Atilus Internet Marketing & Web Development

There is a growing trend of athlete-bloggers, who are candidly and courageously giving fans and outsiders the inside scoop and view of their sport, league, and relationships.

Some, mainly league officials, coaches and fellow players, have been voicing their own opinions and distaste for athlete-blogging. And they should be scared, as blogging is the voice of liability forcing individuals and entities to be responsible. The doors that have been secretively closed for so long are now being blown wide open… or are they?

The voice of reason seems to be setting in for the these athlete bloggers, though. A “bite the hand that feeds you” feeling is washing over them, and making it very difficult for athlete-bloggers to be as candid as they would like to be.

“As successful as Benson has been with his creative endeavors, the possibility exists that they could have a negative impact — that the stigma of being a blogger could actually keep a talented 6-10 athlete out of the NBA. Says Benson’s agent, Bill Neff, ‘One GM told me that [the blog] was a red flag, and he wasn’t the first. There’s an insecurity, from NBA guys, about the blog that shouldn’t exist, because Rod is just hysterical. People may end up looking at him less seriously, even though he averages more rebounds per minute than any pro other than Dwight Howard. Instead of thinking of that, [GMs] may be saying, ‘Do we want this guy writing about us?’”

Read the very eloquently stated response of Rod Benson.

26 Aug | Post by Scott L. Clark. Filed under Blogging, Blogs.

Google is much more than a search engine. It is the ultimate, most advanced network on this planet. No company can outshine Google at this point. It is without question that Google, along with the internet revolution has made our lives so much easier and has changed the internet for the better. With that being said, when comparing to other search engine resources, Google includes an astronomical variety of programs and new product developments. Most of them are not very familiar to most people. Before I joined this internet marketing team and started exploring the tools associated with SEO, I know I wasn’t aware of Google’s capacity. I have been introduced to a great amount of Google applications and was so impressed that I wanted to become more experimental with Google.com. After playing around with Google.com for several hours, I was so astounded that as a result of this brief research on the corporation, I can shamelessly admit that I have become seriously consumed and overly obsessed with it.

What do you know about Google?

Besides the search engine, I am sure you are all aware of Gmail, Picassa, Google Earth, Google maps, Google Images & Videos, yet there is still so much more. Google’s website is comprised of desktop products (standalone applications and desktop extensions), mobile products (online and downloadable), hardware products, web products (advertising, communication & publishing, development, mapping, search, and statistics), and even more.

“Huh?”

Don’t worry, I will go through a few of these handy applications and will explain some of the “Google Tricks” that I picked up on.

The first Google product that I found interesting was IGoogle. IGoogle is a personal Google webpage designed by Y-O-U, complete with multiple tabs of your interests (ie. Art tab, News tab, Humor tab, Entertainment, etc) as well as the search engine across the top of the page. You can design your Igoogle page so it suits you. You are able to make a personal to-do list, calendar of you personal events, your horoscope, and more that you can design for your homepage. One can create an IGoogle page by visiting to www.Igoogle.com.

Google Notebook and Google Docs are also useful apps, but they are entirely different. If you are at a website and come across content that you would like to save for later, Google Notebook allows you to highlight the content, clip it to the e-notebook so it is saved for future use, and finally add comments about the selection. This is very helpful, especially when researching a topic. Google Docs on the other hand is perfect for uploading, editing, and sharing your own documents, presentations, and spreadsheets with others on the web.

Google Sky is a particular function within Google’s mapping designed to view the stars and galaxies. There are several other off-the-wall mapping tools that are attention-grabbing too. To name a few, there is Ride Finder and Google Transit. With Ride Finder, it will show the real-time position of participating shuttle, limousine, and taxi service in 14 US cities. Google Transit makes planning public transportation trips trouble-free.

Goog411- By adding the number 1-800-Goog411 to your mobile’s address book, you can call Google’s 411 Directory for various listings and directions. Also, by adding the number 46645(Google SMS) to your phone, you can text Google to find out all sorts of listings. Google SMS can provide people with local businesses, weather, glossary, sports, movies, flights, weather, translation, stocks, airlines and more. Example: By texting Google with “Weather, 33928”, you will receive the weather forecast for that area.

Google Answers- Have a few questions? Google’s question and answer service allows users to pay researchers to answer your questions.

Google Calculator- Are your math skills a little weak? Well worry no more. Google, The Math Master, has made it incredibly simple for you! Type in any equation into the Google search engine and it will automatically calculate it for you. How neat is that?

Scholar- If you are researching a topic. Google Scholar provides relevant scholarly journal articles on the topic you are investigating. Professors and college students will love this app!

Blogging and Google Reader- Blogging addict, you’re in luck! By joining Google Blogs and Google Reader, you can blog on your own and can also subscribe and stay up to date with all of your favorite blogs. Google Reader is a tab located at the top of your G-Mail account that categorizes and updates your most preferred blogs and blogging sites. With this added application, you can participate daily in blogs and share them with friends!

Google toolbar- If you decide to download the Google toolbar, you will never see a flashy ad or mock computer system alert pop-up again. Phewww!

