Posts Tagged seattle web development
Five Web Design Elements E-Commerce Entrepreneurs Can’t Afford to Ignore
Posted by Rory Martin in Web Design and Development on February 14, 2013
If you’re in the business of e-commerce then your website is your biggest advantage. Whether you choose to work with Seattle web design companies like Rory Martin, or to attempt to do everything yourself, you have to know what works in an e-commerce site, and what sends people running. E-commerce is all about conversion which means your site has to load quickly, use converting text, and have plenty of easy to view and load images. You can also choose to use an e-commerce platform like ZenCart or a big e-commerce manager like Big Commerce, but your web design elements matter as well. Here are five elements that your Seattle web designer should be including in your website, and why.
Social and Email Integration
Today is a world of social and if yours is not integrated into your site, you might be missing out on one of your biggest marketing opportunities. Try integrating an email signup box offering a small 5-15% discount on either a single product or a purchase over a certain amount of money. You do not want to choose anything that would make you lose money, but you do want it to be enough to act as an incentive for signing up or liking you on your social. Include a Facebook ‘likes’ box, and allow people to easily follow you on Twitter. You can then utilize email, and social account to share special deals and sales, as well as to drive attention towards new products which is essentially free advertisement.
Efficient Search Options
Some ecommerce websites convert as much as 16% of their traffic into sales. Others only convert 1 to 4%. While there are a lot of variables involved in the difference, one of the biggest is an efficient search bar. If your customers cannot find what they are looking for, they cannot make a purchase. Including a sophisticated search bar in your website and then properly tagging all of your products can make a huge difference to your sales conversion.
Reviews
While it is true that reviews can be a bit double edged at times, most experts agree that you are better off including them. Try including the option to review an item, and then send a reminding email after the item has been confirmed as delivered. Many people are more likely to purchase an item if it has reviews, even if those reviews aren’t always five-star. In fact, having 3, 4, and 5 star reviews is more likely to sell a product than having only 5 star reviews because it looks more real.
Include Chat
If you don’t have the time to run and manage, or to pay someone, to manage a chat service, then you might want to do without. However, a study in 2012 showed that 76% of customers feel better about purchasing a high value item if they could chat about the product first. If you have your Seattle web designers integrate chat make sure that it is not offensive and does not pop up automatically, and make sure that someone who knows about your products is running it.
One Page Checkout
While it is true that many websites do require you to go through five or more pages before reaching checkout, you can convert as much as 20% more sales if you offer one page checkout. In fact, by simply not requiring your users to sign up, (no registration before sales) you can increase conversion by 23%! Make sure your checkout options are as fast and easy as possible in order to convert the most sales! What does your Seattle web design include? If it doesn’t include any of these important elements, you might want to consider hiring someone to add them in for you! The right website can increase your sales and conversion up from that low 1-4% and into the top of the charts at 16% or higher!
What Your Web Design Really Says About Your Business
Posted by Rory Martin in Web Design and Development on January 29, 2013
There are more than 664 million active websites in the world and that number is rapidly growing each minute. In 2011 alone, website statistics nearly doubled, flooding the web with millions of new sites, all competing for the same thing, traffic. That growth continued into 2012, and is expected to grow even more throughout 2013. Local Seattle web development has been growing too; with more than 97,000 active businesses in Seattle alone, the number of local websites is literally enormous. If you don’t stand out from the crowd, or your website sends the wrong message, you could be losing out on that fight for traffic and customers.
Your website is like the cover to a book and like that book, people will judge you by its cover. From the colors to the design, your website gives your traffic an initial impression of what to think about you. A sloppy design will obviously send them running, while a thoughtful or spacious one might intrigue them.
Color
Did you know that color is often used to represent an emotion, feeling or thought? For example, blue is used for honesty, courage, ocean, and calm. Bankers, lawyers, real estate agents, travel sites, and even doctors often use this color. Red on the other hand is linked with passion and fire, warmth, emotion, and creativity, but also with danger. Pink is linked with romance, love, cute, girls, motherhood and more. Yellow is linked to cheer, sunshine and children. If you haven’t considered what the colors on your site mean, you should definitely think again. Having an experienced web developer choose colors for your site based on brand image, and style might improve your public perception more than you think.
