Buster's Blog By FaithMonkey.com

Google's Instant Preview May Just Shake Up Web Design Forever

2010-12-29T20:00:00.000-08:00

Great article by Addy Dugdale

So, the best-known search engine in the world just got a little bit smarter. Google's new feature is a side-order of Google Instant, but Instant Preview will probably end up being more important than the main, insofar as it gives users a preview of the web pages thrown up by the search, and highlights the relevant snippet of text. As pointed out by Wired,the feature works on slower connections, so that users who most need a greater degree of precision in their searches--that is, those with, say dial-up connections, whose every click can cost precious time--will get it. Hence no messing around for hours, trying to find the information one's after. Sweet for users, eh? Sweetest, however, for Google.

Here's why. Instant Preview will potentially allow Google to own more of our browsing experience. Instead of leaving Google in order to browse the web, you will be browsing the results, rather than the pages suggested in the search itself. The feature may also force websites to redesign their pages in order to conform to Google's design criteria: on the firm's Webmaster Central blog, this is one of its suggestions.

Try to avoid interstitial pages, ad pop-ups, or other elements that interfere with your content. In some cases, these distracting elements may be picked up in the preview of your page, making the screenshots less attractive.

One part of the web demographic that should be quaking in their boots with the arrival of Instant Preview is cybersquatters, those who park on websites whose names are an accidental letter or two off of far more popular sites (yhoo, or, say rbay). Can Google think of any alternative careers for them? Fast Company reached out to Google with some queries. How will Instant Preview change how websites design their pages, in order to improve their SEO rating? And who won't get clicks because of the feature? And, conversely, who will?

A friendly Google spokesperson got back to us just shy of instantly with a sort-of answer that made it clear we'd need to redesign our questions to fit his statement. "In general, Instant Previews is yet another reason for webmasters to design sites that are as useful as possible, following the best practices. With previews, people can peek at sites before visiting, which means they are more likely to copare them visually and pick the one that looks the best. In general, this should benefit webmasters who have well-designed sites with great information."

And it's true, sites which do play the search engine optimization (SEO) game would do worse than to listen to Uncle Goog and its pronouncements, however nebulous, on how its magical algorithm works. Google does strange, yet logical things to the design of websites already. Bigger pictures play better on Fast Flip, which drives traffic, and video works better lower down the page, although Google seems to be working on plans to render rich content--that's video and Flash--accurately, which may well change the way that video works on SEO.

Clicking on the Instant Preview magnifying glass icon next to a URL on the search engine does not serve as a click for the website. As Google says: "Instant Preview does not change our search algorithm or ranking in any way. It's the same results, in the same order. There is also no change to how clicks are tracked. If a user clicks on the title of a result and visits your site, it will count as a normal click, regardless of whether the result was previewed." But that means you're not clicking through a bunch of pages--pleasant if you're searching in a rush, not so pleasant if you're on a discovery mission. "Previewing a result, however, doesn't count as a click by itself," Google wrote on its blog.

Instant Preview brings us back to a time when Google was the single most dominant and talked-about force on the Internet. That is, before Apple's iTunes, and certainly before Facebook, Google's soi-disant replacement as the go-to site on the web for the generation born in and after 1980. Will it worry Mark Zuckerberg? Probably not. But, as weapons go, Instant Preview is a handy one for Google to have as it battles Facebook for the attentions of Internet users.

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Located in Denver, CO Faith Monkey is a leading solutoin provider of SEO, web marketing and hosting services. To Learn more about Faith Monkey, visit our website at http://www.faithmonkey.com/

19 Questions To See If Your Company Is Ready For Social Media Marketing

2010-10-11T09:31:00.001-07:00

A great blog I read today by Lee Odden

Even though a company sees the value of social media, it doesn’t mean the organization or its members are ready for it. Have you started something you really weren’t ready for? Sometimes it works out and other times it doesn’t.

In order for companies to realize the maximum benefit from social media marketing, there must be a certain level of understanding about the nature of online communities, social media sharing web sites and applications. One of the most effective ways TopRank Online Marketing has found to assess a company’s awareness, capabilities and resources for social media marketing is to conduct an external audit and an internal survey.

