This year, Divertido is proud to Sponsor WordCamp Edmonton 2011 happening November 18 and 19th. WordPress enthusiasts unite, to discover and learn how to better utilize the WordPress platform. With an expected attendance of over 80 people, there will be a variety of people there, from first time bloggers, professionals, content creators to savvy developers.

We are pleased to be a sponsor this year – as we believe that knowledge is power!

“What is WordCamp?

WordCamps are casual, locally-organized, non- profit conferences covering everything related to WordPress, the free and open source personal publishing software that powers over 25 million sites on the web. WordCamps come in all different flavors, based on the local communities that produce them. In general, WordCamps include sessions on how to use WordPress more effectively, beginning plugin and theme development, advanced techniques, security, etc. The types of sessions typically seen at WordCamps can be viewed on the WordCamp channel at WordPress.tv.”

Burberry’s “Tweetwalk” Delivers to the Masses and Challenges Fashion’s Old Guard

Burberry outdid itself again. This time the venerable British brand is staying one step ahead of its already digitally-advanced self by working a partnership with Twitter to tweet backstage photos of each and every look in the collection before livestreaming its London Fashion Week runway show. It’s also make select items (coats and handbags only) available for purchase immediately after (through September 26). And just like that, a 155-year old company challenged the establishment and disrupted the power of the elite coterie of editors and retail buyers to deliver the latest style.

The “Tweetwalk” allowed avid followers an exclusive, up-close view of Burberry creative director Christopher Bailey’s Spring/Summer 2012 collection replete with rattan woven trenches and clutches in saturated hues. Twitter promptly blew up with #hashtag comments from Austin, TX to Instanbul about the clothes, no costly airfare to London (not to mention a coveted invite to the runway) required.

For those addicted to Facebook, the show was livestreamed on Burberry’s FB page in HD. And the company retained popular photographer Mike Kus to take shots during the show. Kus’s 123,135 followers were encouraged to see the pics immediately on Burberry’s Instagram stream. For those who missed it ‘live’ the photo montage will later be made available on iTunes through its on-demand service.

Buying Burberry’s latest goods online, however, is proving to be a little more difficult for desk jockeys trying hard to place their orders ahead of the fashion pack. The site was slow at times throughout the day and at press time was completely inaccessible. What’s more, having the video open in the browser made some other tabs I had open, crash.

Despite these small glitches, Burberry is certainly poised to add more sales worldwide, if not on this collection’s $3000 clutch handbags, then certainly as a result of increased brand recognition. Burberry’s already sitting on soaring sales. For the first half of 2011, the London-based company reported total revenue of £367 million, up 34 percent with double-digit growth in retail (retail revenue was £245 million up 49 percent) and wholesale, in all regions and all product categories.

Images via Burberry.com and on Twitter

Article by Lydia Dishman via Forbes.com

Pedigree in New Zealand came up with a fun and brilliant way to discover who your next best friend could possibly be – for real people to matching real dogs that need adoption. Using face recognition technology, discover who your best dog match is through this interactive mini-website. Maybe the saying is true, that the best fits for dog’s/humans is having a “similar look” to one another. Check out more info here!

Search Engine Optimization (SEO): Many of the key elements of search engine optimization will continue to be essential in the ranking game. This includes updating your meta-descriptions (which can be done directly via your Redman Workstation), as well as the very important elements of inbound linking and back-linking.

Social Media Optimization (SMO): When social media is implemented correctly into your overall online marketing plan, social networks like, Facebook and Twitter can be used to their advantage of helping you attract and convert leads. Social media is fantastic in the way that you can measure and track your business in the online social sphere.

Tip: Remember to have your social media networks promoted on your company website via an icon – or even better through live feeds of your twitter or a Facebook “Like” box.

What Remain’s To Be Essential? Content – Like the popular saying goes “Content Is King” and truth be told, it will continue to reign as the lead advantage when it comes to the online world. When writing the content, make sure that it is relevant, interesting and sufficient in respects to fulfilling the prospects appetite for information.

While updating and enhancing your content may take time – in the long run, it will always be worthwhile. If you don’t have the time to focus on enhancing your website, we at Divertido can help through our professional search engine friendly copy writing services.

Remember - It is important to be open to adapting to the new medias – as it can provide unexpected and exciting opportunities for your business.

Owning a business revolves around providing a service or product that people or a group of people need. Typically, the greater the number of customers that know what you offer and the advantages of it, the greater your earning potential can become.

Building a relationship is about being approachable, accessible, knowledgeable and helpful to others. Just because you are building a relationship with a potential client does not mean that they have to become your next “best friend”. You want to establish a relationship in which your clients know that they need and want to rely on your skills to achieve their own goals.

