It is time.  You’ve put it off long enough. It’s time for you to get that new-you feeling– LinkedIn.  A profile on LinkedIn will re-identify your professionalism, expand your network and fine-tune your interconnectivity.

Professional

-LinkedIn membership includes executives from all 2010 Fortune 500 companies.

-According to Jesse Noyes, Corporate Reporter for Eloqua, LinkedIn’s hiring solutions – which includes recruiting, job posting and subscriptions services – represents 41% of its net revenue. 

Expansive

-LinkedIn’s membership grew by one million new members every ten days since fall 2010.

-Its 100 million members reside in over 200 countries, and over 50% of these members live outside the US.

Interconnected

- LinkedIn uses information on the site to acquire data about your companies listed on your profile.  Your job listings will automatically reveal links to profiles of all those who have been and continue to be involved with the particular company.

-With options to display business presentations, upload and manage files, link your Twitter account and synchronize your blog to your LinkedIn profile, third party applications on LinkedIn keep your colleagues close and your customers closer.

How to begin?

Your profile will be the first thing people associate with you.  Upload a crisp headshot to prove you are a credible source and list all areas of experience to promote your qualifications.

Optimizing your profile will increase relevance on search engines. When you hyperlink URL addresses to your company’s site or your personal blog site, make the default display text the name of the actual site (“Dezinsinteractive” for example.)  Also, using keywords in your experience descriptions will make your profile more searchable.

Recommendations from co-workers and employers will reveal how others value your expertise. Utilize the option to ask select contacts to recommend you on LinkedIn.  Simply click on the blue “Ask for recommendation” button on your profile, and follow the directions.

Build your network by adding connections! You can either browse your e-mail address book to find contacts already LinkedIn or search for people you know in the box on the top right.

Post your profile URL address to relevant Web sites, blogs, cards, email signatures, Facebook pages, etc, in order to promote your LinkedIn identity.  Don’t forget to update your profile regularly.  The less you update, the less likely people are to interact with you.

Create a company profile following the same steps for creating a personal profile. To leverage your company’s likeability, share information about your industry by creating a group LinkedIn and inviting others to join. 

The next time you are stuck in a traffic jam, think about this – on average, people spend 15 minutes per day on YouTube®.  And according to a website monitoring survey, 24 hours of video is being uploaded to YouTube® every minute.  So, in the time it takes you to tweet about your business, a full day’s worth of YouTube® material is infesting the Internet.  Let’s face it, YouTube® is viral.  And you should catch the bug.  If Lady Gaga’s “Bad Romance” video can get 185 million views, think of how much traffic you can drive to your site with a popular YouTube® video.

Buckle your seatbelt – here are some helpful tips when using YouTube® to drive traffic to your website:

1. Drive carefully:  One way to attract people to your site is to first, drive traffic to your YouTube® video.  It may seem tedious, but if you map it out carefully, the end result will be bumper-to-bumper traffic on your own web site.  The more you entice people to your YouTube® video, the more likely you are to get those viewers browsing your organization’s web site.  So, how do you let people know about your YouTube® video? Bookmark it, refine its description, tags and SEO titles, “like” it on Facebook® and “tweet” about it until you run out of gas.

2.  Directing traffic:  Final destination? Your web site, of course.  Point your video’s viewers in the right direction.   Attach a link to your site in the description portion under your YouTube® video. Keep in mind YouTube® does not accept the html address for direct linkage.  You must insert the full URL.  If possible, add the link toward the beginning of your video description so viewers don’t miss the exit.

3.  Leave them hanging: We have all experienced the agony after reading “to be continued” at the end of our favorite show and the anticipation that consumes as we wait for the next episode.  You can also use this theory with your YouTube® videos.  If your video presents a tutorial, split it up into two parts, giving your viewers a reason to come back.  Or, even better, post the second portion on your web site.  This will force viewers to click the link to your site in search of part II. 

4. Offer gifts:  Valentine’s Day may come and go, but the what’s-in-it-for-me mentality is forever.  Use this to your advantage when strategizing for your YouTube® video.  Offer viewers a gift correlated with your video, and make the gift available only on your website.  Design a helpful PDF document related to the content in your virtual tutorial.  Maybe the PDF features a list of the video’s main points, or maybe you want to include useful links and guidelines about your topic.  Be creative.  Everyone cherishes a homemade present.

