What to Look for When Hiring WordPress Developers?

The toughest part about hiring WordPress developers is that you don't really have an idea about what you don't know! Quite evidently it sounds like stating the obvious. Some of these "how to do" tips are really practical and will be easy to follow.

So this is what to look for when hiring WordPress developers:

Portfolio:

OK - this again may seem supremely obvious - but I have seen a lot of people offering WordPress customizations or design services (especially as WordPress grows, there are plenty of people jumping into this arena) - however, they don't have any sample work with them.

What's the Process?

a. Are you going to communicate over the phone?
b. How frequently are you going to do that?
c. What is the time period?
d. Will you receive updates?
e. Which kind of communication processes can you expect?

Design/Graphics:

When your graphics are finally done and your site looks fantastic - who ultimately owns the right to the final work? Do you have the right to use the artwork/graphics however and wherever you want to?

If you have paid for custom graphics, you have to make sure that you have the luxury and liberty to use them as and when you want them to! However, on the other hand, if you are using stock pictures, then you have to strictly follow the copyright guidelines enlisted on the site from where you have purchased the work.

Skills:

Yes, this is indeed another point that seems pretty obvious, isn't it? I had a few clients who recently hired individuals to make WordPress customizations, however surprisingly enough; they were not really acquainted with WordPress.

There are situations where the clients hired individuals who were graphic designers. They worked mainly with Dreamweaver; numerous client pages were made in Dreamweaver, and then pasted on to the WP editor. In such instances, if the client attempted to adjust things without understanding the HTML, they ran the huge risk of throwing the entire page off.

If you bring in somebody to help create a custom WordPress theme or create a WordPress customization, ascertain the fact that they really understand the features of WordPress! If you can't use the things that make WordPress what it's intended for - it is defeating enough and it seems like a vain uphill journey.

Functionality:

This relates straight to training. If additional features /options are uploaded on your website (as for example: shopping cart, video & audio plugins etc.), are you aware as to how to use them productively?

What exactly is included with set up? Let's take a shopping cart for example:

- Is the autoresponder integrated properly? (If at all possible)
- Are your products being effectively added?
- Is the Thanks page for purchases being set up?
- Are Product images (cropping/ editing, etc.) included?
- Is the Payment gateway installation included?

Many of these functionalities demand additional effort and time. Strive hard to understand in a crystal-clear manner what is being included for any such additional features.

Support:

When your website is done completely and your contract also is complete, is there any support available?

a. Enquire whether the support is handled through help desk, email, or a phone call?
b. Enquire about the charges for support?
c. Can there be an option for monthly maintenance/ support?
d. In case your designer does not offer support, are they able to refer someone else?

So, these are some of the important criteria, I would suggest that you consider when hiring anyone to create a WordPress website for you. Hope this can help!

Source:http://ezinearticles.com/?What-to-Look-for-When-Hiring-WordPress-Developers?&id=8047568

Social Media Marketing And What You Can Do To Get Help

Social media marketing gives an indicator of the most popular trends today. You have to understand how much success social media marketing but it's best to include it. The advice here should help you begin if you know nothing about social media marketing.

Widgets can help out your site's visibility of site.

Facebook makes it fairly simple for your followers to share your content. If somebody leaves a comment on a post, all their friends will see a mention of this in their feed.

These tools allow you find users who belong to your target audience as well as influential followers. You can subscribe to the users you find, and hope they will follow your updates too.

When you post your article, it appears automatically as a LinkedIn update. This helps to save time and you'll enjoy more exposure in the blogging community.

Be flexible with updating your page is updated. When you are promoting an important new product, your customers will want to be updated more frequently. If you frequently find that you have nothing to post, you may want to post less often.

Make it a habit to respond to all the comments that pop up on your social media pages. You should do this for negative comments also. If your followers know you care about what they say, they will be more likely to stay loyal to your brand. Always respond to customers as soon as you can so they don't feel ignored.

