Open Source For Hard Times

04 December 2008 Categories: social media, st petersburg, web design, web design

Use open source software, save money.

Open source software is freely available, easily downloadable, and deployed and modified without any licensing cost. Though not strictly free– in-house administration and support costs money — open source software can provide a tremendous boost to struggling small and medium businesses. Three reasons open source is going to save us — watch out while I lay ‘em on ya.

Read the whole piece at Whurley.com

OSALT: Open Source Alternatives to Commercial Software.

Establish A Consistent Social Media Presence

Web Design With Wordpress for Social Media Success in St Petersburg,Tampa Bay,Florida

Establish A Consistent Social Media Presence

Seven North Web & Graphics

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St Pete’s Seven North Web & Graphics Social Media-Hub Website: Leveraging Wordpress for Easy SEO and Lower Cost.

Our Philosophy: You should have total control and ownership of your site’s look, function and content, your hosting choices and your domain.

Our Policy: You select your hosting and domain registry provider (we can assist you with this if desired); You do your own content management (we can get you started and provide training or manage it.for you if desired.)

Web Site Option One

We will:

Consult with your company about your Web Site, and
Build a Social Media HUB-Web Site designed specifically for your business.

You Get:

Theme Layout
One hour of Design Time
Web Log
Two Blog Entries
Content Pages
Two Social Media Connections (Face book, Twitter, Youtube, Flickr, etc.)
One Hour of Training- Content Management and Organic SEO Techniques.

We Install:

Your Web Ready Content
Links, Categories and Navigation
Search Engine Optimization Plugins
User-Centric Modifications
Comment-Spam Protection
Daily Backup System
Google Analytics or similar tracking system
Webmail Account
Wysiwyg editing aids
And more.

Starting At $599.00

Graphic Design: From business cards to billboards, we can design, manufacture and deliver all your print-media promotion at great prices.

Web Site Option Two

Includes Option One – PLUS

Custom or Premium Theme
One extra hour of design time -( Total two hours).
Four extra Social Media Connections (Total six)
Ten Web Log entries (Total twelve)
RSS News Feeds with content relevant to your industry.
2 Hours of Training (*Total three hours*) option one plus: Writing for the web and SEO, Business blogging, Social media marketing, Netiquette.

We teach you how to run your Social Media Marketing Empire effectively and efficiently.

Post to all your social applications at once, including your weblog – Free!
Use RSS feeds and specialized searches to gather industry news and media daily that you can use to blog, microblog, bookmark etc., which increases your authority, web ranking and reader base – Free!
Find out what customers are saying about you, your competitors and your industry in real time – Free!
Find out who visits your page and from where – Free!
Learn to use the free and honest way to increase your Search Engine Authority as recommended by Google – Free!
Learn the easy way to write copy for the web using your branding key words naturally for organic SEO – Free!

Starting At $899.00

Call 727-894-5266 for more information.

*Re-pointing of existing domain ($40.00)
*Logo design, if required, is additional

Note: Security and feature updates to your Wordpress software and your plugins are necessary at irregular intervals. You may wish to perform these updates yourself, or you may wish for us to do this for you. At this time we charge fifty-five dollars an hour, with a fifteen-minute minimum. Most updates are quick and uneventful.

Impact of Regulations on Healthcare Social Media

By now, the challenges faced by health care and pharmaceutical organizations when it comes to government regulations on social media are well know. But a recent blog post from SmartBlog on Social Media’s Merritt Colaizzi suggests there may be some hope on the horizon. Despite the added layer of comp …

Connecting the Dots with Carra Riley

By Guest Blogger Pamela Cendejas with Second Self Virtual Assistance Today’s edition of “ Connecting the Dots with Carra Riley“. First of all, we at Second Self Virtual Assistance have to give a hearty “thank you” to Carra Riley , the Countess of the Cosmic Cow Pie. We were privileged to be interevi …

Demand Media Announces Recent Pluck Social Media Deployments …

AUSTIN, Texas—-Demand Media, provider of the industry-leading Pluck® social application server to publishers and brands, today announced a number of customer deployments that have gone live in the past 90 days. See the rest here: Demand Media Announces recent Pluck Social Media Deployments (Business …

Not So Fast Twitter…Don’t Forget Your Roots.