Identifying a company’s current state of social media readiness helps determine benchmarks and sets a baseline from where to build from. This is part of developing asocial media strategy and helps avoid the random testing many companies are calling their “social media strategy”.

There are a number of free or low cost tools that one can use to identify a brand’s current social web participation, ranging from social media monitoring software to profile checking tools like KnowEm to social search tools like How Socialable, 48ers or socialmention.

With many companies, there are often a mix of official and unsanctioned social media accounts setup. It’s important to get a handle on such participation, who’s managing the accounts, whether they are run by employees or fans and what the company can learn from them. Getting a handle on the difference between how social the company is and will need to become is essential for planning, training and strategy development.

As part of the evaluation process, here are a few questions companies might ask themselves and answer as they embark on a social media marketing journey:

What goals do you hope to achieve from a social media marketing effort?
What measures of success will be used to evaluate a social media marketing program?
What are your current social media channels and destination web sites/pages?:
Do you employ a full-time community manager?
If not, do multiple staff share the role of community manager?
Are you conducting a formal effort at monitoring social channels using a social media monitoring/analysis software application? (Ex: Techrigy SM2, ScoutLabs, Trackur, Vocus, SocialRadar, Radian6)
Is there a particular business unit, division or product that can serve as a test case?
If active, how long has the company participated with social media sites and which? Blogging, Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, Wikis, Delicious, Digg, StumbleUpon, etc
Are current social media participation on different sites coordinated?
Is a dashboard and campaign management tool used for social media content promotion?
Have you noticed any particular preferences within the target audience in their social web participation?
Do they prefer particular sites? (Twitter vs Facebook – blogs vs forums)
Do they comment, do they contribute content, do they tend to observe, do they not participate at all?
Have you identified and engaged and/or networked with influentials in your target industry on social web sites?
What unique value do current social media efforts offer clients/prospective clients? What need do they satisfy better than the competition?
Are text content or media regularly shared on other social media sharing sites?
Is there a user generated content component of your web site? Profiles, comments, reviews, content sharing: text, image, video or audio?
What departments, business units, cost centers and approval entities would be involved with the Social Media program? Is there an internal social media council?
What internal human resources are available within the company for support and implementation of social media marketing initiatives? (Content creation, network development, promotion, monitoring & analytics, community engagement)

Obviously each situation is as unique as the company and its objectives, but the list above can provide valuable insight into a company’s state of social media marketing readiness as well as provoking new thoughts and concepts. The more informed companies are about the social web, the more successful they will be at qualifying and managing social media marketing agency engagements.

You might be wondering, why did I pick 19 questions when 20 would be a much nicer, even number? It’s because I’m curious what your 20th question would be. What are we missing? What else would you ask to determine the social media readiness of a company, business unit or division?

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Located in Denver, CO Faith Monkey is a leading solutoin provider of SEO, web marketing and hosting services. To Learn more about Faith Monkey, visit our website at http://www.faithmonkey.com/

What Customers Look For In A Website

2010-08-05T14:40:00.000-07:00

If you are doing business online, consider your website as your main product and your readers, your customers. You can’t always think that people really spend their time and money on your website so it’s essential that you make a periodic audit to figure out if your customers have really meet their needs and not just reach out to them through social media and blogging.
People are diverse but when it comes to the internet, we all look for a few things in selecting who to follow, trust, and patronize. The following is a list of seven essential things that every web site should have.

Ease of use
Your website should not be confusing or hard to navigate. Web customers typically look for simple things: your products, information about you, your blog, your contact page. These should always be prominent and easy to find, as should any other information or links you want people to follow. The font should be easy to read and the links should be keyword-rich and easy to spot.

Clarity of content
Your content, including the call-to-action, should be easy to understand. This applies to every single page of your website. If your readers can’t understand you, they will leave.

Credibility
First, your website should definitely have a dedicated contact page with a contact form, e-mail address (avoid free email addresses like @gmail or @yahoo) and a physical location and phone number. Credibility also includes not only on-page content like testimonials and comments, but also third-party validation in the form of Twitter followers, Facebook fans and awards or certifications. The quicker readers are able to discover that you are a thriving business vouched for by other people, the sooner they can make the decision to trust you.

