You can find these updates on Facebook and Twitter as well…

@feonews

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The site is designed for the extremely vertical market of used motorcycles and motorcycle parts. Knowing that there are a number of classified sites already in the space, the site will leverage the fact that the ads will be monitored so the SPAM and junk posts will be minimized.

The site is full of features to help connect buyers and sellers. One major point is that sellers have a “profile” page that shows all the items they have in the system that they can broadcast out to their potential buyers.

The site is also fully SEO’d which will also help sellers get their product in front of buyers, and will help buyers find the products before they even get to the site.

A registration system, which is free, is in place for both buyers and sellers and helps cut down on the junk.

Check it out if you have a moment. It should be an interesting project to watch…

1. A centralized support system: As all of the offices use the same website administration system it is much easier for Tradebank to support the entire system. And since everyone utilizes the same interface, ideas and techniques can be shared between the offices.
2. Data sharing: The system was designed so that content created by one office can be used by other offices in the system. This reduces the duplication of effort that was happening across the system.
3. One step upgrades: When a new feature is introduced to the system it is available to all the sites in the system. Again, this reduces duplication and opens up new ideas to the entire group.
4. All the social networking links were built as well. Each office now has their own Twitter and Facebook pages so that clients in their region can keep track of each individual office instead of being blasted by updates from all the offices.

Often times when sites for a large company are created like this you will find that they all look the same with only some changes in text or logos. Not so with the system built for Tradebank. This system is highly customizable so that each office can be extremely creative in their designs and content. Take a look…

Tradebank of Greenville:

Tradebank of Charlotte:

Tradebank of Orlando:

There are many more examples, but you can check those out over at the Tradebank website. As you can see though, each office has been able to create their own look, even though the administration system is the same.

This system has helped Tradebank manage the different sites from one location saving them time and effort (and thus money) while giving all of their independent barter exchange owners an advantage over their competition. Stay tuned for even more updates to this system and the individual barter sites.

I will say that it is an exciting time around here right now. Several projects should be wrapped up soon and there are new projects are in the hopper as well. It suffices to say that business is good, and for that I am very thankful.

A big change that has come about recently is the release of WordPress 3. I’ve done a few upgrades and the results have been excellent. What a fantastic upgrade to an already existing product. I will be updating this code, and the site template as well, in the not too distant future in order to take advantage of some of the new code so stay tuned for that. Of course that will have to take a back seat to client projects, but the thought is there regardless…

That’s it for now. Back to client work…

This tongue-in-cheek site was put together in order to have a little fun with people who innocently ask questions on the Internet about topics that they could very easily find the answers to if they only took a moment to type the question into Google instead of sending it in an email or posting it on a message board. And if you’ve been around on the Internet for very long you know exactly what I mean…

On the technical side… the site uses a bit of custom programming to:

1. Handle the scripting on the home page.
2. Display the correct search results from Google.
3. Create a custom “award” for the user to download.
4. Handle the emailing of the site to “friend’s”… keeping the spammers at bay using re-captcha (which nobody likes but is a must-have in an open environment like this)… and generating an email tracking system that allows people to add themselves to a “block” list so that the site will not send them any additional email.

So the next time someone asks you “Does the light go off when I close the refrigerator door?” you can simply point them to http://youcangoogletoo.com and they can learn how to search for answers to life’s most profound questions (in just THREE easy steps). We hope you enjoy.

So when you are building those social pages out there, remember that your goal is to leverage those sites to drive traffic to YOUR site, not to those sites. If your social space contains too much information, or more information that your “real” website then you are hurting yourself.

Some things to consider:

1. Your goal in the social space should be to push your information out to where your users are and by doing that draw them back to your site. If you post everything on Facebook (for example), then why would your Facebook fans bother to come to your site?
2. When you create content on social sites you are building the social site, not your own. Their site, their users, their ads, their control. Again… leverage that tool, don’t build your business on it. Put YOUR content on YOUR site, under YOUR control, with whatever other message you want those users to see.
3. When a user sees ALL of your information about a given topic on a social site, and therefore doesn’t bother to visit YOUR site, they may miss other items of interest that you’ve spent time developing (look to the right for an example). So don’t leave them out there, bring them home.
4. Lastly, remember that trendy, social type sites come and go. Their popularity may be huge this month, but six months down the road it may fall off when the next new site comes along. So if you have all this great content, and “followers”/”fans”/”peeps”, and posts on your “wall” telling the world how great you are… and it’s all out there on your Tripod account… what do you do when the next thing comes down the road, rebuild it all? Conversely, if you are pointing all those things towards your own site then you can just go with the flow… and when the next big thing happens you just draw customers from that site as well.

So keep building those social pages. Reach out to where your current, and new, customers spend their time. Just remember that your goal is to bring them back to your site and build those pages and posts accordingly.

