Headlines for the past two weeks have been focused on the Swine Flu outbreak. Information is coming from several directions and people have questions and concerns. An interesting article on CNN’s website talked about how companies are planning for the possibility of a pandemic.

An interesting mention in the article is how Sprint used their “internal website” to post information for employees.

This is just one more benefit of an intranet within an organization. How many ways do you need to communicate with your staff efficiently and consistently. During any type of event, the intranet can be not only the way to get the message out, but also the de facto location that your employees will turn to in a time of crisis to understand how events may affect them.

Think about it and if you want to know more about how an intranet can help your company, check out my previous post on the benefits of an intranet.

-- Mike

follow me on Twitter @mikevilla

So you’re posting to Twitter, Facebook, etc. and providing regular updates to your status. You’re even using the platforms to generate web traffic by posting links to your site. But if you are relying on the quick link sites (TinyURL, Bit.ly, etc) you may just be minimizing the benefits. Doing so will eliminate the benefit of your updates for organic SEO by masking your site’s link with their short ones.

Yes, it’s convenient and sometimes that pesky 140 character limit to for tweets can get in the way when you have a lot to squeeze in. So whenever possible maximize your efforts by using blind URLs. Turn your long blog post permalinks into shorter friendly links that don’t take as much space when included in a message.

After all, http://www.dovetailinternet.com/BlindURL-Tip is a lot less wieldy than http://www.dovetailinternet.com/Blog/2009/04/25/Social+Media+Quick+Tip+Blind+URLs.aspx too!

-- Mike

follow me on Twitter @mikevilla

It’s been well documented for years that one of the best ways to improve your organic search engine results is to establish inbound links from other websites. Here’s 5 tips on how to do it.

1. Industry Directories
   Pick an industry, any industry, and you’ll find a number of options for posting your site in online directories. Most are free, and besides helping to increase your inbound links, visitors to those sites will be likely to find you when they visit.
2. Complementary Reciprocal Links
   Take inventory of your business partners and other complementary companies. Check out their websites and reach out to them about the possibility of cross linking. You can link to them and they can link to you.
3. Press Releases
   Whenever you issue a press release, be sure to include links to your site. When the press release is picked up by other sites and posted, your links are typically embedded.
4. Blog Commenting
   Spend time on blogs? If so, don’t be shy – comment away. Lend your expertise in discussions that match your company. Then at the end of every comment include a simple, but consistent signature that contains your information with your website address.
5. Social Site Status Updates
   Sites like Facebook, Linked In, and Twitter are all the rage. Use these sites’ status updates to provide useful information about your company and its solutions. Answering a question on Twitter, post a link. Letting people know about a news item, post a link.

Now, of course these are only a few techniques and I could spend an hour on each but no matter how you link to your site, be sure your site is a destination worthy of the visitor’s time. Keeping your site current and relevant is the first part of success, and of course a solid content management system can go a long way to help you do just that.

-- Mike

follow me on Twitter @mikevilla

Today is Earth Day. According to Wikipedia, today is “a day designed to inspire awareness and appreciation for the Earth's environment.” The mantra of the generation is the three “R’s” of environmentalism – Reduce. Reuse. Recycle. Have you ever thought about how your web strategy can help you do just that?

Last week I had an article published by Worcester Business Journal called "Intranet Advantage: How an internal network can help your business." In it, I made the statement that

“…an intranet can help you reduce your company’s carbon footprint. With all your forms in one central location, and by providing employees the ability to fill them out online, you can eliminate unnecessary printing and copying.”

This is no trivial statement. Think about it. For example, an intranet where board members can login and receive meeting packets can easily same a ream of paper per board member (multiply that by 20 board members and you’ve save two cases of paper!). The time spent putting together those packages is also greatly reduced, adding efficiency and decreasing costs from administrative tasks.

Companies with intranets have come to realize that it’s not only environmentally beneficial to reduce waste created through print, but fiscally responsible as well. Many have also come to realize there’s another type of green benefit from an intranet. The green that shows itself as a positive impact on the bottom line.

At Dovetail, we work with many clients to build effective intranet solutions with our novo content management system. Check out the case study on our site for Westfield Bank to read about one example.

If you don’t have a solid intranet platform and are looking for ways to improve your carbon legacy as a company, consider one. If you do have one, ask yourself if you are using it as effectively as you could be to reduce waste. Why save a tree alone when together we can save the planet? Make every day Earth Day.

-- Mike

follow me on Twitter @mikevilla

Every business knows that a web site is a critical component of their marketing efforts, and at the same time agrees that keeping their site current is also critical. But many companies are simply unable to do so. They fear the technology, don’t have the time, or don’t feel they will ever see a return for the investment. Our company was founded on the principal that no business should languish online. To that end we created novo, our content management system. And for businesses in almost any industry novo is just what the marketing doctor ordered.

But many companies still feel that full content management is simply too big, too time consuming, or too expensive. At Dovetail we do our best to combat these misconceptions. And to make it even easier, we’re now offering novo in a new hosted option that’s flexible and affordable. Simply put, time to market can be faster, updates can be easier, and a real ROI can be realized.

So if you are looking at a way to get the most out of your website, partner with the experts at Dovetail and find out how you really can have the power to change the way you think about your website.

