Costa Technologies, Inc.

Capturing The Value Of Social Media Using Google Analytics

admin — Thu, 03 May 2012 22:19:01 +0000

Google Analytics is a very important tool to measure the traffic to your site and its free! So nice of Google and you should be using it for your web site. A new part of analytics is the social media feature and the ability to see how much traffic is coming from the different social media sites.

FROM GOOGLE BLOG

Measuring the value of social media has been a challenge for marketers. And with good reason: it’s hard to understand exactly what is happening in an environment where activity occurs both on and off your website. Since social media is often an upper funnel player in a shopper’s journey, it’s not always easy to determine which social channels actually drive value for your business and which tactics are most effective.

But as the social industry matures, marketers and web analysts need true outcome-oriented reports. After all, although social is growing in popularity, brand websites – not social networks – remain the place where people most often purchase or convert.

That’s why we’re releasing a new set of Social reports within Google Analytics. The new reports bridge the gap between social media and the business metrics you care about – allowing you to better measure the full value of the social channel for your business. We wanted to help you with 3 things:

Identify the full value of traffic coming from social sites and measure how they lead to direct conversions or assist in future conversions
Understand social activities happening both on and off of your site to help you optimize user engagement and increase social key performance indicators (KPIs)
Make better, more efficient data-driven decisions in your social media marketing programs

Creating a Cover Image for Your Chicago Business Facebook Page

admin — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 07:45:38 +0000

Your cover image is the first thing fans will see when they land on your facebook business page; use it to tell a compelling story about your business.

Your goal is to create a first impression without hard-selling. The cover image is 850 x 315 pixels and there are specific rules about what you can and cannot put on it.

Facebook won’t allow you to use calls to action like “Sign up today” or “Join our email list” in your cover photo. You also can’t include contact information such as a web address, or reference any interface elements such as ‘Share’ or ‘Like’.

HOW TO ADD A COVER PHOTO TO YOUR FACEBOOK PAGE – From Facebook.com

A cover is the larger photo at the top of your timeline, right above your profile picture. Note: Like your profile picture, cover images are public, which means anyone visiting your timeline will be able to see them.

We’ve found that people have a better experience viewing your timeline when they see a cover that is as unique and individualized as you are. This helps people learn more about you. It also helps us prevent spam, fake profiles, and other content that can detract from your experience on Facebook. An easy way to ensure your cover image is unique is to choose an image from your life, like a photo from a wedding, day at the beach, or birthday party. If you want to use a photo to show solidarity or express support for a cause or organization, you can still post a status or a photo and star it on your timeline.

To add a cover image to your timeline:

Go to your timeline
Click Add a Cover
Choose whether you want to upload a new photo or pick a photo from one of your existing photo albums
Once you choose a photo, you can reposition it by clicking on the image and dragging it up or down
Click Save

Note: Your cover image has to be at least 720 pixels wide.

If your Chicago business needs assistance with your facebook page, contact the Chicago Facebook experts at Costa Technologies today for a free estimate by calling us at 630-393-0460 or filling out the online Facebook contact form below.

Plugins for WordPress: Fast Secure Contact Form

admin — Tue, 17 Apr 2012 08:50:27 +0000

Everyone pretty much needs a contact form for their website or blog and one of the better wordpress plugins for your business is the Fast Secure Contact Form.

This is a pretty simple form to setup and it has a lot of good options like built in CAPTCHA to keep the spammers away, ability to easily create multiple forms for different pages and the ability to easily setup a confirmation page for your contact form to redirect after its filled out.

WORDPRESS CONTACT FORM PLUGIN

A super customizable contact form that lets your visitors send you email. Blocks all automated spammers. No templates to mess with.

This plugin allows a webmaster to easily create and add contact forms to WordPress. The contact form will let the user send emails to a site’s admin, and also send a meeting request to talk over phone or video. An administration panel is present, where the webmaster can create and preview unlimited forms.