Design
A sloppy design is obviously bad but did you know that a busy or overly cluttered one can send a band impression as well? Studies show that overly cluttered websites are often considered to be spam as this is a tactic spam sites often use. Go for simplicity and allow a smaller amount of content to have greater impact. If you have a lot of content, create multiple pages, don’t put your bio, an order form, and your company history right there on your home page.
Do you feature your products or information on the home page? If not, do first time visitors know what it is you sell? Unless you have a store or e-commerce site your home-page shouldn’t look like an order form, but it should let people know what it is you do, and why they want to click another page to make an order or to contact you.
Content
Your content includes everything from your written content to photos on the site. As you might have guessed, these have a great deal of impact on what your visitors think about you. If you have grammar errors, overly stuffed keywords, or haven’t updated your content in years, you might have problem.
With photos, you should choose images that reflect your business and what you do. If stock photos are appropriate than you can by all means choose to go with these, but you might also want to consider hiring a photographer and having them capture images that are unique to you and your business. Seattle web development is on the rise and companies around the city are creating, updating, and managing their websites. If you want to compete, your website has to send the right message to your customers or clients.
Create an Eye-Catching Site with Innovative Web Design
Posted by Rory Martin in Web Design and Development on August 15, 2012
At RoryMartin.com, we put a lot of time and effort into web design and development, because we recognize the importance of the website as your introduction to the world. With people using the web for everything nowadays – research, communication, shopping, networking – a website must work hard to attract and keep an audience.
The perfect website should be unique, yet recognizable
This means that the site should be different enough from its competitors to be memorable and exciting, but that traditional features which appear on many sites should be in obvious and expected places. Have you noticed that Login buttons on social media sites are almost always in the top right? People will naturally gravitate to that area to log in or sign up to your site, and if it’s not there, they will become frustrated at having to search for it.
The perfect website should be easy to navigate
Web users expect to be able to achieve most things on-line in two or three clicks. If they search ‘Comedy nights’ and your website comes up, but listings aren’t immediately available in two clicks (or less!) they will quickly head somewhere else – and this is bad news for your Bounce Rate. A good website should also be completely navigable from within the site; this means that a user should never have to click their browser’s back button! These are the kinds of issues which usually asrise during the testing process, and are quickly resolved.
The perfect website should be eye-catching, but not overwhelming
When you want your website to stand out, it can be tempting to make the headers even bigger, use lots of different fonts and throw photos at it like confetti. Users who arrive at a site like this quite literally will not know where to look! At RoryMartin.com, we like to keep things slick and simple.
Against this background, a different header font or announcement photo will have a greater impact on audience attention.
The perfect website should be clear about its purpose
Do you design stained glass windows, wash windows, install double-glazing, or sell glass paints? When a web user can reach your site by searching very common terms, it pays to have a tagline which makes the purpose of your site clear. This might increase the bounce rate of visitors to the site, but it will also prevent people associating your site (and services) with being a waste of time!
The perfect website should be up-to-date
Most sites will have a copyright notice in their footer. If people are going to trust your site, then this copyright certainly needs to be up-to-date! Another way of appearing up to date is to have a regularly scheduled blog, or social media accounts displayed on the page, which are updated every day, or near enough. This immediately lets people know that someone is on the other end of this website, and that it’s easy to get in touch with them.
At RoryMartin.com, we put a lot of time and energy into web design and development, in order to build amazing sites that mirror your business strategy. Talk to one of our Seattle web design experts today about what we can do for you.
Pinterest Influences Web Design Trends
Posted by Rory Martin in Web Design and Development on March 15, 2012
Pinterest is big in the social media marketing sphere (Haven’t heard of it? Click here to read about how businesses can use Pinterest), and it’s making waves in web design as well. The unique layout Pinterest offers is becoming incredibly popular with businesses who are looking to reinvent themselves online. In fact, some magazines from publishing giant, Condé Nast, are launching new designs using a grid-style layout, with minimal text and tons of pictures. Not only are publishing houses looking at this new style, Flickr – the popular photo-sharing website – is set to upgrade and redesign it’s site within the month, to make it look more like Pinterest.