Uniqueness
This applies to your site design, to your product and to your content. If your site doesn’t look interesting, people are not gonna waste their time looking on it. If you’re like every other business in the market, why should your readers listen to you?

Participation / Ability to give feedback
If your customers can’t reach you easily, they’ll give up. If they contact you but don’t receive a speedy respond, they’ll leave and either forget you or damage your credibility. So provide an easy way for customers to interact with you and give them as many options as you canhandle: phone number, social media, contact form, and blogging are some of the most popular ones. People will likely trust and be loyal to you if they see that you are open and are always available.

Personalization
Remember that every single person you interact with or sell to is unique and has his or her own expectations from your product and services. No one likes to be referred to as “Dear Customer” in an e-mail, and everyone likes offers and products about subjects that are of special interest to them! So get to know your customers, store the individual information they share with you and use it to build personal and lasting relationships.

Security
Readers and customers want to be sure that any and all personal information provided to you will stay confidential and not be sold to third parties or misused. If you are selling products, this means SSL security. If you are asking for e-mail addresses for a marketing list, this means respecting your readers’ privacy. If you are connecting with people on social media, this means discretion on your part about any and all personal interactions.

Does your web site pass the test?

More About Faith Monkey Located in Denver, CO Faith Monkey is a leading solutoin provider of SEO, web marketing and hosting services. To Learn more about Faith Monkey, visit our website at http://www.faithmonkey.com/

The Benefits of Choosing The Right Fonts and Page Size for Web

2010-08-04T10:59:00.000-07:00

Font type and size. What boring elements, but what important ingredients in any written communication. We often don't notice font, even when we can't read it: it's almost completely transparent.Writing for the web however forces us to use a completely different set of rules, and those rules created for hard copy writing don't really apply any more. For example, when writing for print you should really use a Times-like font when writing, because the slight serifs (the small marks at the end of each leg of a letter) allow the reader to quickly separate and identify the letters more quickly than any other letter. This is part of the meta-information of a document: it facilitates meaning without meaning something itself.

However, the rule is different for the web. Researchers have found that sans-serif fonts, specifically Verdana or Helvetica, work the best. People can more easily read on the screen when using these fonts. Thus, when setting font type, these are perhaps the best used.Actually many specify "verdana, sans-serif;" just to be safe. In such a case if verdana is not available, the available sans-serif will be displayed. This might be a trend, after all web design is design after all, but research has demonstrated that sans-serifs seem to enhance understanding when reading online information.Maybe it has something to do with how we read online. We scan for information, when we find that information we concentrate on it, and then move on. We tend to skip to topics sentences throughout a page. Thus, perhaps words in san-serifs stand out more. And because we aren't reading an immense amount of text, we don't need the same strategies we use when reading hard copy documents (with which we typically read much more than we do online anyway).With regards to font size: larger is not better! Large fonts make for awkward reading, and it is difficult to use the space effectively to find the information we're looking for when the words are too big. A font size of what would be equivalent to 11 pt typically are the best. Sans-serif fonts tend to be larger, so scaling it back down from what we would normally use on hard copy (12 pt) is needed anyway.

You can use bigger font sizes, of course, for headings and titles, but try to limit the amount of larger font sizes used: it actually detracts from understanding and it's hard to see the entire screen easily when the font size of any element is large.Using colors with text is tricky. Web designers used to erroneously think that bright colors would attract people to read something. They also felt that some type of rainbow effect was useful or would be catchy somehow. It was actually more kitsch than catch.The rules of contrast apply especially to screen. Light background and dark font need to be used to effectively communicate. Because we scan screens for information, you need to use effective contrast to highlight information. We will quickly miss important information that blends in with the background.The size of the page, and the amount of text on it are also extremely crucial to aiding people in their task of finding and understanding information. As we graze over a web page, we are scanning back and forth for specific pieces of information. Thus, long paragraphs tend to hamper our attempts. The more information we put in a paragraph, and the longer it is, the more people have to scan.

