For the Love of Blog

It’s been quite a long while since I’ve publicly blogged. It’s funny and ironic how life can get away from you and you find yourself doing things because you have to and not because you love to. Part of the reason I haven’t written in a while wa simply because I didn’t have a computer.  If you know me, you would know that this bit of information is shocking,  My laptop was stolen out of my apartment on Christmas.  And as these last few months have gone by, I realized how much I missed writing, designing, creating and being geeky.

Another thing is that I had originally planned on blogging a good portion of my project work for the electronic media class I was taking last semester; most of the files were lost when the computer was taken from me. The files for the final project, which was an 8 page InDesign layout for print on a topic of our choice, were also lost which was very disheartening to me.  Luckily, I had converted the final project into an electronic flash file which I had conveniently stashed “in the cloud” for future access.  Three months later and here we are.   I finally got around to loading the flash file onto my website, which I am excited to share with you. And in doing so, gave me something exciting to write about.  The file acts as a digital booklet which has an integrated page curling feature which allows you to hold your mouse down on the corner to turn the page with realistic page curling functionality. Check it out and let me know what you think.  And be on the lookout for more blogs on creative work, I have a fun and exciting blog project in the works that I am doing the design and branding for. Details to follow in the near future.

How to Master Online Dating

How to Master Online Dating

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Why Social Media and Paid Search Should Fall In Love and Get Married

(article originally posted on Pomeganda.com)

One thing I’ve noticed from internet marketers is that there seems to be a great divide on the concept of what gets the best “bang for your buck” with internet marketing. There are the “marketing traditionalists,” as I like to call them, who focus their efforts solely on search engine optimization and online paid advertising, and then there are the “new age” marketers who believe that digital and social media is the marketing wave of the future. My biggest issue is with the divide itself. Why focus your efforts on one aspect of marketing when you can take the two practices and marry them? Moving forward, you can call me the Minister of Marketing, because I am about to pronounce Paid Search and Social Media as husband and wife.

Building the Foundation for Marriage

Paid Search/SEO and Social Media need each other like a fish needs water, but for different reasons. Many traditional marketers aren’t viewing their targeted search from a brand identity perspective, which is a big mistake. As a devout supporter of social media, I know how important it is to participate in social brand engagement as a way to create an active dialogue with consumers around products and services. The main goal is to build brand value and connect with consumers, with the secondary goal of driving traffic, and, ultimately, sales. It’s important to stress that if you are looking to drive traffic for instant sale conversions, social media is not going to give you direct results. On the other hand, most marketers know that using paid search and standard SEO practices will primarily drive sales, leads, and conversions, but they don’t expect the short text of their paid search ads to do much for branding.

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Not Your Average Droid Review: Simplify Your Life & Get Social!

article originally posted on Pomeganda.com

As Pomegranate’s resident Social Media expert, it was high time I got my hands on a smart phone.  I had been contemplating the iPhone for some time, with little motivation to move forward.  Born and raised on a PC, I never really jumped on the Apple train, having been quite loyal to my Microsoft-based products for a good portion of my natural-born life.  Some would see this as a curse.  I might have to agree.

As a loyal Verizon customer since 1999, I began the search for a new phone.  I owned an LG Voyager for about a year but wasn’t feeling satisfied with its performance; it was time to break-up and move on.  I started casually dating the LG EnV touch, but that relationship was short lived, leaving me with a bitter taste in my mouth and a jaded outlook towards media-based phones.  I was determined to put myself back out there and meet the love of life; a phone that was, by definition, perfectly seamless for all my social networking and data management needs.  Blackberry?  Droid?  Eris by HTC?  As a supporter of Google services for years, I decided it was time for an Android-based phone with Google integration.  It was safe to say I was fully in love with Google and was desperately wanting to take our relationship to the next level.

What is it about a Google phone that makes it stand apart from the rest, you ask? Most importantly, Android is an open-source, Apache-licensed operating system that Google makes available free of charge to device manufacturers who can add their own application genius for download in the marketplace. Basically, there’s no single, unified Android platform like there is for the iPhone which means you get a much greater amount of diversity, hardware and software, than the iPhone. You get Android 2.0 with Google’s proprietary push Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Voice, YouTube, and Google Maps Navigation with live street view rolled in. And because of the nature of open source software, the Apps Marketplace is a veritable smorgasbord of delicious and (very often) free applications that are sure to enhance your mobile experience. If you’re heavily invested in Google and all its glory, then you’ll have absolutely no problem making the switch.