The success of this type of layout could be because Pinterest users say they need to create and curate, organize and compartmentalize ideas in an increasingly scattered digital world.
Companies are working to create sites that feel more like brand lifestyles than sales pitches and corporate information. Mashable’s Community manager, Meghan Peters says that Pinterest allows users to “experience the web in a way that makes them feel productive and inspired”. This is one of the bigger roadblocks to creating an engaging corporate experience. In fact, Flickr has switched to this design style because, ““We see in our first metrics that people consume a lot more photos, they interact so much more with photos in this view.”
In web design and typeography, Pinterest is also inspiring designers – not through its layout, but through mood boards created by other illustrators, graphic designers, typographers, etc. We’ve been using Jquery plugins that accomplish Pinterest-like layouts for the past couple of years. Our vertical layouts emulate the forward thinking of Pinterests vertical layouts.
What we do at RoryMartin.com is remain technology agnostic. Since we use the latest and greatest technology from the vast world of open source developers we can stay ahead of the times when it comes to making our customers’ users happy.
Pinterest’s success is an example of proving our philosopy; that new information architecture can and should be adopted based on what users tell us they want. In this case – Pinterest users spoke up – and we will continue to listen.
Engagement Focused: Sevenly.org
Posted by Rory Martin in Web Design and Development on March 1, 2012
We’ve heard a lot about the hip new startup, Sevenly, that provides users with an easy and efficient way to make a difference in the global community. What we like about Sevenly is that their web design offers a strong call to action, content that is presented in a way that’s easy for users to digest, and places a focus on how users can give back to their community. Sevenly CEO, Dale Partridge says, “In today’s world, if you aren’t constantly improving your website… you’re falling behind… We listen to our customers and figure out what they want and what would make the process of supporting our causes easier…”
The site makes sure to include an in-depth explanation of what they do and how they donate their funds. They also offer cause statistics, and highlight how Sevenly users have contributed to their charity partners. Sevenly’s users are encouraged to support campaigns by both making donations and promoting the cause through social media. The new site design is committed to building awareness, finding funding, and building a following.
The design is heavy on imagery, light on text and highly graphic for impact. It focuses on numbers, statistics and charts to show each user how they’re helping the community. They also have full Facebook integration, allowing users to comment and share their own stories.
We liked the way the site was focused on user engagement. As businesses start to use Facebook more, we feel it’s important to remember that Facebook should be a social media tool, but it shouldn’t be the ultimate landing page for clients or users looking to find out more about your brand. It’s important to have an engaging corporate page, where users can go to ultimately connect with your business. We give Sevenly’s site an A+.
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RoryMartin.com is a Seattle Web Design company that specializes in Seattle Search Engine Optimization and Seattle Social Media Marketing. To make an impact with your website visit us at RoryMartin.com.
Build a Better Website with Tips from Rory Martin
Posted by Rory Martin in Web Design and Development on January 5, 2012
Netcraft reported that as of November 2011, there were approximately 525, 998,433 websites out in Internet-land – and many of them aren’t perfect. Think about it: when you look at your website, what do you see? Do you see a sleek design? Is it easy to navigate? Do you see compelling imagery or a big block of text? Are you missing the little things like SEO or a Footer? Are you effectively using Social Media? Or have you forgotten to actively add that element to your website?
To make your website more “perfect”, you need to think about all the things we’ve just mentioned. Seattle Web Design and Social Media Marketing company, RoryMartin.com can help you perfect your website with a few tips on designing a better website.
It’s true that content is key when it comes to making an impact on the web, however design is also key. There are a variety of browsers, processors and monitor sizes, so it’s important to design a site that looks great on all of them. While you may use Firefox or Chrome, and so you may design for those two browsers, consider the fact that 40% of internet users STILL use Internet Explorer. Cross-browser compatibility can be a difficult problem to solve, but producing a sleek design without all the extra bells and whistles can save you some time in trying to determine why this or that widget doesn’t work.