This will cause a couple of things to happen. People will either get frustrated and leave, or they will not find the information they need because it's buried under a layer of text they don't need. Thus breaking up the paragraphs into smaller, more manageable chunks of information--usually by subtopic--is necessary to help people find information.Many experts recommend what's called the upside-down pyramid approach to organizing information. Unlike hard copy writing strategies, where we introduce a topic and gradually get to the point, we want to quickly give the important information at first and then fill in the details. Readers will first read the important info, perhaps the first or topic sentence of a paragraph, and then determine what they want to read next.Also, the length of a page can be a detriment to design. Long, scrolling pages are harder to navigate as well, according to many studies. Users would rather skip to the next page, just like when reading a book, than scroll through a bunch of information they don't need. We don't use things like papyrus scrolls anymore, after all, so it's hard for users to adjust to finding information in that manner.To enhance the amount of information the user gets, we need to also try to constrain the viewing information as well as the amount of information we are giving. Thus, the viewing size in which the primary information is given should be reduced. This makes the reading task more familiar to users because, again, it's more like reading hard copy, which is how we were originally taught to read: small pages with small bits of information. We weren't originally trained on the landscaped rectangles we use to view web pages on, thus it just doesn't seem natural.Writing for the web isn't hard, it just takes a different set of considerations than writing for print.

Google Caffeine?

2010-07-28T12:55:00.000-07:00

Since its debut in 1996, Google's search engine has experienced countless updates and revisions. But none of those revisions have fundamentally changed the architecture of the Google search algorithm as much as Google's latest update, codenamed Caffeine.While recent reports put Google's market share at around 65 percent, a massive update to its search engine technology makes sense at this point. Microsoft's new Bing search engine showed some resiliency in late 2009, while Web 2.0 services like Facebook and Twitter have done a lot to change the way people search for content on the Internet.

For Google to remain the most popular search service, it will have to counter Bing's claims of technical superiority. It would also have to more effectively incorporate "real-time search," the term used for finding information and content - like tweets from Twitter and breaking news stories - that have just been posted.That means a radically different Google search engine. And it also means that those who care about Website search engine optimization and placement may have a lot of new rules to learn if they want to earn high Website rankings on Google. Because Caffeine is a significant departure from previous versions of Google's search engines, Website owners and marketers could see dramatically different results for their search engine optimization and placement efforts.But the good news is that Google has offered Webmasters and online marketers a taste of Caffeine's unique algorithms. Search engine optimization and placement specialists have been able to test their Websites against an early version of Caffeine. And while it's a nice gesture by Google to provide the chance for Webmasters and marketers to do some preliminary research, it would be wrong to draw any hard and fast conclusions at this point. It's more than likely that Google will continue to tweak and refine Caffeine and its search engine optimization and placement for months after its official release.

So are there any search engine optimization and placement tips and tricks that we can learn from Caffeine? Yes. Google has hinted that several new things will have a major impact on search engine optimization and placement. Here are the most important changes.1. Website speed: Google will now place more importance on how quickly a Website loads. That means Websites that load fast will be given prominence in search engine optimization and placement over Websites that are slow and clunky.2. Broken links: Links that go nowhere aren't just annoying, they'll soon count as a strike against a Website's search engine optimization and placement efforts. It's already an accepted rule that any good website shouldn't have broken links. Now it's even more important for Website owners make sure that every link goes somewhere relevant.3. Penalties for linking to bad neighborhoods: Currently, linking to spammers and obtaining incoming links from known spammers is not a good way to achieve the best search engine optimization and placement results. Look for Caffeine to place even more importance on staying away from link farms and other malicious online practices.4. Overall website quality: Some canny Website owners have gotten good search engine optimization and placement results by ranking high in a single factor that Google assesses, while ignoring other aspects. Under Caffeine, the overall quality will be under closer inspection. Having just one or two key search engine optimization and placement ranking factors won't be enough.