5.  Be straight up!  In your video, tell your viewers there is a link to your web site below, and tell them to click on it.  You won’t be stepping on anyone’s toes.  Also, repeat the announcement at least two times, and you will be more likely to get viewers to click.  But don’t over-do it.  Too much advertising for your website may run some people off.  Stick to two or three web site references per video.  Promoting the link to your site more than three times may come off as pushy.

6.  Sharing the wealth:  There is no harm in using other successful videos to draw attention to your site.  You can take a popular video with 4 million views and tag it to your site, “like” it on Facebook®, blog about it or even incorporate it into an online article for your organization.  Think about your target audience and what they want to watch.  What will they think is funny?  What will give them goose bumps? 

7. If you tube it, they will come:  If the Internet had a mysterious voice, my guess is it would sound a lot like the unknown soothsayer in Field of Dreams telling you to have a little faith.  You’ve done all you can at this point - enhanced your video, posted follow-up documents on your site, tagged links and videos, tweeted, “liked” and tied up all lose ends.  Now, let your viewers do the rest of the work. Be patient and persistent with the goal in mind.  More YouTube®-ers means more traffic on your site.  Can you hear the horns honking?

William "Carey" Long, Baton Rouge fitness expert, has hired DezinsInteractive (DI) to brand his national campaign and identity with the following features: mobile app development, a fully equipped web site and customized marketing strategies. Long, founder and CEO of Complete Fitness, recently established national exposure for the release of his new book REAL LIFE FITNESS.

For a brilliant example of how dezinsINTERACTIVE helps other companies brand themselves, look no further than the design agency’s
own logo.

A green and gray sphere embossed with a leaf, the symbol perfectly conveys the natural flow that’s taken dezinsINTERACTIVE from humble origins to award-winning web design and marketing agency. The idea of synergy even extends to the firm’s branded office interior with fresh greens and tans, representing their organic approach to client relationships.

Founder and managing partner Orhan McMillan uses words like “spherical” and “synergy” to explain how dezinsINTERACTIVE helps clients discover and deliver their message through design, technology and marketing. Far more than just website designers, dezinsINTERACTIVE’s full menu of identity, internet and exposure services are tailored to reinforce each client’s market presence.

The circle of success is powered by collaboration.

“From the moment a new client calls, I am listening—to their goals, to their personalities, to everything that makes their company unique,” McMillan explains. “Then our creative director comes in and listens. Then our programmers. We are all collaborating to determine what their company’s identity is and how to brand that.”

“A lot of designers try to make the customer fit the market. We do the opposite,” McMillan adds. “That’s why our slogan says we ‘revolve the market around you.’ “

“We are always two steps ahead in terms of innovation, whether it’s social networking or a technology our clients haven’t even thought of,” says Razi, an information systems graduate of LSU and IT manager with 15 years of experience. “We get our clients thinking in new areas.”

McMillan notes that dezinsINTERACTIVE is also unique in that it has “an amazing set of designers and an amazing set of programmers. Usually you only get one or the other. “

The results are plain to see. dezinsINTERACTIVE recently won a silver ADDY from the Baton Rouge Chapter of the American Advertising Federation, an impressive feather in a young agency’s cap.

McMillan is also proud of dezinsINTERACTIVE’s proprietary content management system (CMS) that allows customers to update their own websites. “Most CMS programs are cumbersome, complex and non-intuitive. We designed a CMS that is simple to use yet just as powerful.” Thanks to its staff’s expertise, dezinsINTERACTIVE websites are truly customizable far beyond the standard templates. dezinsINTERACTIVE also excels at campaigns for Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and LinkedIn, as well as iPhone apps to increase brand awareness, customer loyalty and traffic.

It all goes back to dezinsINTERACTIVE’s mission of revolving the market around its clients.

“Our clients are at the natural center of all we do,” McMillan says, “and from there we empower their market relationships, new ones and the ones they’ve had for years.”

The American Advertising Federation-Baton Rouge (AAF-BR) hosted its annual ADDY® Awards show on Saturday, February 19, 2011 at the Varsity Theater. Inspired by a speakeasy establishment from the Prohibition era, the 2011 ADDY® Awards featured a “Work Hard, Speakeasy” theme.

The ADDY® Awards recognize and award outstanding creativity in the advertising field. More than 66 local agencies, individuals and students entered the ADDY® competition this year, for a total of 475 entries. 45 gold ADDY®s, 53 silver ADDYs, six Special Judge’s Awards, Best of Show and Best of Category Awards were presented.

