It's a Mesh: merging web, mobile and traditional marketing

Today we had a client who, in setting up her LinkedIn account, had accidentally invited hundreds of people to connect by importing her contacts. Panicked, she gave us a call wanting to know if there was any way she could withdraw some the invitations.

The good news is that, yes, you can withdraw invitations but the bad news is that you have to do it one invitation at a time so it's a pain if you have hundreds to deal with like her. Here's how to cancel invitations that you sent, keeping in mind that you can only do this If the person hasn't accepted your invitation yet:

1. Click Inbox near the top of your home page.
2. Click Sent on the left.
3. Click the Sent Invitations tab under the top navigational bar.
4. Find an invitation without "Accepted" by the name.
5. Click the subject line of the invitation.
6. Click Withdraw.
7. If the Withdraw button isn't there, the invitation can't be withdrawn and may have already expired.
8. The recipient won't be notified about a withdrawn invitation.
9. If you change your mind, you can send another invitation to the member 3 days after the initial invitation date.

Note: Withdrawing invitations doesn't return them to your balance of available invitations.

You've probably heard about the controversy surrounding SOPA and PIPA, but if you're like most people you have no idea what it is, what it means, and why you should care.  SOPA stands for the Stop Online Piracy Act and PIPA stands for the Protect IP Act.  Like most things, they started out with good intentions but have dangerous implications for the future of the internet.

The goal of SOPA and PIPA is to give the government and copyright holders the ability to block access to "rogue websites dedicated to infringing or counterfeit goods," especially those outside of the US.  SOPA is supposed to protect against copyright infringement and would allow copyright owners and/or the US Dept. of Justice to seek court orders against anyone who facilitates or enables those who are infringing on copyrights. The key words are facilitates and enables - notice it doesn't say actually infringing.

The other night we presented the first workshop in our Social Media Workshops series; in this workshop we presented an overview of social media, illustrated how it has always been used in society but the tools are changing, showed examples of successful campaigns, and talked about how social media should fit in your overall marketing plan.  As a part of the discussion we stressed that you should address negative comments in a way that is communicative rather than defensive and that you should not delete negative comments but should use them in a way to try to turn them into a positive. The very next day several local residents made disparaging remarks about the workshops in comments on a local newspaper's site, calling out our company by name and accusing us of being paid to present the workshops as a political payback for supporting a new local meals tax.

6pm Tuesday, December 6 will mark the kickoff date for a free series of workshops to be delivered by Glerin. The first workshop will be an overview of the major social media outlets, explaining what each is, how they differ from each other, what they're used for, and how they can be used together in a coordinated way.

Topics covered will include Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, YouTube and more, plus using blogging and newsletters in coordination with social media.

35% of searches will be affected - think you can possibly dodge that?

As social media becomes more pervasive, Google's search results have become less relevant to those who are looking for real-time news.  The latest changes in Google's search algorithm are the search giant's attempt to compete for those searchers by providing "the most up-to-date results."  Your site's ranking in search results will undoubtedly be affected since the company expects the changes to affect about 35% of searches.

Recently we've had several clients who were confused about what PayPal is and how it works, so here's a quickie overview.

A basic explanation from their own website is that PayPal is a service that enables you to pay, send money, and accept payments without revealing your financial information.  Most of our clients have questions regarding using PayPal to accept online payments, though.

Before PayPal, if you wanted to have a merchant services account (i.e. accept credit cards) you typically had to pay an application fee of up to several hundred dollars, fill out an application and authorize a credit check, and provide quite a bit of information about your business; the process took weeks to complete and was inconvenient and expensive.

The new website for Southern Virginia Regional Alliance has launched, including foreign language versions created on the fly.  Glerin designed and developed the new website for the regional economic development initiative spearheaded by Lt Gov Bill Bolling, and including the counties of Halifax, Henry, Pittsylvania and Patrick as well as the cities of Danville and Martinsville.

We were recently selected to design the logo and website for a new regional economic development group in Virginia, the Southern Virginia Regional Alliance.  Last Friday, Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling was in town to kick off the alliance and to introduce the group's new Executive Director, Leigh Cockram; the new logo was unveiled to the public at the event.

Halifax County saved itself from going a huge step backward this week by announcing the hiring of a new band director and that the high school band would continue.  Music is inherently connected with math and helps kids mathematically without their ever realizing it, and it's not just me saying it.

It's like something out of James Bond - a single "state actor" hacking into computer systems all over the world; government agencies, defense contractors, political organizations, even the International Olympic Committee and the World Anti-Doping Agency were compromised.  McAfee's Operation Shady Rat could be the basis for an intriguing spy novel, with China at the center.