Design also plays a big part in your website’s layout and navigation. Consider this – 60% of the time, users cannot find the information they’re looking for – and much of that is due to poor execution in navigation and UI design. Making sure your site is simple but well-designed could save your visitors a lot of time and effort trying to find out where you’ve hidden that gem of information they’re looking for. And where user interface is concerned, users report clicking away from a page that has pop-ups or plays music or video automatically when the webpage has loaded.
One big part of web design that is often overlooked is the footer. Often, businesses forget all about the SEO properties and usability of their footer in favor of more visible elements like header images and information. At RoryMartin.com, we build footers for clients that include copyright information, the company address and contact info, their business tagline and even quick navigation links for the web-user who’s made it to the bottom of your page. We also recommend links to your social media profiles, because, as users arrive at the bottom of your page and want to know more, the footer can convert your web visitors into Twitter or Facebook followers.
Are you actively using social media? Is it easy to find your social media links (and maybe even your Twitter stream) on your website? Web marketing consultant Chris Brogan says, “Social Media puts the ‘public’ into PR and the ‘market’ into marketing.” Social media is one of the easiest, most direct, and most prominent forms of both public relations and marketing, available to businesses today. If you’re not using social media, and displaying your information prominently, you’re missing out on a huge target audience. And, studies have shown that social media builds customer loyalty.
SEO or Search Engine Optimization is probably the biggest key to driving customers to your site. Using a correct combination of keywords and search terms throughout your website in strategic places will help propel your website to the front page of Google. Of course, being on the second page of Google’s search isn’t bad either – considering a quarter of all web searches progress to the second page of Google. But keywords aren’t the whole story: Though 42% of users click the top ranking link on Google, the text that shows up beneath your link is REALLY the driving factor. It’s this text – copy pulled directly from your website, that truly drives traffic to each site, while your strategic keywords ensure you’re listed in those search results in the first place.
If you’re looking to update your website, grab the wide world of social media marketing by the horns, or just looking to manage brand communications, our skilled staff of social media marketing and web design experts can help. Find out more about what we can do for you at www.rorymartin.com.
Social Media Marketing – The Value of Business Blogging
Posted by Rory Martin in Search Engine Optimization, Social Media Marketing on April 29, 2011
There is a common misconception among business owners as to the value of business blogging. Many believe that they do not have time to effectively implement a Social Media Marketing campaign or that there is little return on investment. RoryMartin.com a Seattle Web Design company that specializes in Seattle Search Engine Optimization and Seattle Social Media Marketing can help you build a marketing strategy that reflects your unique brand and meets your business goals.
A corporate blog is a marketing asset and therefore, an asset to your business. Properly executed, a blog will continue to drive traffic and leads to your business over time and should be viewed just like Search Engine Optimization, a due diligence process that is not a short term experiment, but a long term investment.
There are many reasons to consider a business blog. By delivering fresh, compelling, keyword-rich, original content you will bring users back to your site on a regular basis, helping increase awareness for your brand and driving your site up in ranking. In addition to gaining search engine ranking and generating leads, blogs engage your current customers and place you in a position to provide thought leadership to your industry, strengthening your brand.
Optimizing a blog that engages customers and prospects while furthering your company’s mission and business objectives, is much like optimizing a website. By implementing search engine optimization, your blog can rank much higher than static website pages in the search engine results. Over time, this drives up the ranking of your company website.
In order to measure Social Media ROI you must define clear measurable goals. RoryMartin.com’s online marketing campaigns deliver both measurable revenue as well as ancillary brand building benefits for your company. It is important to understand the value of a visitor. Each visitor becomes one of three things; a browser, an influencer or a transacting customer. A transacting customer delivers immediate financial impact which can be measured as ROI. Browsers and influencers are measured as ancillary even though they directly affect your financial bottom line, just not in the immediate sense. Their value falls into the category of non-actualized potential.
Some of the most substantial benefits of a social media campaign will be difficult to measure directly. There is no concrete financial value that can be assigned to reputation management, branding and customer service. However, every business owners knows those values are indispensable.
