Hey all,

I just wanted to provide an example of a spam email that looks legit but is really SPAM.

Notice who it is To: “recipients” and there are misspellings and malformed sentences all over the place. These are clues to watch for anytime you get a suspicious email, such as this.

PayPal is a major corporation and they don’t make these kind of mistakes when writing emails. SPAM BOTS do though.

Be careful with your info And safe browsing.

As always, if you are in need of a website, WordPress help, or anything having to do with online awesomeness, contact us today. We have you covered.

Here is a recently (and randomly, I might add) whipped up logo creation.  No real rhyme or reason behind this one, it just popped into my head when I was working on a design for a client’s website.   Funny how that happens sometimes.  ;-)  Enjoy!!

(This logo is a fictional work which was created with no intentional reference to any actual company.)

Thanks for stopping by.  Please feel free to leave a comment about this logo or anything else on your mind.

As you know, we are always looking for ways to improve the level of service that Big Cloud Media provides and to move toward that goal, we have recently begun posting helpful tips on Twitter regarding Blogging, WordPress, Websites and Marketing (with a little SEO thrown in for good measure).

It is our aim to keep you informed on common issues that we have run into while completing our various projects and ways to avoid them. We also want to provide great advice and helpful burbs to educate, inform and empower you to make the web related decisions that will help, not hinder, your travels on the road to online success.

To make it open to everyone, we are using Twitter as the hub for the helpful info tidbits and we invite you to follow them via our @BigCloudMedia Twitter page. If you like the tweets, don’t like the tweets, etc. feel free to leave a comment or reply back to the tweet with your opinion. Feedback rocks, good or bad, and since we are offering up these blurbs for you, we want to know what you think about them to refine our advice even more.

You, our client or otherwise, are what keeps our doors open and we want to keep you informed, educate you and serve you in the best way possible with the best outcome possible, at all times.

– Forgive me for the shameless plug coming up but we gotta eat too. –

If you need a custom website / blog created or you need your current one updated, contact me right now via Twitter (@BigCloudMedia) or our contact form. If you don’t need website/blog help, tell us who does or tell them about us. Referrals are always appreciated.

– Ok, shameless plug is over. –

All that being said, I hope you will follow us on twitter and RT the advice to your hearts content.

Thank you for reading and stay tuned.

To iterate this website tip in the best way possible, I will simply say:

KEEP IT SIMPLE!!

I know it is a matter of opinion but honestly, simple is best.

Agree or disagree? Leave a comment.

Have a wonderful day!

Considering the impact that a website (or database) gone kaput can have on your mental health and your pocketbook, I want to make sure that the importance of this message is delivered without any distraction… pause for effect …

THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT!! 

Now that the importance of this message is out in the open, you can read on

This is a friendly reminder to back up your website (and database if you use one) to save yourself a lot of headaches.  It is super important, as mentioned previously, because it can save you a lot of time, money and your sanity (very important) fixing your website, if your website is a victim of accidental or intentional data loss or deletion.  Consider your back up an insurance plan for your website (and database) since it may not always be used but you can depend on it when you need it.

BACKUP VS. RECREATE

It is often the case that you have two options when your website/database decides to take its own life (or the user / admin kills it some how):

• Option 1: Restore from a previous back up
• Option 2: Recreate it cuz it is a goner

It should be quite obvious that the quicker and easier option is “Option 1: Restore from previous backup”.  Using this option, you may loose some data (this being any data that was not included in the most recent backup) but the issue is quickly fixable and most likely, cheap (yay for cheap!) to do.  The keys to Option 1 are that you backup often and consistently.  In this way the amount of data lost from a major malfunction or crash is minimal.

“Option 2: Recreate it cuz it is a goner” is the less favorable, more expensive and (most likely) the most time consuming option. This option is often the result of not having a backup to recover your data from or not keeping the backup current.  That being said, I highly recommend avoiding this when possible.  DELETION OF DATA IS IRREVERSIBLE OR EXTREMELY DIFFICULT TO RECOVER without a backup and it is best not to risk it at all.

