Archives for February 2010

Guest Post / Feb 5, 2010

5 tips for success with Local Listings

This is a guest post by Emily Thompson, Online Marketing Coordinator for Kutenda.

Local search has quickly become one of the most cost-effective opportunities for businesses to connect with local prospects. Not only are you getting found by locals searching for YOUR products or services, but statistics show nearly 82 percent of local searches online result in further action: a phone call, site view, in store visit or immediate purchase.* (Source: TMP/comScore, October 2008)

Wondering how to tackle Local Search for your business?

Sarah Worsham / Feb 5, 2010

Top Internet Strategy, Marketing & Technology Links – Feb 5, 2010

fleur120

Using information to make design decisions is something that should be practiced more in the web design community. In this case, a little data has provided a significant argument against a common blog design practice. What else could we be doing wrong or could we improve? – The more I know, the less I need: Thoughts on web design (Brian Cray)

Brian has been iteratively redesigning his blog/website for the past few months – trying something out and then taking a look at the data to see how it’s working. His current design is very clean (and I have a todo list to clean up my own) – very usable (and maybe a slight bit boring).

I think usability is very important to design – but it needs to also be balanced with what looks good. What the eye finds appealing isn’t always the same as what is easiest to use, but eye appeal has a lot to do with how we “feel” about a site and that can play a powerful part in reuse/repurchase/revisit/etc. In Brian’s blog, I really like his layout on his portfolio page – because the images on the right really look nice with the text on the left. On the other pages, the text doesn’t feel like it takes up enough of the page (although I wouldn’t want it to take up the whole thing either) – and the small width means more scrolling for reading. That said, this is a great experiment, I’ve learned some things from Brian’s findings and I applaud Brian for working towards improved usability.

Sarah Worsham / Feb 4, 2010

Review: TweetDeck vs. HootSuite

Awhile back we had a knock-out-drag-out between HootSuite and SocialOomph, with HootSuite winning handily. Now, we’re pairing up HootSuite with TweetDeck. Until recently I was an avid user of TweetDeck for keeping track of my Twitterverse. I switched to HootSuite because TweetDeck seemed to be dropping a lot of messages out of my groups and mentions (not cool). Plus, I’m using HootSuite as my Tweet scheduler now (having won over SocialOomph), so it was easier to be in one place all day. But, let’s see how these two stack up:

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