The plugin is able to pull tags from your blog post and into iStocks search engine, from which it uses to suggest appropriate images. The entire transaction can be completed in a matter of seconds. Deliver the strong visual impact you need without a lot of extra effort, and you’ll have more time to start thinking about what you want to write next. The plugin, co-developed by Lee Torrens and Amos Struck, is available in the WordPress Plugin Directory.

My mate was looking to set up a home theatre in his house and was researching products, after a bit of time on Google he stumbled across a home stereo enthusiasts forum. After jumping in and taking a look around grabbing some good information about products and different configurations. He decided to start a new thread, “What do you think should be in the perfect entertainment unit?” Now here is the thing, my mate makes custom furniture and it is hot stuff (check out his site).

Not thinking anything of it apart from getting some information about what these guys would like in a cabinet, which he could build into his. Within under an hour there were 37 replies all from people with great ideas, my mate jumped in as part of the conversation offering his thoughts, suggestions and alternatives to other ideas from an expert cabinet makers point of view and the community really took to it.

Within a couple of days of being a member of the site, he had many enquiries and additional traffic to his site and within a couple of days had booked a job, making a perfect entertainment unit. Now this wasn’t the intent of his post, nor being on the forum in the first place, but what a great outcome.

This was very interesting to me, this story highlighted the value of social media and building your online networks. Getting involved in community forums is a great way of referral promoting your products and/or services. Being an active member of an online community can help you to learn new techniques in your industry, share your information, engage directly with consumers to find out what they like, desire and think they would pay for and like Twitter be known for being an expert in your field. Im not advocating spamming online communities, though I feel if you have something to contribute you could see benefits to your business, be it in selling products or simply gaining a new perspective.

What I would like most to share out of this story is just how little effort and money it took for my mate to promote his services that resulted in a sale. Word of Mouth or referral marketing is a powerful tool for you business and shouldn’t be under-estimated. Our business was built on it, still to this day we do not pay for over priced advertising and 101 Web Technology continues to grow. Lets Skype sometime or follow me on Twitter @phil_at_101 to find out what social marketing can do for your businesses bottom line.

Embracing social media the company launched their Foursquare promotion in May, which encourages users to check-in at their locations. Their Facebook page has over 37,000 fans so stated CEO Chris Moore in the companys earnings statement. Starbucks is another great example of using social media to its best, during their Free Pastry Day the company was able to attract $1million people to their stores.

Both of these are great examples of how a company embracing social media has seen real and measurable growth, not to mention the brand awareness. The question I would pose to you as a business owner is what would an increase in 30% of profits mean to your business?

The potential of social marketing is massive and is limited only by your imagination and creative ways you embrace an utilise the technology.

We believe a great looking website that presents a consistent brand is just the start of Internet Marketing and not the end game. Internet Marketing is more then just marketing your business online, we believe it is a discipline that requires knowledge of the arena, knowledge of the business, the target demographic. We believe it requires knowledge of the tools available to extend your brand and take it international. For instance have you thought about how Twitter can help drive more traffic to your website? What about YouTube, thats just for people looking for there 15mins of fame isn’t it?

Lets start thinking beyond building a great looking website, lets start focusing our attention on how that great looking website is going to make us money while we sleep, while we are on holidays and while we are doing the things we do when we are not working.

If you have a website then Internet Marketing is for your website and business. You have a website and you have the potential to turn that website into a business tool, not just a place to house photos and example of previous projects.

Contact 101 Web Technology to discuss an Internet Marketing strategy that will suit your business.

For this website build we are using:

• WordPress for content management and blogging
• aMember Pro for user subscription and management, recurring billing and secure membership
• 1Shopping Cart for Auto-Responders, online shopping and mailing list management.

