About This Blog
Hey, my name is Alex Baker. I'm the Chief Executive of Infinistorm LLC, an Indianapolis based website design and software company. My blog is about new websites that we create as well as search engine optimization and social networking.
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Posted On:
10/22/2009 10:37:22 AM
Earlier this morning,
WZPL, 99.5 in Indianapolis, talked to Infinistorm about Windows 7.
In the interview, we talked about some of the great new features of Windows 7. The new task bar, which is much improved, has these great active previews of your current windows that are open. So if you have five Internet Explorer or Firefox windows open, you can see a preview of each webpage that you have open. Also if you're watching a video, it even shows an active preview of that.
We also talked about the Libraries of Windows 7 with Pictures, Music, and Movies. As well as the reasoning for the security pop-ups/notifications in both Windows Vista and Windows 7.
For additional Windows 7 tips or to get answers to your Windows 7 questions, check out
@MicrosoftHelps on Twitter or tweet at us to answer your Windows 7 business questions at
@infinistorm.
UPDATE: Miss the interview? Check it out on the WZPL podcast here,
http://bit.ly/2KzEdk
Posted On:
10/19/2009 11:00:23 PM
In a perfect world, the search engines would realize that your business is the obvious choice for a certain keyword because you have a better product or better customer service than that other guy. But, unfortunately, it isn't a perfect world and the engines don't know about your customer service (hint: write about it on your site's about us page).
So because of that, when we begin website projects with our customers, both creating new websites and updating existing sites, we expect to hear phrases like, "we need to be #1 in Google" or "we need 50,000 people to get to our site to be successful". Depending on your market, you may be competing with 10,000 websites or 50,000,000. And in the latter, achieving number one would be an uphill battle.
What our customers are really telling us is, we want or need our website to help us drive business. Whether that is increasing conversions once a visitor lands on the site or if it is driving traffic to your website, Infinistorm can help. Not only do we proactively help your site get ranked on search engines, we can help you to understand your website traffic and your customer's online buying process.
If you're looking to increase website traffic through search engine optimization or trying to get more customers to purchase some widgets from your site, give us at call at Infinistorm - 888-423-1337. We're here to help you be more successful online.
Posted On:
9/30/2009 8:27:35 AM
In our final part of the 3 part series, using Twitter for Business, (see: Part 1 and Part 2), we are going to discuss using Twitter effectively to engage users.
In part 2, we discussed using Twitter search to find people who are talking about things that your business does. After finding those people, then you have to engage them, by Replying (using the @ sign then their username, such as @infinistorm) to them.
Now that the customer has heard about you and you follow them, send them a direct message using the D command. Keeping with the wine theme from last post, for example, "D infinistorm Thanks for following us back. Check out our killer new Red Table Wine. Stop in for a free sample."
Now that you have some followers and have engaged them, run a contest. Give something away to the first 100 people to RT, or re-tweet, your post. Or maybe give a gift certificate away one of the people who follow you. Either way, doing this increases your followers and the number of people paying attention to what you have to say.
Lastly, pay attention to hash tags, both trending and not. A hash tag is a pound sign and a keyword, something like #indy or #indianapolis for example. These hash tags allow people to click on them to see other people that are talking about the same topic.
Trending topics are hash tags or topics that are being discussed by a large amount of people on Twitter. One great Trending Topic to participate in is Follow Friday, or #ff. Follow Friday is a way for users to promote the people that they like the tweets from. So Infinistorm may do a follow friday like this, #ff #customers #staff @alexanderdbaker @joshuastarr @discoverindy @circlecityplann @rockstarsauto @jsconcrete.
If you have any questions about Twitter or how to effectively use it for your business, please give us a call, we'd be glad to speak with you about it. 888-423-1337
Posted On:
9/23/2009 7:10:26 PM
Taking a quick break between my series on Twitter for Business because I came across this link and I wanted to share it with everyone.
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2009/09/google-does-not-use-keywords-meta-tag.html
So it's official now, the meta keywords really don't matter to Google. The meta description is still the important piece of meta data. This meta description is sometimes used in the Google search results under the page title if Google believes that it is relevant enough. But as mentioned in the link above,
"Even though we sometimes use the description meta tag for the snippets we show, we still don't use the description meta tag in our ranking."
So there you have it, Google cares about relevant content, period.
Posted On:
9/30/2009 8:25:39 AM
This is part 2 of my 3 part series on using Twitter for Business.
Read part 1 here.
Simply put -
Engage.
Businesses who want to promote themselves or their products on Twitter need to engage their followers. As mentioned in part 1 of this series, Twitter search is an invaluable tool that doesn't get used enough. This very powerful tool that allows you to type a keyword and see what people are talking about. For example, for a winery in Indianapolis, they may be interested in promoting their new wine to wine drinkers. I would go to
http://search.twitter.com and type in wine in my search term. Now maybe there are too many results that aren't relevant enough for me. So I would refine my search and enter
wine near:indy as my search term. Unsure of how to refine your Twitter searches to your benefits, check out the
Twitter Search Operators manual here.
From there, it's as easy as clicking "Reply" and sending them a message, such as "@infinistorm Saw you liked wine! If you haven't tried our delicious new wine, please check us out." Then after replying to them,
become a follower of their Twitter account.
Stay tuned on Tuesday for the final part of using Twitter for Business where we talk about trending topics, direct messages, and running contests.