The team at dezinsINTERACTIVE was awarded a Silver ADDY® Award – Interactive Media for the web design for The Corbel Distinctive Gifts and Interiors of Jackson, La. www.TheCorbel.com

Happy’s Running Club has chosen dezinsInteractive Web Development and Advertising Agency  (DI) to manage the brand identity and web development for the club’s new race sequence, The Nightlife Series.  The DI team will facilitate marketing strategies and create all promotional materials - customized logos, advertisements, interactive Web sites and social media profiles - for each of the three races associated with the series, which begins March 26 with Happy’s 5k.

Lose 20 pounds. Eat more vegetables. Get more sleep. New Year’s resolutions can get old fast. This year, instead of slaving away at the gym, try focusing on how to improve your marketing plan for 2011. Last year’s economic slump may have caused a set back in your good intentions to market successfully. But the following resolutions will guide you in budget-conscious ways start your 2011 marketing plan off on the right foot.

1. Socialize: The holiday parties may have died down, but your New Year marketing plan still calls for building new relationships and tending to old ones. According to Dawn Berryman, successful marketing blogger, social media sites like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn are free and fast ways to expand your network in order to reach potential business partners, customers and employees. In 2011, social media is your number one way to jumpstart your marketing plan.
2. Stay in Touch: After establishing your relationships, it is crucial to stay in touch. E-news is a great way to maintain consistent contact with your site visitors and potential customers. By offering a sign-up box on your web site, visitors can easily subscribe to a monthly newsletter email. You can thank subscribers by sending them coupons or updated promotion. This strategy is sure to build loyalty between your business and its clients.
3. Link up: When trying to increase your Search Engine Optimization, it’s all about links. By adding links to your site, you will improve your search engine results. Some sites are even willing to share links at no cost, according to Berryman, who also suggests taking advantage of free online directories. Adding links to your social media sites can also benefit your SEO.
4. Get Real: The ease of digital communication often leaves us feeling detached. Before we know it, the relationships we’ve built online are only a part of a pseudo network lacking human contact and verbal communication, criteria that are vital to a successful marketing plan. In 2011, pick up the phone, attend local meetings and networking events, visit your local Chamber of Commerce, shake hands, get face-to-face. There is nothing old-fashioned about introducing yourself. By getting real with your community, you’re more likely to leave a lasting impression.

“Dress to impress” does not only apply to you and your colleagues. According to the 2010-2011 world of web design, your web site is also expected to be dressed to the nines in the latest web design trends. With more personalized touches, web design this year is all about big, bold, and beautiful. Here are some tips to keep up with the trends.

Your Grand Intro

The first rule of thumb is to properly introduce yourself without scaring away your audience. And with an intro box, you can do this in a concise way. The intro box saves you the stress of creating the perfect “about” page and forces your introduction to be short and sweet. Hasty viewers appreciate brevity.

And typically, when your viewer loses interest, web designers like to throw in the irritating pop-up box. But a new trend this year is transforming this outcast from pest to popular. The sleeker modal box is a similar pop-up feature that offers a more subtle appearance and is less likely to annoy your visitor.

Big

Today’s “information age” pressures you to accumulate clutter on your home page. So how do you help viewers sort through the rubble? “Biggie size” your logo, enlarge your header and footer, increase your image sizes. Web designers use these oversized elements on home pages to point out the most important details to the viewer – company logo, for example. These large images will create a sense of power for your company and act as instant reminders for the viewers to acknowledge exactly who they’re browsing. In 2010-2011, don’t be afraid to do it big!

Bold

Experimenting with fonts is another brave shift in today’s web design trends. More sites are using the slab typeface to highlight their main concepts. The slab typeface is all-caps, “Old West” lettering format typically used for key phrases and headings. Its bold and daring look is also a way to combine the oversized lettering and vintage style trends.

Mixing up your typography is also way to add an edgy appeal to your site. For instance, a slogan made up of varying font types and sizes serves as both information and art. The word collage will also keep you from junking up your page with an excess of photos.

Beautiful

Other web design styles of 2010-2011 include homemade sketches and vintage themes. The hand-drawn look is a way to individualize your site with a less formal touch, and it creates a whimsical tone. Depending on your target audience, you can also use a retro style – a 50’s diner scene or an old marquee border - to add a flare of playfulness or nostalgia.

Styling And Profiling

Today, many sites are mimicking the style of a magazine layout to offer viewers a familiar way to sort through the site’s pages. The magazine layout is especially common in blogs. And when it comes to getting personal, another new idea is to spotlight your praised staff member or company president in a creative, one-page profile. Brighten up the colors and use a fun variety of fonts to truly express the person’s personality. Don’t be afraid to be dramatic. Such details may help create stronger relationships between your company and your audience as viewers learn about the profiled person through particularized visuals.

