On top of word of mouth promotion to your clients and building up content, creating a few pieces of link bait can bring in additional visitors as well as establish links to your site – something that, in the long run, will help with your site’s SEO.

While you’ll still have to do a little bit of promotion after creating any of these pieces, a quality piece of content will help you to get your website – or blog – to the place you want it to be traffic wise. And won’t your mom be so proud….

1. Top 10 Lists
   Whether it be a Top 7, Top 10, or Top 100, lists tend to be a fan favorite when it comes to earning back links. Lists can also earn you expertise status if packaged correctly and can be a start to a series to expand on in future blog posts. Take for instance Time’s list of 50 Best Websites in 2008 or Web Worker Daily’s list of 12 Free Tools for Online Collaboration. Make the list as silly or as serious as you want, but make it unique. Hair Salon? Top 10 Cuts for Fall. Law office? The Top 5 Craziest Lawsuits in History. Restaurant? Top 100 Things You Can Use a Fork for Other than Eating. Make it fun, make it unique, and make it interactive. A good discussion piece will bring in quality links for time to come.
2. Checklists
   A few minutes of keyword research shows that people regularly look for terms such as SEO Checklist or Travel Checklist. Create a quick checklist of items your clients and potential clients would find valuable, then PDF it or make an interactive html page that can easily be printed out. Examples of link worthy checklists include a travel agency that puts up a To Pack List and the magazine that puts up a wedding registry checklist.
3. Contest
   Any contest will bring in a few back links to your site, just make sure to make it something people want to enter. Have a product that you can give away? A service that you can offer for free? Heck, money always works, as do gift certificates. Just tie in the contest to your business somehow. You can also use the contest as a way to gather additional email address by allowing contest entrants to subscribe to your rss feed or newsletter sometime during registration. Check out these sites that increased readership just by having a contest.
4. Competition with another blogger
   Friends with another blogger in your industry? Suggest holding a competition, such as bloggers John Chow and Shoemoney did, that cross promotes both of your sites. Whether it be a competition to see who can write the most posts in a month, grow the most traffic, or even sell the most of a specific product, a friendly competition can earn you some links as well as promote your site to a target audience.
5. Calculators and Widgets
   Since web visitors are often in the research stage when they’re visiting your website, offering up a tool that allows them to answer questions on their own can draw in a variety of links to your site. A bank could put up a calculator that allows people to calculate interest or try something silly like this Web 2.0 URL generator. Visit Widget Box for already created widgets and calculators that might help to conjure up some ideas. Perhaps our developer could come up with a Top 10 List generator
6. Resource List
   Create a page on your site that lists out every quality resource you would recommend in your industry. Examples of resources could include free tools, magazines and blogs relevant to your industry, or case studies and white papers that would be valuable to clients. Check out Agency Tool’s Web Design Directory that lists out a plethora of web design resources, or this fun list of “National Days.”
7. Offer Something Free
   Free consultation, free fonts, free images – people like free. Whether you offer a free consultation, product/sample, or even a download of advice or tips, promote the free item as something unique and valuable that only you are offering. This online fax company offers up a free fax service for those who don’t (yet) need regular online faxing services and this software company offers up a free trial download of their quality control software. You can also offer up a free eBook, online tool, or even email address.
8. Review a product
   Review a product, brand, or website that is related to your industry then let those people know that you reviewed them. Have a grocery store? Review some of the latest foods out and give them a rating. Attend an industry conference or convention recently? Review the latest and greatest in new products or recap a speaker’s presentation. Become the CNET, PCMAG, or TechCrunch of your industry.
9. Capture a Round Up of News
   Do you have a list of websites or blogs related to your industry that you frequent on a daily or weekly basis? If so, your potential customers may be interested in learning about them. If you have a blog, a weekly or monthly round up of all the blogs or news articles in your industry that interested you can garner in quite a bit of attention. Check out YumSugar for a fun example of a round up of restaurant and food related posts.
10. Expose a Trend
    Have you noticed a new trend in your industry? Keep an eye out for clients that are asking for something out of the ordinary, products that are selling out quickly, or ideas that you think may take off eventually – trends do have to start somewhere. You can also pick out trends from industry publications that clients may not read or visit sites like Google Trends or Digg to discover items that people are talking about.

From You Can’t Touch This to a profound love for web analytics, MC Hammer has had quite a journey in life. But I have to admit his excitement about web analytics is well founded. Without numbers you won’t know how people are finding your site, where they’re going once they get there and about a thousand other juicy nuggets of information that, at the end of the day, can provide a lot of insight into your website’s operation and strategy.