For more details and to find out how affordable web CMS can be, check out our novo options for small business today.

-- Mike

follow me on Twitter @mikevilla

We’ve seen an increase lately in customers wishing to implement intranets and extranets to improve their internal communications. In today’s challenging times companies can see real ROI on a solid intranet that not only reduces costs but actually improves employee morale and communication.

Here are some thoughts on why having a corporate intranet can be a real benefit to your company.

• Improved internal communications – store information centrally and know that everyone is accessing up-to-date information. Your intranet provides greater version control than shared folders. It is the location for approved pieces (not all the work-in-progress items).
• Increase communication and sharing – by putting best practices and resources in one place you create a more collaborative working environment – both internally and with your customers, vendors, distributors, strategic partners--everyone.
• Secure communications – instead of sending sensitive information, such as price lists, over email, make everything available in one password protected location.
• Improve customer service – when all employees have easy access to the same information, they can answer customer questions more accurately and quickly. Open up some of this information to your customers, and then they can get answers to their questions even faster.
• Reduce paperwork and email traffic – put all your forms in one central location and allow them to be completed online and you reduce the effort of sending these forms by email and printing them out
• Increase productivity, flexibility, accessibility – an intranet is more accessible than a file system or a virtual private network (VPN). With everything in a single location, employees can easily access what they want, when they want. Do employees work from home? Do they travel? Might they be working at night or on the weekend? Your intranet gives them access to whatever they need, whenever they need it.
• Build an online community - an intranet can provide things to organization members that the corporate office alone couldn’t provide, like an anonymous comment box. It can also help foster and create an online community within the organization. For example, the day after the company picnic, you can post pictures of the event.

-- Mike

I can’t seem to go to a meeting these days without the topic of Twitter coming up. Twitter is one of the pioneers of micro-blogging – sending curt (140 character) posts with the goal of answering the question “What are you doing now?”

I’ve been using Twitter myself for over a year as an off-shoot from my Mind of Men podcast. My twitter ID is currently @mindofmen. And I’ve been very successful at using it to stay in touch with friends, follow interesting items, and meet new people along the way. And as a social tool it is really great. However most of the conversations I’ve had about it during business meetings center around trying to understand what the potential value is to using Twitter as a part of their online marketing efforts.

My normal response is simple. People are using Twitter (and other social media outlets like YouTube or Facebook) to converse – to share their opinions. And somewhere, somebody is probably tweeting (posting an update to Twitter) about your company. Could have been that they were on the way to your bank branch, had a great experience ordering online from you, or even perhaps that they weren’t too happy with an experience with your company. Either way there is a conversation going on out there, and by your company joining in you can change the monologue into a dialog.

Just tonight, I received a tweet from Lance Ulanoff, editor-in-chief for PC Magazine (I’m a follower of his Twitter account @LanceUlanoff) linking to an online article that talks about some big-name companies that are using Twitter in some pretty effective and exciting ways. So if you are interested in exploring a bit check out 10 Corporate Accounts Worth Following on Twitter.

And if you’d like leave a comment here, or send me a tweet, I’d love to have a dialog with you too!

-- Mike

CyberStore 1.7.288 was released today. This release includes:

• Enhanced the Sales Order Review to allow the visitor to search by either their "Customer PO" or the SYSPRO Sales Order Number.
• Fixed an error that happened when doing an "Exact" search on the dealer search page.
• A new control template that can be used to send an email from user input via a form on a customized ecommerce page.
• Enhance the Dealer Search to show the SYSPRO description (CyberStore Name) and SYSPRO long description (CyberStore LongDescription2) instead of the CyberStore Short Description.
• Add a new variable [customerpo] for use in the email body on order confirmation/receipt.
• Enhanced the Dealer Search results for readability move the dealer information into a separate column from the preferred dealer graphic to allow each to be left aligned separately.
• Enhancement to Distributor Search results to allow an administrator to set the maximum number of miles from the visitors starting zip code to show results for.
• Added access to edit the EnableCustomerIDFill web.config variable via the Console > Setup > Catalog Configuration > Auto Fill Leading Zeros on Customer Number.
• Corrected the display of the State field when you select a different address from the On File Address drop down during Account Registration or Checkout. This only effected B2B On File customers who had multiple ship addresses with different states.
• Enhanced session management to avoid the error message "A problem has occured with your session. Please reauthenticate to continue shopping."
• Added a configuration variable to set the taxable status of Miscellaneous charges. This allows CyberStore web promotions to not be taxed as they are added to the SYSPRO sales order as miscellaneous charges.
• Optimized the Common Util Update Item Description function.

What you need to do
To perform the update you will need to download all build versions greater than your installed version, and apply them in order. Update instructions can be found at http://www.dovetailinternet.com/default.asp?LINKNAME=CYBERSTORE_UPGRADE_PROCEDURE. If you do not already have an account for the CyberStore Center, please create one when asked to login.

How to download CyberStore Builds
To obtain the correct builds, confirm your installed version and download all builds numbered greater than your version, and then install them in order. Build files can be downloaded at http://www.dovetailinternet.com/default.asp?LINKNAME=CYBERSTORE_BUILDS.

For details about this release cycle, please check the online release notes at CyberStore Release Notes.