Be prepared for the negativity that goes along with social media. Social media is awesome when you get praise, but there is also a negative side to it.Do not ignore them but answer them and help those customers who are unhappy.

Keep checking on your competitors' activities. Find them on social media sites and pay attention to their methods. You could either use a similar method or think of something outside the box to outperform them.

Social media is a powerful way to help with company brand very recognizable. Your logo should serve as your avatar and/or background of all profiles. Keep the same color scheme among your various social media profiles. Be consistent and use branding to your business's advantage.

A photo contest is a fun way to increase excitement and exposure of your brand.Offer followers an appealing prize for the user that posts the most entertaining and creative picture including your products or logo. This will help others to see your page as the users post them, exposing you to new markets.

If you are thinking about creating a Facebook page for business promotion, you should take some time to investigate what other businesses similar to yours are doing. When you go over their pages, and what isn't, and what isn't going to work. Make your page appealing and appealing.

Marketing via social media can be quite easy once you really learn the ropes. The truth is, marketing through social media is a great method of offering a useful, interactive experience for your advertising audience. If you thoughtfully implement the above advice, you will enjoy fresh and continued success from your advertising efforts.

Source:http://blogs.siliconindia.com/imperiastructuresltdcomplaints/Business/Social-Media-Marketing-And-What-You-Can-Do-To-Get-Help-bid-s8IU6SOv3998351.html

Really are the Education Industries do marketing activities as like eCommerce Portal?

“If you have command over English, you can command anyone”. This is the proverb used to say someone is expert in particular subject or particular business so that he has command over power compare to other team members. The Education System also started like that someone might be in the teaching profession couple of decade of years and he would have awarded by many of the Non-profitable organizations and Educational Body’s as “Best of the teacher”, “Award-winning headteacher”, “Teacher of the year”, etc…

The person mind & soul is full of upliftment of education for the nation. Being the education upliftment for nation as ambition he may start the school in very small way that too even without infrastructure because he is not the Businessman or not funded by Venture Capital (VC). But by the word of mouth, he would be getting overwhelming admissions for his schools though he doesn’t have any school infrastructure, process, standards, etc… Nowadays, we have 1000s of schools in the market but we can count it those kinds of schools being very few schools that too it may be single digit.

We would like to take this opportunity to introduce one pre-school in Bangalore which has started in very small in last year that too less than 30 students (Without any marketing activity or marketing strategy). More than the education, they are doing as profession. You can’t imagine the kind of care or Toiling and moiling effort to improve the kids wisdom in all the aspects. You would be wondering even the 15 months old kid what they noticed and given the annual report. It’s amazing! Marvelous. Please find the sample report here. (Download). It’s our wishes to success in their academic excellence.

Important Note: Pramiti is one of the only schools along with Inventure Academy in Karnataka that is part of the India Inclusion Forum launched on 26th of January 2014 on the occasion of Republic Day.

Today the schools are opened by the business people as another business entity part of their business. It becomes chain of schools. It’s another way of revenue generating model. Recently we observed one chain of school opened nearing to our area BTM, Bangalore which has done 1….N Marketing Activity (we can say there is no more marketing activity) to fulfill the admissions. Even the corporate generate Crores of business everyday they might not be done such a Huge Advertisement. It’s called as Killer Strategy. Usually, the Killer Strategy would be implemented ONLY product based company to compete other product or services. But Schools are doing it’s unvitable. Because end of the day all this marketing expenses going to bear by parents.

It’s NOT only the schools are doing these marketing activities. Even most of the colleges, universities, B-Schools are doing these marketing activities. One of their key marketing activities or strategies is Bulk SMS Promotional Activities with the key Targeted Audience. i.e.)  ABC Company is offering B-School(MBA Course) as part time course, they go to Job Portal and target all the fresh graduates and download their contacts and keep sending them SMS Communication about the advantages of B-School, features, etc… and convert them to become the B-School enrollment.

Conclusion: It’s quiet common nowadays each educational institutions targeting their student base and keep sending the SMS Communication to convert them into admissions. It becomes one of the basic marketing activities for Educational Institutions.

