The folks at Northern seem to be really nice and honest people. And the buildings they’ve worked on seem topnotch. I encourage anyone looking for repairs, repaints and more to give them a call.

Oh, Northern Contracting also specializes in stucco finishes which reminds me that my two little “best friends” also ate some stucco off the porch. Yeah, I will be giving Northern a call about a month before my lease is up.

This isn’t web related, what’s this about?
I thought posting this section as a way of giving back to our clients and as a way to show them how helpful a blog can be. I will be showcasing one client a week so if you like ‘good news’ stop on by; and if you get a chance leave a comment or two.

Disclaimer:
I’m pretty sure that Atilus supports all of our clients (or they wouldn’t be clients) but I can’t say that Atilus endorses all of the actions of our clients, you know for legal reasons. So if something here doesn’t jive with you, realize I’m posting my opinion and not necessarily that of Atilus’. Thanks for understanding.

What are the Internet Yellow Page search engines (IYPs)?

you ask, well my friend they are a number of websites that list your company or organization based on a geographic location. And many of them are FREE! I won’t bore you with unnecessary jibber jabber, I’ll just list a number of IYPs I’ve found over the years. And please bookmark this page as I will be adding to this list as I continue my everlasting search. Do visit these sites and take a few minutes to add your company. It will help us die-hard local searchers find your company, and bring you additional customer to boot.

Without further ado, in no particular order, the list:

Nationwide Internet Yellow Page Web Sites:
Click the “Add my business” link to add your business today.

• Google Local - Add my business to Google Local
• Live Search Maps - Add my business to Live Search Maps
• Yahoo! Yellow Pages - Add my business to Yahoo! Yellow Pages
• YellowPages.com - Add my business to YellowPages.com
• Dex
• SuperPages.com
• Switchboard
• Local.com
• AnyWho.com
• AOL Local
• AOL Yellow Pages
• ASK City
• da+
• LocalSearch.com
• MerchantCircle
• TrueLocal
• yellowbook
• YP.com by LiveDeal

Local City Guides and Recommendation Web Sites:

• YellowBot - Add my business to YellowBot
• Yahoo! Local - Add my business to Yahoo! Local
• MSN City Guides
• Citysearch
• areaguides.net
• Hello Metro
• insiderpages
• judy’s book
• yelp

Region Specific Internet Yellow Page Sites:

• bestredyp - Various States
• kudzu - Various Metros and growing

Mobile/Cell phone Friendly Internet Yellow Page Sites:

• go2
• 4INFO

Coupon/Savings Internet Yellow Page Sites:

• welcome wagon

Info/Data Companies for Internet Yellow Page Sites:

• Localeze
• infoUSA

If this has helped you in anyway let me know. Leave your comments below. Thanks.

For those of you not in the industry, internet marketing is the buzz in the advertising and marketing world. With ever changing technology and improved techniques, and a now solid foundation of return, internet marketing is slowly coming to the forefront of marketing discussions.
And this internet revolution is even outpacing newer, less conventional forms of marketing and sales. Take for example traveling on any major airline. E-ticketing is available 24 hours a day and is convenient (whereas if you call the 800 or 888 number, you will be billed a transaction fee); you can print your ticket(s) 48 hours before the flight or 1 hour before the flight, at no additional cost attached.
I think that it is important that the advantages and disadvantages are carefully studied in contrast to traditional marketing. But that doesn’t mean the industry is without its evils. Issues that are still prevalent in and around internet marketing include: spam (which needs to be more heavily regulated), consumer loyalty (which needs to be studied more), and the different advertising strategies and performance that internet marketing has over traditional marketing.

However, one of the largest concerns of the general public is security and privacy on the internet. For example, if you read my previous post “Flirting with Diaster”, the attached You Tube video has a prime example of this: When Sarah Lacy asked the audience to begin asking their questions, an audience member stood up and said “What is the biggest obstacle that Facebook faces?” Zuckerberg replied “Building systems that allow users control of their applications/information.” The audience member replied, “Is it a security issue allowing users to control of their applications/information?” See how security is reiterated each time the audience member asks a different question? I have to say, it is a major concern of the general public, and must be addressed.

On the other hand, Internet marketing has truly revolutionized the marketing industry as a whole; traditional advertising and marketing firms better sit up and take notice and quickly adapt to the to the ever changing internet/technology as the general public consumes more media, does more searches, and spends more time online. Additionally one major advantage that internet marketing has that stands out ahead of traditional advertising is that with internet marketing you are able to customize and personalize your site from start to finish, making the process interactive between the internet marketing agency/firm and the client. And these custom solutions are growing the internet eco-system. For example, custom interactive shopping has revolutionized the way the general public shops, while improving the online shopping experience.

With that said, do you think internet marketing will revolutionize traditional marketing? You be the judge.

Equity Management Solutions approached Atilus with a need to build out and customize their existing flash website. Our core flash team was able to build out the site in record time. Preliminary search engine optimization techniques and marketing have already led to success and qualified leads!

We look forward to working with the EMS team over the coming years to market their website and grow their business online using our proven and measurable marketing techniques.

