Blog | WebShark Media

WebShark Media Sponsors Canada Day in Kanata

The Canada Day in Kanata Celebration is one of the largest community events in Ottawa. Crowds of over 30,000 gather at Walter Baker Park off Terry Fox Drive in Kanata to celebrate this significant community event. The best part, admission is free!

WebShark is always involved in our local community and we are very proud sponsors of this great event for the second year in a row. We hope to see you there!

More details can be found here: http://canadadayinkanata.com/ – We might have also helped them out with their website

WebShark Helps Blushes Gain Top SEO Rankings

As of this morning here are some rankings for Google search terms:

Kanata Hair & Beauty Salon: rank #1
Kanata Hair Salon: rank #2
Kanata High End Salon: rank #1
Kanata High End Hair Salon: rank #1
Kanata Hair: rank #2
Kanata Beauty Salon: rank #4
Blushes: rank #1

Just a month ago Blushes Hair Salon was nowhere to be seen in the organic rankings on Google for any of these terms. WebShark built them a new site with SEO in mind and now they are reaping the benefits.

About Blushes

Blushes offers a deluxe service that truly speaks to the fashion savvy person. Strongly trend-aware but never slaves to fashion. The Blushes salon experience is tailor-made to enhance the individual style, of you, our valued client. Offering, more then just a flawless cut or an extraordinary colour. Blushes is a fusion of your personal style blended with our cutting and colouring expertise. Every one of our creative stylists are meticulously trained to combine their natural creativity with a complete understanding of the craft and your character, so that every style is uniquely personalized to suite your features.

QR Codes and Your Business

QR codes come to us from Japan where they are very common. QR is short for Quick Response (they can be read very quickly by cell phone and other mobile devices). You see QR Codes in a magazine adverts, on billboards, web pages and even on clothing. Once it is in your cell phone, it may give you details about that business (allowing users to search for nearby locations), or details about the person wearing the t-shirt, show you a URL which you can click to see a trailer for a movie, or it may give you a coupon which you can use in a local outlet.

The reason why they are more useful than a standard barcode is that they can store (and digitally present) much more data, including url links, geo coordinates, and text. The other key feature of QR Codes is that instead of requiring a chunky hand-held scanner to scan them, many modern cell phones can scan them. The full Wikipedia description is here.

How does the cell phone read the code?

The cell phone needs a QR code reader, We use “Simple Scanner” on our blackberrys. It takes literally 1 minute for someone with an iPhone, Android, or Blackberry phone to find and install the reader.

How do you generate a code?

You can easily generate a QR code using a site like Kaywa.com or you can use the Open Source code to generate codes for you if you have a smart developer on hand. We like this one: http://www.qrstuff.com/

How could your business use a QR code?

Your business, no matter how small or large, could use QR codes in a number of ways. You might auto generate one next to every product on your web site containing all the product details, the number to call and the URL link to the page so they can show their friends on their cell phone. You could add one to your business card containing your contact details so its easy for someone to add you to their contacts on their cell phone.

Add them to any print advertising, flyers, posters, invites, TV ads etc containing:

Product details
Contact details
Offer details
Event details
Competition details
A coupon
Twitter, Facebook, MySpace IDs
A link to your YouTube video

QR Code recently featured in the TV Series “CSI Miami”

WebShark Media wins PCBA Technology Business of the Year for 2011

2011PCBALogoforwesbite WebShark Media wins PCBA Technology Business of the Year for 2011 Thanks to everyone who voted for us. We are very pleased to announce that WebShark Media is the winner of the Kanata Chamber of Commerce PCBA “Technology Business of the Year” for 2011.

Nominees were: BKL Design Group, Gridway Computing Corp, Herjavec Group, IPlay Network Gaming Lounge, Perram Consulting Inc, Quest Software, Research in Motion, Smart Technologies. Congratulations to all the nominees.