TO DRIVE THE POINT HOME…AN EXAMPLE OF IRREVERSIBLE DATA LOSS :

Jerry runs his own wordpress site and decides to make some changes to the database.  Instead of running a query to find some information, he runs the wrong command and accidentally deletes all of the data in the database.  Wordpress runs off of the info in the database so if there is no info, WordPress will not function properly.  If Jerry did not backup his database, he is stuck with choosing Option 2, cuz his site is a goner.  In this situation, the website files would be there but the information the site depends on to run would not be and Jerry is out of luck.

This could happen to you so don’t risk it.  Back up your website (and db if you are using one) consistently and often for best results.

EXTRA HELP:

If you are a WordPress user, I highly recommend the “WP-DBManager” plugin since it is easy to use and does a good job of backing up your wordpress database for you.  Due to the potential security risk of keeping db backups available, be sure to follow the instructions provided with the plugin regarding .htaccess files, etc.  Also keep in mind, this plugin only backs up your database.  Be sure to backup your website files as well to make it extremely easy to recover from a case of website data loss.

If you have any questions about backing up your website or restoring a website from a backup (or anything else I’ve previously blogged about), please feel free to contact me and I’ll be happy to help, advise, pitch my two cents, provide a solution or provide a shoulder to cry on.

Also, please feel free to leave a comment on this topic if you have experienced data loss, can expound even further on the importance of backing up your website / database or if you just have something to say.

Thanks for reading.

This is the first post in a new blog series I am doing geared toward helping those who use web marketing to succeed in their efforts.  I encourage you to leave your comments and tweet it as you see fit and hopefully, we can all learn something new.

So what is the key to a great web marketing campaign?  Some would say the delivery of the message is the key.  Others would say it is the platform.  Both of these are great answers and very important to the success of a web marketing campaign but ultimately, what makes a web marketing campaign a success is the website your potential customers are sent to.  More explanation below…

Make sure the target website converts.

For any web marketing campaign to be successful, the website you send visitors to must convert.  Sadly, you can throw all the visitors you want at a website that doesn’t convert and still be in the same situation you started in only with less money, more frustration and more visitors that are not doing what you want them to do.

That being said, it is extremely important that you make sure your website works the way it is supposed to and does what it is meant to do.  I realize that all websites are not about getting people to buy something but they are meant to get visitors to do something, be it read the posts, click on ads, sign up for services, etc.  If thewebsite does not serve this purpose, web marketing will ultimately fail to do what it is supposed to do.

To play the other side of the story, some web marketers would argue that the purpose of web marketing is to get people to the intended site and the job is done.  Honestly though, what is the point of doing the markeeting if the site doesn’t convert.  Yes the web marketing is complete and working, because people are visiting, but what is the value for our client if we get 1o,000 visitors to our client’s site and none of them take the intended action on the site?  The value is none.  This is a shoddy client experience and honestly, if I were the client, my web marketer would be replaced, quick-like.

Testing if the website converts.

There is a quick and dirty way to see if your website is converting already and it involves comparing your record of desired actions taken (such as sales numbers, ad click numbers, etc.) for 2 months and your website analytics for 2 months.  I suggest comparing 2 months of numbers so you can rule out 1 month being a fluke if your numbers are crazy.  Granted, it does take a bit of work to get to the results, but compared to a full-on marketing analysis, this should be pretty cake.

To get a good idea of whether your website converts, compare the number of actions you want completed on the site (such as product sales or ad clicks) to the # of visitors that you get per day.  Using this data, you will be able to see, over the course of 2 months, whether your site converted or not, what your conversion ratio was (both on a daily and monthly basis), and also the days when your site converted the most and the least.  Using this information, you can get a better idea of whether or not it would be beneficial to spend the money to get more visitors.  If your conversion ratio is low and your visitor count is low, I suggest you consider having your website reviewed (and possibly revamped) to improve it’s conversion, before considering additional web marketing actions.  If your visitor count is low and your conversion ratio is high, your website will likely see even more success with a targeted web marketing campaign.