Some weeks ago while finagling with an Expression Engine template, it occurred to me that it would be pretty neat if EE could add a “_selected” next to my menu item’s class name if a visitor was on that particular page. This would effectively give me the power to do things like: make the menu item that corresponds to the current page highlighted while the other menu items stay normal. So, I set off to research the documentation of EE for plugin programming. This is what I’ve created for you to use as well:

Download the Plugin: atilusmenuclass.zip

Here’s how you use it:

Once uploaded, you will be able to add this snippet inside any of your template files:

<a href="/about/" class="{exp:menuclass:item class="aboutlink" selected="_selected" uri="about"}" title="About Page">about</a>

Any parameter you pass for selected will be added trailing your class name you pass for class. The parameter uri is used to specify the page URI for which the plugin will trigger this class name change.

For example, if a visitor is at the address http://yoursite.com/contactpage/ and you have set one of your links assigned with uri=”contactpage” as well as selected=”_selected” and finally class=”contactpagelink”, the plugin will change your link’s class name to contactpagelink_selected. And of course, when the visitor is on a page other than http://yoursite.com/contactpage/ the class name will be displayed as “contactpagelink”.

Output:

If visitor is NOT on http://yoursite.com/contactpage/ :

<a href="http://yoursite.com/contactpage/" class="contactpagelink"/>

If visitor is on http://yoursite.com/contactpage/ :

<a href="http://yoursite.com/contactpage/" class="contactpagelink_selected"/>

It’s the end of April and the temperature is starting to rise. Now’s the time window & siding people come sniffing around. How? Door to door, if you can believe it! This is incredibly intrusive and annoying.

Mail arrives daily with offers from credit card companies hoping I’ll spread some of my debt to them. Like I need help increasing my debt!

What about the phone calls at dinner time? TV ads that aren’t watched because we’ve all got DVR? Radio ads we tune out, billboards we don’t notice anymore… The list goes on.

What do these marketing methods have in common? They’re not targeted. They waste a lot of money on consumers who won’t or aren’t ready to consume. They’re fishing for sales rather than strategically positioning themselves where those searching for their product can find it. This is where search engine marketing (SEM) comes in. If the goal is to sell a recliner, money should be spent wooing people who are in the market for cushy seating. Consumers are savvy. They’re online researching products, suppliers and prices. SEM nails them when they’re most interested. Benefits include, but are not limited to; low cost, measurable, and easy to change. Cost is low because you’re only spending money on consumers who are interested in your product. Results can be measured on a number of variables such as click through rate, conversions (did they do what you wanted them to), and at what point shoppers abandon your site. Campaigns are easy to change if they’re not producing desired results. Testing can be done on multiple campaigns simultaneously and results are available in real time. Can’t say that about print ads.

I’m not saying the other methods don’t have merit. If used in conjunction with one another they can be effective, especially if personalization is included. BUT, nothing is as cost effective or has as great a return on investment as SEM. With SEM you don’t have to hope that the consumer seeing your ad might be looking for your product – they came looking for you, they want it. And that is the furthest from annoying.

For more information on how Atilus can help with your SEM, please contact us at www.atilus.com

It didn’t stop there however; Sarah did not connect with the audience on any level. Sarah in my opinion created an adversarial relationship with audience. At one point the crown became so upset and vicious with her she responded to the crowd by saying “You don’t know how hard my job is up here” and she said “I am trying to ask interesting questions….you think you guys can do any better?” After asking the audience to come ask their questions, she said to the audience: “If you think I suck so bad why don’t you send me an e-mail?” The next audience member then responded by saying: “what’s your e-mail address?” At this point the roar from the crowd was out of control. She begins speaking of his journal that he writes about his ideas for Facebook and that she heard that he burns them, and Zuckerberg says “I don’t burn them” He proceeds by saying “You have to ask questions”, if you watch the video you’ll hear the crowd roar and clap in Zuckerbergs favor. At one point in this utter disaster (supposedly an interview), she says “You’ve seen me throw a full glass of water at Michael Errington, I just want to warn you” Zuckerberg reaches for the bottle of water, and places it on the floor. What else could possibly go wrong?

There are two sides to every story right? or shall we call it “crisis management”?

Throughout the interview both Sarah and Mark took two completely different routes if you will. A few days after the interview both Zuckerberg and Lacy responded on her Twitter message by responding “Seriously screw all you guys. I did my best to ask a range of things.” This is clearly not the way to manage crisis, despite all of the criticism she received from the audience and bloggers days after the interview.

Zuckerberg, took a much more humble approach, he held a Q & A session , with a little humor Zuckerberg began the Q & A by saying “Yesterday’s Q & A wasn’t enough fun”. The audience asked him about privacy issues and where Facebook as a social network sees its self in the near future.

This keynote interview, had two sides to the story. Look at how Lacy responded on her Twitter message with a cold shoulder, and look at how Zuckerberg held a Q & A and humbled himself.

Was Lacy handed “the pink slip” after this interview?Unfortunately not.
Do you think Sarah Lacy learned her lesson? To be brutally honest with you, NO!

Unfortunately it just wasn’t performing as expected.

The site was nice looking and usable, but no one was visiting. After initial consulting and research we realized their site, although attractive, was not properly coded for marketing and search engine success. By restructuring the code, making it more friendly for general users, handicapped users, as well as search engines, and making sure to take careful care in crafting TITLE and META information we could quickly help the site rise in the search engines.

We are pleased to announce the release, and success of the Boemi restructuring. In just a few days since launch they are already ranking for desired and meaningful terms (”Plastic Surgeon of Naples“) getting in front of their target audience and seeing amazing results! We look forward to working with the Boemi team over the coming years, increasing their web presence and helping them to strategically marketing their business online.