Source:http://blogs.siliconindia.com/bulksmscompany/Business/Really-are-the-Education-Industries-do-marketing-activities-as-like-eCommerce-Portal-bid-fP9gkbI221215141.html

Five tips to get started with big data

Everyone seems to be talking about "big data" these days. Do you wonder what you’re missing out on? Let’s take a look at how you can get started with Big Data.

    Learn what it is, and what it is not. While we are all comfortable with the concept of data, why the emphasis on "big" data now? The world of data has changed. The speed at which data is produced and often is required to be consumed is nearly at the speed of thought. With data from sensors, geo-spatial tracked data and the discourse of human conversation being captured in social media today, our heads are left spinning with the amount of data being collected. And this is not just facts about dollars and cents or counts of activity. These are complex data points, often verbose text data that must be interpreted to identify the relevant meanings to your business. Big data simply means that you have a lot of data, and it is quite complex to use.

    Get with the program. Organizations can no longer stick their collective heads in the sand about the amount of data they must handle.

    Find the right people. Notice people come before tools. Data analysis tools are often touted as the “magic solution” to big data. While they will help you get there, you must have the right people that understand business strategy and data analysis (including statistical analysis, business modeling, and data mining).

    Find the right tools. The centralized IT group cannot keep up with the business’s demands for data and analytics. Self-service BI and analytics is the name of the game here. You want tools with features such as in-memory analytics that provide high-powered analysis on desktop-sized machines that your analysts can use.

    Be an IT-hugger. So often, once the business users and analysts get their hands on high-powered tools, they decide that IT is no longer needed. This could not be further from the truth. Often, IT has developed complex solutions to integrating data from large and diverse systems, providing standard methods for retrieving the data you need. In addition, IT is trained to plan for critical elements of your environment such as security and scalability. Figure out what the business needs, develop solid business rules around these requirements and learn from IT all you can.

Not so hard, right? Now, the next step? Go analyze. Go figure out how to turn your good company into a great company with the power of analytics.

Source: http://www.bizjournals.com/nashville/blog/2014/05/five-tips-to-get-started-with-big-data.html

Connotate's Intelligent Web Scraping Technology Powers Investigative Reports

Data collected by Connotate, the leader in intelligent web scraping, has generated six news stories in major media outlets over the past two weeks, the company announced today.  Stories ranged from a deep look into Airbnb's practices to predicting if the Superbowl would be a commercial bust to determining the best New York neighborhoods for a last-minute Valentine's Day dinner.

"The use of web-sourced data in investigative journalism is a great example of its potential and power," said Keith Cooper, CEO of Connotate.  "And it's just one way – out of hundreds – that web data can be used. In fact, today our customers are using Connotate-sourced web data to improve everything from competitive and market intelligence to lead generation and contact management and far beyond."

Connotate employs sophisticated machine learning science to automate many previously manual data extraction tasks, and to ensure that processes are persistent – that is, don't break down if a website's content and design change.  Connotate provided to reporters the structured, organized data sourced from public websites that allowed them to arrive at fresh, fact-based insights.

Skift reporter Jason Klampet turned to Connotate to supply him with web-scraped data to determine whether the New York State Attorney General's office had a case against new apartment-sharing company Airbnb and claims of New York City lodging and tax regulation violations. Using automated Agents to pull specific data, , Connotate intelligent agents delivered a full month's set of listings for New York City, including inventory, availability, unit management, super-hosts and more. On February 13, Skift released two news items: "Airbnb in NYC: The Real Numbers Behind the Sharing Story" and "The 10 Airbnb Super-Hosts That Rule New York City."

CNET picked up the story and came out with its own, "Study finds 66 percent of NY's Airbnb listings may be illegal – A dive into Airbnb's listings reveals an interesting breakdown of the dwelling types available on the site, according to data-crunching firm Connotate."

