August 31st, 2010
This post originally appeared on the American Express OPEN Forum, where Mashable regularly contributes articles about leveraging social media and technology in small business.
For all the praise that brand advertisers have for social media, they must be aware that it’s very much a double-edged sword. And for all the free marketing, advertising and brand promotion via Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, Linked In, and other platforms used to help build an identity and relationship with your customers, it can just as quickly turn on you and your brand.
Social media disasters occur for a number of reasons, the first being that your company probably messed up. It may not have been intentional, but something, somewhere down the line, went wrong enough for someone to complain and it was enough for others to vocalize that complaint en masse. One mistake is all it takes for social media to turn against your brand.
No one is perfect and you can’t expect to please everyone all the time, so the best trick is to be prepared for how to handle things if your company finds itself under attack in the social realm. Here are three examples of companies who were attacked by social media and how they handled, or should have handled the situation. Learn from their mistakes or successes so you can stay on social media’s good side.
Read more …
Posted in FL1, General, Marketing | No Comments »
August 6th, 2010
It’s the summer holidays for many, and things typically slow down.
Not for us I’m glad to say, as the internet gets busier and busier with more online business being done than ever before.
A key part of making any business work is being to measure its performance and make effective decisions on your findings.
The internet is no different.
Using tools such as Google Analytics, it’s possible to see what’s working and more importantly not working with your website.
We continue to get asked more questions about Google Analytics than any other subject, that’s why we’re offering a free training session throughout this August.
Drop us a line or follow this link if you’d like to know more.
Posted in FL1, General, Marketing, Search Engines, Technology | No Comments »
August 2nd, 2010
It’s been an interesting past few weeks at FL1 Group.
As well as building blogs, shops and content managed websites, we’ve been involved with securing a company’s website that wasn’t PCI/DSS compliant. The website stored credit card details in a database that was hacked into and the credit card details were retrieved. Two of them were used fraudulently, and that’s where the story began. The banks got involved with fines and costs to recover the costs of the fraud. Added to this the company has been forced to go through a programme of becoming fully compliant. To-date, adding the costs of consultants, website changes, fines, costs to re-issue cards, and significant amount of off-line processing changes and new equipment, the cost to the business at this current time runs in excess of £170,000!
This particular business is lucky enough to be owned by a much larger parent company that could absorb these costs, but these sorts of costs would easily put most small companies out of business.
It’s been an eye opening project that’s for sure, and based on what we’re learning from it, we’ll certainly be putting together a seminar to help more business understand what PCI/DSS is all about and how to stay on the right side of the banks.
It’s not all been about “the dark side” of the internet though…honest!
Ali’s been settling back in and taking to his new role as designer and project manager like a duck to water.
We’ve also teamed up with some a partner that will help our online stores excel using the shopping and affiliate portals, which has to be a good thing in these challenging times.
More on that next month!
As Google’s superb Analytics package gets better and better, we’re proud to announce some free workshops we’re running throughout the summer holidays. We install it on every single website we build, so if you’d like to know how to see how your website is really working, let us know.
The most important thing to consider, is tools like Google Analytics allow you to discover what’s working, but more importantly what’s not!
If you’d like to book a Google Analytics workshop or want to know more about PCI/DSS, drop us a line or call 01727 739812.
See you next month!
Posted in E-commerce, FL1, General, Search Engines, Seminars, Technology | No Comments »
May 25th, 2010
One school of thought could be, so long as it works and achieves your business’ objective, no.
This thinking is perfectly fine, until you need to develop your website further or more importantly find a developer and platform that can take your website to the next level.
A little history?
To generalise you could put website development technologies in to two categories: Microsoft, or non-Microsoft (Betamax or VHS if you will!).
Circa 1996 onwards, Microsoft introduced their well developed Visual Basic technology (VB) to website development in the form of Active Server Pages (ASP).