News Article: http://www.yourottawaregion.com/news/local/article/959560–business-stars-shine-at-awards-gala

Geo-tagging Blog Posts

When you think of geotagging you probably think GPS, FourSquare, Facebook Places or letting a photo site like Flickr know where a photo was taken. But it can also be done for blog posts.

WordPress.com already supports geotagging on profiles and posts so that you can let others know where you are posting from. They will also soon launch a Geo Search feature that will allow people to find posts based on their location.

If you have a WordPress hosted blog, this functionally isn’t built-in yet, but there are a few plugins that can enable it. GEOTag, OSM and Geolocation all claim to add geo information to blog posts and are worth checking out.

So how does this tie back into local search marketing? Easy. Local search is all about finding the right match for a user based on their location. So when I search for “Audi dealers in Ottawa”, it filters out any results in Toronto, Montreal or Calgary.

Now imagine that same search in regular search. Search engines will still put local results at the top, but then list out what it believes are the best matches based on their algorithm. If you have geotagging setup, that can be another indicator to search engines that your post is targeting (or most relevant for) searchers the Ottawa area, and it may then rank better for that specific search.

Search engines are all about giving the best search results to their searchers and location is increasingly important. Not all users know to search Google Maps for local results, so search engines have to interpret local intent and the location of the searcher into regular search results as well. If you are geotagging your blog posts, this can be one more indicator to search engines that your content is a good match for a geographically specific search query.

As geotagging continues to evolve, chances are that search engines will roll that into their algorithm as well as the other geolocation signals currently considered. It’s also very possible that location specific search engines will start popping up and show results based purely on geotagging. Getting geotagging setup now might help get your blog content ahead of the game.

Corporate Vehicle Wrapping – Part of Your Marketing Mix?

You see them everywhere…trucks with construction company logos, vans with florists names on them, hummers with martial arts training studios, and everything else you can think of. Is it worth it? What are the pros vs. cons and what are the costs?

When you compare vehicle wraps to other forms of advertising you can make a great case for it. Depending on how often and where you drive you can potentially be getting a lot of brand awareness from your vehicle wrap. Seeing as the cost is anywhere from a grand to about four depending on how you do it (full vs partial wrap or decals) it is inexpensive compared to most print campaigns.

It makes it much easier to write off your vehicle milage (you can send a picture of it to the tax man if he doesn’t believe you). You can gain brand awareness in your local area very quickly from people noticing your vehicle. It also works as a great conversation starter when parking around town. Keep lots of cards in your glove box!

The key is getting a good design that both looks good on your vehicle and stays on brand.

The only downside I can see is that once you get a wrap done you will need to spend more time keeping your vehicle clean. You are also always a company rep when in the vehicle so road rage and aggressive driving must be kept in check.

So in conclusion if you drive around enough and can shell out for a good design it may be worth making part of your marketing mix.

Website Design Firms in Ottawa (And the World)

When a company or individual decides its time to either build their first website or re-design an existing one the number of options can be overwhelming. In Ottawa or really anywhere else in the world there are many different types of web design firms to choose from. When I am explaining the options to potential clients I like to categorize them as follows:

Large Ad Firms
Template Oriented Firms
Cousin Rick
Small Web Shops

There are plus and minus arguments for all of these categories and they all serve their purpose for their target audience. Startup companies usually do not have the cash to spend thousands on their first website. Using a template firm or cousin rick out of his basement will get a website online for much less. Firms that are ready to take their website to the next level can use a small web shop or a large ad firm to transform their “site” to a “marketing tool” that will actually drive leads and sales.

Here is the breakdown, in my opinion, of the pros and cons of each category:

Large Ad Firms

Great for large companies that need a dedicated team on retainer to help with radio, print, web campaigns. They do all custom work, no templates. You usually get a dedicated team lead that you can call at any point to get anything you need. Obviously very expensive because of the overhead of all the salary employees, fancy studio, etc.