5 Seattle Small Biz Web Design Trends to Watch
Posted by Rory Martin in Web Design and Development on August 16, 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.
The importance of having an attractive website that converts visitors into buyers and helps cleverly promote your small business is essential in these fiercely competitive times.
Your website has to capture a visitor’s attention, entice him or her to stay and browse around, create an interest in your product or service, and result in sales. For small businesses with limited time and budgets, design is an essential factor in both attracting and converting potential customers.
With this in mind, here are five current design trends that most small businesses can utilize to great effect.
Let us know in the comments below about any additional design trends that you have spotted in the small business world.
1. Minimalism
While this web design style has been popular for some time, it’s worth revisiting as no small business owner wants to turn visitors away with a cluttered, overbearing and hard to navigate website.
Minimalist design effectively strips away the excess and helps the user concentrate squarely on the content. If a page has too many elements, the user will easily become confused about where to focus on, with many elements vying for attention.
With page weight now affecting your Google (
) search engine position, it’s the perfect time to reassess how streamlined your design is.
There are several principles and steps you can follow to create a more minimalist design:
- Go through your site and prune any unnecessary widgets or elements which aren’t serving a real purpose.
- Make good use of whitespace, which is the space between different elements of a design. Used well, it will allow for easier scanning of your site and help frame the elements on each page.
- With fewer elements, choosing the right color palette or accent color is critical. As color has great significance and meaning, it’s best to test how certain colors interact with each other.
- Browse your site through the eyes of your visitors, evaluating if there is too much information, confusing or off-putting elements, or sufficient calls to action. Answering these types of questions truthfully will help you prioritize the essential elements.
A minimalist design doesn’t have to be bland and boring; it can easily be modern, fresh, sophisticated, elegant or refined, based solely on the details within the design.
2. Unique Photography
Two men shaking hands, a group of people in suits sharing a joke, the call center girl: these are all tired, clichéd images that litter thousands of business websites. These types of images fail to convey either information on the company or a sense of the site’s character, and are essentially meaningless.
Using custom photography or artwork whenever possible is recommended, though for small business owners, both time and budget are limited and stock photos are a relatively cheap and accessible resource.
So when choosing stock imagery, it’s best to keep in mind these four tips:
- Research your competitors and industry and take note of the images used. You can then find a unique way to represent your product or service.
- Avoid being too literal in your choice of imagery as abstract compositions often give a more dramatic and memorable effect.
- Don’t always opt for the cheaper low-res image, as pixelated imagery devalues your overall design and looks unprofessional.
- Veer away from the bland and predictable and let the images ‘break out of the box’.
Imaginative imagery will reinforce your brand message and add greater character to your website. So, when you must use stock imagery, do so with great care and take the time to find the right piece that will convey the true personality of your service or product.
3. Bold Typography
Web design at its core is about communication, and typography is a vital component of that. Great web typography helps bring order to information and creates a coherent, visually satisfying experience that engages the reader without their knowing.
A recent trend is the use of big, bold typography which helps to create contrast between other text while grabbing a user’s attention. Oversized text can help create hierarchy and ensure users understand your message loud and clear.
In order to utilize typography to create a bold statement, keep in mind the following tips:
- Determine the single most important message you want to emphasize, as too many messages can lead to choice paralysis. Understand the qualities of the message you are trying to convey, and then look for typefaces that embody those qualities.
- Choose a typeface that will match the character of your work. For instance, if your company embodies the feel of an Old Style font, you should consider Bembo, Garamond and Sabon. It will also greatly depend on what you want to convey with the type, because legibility is as important as the character of the type.
- Give the typography the prominent position it deserves by surrounding it with a generous amount of whitespace. This will add emphasis and create even more focus on the typography.
- Test () out some of the various font replacement options such as Typekit or Typotheque. These allow you to license fonts to embed within your site, and help you to experiment with beautiful typography.
)Typography is an art and the decisions you make are subjective; however, carefully selecting a typeface can make a huge difference to the quality of your design.
4. Clear Calls to Action
As a small business owner you want your visitors to complete a certain task when they land on your page. It could be to download, sign up or checkout, but these calls to action are one of the most important (and overlooked) elements in a small business website.