Keep Your Social Network Professional

Here’s what I mean by that:

If you have a social networking profile that is for PROFESSIONAL use, make sure that the comments/status updates that you post are at the VERY LEAST spelled correctly. You wouldn’t want a typo on your website or in an email to your clients, why would you have that on a “tweet” that your clients read?

Secondly… and I cannot stress this one enough, this is no place for Internet Slang or Instant Message acronyms. Phrases like “u” and “ur”, “rotflmao”, “kewl”, and “thanx” have no place in a comment or status update. It just doesn’t look professional and lessens your credibilty with your audience, unless of course your audience is twelve years old.

These comments/updates still represent you and YOUR COMPANY to the rest of the world. Make sure they represent properly.

All that being said, if you feel that you must be able to just toss anything out there, set up a second account that your customers aren’t linked to and say what you want, however you want to say it.

With Microsoft’s new engine “Bing“, and the upcoming Yahoo/Microsoft team-up, Google does have to stay on top of things. So we’ll just have to see if these new changes, which again will be mostly transparent to end users, will make any real impact or if they will just help Google stay on top.

Regardless though, the landscape is changing. And if you operate a web site that relies on search results you need to be aware of these, and other, changes. While Google still maintains a healthy dominance, they are not the only game in town. So a little attention to some of the “lesser” players is certainly in order. So brush up on your Microsoft SEO tactics if you haven’t already. The differences are minor (mostly dealing with how inbound linking is handled from what we can tell), but with Microsoft making gains on this front you don’t want to get caught napping…

Of course questions and comments are welcomed, as always.

RSS? Really Simple Syndication. Bet that helped…

RSS is the juice that keeps the Web moving...

RSS is the “juice” behind Web 2.0. As we discussed in the first part of this article on leveraging the web, in today’s Internet there are two types of businesses, those that use new technology to push their messages to their customers, and those that are still trying to figure out how to do that. RSS is part of the “how you to that.”

Now, we aren’t going to go get all technical here. You don’t need to “know” a new coding language (don’t go run out and buy “RSS for Dummies“… yes, that is a real book). Here’s what I want you to do:

1. Become RSS “aware”: It’s all around you. Look for the RSS Icon. You might even click on it. You might be a bit confused by what you see, but we’ll get to that in a second. The point is that RSS is “everywhere” these days (except on your site, right?). Now… if we could just figure out how to leverage RSS to OUR advantage…
2. Get an RSS “reader”: This is the important part. You can read most RSS feeds directly in your browser, but then you’ll have to open each feed EVERY time
   you want to see what is going on with that site. That isn’t very efficient, is it? No. And that’s sort of the point of all of this… LEVERAGING the tools… So go grab yourself an RSS reader. You can Google “RSS readers” and find something that works for you. I personally recommend Google’s Reader (http://www.google.com/reader) as that allows me to keep track of my feeds from pretty much any browser.
3. Subscribe to at least TWO RSS feeds using your reader: Start with the RSS feed for this site then add at least one more feed. Remember, we’re talking about using the tools here. Subscribing to just one feed is certainly a start, but the real benefits of will become apparent when you are keeping up with multiple feeds at the same time from one location. This is the power of Web 2.0.

I should also note here that you can pull RSS feeds into other sites as well. If you’re on Facebook (FeO is!) you can import feeds directly to your profile using several methods (Google for more information). Again… that’s the “magic” to all of this… you can read this data from pretty much anywhere you already are… now… if there were only a way for YOU to get YOUR information out to YOUR customers in such a manner…

You’ve built your website. You’ve pasted it on everything that goes out of your office or business, from letterhead, to receipts, to email signatures, to business cards. Your “www” is all around you. But that’s just it. It’s all around YOU. But your customers only see it when they need something from you (you hope). How can you engage your clients in such a manner as to stay on their proverbial radar?

Back in “the day” you would gather your client’s email addresses and every so often send out a mass email about your latest product offering. Or perhaps an actual mailing using the good old “direct mail” method. Maybe you did some cold-calling. Whatever it took to get your message in front of your clients, you did.

And all the while, your website is sitting there. Waiting. Hoping that one of those customers, or perhaps even a new customer, would stumble by and go bananas over this great new product/service/idea/annoucement (you did put this great new product/service/idea/annoucement on your webiste, didn’t you?). If we could only figure out a way to put the information on your site and then instantly inform your customers, and potential customers, of this information. Well, perhaps we can, and it’s Really Simple.

Over the course of the next few posts I’ll be exploring just how to do that. We’ll be talking about things like “Web 2.0″, and RSS, and a bunch of other terms (some of which I’ll make up as I go along, just for entertainment value). So stay tuned…