Using the best of these products and some custom plugins and coding to get it working 101 Web Technology has launched a new level of internet marketing website. A site that allows a non-technical user the ability to run a full service internet marketing business for minimal outlay. This level of functionality while not new, has primarily been dominated by large organisations, with large capital budgets, now with the products that 101 Web Technology has choosen to work with Internet Marketing and eCommerce is now more accessibile to small to medium sized enterprises then ever before. With potential to go international with your business, build a mailing list of potential clients who have asked for you to market to, what is stopping you looking at what Internet Marketing solutions may be available to you?

Take a look at the site here: http://www.thepropertyking.com.au

What we are most proud of about this site is, it doesn’t look like you standard run of the mill Internet Marketing page. You know the ones, they are usually have a white content area centered on the page with a yellow background image, default times font and really really long. While sites in this format do serve a purpose and they do achieve results, our clients wanted something different. Our clients recognised the need to build client repour online, before making a sale in the presentation of content and freely available information. Using blogging as a way to create an interactive environment, that gathers information from a variety of sources and grows the sites content organically.

Contact 101 Web Technology to discuss what we can implement for you and how our experience in Internet Marketing can take your business to the next level and beyond.

Dropbox is an application that allows for easy online backup, file sync and sharing. Using the latest in cloud technology, our clients can collobrate with us and have access to the latest files 24/7. We find this service especially helpful when in the content stage of the website as we can maintain an updated log of activity to keep track of the progress, up-to-date to do list and a list of edits that need to be made.

We are using Dropbox at the moment for a new education based website where we are collobrating with 4 different content authors. We find this approach is working really well as we can open the files, see the progress and make use of the updated files.

Do you work away from the office alot or run a a mobile office. Using dropbox you can always have access to those important files and tools when you need them most.

In my consulting role, I find Dropbox is invaluable to me, allowing access to the office while Im out and allows me to have a central repository for all those handy code snippets, templates and useful applications that just make life easier.

So how much does Dropbox cost?
Surprisingly Dropbox is free for 2GB of storage and for each referral of a new clients to your shared files Dropbox will award you with 250mb extra up to 8GB total.

More pricing information is available here: http://www.dropbox.com/pricing

* 101 is not affiliated with Dropbox we just think its a great product, so thought we would share.

How much time do you have available to keep this website updated?

As I have written about in other articles “Keeping your site fresh” and “Whats your site up to?” we know that keeping a website regularly maintained is like servicing your car. Yes it will run with old oil and half worn tyres. The old faithful will still get you to the shops and home, drop the kids at school. However would you trust the car to take you around Australia? Some would, though we wouldn’t.

The fact is if you want your website to go the extra miles and really give you a return on investment, then you need to invest into the site yourself. The biggest investment as business owners is time. Time is the one factor that is not tax deductible, time is one factor that you can’t make back. As business owners we do tend to like to save costs and think, yes we can do it ourselves, but are we going to do the same job as a professional? Are we going to remember to dot the i’s and cross the t’s?

When updating a website it is often not only a matter of making the small content changes, but having a holistic view and understanding of your web presence? Updating your content is only a very small part of keeping your website finely tuned. I liken it to changing your cars oil and not using a new filter. Yes you have new oil, but is it effective as it could be?

Keeping a website finely tuned does take time and effort. A Content Management System (CMS) is a great tool to get you off and running updating your own website content with little to no web programming skills and yes its true, if you want simple updates to your site, making them yourself makes sense. However what we find is our clients don’t have time to update the website themselves, we find their websites haven’t been touched sometimes over 24months since we launched the site. Would you not have serviced your car at least once in that same amount of time? In comparison clients making use of our website maintenance packages are more proactive with site updates, usually an email is sent with images, Word or PDF attachments with instructions on what they want the new/updated page to look like. Updates are made within 24hours of the request and the client has saved themselves the time and effort by having the professional look after their website. The client knows that their search engine ranking is being considered by a professional after each change, the site will be 100% error free. Simply it just works the best it can and your site has been tuned.

101 Fact: 9 out of 10 CMS we have deployed (good mix of both Joomla, WordPress and Adobe Contribute), due to time constraints we end up making the changes on behalf of the client.

