Featured Posts:
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3 Things Your Website Must Do
All websites are not created equal..here are 3 things to make sure yours is working Continue reading
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How to Prepare for Your Company’s New Facebook Timeline
On March 30th, all Facebook business pages will switch to the timeline Continue reading
Category Archives: Industry News
How to Prepare for Your Company’s New Facebook Timeline
Posted on February 29th, 2012 by Jason Bumblis:
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Facebook has once again thrown a wrench into the online marketing efforts of thousands of businesses everywhere. Starting on March 30th, 2012 all business pages will be making the transition to the “timeline” look that was rolled out for individual pages this past fall.
What does this mean to you? The Bad.
All of the work you had done on the sidebar is going to be essentially wasted. The customized tabs you created will disappear. You can also no longer set a default landing page either, which is a bummer.
How can I take advantage of this? The Good.
The timeline image is going to be a great opportunity to build your brand. This is a large piece of real estate that will present a very real opportunity to present information to the client.
This is going to really allow smart marketers a better platform to brand their products/company.
How can Pacer Design Studios help me with Facebook?
We can help work with you to make sure that when March 30th hits your business will be ready for the change. We can help you understand how to get more out of your new timeline look than your competitors.
Call us today at 724.709.7261 to set up your consultation.
Google Gets Personal With Your Data
Posted on January 11th, 2012 by Jason Bumblis:
Google’s new “Search Plus Your World” rolls out today, marking the most radical change ever in how Google serves up your search results. The new results now not only find content out there on public websites, they also display content that has been shared privately through Google+.
The new format went live today, and will start showing up for everyone over the next few days. You can tell if you are seeing the new format because you will see an image like this:
HOW IT AFFECTS YOU
Google has been using personalized search results since 2005, with updates in 2007 and 2009, but this is a whole new level. For instance, when you type in your friends name, their Google+ profile will appear right in your search results. When you search for a photo of say, “Bermuda”, any photos your friends shared of Bermuda will come up first. If your neighbor shared a photo of his dog named Bermuda, that would appear.
The personalized results will also creep into your search bar via the autocomplete predictions as well.
For instance, for most users, a search for “chikoo” would show links about and photos of an Indian fruit. But for friends of Google Fellow Mr. Amit Singhal, it would also show photos and posts about his dog, Chikoo. A search for a sports team would show, in addition to the usual links, conversations about the team among a user’s friends on Google Plus.
PERSONALIZED SEARCH RESULTS NOW INCLUDE:
- Listings from the web
- Listings from the web, boosted because of your personal behavior
- Listings from the web, boosted because of your social connections
- Public Google+ posts, photos or Google Picasa photos shared with you
- Private or “Limited” Google+ posts, photos or Google Picasa photos shared with you
While it may freak some people out seeing personal information in their Google results, you must remember that these are not public results. They are results personalized just for the person viewing them. If private content has been shared with those people, that is visible. If it has not been shared, it is not visible.
PUBLIC CONCERNS
This new system seems to have an appeal to certain people, but in the broader scope it seems to have generated more concern than anything. Right off the bat the anti-trust comments are everywhere because now it seems that Google is giving search preference to its own social network. Obviously Google and Facebook are not friends anyway (since Facebook partnered with Bing), but now Twitter and other social services are concerned that their information will automatically be pushed below Google’s own network results…which is a no-no.
“We think that’s bad for people, publishers, news organizations and Twitter users,” the company (Twitter) said in a statement.
SHOULD YOU BE CONCERNED
As with nearly every social media, it is very easy for someone with access to private content to re-share it publicly, whether intentionally or not. So if you share a photo of Grandma sleeping on the couch on Google+ and forget to mark it private, it could potentially show up for anyone searching Google.
DO I HAVE TO SIGN UP?
Unfortunately, Google chose to not go down the Opt-In route, but rather the Opt-Out option. You can go into you search settings are on Google and choose to permanently opt-out.
“I think this is a much better experience, at the end of the day,” Singhal said, explaining why the default change was made.
CONCLUSION
Overall, I think that the marriage of public and private data is an obvious one, and everyone could see it coming. I think there are some security concerns that will startle a few people, but for the most part people will adapt to it and learn to like it.
I think this will almost force Facebook and even Twitter to come to the bargaining table with Google and try to get their services included in the same fashion.
It is nice that Google allows you to turn this off, which will help some people avoid it, but long term I think this is the future of search.
The way Google+ is integrated into this gives it a distinct advantage and only further strengthens our stance here at Pacer Design Studios that search engine marketers cannot ignore Google+.
Mobile Sites are Driving Revenue
Posted on December 8th, 2011 by Jason Bumblis:
According to Google, 44% of searches done for last minute gifts this season will be done on mobile devices.
If your business has paid attention and your site is optimized for the mobile web then CONGRATULATIONS….you are all set to capitalize this holiday season on this growing trend.
If your business has slept on the mobile phenomenon…then ouch!
Mobile sites have become a critical component to the success of any retail business whether it be brick and mortar or purely virtual. People all over the country have and tablets and are using them more and more to not only find the locations of restaurants and stores, but to also make purchases online.
When mobile users have to deal with a slow site that is not set up for mobile use, they quickly leave and go to a site that wants their money.
Get with it folks, mobile sites are no longer a luxury, they are a necessity.
Call us today at 724.709.7261 and talk to us about your mobile situation and we will help you create a plan for 2012. Mobile is here now to stay.
