blogging is your “voice”. Have ever happened to you to be jammed in traffic on an overcrowded highway in pouring rain, and the only voice which came through was that of a presenter? And as soon as it arrived to the forecast and encouraged everybody to hold on because in a few hours the sun could be seen again, your positive feelings came again to life. Well, that kind of effect can have your blog on its readers. No matter how good or bad ideas/information you’ll present, there will always be positive or negative reactions to it. But as long as you’re sure about what you have to say, your blog is your voice that teases your readers’ eyes and minds and shapes out your image.

Because blogging is your company’s tool. Blogging is your personal and also corporate mean of communication at the same time. Just have a glance at these recent blog statistics (March 2010) to understand how big is the blogosphere and how it can help your company:

1) More than 133,000,000 blogs have been indexed by Technorati since 2002.
2) 77% of Internet users read blogs according to Universal McCann.
3) 58% say that they are better-known in their industry because of their blog.
4) 56% say that their blog has helped their company establish a positioning as a thought leader within the industry.
5) 72% say they blog in order to share their expertise.
6) 61% say they blog in order to supplement their income.
7) 53% of professional Bloggers are interested in attracting new clients from blogging.

Blogging represents your company; it can be an image-booster and also a bridge for communicating with your employees and your actual customers or future clients. You can regularly fill them with your current projects, ideas, products or actions keeping them informed. You can share company news or internal information with your employees on a daily basis, archiving what you write permanently in categories chronologically. Another great thing is they are getting the same amount of information at the same time. If you can win over your employees to keep blogs the whole phenomena will be super-viral as they will link a lot of information. Even better for your organization.

So to say your blog is like your brand, expressing your unique perspective and boosting a response from your potential customers. Actually, you can read their opinion, concerns or ideas to improve your services or products. Feedback always comes in handy.

Because blogging will be e-history. Remember, what you write will be on the net forever. It will be in years a part of our collective history. So due pay attention what and how you write. Maybe your ideas will be useful to the next generations too as a universal truth.

First and maybe the biggest mistake is not having a well sketched plan before hitting into the real-deal. It can occur because you’re under the rush of having realized your smart and unique business idea, you haven’t researched the market well enough or simply you haven’t had time for it. Unfortunately there’s a tough and hard competition out there, so you better prepare your oars for those sharks.

Another mistake is thinking in trends. Try to be unique, creative and original. Even if you’re selling a well-known product, invest time in packing it cautiously, presenting it in a manner that drags attention. People not always buy stuff to use it; it’s the malevolence and magic of having what others don’t! Besides the importance of product make-up don’t do the mistake of not knowing all about it in a professional manner, learn it like the back of your hand. Remember that amateurs don’t last long.

Erroneous budget calculations can lead to disaster too. Internet marketing is expensive so take in consideration that you may lose some money before gaining any profit. Estimate your investment over a long-term planning. As well as this don’t apply the policy of minimal investment and fast, short-time goals. You will end giving everything up.

Fast is a lie. Time factor should be one of your concerns in the same manner as you promise it to your customers. Lying to them is lying to you. But lying only to them is the worst policy. Be honest as much as you can. Even if you can’t help them at least give them a direction or forward them towards affiliates of yours. Not having calls for action or tempting headlines (title tags) on your site is a mistake too. Take care of your potential customers as of old ones too. Give away free samples and offers. A minimum sacrifice will have later great benefits.

Do you have improvement plans? If you don’t, you made a mistake again. The field that constantly needs to be improved is your keyword database, for SEO. Always aim for using keywords that are relevant, have high search volume, research how much traffic you get from each of them and improve. Keep in mind to use real keywords that people can have in their heads.

GIFs: (Graphic Interchange Format) has the lowest byte size and is tremendously used by programmers because of its internet browser support. Transparency and animation are two of its strong points so it is perfect for logo or button design. As well as this it’s highly used for graphic-text, backgrounds and box corners given its cartoon-like view. Sometimes scanned files are saved as GIFs because the low size permits easy and high-speed upload/download and FTP processes. Unfortunately GIF’s have only 256 color mode so pictures will look sharp but flat-colored mainly at the edges, and if it is used for bands, horizontally oriented bands of colors will compress better than vertically oriented bands.