So what will you have to change if you want to achieve great search engine optimization and placement results under Caffeine? If you already have a Website that subscribes to Google and SEO best practices, then there probably isn't a lot you'll have to tweak.Here are some steps you can take to make sure that you're Website is primed to get good results under Caffeine:1. Eliminate all spam elements from your Website: Any part of your Website that could conceivably be considered spám will likely have a negative effect on your search engine optimization and placement efforts. Spam elements include Website text that's the same color as the background, Website cloaking, and automated linking.2. Reevaluate your Website design and structure: Make sure your Website looks great and is user-friendly. Users should be able to easily navigate through the Website and search engines should be able to understand and categorize a Web page just by reading its title and meta tags.3. Get links from social bookmark and other social media sites: Links from social bookmark sites like Digg and Delicious are already important to gaining good search engine optimization and placement. The importance of links from these types of sites is likely to incréase under Caffeine.4. Check your Website links: Make sure that you aren't linking to any Websites that could potentially be labeled as spammers. Having a selection of quality links is far better than gathering as many links as possible.By following the above tips and tricks, your Website should have no problem adjusting to Google's new search engine. And you'll have a crucial advantage when it comes to getting great search engine optimization and placement results.

All You Need to Know About YouTube's Promoted Videos

2010-07-02T12:13:00.000-07:00

Way back in 2006, Google purchased YouTube.com for an alleged reported figure of 1.65 billíon dollars. And, like with everything Google does, they've added their own special "Google Touches" over the last several years, turning it into one of the most popular video destination websites online today.Need proof? According to Comscore.com's December 2009 "Videos Viewed Report", YouTube was ranked as the top U.S. video site serving up 13.2 billion of the total 33.2 billion videos that were viewed online in the U.S. for that month alone. That's a lot of people watching mega videos. For more stats see tinyurl.com/y8jbnqh.

Furthermore, according to Google, YouTube has twenty hours of new video uploaded every minute and 420 million unique visitors per month. Watching online videos and sharing them with others has become an Internet obsession. People really love watching videos. Remember the old song "Video Killed the Radio Star"? In today's marketplace, it should be called "Video Killed the Television Set".What if I told you there's a way to harness that huge audience in your onlíne marketing campaign? Now you can with YouTube's new advertising program called "Promoted Videos". YouTube and its other site, Google Adwords, have partnered together in this latest ad serving project. When promoting your videos on YouTube, they'll also be shown across Google's Content Network, aka sites running Google Adsense on them.The purpose of "Promoted Videos" is to help your videos stand out from the millions of others on the site. At the time of this writing, they're available in the U.S., Australia, Brazil, Canada, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Israel, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Netherlands, Poland, Russia, Spain, Sweden, and the UK.

The first step is to sign up at ads.youtube.com, or if you're already a user of Google Adwords you can access "Promoted Videos" from your control panel. You must have a YouTube and an Adwords account which will be linked together as the video ads are served up by Adwords. To find them in Adwords, log into your account, select the "Ads Tab", then the "Display Ad Builder", and finally select "Video" from the category menu and you'll see "promoted videos". Once your accounts are linked, you can manage your Promoted Videos campaign from the Adwords Console, or YouTube directly.So where do Promoted Videos appear? By default, they run on YouTube's site and those sites that run Google Adsense ads. On YouTube, the video ads are shown below and to the right of search results pages and on some of YouTube's Watch pages in the "related video section", if related to the content of the page. Watch pages are like the home page of a video that displays all of its public information. Advertisers can option in or out of the "Content Network", which gives some control over where the video ads may be shown. The videos are clearly marked as "promoted videos", but it seems Youtube has moved back and forth between labeling them "promoted or sponsored videos".Like other forms of pay-per-click advertising, it's an auction like setting where advertisers bid on selected keywords, set a maximum cost per clíck, and a daily budget to spend. The Promoted Videos program uses the "Adwords Discounter" to help keep costs down. No matter your maximum cost per click, advertisers only pay one cent more than the other video ads shown on the same page. When selecting keywords make sure to choose the ones you would want to appear when a search is done on a particular subject. YouTube's Insight is helpful when choosing keywords. For more on this, see searchenginewatch.com/3640113.

