How Websites Work

Ever wonder how a website gets to your monitor when you're browsing the internet? What makes this possible?  Before we dive into what happens when you visit a website, we need to go over a few quick concepts.

Servers

Websites are nothing more than files on a computer somewhere in the world. These files are basically full of text that tell your browser- which is the program you use to view webpages -  how to display text, images, links, etc.  The computers that host websites are called servers. When you type in an address, such as www.alterimaging.com, you are viewing a file located on a server that Alter Imaging manages.

2010 Social Media Predictions

Well, it’s that time of year again!  Time for the Internet to be bombarded with posts about predictions of what is to come. It happens every year. Some predictions come true while others still remain to be seen (Second life? We are still waiting to see that take off…) At Alter Imaging, we just couldn’t resist the temptation to hop into our Delorian and go check it out for ourselves.

Social Media Real Estate - Stake Your Claim!

If you are just starting to get into the social media world it can be hard to know where to start. We here at Alter Imaging, believe that different social media sites are more or less effective depending on what type of business, vertical, or industry you are in.

However...

Knowing what will be the next Friendster Twitter is next to impossible. So we recommend staking claim in as many social media networks as you can. Not only to make sure that your usernames are consistent and branded across all platforms but also for the inherent SEO benefits that comes with web 2.0 sites.

Finding and signing up for all these different social media networks can take FOREVER, but not anymore! Knowem.com is a pretty nifty site that gives you the ability to check username availability across hundreds of social media sites

Just enter your name and click “check it”. Boom, Done.

Not only is this a great way to grab up your online real estate but it is also a good resource for finding new and popular social media platforms. These new discoveries could be utilized to find niche customers in their respective online habitats and leveraged (in a social way, remember) to help you meet your businesses goals.

Blogging Username Check

250+ Influential Marketing Minds Worth Following

List time! We had such a positive respond from our last twitter list 400+ Web designers and developers worth follow on twitter , that we decided to scour through the people we think are “in the know” when it comes to digital marketing.

The fast paced landscape, that is digital marketing, is hard to keep up with! Thus, we try and subscribe to the best blogs and follow people on twitter who we think "get it". Below is that list of people we follow on twitter to keep up with whats important and fresh.

Enjoy! And please comment below if you think we have left anyone out! We would love to hear who you follow to get your digital marketing insights.

Here is the button to follow them all in one fell swoop!

List of 250 Internet Marketing Minds Worth Following on Twitter

(In no particular order)



chrisbrogan - Chris Brogan - President, New Marketing Labs. Co-Author of Trust Agents.



Pistachio - Laura Fitton - Much excitement and geekiness about where this all leads. www.oneforty.com.

Social Media Customer Relationship Management

Here is another panel from the social media business forum B2B track. This session put on by Mike Schneider is about how to implement social media into your customer relationship strategy. It digs deep into the topics of data mining, social crm applications, and how it all ties back together to help further organization goals.

Your customers are out there talking about you.... Are you listening? Are you factoring that data in to your game plan? If not, you really should be.

Runtime 35min



Social Media CRM - Connecting your sales force to the social Web from Alter Imaging, Inc. on Vimeo.

Social Media CRM Shownotes

1:17 There is a big problem today with CRMs

1:30 Social CRM is a philosophy & a business stratgey, supported by a technology platofrm, business rules, workflow, processes & social characteristics, designed to engage the customer in a collaborative conversation in order to provide mutually beneficial value in a trusted & transparent business environment. It's the company's response to the customer's ownership of the conversation" paul greenberg

1:45 Tweetable version "the company's response to the customer's control of the conversation"

2:10 our job as social marketers is about getting out there and building relationships

4:19 extending CRM capabilities

4:30 We live in an opt-in world

4:45 The model is shifting from the traditional ways of content consumption to that of a society of content creation

400+ Web Designers & Developers Worth Following on Twitter

Social Media SEO - Panel from the Social Media Business Forum

Here is another panel from the Social Media Business Forum on Social Media SEO

Using Social media is not only important for engaging with your customer but also for rankings in search engines. Considering the Social media aspect of search engine optimization is mostly overlooked by companies when jumping into the social media game. Eric Miltsch and Dan London discuss how they have used social media in their respective companies search marketing strategies.

Best Practices for Business Blogging

Having a blog for business can be a huge asset to your company. Not only can a blog help with search engine optimization efforts, but it can also help to show your company as a thought leader in your industry. Being a thought leader in your industry means people will turn to you as a trusted source for information. Being the go-to person ends up driving business in your direction. Thus blogging should be an important business strategy to consider implementing.

Here is the panel from the Social Media Business Forum with Jeff Cohen, DJ Waldow, and Alison Bolen on "Business Blogging Best Practices." It was a great panel and some very good tips, tricks, and how-to on how to get your blog working for your business. Runtime 51min.

The Future of Business on the Social Web

Last Friday, we packed up our suitcases and headed over to Durham, NC for the 2009 Social Media Business Forum.

It was a fantastic conference that brought together some of the brightest minds in the social media scene including Laura Fitton (author of Twitter for dummies), Jason Falls (Principal over at Social Media Explorer), John Andrews (Founder and Managing Partner at Collective Bias), and Lucretia Pruitt (Director of Social Media at Collective Bias.)

They spoke on the keynote panel addressing “the future of business on the social web” You can watch the video below.

Creating Relevancy in Email Marketing

Email relevancy is KEY - especially when you consider you have the recipient’s attention for about three seconds.  So in that short period of time, it's crucial to cater your message to the recipient.

Sending relevant emails that are more in-tune with the recipient’s goals and interests will build a stronger connection between them and your company, plus create a much higher conversion ratio.

This post will provide you with valuable information on how to begin sending relevant emails that encourage action and actually get a response.