Be sure to watch the video and if you’re feeling like maybe you haven’t been as excited about your site’s analytics as Hammer is about his, then its time to start.

Cuil’s search results are just nowhere near those of Google, Yahoo, MSN or Ask. In fact, I bet some of the old school meta search engines may have better results. To top it off, Cuil has a bad habit of associating a random picture with a search result. In fact just today, Mark, one of our managing partners searched our brand name “Stone Interactive Group” on Cuil and noticed a seemingly random “Hell Cab” image listed next to our company’s search result.

Here’s a close up of the logo:

So for now Cuil has a looong way to go, but it is kind of fun to search with and see what kind of bizarre stuff you can come up with.

Find anything weird on Cuil? Share it in the comments…

Content.  The bane of my existence as a Project Manger in the web industry. Every schedule I have ever created includes “Content for the site”, the Functional Templates I put together, although tedious, shows every page of the site that will need content. Yet when the time comes for the content to be sent the first words I hear are, “I have most of it”. (No you don’t )Now I admit, perhaps we (Project Teams) don’t explain ourselves very well. We should be very clear. Yes, content does include the words that will be on a page. What you may not realize is that content is also every picture on the page, taglines, PDF’s you may want to include, charts, white pages, email address, links to other sites,  headers, EVERYTHING you want on your site.



How many  content items do you see in this picture? If you guessed 7 content items you are correct. Anything less and you have to take a step back and look at the content you will be creating for your website. 

While it is easy to look at your current website and think, “I’ll reuse this copy”, once you really look at it you realize that you really dont want to put out the same old message. If you have waited to have this realization the night before you are to deliver the content then you are now in a jam that could cost time and money. The more realistic you are about what you will need to accomplish, the less inclined you will be to put off the task until the night before the vendor is putting it on the site. 

The beauty of Knol is that anyone can write their own knol on the subject of their choice and publish it. All you need is a Google account and enough time to slap together a half-decent few paragraphs on whatever you’re an expert on and go from there. In fact I just whipped together a quick Knol discussing how small businesses can use social media. I know, i know…not the prettiest thing ever, but projects that Google puts their weight behind tend to at least be moderately successful.

Basically, Knol is an easy way to show off your knowledge and getting in early definitely can’t hurt. I’m sure at some point they’re not going to want multiple articles on the same topics, so I suggest you knol (if that’s even a verb) now on a few broad topic in your industry, then toss in a little About the Author at the bottom and see what happens.

Wouldn’t it be great if everything were just that simple? Unfortunately, we know that building and launching a new site is just the beginning. A website is only effective if a.) People go to it, and b.) People update it. Think of this new website as an arm in your organization that needs constant attention if it is to grow and prosper.

Your first post-launch task is to drive traffic to the site. This can be done in a number of different ways: word of mouth, send out traditional mailers/flyers, put your web address on EVERYTHING, create press releases, and/or hire a SEO (search engine optimization) firm to manage pay per click accounts and help with organic and other search ranking efforts.

The second task is assigning people in your organization to take care of keeping the site up to date and current. If a content management system is put in place, someone needs to be trained on usage and set aside the time to make continual updates. Other possible tasks might include fulfilling ecommerce orders, managing customer support, monitoring forums, and my favorite – creating blog posts.

Organizations that fail to do the above will risk wasting the huge effort they undertook from the beginning, and most likely see their website fade over time. It’s key to the evolution of a website to always promote it and to keep the content dynamic and fresh so that users continue to visit for years to come.

Client said - “Jennifer, we need to talk about XYZ. I know we haven’t discussed this before but it HAS to be here. It is one of our biggest requirements. The WHOLE reason we are doing the project.”

I don’t know what the big deal is, just fit it in. Yeah-Yeah, I’m sorry I forgot it right up front, but come on, how hard can it be to add? It’s just a tiny thing that leads to this form that needs to be sent to our 3rd party vendor and then sent back nightly so we know what the customer did and if they have been here before. (You would think that they have been doing this job long enough that they could do it in their sleep.)

Plus, isn’t it their job to expect things to change? How should I know what is hard and what is easy to do? If I had time to do their job I wouldn’t have had to hire them in the first place. Plus, I’ve got to get this project done and off my plate. Especially if I want to be recognized within the company. This is huge.

Vendor said - I don’t see why they don’t get it. This is why we discussed requirements in the beginning of the project. I don’t understand why they didn’t talk about it earlier if it was so important. I mean sure, it looks easy, but it isn’t that easy and now it’s going to put us back in the project timeline because we have to redo the architecture of the project. A=d to top it off the client is going to be mad because it’s going to cost more=and I’ll have to explain why and have them ask how to do it cheaper.