The art of relationship building should be practiced with everyone, all the time. Bring a smile to people’s faces by saying “Hello” when you walk down the street. Try to send e-mails just to see how some of your acquaintances are doing. Continue to remind people of what you do and how you can help them.

Your goal is to sell your value to each and every person! The more people you meet and get to know, the better you’ll do. Typically, traditional marketing takes at least 7 contacts or views before your message registers in their consciousness. Once it does register, it only takes a matter of seconds for people to decide whether they want to buy or sell from you or not. When meeting in person face to face, you have a better opportunity to express your individual strengths and become memorable.  Always show people your ‘A’ game.

Your website can serve an unlimited amount of clients with relevant info about your business without you having to be present in person.  Once contact info is captured, communication is key.  Communicate with each lead on your website as quickly as possible. They may contact you today but can be gone tomorrow as people will typically choose to do business with the person with whom they actually build a relationship with first or better.

The Twelve Most Common Mistakes in Advertising

1. The desire for instant gratification. The ad that creates enough urgency to cause people to respond immediately is the ad most likely to be forgotten once the offer expires. Such ads are of little use in establishing the advertiser’s identity in the mind of the consumer.
2. Trying to reach more people than the budget will allow. For a media mix to be effective, each element in the mix must have enough repetition to establish retention in the mind of the prospect. Too often, however, the result of the media mix is too many people reached without enough repetition. Will you reach 100% of the people and persuade them 10% of the way? Or will you reach 10% of people and persuade them 100% of the way? The cost is the same.
3. Assuming the business owner knows best. The business owner is uniquely unqualified to see [his/her] company or product objectively. Too much product knowledge leads [them] to answer questions no one is asking. [Their] on the inside looking out, trying to describe [themselves] to a person on the outside looking in. It’s hard to read the label when you’re inside the bottle.
4. Unsubstantiated claims. Advertisers often claim to have what the customer wants, such as “highest quality at the lowest price”, but fail to offer any evidence. An unsubstantiated claim is nothing more than a cliché the prospect is tired of hearing. You must prove what you say in every ad. Do your ads give the prospect new information? Do they provide a new prospective? If not, prepare to be disappointed with the results.
5. Improper use of passive media. Non intrusive media, such as newspapers and yellowpages, tend to reach only buyers who are actively looking for the product. They are poor at reaching prospects before their need arises, so they’re not much use for planting a reticular activator or creating a predisposition toward your company. The patient, consistent use of intrusive media, such as radio and television, will win the heart of the customer before their even in the market for the product. Tell them why; wait for when.
6. Creating ads instead of campaigns. It is foolish to believe a single ad can ever tell the entire story. The most effective, persuasive, and memorable ads are those most like a rhinoceros: they make a single point, powerfully. An advertiser with seventeen different things to say should commit to a campaign of at least seventeen different ads, repeating each ad enough to stick in the prospects mind.
7. Obedience to unwritten rules. For some reason, advertisers want their ads to look and sound like ads. Why?
8. Late-week schedules. Advertisers justify their obsession with Thursday and Friday advertising by saying “we need to reach the customer just before they go shopping.” Why do these advertisers choose to compete for the customers attention each Thursday and Friday when they could have a nice, quiet chat all alone with [them] on Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday?
9. Overconfidence in qualitative targeting. Many advertisers and media professionals grossly over estimate the importance of audience quality. In reality, saying the wrong thing has killed far more ad campaigns than reaching the wrong people. It’s amazing how many people become “the right people” when you’re saying the right thing.
10. Event driven marketing. A special event should be judged only by its ability to help you more clearly define your market position and substantiate your claims. If one percent of the people who hear your ad for a special event choose to come, you will be in desperate need of a traffic cop and bus to shuttle people from distant parking lots. Yet your real investment will be in the 99% of people who did not come! What did your ad say to them?
11. Great production without great copy. Too many ads today are creative without being persuasive. Slick, clever, funny, creative, and different are poor substitutes for informative, believable, memorable, and persuasive.
12. Confusing reactions with results. The goal of advertising is to create a clear awareness of your company and its unique selling proposition. Unfortunately, most advertisers evaluate their ads by the comments they hear from the people around them. When we mistake mere response for results, we create attention-getting ads that say absolutely nothing.

Source:  The Wizards of Ads – “Turning words into magic and dreamers into millionaires”

Copyright 1998 by Roy H. Williams

2011 is an exciting year when it comes to online design options and solutions. Web technology is a constantly evolving and fast moving monster that can get away on you if you don’t keep on top of the latest trends and emerging innovations. We have been doing our homework and put together a list of some of of what we think is going to change the way many of us see and interact with the web throughout 2011.