Steve Jobs…what a failure!
Posted on October 6th, 2011 by Jason Bumblis:
Steve Jobs has been pronounced by many as the Thomas Edison of our generation. Time will tell on that one, but I still use my light bulbs more than my iPad so I am giving the nod to Edison there.
Upon his recent passing, there are tribute articles everywhere listing his numerous accomplishments and praising him as a human being and visionary. This is not one of those articles.
Yes…Steve Jobs was an amazing visionary.
Yes…Steve Jobs was a powerful leader.
Yes…Steve Jobs invented the mouse.
Yes…Steve Jobs was a huge failure
That’s right, you read it right.
What sets Steve Jobs apart from so many is not that he failed, but that he failed on a large scale, and came back stronger. Steve Jobs went big, or he went home.
In today’s world were everyone coddles the youth, and tries to insulate everyone from failure and losing, Steve Jobs successes should serve as an eye opener to parents and leaders all over our once great country.
IT IS OK TO FAIL
Seek it out, embrace failure. Failure is not what will define you, it is how you respond to that failure that will determine who you are and what you become.
Steve Jobs dropped out of Reed College after one semester.
- He then slept on friends floors and snuck into classes that interested him. Jobs later said, “If I had never dropped in on that single calligraphy course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts.”
Steve Jobs was fired from Apple in 1985, the company that he started.
- They came crawling back in 1996, sort of the same time Apple started to become relevant again
Steve Jobs pumped millions of dollars into NeXT, have you ever heard of NeXT?
- NeXT was a hardware company Jobs started to build computers for the higher education and business markets. The cost of the machines never fit into budgets and the company only sold 50,000 units total. Jobs swiftly switched the focus of the company to software development and pioneered technologies such as OPENSTEP and WebObjects. He eventually sold the company to Apple for $429 million and 1.5 million shares of Apple Stock.
Steve Jobs and failure do belong in the same sentence. It was from his failures that he learned to be great. It was fear of those failures that drove him to be great.
Steve Jobs was a great visionary and innovator…his failures and the way he embraced them had as much to do with that as anything.
Perception or Reality?
Posted on April 15th, 2011 by Greg Cercone:
The other day I was reading a newspaper article about a new restaurant in town. The more I read, the more interested I became. The trendy tables and great atmosphere, not to mention how the writer raved about the service. So I decided to check out the website to find out more. I googled the restaurant and there you had it…..nothing. The article didn’t have the menu, hours, or location, but I figured the website would. If the website existed it would have. No website means nothing for the search engine to find.
My boss once told me “a poor website is worse than no website at all.” I find this to be true more and more as I begin my journey into web marketing. A website can serve many purposes in the tech savvy world we live in. The most important aspect of a website is image. If the image portrayed is old, dirty and not up to date then that is perception that company will give to potential clients.
Perception is reality…and that is never more true than in the marketing world.
So I do agree that a poor website is worse than no website at all, I think we can all agree that is not a race you want to be in.
Greg Cercone
Sr. Account Executive
Pacer Design Studios
gcercone@pacerit.com
6 Great Reasons to Have a Website
Posted on February 28th, 2011 by Jason Bumblis:
Pacer Design Studios, your Pittsburgh website design solution offers your 6 quick reasons why you NEED a website no matter what your business is:
- Your competitors are already on the web….they probably have been for a while and they are attracting your customers right now.
- Over 80% of potential customers check your website before they decide to do business with you
- Websites are open 24 hours…with people searching for your business online at all hours your website is always available to be found
- the Yellow Pages are so 1990′s….there is a reason the paper directories are have been focusing on online listings for years now.
- Placing well on the search engines is affordable…with proper research and techiniques it can be very afforadable for your business to show up on the front page of google
- Websites are adaptable…unlike that brochure you just printed, websites can be changed quickly and afforably to match the changes of your business
There are way more reasons than just 6 to get your business on the web today, but the above are just a quick few that we feel are important. In this day and age not only is it important to have a website, it is important to have an effective website. We often tell customers that a bad website is worse than no website. Often times your website is the first impression that a customer gets of your business. If that impression is not favorable because you went with some cut rate web designer it will end up costing you money.
If you are looking to get your webstie started, or looking to upgrade your current web presence, Pacer Design Studios can help. Call us today at 1.800.515.3950 or email us to get started with your free consultation.
Want Higher CSI Scores?
Posted on February 8th, 2011 by Jason Bumblis:
In all my years of working with car dealerships I have yet to find a dealer who says they wouldn’t like higher CSI scores. Higher CSI scores not only improve the obvious things like customer satisfaction and workplace moral, they also improve your bottom line. Nearly all dealerships receive incentives for better CSI scores. So I ask you this….
If I can offer you a product for just $165 a month that is sure to help improve YOUR CSI SCORES would you want it?
You bet you would, and Pacer Design Studios is proud to announce the public release of a product that does just that….Reactback
Reactback is so simple, but so effective that it absolutely must be included as part of your CSI strategy. Our initial group of test dealers had such success with this product that they jokingly asked us to not make it available for other dealers.
Here is how it works:
- Your customers recieve simple surveys (both sales & service) via email that they fill out in under a minute
- You get instant access to their valuable feedback.
- You react to their concerns and feedback
- Your customer satisfaction level goe thru the roof….all before the customer ever even recieves a factory survey.
Click Here to find out more about Reactback and to take a test drive or call 1.800.515.3950 today.