You want to grab your visitor’s attention and move him or her to take action. Crafting a clear, concise call to action is essential.
Here are four tips to keep in mind when designing a call-to-action button or advertisement:
- Language: Keep the wording short and snappy (always start with a verb), but also explain the value behind the action the user is taking. In some instances it also helps to create a sense of urgency using words such as ‘now’, ‘hurry’ and ‘offer ends,’ with ‘free’ being the number one incentive.
- Positioning: Ideally, calls to action should be above the fold, and be placed on every page of the site in a consistent position. For instance, Squarespace () (shown above), not only has a large call-to-action button at the top of the page, but also has a slightly smaller button in the footer of every page.
- Color: The color should make the call stand out from the rest of the design. Brighter, more contrasting colors usually work best for smaller buttons. For larger buttons, you may want to choose a less prominent color (but one that still stands out from your background), so as to balance out its size.
- Size: The call-to-action button should be the largest button on any given page. You want it to be large enough to stand out without overwhelming the rest of the design
)RoryMartin.com – a Seattle Web Design company that specializes in Seattle Search Engine Optimization and Seattle Social Media Marketing, we follow these types of processes…for more information please visit our site at RoryMartin.com
- .
It’s vital you test different combinations of call-to-action buttons and see how each affects your conversion rates (see A/B Testing below). It’s also best to make sure they fit within your overall design.
5. A/B Testing
With competition growing fiercer online, it’s important for small businesses to have a website that converts visitors to buyers and creates a competitive edge. That’s why it is important to continually measure and improve site performance, usability and conversions.
One of the foremost ways of optimizing your web design is via A/B testing (sometimes referred to as split testing). An A/B test examines the effectiveness of one landing page over another. The two versions are randomly shown to site visitors to see which generates the best results. You then evaluate the performance of each and use the best version.
Various elements can be tested, including, layouts, copy, graphics, fonts, headlines, offers, icons, colors and more. Here are a few tips for A/B testing:
- Clearly define your goal before beginning any test. For example, if you wanted to increase sign-ups, you might want to test the following: type of fields in the form, length of the form, and display of privacy policy.
- Start with elements that will have the biggest impact for minimum effort. For instance, you could tweak the copy on your checkout button to see if conversions can be improved.
- Don’t use A/B testing in isolation as this alone won’t give you a well-rounded picture of your users. Instead, use other feedback tools, such as Feedback Army or User Testing, in conjunction with A/B testing to get in-depth analysis of user behavior.
A/B testing won’t make a bad design great, but it will prove an effective aid in optimizing your current design’s usability and conversions until you decide to overhaul your website design completely.
These are just five web design trends that small businesses can take part in to enhance their websites. Which web design changes would make the most sense for your small business?
More Web Design Resources on Mashable
– 10 Free Web UI Kits and Resources for Designers
– 10 Free and Fun Twitter Bird Icons for your Website
– HOW TO: Implement Google Font API on Your Website
– Top 10 Accessories for Typography Nuts [PICS]
– 10 Beautiful and Free WordPress 3.0-Ready Themes
Examples of Social Media that RoryMartin.com will do for your company
Posted by Rory Martin in Search Engine Optimization, Social Media Marketing, Social Networking on June 8, 2009
As a Seattle Web Design company that specializes in Seattle Search Engine Optimization and Seattle Social Media Marketing, I think Mashable is sweet and reference it as much as possible. The following are some examples of how we’ll work with you even if you’re not a big corporate company but have monthly marketing budget.
For the original post click here
We’ve discussed some tactics to get your company better engaged with social media. Lest you think there’s a limit to how you can connect with business and customer facing audiences, we’ve assembled this list of more than 35 companies who are experimenting with social media in a host of different ways.
This list is by no means exhaustive, and it represents a wide variety of businesses, industries and social media tools. As you can see, engagement takes many forms. Some are likely to generate more discussions with the company while others might result better connections between customers. Some will fade away over the next 6-12 months while others will continue to grow and evolve.
