Did you just let 2011 slip by without crushing it online like you thought you were going to and like you knew you could have, if only… if only you had a killer website and blog and some presence? Why not “brand-up” and be ready for 2012? Isn’t it about time you started cashing in on the leads and sales you know are possible online? The world lives on the web 24×7. That’s where you’ll get checked out and qualified long before your hear a ringtone on your cell phone, and people are going to take an online look before they bust out a checkbook.

Isn’t it about time you got branded to establish yourself as the go-to person in your area of expertise, and your business offering as the solution to the problem that your prospects are even now seeking? Answer Hint: “Why yes, it’s high time I got around to that!”

Core Zero Creative–specializing in web design since 1993–is now offering

The 2012 Branding Double Decker

1. A fully branded WordPress Website and/or Blog
2. A Facebook Business or Fan Page including:
• A Tall Side Banner
• Your own Facebook App Tabs for Reveal & Welcome Pages
• Reveal (pre-Like) and prompt to Like your Page
• Welcome (post-Like) and a special offer from you
• Email Opt-In using your AutoResponder to offer your free video or ebook
3. A branded Twitter Background
4. A branded YouTube Channel

Shazam! Get the Website with or without a Blog, or just the Social Media Branding Package, or get both, you get to choose! All for one simple price that has numbers in it. Call, email, or Facebook Eric to get started on your 2012 Branding Blowout. Let’s make the most of 2012!

At Your Service,

Eric Bryant

• Eric on Facebook
• Core Zero on Facebook
• (207) 212-5100
• eric [@] core zero [dot] com

WordPress Back Ups, that is.

Do yourself a favor and be sure to back up the content on your WordPress Website or Blog. The worst thing we hear is “I don’t know what I did, but I’ve lost everything.” Ouch! Don’t let this be you. %%theme_more%%

The thing you’ll probably be doing most with your WordPress Blog is writing and publishing posts. This is a short video showing you how to get started. %%theme_more%%

A short blog post to eliminate excuses for keeping up with social media marketing and relationship building. I’m posting to our blog using a free Android app on my phone. The photo is of the same app on my iPad, snapped with the Android while in the middle of creating this post. Tags and categories were also added. Furthermore, I added this using speech to text recognition — talking to my phone. The End.

Social Media Marketing is all the rage these days: using Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Blogs, and Videos to market your business, advertise your products and services, and create and establish your brand online. %%theme_more%%

I mentioned in my post If I Can Do It You Can Do It about my new best friends. My new social media best friends are HootSuite and AddThis. Each of these tools or applications have made my social media marketing implementation a lot easier.

HootSuite is a social media dashboard for teams using Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, WordPress, and other social networks. You can manage multiple profiles on Twitter, Facebook, etc, add multiple editors, pre-schedule tweets, and measure your success. You can do all this through one easy-to-use interface.

AddThis helps website publishers and bloggers spread their content across the web by making it easy for visitors to bookmark and share content to their favorite social destinations. If you create an account you can get analytics to understand how people are sharing your content.

So start sharing because it’s fun.

Yes, that’s a challenge.

I have made a commitment to blog more often. One reason, of course, is for all the reasons we’ve been telling you to start or be actively blogging… become a trusted resource on your industry, it’s great SEO (Search Engine Optimization), develop a conversation around your industry, product or service, cause, or personality. To be honest I have many of the same limiting beliefs as most of you. What do I write about and who actually wants to read what I have to say. Well, I guess we’ll find out! I know what you’re thinking “but you give hands-on workshops on blogging“? The brains and brawn of that division of Core Zero is Eric. He is an absolutely beautiful writer and speaker. Listen, I know my strengths and I am all too aware of my weaknesses but I am teachable. And so are you which is the point of this experiment. You know how much we love our experiments!

First, I will tell you what my qualifications are so that you will want to follow EVERYTHING I have to say… there are none! Well, mostly none, but that is exactly why you are going to want to follow my blog posts.

I am an artist. I enjoy holing up in my studio and not having contact with the outside world for long periods of time. I call it “catching a groove”. When I’m in it, don’t bother me. Just ask my family. They all know what it means when I tell them to “pretend that I’m not here”. I am NOT a writer! I have no idea where to put comma’s (as I’m sure you have already noticed) I just start putting them wherever I think it looks good or where I would naturally take a breath while speaking. I also write like a speak so grammar is right out the window. I am thankful for spell check. Use it, it’s your best friend (read about my other new best friends) but don’t get too hung up on the occasional spelling error, it’s not that big of a deal. My only advice is that you try to know the difference between words like there, their, they’re, here and hear, and when to use desert and dessert as we all know that dessert is the most important meal of the day.

So what are some of the things I’m going to write about? Hmmm, good question I’m still not sure but my guess is that I will be sharing what it’s like to “be” in our office. Maybe a little about the musings of working with your spouse, and hopefully some helpful tips on getting YOU started/inspired/off your duff to create your own blog.

The gauntlet has been dropped!

A good start to describing a Content Management System (CMS) is to describe the experience of using one. At Core Zero Creative we design websites in a database-driven content management system (CMS) that allows our clients to easily update and manage the content of their websites. They can do this using any web browser from any location, and it requires no software to be downloaded, purchased, or installed. Each user within a company or team can have their own login and be assigned permission to edit various parts of the website content including the text and images. And the best part yet is that this can all be done with no technical expertise needed, and certainly no HTML or web programming knowledge—at all!

