Something that can break through the noise and soft value of everyone else, and get down to the core of what moves the needle in a VERY big way.

It’s a poorly kept secret that people love contests, and will do just about anything to increase their chances of winning.

We also know that interest groups huddle together, so if you could find a way to easily attract the second and third layers of a target audience quickly, you could quickly enlarge your user base.

For those of you running your site on WordPress (which many of you are), a solution like that actually exists (unlike unicorns).

It even levels the playing field with the huge brands who have been executing this strategy at the expense of reinventing the wheel every time they do it. I recently did a quotation for a company wanting to do a video contest, with ecommerce functionality, and voting. It was $10-20k PER contest (most of the cost came from the customization of requiring an entry fee).

All of the main social contests I have seen – Votigo, Wildfire, Launch6 – have significant monthly, daily, or per-contest fees that put them out of reach for many truly small businesses.

At only $37 USD it is super affordable, and it gives you a polished tool for your site, instead of homemade pages and time-intensive administration.

It’s called Contest Domination.

When I heard the price, it seemed like a no brainer.. but if you aren’t sold on the value of Contests for lead generation, you should at least check out what it has to offer since the demo alone enters you to win a full year of DropBox Pro, my favorite cloud storage tool.

Take a look… and tell me what you think.

CONTEST DOMINATION – WordPress Contest Plugin

SUNSHINE TV NETWORK:
Video advertising in businesses, floatplane terminals, and high-visibility screens in downtown Vancouver. Matches web site brand that showcases the video advertising itself as the main brand image.

C-TOW CANADA:
This unique business provides 24 hr marine services to mariners in BC, Lake Ontario and in the Maritimes. From towing and minor on-location repairs to fog shepherding and trip registry C-Tow conveys the range of their services

WALTZING WHIPPET:
Gallery/Boutique Gibsons Landing. Custom landing page, North Social apps install, small ecommerce shop, showcase, video introduction, fan deal

PROACH MODELS:
High quality replicas of Space, Aircraft, Astronaut-Signed items, Ships, and Model Kits sold worldwide. Custom landing page and ecommerce for a small group of items.

MOON DANCE CABIN & SAKINAW LAKE LODGE:
Two Pender Harbour accommodations run combined partner program with 2 North Social installs and clear ties between the two cross-promoting businesses. Fan deals, video, partner links, landing pages, photo showcases and more.

TALAYSAY TOURS:
Sunshine Coast and North Shore/Deep Cove Kayaking and Snowshoe rentals and tours, including multi-day trips. Aboriginal owned with a strong cultural component. Custom FB Landing Page, and You Tube Channel & Videos.

SUNSHINE COAST RESORT:
Beautiful hotel accommodation, luxury chalets, cabins, marina and boat tours & rentals. Full North Social install, YouTube channel integration, deal-share for off season, photo showcase, alternate language/translation.

LIBRE TEA:
Fantastic on-the-go loose leaf tea mug/glasses with a cult following already has some good social marketing components installed but we’re adding North Social, along with custom created video and running a unique PR campaign to really get the word out.

HUCKLEBERRY COTTAGE:
Private and beautifully appointed cottage in Roberts Creek with long-time repeat customers and high occupancy levels. Building their brand on Facebook to increase additional repeat business with fans of the wooded countryside, gourmet basket, and often, invitations to join in Huckleberry celebrations. Custom Landing Page.

INTERESTED IN EXTENDING YOUR BRAND INTO FACEBOOK?
Contact us today – call 604-885-5913 or

This site was a pleasure to work on from start to finish. Michele Peterson, a referral from ColleenFriesen.com/blog, wanted to freshen up a tired & dated web site that housed her published article tear sheets and services information, and combine it with a self-hosted version of her blog residing on Google’s Blogger.com.

Michele lives in Toronto and is frequently traveling the world, so this was truly a ‘long distance project’.

We started off selecting a template that would form the basic structure of the site. I am a big fan of using already created templates for solo entrepreneurs and very small businesses – they allow for great sophistication and useability at a fraction of the cost of developing from scratch, and they are customizable to a great extent through innovative dashboard-based administrative tools. This means that while the site owner may have started with a template shared by many other businesses, once the customizations are complete it can look quite different. They can employ one-button design components like drop-down content boxes, multi-column layouts, tabs and innovative sliders. They are created with W3C compliant code, and are elegantly attractive.

