Facebook Timeline

Back in September of this year, Facebook unveiled the new Timeline function at the F8 event. The Timeline has been summed up to be the story of your life on one page.

The Facebook Timeline feature allows users to create events of their life on their Facebook profile. Do you remember that time you broke a bone in 6th grade? Well, you can create that event for the world to see. What about your senior prank? Go ahead and include any information you want to include — time, description of prank and location. You can now literally tell your life story to your friends and family.

Of course, privacy is still the main concern for many Facebook users. Facebook is still doing great things to uphold the privacy of its members. Users still have an option to hide what they don’t want people to see and limit things to only a certain group of people.

The Facebook Timeline feature will be scrutinized by many users. Thousands of people are already verbally and publicly displaying their disinterest for the feature. However, this is usually the new trend for any new feature of Facebook. Most people will admit that it will just take a little time for the new Facebook Timeline feature to grow on them.

Once people discover how useful and personal the feature is, they are more likely to use it to its fullest capability. Some people do not want their whole life to be on Facebook, but other users see the attraction in telling their story on one single page to people who may not know too much about them.

An exciting free e-commerce WordPress plugin adds e-commerce functions to the popular blogging and CMS platform. Produced by developers at WooThemes, the new e-commerce platform promises to revolutionize the WordPress world. In the past, e-commerce plug-ins for WordPress were difficult to use and often came with a large price tag. Now anyone can set up an online store. To go into business, all WordPress owners only need time and the WooCommerce plugin.

Excitement about this new e-commerce WordPress plugin comes for two reasons. First, the WordPress community recognizes WooThemes as a skilled developer of quality WordPress products. Bloggers and website owners everywhere expect innovation and high quality from anything made by Woo. Community excitement also comes from the fact that WordPress users can get the WooCommerce e-commerce WordPress plugin free.

WooCommerce features an administrator dashboard that works naturally with WordPress controls. This means most WordPress users will quickly and intuitively understand how the plugin works without a long learning curve. This e-commerce WordPress plugin also comes with impressive reporting capabilities that provide statistics, graphs and easy integration with Google Analytics. Communication in any e-commerce environment determines its success. WooCommerce comes with HTML templates that website owners can use to send professional HTML-formatted email messages. WooCommerce comes with a simple product entry system that works inside the WordPress dashboard.

The front end of the WooCommerce e-commerce WordPress plugin allows shoppers to choose how to sort goods and services and has built in cross-selling and up-selling features. Sellers can use the built-in coupon system to promote their products. This system supports expiration dates and limits for how many times shoppers can use a coupon.

WooThemes hired a well-known WordPress developer to audit the WooCommerce plugin for security, helping Woo to harden the e-commerce WordPress plugin to keep users safe online. This extra step helps demonstrate the commitment developers of WooCommerce have to providing a safe and efficient e-commerce experience.

Of course, WooThemes has much in store for WordPress users beyond its powerful WooCommerce plugin. The company has a number of premium WordPress themes featuring WooCommerce integration. This helps users create professional WordPress-based stores with only a small capital investment. Webmasters who want to experience the power of an integrated WooCommerce theme can download Wootique from the WooThemes website. This is a free theme that allows all WordPress users to experience the power of the new e-commerce WordPress plugin.

After experiencing Wootique, users will probably want to upgrade to one of WooThemes six premium themes. For example, a child theme for Canvass and theme called Statua make selling photographs easy, from the WooCommerce platform. Nine commercial extensions add powerful abilities to this e-commerce WordPress plugin such as the PayPal payment gateway, a shipping table and an EU VAT exemption feature. Other commercial extensions work to improve the WooCommerce with other exciting features and payment gateways.

Happy birthday, Google! Sorry, but we didn’t get you anything this year.

In order for a business to thrive, marketing is an essential tool. How a business goes about marketing is based on the product or service they are selling, their target group and what has worked best in the past. With the internet, many companies have succeeded at email marketing. You may think that this form of promotion is outdated; after all, many businesses have shifted their focus to using social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook to attract customers.

Email marketing is in fact very popular – and very effective. It works for a variety of reasons, including that it allows businesses to target specific people, it drives direct sales and it builds a relationship between the company and the individual. In the majority of cases, it’s the person that signs up to receive emails, so already the company is sending their marketing tools to those that have a general interest in the product or service. With regular emails, the people can choose when they want to take advantage of the product. And, there are options to customize the emails with the customer’s name for a more personalized approach.

Another advantage to email marketing is that it allows opportunities for immediate action. Click on a link and customers can instantly start shopping. Download the latest flyer or hit the envelope icon to send a message to a support person. All of these tools and more are available through email marketing. In fact, emails work very similar to websites, with bright colors, bolded fonts and enticing places to click. By using this type of email newsletter marketing, companies can directly link their target group to their website.

