Archive for Open Toolbox

Five Tools For Successful Web Marketing, Part 3: Facebook

Friday, July 10th, 2009

facebookNo one could have predicted a few years ago how successful online social networking would have become.  What we know now is that it is beyond a fad or a nitch market. Social Networking sites are the new wave in communications. Facebook, with it’s over 2 billion users, is quickly replacing other forms of online communication to become the premier place where information sharing takes place on the web. Facebook and sites like it are an ideal way of collecting marketing research as well as spread word of mouth marketing about your business. With a Facebook page for your business you can connect with your clients in a new, more personal way while at the same time collecting demographic information about your client base. Facebook also branches out your market utilizing your current clients and giving them an easy way to tell their friends about you. By becoming a fan of your page, they are identifying their affiliation with you to all their friends. Here are a few was to encourage people to connect with you in Facebook. Read More→

Five Tools For Successful Web Marketing, Part 2: Adwords

Wednesday, July 8th, 2009

adwords2Pay per click advertising is the most effective marketing you can pay for. If you have a budget for continued marketing, then Adwords are your most cost effective solution. For as little as a few cents, you can bring customers looking for your products and services right to your website. The best part about Google Adwords, is that when a visitor searches your keywords and clicks on your Ad, Google tracks that and it contributes to your natural site page rank. So even if you don’t have a continuous budget for marketing with Adwords, it would benefit your site to run Adwords for a few months. Especially if you are launching a new business or just trying to reposition your business to a new market. You can target your Adwords regionally to decrease unnecessary hits to your ads and you can simply set a max budget, so your advertising costs will never exceed what you intended to spend. Here are a few tips for setting up your Adwords. Read More→

Five Tools For Successful Web Marketing, Part 1: Analytics

Monday, July 6th, 2009

analyticsThe often overlooked and sometimes ignored aspect of an SEO strategy is your back end server stats and/or analytics. People are hitting your site now, and understanding the how, why, and what of your current viewers is the first step in seeking out new visitors and expanding on your current viewer base. Most hosts offer a statistics monitoring service that allows you to keep track of the basic visitor information. Google Analytics offers the most comprehensive statistics solution out there today, and it is completely free. The Analtics reports from Google Analytics will help you answer the following how, why, and what questions that will help you build your online marketing strategy. Read More→

Open Toolbox: WordPress Custom Fields

Tuesday, June 23rd, 2009

opentoolboxWe are excited to announce our new video blog: Main Street’s Open Toolbox. This video series will discuss tools and techniques for building better web sites. We will also include interviews with industry players and developers.

To kick off the series, we start with our own WordPress guru, Adam White, as he discusses one of WordPress’ most under-appreciated features: custom fields. If you’ve heard people complain that WP is not a “real” CMS, they probably don’t have a clue how custom fields can expand the functionality of your site.
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Upgrading to WordPress 2.8

Tuesday, June 23rd, 2009

opentoolboxCory Miller and Chris Jean from iThemes were in our studio last week. One of the topics was when to upgrade to WordPress 2.8, and how to prepare for the upgrade. Chris Jean, the senior Code Monkey and general technical guru of iThemes gave us his suggestions.
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