New Authorization Rules
As of the beginning of September, all Twitter applications are required to use OAuth to access your Twitter account.

OAuth enables applications to access Twitter on your behalf with your approval, without directly asking you for your password. While they may ask for your password once, they are required to use OAuth to access your timeline or allow your tweet.

What It Means for You
Applications cannot store your password any longer. If you change your password, the apps will still work; although some may require you to reauthorize after the change. You can see all the applications that you have authorized. You can revoke access to any of the apps at any time. This is a good step toward additional security for your Twitter account.

New URL Wrapping
In the next few weeks, Twitter will be rolling out their new link wrapping service t.co. Wrapped (shortened) links are easier to read and appear with the actual domain and part of the URL showing, so you’re not randomly clicking unknown links. Twitter will check links you click on to make sure they do not contain known malware, then they will forward you onto the destination URL. This is expected to be launched by the end of the year.

What It Means for You
Long links will be shortened to a “t.co/” link for SMS dispalys but may also be displayed as the root URL and a shortened page title, such as alphabetix.net/web. This makes the link you’re clicking on less obscure. Twitter will also log clicks, so that the information may be useful in the future.

Creative Content
Having great, unique content is one of the best things you can do to get people to your website. Good content is written in a way that is readable, is interesting to the reader, and has the right keywords to get you found in the search engines.

Well-written content will get readers to your website and get them to come back. Give them something they can’t find somewhere else. While the topic you are writing about may not be original, the way you approach it can be. And, the style you use to write can be more appealing.

Whatever you do, do not steal content from another site. Not only is it ethically questionable, it violates copyright, and search engines hate it. Search engines see sites with the same content as spam. If you want the search engines to like your content, then make sure it is YOUR content.

Original Design
While having a unique design doesn’t directly buy you good vibes from search engines, it does so indirectly. Clean, creative design gets people to hang out on your site. That’s good for you and your search engine rankings. Having a site that is user-friendly does the same thing. So, why not buy a template? Templates have their place, but do you want your site to look like a lot of other people’s?

Think about how you feel when you walk into a coffee shop that is decorated just like a Starbucks. Do you want to stay there? Or do you want to leave and got to the real Starbucks or a unique, independent coffee shop? Knockoffs are no fun. And again, they are questionably ethical.

Need a unique, user-friendly website with excellent web content? Let Alphabetix help.

Quality over Quantity
In social marketing, it’s all about who you know, or rather, who knows you. You can have throngs of followers (feels good to be popular, doesn’t it?), but that won’t get you anywhere if your followers aren’t the right followers for you. You want people who pay attention to what you publish, not people who click “hide” as soon as your content starts popping up on their page. Interaction is important, and you can only interact with people who are invested in your company. So, don’t pay someone “social media expert” who says they can get you 500 followers in two days. They’re not getting you who you really want.

Come Out and Play
A solid social media campaign gets people interacting. Sure, it’s great when someone retweets your post–that means you’re putting out quality enough content that one of your followers thinks their followers would like it. But, even better, is getting several of your followers tweeting about your post with each other. Interacting with your moderator – great; interacting with each other – priceless.

Memories in the Corner of My Mind
The great thing about social media is that, unlike an ad that people may see and forget, social media’s levels of interaction tend to make your brand more memorable. While response time might not be immediate, frequent interaction builds an image of your business in potential clients’ minds. You know how frequency can influence you. All you need to see is a Bulls Eye to know it’s Target. Why? Because you’ve seen it a million times. Now, most businesses don’t have Target’s ad campaign budget. But, they all have access to free social media. So, make your brand a bulls eye.

Social media can be an excellent tool for developing your brand and bringing in more customers, but only if you are aware of the value and work toward developing a solid social media campaign.

1. Get Specific
A generic resume that doesn’t make any specific notation about the job you are applying for won’t get you very far. You should make it very clear that you want the specific job that you are applying for. That may mean rephrasing your skills list, removing the skills that don’t apply to the job, focusing your job history, and writing a goal statement that is specific to the job you are applying for.

2. Make Connections
Don’t make a job recruiter try to figure out how your experience applies to the position they are trying to fill. Make the connection between your retail experience and your ability to multitask in a fast-paced environment or your summer camp counseling and your ability to lead a group of disparate individuals. Show the parallels between your past and your present.

3. Put a Cover on It
It is essential to include a cover letter with your resume. A cover letter needs to include specifics about the job you want and how the skills you have relate to the job you want. It’s also a good idea to do some research about the company you’re applying to. Let them know what it is about their business that is a good fit for your experience. Set yourself apart.

4. Keep It Clean
While it may be no fun to hear, it is essential that your resume and cover letter be error-free: no typos, no grammar errors, consistent punctuation, well-organized formatting, and while you’re at it, make it look good. You might be well-qualified for the job, but if the recruiter thinks you are not conscientious enough to make sure your resume is error-free, they won’t believe your work will be error-free either.

