3382 The WildFireWeb Blog
2009

Web Design News & Announcements from WildFireWeb


Categories  

View Archive What's Happening at WildFireWeb!

Category - New & Notable,New Websites,Design,Marketing,Partners
Posted - 10/02/2012 11:13am V12 Studios, A little WildFireWeb under the hood!
Making companies, their customers and people's lives better. That's what V12 Studios strives to achieve with each and every design challenge. Combining innovation and design leadership, we have created successful brands, identities, communication campaigns, advertisements, environments, and products enabling enjoyable and satisfying consumer experiences.

v12_1.png

We practice an inter and multi-disciplinary problem solving approach to design, establishing ways to emotionally connect people with our clients offerings, goals and objectives. Our strength is a unique ability to embed a brand's personality and values into every aspect of our work. This results in a design solution that builds bonds between companies and their customers.

From a Fortune 500 company to a startup, we share a passion for success. Collectively, we discover opportunities that will build brands, increase valuation, market share, and improve your bottom line.
1fc7

Category - Marketing,Facebook,Social Media
Posted - 09/28/2012 08:22am Sorry Marketers, You're Doing Facebook Wrong

Sorry Marketers, You're Doing Facebook Wrong

By Todd Wasserman | Mashable – 6 hrs ago

If you're looking to take a day off from posting on Facebook, choose Wednesday, but don't rest on Sunday or you'll miss the best opportunity of the week.

That's the advice from Buddy Media's "Strategies for Effective Wall Posts: A Timeline Analysis," a report based on activity from 1,800 of the world's biggest brand pages from April 1 to May 31.

[More from Mashable: Facebook, Gates Foundation Team Up to Create Apps For Future College Students]

As with previous Buddy Media reports on the subject, the analysis found that marketers are still posting too little on weekends and at night and when they do post, they're way too verbose.

Weekends, when brands post too little, the audience appears primed for interaction, though it varies by industry. For "advertising and consulting," for example, weekend posts get 69% higher interaction, but only 11% of posts are published on Saturday and Sunday. Not every industry has the same pattern, though: Thursday is the biggest day of the week for "clothing and fashion" while Monday is the biggest for "general retail."

[More from Mashable: The 10 Pages That Lost the Most Fans From Facebook’s Purge]

SEE ALSO: Sorry Marketers, You’re Doing Twitter Wrong [REPORT]

In general, though, Hump Day is the worst day to post; interactions on Wednesday are 7.4% lower than average.

Once again, the study also found that off-hours are the best time to post. Brand posts between 8 pm and 7 am got 14% higher interaction than those published between 8 am and 7 pm.

Meanwhile, when it comes to posts, less is more. Brands that post one or two times a day see 19% higher interaction rates than those that publish three or more posts. "The key is not to bombard fans with too many posts, as Facebook News Feed optimization often penalizes for this," the report cautions.

And while Twitter has a 140-character limit, Buddy Media suggests a self-imposed 80-character wall for Facebook posts. Such posts get a 23% higher interaction than longer posts. However, 75% of posts are beyond that limit. It's also a good idea to run photos -- photo posts get 39% higher interaction rates than average. Text-only posts aren't a bad option either, though: They get a 12% higher-than-average rate. Video and link posts appear to be the worst option: They have lower-than-average interaction rates.

Among the other recommendations:

  • Use links with a recognizable URL, like "www.shop.com/umbrellas" where users have an idea of what to expect.
  • Asking a question is a good idea, but ask it at the end of your comment, not at the beginning. Posts with a question at the end have a 15% higher overall interaction rate and a 2X higher comment rate than those with a question asked in the middle of the post.
  • Ask fans to caption a picture. Posts that ask readers to "caption this" get 5.5X higher comment rates than average. Such posts also increase the overall interaction rate by more than 100%.
  • "Fill in the blank" is another good option. Such posts garner 4X more comments than average.
  • Use emoticons: Posts that contain emoticons receive 52% higher interaction rates. Posts that employ them have a 57% higher like rate,a 33% higher comment rate and 33% higher share rate.
  • The best emoticons to use: ":D" and ":P." Such emoticons have a 2.4X and 2X higher response rate, respectively than other emoticons.
  • Use a call to action. Posts with commands like "Like," "Caption This," "Share," "Yes or No" and "True or False" get interaction rates that are 48% higher than average.