Seriously, I don’t know why in this day and age people just don’t get it.

Conclusion - The truth is, when you take the personal feelings out of this situation, what you have is a change. Don’t fool yourself, everyone knows where the other side is coming from. The client really does know that it is going to take more time and more money and although they really don’t know how much they do know it is a change and that they are the ones that are guiding it.

And on the flip side, the vendor really does know that you hired them for a reason. Yeah, it is going to change the timeline and the price, but the purpose of putting together the requirements and documenting the process as you go is so that it is a level playing field for everyone.

And seriously, the client doesn’t know that you hear this 3 times a week from anyone else, they only know that they need to accomplish something and it needs to look good for their bosses/organization/mother.. Any number of people. They are just trying to do it right.

The point of the story for both client and vendor is this. When you start a project and you need to add/edit/change something, step back and take a look at the big picture. Remove all personal feelings and write up the change request. Include why the change was asked for, what the change is, how it will work, how it won’t work, what it will effect and how much time/money it is going to take to change it. One of three things will happen; they will accept the change and you move on. They will reject it and you will move on, or they will decide it can wait until the next phase of the project… and you will move on. But change happens, it is the only thing we know to be an absolute truth.

Sometimes the “need” to get something done outweighs the need to plan correctly for it. Or so some think. Have you ever heard, “We will make a decision when we get there”, or “Lets investigate some options and I’ll let you know”, or my personal favorite, “I have to see it working to know if it is right “. While working in this fashion feels good to start, it is not the most direct route to getting the work done and it is a heavy load on the finances as well. Both for the client and the company.

One way to help avoid these problems is to have a detailed discussion at the beginning of the project. A discussion where you gather the stakeholders and discuss the scope of the project. (The scope of the project is the sum total of all of its products or features.) Make decisions together on the direction to go. You should decide the way features should and will work. Write them down; include assumptions about how they work, and assumptions on how it won’t work. Being clear up front gets everyone on the same page and moving in the same direction. Do not count on the proposal to cover features in this much detail, it doesn’t and it isn’t supposed to. While having these talked up front may not curb the occasional “that’s not how I thought it was going to work”, it will, if documented, help to avoid rework of things that have been done.

Keep in mind that planning the project SHOULD take a big amount of time. The more planning and discussion done up front the less that needs to be done later. This means less rework to correct issues or misunderstanding and less money and heartache to the client, the team and the bottom line. Changes may come along, but your whole project is one big moving target if it isn’t planned correctly to begin with.
( That is putting it nicely)

So instead of groaning when the Project Manager wants to talk about the nuts and bolts of a project, next time rejoice that someone cares enough to want your project to be a success.

Over the past few years video has experienced rapid growth and adoption rates online.

Broadcasting networks continue to push more and more video content out on the web, large corporations use video to build their brand and, of course, videos on YouTube are viewed daily by millions.

But even with the growth of the past few years, for most industries online video is still in its infancy, which means big opportunity for businesses looking to differentiate themselves online.

Easy Ways for Your Business to Use Video on the Web

• Customer testimonials
• Online product demonstrations
• Video bios of employees
• Intro to the company or a product
• As a blog entry
• Facility overviews
• Viral/Buzz marketing
• and anything else you can dream up

If you’re interested in exploring how video can differentiate your business online, get in touch with us. We can help formulate a web video strategy and then execute the strategy to ensure its success.

As I was answering questions, the potential client told me that they had heard from another company that an Open Source CMS does not allow for a very flexible design and that if you wanted to have a nice design, the way to go is with a custom CMS. If you have ever taken a look at Stone’s Web Design Portfolio, you will know the answer to this. However, here are my two cents regarding that comment.

It doesn’t matter whether the CMS is custom or Open Source. If you know the system well enough (which Stone Interactive Group does) the design can look however you would like it to look. The second thing to consider is the designer themselves. Stone has a fantastic design team that produces wonderful results and the developers have been able to put every design thrown at them into this CMS.

The nice thing about Open Source is that you have an extremely large amount of team members that put time to keep the CMS up-to-date. If you ever need more help in the future with your website, you can go to many developers out there that may know the system and be able to pick it up quickly. The custom CMS projects that Stone has adopted from clients are typically very time consuming to understand and are typically out-of-date quickly and are not as easy to apply a redesign to.

So when you have the option to decide Custom VS Open Source, in my opinion, Open Source is the way to go and Stone is there to assist you along the way.