Some companies choose to partner with smaller companies to promote awareness about social issues, sell related products and send out important information. With this approach, companies are able to expand on their ideas, encourage social change and ultimately build trust within their target group.

With all the advantages to email newsletter marketing, it’s no surprise that many companies start here in their efforts to promote their product or service. With an email marketing company by your side, you can send out engaging emails, track how many of the newsletters are being opened and read and maximize your marketing tools. With analysis reports and strategic planning, a marketing company can ensure that your business succeeds and gains all the benefits of email marketing.

In its simplest form, ecommerce is the buying and selling of products through websites. This is an excellent way to improve sales, boost traffic to the site and make a name for your company. Search Engine Optimization or SEO is needed to capture and grow organic traffic that is related to the success of your ecommerce business. There are many ecommerce SEO techniques that will benefit the natural search traffic and interest of your target audience.

First, you will need to optimize the distribution of your ecommerce homepage Rank. Since your Home page most likely has the highest ranking; the rest of the pages should link directly from the home page. You should also keep the pages within 1-2 clicks of the homepage. The pages that most consistently link from your home page will also rank higher in organic search results.

To benefit your ecommerce SEO home page, be sure to use a pure CSS based design instead of nested tables. This will allow pages to load faster and is better for ecommerce SEO. Place H1 and H2 around headings and subheadings, and use the keywords in the page titles. When evaluating the most popular site searches, place these terms around the search box.

Next, you will want to focus on the proper linking and redirects for your ecommerce SEO. Ensure that your homepage is linked to your site root folder “/”. (Sometimes, it can be linked to a default or index page instead.) You’ll also want your page to be easy to find, so if your site is www.roguemediaonline.com, you’ll want to make a 301 redirect from roguemediaonline.com to www.roguemediaonline.com. Avoid using sessionIDs in URLs and keep your URLs written in descriptive formats that keep consistent with relevant keywords.

Once you have established the linking and redirecting, you can rest assured that online users will be able to find your ecommerce site rather easily, plus be directed to the right pages. Now you will need to work with your Product Page, which should be built around targeted keywords that will help you in ranking better.

To assist with this, ensure that proper meta-keywords and descriptions are included for each product. Also add an H1 header in the product title, use the main product keywords in the page title and URL, place keywords in italics and bold and add keywords in the last paragraph of the page.

Finally, make your ecommerce SEO authentic, never duplicating the content from the manufacturer. If you do this, your website may be devalued for duplicating content. By taking the time to ensure everything is linked properly, the proper keywords are targeted and organic search results are directed to the right pages, your ecommerce site will be well on its way to success!

Hold onto your hats Asheville. If you think that the summer has been hot so far—you ain’t seen nothin’ yet!

In less than two weeks, the City of Asheville, the Bele Chere Board of Directors, and an eclectic army of supporters dedicated to continuing the tradition of “beautiful living” here in North Carolina, will descend on the downtown area to launch the 33rd Annual Bele Chere Festival. The Festival, which was first held back in 1979 on a patch of land that spanned about three city blocks, has now grown into the largest street festival of its kind in the southeast, drawing well over a quarter million visitors each summer—and consuming every available inch of Asheville’s central business district for the better part of three days.

Over the course of the event—which will officially kick-off at 12pm on Friday, July 29th and wrap-up at 6pm on Sunday, July 31st—a wide variety of musicians, artists, vendors, and “home folk” will gather to celebrate the special ingredient that has helped to make Asheville great: its people. And true to the spirit of southern hospitality, Bele Chere’s organizers will ensure that there is something fun for everyone:

Children and Youth. For the littles, the Arena Level of the Asheville Civic Center will be transformed into an alcohol-free Children’s Area featuring free crafts, children’s performances, and ticketed rides.

Music Aficionados. Love music? No problem. The Festival will host more than 40 bands representing diverse lyrical traditions including Rock & Roll, R & B, Bluegrass, Top 40, and Gospel.

The Artistic. Consider yourself crafty? Great! Visit Bele Chere and greet some of the most skilled artisans from across the nation as they show and sell high-quality works in metal, fabric, paint, and other popular mediums.

Silver Foxes. Who says that young people should have all the fun? Join Asheville’s “young at heart” at the Bele Chere Senior Oasis as they enjoy all of the same fun as the younger set—and maybe more—in a cozy, air-conditioned venue.

So whether you’re a swinging single, married with children, a forward-thinking elder, or somewhere in between, plan to join the fun at this year’s Bele Chere Festival. After all, you’ve only got one life to live. Why not make it beautiful?

Change is in the air for Google merchants and shoppers alike! On September 22, 2011, Google will implement a new set of standards for the Google product datafeeds designed to improve Google Product Search. Who will the changes affect? Merchants in the U.S., France, Germany, the United Kingdom, and Japan will be required to adhere to the new Google product datafeeds standards. As for Spain, Italy, and the Netherlands; Google will email any account affected by the changes with further information. Not to worry, though, because these changes will not only improve your shopping experience but also drum up business for Google merchants.