We all know that Twitter and Facebook have revolutionized the world. They have brought attention to the whole concept of “sharing.” It’s a concept that we were supposed to learn in pre-school and then again in pre-marriage counseling, but we couldn’t really wrap our heads around it until it was pres …

SEO Should Not Stand Alone – www.InternetMarketingBestPractices.net

Your consumers do not view your website, email, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and even their mobile as mutually exclusive channels; neither should you. Search engine optimization was once a very powerful form of communication and marketing by itself but as time has pushed on and the technology has chan …

SEO Should Not Stand Alone – www.InternetMarketingBestPractices.net

Wine Online: How Wine Lovers Use Social Media

Twitter. Facebook. Blogs and videos. With all the various ways to communicate about wine (and myriad other pursuits), it’s a wonder we have any time left to sip and relax. But social media gurus say that tweeting and blogging can help us enjoy our favorite tipple. “Wine is a very social beverage,” s …

Who’s the ‘U’ in Social Media & U?

Welcome to my blog! Through my years of experience working and volunteering with university alumni groups and non-profits, I’ve realized that there are a lot of ways that these organizations can use social media as a marketing and a connection tool. Unfortunately, not everyone is aware of the possib …

Social Media Marketing . . . Part 3

In part 1 of this series on Social Media Marketing I gave a brief overview of what seems to be going on in this young medium. In part 2 of this series, I walked through some of the tools that I’ve found to help me with managing the task of getting involved in Social Networking sites. Next, I’d like …

At Last! Pharma eMarketing Comes of Age

I’ve actually heard of someone saying “2010 is going to be the year of digital,” and I kind of laughed inside my head a little. Wasn’t the breakout year of digital marketing a few years back? Okay, in the world of pharma, perhaps not. I guess it depends on how you define “the year of…” Does it mean …

Setting Up Your New Website

: Image via CrunchBase

Wordpress Site Setup: Web Design With Wordpress for Social Media Success in St Petersburg,Tampa Bay,Florida

Your Wordpress site will be the center of your social media web marketing campaign.

What we need to do before we begin:

Save all content (pictures, text, etc.) from your current site, if you have one.
Establish a 5 or 10 dollar a month Linux hosting account with a hosting provider like GoDaddy.com. We can do this for you if you like.
Point your current domain name [yourbusinessnamehere.com] to the new hosting account– this will require: a) the domain name’s owner’s presence (you, presumably) and b) access to your current hosting account, and c) access to your new hosting account. In other words, you will need a computer and quite possibly a phone if you need to call your accounts for assistance. We can help you, or we can do this for you
–OR– grab a new domain name. We casn help you with this.
Establish a webmail email account to which we can have initial and temporary access. Later you can change your password. We’ll be happy to do this for you.

Our Personal Consults:

Initial design consult– bring your ideas and a notebook
Coaching session 1– how to add new content (posts and pages), handle dialog with users and modify existing content
Coaching session 2– how to add categories, themes, plugins, etc., and follow-up questions

Additional services:

Prepping photos for web use: $2.50 per photo, with excellent volume discounts available
Consultation on blogging skills, maximizing your SEO, community and linkbuilding through free Web2.0 services: $50hr, 1 hr minimum. Consultation held at Seven North’s office.

Why You Should Use a Simple Wordpress CMS to Power Your Site

It’s free, open source and constantly updated for features and security.
Hundreds of looks (via themes) for free.
Hundreds of extra functions (via plugins) for free.
No more webmasters– no more maintenance fees.
Edit, add text and pictures from any one’s computer anywhere and anytime with your web browser– or even your cellphone – No need for web design software (Dreamweaver, et al) or FTP clients.
Easy to add video clips, audio, pictures, graphics, etc.
Any user can, with 90 minutes or less of easy instruction, take total control.
Vastly superior Search Engine Optimization built into the structure (Google loves dynamic blog-architecture sites)– people can find you easily and incidentally.
Menus, archives, hierarchal page organization and search are all built in.
Discussion-participation (comments), RSS feeds, blogroll and links are automated – make your site interesting and encourage community-building and frequent visits to your site.
Huge user-base for community-based support.

Open publication – Free publishing – More wordpress

If at some later date you decide to graduate to a full fledged CMS like Drupal or Joomla, you will be ready by virtue of your experience with Wordpress to take full advantage of those more complex and capable applications’ features.

Here’s a diagram of Seven North’s recommended SMM set up:

Social Media In Plain English Video

Social Media in Plain English from leelefever on Vimeo.

St Pete’s Seven North Web & Graphics Social Media-Hub Website: Leveraging Wordpress for Easy SEO and Lower Cost.

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Seven North Web & Graphics Service

Web Design With Wordpress for Social Media Success in St Petersburg,Tampa Bay,Florida