Caryn Ganeles of the Village Voice used Connotate's data and infographic addressing 3,000 Manhattan restaurants to report the good news – the romantic West Village had the most seats available – and bad news – procrastinators had little chance of gaining entry into high-end restaurants for peak-hour meals. The story, "What's the Prime New York Neighborhood for Valentine's Day?" ran on February 14.

Just before the Super Bowl hit New Jersey, dropping ticket prices and an increasing number of hotel vacancies made spectators wonder whether the big game was turning into a big bust. Connotate's automated Web agents tracked the costs among tickets and hotel and determined patterns that gave the media the necessary insights to understand the situation. USA Today provided its coverage in "Super Bowl sales might be a sign of challenges ahead." The New York Daily News published "Owners of hotels nervous about vacancies days before Super Bowl."

About Connotate

Connotate puts the power of Web data monitoring and collection into the hands of the business user. Connotate delivers the scalability, reliability and resiliency necessary to drive strategic value from dynamic Web sources. Connotate's growing customer list includes global businesses such as McGraw-Hill, Associated Press and Thomson Reuters.

Source:http://www.sacbee.com/2014/02/27/6194335/connotates-intelligent-web-scraping.html

Google Places and Your Business Success

Google Places is now a crucial element to your business's online success, but did you know it? Have you even heard of this significant marketing website? Many new and even existing business owners have not heard of it, and they are losing out on a lot of potential profit because of it. If you want to get your business to the top of the search engine results and get more customers, then you need this service.

Google Places is a free business listing service run by Google. All you have to do to use it is type the name into Google, fill out the form, and submit your listing. This site will also provide you with free tips on how to make your listing work more for you.

This website was launched in 2009 by Google. It allows business owners to create a business profile, which can have as much contact information as you choose. You can also include pictures, videos, business hours, and even include a mark for your business's physical location on Google Maps. You can use this service even if you don't have a website, and your business can soar to the top of the Google search results with a listing alone. Once people find your listing, they will know what your business is, what it does, and how to contact you. What could be better?

Not only is Google Places a great listing service, it is also interactive. Users can leave reviews of your business for other people to see. This will help people decide if you are a business they can trust, and the more reviews you get, the closer to the top of the search engine results your listing will be. In order to encourage customers to leave a review, simply send them an email asking them to do so. You can use an auto responder to do this automatically for new customers.

You'll also want to make sure the contact information you list in other business directories online is accurate, as Google Places scrapes information from these other sites. You don't want inaccurate information appearing in your listing! Finally, be sure to use the proper keywords to describe your business in your listing. Think of what words potential customers may type into Google when searching for your particular product or service, then use those words in your business description. It will help you get closer to the top of the search engine listings and allow your customers to find you more easily.

Source:http://ezinearticles.com/?Google-Places-and-Your-Business-Success&id=5781751

Choose Perfect and Experienced Research Paper Writing Service

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Your thought or your problem like, ‘write my essay for cheap’, would be very much possible when you try to get their service from experts. It also provides you with discounts where you can save a lot of your money at the same time. With the best professional essay writers, it would make you bring a big smile to your face without any worries making you feel good about it. You do not have to worry at all as you can also get the perfect college homework help. It would also make you feel confident when you get hold of the best help on homework. You do not have to get worried whether you need experts for completing your work on subjects like Physics, Journalism, Biology, Mass Communication…etc, as they would help you to get it done quite easily.

And also helps you to get help on custom papers, homework service without having to get tensed as they would be able to get it done very easily and that too much before the deadline. So, you just need to pay to write essay while you can try to do other work or listen to music as well. With the perfect and cheap paper writing service, you cannot expect better than this that would make you feel proud of your choice, So, if you were searching for ‘someone to write my paper,’ then you would be able to get the right one for you without having to go out of your place. With the best quality work, it would make you feel proud of the perfect source that you have got for yourself that would be of great help to avail the ultimate homework service for you.

Source:http://your-story.org/choose-perfect-experienced-research-paper-writing-service-409372/