Article Originally Published: Mashable.com
Author: Ben Parr

With a few tweaks and an interface change, Google has placed location and location-based search front-and-center in its search engine.

The big change, announced earlier today on Google’s Blog, is that Google has moved the user location setting to the left-hand panel of the search engine results page. This feature automatically detects your current location and tailors search results based on that. For example, searches for “pizza” or “gyms” will provide local business results near your location, which tend to be a lot more relevant than a Wikipedia article on everybody’s favorite cheesy snack.

The change rolls out starting today and will be available to users in 40-plus languages sometime soon.

Now that the location setting will be on the right side of the search engine results page, users can easily change it if Google gets it wrong or if a user wants to find restaurants near a different location. Say you’re about to travel to New Orleans and you want to find the best gumbo near your hotel; all you have to do is type in the new city or zip code and Google will adjust search results based on that location.

While nothing has changed in the back-end of location-based search, the simple fact that Google has prominently placed it on the left-hand side, where millions of eyeballs will catch it, is not a small change. Google clearly understands that location plays a vital role in search, and with the rise of mobile and GPS, Google has been adding more and more location-based search features.

Today’s changes are just as much about promoting location in search as it is about giving users more control over their privacy. Do you think today’s change will get more users to utilize location in their searches? Let us know in the comments.

Are you ready to take the next step? We’re not talking about marriage, just Search Engine Optimization. Chances are you’ve put off this proposal for far too long in fear of making the wrong choice. And, yes, selecting the right Search Engine Optimizer (SEO) for your company’s Web site should be a careful process. But, there are ways to prevent your cold feet. In fact, there are plenty of trustworthy, valuable SEO’s willing to help your Web site achieve the most effective results. Similar to choosing a spouse, the first trick is to really get to know your partner.

What does an SEO do exactly?

Simply put, an SEO modifies clients’ Web sites in order to improve their search engine results. This may involve different techniques like restructuring your Web site’s content or code to gain more effective search results, or even optimizing content on other Web sites relevant to your own.

Who can I trust?

Sad, but true, there are scammers out there.  According to Google’s Webmaster Guidelines, here are some questions you may want to ask your potential SEO to sift the good guys:

• May I review samples of your previous work?
• What are some past success stories?
• How do you measure your success?
• Do you follow the Google Webmaster Guidelines?
• Do you offer any online marketing services?
• What kind of results do you expect and in what timeframe?
• What type of experience do you have within my industry?
• Are you experienced in my location (city/country)?
• Do you have experience developing international sites?
• What are your most important SEO techniques?
• How long have you been in business?
• How do you typically communicate with your client?
• Will you freely share with me all the changes you make to my site?
• Will you provide detailed information about your recommendations and the explanations of each?

What do the experts say?

In a recent article, Karl Ribas, Project manager at All Web Promotion, also offered direction in the search for the right SEO:

Request References: Sift through the top listings, focusing more on those that appear on the bottom half of the first page.  According to Ribas, this is where the more resourceful information – comments, reviews, articles - will be located.  This way, you can gather an overall vibe based on how others feel about your SEO.

Search their keywords: Seeing how well your potential SEO ranks will reveal how your company may also be ranked.  Remember that not all good SEO’s will rank high for “SEO Consultant,” or other obvious keywords; there are simply too many SEO’s out there.  “Focus on how well the SEO ranks for the keywords they were brave enough to provide and see first hand just how good the SEO is at SEO,” Ribas said. 

Talk it out:  It is important to speak with more than one representative if you are dealing with an SEO company.  To avoid a maze of phone conversations with a sales team, simply request to speak with members of the “SEO team,” who will more likely be able to answer your questions.

Now, to weed out the bad guys, here are some red flags to look out for:

Surprise emails: Be suspicious if an SEO randomly sends you email notifications and invitations.  These shady messages may even be personalized and addressed directly to you.

Tooting their own horn: Don’t fall for the SEO that claims to have the #1 Google ranking or “priority submit.”  According to Google, there is no such thing!

Not telling the whole truth: Be skeptical if the SEO is not entirely clear in its explanations for doing certain things on your behalf.  If an SEO says anything about “doorway” pages or “throwaway” domains, your site may be removed entirely from Google’s index, according to Google’s Webmaster Guidelines. 