JPGs: (Joint Photographic Experts Group) is the best format for presenting photographs, real life images and artwork. Documents will look smooth-toned, gives back all realistic true-color (has 16 million color mode support) and is extremely efficient in displaying visuals at high resolution. That is why HD pictures are in JPG format which offers high quality and contains even the smallest particles which are imperceptible for the human eye. Among its drawbacks it should be mentioned that JPGs get distorted at compression and become lossy, lower sizes usually meaning lack of details or simple colors.

PNGs: (Portable Network Graphics) is a lossless format, meaning that compression and resizing does not affect image quality being perfect for temporary design work or saving the stock photography. But quality comes with huge size which means slow loading time. It is used for professional logos or graphics which are crisp and clear and as well for thumbnails in case of picture galleries or product showcases. Usually there are two forms of each picture, a PNG-thumbnail version as preview and a JPG-original version for full view. Sadly it is not well supported by earlier versions of web browsers and its loading time causes issues for users with low-band connection.

Remember that there is no winner. All three formats should be used when it comes about the visual part of a website. With the perfect optimization everyone can get the perfect result for breath-taking and mind-blowing visuals.

These are the Top 5 Categories you should consider:

1. Usability: think of your visitors, if they can’t use what you provide they won’t stay! Assure easy usage and navigation, same navigation menu on every page if possible. Not everybody is a net-guru, there are grandmothers surfing too! Create internal and external searchboxes, if you can’t handle it alone use third-party search links as Google’s or Bing’s.

2. Structure: because your design and content should relate in a logical manner. Become a Link-king:

- make sure your headline logo always links back to your homepage
- insert a link that takes back the visitor to the header of your page
- insert your own easy-to-follow contact link on every page
- try to use the same color for every general link
- also link the parts of your content found on different pages
- include your Privacy Policy link on every page

Always use @yourdomain email addresses as your official contact mail address. Use only relevant widgets (visitor counter, world clock, currency converter, news feeds). Create an About page (if you don’t have one) describing your brand’s corporate philosophy, its purpose. Insert there some pictures, presenting your team, corporate activities. Gather here your links to your social media profiles too. Always spell check your content. Invest time in creating a one of a kind framework for your layout. Do everything possible to hold your visitors “inside” your page, and don’t lose them or misguide them in the jungle of external links!

3. SEO and Google ranking: you need to be found, as easily and as fast as possible. Use different and interesting titles on every page (headlines, title tags); they should be short and content-relevant. Strengthen your keywords, but don’t overuse your highlights, the last thing you need is a Christmas tree instead of a comprehensible text. When choosing your keywords have in mind your visitors, not some SEO policy. They are real people; make your keywords real too.

4. CCO (content, credibility, off-site sharing): get close to your audience. When elaborating page content use simple, easy to follow sentences, deliver purposeful messages. Remember this is a two-party relationship in which they might need you and you might need them, and even a sewer worker could order some flowers online for his wife. Get off-site, share and learn via blogs, forums and social networks. Check out what people want and like. Do not spam! Don’t insert your own link in every comment you make.

5. Design: visually impress and get noticed. Before actually putting up your design, search for content-related trends; ask your friends, parents or even your neighbor about how a certain type of site should look in their opinion and only after that sketch out your plans with the graphic designer. Use many images, but optimize them because not everybody has high-speed internet connection. Use CSS stylesheets to make your page printer-friendly. When using colors have in mind your brand. Can you imagine NASCAR’s site looking like a parrot? Sometimes less aesthetics means more business. Leave some white spaces. You don’t have to fill everything up with ads. It’s like putting a leaflet every morning under your visitor’s door. Let them breathe and enjoy what they see.

Hope our topic gave you some good ideas to get fantastic results out of your site. And if you need help we’re always here to offer you solution. Don’t hesitate to contact us. Remember design it’s not philosophy, it’s rational and it’s for life.

When creating or redesigning a website for your company, it’s not enough these days to create a simple landing page with a logo and a mailing address of where to find your office or store. Consumer expectation is high, and today’s internet-aware audience demand visual impressiveness, on-trend functionality and applications as well as social interaction and navigation simplicity.