You've probably heard people talking about Google's new project, Google+, and wondered what it is; basically, it's just Google's latest shot at making a big impact in the social networking arena.  The company's goal is to make social neworking more like real life; according to their blog "Today, the connections between people increasingly happen online. Yet the subtlety and substance of real-world interactions are lost in the rigidness of our online tools. In this basic, human way, online sharing is awkward. Even broken. And we aim to fix it."

Many of the online services you probably already use are owned by Google - Picasa, Google Maps, Gmail, YouTube, Google Earth - and plans are for all of their services to integrate with Google+ so you don't have to login to different accounts to share information.

Your site visitors care about one thing - how you can help them get what they want.  They don't want to read all kinds of long, boring prose about how great your company is or it's history, nor do they want to have to give you their name and email just to be able to view more information about your products or services.  Your visitors want a solution to their problem - whether they're looking to buy a product online, or whether they just want a good laugh from your joke of the day.  Don't scare them away by demanding information from them before they're ready to provide it to help themselves.

I thought the following pretty much went the way of the 90's, but recently I was researching a product and ending up on a major company's website, only to find that I couldn't even reach the product information page without encountering "let us know who your are!"  Well....NO!  I immediately left the site and returned to Google, and the company lost a sale to another site.  There are too many competitors out there for you to alienate potential customers by demanding information from them before you've earned it.

If you have a business Facebook page you may be wondering what the impressions and feedback stats are that you see under each post; you can use these stats to help gauge the effectiveness of your posts and how interesting they are to your followers.  Exactly what do the terms "impressions" and "feedback" mean?

We've found that there's a lot of confusion about the difference between mobile apps and mobile websites, even amongst many so-called developers - believe it or not! The difference is very simple. A mobile app runs natively on your mobile device and must be installed on the device; many can be used regardless of whether you have an internet connection. A mobile website is a version of your website that is stripped down to make it faster to load on a mobile device and easier to read and navigate on the small screen. Usually there are less graphics and extraneous information on mobile sites, but you should always include the option for mobile visitors to choose to view the full site.

If you aren't familiar with QR codes, I can pretty much guarantee that you've seen them around and just didn't know what they were.  QR (Quick Response) codes are similar to bar codes but can hold much more data; they enable you to pass along information to clients and prospective clients who are able to scan them with a QR code reader, usually a smart phone.  The codes can hold data such as: a web url, contact information (vcard), a Google maps location, and SMS message composers.  The sample at right contains the url to this website:  http://www.glerin.com.

Our new SoVaMusic app for iPhone and iPad is available on the App Store, and the Android version will be coming soon.  So what does this mean to businesses in our region of Southern Virginia?  For serious advertisers it could mean a lot.

We all know we need to keep our websites backed up, but let's be honest: how many of you actually follow through and keep a current backup?  And I don't mean just files; you need to backup your database also.  Good intentions don't count when your site has been hacked or your server explodes.  We can take the pain out of backing up your site, but you need to set it up now - not after your data has been lost.

If your website doesn't have a mobile version, you must correct that!  Too many sites either display poorly on mobile devices, or even worse, don't display at all.  Recently I tried to visit a site on my iPhone, but it opened up to a blank white page; when I got back to the office I browsed to the site on my laptop and found that it's built entirely on Flash.  That results in nothing to display on the iPhone!

Luckily, when I initially tried to visit the site I wasn't looking to buy or researching a company I may want to do business with; if that had been the case, they would have had a lost sale.

We recently launched the newly redesigned and redeveloped website for Virginia's Motorsports Alley, a regional Tourism and Economic Development initiative; the new site can be viewed at motorsportsalley.com.

The old site was developed several years ago by another company, focusing mainly on Economic Development, and we were contracted to develop an additional Tourism section.   The project scope grew when it was determined that the site's content management system needed to be upgraded to a new version, requiring a new layout to be designed for the new cms version, so the project ended up being a complete site redesign and redevelopment.

The Prizery is a wonderful asset to Southern Virginia; it not only brings us great entertainment, arts classes, and workshops, but is also a big part of our economic developers' tool box in recruiting new companies to the area. When companies consider moving to our community, they not only care about the business atmosphere, but also cultural and recreational options that are available to their employees.  The positive reactions that we continually see when prospects are first introduced to The Prizery are a testament to its value to our community; they're simply amazed that a community of our size has such a sophisticated venue.

Please invest in Southern Virginia's future by making a donation to The Prizery's Annual Fund.  Every gift is important; from $25 to $2,000.