Writings from Force 5 Basecamp

01/11/11

My blog post last week on discoverforce5.com left you with this question:  “How much should a marketer promise about an experience?”  Probably better stated as : “How do I promise people enough to move them to action without setting them up for disappointment once they make the move?” I had several conversations about this last week.  It was clear this question hit home

01/05/11

Almost every modern website has a “search my site” module of some sort added to it. In this How-To I’m going to explain how to set up Karamasoft UltimateSearch to automatically rebuild its index on a repeating scheduled basis in a Microsoft Windows hosted environment. First, you will need to obtain the UltimateSearch software from the Karamasoft site, found at:

01/03/11

Marketers are promise –makers.  They use their promises to set expectations high enough to move consumers to action: to buy their stuff, read their books, to come to their show, etc.  PT Barnum made big promises.  He promised, “The Greatest Show on Earth” – the ultimate claim – not a better show anywhere on the planet.  I imagine his customers

12/09/10

Having duplicated content within search engines is a very common problem that is often overlooked. You would think having duplicated content will be good for your search rankings, although that is not the case as it may be not useful to the end-user. www-vs-non-www (Problem) Search engines recognize your www.your-domain.com and your-domain.com as two separate websites. You may not be

11/22/10

When I was a kid, I loved watching the The Road Runner Show cartoon on TV after school.  Yes, it was a little violent. Yes, it was a lot predictable. And no, it really wasn’t very funny.  But what I liked about the show was the Coyote’s creativity.  What imagination! I mean really, this dude had some creative chutzpah!  He came

10/14/10

Earlier this year, the University of Maryland researched social media efforts being made by small businesses. In early 2010, about 25% of small businesses said they were using social media. The most recent survey from Network Solutions and the Center for Excellence in Service at the University of Maryland points to a stall in the number of small businesses that

10/13/10

You’ve probably seen them. Tucked in the lower corner of a magazine ad, on the back of a business card, on a bus sign or even on the entire side of a building. It’s an increasing trend in advertising that some say is a fad, and some say the next great new way to promote. What are QR Codes? QR

10/11/10

The first movie I can recall seeing in a theatre was the 1971 James Bond 007 film, Diamonds Are Forever.  Yes, at the tender age of six, I became a fan of James Bond movies.   I was too young at the time to appreciate James for his prowess, his daring, his panache.  What I loved about Bond films were the

09/16/10

What are Response Headers? Response headers is data that gets sent from the server to the browser. The data can include date & time, content type (ex: text/html, text/javascript), and server information (ex: Microsoft-IIS/7.0). Why is it important to hide them? Security. At the most basic level it will not broadcast what operating system the web server is and which

09/13/10

As a Certified Brand Strategist here at Force 5, I am always on the look out for brand done well and brand that needs help. Both are easy to spot. I have found two examples of wonderful brand ambassadors locally and want to share them with you. The first example of a great brand ambassador is one of my favorite

08/23/10

400 million…500 million…..and still growing. Whether you “like” it (pun intended) or not—Facebook is dominant in helping companies build relationships with their clients. Look at the chart in the article below (thanks to AD Age…)—and with the likes of Starbucks having 12.7 million fans, and growing at almost 79,000 a DAY-you can’t help but consider facebook as a dominant player

07/06/10

In a previous post I showed how-to add specific page keywords & descriptions while using ASP.NET with Master Pages. Compared with the latest ASP.NET 4 version, this technique was not coder friendly. In ASP.NET 4 adding page keywords and descriptions is as easy as this shown below. protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e) { // page keywords Page.MetaKeywords = “keywords