California Chef Services provides personal-chef style meal preparation and delivery services in the greater Los Angeles area.They provide meals to clients with a wide variety of dietary needs from weight loss to vegetarian and are recommended by a number of nutritionists and personal trainers.

While they were happy with their existing website’s design, they were looking for better organic search performance and more control over site content to help them respond more effectively to their market. They also wanted social media integration and an integrated blog.

In response to their needs, we created a new theme for them in WordPress to keep the look and feel of their website as close to their existing site as possible. At the same time, we increased page width, streamlined the site’s navigation and added dynamic media elements to improve user experience. Perhaps best of all, we made use of the extensive toolkit available in WordPress to enhance the site’s SEO capabilities. A thorough keyword analysis directed our efforts, and their new site is optimized from navigation and page structure down to the meta content on each page.

We are really excited about the launch of this new site, because this project perfectly exemplifies the value we provide. Check them out!

Music and Arts Partners provides money through memberships and grants into the music and arts programs in the West Linn Wilsonville School District. As a parent of children with an interest and aptitude for music and art, I wanted to provide whatever support I can to these programs in their schools.

As a case study, the development of the Music and Arts Partners website is consistent with many projects we encounter at Face Time these days. The MAP website was a few years old and in need of a major update.

With a new logo completed, we were asked to create a website consistent with the new brand. Our experience with social media and web 2.0 interactivity drove our efforts – we wanted the new site to tell a compelling story and provide value for its visitors. We also wanted to ensure that whatever we created would be easy for MAP to update and maintain.

The new MAP website was developed in WordPress (now 2.9.1), using a theme called Suffusion which provides much of its customization options through the administrative interface. I know this bloats the code, but I didn’t want to stick MAP with a site that only I (or someone else with PHP knowledge) could update or fix. Suffusion also offers some great built-in features including Google Analytics integration, Twitter integration, robust page navigation options, and SEO features.

We added several interactive features using WordPress plugins including an Events Calendar (events manager), online Grant Request Form (cforms), file downloads (wp-downloadmanager), enhanced user roles to support the board, representatives, and faculty (role manager), and a great plug-in to automatically generate a site map for display on the site (html sitemap). We ran into minimal compatibility issues, which were quickly and easily resolved.

The site is now live. We’ll be updating it and adding new features as our community grows. Please go take a look and let us know what you think!

Bogus Yahoo Login Screen

We routinely tell our clients that it is important to register their small business with the search engines – local results will help drive traffic and bring warm leads to your website. But managing all of these logins can be a lot of work and potentially open you up to phishing attacks – like the one we received today.

We received an email from ‘Yahoo Small Business’ threatening to expire our membership if we didn’t log in. If you receive something like this, ask yourself if this kind of practice makes any sense. Why would Yahoo arbitrarily cancel our membership?

Okay, so I took the bait and clicked on the link in my email, which brought me to a website with Yahoo’s logo and a consistent design with their Small Business service. Then I looked at the URL. Hmmm. It didn’t seem right. Then I noticed that the copyright message at the bottom of the page said &copy 2008. Definitely not right.

So I opened a new tab, Googled (I know, ironic) Yahoo Small Business, and landed on Yahoo’s ACTUAL page. Crisis averted.

So here’s the lesson and the warning.

Whoever sent that email and set up the bogus page was simply looking to access my username and password for their own nefarious purposes.They know that many people use the same username and passwords across multiple accounts, so this simple scheme could open the door to full-fledged Identity Theft.

Here are a few tips for managing and protecting your online identity:

1. Use Unique Passwords for each website you register for.
2. Keep them safe – use an Excel spreadsheet or one of many free password storage utilities to keep them organized
3. Don’t respond to cancellation threats, and if you do, find the website on your own – not via the link in the email.

An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure!

One can only imagine what life was like during this period of astonishing economic and social change, but we may be on the verge of something very similar occurring right now.

Rapid innovation and globalization are dramatically affecting our social climate, from the ways we interact to how our goods and services are designed, produced, marketed, delivered and consumed. A new economy anchored in relevance, value and sustainability will provide opportunity for companies who embrace and communicate these values.

Gone are the days of push marketing and advertising, where companies controlled the media upon which they promoted their brand and products and, in turn, managed public opinion. People don’t trust advertising anymore, and our recent economic downturn has reset our values.

In a new social climate enabled by technology, personal connections and recommendations through social media now empower consumers and influence their perceptions and decisions more extensively than any company can actively manage. And we are only at the emergence of this trend.

Forward-thinking companies and some really smart people are trying to figure out how to effectively market their goods and services in the social media sphere – and for good reason. It is strategically imperative for a business to be a part of the conversation, in terms of both brand management and product development, even if that business can’t control what is being said.

If the anecdote about 10% of users contributing 90% of social media content is even close to being accurate, the firm who influences social media opinion leaders will effectively tap into a vast content-generating engine, capable and willing to spread their message instantaneously and globally.

Savvy internet marketing firms are finding ways to segment, identify, and market to social media influencers because their credibility enhances the distribution and retention of a company’s message.

But there is no best way to reach the influencers because they are unique, particular, technologically literate and fickle. They don’t like being sold to. That’s why advertisers are having a hard time converting mass-market messaging to the web and why a viral campaign only works once.

Ignoring other marketing channels at the expense of a robust social media strategy is short sighted and risky, regardless of how important this channel has become. It’s like going all-in with your marketing budget at a table in Vegas. The odds always favor the house. We read a lot about the companies that have found viral marketing success, just as we see lottery winners interviewed on the evening news. It’s nice to see someone win, but there is rarely a repeatable methodology established.

If a marketing strategy in the old days favored reach, then control has become the significant factor for the evaluation of a marketing channel in the new social economy. An effective marketing plan will rely on an integrated use of all marketing channels including interactive, print and media advertising, sponsorships, partnerships, and experience marketing, with resources allocated based on the degree of control the firm has over its message and the perceived value it can provide to the intended audience.

I believe that integrating a sound Internet Marketing campaign with experience marketing, point of sale and package design will provide the most ROI by demonstrating tangible value to the consumer and providing a controlled environment for presentation of message and brand to influencers. Consistency of design, user experience, and the marketing environment will become core competencies and differentiators.

Successful marketers will engage market research to find opinion leaders for their products and then reach out and engage them personally in a way that makes them feel valued. As channels of mass distribution evaporate, feet on the ground will help companies promote their products and brand.

And when the influencers share their brand interaction experiences with their social media friends, the company will be online to measure, evaluate and participate in the discussion.