    • This story originally published on Mashable here.

1f66

Category - Marketing
Posted - 11/18/2011 09:12am Matching your website goals with your website budget.
At WildFireWeb, we have designed and built hundreds of websites, so we understand the evolution of the process very well. We know that everyone wants everything, we know that because we want everything. Should we all have a website as good as Apple®? Of course we should. Do we all have the same budget for our website as Apple? Of course not.

Your website is your presence, it is the public face of you, your calling card, your single best marketing tool, your shingle on your storefront. Businesses need to consider the value placed on that idea as it relates to them.

As business owners, when it comes to marketing, and let's be honest, websites are marketing, we need to ask ourselves these questions every day. What is that sign on our store front worth? What does it do for my business? How well does it reflect the nature of what we do? What is the value of a newspaper or magazine ad or the difference between a text listing and a display ad in the Yellow Pages?

How many times have we walked into a store because of the signage, how many times have we walked past one for the same reason?

Just like that sign on your storefront, in many cases, your website IS your first impression. New clients will see it before they see you, and through it must immediately engage and connect with who you are, what you do and why they care.

The challenge for us then is to realistically match our clients vision with their budget. The good news is, we happen to be very good at that.

Blaine Transue
Cofounder, WildFireWeb Inc
http://wildfireweb.com

(707) 938-7677





Category - Marketing
Posted - 03/08/2010 05:11pm 6 steps to write a well-structured press release
Here are some steps to create a correct structure for your press release: by Tina Fotopoulou 

1. Attractive Headline

Write an attractive headline which communicates the core message of your press release. Use action verbs in the present tense and relevant keywords.

2. Text Summary

Under the headline, write a summary text with one or two key sentences.

3. Key Elements

Create the body of the press release and ensure that your key elements are written in the beginning of the text so as to attract the readers’ attention. Don’t forget that journalists are usually very busy and in a rush when they receive it.

4. Contact Information

Write the name and the contact information of your company at the end of your press release, so that media can easily find that information if needed.

5. Use standard fonts

Use fonts universally accepted and avoid the use of bold, italic or colored fonts. In this way your press release remains readable from various computer platforms.

6. Post it online

When your press release is completed, don’t forget to post it on your website(s) so that search engines can easily pick it up.

Don’t forget to optimize your texts, review the grammar & orthography and send your press release to all available free submission directories!

Category - Marketing,Social Media,SEO
Posted - 11/19/2009 12:46pm Tip of the Week

     tweetcopy.jpgIdeas on Using Twitter for Business


If you want to brand yourself on Twitter for business purposes, don't forget to be real     


First Steps
  1. Build an account and immediate start using Twitter Search to listen for your name, your competitor’s names, words that relate to your space. (Listening always comes first.)
   2. Add a picture. (logo or photo of yourself.)
   3. Talk to people about THEIR interests, too. It shows you’re human.
   4. Point out interesting things in your field, not just about you.
   5. Share links to great things in your community.
   6.  Be helpful
   7. Be wary of always promoting your stuff.
   8. Promote your employees’ outside-of-work stories.
   9. Be creative with ideas
  10. Talk about non-business too

Ideas About WHAT to Tweet

  11. Instead of answering the question, “What are you doing?”, answer the question, “What has your attention?”
  12. Have more than one twitterer at the company. People can quit. People take vacations. It’s nice to have a variety.
  13. When promoting a blog post, ask a question or explain what’s coming next, instead of just posting a link.
  14. Ask questions. Twitter is GREAT for getting opinions.
  15. Follow interesting people. If you find someone who tweets interesting things, see who they follow, and follow them.
  16. Tweet about other people’s stuff. Again, doesn’t directly impact your business, but makes us feel like you’re not “that guy.”
  17. When you DO talk about your stuff, make it useful. Give advice, blog posts, pictures, etc.
  18. Share the human side of your company
  19. Don’t toot your own horn too much.
  20. Or, if you do, try to balance it out by promoting the heck out of others, too.

Excerpt taken from Chris Brogan, community and social media

read more ways companies use twitter for business


What in the world is an RSS Feed and why do I care?