The Google product datafeeds that will fall under the new specifications are availability, data freshness, Google product category, apparel, and image feeds. Fortunately the changes are relatively easy to implement. For example, the availability feed will require the status (out of stock, no longer carried, etc.) of products. This is to ensure shoppers can find the products they are searching for even if the item is out of stock. The image feed changes require stores provide an image link of each product, ensuring consumers have a better idea of what they are purchasing. As one can see, the new specifications will not only make shopping on Google a more pleasant experience, but likely improve sales for Google stores.

Merchants can rest assured Google will indeed enforce the changes to the Google product datafeeds. Any merchants in the U.S., France, Germany, the United Kingdome, and Japan that do not put into practice the new specification may well find their accounts suspended. There will also be penalties for those who continuously fail to implement the changes. However, improved sales are all merchants who adhere to the new specifications can look forward to!

Once again, Asheville has managed to climb to the top of the charts for beer production. It just seems that no one else can seem to catch up as far as the Beer City title is concerned. This is the third year that Asheville has won this coveted award, taking it with over seven thousand votes and blowing away the competition. Cities like Portland and St. Louis were in the running, but no one could come close to Asheville. It really is the very best place to go if you want to find great beer and a town with under one hundred thousand people that has gathered around the beer industry.

Now, it is important to note that winning the Beer City award is not something that a city can do just by producing a lot of product. If that were the case, St. Louis, with the main Budweiser plant, would be much farther up the list. This is about producing the best product, the beer that people actually want to buy. It is about small-town brewers who want nothing but to craft top-notch styles of beer that perhaps only sell to a few thousand people. They are not looking to make it big; they are looking at their brewing efforts as a form of art.

This is an idea that Asheville has embraced on all fronts, not just that of beer. The downtown district is full of little shops that are locally owned. The money that goes into the city’s economy tends to stay in the city’s economy. Everything is done in Asheville with a distinct sense of identity and pride. The people who live and work in the city want to show the world who they are, but they want to be true to who they are without absorbing everything from the rest of the world. This is true in their restaurants, their produce markets, and their breweries.

In Asheville, there are many different kinds of beer to be had. Those who are used to drinking the same generic lagers day after day will be shocked to find how many choices they have. The beauty of this is that no two Asheville beers are quite the same. A brown ale made by one company is going to be different than a brown ale made by another. Everyone wants to put their own spin on the beer that they are making. They know that this creates small niches for different beers, but they love this individualism.

What this has led to in Asheville is a town that rallies around itself. The people of Asheville are proud of what they have accomplished. They are proud of what they have and what they have done. They all seem to support this small-town mentality, this close-knit tightness that is not often found in a town with eighty thousand people. The beer is just an offshoot of this mentality, one more way that they can come together and create, and what a wonderful offshoot it is.

Earlier this year, Google released another significant update to their search algorithm aimed at devaluing websites deemed to be of low-quality. The Farmer/Panda update was officially released on February 24, 2011 and has affected an estimated 12% of Google search engine results. (The update was initially coined “Farmer” by Danny Sullivan of Search Engine Land but was named Panda internally at Google after one of the engineers.)

As many of you know, we’ve been stressing the importance of providing unique, quality content for some time now. This most recent algorithm update touches on that by identifying and devaluing excessive duplicate (copied) content, but it also takes the analysis a good bit deeper. Essentially, Google polled third-party testers about the overall quality of a series of websites and compiled their answers to help define what a “low-quality website” is. Some of the signals of low-quality websites include the following:

• High percentage of duplicate content
• High bounce rate
• Low click-through rate
• Low time-on-site
• Excessively obtrusive advertising

These metrics are not only a measure of content quality, but can also be heavily influenced by the quality of web design and usability. Your content may be 100% unique and engaging, but if your web design is grossly outdated and contains aggressive ads this would affect your overall quality score by contributing to high bounce rates and low time-on-site metrics.

So what’s the takeaway?

Instead of scrambling to update your website every time there’s a Google update, align your Internet marketing practices with Google’s: Provide engaging, quality content and give your visitors the best experience possible! This really isn’t a new concept but it does help to reinforce our overall approach for SEO and Internet marketing for years.

This Saturday, the former Black Mountain College campus at Lake Eden will be revisited by a gathering of creative minds and bodies to share their work and inspire others. The second annual {Re}Happening will feature performances and installations from artists working in a variety of mediums, including sculptural video installation, to interactive sculpture, and multimedia-based performances. Tickets for the opening dinner are sold out, but after-dinner tickets are still available. Come out and enjoy a fantastic evening of art and inspiration!