While these CMS products are great at what they do there are limitations on them and a good web development company will be able to let you know what those limitations are and provide you a range of options that best suit your requirements, budget and availability of time.

Global Sunrise Applications opened on 26 April.
This is the first time that this domain extension will be available on a global scale. If you have a registered trademark that you would like to register a .co Domain for, please contact 101 Web Technology and we will arrange the process for you and faciliate payment of the application fee and payment for the domain. After the sunrise period the domain extension will be available in our domain shop, where you will be able to purchase your new .co domain.

Why .CO?

• A .co domain reveals many opportunities for a wide range of businesses and individuals.
• Global, recogniseable & credible
• Opportunity to create a worldwide footprint
• Meaningful and memorable to the end-user
• Appeals to today’s socially networked individuals and entrepreneurs

Key Dates
As this is the first time this new global domain has become available, the industry is anticipating a high demand. To allow for priority applications, there are 3 stages of availability:

1. Global Sunrise: 26 April – 10 June
2. Landrush: 21 June – 13 July
3. General Availability: 20 July

Global Sunrise applications opened 26th April. To register your trademark for a .co domain during the Global Sunrise stage, please contact 101 Web Technology.

Application & Registration Fees

Global Sunrise:
Application Fee: $333
Registration fee: $61 /yr

Landrush
Application Fee: $8
Registration Fee: $400 / yr

General Availability
Application Fee: $0
Registration Fee: $61 /yr

Due to the Global Sunrise and Landrush stages, there is an Application Fee which is payable irrespective of the outcome of your application. However, the registration fee will be refunded should your application not be granted. For more information on applications, please contact 101 Web Technology.

Find Out More
To find more information about .co Domains and how to secure yours, click here.
To apply online during the Global Sunrise Stage, click here.

If you have any questions about this process, please call us on 1300 665 491.

• new 2LDs in general; and
• proposals for new 2LDs, conf.au and info.au.

The closing date for submissions is Sunday 23 May 2010.

For more information please see http://www.auda.org.au/new2ldsap/new2ldsap-index/

There are two ways in which you can comment on the issues raised in the paper.

1. Send a written submission to:

Jo Lim
Chief Policy Officer, auDA
email: jo.lim@auda.org.au
fax: 03 8341 4112

Electronic submissions are preferred. All submissions will be posted on the auDA website within 2 working days of receipt, unless clearly marked confidential.

The closing date for submissions is Sunday 23 May 2010.

2. Complete the online survey at http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/3GWKKM9 .

The following changes are made to the Domain Renewal, Expiry and Deletion Policy

• expired and deleted .au domain names will be published on the Official Domain Drop List at the time when they become “eligible for purge”

• eligible expired and deleted domain names will be purged from the registry at 1.00pm AEST (2.00pm AEDT) every day, including weekends and public holidays.

The changes will be implemented during a scheduled registry outage on 18 April 2010. The Official Domain Drop List will be published on the auDA website (linked from the homepage) at the end of the registry outage on 18 April 2010. The new purge time will commence the next day on 19 April 2010.

Essentially this change to the policy will have no impact to clients that renew domain names prior to the expiry date. Clients transferring to 101 Web Technology Domain Registration service should start the transfer process well before the domain expiry date. This takes into account the time it takes to go through a regular transfer of registrant which can take at least 48hours.

This is also a timely reminder to ensure that your associated registrant details are up to date for your domain. If contact details are incorrect especially email, then the domain may not be easily renewed and may lapse the reminder and expiry periods and you may lose your domain. You can check your details are up to date at http://domains.101webtech.com if you have a domain registered with us you can login to administer your domains, clients that have domains with other registrants can use our Whois lookup under Domain tools on http://domains.101webtech.com

If you have any questions or want to know specifics about the new policy and how it may affect you, get in touch or leave a comment below and we will get back to you.