Features a super easy admin panel, multi-form feature, autoresponder, no templates to mess with, and an option to redirect visitors to any URL after the message is sent. Includes CAPTCHA and Akismet support to block all common spammer tactics. Spam is no longer a problem. You can add extra fields of any type: text, textarea, checkbox, checkbox-multiple, radio, select, select-multiple, attachment, date, time, hidden, password, and fieldset.

Download Free Plugin

How to Change Your Twitter Profile Picture

admin — Mon, 16 Apr 2012 05:40:13 +0000

Sometimes you might want to change your existing twitter profile picture or maybe you never set one up! So add a little flare to your twitter profile and create a 128 x 128 image.

You can edit your picture or profile information in the Profile tab under your account settings or by clicking the “Edit profile” button that appears on your profile whenever you are logged in to that account.

How to change your profile picture:

Log in to www.twitter.com
Click on your name to visit your profile (http://twitter.com/[username])
Click the “Edit profile” button. (This button appears for you whenever you are logged in.)
Click the Browse (or Choose File) button next to your profile image.
Select a file to upload. Your image can be up to 700k in the following formats: JPG, GIF, or PNG. (Twitter no longer supports animated GIFs.)
After selecting the file, click Save changes at the bottom of the page.

What is Google Plus?

admin — Sat, 14 Apr 2012 07:57:54 +0000

Google Plus is one more Social Media network you should have your business setup with. Its the new player on the block but its growing quickly and I really like it.

Google Plus is a social network, with similarities to Twitter and Facebook, but some interesting differences as well. The site is based around the idea of offering users some control over who they share information with through a feature called “Circles.”Essentially, a circle is a group of people you define and curate, designed specifically for sharing information.

The site also features “Huddles,” which are group chats, “Hangouts,” which are group video chats, and “Sparks,” which are streams of content from around the Web based on topics you’re interested in.

Instead of having a wall like on Facebook, the primary user experience is through viewing feeds of information, similar to Twitter or the Facebook news feed. But what’s unique about Google Plus is that you can view one feed of everyone you’ve added to a circle under the “home” view, select to view unique streams of information based on the circles you’ve created, or view a feed called “incoming” for people who have added you to a circle that you haven’t added to one of your own.

Your posts aren’t limited to a short character length, and you can edit a post once you’ve shared it. Like a Facebook wall, you can comment on people’s posts and interact with other people, and if they’ve posted publicly, you can comment on someone’s post even if they didn’t share it directly with you.

Google Plus integrates the +1 feature that the company launched last month, which has similarity to a Facebook “like,” except that it doesn’t actually share the content on your Google Plus profile. For example, you can +1 a comment or a post on Google+, just like you can +1 a website or blog post that has added the +1 button.

GOOGLE PLUS FOR BUSINESS

Should your Chicago business have a Google plus page? YES! Without a doubt it makes sense to have a Google plus page for your Illinois business for multiple reasons. Even though Google plus just started, it just makes sense to do anything related to Google. Especially because it appears that it can have a positive effect on your organic SEO rankings.

Below is a great video describing what Google Plus is and how it compares to Facebook.

Key Plugins for WordPress: WordPress Importer

admin — Sat, 14 Apr 2012 07:44:36 +0000

The WordPress Importer is a plugin that will import posts, pages, comments, custom fields, categories, tags and more from a WordPress export file. This is a file that you can easily create under Tools and Export. This will create a file that contains all your posts, pages, etc and then you can import it if you ever move your site to a new web host.

The WordPress Importer will import the following content from a WordPress export file:

Posts, pages and other custom post types
Comments
Custom fields and post meta
Categories, tags and terms from custom taxonomies
Authors

Download the WordPress Importer here

Report: 25 Percent Of Paid-Search Clicks Will Come From Mobile By December

admin — Tue, 03 Apr 2012 06:22:24 +0000

Marin Software has released “The State of Mobile Search Advertising.” It provides yet more evidence of how the search and paid-search markets are being profoundly affected by mobile devices. In almost every category there’s triple-digit growth according to the report, which projects that smartphones and tablets will combine to generate 25 percent of all Google’s paid search clicks in the US by the end of this year.

Marin also estimates that nearly one-quarter (23 percent) of “Google’s US paid-search spend [by December 2012] will come from mobile campaigns.” These are remarkable statements, and it means that Google will be seeing billions in mobile revenue accordingly.