Getting your resume just right can be tricky, especially for non-native English speakers. We are here to help.

So, how does a social media presence help?

Go Big
Social media sites carry a ton of weight as far as search engines are involved. They have a ton of content, have a lot of visitors and are linked to from all over the internet. Currently, Facebook is the second ranked site in the world. YouTube is number three and Twitter is number 11. You can’t beat that kind of popularity. Using these sites, having your name and brand associated with them, is great for your search engine rankings.

Linky, Linky, Who’s Got the Linky?
Social media is a great forum for getting links to your site. We in no way recommend getting spammy and plastering links to your homepage in every post you do on Facebook and every tweet you tweet. Let’s be clear: that’s bad. But, linking to a specific page that is relevant to a given topic, particularly blog posts, can be a good way to get traffic to your site. And, if your content is good, hopefully they’ll stick around.

Being Content with Content
Blogs, which yes, are social media, are a great way to get high quality content on your site, and there’s nothing that search engines like more than great content.

So, when evaluating the effectiveness of your social media campaign, keep in mind the quality of your fans, the quality of your links, and the extent of your content. And, let us help you set up a great social media campaign.

What’s a Favicon?
A favicon is a small icon that is associated with a website. You can see it in a browser, typically before the web page’s address. Look up in the browser bar, and you’ll see the Alphabetix favicon, a simple alpha.

You can also see Favicons next to a page’s name in a bookmark list. And, in browsers that have tabbed documents, you can see the favicons in the tab next to the page’s title.

Why You Should Use a Favicon
Really professional looking sites, one’s with an outstanding web presence, have favicons. A favicon is a great, minimal way to build brand identity for your site. A graphic representation of your site is an excellent way to draw attention to your site and set you apart from out-of-a-can websites.

Successful brands take advantage of any opportunity they can to stand apart from a crowd. Branding your site with a favicon is yet another way to reinforce your image. It also visually unites the browser bar with the rest of your site.

Pages without favicons lack the essential element of visual appeal that is important in an increasingly visual technical world. When a user has a huge list of bookmarks, those with the generic “folder” or “page” icon are easy to skip over, but those with eye-catching favicons draw users’ attention.

Does your site have a favicon? If not, let us help you design and implement this essential branding tool.

1. Make sure your expert has social media accounts. Would you hire a tattoo artist without any tattoos or a contractor who lived in a shack? Not likely. How can someone possibly claim to be an expert in social media if they don’t even use the stuff? Whether it’s Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, LinkedIn, or Foursquare, make sure they use the right media for their business.

2. Make sure your expert actively uses their social media. Merely having accounts isn’t enough. Social media is a constantly moving target, and if your expert doesn’t interact with it all the time, they won’t know the latest and greatest. Check that they post regularly, post interesting content, and that the content varies. If they don’t, they won’t be able to tell you the essential social media steps you need to take for your business.

3. Make sure they ask you questions. If your media expert doesn’t ask you questions about your goals with social media or doesn’t take the time to find out more about your business, you better believe they aren’t going to give you the best advice for your business. It is essential that a social media expert takes into consideration the intricacies of your situation, rather than handing out a stock package. Make sure they will tailor a plan specifically to you.

4. Make sure they don’t promise a certain number of followers. Sure, they may be able to get you 100 followers in two days, but who are these followers and do they care about your message? Simply getting their social circle to follow you, or worse, buying followers (or fans, etc.) doesn’t do anything for making sure your message reaches your target audience. With social media, quality ranks over quantity. The right followers will be more interested in your product or service and are more likely to become advocates for your business. And, the best way to get the right kind of followers, is with the right kind of content.

Alphabetix derives its meaning from the fusion of “words” (alphabet) and “technology”.

The Alphabet
The alphabet is a set of elements that, when combined together, create more complex elements: words. And, when words are combined together, they create language. The name Alphabetix reflects the coming together of simple elements to create something complex and beautiful. It brings together clean web code (language), a beautiful aesthetic (how the page reads), and concise, effective content (words).

The Technology
At Alphabetix, we believe that combining the elements of language with the functionality of the best technology is the best way to develop strong web sites for our clients.
Whether it is using content management systems like WordPress, Drupal, or Joomla or the best scripting languages like HTML, CSS, Java, Ruby, or any of the other coding languages that we speak fluently, we make sure that our clients get the best, most effective web presence possible.

Web Design. Only Better.
Because we are very much focused on building more than a website for our clients, and instead building a web presence, any website that wants to have not only traffic but the potential of converting casual visitors into customers, must master the art of delivering high quality website content.

No matter how pretty or how cool your website functionality is, if you have poor web content, you won’t have much luck succeeding online.