Despite the increasing popularity on websites, a lot of people don't know what RSS feeds are and don't understand how RSS feeds can help their business.
Basically it is a really simple way of delivering information off the internet.

Have you ever seen this symbol and wondered what it means?
rss_icon.jpg
What is RSS? An RSS feed is just a document, in a very specific format, that contains information about certain items on your website. Because RSS documents are intended to help visitors to your site stay up to date, an RSS document is highly useful for sites that update often - such as blogs or news sites. To add blogs visit WFW site

The RSS document is special though because it allows other people to take your content and put it on some other website very, very easily. In other words, this RSS document from your website feeds content to the other websites. Pretty cool right?

The power of RSS as a marketing tool: people can subscribe to your content and access it somewhere other than your website ( still with me?). The RSS feed then provides links back to your website - that way if people do want to visit the website, they have a link right there to do so.

This also helps SEO's ( Search Engine Optimization) which we discussed in the last newsletter. You may want to archive our newsletters in a  mailbox file in your email program to refer to  from time to time.

Some Examples of our customer sites who use RSS Feeds

Paula Rosado Public Relations
Law Office of Stacie L. Patterson
Lisa Murray Yoga

Category - Email,Marketing
Posted - 09/15/2009 07:08am Bouncing spam rises by 2000 percent, IT Pro 9/14/09

By Davey Winder in Editorial

September 14, 2009 at 1:00 pm

Permalink | Author Profile

When you send an email to an address that doesn’t exist or to a server that is having trouble delivering it, you get a Non-Delivery Report back. Spammers have been exploiting these bounce messages for a while now, as a way to get around spam-filtering measures. However, last month saw NDR spam hit an all time high with 20% of all spam messages using the trick. That’s a rise, according to security specialists PandaLabs, of no less than 2000% when compared to the number of different NDR spam samples seen between January and June this year.

It is a clever technique, and obviously one that works or the spammers would waste their time and money exploiting it. The point being that the bounce messages themselves are more often than not genuine, with the server function being exploited to distribute the spam (sent as an attachment to the bounce notice) using the sender’s real name.

Read the full text of the article here...



Category - SEO, Social Media, Marketing
Posted - 09/11/2009 10:00am Twitter tweaks terms of service

By Steven Musil
Posted on ZDNet News: Sep 11, 2009 5:33:01 AM

Twitter posted changes to its terms of service Thursday, assuring users that they own their tweets while leaving "the door open for advertising" opportunities.

"The revisions more appropriately reflect the nature of Twitter and convey key issues such as ownership," Twitter co-founder Biz Stone wrote in a company blog. "For example, your tweets belong to you, not to Twitter."

In announcing the new terms of service, Stone also addressed the topics of abusive behavior and spam. These are four highlights Stone called out:

Advertising--In the Terms, we leave the door open for advertising. We'd like to keep our options open as we've said before.

Ownership--Twitter is allowed to "use, copy, reproduce, process, adapt, modify, publish, transmit, display and distribute" your tweets because that's what we do. However, they are your tweets and they belong to you.

APIs--The apps that have grown around the Twitter platform are flourishing and adding value to the ecosystem. You authorize us to make content available via our APIs. We're also working on guidelines for use of the API.

Spam--Abusive behavior and spam are also outlined in these terms according to the rules we've been operating under for some time.

The prominence of the advertising revision seems to suggest that the microblogging start-up is warming up to an advertising-based model, a dramatic change from comments Stone made in May.

"There are a few reasons why we're not pursuing advertising--one is it's just not quite as interesting to us," Stone said at the Reuters Technology Summit.

Certainly the ownership message is designed to avoid the user backlash created by a revision to Facebook's terms of use that some interpreted to mean that Facebook claimed ownership of user profile data and photos.

Steven Musil is the night news editor at CNET News. Before joining CNET News in 2000, Steven spent 10 years at various Bay Area newspapers. E-mail Steven.



Category - SEO,Marketing,Social Media
Posted - 04/29/2009 12:49pm What's a Blog?

The word ‘blog’ is derived from the combination of the two words, web and log.

Blogs can be virtual diaries, commentaries on a particular subject, or even an editorialized view on current events. It's a space to voice your opinions and share them with millions of potential readers.



0