Google talk- Google Talk is very similar to Skype in that it allows you to IM and call your contacts for free from your computer. It is beneficial for communicating between businesses and for keeping in touch with close friends and relatives.

Real player- I was completely unaware of this tool. If you enjoy downloading music and videos in your spare time, this is ideal for you. This Google gadget allows you to transfer music and videos to your Ipod or MP3 player. Simple as that!

Google’s Business Solutions are extremely helpful for Atilus and we use them consistently throughout the day. We use Google’s Adwords account for SEO and PPC. We also use Google Analytics to monitor the traffic on our clients websites and our own. Google’s other business solutions services are located at www.google.com/services/.

The tools I have listed are only a few selected from Google’s limitless list of entertaining and useful applications. Google even has different kinds of communicating services and social networking memberships within its site. If you are interested in seeing what else Google has to offer, visit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Google_products or browse around on http://www.google.com/intl/en/options/.

15 Jul | Post by admin. Filed under Blogs.

A few weeks ago I joined Atilus as the company’s first intern. However, I am very new to the web design business. When I came across Atilus, I was incredibly interested in the company and hoped to gain significant knowledge of web design and internet marketing. So far I have. My recent experience with Atilus has been especially beneficial and all of my co-workers have been extremely helpful by introducing me to the world of web design and how it works. The other day, my boss and co-worker asked me to research the best color-schemes for middle-aged women. This really sparked my interest because I had no idea so much thought was put into each individual website created. Instantly I questioned, “Do men and women respond differently to web design colors?”, that is when I went into my in-depth research mode to find out. From my research findings, it was evident that color does matter for each gender.

It wasn’t a surprise that the color blue was a commonly favored color of both genders, but I didn’t expect that yellow was the most disliked by men and women. Blue is appealing because it has a “calming effect”, but who would have thought that yellow would prevent people from visiting a website? Apart from their similarities, men and women have an abundant amount of contrasting color preferences. I originally thought that women’s favorite color was pink, but each study I viewed proved me wrong, demonstrating that pink was only appropriate for young girls and that a woman’s color-preferences vary with age. A few websites I found affirmed that women respond more strongly to website colors than men do and are more attracted to cool colors, tinted colors(instead of shaded ones), pastels, de-saturated, and earthy tones. With maturity, colors such as blue, purple, and green (blue-greens and turquoise) were of greater liking over bright colors with hues of longer wave length such as red, orange, and yellow. Purple was noticed as a soothing color for women, especially lavender because it evokes feelings of nostalgia and romance for women. On the other hand, purple and blue-green colors do not have the same effect on men. In no such way do men find these colors mysterious, romantic, or spiritual. Men are drawn towards the “less colorful”. They find deep shades of blue, green, and black the most appealing. Deep shades of the popular color blue are said to reflect authority, stability, and intelligence; while dark green colors are associated with environment, renewal, and health. Lastly, men’s most preferred color is black. In conclusion, I have been able to point out the similarities and differences between men and women’s specific color preferences. When designing a web page for women, soft “cooling” colors of blue, purple, and green should be used. Deep colors of blue, green, and black are more suitable when targeting men. If you are trying to create a website to appeal to men and women, it will be easy to attract them with the color blue.

http://www.colormatters.com/khouw.html , http://joehallock.com/edu/COM498/preferences.html , http://content.karger.com/ProdukteDB/produkte.asp?Aktion=ShowFulltext&ArtikelNr=52802&Ausgabe=227952&ProduktNr=224091 , http://desktoppub.about.com/od/choosingcolors/f/womencolors.htm , http://www.colornexus.com/web-site-colors.html , http://desktoppub.about.com/od/choosingcolors/f/mencolors.htm

02 Jul | Post by admin. Filed under Blogs.

Just found this cool new service called Blogrush that we will be trying out. It is a little widget you add to your blog that shows posts similar to yours across the web. Every time the widget is loaded (by a new visitor) your own blog and posts gains the opportunity to be shown across the web. It is a great idea, but lets see if it really works.

We will keep you posted as to the results!

29 May | Post by admin. Filed under Blogs, Internet Marketing.

“I blog but its not getting very popular… nobody comments on my blog… this is useless.”

Have you ever found yourself uttering these sad, pathetic, self loathing words?

Well stop. I think I know what you are doing wrong.

You are blogging, far be it for me to judge how well you are blogging, but you are blogging. For the sake of argument, let’s assume that what you are blogging is interesting, relevant, original and serves a particular audience that if they found your blog they would read it.

So what’s the problem? No traffic.

Okay, duh, and the solution? 3 D your blog.