The next job was importing all of the existing content from the old boxy html site and the blogspot repository. This is where WordPress shines: run old html code generated text through a simple text editor to remove bloated background code, and then copy/paste into the WordPress editor and reapply styles as needed. Upload all of the article tear sheet images through the image gallery function and voila, a portfolio. The blogspot import went equally well (export from blogspot, import through the blogger.com dashboard import tool), except the images had to be saved manually and then uploaded into each related post.

The site completed very fast, and immediately brought Michele Peterson’s work and stories into a current and invigorating design. Michele is managing the site now on her own, adding new content on a regular basis, selecting posts to feature on the front page, and creating image versions for the slider, thumbnails and regular insertions like a pro!

Now, this is a very broad category search. It brings back results that run the gamut of recreational dive companies, diving schools for individuals and train-the-trainers certification, and commercial dive services. The approximate results of such a search are in the neighbourhood of 1.1 million possible results. It’s so general and so many companies want that top 10 placement that simply creating an seo-friendly page targeted to that term would be a slow, and potentially ineffective strategy.

Instead, Bad Dog developed a multimedia press release for Seaveyors.ca, utilizing photos and content they already had, and submitted it through our industry leading PR partner. This is not the same as ‘article marketing’, though releases can also be found showing up in those free directories. Instead, the news release goes through an editorial process and must meet rigorous criteria to be approved for release.

The criteria ensure that each release has a bonafide news angle, contains quotes from relevant individuals (clients or their customers), and has images and multimedia of high quality value.

This release is then forwarded out, depending on level of release chosen by the customer, to thousands of journalists online, and their publications – web sites, blogs, magazines. These entities have signed up to receive ‘story ideas’ and content through the PR service, and the pick-up on the stories is very fast, typically 1-3 DAYS, vs. weeks of waiting for a Google crawler to swing by the client’s site.

A third tier gives the client access to a list of journalists by name, and is searchable by industry sector, publication type, location and more. Up to 200 journalists can be selected for a direct email. This is incredibly targeted promotion.

Within 3 days, the Seaveyors release had received 60,000 headline impressions, 3000+ reads, and had been picked up in a variety of journals, blogs and sites. They also broke the top 10 in Google for ‘bc diving services’ and are still placing there after two months. They are #12 for ‘bc dive services’ (no suffix) and are in the top 10 for ‘dive services bc’ (a separate search term).

The entire campaign cost less that $900, including creation of the release. I ran into one of the other principals of the company last week: “Very impressed!” was the feedback.

Call 604.885.5913 today to find out how a targeted press release broadcast can generate results for your online marketing goals.

Ignore this post at your peril. Unless you are comfortable with visitors to your site seeing the big red malware warning Google slaps on hacked web sites and unlinking to you pronto, utilize these 5 tips to protect your valuable web asset.

Over the past three months, self-hosted WordPress sites (as opposed to those at WordPress.com) have been experiencing an increasing number of hacking and malware attacks. It was inevitable as this platform continues to draw converts from HTML, Drupal, Joomla and other content management systems (CMS), and now that WordPress has become a focus web site owners need to take immediate action to protect WordPress-based web sites.

Here’s 5 things you can do – right now – to protect your site:

Back up your database weekly or daily using a plugin like Snapshot Backup.
This creates a zipped copy of your entire site, including the WP sql database, all themes, uploads and plugins. Why do this? If your blog/site suddenly gets hacked you have a copy of your last clean backup that you can restore.

Change your CPanel (control panel) and wordpress admin passwords to a random-generated secure one. I use Passpack.com to do this; most users will only need the free version. If you don’t want to use your own program, there are random password generators online, most free. While you’re at it, change the login name for wordpress from ‘admin’ to something else. Admin is the standard install username so will be the first thing hackers will try. To learn how to change your wordpress username, go here.