Wrapping it up.

Ultimately, we all expect a return on the things we invest in and in the true spirit of your website being an investment, I hope that this post has provided you with a tool and some insight into how to get on the right track with it.  If you have any questions about web marketing, websites or anything else in this post, please feel free to contact me, as I would love to discuss it more with you.  Also, feel free to leave your comments below and let me know your web marketing story.

For an incredibly in-depth marketing analysis, in which we will take this method and expand it to gain even more insight into the results your website is producing, please contact me and request a free consultation.

Thank you for reading and stay tuned for the next post in my Web Marketing Success Tips series.

As part of our “From the Lab” series, I will be presenting some ideas and experiments that we currently have going on.  In this “From the Lab”, I will explore a different way to employ a CAPTCHA  test on a web form.

So what is CAPTCHA?

To start, CAPTCHA (Completely Automated Public Turing Test To Tell Computers and Humans Apart) is a common technique deployed on web forms to avoid spam messages or bogus information being sent through them.  CAPTCHA often manifests itself as an obtuse set of characters that you have to enter in order to submit information through the form.

Why use CAPTCHA?

In one word: SPAM.  In a hyphenated word: SPAM-BOTS.  It is common for spam-bots (evil creatures that crawl from page to page looking for web forms to repeatedly submit ridiculous amounts of spam through) to target un-protected web forms and cause havoc on the systems they penetrate.  CAPTCHA basically acts as an additional deterrent to spam-bots due to the fact that they cannot “see” what the characters in the image are.  But can they?  Due to the complexity of the images that are used by Google, Yahoo, Twitter and Facebook, perhaps the spam-bots can do more than meets the eye.

Issues we hope to resolve:  

There are 3 main issues that we found with the most common form of CAPTCHA (the “enter the characters from the image” test) and they are:

1. They are eye sores!! (due to the nature of the opposition, the images used to display the characters are all jacked up and are just not pleasing to the eye)
2. Not the best user experience, more typing, less fun.
3. CAPTCHA is easier to defeat by spam-bots if the characters in the images are not ridiculously skewed to the point where even legit humans have to guess.  Google services, Twitter, and other major name websites use these severely deformed characters and their CAPTCHA images are near impossible to read.  Again, not-so-good user experience.

A New Kind of CAPTCHA: CLICKTCHA

Enter CLICKTCHA, a new spin on a tested concept which follows the same principle as CAPTCHA but is a little more user friendly.  To our knowledge, this test cannot be defeated by spam-bots because it involves using the mouse to move items around, as oppose to entering information.  Once implemented, the spam-bot defense can be taken a step further by encrypting the CLICKTCHA identifiers and processing all of the verification and decryption server-side. Boo-yah!!

Example of Clicktcha:

Sometimes it is best just to use it for yourself rather than read someone else’s gabs about it so click on the Clicktcha Example and try it out.  This is just an example so feel free to pump it full of fake info.  To submit, you have to order the CLICKTCHA items in the order specified.  On the list of things to do is a plugin for WordPress as well as other popular blogging sites and copy paste implementation for those who like to hand code (like we do).  Our goal is to get it down to as little work as possible to implement CLICKTCHA on any web form. Much to do, but we are working on it.  :)

The Caveat…

In the small amount of testing that we have done for usability, CLICKTCHA has been known to not be so friendly with older browsers (blanket statement but especially IE, uggh!) and touchscreen smartphone browsers.  Sadly, we have not advanced in the mobile phone touch screen world enough to distinguish a click and drag from a click on most touch screen phones.  This being said, you can always set your website to catch the browser type and compensate with the good ol’ CAPTCHA method for the incompatible browsers.

And to you…

What do you think?  Is CLICKTCHA better than CAPTCHA?  Which would you rather use?