In the bigger picture, a CMS is actually an entire programming framework running on a web server inside a live, interactive database, allowing not only the above experience, but also the complete customization of entire websites or blogs created (and managed) using CMS. OK, I totally promise not to crack out any more tech-sentences like that, OK? Back to plain English, everything behind the scenes that allows the simple, powerful interface described above is also up for full customization. There are two reasons to customize: colors/visuals, and adding features/functionality. Every element can be customized from headers at the top, footers at the bottom, side bars on the left and/or right, to the theme—the overall appearance and colors. Your blog can visually match your brand and image, and you can add any functionality that will help better serve your readers, clients, and prospects.

At Core Zero Creative we use WordPress, which is a state-of-the-art CMS publishing platform with a high value placed on aesthetics, web standards, and usability. WordPress is, in a word, priceless. Programming on this platform we are able to build entire custom websites with embedded blogs, or we can build stand alone blogs. Everything is taken care of for our clients, leaving them to focus on adding quality, helpful content to connect with their readers, prospects, clients, and customers.

The experience of “posting” (adding content) is that of using a simple word processor like Wordpad, or Word. You have bold, italic, and underlined text, center, left, and right alignment, and bulleted or numbered lists. All the fonts, colors, spacing, and other elements are automatic. This is for visual consistency. You just type, jazz it up a bit with a little bold or italics as needed, add web links or images, and then simply click a button to publish your work. Everything falls into place, your titles, links, fonts, all of it.

You’re likely reading this on our blog, so take a look around with different eyes now. See how everything looks consistent? Colors, fonts, headlines, titles, dates, authors? See the categories to guide you by topic? See the recent post list? Let us know what you think of this mad but simple science by posting comments below. Is this something you’d like to take advantage of for your business to maximize the use of your time? Let us know!

At Your Service,

Eric Bryant

A blog is a type of website (or a section of a website) where articles, pictures, and/or other items of interest are “posted” on a regular basis. Blogs are typically organized around a specific topic, be that a person, an idea, concept, computer program or type, political or social topic, scientific area, well… you get the idea! There are endless blogs out there. A person who posts these articles is said to blog, and is called a blogger. Here’s another core blog topic: your company and its people, products, and services.

The ongoing articles added to a blog are called blog posts. Posts are sorted into categories, searchable by tags, displayed in reverse chronological order, and archived over time for easy search and retrieval. The word “Blog” is a concatenated form of the words web and log. Get it?

Advantages of a Blog

The advent of the blog marks the first time in web history that website owners can easily add and edit their own site content without incurring ongoing fees from web designers or the expense of buying software. Note the word ‘easy’. It’s very easy.

As noted above, managing your blog’s content couldn’t be much easier these days. You open a web browser from the comfort of any location in the world, log into the administration console, and edit away. You do not need any technical expertise per-sé, and certainly do not need to know how to edit HTML web code. For the most part, it’s like using your favorite word processing program.

Blogs are Highly Customizable

Every element can be customized from headers, footers, side bars, and the theme (overall appearance and colors) to the functionality of your blog by adding plugins and widgets. Yes, there is a lot of “lingo” right there! The point is you can make your blog match your brand and image, and add any functionality that will help better serve your readers, clients, and prospects.

Blogs are Interactive, and that Builds Community

If you so choose, you can allow your blog readers to post comments about your posts. Their comments show up under each post (after you approve them) and you can reply to them right there in what we call a comment thread. It’s a great way let your readers feel they are a part of your interactive online community, and it’s a great way to engage them in conversation leading to… wherever you want! Prospects can become customers, and you get feedback and can better serve people toward accomplishing the goals of your business.

Blogging Builds Relationships, Trust, and Credibility

Blogs tend to have personalities of their own due to the varied styles and personalities of their writers. Some attract, some repel. In the new wild, wild west of Web 2.0 people are looking to connect and to belong. It may still only be a one way communication, but that is the reader’s choice. They will likely find your blog from either a web search, a referral from another website, or a referral from you. Once they get there, whatever the reason, they want to get to know you and your company. Plenty of the old rules of marketing and advertising still apply: create engaging, informative, helpful content on your topic. Whether it is information, product knowledge, or comedy, deliver it. Many readers will make a connection with you. They’ll want to come back, and see what else you have to say on another day. They may engage you in comments, or straight out email you or even call! All that to say that as you dynamically blog and respond, you build relationships. Relationships inside of credibility and integrity build trust over time. What more could you ask for than loyalty from prospects you have yet to meet?

Blogs are Search Engine Magnets

Search engines love the structured architecture of a blog. There it is, all laid out for them to index by categories, topics, tags, posts, and even archives. If you continue to add great content to your blog it stands a good chance of getting ranked high enough in the search engines to actually be seen. Of course, YMMV (your mileage may vary) but working with a content management system (CMS) eliminates oodles of technical problems related to search engine indexing that a traditional websites may have, and that their business owners and webmasters may never even know about. And yes, “oodles” is a technical term used by very technical insider types.

Blogs are Flexible

A Blog is the perfect medium for various freebies, gadgets, opinionated editorials, polls, random comments, reviews, short articles, surveys, tips, and you-name-it items that don’t really fit well into a conventional website.

In Closing

Hopefully this article has helped you to see the light of the benefits of business blogging. Feel free to call us about getting set up with a business blog, we’re here to help!

And remember that we keep up with all the latest in the world of internet marketing and social media marketing. From search engine optimization and search engine marketing to the very latest trends on the social media scene, we can guide you in saturating the web with your brand and your message.  Core Zero Creative holds monthly workshops and seminars on helping local businesses launch their internet and social media presence through the use of blogging and popular sites such as Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, and YouTube.

Call Today!

At Your Service,

Eric Bryant