Situated Research's Blog

Many companies approach us and ask, “I want to maintain and update my own website. What CMS system do you suggest?” When reviewing content management systems (CMS) with clients, we go over the pros and cons of the most popular systems, and evaluate their background and website capabilities to ensure that the correct CMS system is selected for your company. Sometimes a CMS system is not the solution for a company, and an affordable monthly maintenance program is more appropriate.

Following, we discuss the pros and cons of three major CMS systems: Drupal, Joomla, and WordPress. Read more »

From 2005 to 2010, Cyber Monday sales (the Monday after Thanksgiving) have more than doubled, as illustrated above. A recent article from the Wall Street Journal showed an increase of 22% in sales on Cyber Monday in 2011, compared with the 2010 holiday season.

According to research firm Score, Inc., the 2011 holiday season saw a 15% increase in web sales over 2010, for a total of $35.5 billion in online sales (while overall holiday spending was up just 3.8% from 2010).

The holiday season is not just about selling products to your customers. It also involves keeping those that come for the first time, and keeping them there. As said by Jakob Nielsen, “It’s an old lesson: It’s much easier to close additional sales with existing customers than to acquire new customers. People who’ve proven willing to give you money will often give you more. This is true for all sales channels, but it’s particularly crucial for e-commerce because the first order proves your credibility if you effectively handle follow-up and delivery.” Read more »

It may be an unfortunate commentary on society that including words like “moron” and “idiot” in the title of a post garner considerably more traffic than words like “success” and “charity” but it is a fact. Read more »

Why would you want to convert your website to run on a popular blogging platform?

WordPress, one of the most successful open-source blogging platforms, has become a powerful tool for integrating Web 2.0 features on your website. Besides an excellent Content Management System (CMS), WordPress offers thousands of free plugins (created by a community of developers) that can add a variety of features and functionality to a website.

Even if you’re not ready to host a blog on your website, your website’s theme can be converted to WordPress to maintain your current look-and-feel while adding useful features such as social media integration and search engine optimization (SEO), which could otherwise be expensive to implement.
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With the former glory of old, linear media fading, Melody Ayres-Griffiths examines just what the new media artform known as ‘transmedia’ is, and how it will engage an increasingly discerning yet time-starved populace in an immersive and interactive way. Read more »

As I sat last night debating between writing this blog post for Birgit and hand addressing my corporate holiday cards, I could not help but be struck by the irony of my situation. You see, it is important for your business to take note of your clients and customers, especially at this time of year, and a hand written message gets noticed in this age of electronic communication. The irony however was, that had I thought through my holiday plan carefully, I could have been writing this post while Birgit addressed all of my cards and notes. In other words, I could have been attending to my business and new opportunities while Birgit handled the important but more routine task.

Fear not, it is not too late to get organized to maximize this holiday season and its marketing opportunities, positioning yourself top of mind with your customers for next year. With a list (see below), and help from Birgit, and me, if you don’t yet have all of the components that you need, you can still turn this holiday season into a marketing bonanza for your business. Read more »

The purpose of our blog is simple: provide useful information and content that would help our subscribers on certain subject matters. We spend days searching for the best posts to place on our blog. Some we write on our own, while others we redistribute from what we consider as professional and reliable sources.

As authors, we understand that plagiarism and content theft is wrong and unprofessional. It disrespects the original author and in some cases hurts their reputation when used in an unprofessional manner. When we find an article to share with our subscribers, we first try to contact the author in order to obtain permission to redistribute their content on our blog. If we cannot obtain written approval, we always look for a privacy policy statement or the phrase “All Rights Reserved” within the source of the article. Information on this subject matter may be found in any law book about ethics and blogging.

Sharing others’ work (and giving credit) helps authors reach a wider audience. Social media is about gathering and sharing information with others. When you visit a blog, you usually see Tweet, Digg, Facebook and other social media buttons in order to make sharing with a wider audience possible. Read more »

Blogging can be intimidating for someone who hasn’t done it in the past or grown up in the age where everyone has a personal blog. It is, however, critical that business owners and marketers “blog for business.” Putting pen to paper or more appropriately, putting fingers to your keyboard is the biggest challenge for most people. So let’s talk about how to get started. Read more »

There are many simple and easy ways to boost your rankings in search engines so that more people will visit your website. Some search engine optimization (SEO) methods are out-dated and others are just plain shady (e.g. ‘black hat SEO’ tricks such as link farms).

We will discuss seven of the best organic”white-hat” methods of SEO: things you can do for free to achieve higher search rankings (rather than paid options such as pay-per-click advertising). Read more »

How many times have you heard someone say, I just want that top search result on Google? For a business website, the top spot in the search engine returns can be a lead generating machine.

Think about it. Google is where most people go when they are researching. What if there was a way to get your company’s website on that first page?  Well there is…

One of the best ways to gain that top spot is by blogging. Incorporating a blog into a website can have a huge impact on the overall website’s search engine rankings. Read more »

A lot of small business owners feel that there’s a cringe-factor associated with marketing; some resistance, avoidance and dread. It is possible, though, to create buzz-worthy promotional events around your business that not only get you in front of your target audience, but might even be fun to coordinate. Here are a few ideas for generating buzz for your business. Read more »

Research published by analyst firm Access Markets International Partners shows that almost 70 percent of small and medium businesses actively use social media sites such as Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn to promote their companies. But simply posting what your CEO had for lunch isn’t going to do much to help move your business forward. Smart companies are tactically using social media tools to increase their exposure to potential customers.

We’ve compiled ten of the most compelling reasons that you should consider using social media tools to promote your business. Read more »

Twitter is a great tool for conversations, building community, finding brand advocates and reading the latest news. That’s why celebrities, athletes, your competitors’and hopefully you- are on Twitter.

The growth and usage of Twitter is not surprising. Compete.com estimates approximately 21 million unique monthly visitors, and a quick search on Twitter yields a variety of conversations from music, sports, politics, events and products.

For business however, there’s an art to using Twitter, and the most successful at it follow an unwritten set of rules. The following are 5 important tips to follow on Twitter; all lessons that I have learned while working for companies like HP, Yahoo! and Intel.  Read more »

The importance of search engine optimization is well known to most business owners. What is equally well known is the fact that good optimization advice does not come cheap and bad advice comes cheap but costs a lot in the long run (think websites getting banned on Google).

While targeting the most popular keywords in competitive sectors might no longer be feasible for most new businesses on a tight budget, there are still numerous options available to such businesses.

A lot of the opportunities arise from Google’s Universal Search concept, where regular organic listings are mixed in with other search results such as images, videos, maps and so on. Read more »

So many people tend to really over think SEO when they start to realize that they need it. It is not a magic pill or a secret potion it is simply a different type of marketing approach to get internet traffic to find your website. Marketing does not come with a set of rules or guidelines. Search engine optimization is new and fresh and it is going through many various changes but it is important to grab a hold of it sooner than later to help promote your business. Read more »