The Five and Dime

The Guest Author for this post is Trevor Gunter. Trevor manages the web components of our businesses and is the de facto IT person for our companies, as well as playing an important role in the creative department.

We’ve recently added RSS feeds to the ad listings on the Ad Diner. This is a great feature for visitors who use RSS and want to keep an eye on new offerings, but only a small fraction of internet users actually know what RSS is. If you aren’t familiar with it though, it’s worth taking the time to give it a try. It might dramatically change the way you use the web.

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The hype and the reality of social media

(Please note: this article is really written for the small business. For our larger clients, you may find it interesting, but there really is a different strategy for larger companies dealing with social media. Contact me and we can talk about those ideas.)

Everywhere you turn, it seems like people are telling business owners that they have to be working with social media. The latest buzz is all about Twitter and “tweeting”.

As a marketing person, I have a keen interest in anything that helps promote my customers’ business (or my business, too.) But with all of the hype, all of the articles, and all of the news, I have yet to see many concrete examples on how a typical small business can use social media such as Twitter as a marketing tool.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not anti-social media. I just believe that there is quite a bit of hype and less substance when dealing with social media. There’s simply a lot of businesses that really can’t take advantage of Twitter and Facebook (other than placing ads on Facebook.)

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Over the last several years, we’ve seen the word “presentation” replaced with the word “PowerPoint.” As in, “I’m going to give a PowerPoint on the new product to the board.”

The issue, of course, is that PowerPoint, the computer slide presentation software from MicroSoft^®, should be used as a tool for making the presentation, it shouldn’t define what the presentation is.

That in itself isn’t the problem, the problem is that people misuse PowerPoint in a way that makes their presentations bad. They would have been better off not using PowerPoint at all. In fact, there are many people that would be much better off just talking without any visual aids whatsoever. Still, many people think it would be impossible to make a presentation without this software.

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Everyone wants their website to be one of the top listed results when people “Google” a phrase. There are workshops and seminars where you can spend thousands of dollars to learn about Search Engine Optimization (SEO). There are groups out there that will guarantee top placement on search engines if you hire them. Others will submit your web information for you to hundreds of different search engines. So what is the story on SEO and are any of these worth the money for your company?

First of all, let’s make sure everyone understands what SEO is exactly. Search Engine Optimization is anything you do to create or add features to your website to get higher rankings on search engines. And of course, search engines are the websites where you look up information online to find other websites that have the information that you are looking for. The most commonly used search engines are Google and Yahoo.

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By now everybody has heard of HD video and many people have gone out and purchased that big LCD or plasma HD television for their home or office. Yet, many people don’t really know the difference between SD (480i), ED (480p), and HD (720p, 1080i and 1080p.)

On the business side, people who use video are wondering about HD and how to make it work in their television commercials, on their website, and for long-format video.

Resolution Basics

Most people understand that better picture quality is primarily created by more lines of resolution. (We’ll explain lines of resolution later on.) But there’s more to the story than just that.

There are actually two resolutions that come into play with HD. There is the source resolution–where the video is coming from (cable, broadcast, DVD, BluRay, etc.) And then there is also the monitor’s resolution.

(Please note, when we refer to monitor, you can substitute the word TV. When we’re talking about resolution, there is no difference.)

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