Template Oriented Firms

What I mean by template oriented firms is the companies that create template sites for the vertical industries. Everyone has seen the real estate sites that all look very similar. These sites can be put up with minimal effort and can be controlled via an administration system. Great for people just starting up. Lots of templates for every industry. But your site will not be very flexible, it will look very similar or identical to hundreds or thousands of other sites out there. You must stay within the boundaries of the template, not much room for creativity. Also not great for search engine rankings as the template structure is identical to others.

“Cousin Rick”

I use “Cousin Rick” to describe that family member of friend that “does web design”. I come across this all the time when pitching to potential clients. People always know someone who does website design on the side. This can be a viable option for the first time website owner who does not have the cash to start. 99 times out of 100 this type of relationship does not work out. Rick may move out of the country, start college, etc and will be unable to make the updates in a timely fashion. Unfortunately Rick also doesn’t really understand the strategy behind SEO and how to position your site so that customers can find you. He also doesn’t have a team of professionals so that someone is always on the end of the phone for emergencies, quick updates, changes, design needs, etc.

Small Web Shops

Using a smaller web shop is essentially the best of all the categories above. This may be a tad biased as I am involved with a small web shop but hear me out. A small web design shop has the creativity and team backing every project. They have all the skills and know-how to get your site designed, built, launched, maintained and found by customers. They can also help with print campaigns, radio campaigns and other forms of marketing. They are in tune with the latest social media marketing strategies. They usually don’t have fancy studios, keeping overhead lower, and some are structured with some full time, but most contract workers to keep overhead even lower. You can call at anytime and get someone real at the other end ready to help you. You can always depend on that team to help tweak your site and keep it driving leads to your business.

I hope this gives you a little bit more insight into the web design industry in Ottawa (and around the world) as I categorize it. Comments are welcome! Cheers, Ryan

Social Media Marketing in Ottawa

Social media marketing seems to have caught on a little bit more quickly in the Ottawa area then in other parts of Ontario or even Canada. It may be because there are a large number of very capable web firms making a huge push in the area. It may be because there are a large number of events aimed at educating the business community about the potential power of social media marketing. Whatever it is, it seems to be working.

That being said, there are still a large number of businesses that either don’t know what social media marketing is or just don’t know where to start. In this post I am going to attempt to educate small and medium business owners or marketing directors on what social networking is and how it can be used to spread messages, stay in tune with your customers, increase customer satisfaction, and help drive sales.

The Wikipedia definition: Social media marketing is a recent component of organizations’ integrated marketing communications plans. Integrated marketing communications is a principle organizations follow to connect with their targeted markets. Integrated marketing communications coordinates the elements of the promotional mix—advertising, personal selling, public relations, publicity, direct marketing, and sales promotion—to produce a customer focused message. (more)

Simplified down, social media marketing is using already established mediums and tools like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube etc to share two way conversations with your customers. You can setup Facebook pages, twitter accounts, blogs, message boards, and other tools to initiate that conversation. You could use these tools to let customers know of upcoming events, share product update notes, let customers report software bugs, customer surveys, and lots more.

There are obvious things that you must do in order for a social media campaign to be successful such as proper moderation, response time, and choosing the right mediums. It can also backfire under certain circumstances. Some recent Aussie examples are Tourism Queensland’s ‘dream job’ campaign and Witchery’s ‘girl in a jacket’. Both companies used YouTube video clips that were later uncovered as fakes – which was quickly followed by public backlash from users who didn’t appreciate feeling tricked by bogus or contrived videos.

Sony faced a similar problem in 2006 when it launched a viral marketing campaign on YouTube featuring a couple of boys in a video discussing how much they wanted a Playstation portable for Christmas. Unfortunately their target audience is tech savvy and quickly sniffed out that something wasn’t right – and they made their anger public via blogs across the world. Within weeks, Sony made a public apology to its consumers for misleading them.

But used right social media marketing can be a very powerful, and cost effective way to spread messages, get feedback, and stay in touch with your target audience.

Although Ottawa based businesses seem to be catching onto this Social media phenomenon more quickly than other parts of Canada, there is still lots more businesses out there that would benefit from looking into it.

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