How To Run A Twitter Promotion

Twitter is a great platform to run promotions and contests to gain additional customers and increase brand recognition. The fact is twitter promotions  do in fact grab more attention, traction, and followers (if done properly)

Before running your own twitter promotional campaigns there are some important things to consider while creating and structuring the promotion.

Get Your Web Analytics On!

The digital marketing team here at Alter Imaging love, love, loves our web analytic tools. The metrics and reports we get back not only show us that we are actually doing our job but doing it well! It also gives us the ability to make subtle adjustments to campaigns on the fly to make them perform even better.

For a better understanding of what web analytics are and why they are important to monitor, check out this Google talk by Avinash Kaushik, Google's Web Analytics Evangelist.

Humanizing Your Brand

We had the great opportunity to head on down to the New Media Atlanta conference at the end of last month.  It was an awesome day filled with great speakers including Chris Brogan, Jeff Turner, and Toby Bloomberg.

We filmed the panel and have provided a timeline of the talk.  Enjoy!

Making Social Media Work for your Business

We recently attended the Charlotte Interactive Marketing Association’s Panel discussion on “Making Social Media Work for your business”. It was a great event and the panel was killer. We recorded it to share with anyone who wants to learn more about how to leverage social media to better your business.

Email Marketing - Segmentation & Targeting

Email marketing, if used properly, is an extremely cost effective digital medium to contact your current and potential customers. However, if not used properly, unsolicited emails can quickly evoke the word "spam," which has become a very dirty word and instantly irritates email users with just the mere mention of it.

But don’t let this get you down. By applying email best practices to your campaigns you can assure your emails will not fall onto deaf ears (or blind eyes? ...you get the point).

 

Using Advanced Twitter Search

Twitter can be a great source of competitive intelligence for your company. But getting information out of the Twitter fire hose can be a challenging task.

This post is to help you get acquainted with the Twitter advanced search features to find the tweets you are actually looking for.

Twitter for Restaurants - Food for Thought

So you want to get your restaurant up and running with twitter?

We like your enthusiasm! But before you jump head first, here are some things to consider:

1. As Chris Brogan points out in his new book Trust Agents, make sure you spread other peoples messages about 12 times more than you do your own.

This is so you don't sound spammy and actually gain some traction with your followers and prospective customers. Twitter users are very quick to notice (in a bad way) someone who only toots their own horn.

It reminds them of something…. Oh right advertising!

People use Twitter and other social networks to communicate with real people and share thoughts, ideas, hopes, and dreams. Not to read your advertising messages.

Design like IKEA

If you are one of the few people who has not had the pleasure of visiting an IKEA store or they have yet to come to a city near you, go or book a plane ticket (just kidding)

The Alter Imaging team recently traversed to the Charlotte NC IKEA for some inspiration (and some new stuff) .

What we found was more than that.

Facebook: Jump on the Bandwagon

Using Facebook to promote your company or brand can be a powerful tool. However, not all social media sites are meant for EVERYONE.

Facebook isn’t one size fits all. Each company and/or brand should have a unique strategy that fits them.  Some companies can and will use Facebook to their advantage, while others will simply set up a page, pat themselves on the back all while the page becomes increasingly stagnant over time.

So before jumping into Facebook, here are some important things to consider.

Why Facebook?

Making Viral Retweet Links in Twitter

In this post we are going to describe (and show... video at bottom) how to create a viral link in your tweet that, when clicked on, is self replicating. The tinyurl link in your tweet will repopulate the clicker’s twitter status update box with the message of your choosing.



What’s in it for me?

Good question.  What this does is remove a step in the retweeting process for the end user, provided they are still using the basic web twitter interface... www.tweetdeck.com and www.hootsuite.com are much better twitter clients.

Step by Step Rundown

Okay first you are going to need a catchy message, this is a no brainer. For the purposes of this post and too be cheaky we have decided to use this message: “RT this because it is viral and will RT itself when you click this link: http://budurl.com/viralRetweet via @alterimaging.”

7 Essentials Tools for Social Media Monitoring

Never before in history have your customers had such an influential voice on your brand. With the power of the Internet at their sides, they have access to reach literally millions of people with an opinion of your company. This is a scary notion, but even scarier if you are not listening in and monitoring what they are talking about.

But don’t fret. The truth of the matter is that, while social media is a fairly new way of thinking about your communication strategy, it’s not that difficult to monitor what is being said about your company or brand.

So with any new technology comes a bunch of new and shiny tools to help you shift through this massive amount of data overload!

Alter Imaging wants to give you a nudge in the right direction. So here are some tools to help you monitor your brand…. and they are all free!

Do you know what is being said about your company? Let's find out...

Publish to Twitter from Facebook

If you have a Facebook Page for your business and you also post on Twitter, get ready to to make your life a whole lot simpler.

A Twitter Primer

So you’ve heard about Twitter but you don’t know how or why you should use it.  This post provides a quick primer to get you on your way to Tweeting like a pro!

TwitterSpeak
Commonly used words/acronyms that every Twitterer (if confused, see below) should know:

Twitterer -A group of people whom have Twitter accounts
Tweets - A post on twitter
Twoosh - A tweet that is exactly 140 characters (it’s tricky tweeting a true twoosh)
Tweeps -Twitter + peeps (friends)
Tweetup - A gathering of folks based on a twitter conversation (often impromptu)
Tweetin - When a twitter agrees to tweetup
Mistweet - A tweet in which one later regrets (usually occurring after copious amounts of tequila: see “Dweet” below)
Twarf- A single word tweet
Dweet – A tweet while under the influence of alcohol
RT – Shorthand for retweet.  Used when reposting another person’s tweet.

Want more?  Visit an online dictionary for Twitter at Twittonary