This graphic started out as an info graphic and quickly became a crazy combobulation of different correlations and results.  Technically, it is many interconnected multi-sided venn diagrams but instead of the middle being the specifically shared trait, it is instead, the probable winner of a celebrity death match between the correlated parties.  I am not sure what that makes this. I call it an infographic but maybe it is not…

(click on the image to see the full size version of it…FYI, it is massive.)

This is the creation of Big Cloud Media.  Feel free to share it but please give credit where it is due.

As you know, Big Cloud Media has always been about providing the most for our customers.  Be it hosting, web design, web development or any of the many other services we offer, we always strive to exceed our client expectations.

In keeping with that mentality, Big Cloud Media will now offer Graphic Design as one of our main services. Graphic design has always had a very close proximity to website design and the other services we offer, so we thought it natural to expand that horizon a little.  Originally we just used our graphic design skills to deliver great website and web-application designs but now, the flood gates are open for all kinds of different design projects.

As part of this official service offering we will be able to accomodate all things graphic design including but not limited to:

• Posters
• Flyers
• Business Cards
• Picture touch ups
• Custom art and designs
• Custom and original logos

In the meantime, if you have a graphic design need, get in touch with us right away so we can take care of it for you.

If you are thinking of launching a new Advertising or Search Engine Marketing campaign, Google Insights for Search is a great tool that, when used correctly, can help determine the best search terms for the best times and locations.  Using Google Insights for Search, you can compare the interest in different search terms over time, determine search term interest trends over time, research search term interest by area and much more.  In this post, we will give a quick run through on how to use this awesome tool so you can make your next Search Engine Marketing campaign that much more effective. 

Step 1: Determine Your Search Terms

To start, determine the search terms you would like to build your campaign around.  The terms you use are completely up to you but I would suggest going with similar terms with slight differences (example:  landscaping, lawn care, lawn maintenance … all are services, centered around lawn care, that you pay for but each is a different term) once you have them down, enter them into the search terms box, comma separated, as indicated in the example image below.

Step 2: Determine Your Filters

The next step is to determine how you want to filter your results.  This is where you drill down the type of search you would like the results to come from (Web, Image, Product, and News), the geographic location (you can get down to the metro area level), time frame and categories, as indicated in the image below. If your marketing campaign is location based, you can research the interest level for your search terms, by the locations you are targeting.  Once your filters are selected, click search.

Step 3: Analysis of Results

The third step in this process is analyzing the results of your search.  Many tidbits of information can be gathered from the results but we will focus on 3 main ones: Comparison of Search Volume / Trending, Search Volume by Location and Top / Rising Searches.

Comparison of Search Volume / Trending

General comparison of the search volume for your terms is important because it indicates which term is being searched the most and also trending over time.  With this information you can plan out your advertising or marketing campaign based on when people search for that keyword the most and increase your chances of the campaign being successful.  Out of our example phrases, landscaping trumps the the other two in volume but it shares a common trend with lawn care.

Search Volume by Location

Google Insights for Search also reveals great data on the search volume, for your selected search term, by geographic location.  Using this information you can accurately plan your local search marketing campaign and target specific areas for different search terms.

Top / Rising Searches

The Top / Rising Searches section gives you great insight into other search terms, similar to yours, that are at the top  and also those that are rising in volume.  This information may help you determine what other search terms might benefit your campaign and give you an overall view of what people are searching for most often.

Review

So now you know the basics of how to use Google Insights for Search to improve your search engine marketing campaign.  We have covered how to get the report and a brief analysis of 3 different parts of the report.  If you have more questions about this awesome tool, visit our contact page and send us an email or call us at 210-519-7729.

Below are some live charts from the example search.  Enjoy.

Thank you for visiting.  If you have a website project or online marketing campaign to be completed, we can help you with that as well.  Check out our SEO, Folio, Web and Marketing pages for more information on our services and contact us to see what we can do for you.