Read the rest of this entry …

28 Apr | Post by Scott L. Clark. Filed under Blogging, Blogs.

A blog is commentary or news on a particular subject. A blog allows the reader to leave comments in an interactive format, unless comments are blocked by the administrator. The majority of blogs are text, while others focus on music, videos and social networking, blogging is considered “free marketing”.
I can’t stress to you enough, how important blogging is: Blog, Blog, Blog you can never blog enough. I recently attended a blogging class, and 94% of the people in the class stated that they don’t blog because they didn’t know what to blog about. Blog about topics that are relavent to your target audience (Just ensure that it makes sense and flows well). For example: Top 5 or 10 lists are among favorites, they are simple to write, yet very powerful. Make sure and set about 15-20 minutes a day to blog. Where do I blog? There are many blogging sites such as Active Rain, Wordpress, Typepad, or Blogger. When you are blogging; to ensure that users continue to read your content, make sure what you are writing is accurate and reliable remember to quote all information that you have “borrowed”. Now that you know what to do to create and maintain a successful blog, have fun and go post your first blog. (It won’t hurt I promise!)

25 Apr | Post by Zach Katkin. Filed under Blogging, Blogs, Internet Marketing.

Yes, internet marketing works! When you think of looking up information or an address where do we usually turn to? If you said the internet you are correct (MSN, Yahoo, AOL and Google).

Google holds about a 70% stake in the internet search business. So why is Google, so important? Because if you rank on the first page for search terms related to your business is likely to increase a great deal, because majority of users do not go past the first page to find results.

There are several way to the top of Google’s rankings, but one leaps ahead of the rest in terms of return on investment… Blog, Blog and Blog you can never blog enough.

Google uses the most current information to rank. BTW there is a complicated formula they use to rank their Search Engine Optimization. Also, if you notice when you go to www.google.com if you type in a search term and at the very top of the page towards the right hand side it says “sponsored links.” These are links and text that companies are paying for. How do you pay for these? You can hire a Google AdWords professional to do what is called Pay Per Click marketing, so you only pay for what people use. In other words, the price depends on what “words” you choose. Very common words are going to cost you more money, but again it’s about ranking in the top five results.

23 Apr | Post by Zach Katkin. Filed under AdWords, Blogging, Blogs, Internet Marketing, SEO, Search Engine Optimization.

First of all, let’s get this out of the way… you need a website. Period.

And not just any ol’ website, but a great website with clear, crisp professional, easy to navigate design with superb user ability and functionality. Furthermore, you need a website that is just as easy for you to use administratively, as it is for your site visitors to use.

It doesn’t matter if you are a national corporate brand, a smaller brick and mortar with ‘plenty of business’, a brick and mortar with only local business, or an ice cream shop that only sells to people between 5′10 and 5′11 wearing baseball hats before 3 pm only… you still need a website! Your business can be broad or niche, it can be large or small, and despite what you may believe… you need a website!

Now, what does a website cost?

Read the rest of this entry …

10 Apr | Post by Scott L. Clark. Filed under Blogs, Business, Design, SEO, Search Engine Optimization, Web Design, social media.

If you write in your blog consistently then you know the benefits that come attached. With fresh content, you can draw in unique visitors to your blog, as well as, keep the interest of your current blog readers and have them coming back for more. The benefits that come along with an attractive, active blog with fresh content will have to be addressed in a separate blog post because they are immense ranging from advertising revenue possibilities, affiliate marketing possibilities, sales if you are a merchant or service provider, and ,not to mention, the building of credibility and professionalism within your market, and the adoration and respect of your viewers.(The benefits are so vast that it warranted a run-on sentence.)

However, shall you decide to stop writing, for whatever reason be it illness, vacation, etc, you lose all of the aforementioned benefits. How can you avoid such losses? Be honest. Tell the truth, and just simply leave a blog post that you will be away for X number of days, weeks, etc.

It really is that simple, and yet so many bloggers fail to comply. I have been witness to many avid, talented bloggers go stale because they failed to notify their audience that they will be absent. Because when you finally decide to return, they may not be there waiting for you.

You have to think of your blog readers as fans. Because they are; they wouldn’t take the time out of their busy schedules to tune in if they didn’t enjoy what you displayed for them. So, with that said, are you not turned off when your favorite movie star or athlete disappears from the scene?(here’s to you fans of Jerry Seinfeld and Barry Sanders)

Some bloggers are lucky to have a very loyal fan base, but you cannot count on that nor expect that. Respect your blog readers and let them know if and when you decide to take a hiatus by simply placing one last blog of your situation and an expected return date. You don’t have to get too personal, but be courteous and provide some reason and don’t EVER let it be because you are “too busy”… even if it is true.

31 Jan | Post by Scott L. Clark. Filed under Blogs.

Perhaps you have been approached by someone telling you that you need to blog, then again maybe you haven’t. Though blogging has been around for almost 10 years, it hit the mainstream about 5 years ago. Either way, you are probably wondering; How can blogging help me? or Why do I need to blog? There are many reasons why you may want to blog even if you don’t feel the need or if you don’t like writing.

So why should you blog?

The Short Version:
Blogging gets more visitors to your website.

The Long Version:
Blogging really gets more visitors to your website.

If you would like a more in depth explanation on how blogging is helpful please Read the rest of this entry …

03 Oct | Post by Jermaine Primus. Filed under Blogging, Blogs, FAQs, Internet Marketing, Search Engine Optimization.