Link sharing: Do not fall for the optimizer who encourages you to have a link to the SEO, or talks about "free-for-all" links, or advises you share your link to hundreds of other SEO’s.  According to Google, “These are typically useless exercises that don't affect your ranking in the results of the major search engines -- at least, not in a way you would likely consider to be positive.”

Content Management Systems are a great way to maintain the integrity of your web site by allowing you, not a web designer, to have control of your content.. When you look for a CMS, look for one that is designed to provide a user-friendly environment that can accommodate multiple users with varying skill levels. Some CMS systems are designed as software that installs on your servers or your PC, while other CMS’s are hosted by the system’s developers and accessed over the Internet via a browser. This type of CMS is generally less expensive than those installed on your server.

Key benefits of implementing a CMS

Two core benefits of any well-implemented Web content management system for both marketing/sales and IS departments are broadly accepted and most often discussed:

• Lower maintenance costs through leaner content update processes because content owners can publish directly without costly help from Web designers.
  
• More current and correct Web content because the delays associated with marketing to IS to marketing handoffs during the content development process are eliminated, which translates to a better site and more traffic.

But just because these are two key benefits that you should get from any CMS implementation does not mean that all CMS systems on the market will deliver them in your environment --- or even that they are the most important benefits that you could achieve. Below we will outline some of the key kinds of functionality you may want to look for in a CMS package, and we will give two examples of sample CMS implementations (each drawn from the experiences of multiple companies) in order to relate these functions to actual business benefits.

 

EASY TO USE

Another thing you should look for is the features of the CMS. It should have all the features of MS Word and be so simple to use that your content developers will be able to begin creating and editing content with ease. CMS systems come in multiple flavors and can be deployed for both small and large companies.

VARIOUS LEVELS OF ACCESS

Many of the better-designed CMS’s are based on authentication level, which means that content developers are granted permission to access the authorized areas within the system. This permission-based content access management utility is very popular and is designed and developed for creating, accessing, and managing menus, submenus, hyperlinks, new page creations, etc. It should offer authorized content developers the ability to navigate quickly and intuitively, using pull-down and drill-down menus to get to specific areas of your web site. Most CMS’s have an auto-log-out procedure that can be implemented if a content editor leaves an active session open without making any changes for a certain predetermined length of time. In such cases all unsaved work should be queued for immediate review once the content developer logs back in.

CLEAN URL DESIGN

One of the key features to look for when evaluating a CMS is its ability to publish content with clean URLs. Not only because you want to be publishing content with nice clean URLs, but because this tends to betray the manufacturer’s underlying understanding of how the web works

URLs should be readable – a visitor should be able to get a good idea of what the page is about simply through the component parts of a well structured URL. This can be hard to achieve if your content management system constructs its URLs using obscure article or category IDs – the visitor can’t get a sense of the page’s content from numerical IDs. What’s more, descriptive, readable URLs index better for search engines and therefore make your content more findable.

Recent and Emerging Technologies

With Web 2.0 taking firm hold, site visitors increasingly expect to see a range of more interactive features. Technologies like Ajax are easy to implement on the front-end, but can your content management system service the requests for data that are needed? Make sure that RSS feeds are also available.

Multi-site Support

If you run, or plan to run, multiple content managed sites it can be really useful to have a single CMS that can handle multiple sites rather than multiple instances of a single-site system. Not only can it save on cost, but also in the administrative overhead of needing to manage, upgrade and maintain multiple systems.

 

IMMEDIATE RESPONSE TIME

Find a CMS that is designed with no restrictions on page lengths and quantity of content, and allows your content developers to preview new or changed content easily. Users should be able to make multiple content changes that will be made immediately without extensive wait or reload time.

PHOTO OPTIONS

Pictures and images are extremely important for some company’s web sites. They may need to upload new photos often, or remove them when they are obsolete. Therefore you need to find out if that option for your photos is available in the system you choose. An important question to ask is, how much control will you have of where and how your pictures appear within the layout of your web pages? This may seem like a very simple question, but you would be surprised how many people do not ask it.

TRAINING/SUPPORT

Another question is, how easy are the tools within the CMS to use and how much training, if any, and support you will get from the CMS’s developer?

Your web site is a critical connection between your company and your customers/visitors. Keeping your content up-to-date can be the most effective way to sell your products and services and ensure that your web site works for you, not against you. There are many features to look for when choosing a content management system, and many of them depend on the particular needs of your project. However, by spending time in evaluation and paying notice to some of the more core issues you can help to ensure that your relationship with your next content management system is not an unhappy one.

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