Words and technology, above all, are the cornerstone to every Alphabetix web project.

While the content was directed at the Sandy business community, the sentiment applies to many brick-and-mortar businesses.

So, What Is E-Commerce?
An e-commerce (electronic commerce) website is a website built for the specific purpose of buying and selling something online, as compared to a traditional website that is built to convey information.

E-commerce websites allow individuals and small companies to reach a regional, national, and global audience at a relatively small cost, while also being able to compete with much larger businesses.

For example, Snickers chocolate bars, made by Mars Incorporated has a manufacturing and distribution system that allows for their product to be shipped all over the world, and you can find it just about every grocery store and “quick stop” / gas station and has a marketing budget in the billions, allowing the opportunity to get their product to get in front of a lot of eyeballs through television ads and billboards.

Meanwhile, Joe Schmoo’s Chocolates also sells chocolates, that tend to be locally made, and of excellent quality. Though Joe’s does not have the advertising budget of Mars Incorporated, it can have an e-commerce website that can sell their chocolates to consumers across their region, across the United States, and even across the world from their small town (or big city), and have a better opportunity of winning back some chocolate selling market share, by virtue of the internet, which grows and is fed by quality content from unlimited sources.

Search engines are constantly crawling to find quality websites for their search algorithms, and if Joe’s e-commerce website meets these quality standards, then their e-commerce website will not only find an audience for their website but consumers for their product.

E-commerce can ranges from simple to complicated. Let us help you find the right e-commerce solution for your business.

Contests and promotions are a great way to get people interacting with your site. Everyone likes free stuff, and they are often willing to interact with your site to get it.

Who Rocks It
Pepsi has launched a campaign to give money to people to help them make a positive impact. Then they blog about it. People start associating Pepsi with the projects that they fund and they are established as charitable.

Make It Work
A great way to get people involved with your site is to run contests that make customers interact with your site or offer a promotion code for blog readers.

For example, if you own a bakery, run a contest on your blog to name your new flavor of muffin. Entrants leave their answer in the comments and you pick a winner who will get a dozen free muffins. Or, post a list of questions that makes them go to a variety of pages on your site. People will learn about your product and interact with your site. It will establish your name in their mind.

If you own an autobody shop, offer a discount to any customers who post a before and after picture of work you performed on their vehicle. Again, customers will be interacting with your site and it will help establish your brand.

Contests and promotions are a great way to get people interacting with your site. If you need help developing a marketing strategy for your business, Alphabetix can help.

Make It Work for You
There are a ton of great ways to use this plugin:

1. Create books of specific content to give to new newsletter subscribers. If you own a pet shop and you have different newsletters for dog people or cat people, you could compile all of your dog blog posts into one electronic document to share with the dog people. And, who really cares about cat people anyway, right? Just kidding, cat people.

2. Create a book of your blog posts to submit for publishing. If you run a crafty blog with tons of great sewing tips, you can compile your best sewing basics to submit to a publisher for review. Or, publish it yourself.

3. Bring a lot of different blogs together to show the standouts. If you are a writing teacher that has students keep blogs as part of their grade, you can pull together all their best posts at the end of the semester to create a great chap book to give to all of the students.

4. Collaborate with others. Blogs are becoming more and more popular, and can be a great way to bring together a variety of perspectives on the same topic. For example, if you have a family reunion and everyone goes back to their blog and documents their favorite parts, with embarrassing photos, of course, you can collect them all together and print a memory book for all involved.

5. Get scholarly. Using Anthologize doesn’t have to be all fun and games. It can be a great way to collect your thoughts into an organized format for academics or for business. It can also be used to collect all the great thoughts of a number of contributors.

So, give Anthologize a shot and see how you can make it work for you.

Lists are a great way to get good content on your site and they’re very popular, making them a great way to draw topic to your site. A good list goes a long way.

Who Rocks It
Experts of all things web, Mashable pretty much dominate the list blog posts. They include a huge range of topics with wide appeal, such as the 10 must-have social media apps and 5 rules for better web writing.

Make It Work
An excellent way to create content lists is to offer information about the coolest new gadgets for your industry or the most exciting advances in your field. Think of what is the buzz for your industry and use it. Lists are a great way to capitalize on the buzz, and are a relatively easy type of blog post to do, since they are mostly collections of existing content, written with your own spin.

For example, if you’re a real estate agent, do a top 5 list about the best places to eat in town. This will show you not only as connected to your community, but will establish you as an expert on the area.

If you are an accountant, do a list of the most common mistakes that people make on their taxes, and post it around tax time. You can capitalize on the buzz of that time of year, and show people that you care about their well-being, making you a trustworthy source and someone they might take their taxes to.

Lists can be fun and draw customers to your site by showing them that you have your finger on the pulse of your industry.