HTML5/CSS3

The most exciting news for this year is by far the looming support of HTML5 and CSS3. While many of the major browsers already support these new technologies, the largest player in the browser game, Microsoft’s Internet Explorer has yet to offer support. The upcoming release of Internet Explorer 9 will offer CSS3 and HTML5 support allowing designers to take advantage of all the greatness that these technologies have to offer. So, what does this all mean? I’m glad you asked!

CSS3
This little gem will give designers the ability to create visual elements and styles that were previously only possible through using images. Rounded corners, drop shadows, image transparency, text shadows and even complex colour gradients, to name a few. This is great news for both designers and end users alike. As designers it will speed up our development process, not having to spend as much time in graphic programs like Photoshop. For the user end, this helps cut down loading times that using  images would create.

In addition to graphical enhancements CSS3 also allows designers to do things like animation and transition effects that once took complicated scripting.

If your looking for some great examples of CSS3 best practices checkout this article.

HTML5
While HTML5 is still a ways away from being fully released (2022 to be exact!) there is still enough browser support to get excited about some of it’s new features. To some HTML5 has been touted as the “Flash killer”, namely for its video and audio support. HTML5 also helps coders keep their markup cleaner and meaner with the addition of smarter tags such as “header”, “nav”, “section”, and “footer” to name a few. Even though it’s still in the distant horizon, expect to see more and more web sites showcasing the power of HTML5!

Mobile

One of the fastest growing segments of the web is Mobile browsing. More and more users are visiting their favorite websites on their mobile devices such as iPhones, Android phones, and Blackberries to name a few. What does this mean for designers? Alot!
The current trends over the last few years has been larger and wider site designs that utilize the large monitors that most visitors now use. Mobile devices however require the exact opposite, having much smaller viewing screens. This has pushed designers to create adaptable designs that work on both large and small viewing areas.

Another hot trend is the development of mobile applications(apps) that offer specialized services and information strictly to mobile users. Redman has taken a lead with this trend and developed a mobile specific web app that streamlines the user experience and offers special services specific to the mobile users visiting our Real Estate clients websites.

Large Full Page Images

They say a picture is worth a thousand words right? Full page, high resolution image backgrounds are getting more and more popular, as they create a very enticing visual experience for the user and let the images speak for themselves. This trend will not apply to every web project and should be used carefully.

If you are looking to implement this on your site there is a great tutorial on implementing full page scalable backgrounds.

Collapsible Headers

Utilizing collapsible headers helps free up space in the coveted top content area of your website and allows users to toggle whether they want additional information to be visible or hidden. This has many great uses such as keeping things like social media, account settings, and other types of info from cluttering up your layout, but still giving your user easy access to its functionality.

Scrolling/Fixed Menu’s

One really cool trend that has been popping up around the web is the use of a hybrid scrolling/fixed navigation. These nifty little navigation menu’s will scroll with the page up until the point that they hit the top of the browser window. Once this happens the nav stays fixed in place and the website content scrolls underneath. This is a great way to make sure your users always have the site navigation right at their fingertips for ease of flow.

The End of Rollovers

Up until recently websites have been designed to be navigated with a mouse. This gives designers the ability to have all sorts of interesting things happen as the cursor rolls over elements. Anything from a simple text color change, to having entire content areas apear and disappear is possible. Sometimes issues can arise due to another web trend – touch screen navigation. Many mobile devices and even personal computers are starting to use touch screen technology for user navigation which leaves a big hole in a lot of web design. As touch screen functionality does not allow for a rollover state. As websites move towards flexibility and usability across different browser mediums and platforms, expect to see less and less rollover functionality in many modern websites.

Paralax Scrolling

Paralax Scrolling uses varying scrolling speeds on multiple layers of a websites background. Its a really unique effect and when used in the right situation can can add depth and  enhance the user experience when done right. Many visual trends, however, when used incorrectly take away from the user experience and distract visitors from your content. Remember to keep your audience and content in mind, as while this trend is hot, it is not going to work for every project.

2011 Web Trends Recap

All in all 2011 looks to be a very defining year for the future of web design and how we interact with our online environments. From Microsoft’s un-fashionably late support for CSS3, to the huge rise in mobile browsing, we expect to see the boundaries of website design and function be pushed further on a daily basis!

Dove is a company that knows how to speak to their true audience of “real women” all while having fun, social and viral when it comes to marketing their brand. The latest gimmick, includes recording an online video to promote their Nourishing Oil Care line, with a group of women dressed in trenches “singing in the rain”.

“Dove wanted to find gals who weren’t shy and were ready to accept the challenge of “Singing in the Rain” so they chose women they’d gotten to know through Twitter and other social media, first engaging them online and then sending a traditional invitation in the mail. ”

According to the brand director of Dove, Alison Leung, “there’s a new way of reaching consumers”.

All we can say, is it definitely made us want to sing in the rain.

Quotes – from: Strategy Online