There are no rules to what form your engagement has to take. Look at your company, identify its strengths, what types of conversations energize employees and determine how you can best grow/shape/build/join your own community.
If you have other examples of corporate social media engagement, please share them in the comments.
Blendtec is famous for its bevy of inexpensive “Will It Blend” videos posted on YouTube and shared by millions.
Adobe maintains a list of interesting company related websites and conversations on the social bookmarking site Delicious.
Best Western sponsors a blog,“On the Go with Amy,” where the author travels the country writing about her experiences.
Cadence recently relaunched its website that now prominently promotes the company’s community.
Cisco hosts 12 blogs addressing a variety of audiences for their global business.
Coca-Cola Conversations is a blog written by company historian Phil Mooney that focuses on Coke collectibles.
Dell leverages a variety of social media platforms for customer engagement, including an island in the virtual world of Second Life.
Ford publishes news releases with lots of multimedia content and employs a social media news release format to display them in their newsroom.
Fujifilm recently launched a social network to build a community of photo enthusiasts around its newest camera.
GM uses blogs to communicate directly with its customers around topics ranging from design to green tech.
H&R Block created a Facebook fan site to aggregate its social media activities, engage customers and offer tax advice/resources.
HP used Twitter to power a scavenger hunt at a recent conference (BlogHer).
HSBC built the HSBC Business Network to connect entrepreneurs using blogs, videos and forums.
IBM was the first large enterprise to embrace employee blogging and now boasts thousands of blogs related to every facet of its business.
Intel has also developed many social media touch points with its software communities, which includes blogs, Twitter (
) and virtual worlds.
Intuit sponsors the Tax Almanac wiki, where anyone can find and contribute to this resource for tax information.
Jeep connects with customers via a community page with links to photos on Flickr (
), the company’s MySpace (
) and Facebook pages and a list enthusiast groups.
JetBlue employs social media as part of its training for JetBlue University.
Johnson & Johnson uses this blog to show another side of the company, with frequent video posts and interviews.
Lenovo launched “Voices of the Olympics Games” to aggregate posts from the athletes competing in Beijing.
Marriott CEO Bill Marriott posts regular updates and stories from his travels to Marriott properties around the world to fuel the content for this entertaining blog.
McDonalds maintains a blog to highlight the company’s corporate social responsibility efforts.
National Geographic uses Google’s new virtual world, Lively, to bring people together around its new show, LA Hard Hats.
New York Times is beta testing a Firefox () add-on that allows users to share and comment on stories through a decentralized social network.
Nike started a social community on Loopd to connect athletes interested in surfing, BMX bike racing and similar activities with the brand.
SAP sponsored a global survey of social media professionals to learn more about social media worldwide.
Sears partnered with MTV to create a social network around Back to School shopping.
Southwest Airlines employees share their stories and communicate directly with customers through the “Nuts About Southwest” blog.
Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz’s blog is the example most often cited for what the CEO blog can be.
Starbucks started MyStarbucksIdea so that customers can submit ideas for the company which are then voted on by other users, the best of which will be implemented by the company.
Toyota started its own virtual world to promote its products in Japan (site is in Japanese).
Visa launched The Visa Business Network application on Facebook to connect small business users and to help them promote their businesses to a larger community.
Wells-Fargo blogs target two audiences; one examines the company’s history and the other is for students interested in getting their finances in order.
WWE has a Facebook application, among other social networking tools and widgets, to bring fans closer to the action.
Xerox blogs address several of the company’s core B2B constituencies.
Zappos uses Twitter for employees to communicate with Zappos customers about their shared love of footwear.
As a Seattle Web Design company that specializes in Seattle Search Engine Optimization and Seattle Social Media Marketing, I really like this article…for more information please visit our site at RoryMartin.com
Deep link popularity using LinkedIn Seattle Search Engine Optimization
Posted by Rory Martin in Search Engine Optimization, Social Media Marketing on May 12, 2009
Here is a quick little way to set up your linked in profile with deep links
As a Seattle Web Design company that specializes in Seattle Search Engine Optimization and Seattle Social Media Marketing, I hope everybody does this stuff…it’s free and easy.
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