What Foursquare Does
Sites like foursquare encourage people to get out and about in their neighborhoods, exploring them and reporting back on the site about where they visit and what they did there. This can be a great marketing tool for brick and mortar businesses.

Using friend finders, social city guides, and games, foursquare rewards users for exploring new places and revisiting old favorites. Users can earn points, become Mayors, and unlock badges.

How to Use it For your Business
As a business owner, you can use Foursquare to engage with customers, particularly those who are tech savvy, using mobile devices to stay connected.
You can post specials or discounts to offer to loyal customers when they check in on your business via foursquare.

What Kinds of Specials Can You Offer?
Check-in Specials are available to users who check in a given number of times.

Offer free french fries after 10 check-ins or a free burger after 25.

Frequency-based Specials are offered every so many check-ins.

Offer a 10% discount every tenth time a user checks in.

Mayor Specials can only be unlocked by the mayor (the user who has checked in the most in the last 60 days) of your venue. It’s a way to reward your most loyal customer.

Mayor Specials can be discounts like a free espresso or some cool swag.

Wildcard Specials are always available but may need something extra to be redeemed.

You can offer discounts to customers who show their foursquare badge.

In using these specials on foursquare, you can also track customer usage via foursquare’s analytics.

At Your Brick and Mortar
You can post official window clings in your business encouraging users to check in on foursquare.

You can also come up with clever marketing materials that you hand out to your customers such as bag drops that direct them to foursquare, and all your other social media sites or forms to fill out that direct them to your sites. When they’ve answered the questions, give them something.

Need help developing a social media strategy? We’re here to help.

Offering tips is a great way to establish yourself as an authority. It shows knowledge about your industry and products and makes you accessible to your customers.

Make sure that you present information in an easy to understand manner. Avoid jargon and overly-specific topics.

Who Rocks It
Photographer Scott Kelby (scottkelby.com) offers great tips on his site about all things photographic, including subjects like shaping light with an off-camera flash and Photoshop tips. His information is great for professionals and for the everyday photographer. He has established himself as source of information in the photography field, and that drives business.

Make It Work
There are a ton of ways to establish yourself as an expert with tips. Share tips of your trade that are informative for laymen, without giving away trade secrets.

For example, if you are an HVAC specialist, talk about how to replace the filter in your heater, including information about how and why it is important. However, you do not want to post about cleaning out your ducts or installing a ductless system, as these are things you want to be hired for. You can, however, post about why hiring a specialist is a good idea for more complicated procedures.

If you are a veterinarian, offer tips about flying with your pet or picking the right dog for your family’s lifestyle. You do not want to offer medical advice, but you can offer suggestions about when it is necessary to bring a pet in, and what you can monitor at home.

It’s a great idea to establish yourself as knowledgeable about your field and share your expertise with your blog readers. The tips you post can be a great investment to establish your business and bring the right kind of customer to your site.

Adjust Your Mindset
When you decide to use social media for your business, you will need to address what this means holistically. Embracing social media usually means a shift in your business perspective. You can’t just create a page and walk away. Well, you can, but it won’t be successful. Remember that social media is, in its essence, social. Understanding networking is key to online social media success, just as it is when you send a representative of your company to a conference. Think of your social media site as an employee (or department) of your company. You expect an employee to look good, behave professionally, and represent your company well. Expect the same of your online presence.

You should also get your employees involved. They can be the biggest advocates of your business, so get them following your social media presence. You can get them to contribute as well. Ask them what they think you should share, or run a contest for a marketing campaign. Make it social for them and they will share it with others.

Public Policy
When using social media for your business, you want to make sure your image and message are consistent and that you protect yourself. Begin with a policy that outlines the overall voice and message of your business. It should also outline how you will handle negative feedback, how you will address others, and how you’ll reward faithful followers. Being prepared will make sure you are consistent when facing different situations.

Make It a Job
Maintaining your social media campaign is a job in and of itself. Whether you give the responsibility to one employee or hire a social media expert contractor, you will want to make sure that you establish who creates and approves all content that is published, including text and images. This person or entity should also make sure that your social media presence is consistent with your brick-and-mortar presence.

Setting Aside the Time
It is also important to establish how much time you want to invest in your social media presence. A good presence is not a hit-once-a-day-and-walk-away deal. You need to be engaged with your followers. If you are going to offer them a venue to interact with you, then you need to truly interact with them. It is important to establish how much time you want your representative to spend online, including the break down into how much time is spent tweeting or posting, how much time is spent answering customer questions or complaints, and how much time is spent planning and developing the marketing materials and strategy for your social media campaign.

If you establish how you will use social media before you get started, you will be a lot more successful.

Need help getting a handle on your social media plan? Let Alphabetix help you establish a social media marketing strategy.