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

Smarter Web scraping from Connotate

Connotate has significantly upgraded its technology with the introduction of Connotate4, which, the company explains, simplifies and streamlines the “Webdata” extraction process and ensures full coverage of a website. It adds that the key component of Connotate4 is a custom browser that uses the Webkit engine powering such browsers as Safari and Chrome.

Connotate states its core technology is based on visual abstraction techniques that allow machines to view Web pages as humans do, enabling high-volume extraction of data from Web pages to be automated through a point-and-click interface. Further, it says, because “agents” are not relying on HTML code to find the data to extract, they can easily adjust to moderate site changes without breaking.

In addition to the custom browser at the center of Connotate4, the company highlights the following capabilities:

    Inline data transformation within the agent development process is a powerful new capability that will ease data integration and customization.

    Enhanced change detection with highlighting can be requested during the agent development process via a point-and-click checkbox, enabling highlighted change detection that is illustrated at the character, word or phrase level.

    Parallel extraction tasks make it faster to complete tasks, allowing even more scalability for even larger extractions.

    Build-and-expand capabilities turn the act of reusing a single agent for related extraction tasks a one-click event, allowing for faster Agent creation.

    A simplified user interface enables simplified and faster Agent development.

The new release allows Connotate’s intelligent extraction Agents to access about 95 percent of Webdata. And the adaptive platform can quickly accommodate new Web properties and technologies as they emerge, providing the ability to scale far beyond the competitive landscape. Existing customers of Connotate’s hosted solution will not be affected by the introduction of this new platform. On-premises customers will be migrated on an as-needed basis.

Source: http://www.kmworld.com/Articles/News/News/Smarter-Web-scraping-from-Connotate-96637.aspx

Is Big Data right for your business?

Today, you can find “news” about Big Data just about everywhere. It’s being talked about in print magazines, newspapers, and all over the web. But, with so much news out there, how can you know if Big Data is right for your business, and, if so, how you should implement?

First, you need to have a working understanding of what Big Data is, and not the popular Cliff Notes version of the definition either. We’re talking about a real, working understanding. Big Data is a term used to describe technologies that allow companies to parse and catalogue datasets that are far too large to manage with conventional data gathering and mining tools.

One popular myth about Big Data is that it has only been around for “a couple” of years. Not so. In fact, major industries such as healthcare and entertainment have been using Big Data to “crack the code” for their production and marketing departments for years. So, we now have several years of a working understanding of how Big Data can work, and a proven track record in several major industries.

What IS true about Big Data is that many companies have just begun to take a serious look at it over the past two years. The world, we all realize, is changing. Smartphones are changing the way people use the internet and that, in turn, is changing how people shop, how they interact, and how they make the majority of their day to day decisions.

It’s a quantum leap forward in a short period of time, and that has many people wondering, and not a few CEOs worried. Is it too early to buy-in for their business, or, if they wait too long, will they be left behind, sacrificing market share to a more daring competitor? This conundrum is, in many ways, not unlike questions technology has forced on businesses before.

In the early days of computing, many companies wondered if they should jump on board, or keep doing things the old fashioned way. Well, we all know how that turned out.

Then, Jeff Bezos came along with an idea that became Amazon. Many companies, particularly in the publishing and entertainment industries, laughed him off the same way record companies scoffed at iTunes. Again, we all know how that turned out.

Bottom line? You will not know if Big Data will work for you unless you dig in, take it very seriously, and do what you can to learn all you can.

Source:http://www.jewocity.com/blog/is-big-data-right-for-your-business/12331

Article Writing Service Supports Your Business

The rapid development in the world of business, marketing, and sales has given rise to high level of competition. This is a practical fact, which applies to both the open and the online market and as businessperson, you have to keep pace with the race if you want to survive and flourish in this modern world of business. Therefore, you require some kind of promotional technique, which will draw the attention of the people in the target market. In the open market, you will find many types of advertisements in the form of banners, posters, brochures, pamphlets, and other means of advertising but for the internet market, you will require quality articles, which you can easily get by hiring the experts engaged in article writing service.

The experience and the professionalism of the writers who work for article writing service firms or provide their services individually will give you a strong pillar of support, as you will get the opportunity of publishing these high quality articles on your website and draw the attention of the prospective buyers. However, you may feel that why should you hire the services of a professional and spend money when you can do the writing work by yourself. Therefore, here it is necessary to clarify the valuable reasons, which will help you to decide whether you require the experienced and expert services of professional writers or not.

Although it is true that you may have the writing flair and can write quality articles for promoting your business, but if you think seriously, you will find that you do not have the time that you will have to spare time for writing the article for your product or service that you are selling online. Moreover, you do not have the idea about the style of writing the articles required for drawing maximum target towards your site. In such a condition, you will have to spare additional time for researching about the art of writing online articles that will help you to promote your business. On the contrary, if you take the support of article writing service you can use the time for using innovative ideas and improving your product or service to withstand the competition in the market.

Therefore, if you spend a small amount and hire experts for article writing service, you can easily shift the load of article writing on the shoulders of the professionals and devout your precious time towards your business. Moreover, the amount that you will spend for hiring the services of the professional article writers will come back in the form of profit that you will earn when the articles will draw maximum genuine target towards your site and increase the sale of the product or service that you are selling online. However, you have to keep in mind some essential factors while hiring the services of article writers; if you want that, you should get high quality, unique articles for your website.

The first thing that you have to do is to check that the writers whom you choose for your article writing service do not use any kind of software to write the articles. You can easily detect the use of software, as these articles will have neither the high quality nor the unique feature that you will find in articles written on their own by the writers. Moreover, high quality content is essential, which means that the article should contain maximum information related to the topic and it should not have any kind of errors especially grammatical error, typo error, spelling mistakes or syntax error. If the articles contain these flaws then it is best to avoid the wrier or the firm for writing your articles.

You should also verify the amount of time mentioned by the writers, as professional writers will complete your work in a short time whereas amateur writers will take longer time for the same job. Moreover, the firm or writer whom you choose for article writing service should always be ready to communicate with you, have all the backup systems like providing a sample copy of the work before the completion of the project, and agree to make necessary changes without charging extra money. However, for achieving this perfection you have to provide all the guidelines clearly, so that you can get the desired result, which will provide the required support to your business.

Source:http://ezinearticles.com/?Article-Writing-Service-Supports-Your-Business&id=3100354

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