Make sure you are using a good hosting company with above-average security on WordPress.
My clients have come to me with sites hosted by a variety of different companies, and here’s what I can tell you: BlackSun Hosting has had its servers compromised, as has JustHost.  This has resulted in hundreds of sites being compromised by a piece of malware that ‘injects’ hidden code into your web site’s home page via a link; if the visitor clicks on it, instead of getting an internal page on your site or a valid external link, they are redirected to a spam server or a site selling them something unrelated to your web site. Who do I recommend? I have used Verio hosting since 1997, and it is very secure; however it is not as user friendly as some other hosts. For clients with small sites, I have been setting up accounts at Hostgator.com for the last 3 years and have never experienced a hack with their system. They also have – in my experience – above average customer service via 24/7 chat, email and telephone. They can also help you move a wordpress site hosted by another company and transfer it over to a hostgator account. If you use the link in this bullet point to sign up, you’ll get a 30% discount on your first year of hosting.

After backing up your site, install a security plugin.
Good ones are WP Security Scan, Login Lockdown, and Remove My Version (hides your version of WordPress from exploiters who look for older versions to target, does not require you to manually work in the php files that make up the foundation of WordPress).
After backing up your site, update your Plugins and WordPress Version to stay current. Many hackers and malware creators go looking for security holes in these files, and if you’re not using the most up-to-date versions you are likely not protected.

Oh, and don’t forget to run a full virus/malware scan on any machines uploading or logging in to your site.

If you think you’ve been hacked, here are three tools that can give you a head start on what to look for:

http://www.google.com/safebrowsing/diagnostic?site=google.com (replace google.com with your web site address)
http://www.unmaskparasites.com/
http://sitecheck.sucuri.net/scanner/?scan=google.com (replace google.com with your web site address)

For full instructions on ‘Hardening WordPress’, visit this great article on WordPress.org.

If you don’t understand these concepts, or are intimidated by working with plugins and databases, hire a reputable and professional WordPress designer or security expert to make these changes for you. Don’t wait until your site is slapped with a big red warning label screaming ‘RUN!’ to your valued web site users. They may never come back.

Photo courtesy of the FC Wild Dogs in Vekkola, Finland, who asked Bad Dog Design to sponsor their boys’ soccer players with the Bad Dog logo for their team uniforms. They refer to themselves as ‘the Finnish Division of Bad Dog Design”. It’s a whole new world!

The Internet is moving at greater-than-warp speed in 2011. New tools and apps come online daily, even by the hour. Some are here for a day or a month and then gone into the abyss of post-15 minutes of fame. Other plugins and platforms prove their staying power and ultimately signal a deep shift in how businesses will need to approach everything they do online.

You need a local, Sunshine Coast based web designer with experience.

If you’re like most small business owners, you need to maximize your time, and use the most cost-effective methods you can to connect with your customers and business partners. You don’t want to be wading through emails and facebook posts about the latest & greatest tool that will ‘change your business’ … and you especially don’t want to make the wrong choices that will damage your business.

Bad Dog Design has been working in web development on the Sunshine Coast since 1997. seeing competitors come and go (and often inheriting their clients when they close shop and move on), learning, growing, and innovating. We’re also active in the community, putting in the time-talents-treasures volunteer efforts too. We have a demonstrated history of keeping up with the curve, and often beating it.

We’ve retained our curiosity and openness, and look for clients who want to be fully engaged online.

That can mean the business itself uses the platform and tools we recommend, consulting with us regularly on strategy to maintain a competitive edge; or it can mean outsourcing almost all of the updating, posting, and social media work to us on a monthly or annual contract basis.

If you’ve already got a web site but it’s been the same for a few years now, it’s time to take a fresh look at what’s happening online and repurpose your site to best meet the needs of the new socially and location-aware web environment.

If you’re stuck on which way to grow, we can help you with brainstorming new and innovative ways to engage with your customers and networks online.

We’ve been here 14 years, seeing competitors come and go (and often inheriting their clients when they close shop and move on), learning, growing, and innovating. We’re also active in the community, putting in the time-talents-treasures volunteer efforts too.

What Bad Dog Design really provides is PEACE OF MIND.

Call us today at 604.885.5913 or write web@baddogdesign.com.