The report incorporates a financial industry (Cowen and Company) projection of Google’s mobile reviews through 2016. While financial forecasts such as this can be notoriously off the mark, mobile will undoubtedly be a massive driver of ad revenue growth for Google over the next several years at least.

Tablets also figure prominently in the future of mobile paid search. Marin reported that at the end of last year tablets accounted for 38 percent of all mobile paid clicks, growing to an estimated 45 percent by the end of this year.

Marin offers some general advice regarding how to allocate budgets in a fragmenting paid search universe: “In the absence of more precise data, the fraction of clicks from tablets versus total mobile clicks is a good proxy for the percent of search budget to allocate towards tablets.” Specific verticals (e.g., retail) may need to pay more attention to tablets than others.

Marin’s client data show that CPCs were lower on mobile devices and CTRs were higher. However mobile conversions were not as strong.

Source

Report: Google to start selling Android tablets

admin — Mon, 02 Apr 2012 21:55:17 +0000

Google reportedly plans on launching an online store to sell co-branded tablets running its Android operating system.

According to the Wall Street Journal, the tablets will be manufactured by partners such as Samsung and Asus and bear the Google logo.

The report cites “people familiar with the matter.”

Neither Google nor Asus, one of the hardware makers reported to release a co-branded tablet later this year, offered comment.

If correct, the move by Google would put it on par with Apple and Amazon, both of which have online outlets to sell their iPad and Kindle Fire tablets, respectively.

Google has tried this before. In 2010, it launched the Nexus One, a co-branded smartphone built by HTC and sold through a Google website. But as the Journal points out, Google killed the endeavor after a few months.

The report also claims the next version of its Android software, code-named “Jelly Bean,” will arrive in the middle of the year.

Android Tablets, Ipads, its just getting more and more mobile! Tablets could easily replace computers for many people. I know I like viewing websites on a tablet. Make sure you take a look at your site on a tablet to see how it looks. You can easily create a separate tablet version of your site. Contact us at 630-393-0460 for more information.

Source

How to Add a New Image to WordPress Site

admin — Fri, 30 Mar 2012 21:28:37 +0000

Heres a video about how to add a new image to a wordpress page or post.

Images that you’ve previously uploaded to your site are stored in your media library.

Adding image to a post or page from your media library is as simple as:

1. Place your cursor where you would like the image to be inserted.

2. Click on Add An Image icon (located on right of Upload/Insert above your Editor).

Add an image icon

3. Clcik on the Media Library tab and then on Images.

4. Locate the image you wish to insert and click its Show link.

Click on Show next to the image you want to insert

5. Now you just need to:

type a title for the image
add alternate text
choose how you want the image align (None, Left, Center or Right)
select size of image you want to insert (Thumbnail, Medium, Large or Full Size)
and then click Insert into Post

Editing image information before inserting into a post

Enjoy!

Key Plugins for WordPress: Google XML Sitemap

admin — Fri, 30 Mar 2012 04:39:20 +0000

TOP PLUGINS FOR WORDPRESS

WordPress is a great content management system that has many benefits including Plugins that you can setup to add to the functionality of your site. There are many different plugins but a few that are must haves for every WordPress site. The XML Sitemap plugin will automatically create a new XML file and alert Google, Yahoo and Bing every time you make an update to your site or blog.

XML SITEMAP PLUGIN

This plugin will generate a special XML sitemap which will help search engines like Google, Bing, Yahoo and Ask.com to better index your blog. With such a sitemap, it’s much easier for the crawlers to see the complete structure of your site and retrieve it more efficiently. The plugin supports all kinds of WordPress generated pages as well as custom URLs.

Additionally it notifies all major search engines every time you create a post about the new content. (Yea I would say thats a pretty good thing, to have a plugin that automatically alerts the search engines when you do a post) Its free and it works!

Download Plugin Here

WORDPRESS SITES

Contact us if you need any work done on your WordPress sites. We can help you setup a new wordpress site, assist you with an existing worpdress site or convert your existing site to a WordPress site.