While Nashville Interactive can't take credit for the sleek design on Rajon's new site, we're still proud to have been able to perform the build via an open-source content management system to help assist the record-breaking Star. The site has some great features for fans with more to come in the near future as well. Check it out at www.rajonrondo9.com.

Taigan Finds is a blog that features fashion news, style trends and great shopping finds at Taigan.com – an online shopping site with exclusive access to high-end boutique retailers. Nashville Interactive worked closely with the Taigan marketing department to produce TaiganFinds.com. A site that looks and feels as refined as the boutique shops which it features. The blog features some great social network integration to help aggregate content more effectively.

If you're into gardening, plants and Mother Earth, you'll want to check out SmartGrow.us. SmartGrow is a line of organic growing products made from human hair! I know, It may sound a bit icky at first but if you think about where most other traditional fertilizers come from (think cow pastures), it's really not bad at all. Plus the product is 100% all-natural and biodegradable. Nashville Interactive provided a much needed face lift to the SmartGrow site as well as a fully integrated online store to improve the buying experience. Ecommerce website design and development is almost essential these days as more and more users flock to their computers to handle their shopping needs.

So all-in-all a very busy week (and several weeks leading up to it). There's much more website design on the horizon so stay tuned by subscribing to the NI RSS feed or by signing up for email updates.

Perhaps Microsoft is just finally waking up and smelling the reality of the web these days with their extensive enhancements to IE9. Or, perhaps this is all in an effort to gain back their dominating web browser market share, which was as high as 90%+ at it's peak.

In many situations, people will use what's readily available to them regardless of how well or how poorly it gets the job done. This is especially true in situations where users are less tech-savvy and don't feel comfortable, don't care or don't have the knowledge to change their browser's default search engine. I'm sure a very significant portion of web users fall into this category. All search engines are available in all browsers but some browsers come with a default search engine already set. Regardless of the reason for Internet Explorer's dominance in the past, that dominance is waning while Microsoft is taking part in a well-marketed battle with Google for a portion of the online search business. Could this desire to gain a foothold in the search market be the reason that Microsoft is implementing a bigger, bader (not bad meaning bad but bad meaning good) IE9? If Users migrate back to IE9, Microsoft's Bing search engine stands to cut into a significant portion of that valuable search business from Google. The great search wars are far from over but Google is obviously winning very big at this point. We'll have to wait and see over the next few years if Bing can hold it's own in a market where the other players are well embedded. Either way, at least we're getting some signs of a better IE.

Pick The Proper Vehicle For Your Message

If you own a small town butcher shop, you probably don't need to post on Twitter every 15 minutes. (I can see the gruesome tweets as we speak!) Your clientele has probably never heard of Twitter and they could probably care less about how many pounds of sausage you just ground anyway. On the other hand, your customers are probably much more likely to log on to the local newspaper's website to check the weather, classified ads or read the forums. Your valuable time would be much better spent focusing your advertising and marketing efforts on local business websites such as your local newspaper's website. Being an active member of the discussion forums on these sites will benefit you much more than Twitter and Facebook ever would. For instance if there's a cooking forum on a local online hot spot, you could answer meat related questions using the business as your username/identity. Just be sure to speak in a tone that is familiar and comfortable to your demographic. There are many different social vehicles to get your message across including, Linked In, blogging, message boards, Digg, YouTube, StumbleUpon and many many, more. Remember to pick the outlets that your users actually use.

Speak The Language of Your Target Demographic

Everyone and their brother is on Facebook these days and it's a great way to keep your brand in a potential customer's mind. However, you can't just throw up an Acme Widget Corp. facebook page, post once per month and expect to see results. Users want something of value and if they're going to spend five minutes interacting with your brand online, do you really want them reading irrelevant internal company news? nope. Ideally, potential customers would be engaged with the brand through an appropriate message that evokes the desired feelings and responses. For example, if you're running an animal rescue and targeting animal lovers (who are generally a kind-hearted folk), you'll want to tug at the heart strings a bit more. Post relevant content about the injustices happening in your town and stories about beating all odds. Another scenario would be that of a large company selling wholesale rubber gaskets. You can bet that your target demo is going to be a bit more responsive to blue-collar humor and they'll be looking for something to brighten their day (I can't imagine that the world of rubber gaskets is terribly exciting without a little help. Though everything is relative I suppose!). Perhaps in this situation, you might post a joke of the day or even tweet about how Doug just tried to use a 3/4″ gasket at the convenience store by mistake.

Don't Tweet Too Much, But Don't Let Things Get Stagnant

There's a fine line between being active with social media and being obsessed. Conversely, if you're only updating your status or engaging in forums once every two months, you loose customer/user interaction and interest. Some users will update their Twitter status or their facebook photos every 15 minutes. I have to wonder how much a person can get done while constantly thinking about and looking for their next tweet or kitschy photo status update. On the other hand if you're too busy to interact with social media on at least a semi-regular basis, then perhaps you should focus your marketing efforts elsewhere or hire someone to help out. There are many freelance copywriters and social media experts who will help out on an hourly basis.

The ROI of Social Media

Return on Investment (ROI) of social media is often a hard metric to track. You may spend 20 hours per month focusing on social marketing and not see a single lead. The key thing to remember is that your brand is in front of people and when those people need your services, you'll at least have a portion of their mind share. You can always track click throughs and keep track of referring sites that lead users to your website and ultimately to your goal whether that is an online purchase, user education or anything else. Having proper analytics running with assigned goals is a crucial part of measuring the ROI of your social media marketing efforts.

Keeping all of these things in mind when working with social media in your marketing plan will help you successfully market your brand to your target demographic in a very valuable and personal manner.

Up next: Building an Online Presence – Part 3: Knowing The Competition. Subscribe to the RSS feed or signup for spam-free email updates to get notified about new posts immediately.

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If you're interested in using feedburner for your site's feed here's a few good links:
- http://feedburner.google.com/ (obviously!)
- http://adsenseforfeeds.blogspot.com/

I've worked a lot of different jobs over the years: caddie, mason's assitant, shoe salesman, waiter and so so many others. One thing you learn from all that "real-world" experience is that you need to treat the customer with respect or they'll go else where. (except for the masonry job. There, you just watch out for falling bricks and try not to die of heat stroke) Website design should be no different. Although you need to have a good, open dialog with your designer, in the end, the client is always right (as long as the check clears).

On the other side of the coin is the fact that most of the time you're hiring a professional for his or her experience and that experience should not be taken for granted. Hopefully your website designer and developer is professionally trained and has at least several years of experience dealing with and acheiving client needs and goals. I've often argued my design choices until I'm blue in the face but to no avail. So the bottom line is, if the logo needs to be bigger, then the logo needs to be bigger

Having a strong web presence coupled with your online marketing efforts is also a key to successful advertising in a recession. Getting people to read your ad is only half the battle. Potential customers need a comfortable place to land when they click through. A well architectured and designed landing page is the part of the equation that really seals the deal. Having a savvy website designer who knows the turf, is well worth the money. Mostly because you can tell exactly how effective your advertising efforts are.

So what I'm trying to say is, don't pass up the opportunity to monetize your web presence in these tough times through quality web design and online marketing.