Lesser known charities where your money makes a huge difference:

• PanziFoundation.org – Did you know Congo is the rape capital of the world? Help victims get hospital treatment, counseling, and training that can change lives.
• Edna Hospital, Somaliland – be a part of this inspiring story of providing maternal health to women in a country with one of the highest infant mortality rates on the planet. Join Edna Adan Ismali – who ploughed her life savings into creating the hospital and now supports it with her pension – in transforming the lives of women and children.
• Union Gospel Mission, Vancouver – I learned about UGM from a close friend’s father, the late Glenn Baker, who was a United Church Minister there for a number of years. As a surburbanite child of middle-class parents, I had no exposure to poverty and the ravages of addiction. Their 6 month drug and alcohol recovery program is long enough to stabilize changes in many addicts and alcoholics, and they have been able to help many individuals and families find stable and affordable housing, breaking the cycle of homelessness and joblessness.

And two close to our hearts:

• The Aboriginal Healing Foundation – Sechelt is a town located in traditional Shishalh territory, and we share this isthmus with the Sechelt people. Aboriginal people across Canada struggle mightily with addiction, homelessness, and chronic poverty and it will be a wholesale cultural program that will restore families and social structures so damaged over the last 100 years.
• It Gets Better Project – telling the stories of gay, lesbian, transgender and bisexual people,  and those who love them – with advocacy, videos, and help from adults who are leading healthy GLBT lives. GLBT youth in crisis can get immediate assistance from The Trevor Project (866-4-U-TREVOR 866-488-7386) and find mentors to help them transition into healthy adulthood. Buy a t-shirt and your donation funds life-saving suicide prevention services and anti-bullying efforts.

Here’s some interesting statistics to close out 2010, and to help answer the question, “Should I be on Twitter?”

Bad Dog and Bigpacific.com both had fairly active presences on Twitter until the spring of 2010. From the time we went online with Twitter to the end of April of 2010 we learned a few things:

• our circle of relevance was quite small, especially when connecting with other Sunshine Coast businesses. We were a part of ‘the usual suspects’ crowd… the grouping of people on the Coast who are always innovating, engaging in social networking in the real world, keeping up with Internet trends online.
• much time was spent looking for interesting people to follow, and participating in the ebb and flow of the twittersphere
• it generated neither inquiries nor points of intersection with clients, prospective customers or people outside the community

Like many other urban-inspired applications (Gowalla, Foursquare, Groupon) the strength of Twitter comes from the volume of contacts to be made around one key reference point, whether that’s a geographical location, a group of users – such as python developers – with worldwide application and participation, or people who just have one freaky convergence point.

The latest stats out on December 9th from Pew Internet & The American Life Project’s first ever survey examining Twitter use confirm our own anecdotal research:

• Only 8% of American adults using the Internet use Twitter.
• Urban areas show the most use (location-based tweets are especially illustrative of this trend), with urbanites using Twitter almost twice as often as rural/small town users
• African Americans and Latinos (remember, this is the US) are twice as likely to be tweeting as any other ethnically identifiable group (caucasians etc).

Does this mean small, rural businesses should never use Twitter? No.

If you want to use Twitter effectively follow these guidelines:

• monitor your brand and competitive keywords
• monitor your competitors for good insight into what others are doing in your space
• be proactive in responding to consumer complaints about your business on Twitter

There are quite a few software services online that can automate some of these processes, and tech site Mashable has a Top 10 Free Tools list, including Twilert and TweetBeep (yes, all of these names do sound ridiculously inane)

Of course, you can also be an innovator and experiment with ways to use Twitter, such as including a mini-business card with your invoices or customer receipts and reward those who interact with you on Twitter with on-the-spot, highly customized and unique specials geared to individuals – and tweet that too.

WordPress provides excellent tools for managing quickly-changing information. You can literally update the site from a smart or mobile phone that has a wordpress app installed. Even if you don’t have an app, if you can email and attach a snapshot, you can put a new post up on your blog from your mobile phone.

The organizers loved having something so easy to update – they were digging up festival sponsors from all around the Coast, and used their site to publicly showcase donors by way of a thank you, in addition to the promotion of them at the actual event.

This year the site will expand with a photo gallery from last year, some of the music from performers who played throughout the two day festival, and a booking form for vendors, as well as a sponsorship signup. Should be good – in a stinky way!

PenderHarbourGarlicFestival.ca

PenderHarbourLibrary.com