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Firefox Extension Offers Professional HTML Signatures in Gmail

Anyone that uses Gmail for multiple email accounts will appreciate the beauty and convenience of the newest Firefox extension from the guys at Blank Canvas.  Blank Canvas is a convenient signature manager that automatically inserts HTML signatures into your Gmail messages based on which email address you’re sending from.

The Firefox only (Windows/Mac/Linux) extension supports up to four unique signatures for each address you’ve designated. Signatures are automatically inserted in both new messages and in replies and forwards.

According to the Blank Canvas website, here are some of the features:

•    Works for Compose Mail, Reply, and Forward

•    Support for single or multiple email addresses

•    Create a different signature for each email address you use in your Gmail account

•    Supports up to four signatures per address

•    Real-time signature preview while editing signature HTML

•    Signature automatically inserted into message above (or optionally below) quoted text

•    Support for special characters

•    Easy setup and configuration interface

Do you use the Gmail Signatures extension?  If so, we’d love to hear your feedback!

(article originally posted on Pomeganda.com)

Make Your Brand More Social in 2010

Wondering how socially successful your company is?  Believe it or not, there is a way to measure the amount of sociability your brand has.   One company, Virtue, has created an algorithm called the Social Media Index™ (SMI) that provides a visually depicted measurement of your brand’s online conversations, including status updates, videos, photos and blog posts.

If you are a brand that offers an interactive service or product that is relevant to a target demographic of social media fans and fanatics, you might want to consider taking a moment to reevaluate your current online presence in order to move forward in 2010.  How can you do this?  Well, first let’s take a look at a few of the top social brands of 2009 and see what they are doing right.  According to Virtue’s SMI, iPhone, Disney, CNN, MTV, NBA, iTunes, Wii, Apple, Xbox and Nike rounded out the top 10 social brands in 2009, respectively.

Obviously there is something to be said about large brands like iPhone, MTV and Disney, whose massive online presence will dominate conversations on sites like Twitter and Facebook easily and without much promotion or buzz.  People are already following these brands and wondering what they’re up to, so it’s only natural that they would measure highly on a social media scale of measurable conversation.  This is not to say that all is lost for a smaller, less renowned brand as long as it already has an established presence on the web.  The key to success in moving forward with brand socialization is changing faster than you can say “let’s chat!” and now is the time to reevaulate your brand’s social outreach for the coming year.

There are a few crucial steps you can take to make your brand more social in 2010.  Many of these include solutions that adapt to the ever-changing method of how we access information on the web, mobile and world wide.  Facebook fan pages are becoming dynamic rather than just a place to update real-time status with simple news and information.  The key to socialization here is interactivity and we believe that this list of straightforward suggestions will help keep your brand moving in a social direction for the new year.

Offer a Free iPhone Application

Develop a fun, engaging and branded iPhone application that can be given out as an incentive for signing up for a company mailing list.

Make the Mailing List Extremely Accessible

Enable users to opt in to receive your marketing offers & news directly from your Facebook page or Website.

Create Polls

Let users interact with simple, fun, multiple choice questions and see results in real-time

Offer Surveys

Give users the chance to weigh in on various topics for brand insights

Utilize Slide Shows

Create a photo slide show of customized content, complete with variable speed, transitions, background music and full branding

Offer a Built-In Twitter–Chat Application

Incorporate a branded Twitter-Chat application directly on your website or blog that allows other Twitter users to chat in real time.

Offer Games and Trivia

Offer branded games and trivia that lets users compete for status, leader board rankings or just for fun

Branded HD Video Player & Playlist

Add high-definition videos to your website or blog, complete with branded video player watermarking

Sweepstakes

Run a contest on Facebook with in-page registration that will make it easier for users to participate and recommend entry to their Facebook friends.  Promote on Twitter as well as other social networks.

Couponing

Reward users for taking actions like answering a survey, uploading media or sending a gift and add extra incentives for every Facebook fan or Twitter follower that also signs up.