ASP was quick to learn, and powerful in that it was easy to create a database driven website with very little programming experience. It became popular with entry-level web developers and experienced programmers looking to move to the web. Running on a Microsoft Windows server platform, it also suited most businesses that used Microsoft products as a core part of their business.
For non-Microsoft developers, technologies such as Perl and CGI were also popular however not so widely adopted and in some case more specialist. These technologies require the long serving and well established UNIX/Linux platform.
As things moved on, PHP started to become popular with those not wishing to jump on the Microsoft band-wagon as a well documented, easy to learn, and flexible language, however in the early stages wasn’t as powerful and well developed as many comparable languages.
Fast-track to 2002 and Microsoft announced its new .NET programming platform. This replaced the popular ASP technology, and offered a far more powerful toolset, aimed in part at enabling existing Windows developers to develop for the web with a minimal learning curve.
This was a significant step forward in one sense; however the complexity and power of ASP.NET came at a price. Compared to its predecessor, it was complex and a steep learning curve.
ASP.NET to some became a daunting learning curve, and to many developers new and old, PHP become a better adopted alternative and FREE. At this point, the shift began!
So today?
PHP as a language is well adopted and without question the most popular language for most small to medium scale websites. Microsoft’s ASP.NET is also a strong contender and continues to hold its own.
Why does all this matter?
In our opinion some 70% of most web development agencies will use PHP as their language of choice for small to medium scale websites. It is a language that is productive and easy to learn and well suited too many websites.
For more complex websites with high volumes of transactions or users, consider Microsoft .NET or Java. If you need integration with third party systems, Microsoft products (such as Microsoft Office) or external web services, Microsoft .NET is a good route to consider.
For us at FL1, we’ve got an equally strong footing in ASP, ASP.NET and PHP and dare we say; we’re different for that simple fact. That said; each technology is quite different in its own way and better suited to different types of website.
For more information drop us a line at client@fl1group.com or call us on 01727 739812.
Posted in FL1, Technology | No Comments »
April 1st, 2010
1. To Express Your Thoughts and Opinions
You have something to say, and blogs provide a place to say it and be heard.
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2. To Market or Promote Something
Blogging is a great way to help market or promote yourself or your business, product or service.
3. To Help People
Many blogs are written to help people who may be going through similar situations that the blogger has experienced. Many parenting and health-related blogs are written for this purpose.
4. To Establish Yourself as an Expert
Blogs are wonderful tools to help bloggers establish themselves as experts in a field or topic. For example, if you’re trying to get a job in a specific field or hoping to publish a book on a specific topic, blogging can help legitimize your expertise and expand your online presence and platform.
5. To Connect with People Like You
Blogging brings like-minded people together. Starting a blog can help you find those people and share your opinions and thoughts.
6. To Make a Difference
Many blogs are issue-based meaning the blogger is trying to provide information to sway people’s thinking in a certain direction. Many political blogs and social issues blogs are written by bloggers who are trying to make a difference in their own ways.
7. To Stay Active or Knowledgeable in a Field or Topic
Since successful blogging is partially dependent on posting frequency and providing updated, fresh information, it’s a perfect way to help a blogger stay abreast of the events in a specific field or topic.
8. To Stay Connected with Friends and Family
The world has shrunk since the Internet has become more accessible. Blogs provide a simple way for family and friends to stay connected from different parts of the world by sharing stories, photos, videos and more.
9. To Make Money
It’s important to point out that most bloggers don’t make a lot of money blogging, but the potential does exist to generate revenue from your blog with hard work and commitment. There are many bloggers who bring in big bucks. With patience and practice, you can make money through advertising and other income-generating activities on your blog.
10. To Have Fun and Be Creative
Many people start a blog simply for fun. Perhaps a blogger is a fan of a particular actor or loves knitting and wants to share that passion through a blog. One of the most important keys to successful blogging is having a passion about your blog’s topic, so you can write prolifically about it. Some of the best and most interesting blogs started out as blogs that were written just for fun and to give the blogger a creative outlet.
Posted in Marketing, Search Engines, Technology | No Comments »