I get a lot of questions about using Facebook and Twitter for promoting businesses and ministries. In this brief blog, I'm going to sum up some of the advice I often give clients on how to leverage the Social Media trend.

Social Media are sites like Facebook and Twitter where people share information and interact with each other. On sites like this, people talk to each other via instant messaging and interact using posts, rather than passively consuming content that has been prepared for them. The trick is to get them talking and interacting about you.

When my wife and I were dating, we wanted to give each other gifts that reflected the true meaning of the Orthodox feasts we were celebrating but alas we were faced with few options. Four years later, when we were planning our wedding, we had a difficult time finding items for the Sacrament of Marriage and gifts for our attendants. Over the years, my wife started to create specialized Orthodox Christian gifts for our friends and loved ones.

We are writing with great joy that we have created a new website devoted to Orthodox Christians and their pursuit to give specialized Orthodox gifts to their family and friends of the faith. We have Orthodox Wreaths, Embroidered Tree Skirts, Stockings, Baby Bibs, Toddler Blankets, Burb Cloths, Childrens T-shirts, Turtlenecks, Decorative Towels, Napkins, Table Runners, Bread Basket Liners, Baptismal Towels, Head Scarves, and Aprons. All beautifully handmade with Orthodox messages.

In addition to providing specialized gifts for the Orthodox community, we will have links to other Orthodox sites and hope to provide a valued service. We have pages for Orthodox videos that you can submit, and Orthodox Charities.

To view our products and website, Go to: www.BestOrthodoxGifts.com.

One of the new and exciting advantages to the computer age is the ability for people to join, meet and share common interest online. This has lead to the phenomenal growth in online forums.

An Internet forum, or message board, is an online discussion site. From a technological standpoint, forums or boards are web applications managing user-generated content. People participating in an Internet forum may cultivate social bonds and interest groups.
Forums are relatively inexpensive to build and no cost to maintain because members take the responsibility for monitoring the content.

A good example of a forum is action can be found at http://www.corshops.com/Support.html
Forums have proven successful for e-retailers that sell products to people with a passion. Pet owner are a fine example of people with a passion.

Before the Internet, people looking for others with similar interest had limited options. The Internet made possible discussion boards, forums and social networks that attract like-minded people from around the world. This ability to bring people together is at the heart of the online forums.

To build a forum for your website is inexpensive because the structure of an online forum is inherently uncomplicated. “The price range for a forum to be added to you site is between $100 and $1500 depending on the platform you are using.” says Olan Chancy, president and co-founder of Corfun “As a e-retailer, when you are helping people find what they want and understand what they need to know also creating an opportunity to interact with other of common interest, you have created goodwill that you can not measure.” Corfun specializes in dynamic Websites that are easy to mange and update.

When you are ready to launch your forum’ there are ways to “prime the pump” to elicit participation. First promote the forum on you website. Second would be to do an email blast to all friends, family and past customers. Third post it to and social networks you may be a member of. Forth you or your in-house staff “seed” the forum with questions, content and comments. Fifth reach out to industry pros and experts asking them to be an active member and post a topic. This will only help them because it gives them more of an audience to show there expertise.

Now that your forum is up and running the only thing left to do is monitor it so you can answer questions, delete inappropriate content and harvest insight into what your customers like and dislike.

As the owner of the forum you have the power to delete post and ban users. Most forums require members to provide a valid email address linked to the users name to become a member.

The economy is down, unemployment is through the roof, we’re in the worst financial crisis since the great depression. Sounds like the worst time to start an online business right? Wrong! The year 2009 could be the perfect time to start an online business because of all the turmoil going on in the business world. Let me explain…

While the rest of the business world is in shambles the online business world is doing well. According to the Department of Commerce U.S. Retail E-commerce sales numbers are up all around. The 2nd Quarter of 2008 saw $34.6 billion in sales which was a 2.9% increase from the 1st quarter and a 9.5% increase from the second quarter of 2007. Just recently on “Cyber Monday” (the online world’s “black Friday”) the online world saw another positive sign, consumers spent $846 billion on cyber Monday which was an increase of 15% over 2007’s cyber Monday. Read more

A Website exists for a reason. That seems axiomatic, but the fact is that many Website owners lose site of that fundamental fact. Before taking on any Web project, I always ask future Web entrepreneurs, "What is the purpose of your Website, and how do you plan to make money off it?"

When it comes to web site design, e-tailers today face many choices. They have more technology than ever at their fingertips to create a site full of bells and whistles, but at the same time, they want to deliver a quick and seamless shopping experience so consumers can get in, get their product, and get out.

The following is checklist designed to help you gauge the search engine friendliness of your website. If you are planning a website this checklist will help you avoid the common pitfalls of unfriendly designs.

The popularity of search engine optimization may have slipped with some retailers in favor of paid search, but is still a critical component of any retailer’s search marketing strategy.

Word of mouth is a proven way of driving sales. When product buyers give a thumbs-up, the endorsement car­ries powerful credibility that retailers and manufacturers cannot duplicate in product descriptions. Little wonder, then, that customer reviews can pack the same punch online. Maybe more, because of the Internet's power to distribute consumer comments more widely and rapidly than word of mouth.