Internet surfers are impressed and attracted to high performance websites that offer something different. From your point of view, you also will want to show yourself to be a leader in your field in order to boost reputation, site traffic and, ultimately, income. Taking all this into account, where do you start when planning a website that works for you?

The first step is to choose a web design company that provides a full service. It’s one thing to create a website that looks good, but it also needs to do what your customers expect it to do, and do it well. Web design and development go hand in hand so it’s crucial to choose a company that will listen to your needs and work with you to develop a uniquely branded, recognizable and functional website that is easy to maintain with a good content management system, rather than trying to cajole you into buying a standard template that will do nothing but help you to become a wallflower.

You’ll need to think not only about the website itself, but how else you can maximize the opportunities that the internet has to offer, including banner advertising, social media, the importance of well search engine optimized content, promotions and viral campaigning? All of these strategies will direct customers back to your website, so if they are disappointed with what they find, it will have all been for nothing. Web design and development can make or break your company, so it’s essential to do it properly in order to achieve internet success.

If your business has a website, how do your site visitors find you? Well, hopefully you’ve employed a knowledgeable web design and development company who is skilled in SEO so that your site ranks highly in your field across a range of popular search engines. In addition, you may have strategically placed banner ad modules located across the internet, and a successful email marketing campaign as well. So how can developing a social media profile help your business?

There are two main reasons. Firstly, social media helps you to connect with new clients in a new way. Social media is exactly that – the use of new media including photography, videos, online gaming and custom applications, to reach out to and connect with people on a social level. No longer do you have to sit back and wait for your traditional online marketing strategy to kick in and bring the customers to your site– now you can go directly to them, in an online setting that they are familiar with. On a Facebook page or Twitter feed, there’s no need to give the hard sell – let your website do the work when visitors follow the link form your profile pages. You simply need to be available and open to discussion, provide information that your audience will find interesting and develop your human side to win friends and influence people.

The second reason why it’s a great idea to jump on board the social media bandwagon is that, more than likely, people are already talking about your brand. Joining the discussion on a social level gives you the opportunity to listen to those comments, good or bad, and to interact, discuss and problem-solve directly with your customers in a more personal and comfortable environment.

To make the biggest impact on the socially-networked world, there are a few do’s and don’ts that you should be aware of – a Facebook page done badly or an unprofessional LinkedIn page can do more harm than good. Seek advice from a social marketing-savvy advisor before leaping into the fray, but when you do, enjoy the rewards.

On top of the structural skeleton, a website’s design gives the company or brand its look and feel; its identity and personality. Incorporating design fundamentals such as banners, images, buttons, advert placement and blocks of text must not be random, but should enhance the user’s experience and ensure that their attention is engaged long enough to be drawn in by the content.

A website’s content is its raison-d’être, but as flesh, it cannot stand alone without the aforementioned bone and sinew of structure and form. Whatever your websites content is, whether it is products and services with accompanying descriptions or reviews, photographs, video, animation or a mixture of any number of other media, it must all be manageable. This is especially important if you have a large and/or successful and popular website that requires frequent updates by more than one individual, who may or may not be technical experts.

Content management systems (CMS) permit design, structure and content to be separated within a user-friendly framework to allow uncomplicated, streamlined, hassle-free website updates. Common CMS platforms including Joomla! and WordPress are built with the non-technical user in mind so now, everyone within your business is able to share content with the world via your website portal, within a structured environment in which it’s hard to go wrong. Using simple, familiar tools, your online content can be managed effectively and centrally stored so that it can be reused, replaced and updated whilst always keeping a record of what worked, and what didn’t work for future reference. As well as the popular CMS solutions available, any web development company worth its salt should also be able to custom-build a content management system that is tailor-made to your company’s unique needs and desires.

Content management systems are more than text and graphics editors; they can also be used to add dynamic content to your website, including polls, forums, search applications and more, thus giving your site visitors simple yet interactive ways of connecting with your business. The longer you can engage your users, the greater chance you have of securing their custom, both now and in the future.