What do “Hits” mean?

Hits would be any request to the server which is logged. This could be both human, as in visitors or other computers, such as search engine spiders or bots. The request can be for anything. It could be for HTML pages, graphics, audio files and more.

What are “Visits” then?

Well if “Hits" are times the files are accessed by man or machine, then visits are when a request is made to the server from a given IP address.

Content writing for the Web might not look too tough, but I promise you it is harder than it looks. Anybody and everybody can write - you learn how to do that in grade school. The problem is not everybody can write well. To hopefully put you back on the right track I thought I would share with you a handful of tips that pros use when doing any sort of web site content writing.

Last month, I was asked for advice on choosing the right payment gateway, specifically for the pros and cons of working with PayPal over the other more expensive options. I’m keeping this list of pros and cons quite short, hopefully this will help you decide if PayPal is the best solution for your online e-commerce website.

Retailers are creating a presences on social networks to make a minimal investment in an attempt to gain maximum exposure.

Roxy, a retail clothing store, posted a video on the social network and video site You Tube to get potential customers interested in its brand.

I'm often accused of being something of a Joomla Content Management System Evangelist. I'll admit it. I am a little passionate. But I think with good reason. This blog is actually a reprinting of a case study I did concerning Maryjean Zarick and her Paradise Music site. I wrote it up to highlight some of the great stuff Joomla can do for a small business person, and I decided to share it as a blog here to help spread the word.

I wanted to reconnect with the seasonal store shopping experience to understand first hand why stores are getting so hammered by online merchants at Christmastime. The stores I visited were nicely decorated and neatly stocked-and hauntingly empty. Parking was easy and checkout was a breeze. I got suitable gifts and prices were good.

James Carville, the political campaign strategist, hung a sign at Clinton’s Little Rock campaign headquarters that read: “It’s the Economy, Stupid” became ensconced in American political folklore—and helped get Bill Clinton elected President in 1992.

For optimizing Search Engine Placement and driving referral traffic, getting links to your business or ministry site is absolutely essential. Unfortunately, despite the critical need for this, many Webmasters don't even know how to check the links they currently have, much less how to get more.

Customer reviews and other user generated content is becoming a "must have" for retailers to compete online. 50% of merchants surveyed have adopted the technology, according to a new report from The E-Trailing Group Inc. Of the merchants who have adopted customer reviews, 58% said improving customer experience was the most important reason for adding the program to there site. We find that

When a European journalist based in Ammam Jordan calls a writer in Central Florida for a comment on church bombings in Mosul, only to end up on a conference call with an Assyrian activist in Beirut - you know things have changed. The world is just not the same.

According to CIO magazine, a recent survey of over 200 CIO's for medium and small enterprises revealed that 83% of them were leveraging some kind of Web 2.0 technology. That is excellent news for those of us who are into the Web design space and don't care much for static Websites.

Unfortunately, many business professionals and Christian ministers will read that statistic and ask, "What is Web 2.0?"

I got to do something really nice last week. As an Orthodox Christian and Web professional, I'm always thrilled whenever I get to help out new ministries get started. That is why being able to help the online presence of a new ministry dedicated to helping our missionary families was such an honor.

If I say the phrase, Orthodox author to you, what name comes to mind? Tolstoy? Dostoevsky? Perhaps a Theological writer like Bishop Kallistos Ware or Father Alexander Schmemann?

But, if you searched for the phrase Orthodox author using Google for the first few weeks of December 2007, you wouldn't find any of those famous authors at the top of the search results.

Instead, you would find Heather Zydek and Father Leon Castner .

Every Web designer has that moment of grace at least once. A moment when you look at the layout, the colors, the text, and the images - and the page just works. Everything is just perfect. I had that happen recently. I remember how ecstatic I was. This was the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, or at least so I thought.

I could hear the frustration in her voice as we talked. The head of a non-profit, she was upset about her Website. It hadn't been updated in a year, and she desperately needed to get control of it. She had fundraising product to sell, supporters to keep updated, and prospective member information to distribute.

Techies love acronyms. So much so, in fact, that we often sound like we're speaking a foreign language to normal humans. That's too bad, because a lot of times the acronyms obscure information about really, really useful tools.

As an Orthodox Parish Webmaster, 2006 marked the year that I wanted to take the parish's Web presence into the 21^st Century. First I did a Bulletin Board/Discussion Forum . Then I did a large-scale photo gallery. In the Fall of 2006, the next stop for the Web presence of the Orthodox Church of St. Stephen the Protomartyr was to go dynamic.

I speak frequently at civic clubs and political organizations on the subject of Christians in the Middle East. My undergrad background was heavy on Balkans studies, and so I spent a lot of time studying the life of Christians under Muslim rule. Little did I realize, of course, when I was taking classes like Ottoman History and Arab Politics back in the early 90's, that someday the topics of Jihad and Dhimmitude would be paramount concerns in the 21^st Century.

Images are important. Orthodox Christians know that better than any other Christian community, which is why we struggle to keep our churches adorned appropriately. Many of our icons, of course, depict scenes from the life of the Church. Great events in the Christian past are rendered in gold leaf and hung for all to see and venerate. We understand how important it is to visually chronicle our past as a community, and to honor that past.