The videos created can include a clickable link to any site you choose. On sites running Adsense ads that haven't elected to block YouTube's Promoted Videos from within their competitive ad filter, the videos appear as a thumbnail with three lines of text. Adsense content partners must also be running ad formats in one of these sizes for video ads to appear. They are: 300X230, 336X280, 728X90, 250X250, 200X200. They must also be opted in to show text and image ads on their sites.The Promoted Videos are different from Adsense video ads. Promoted Videos will always take the viewer to YouTube's site to be played, whereas Adsense video ads are played right on the website it's being viewed on.When creating videos make sure they're fun and entertaining; something people will really enjoy to watch and will want to pass on to their friends and family. The sharing of popular videos on social networking sites, such as Facebook and Twitter, will help it to go viral. Generally speaking, funny always translates well. The less it looks like a commercial, the better the odds of people liking and sharing it.If you've been wanting to try your hand at video marketing and reach millions of potential customers, Google's Promoted Videos may be for you. For further information see:

Promoted Videos Help Center

Promoted Videos Optimization Guide

YouTube Ad Keyword Tool

Show & Tell with YouTube - Showcases the best examples of marketing on YouTube

More About Faith Monkey
Located in Denver, CO Faith Monkey is a leading solutoin provider of SEO, web marketing and hosting services. To Learn more about Faith Monkey, visit our website at http://www.faithmonkey.com/

5 Must Knows For Your Social Media Strategy

2010-06-16T10:51:00.000-07:00

Great blog today from D M Gray

Social media marketing is an essential tool for any business. Sites such as Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn are among the most popular sites regularly visited on the internet and can generate large numbers of visitors and new sales leads.Many businesses are already utilizing social media marketing as part of their ongoing business strategy, but a large percentage of these are not aware of the essentials required to fully maximize social media to its full potential.

Here are 5 important criteria that need to be addressed in order to run a successful social media campaign.

1. Search Engine Rank AwarenessSocial media profiles now make regular appearances in search engine listings. The major search engines are placing greater importance on these profiles as they tend to possess regularly updated topical content and provide quality information that search engine users are looking for.Any social media profile should be created with search engine placement in mind. Ensure that relevant keywords are placed in titles, and content, and that any links use keywords (located within the anchor text). Brand names should be clearly visible to augment the likelihood of search engines displaying a social media profile for brand-related search queries.Having a social media profile appear in SERP listings will build traffic to that profile and could subsequently lead to additional traffic to the main business website via that profile.

2. Additional Site Traffic from Social Media PostsSearch engines now index and display individual social media posts in their search results. The search engines consider these posts topical, relevant and useful to their users - 3 of the main criteria search engines look for when ranking a page (or submission).Posting quality submissions on social media sites and including links back to a main website, or webpage, within these posts can seriously incréase website traffic - if the posts are indexed and displayed in search engine listings. Social media bookmarking sites such as Digg, StumbleUpon and Slashdot have been known to drive thousands of visitors to websites. Submit blog posts - and website content - to these sites and there is a good chance that these submissions will capture the interest of readers and result in increased website traffic.

3. Use Social Media for SEO-Based LinksLinks back to a main website can be placed in most of the social media profiles. These are useful links from high authority websites and good quality backlinks influence where a website is ranked within a search engine. Many social media bookmarking sites now apply the NOFOLLOW attribute to links due to abuse, but there are still some major platforms that continue to use the DOFOLLOW attribute. At the time of writing, these social bookmarking sites still allow DOFOLLOW links:

• FriendFeed

• Furl

• Slashdot

• Digg

• Mixx

Even if a bookmarking site applies the NOFOLLOW attribute, links within posts can still pay dividends. Regardless of their SEO-based backlink power, people will still follow these links back to a main site and this means increased traffic and greater site visibility.

4. Target Specific MarketsThe simplicity of creating a social media profile allows for the creation of multiple campaigns. A good business strategy should run a main social media profile and then look to create smaller, laser-targeted profiles that cater for very specific niche markets related to the main business interest.If a business sells a wide variety of products, it should look to create individual profiles that target the different categories of products sold. This tactic allows the business to concentrate on each subset of product, as well as the potential customers searching for these specific products, or type of products. By breaking down social media campaigns, a business can provide relevant, topical information that caters for very specific individuals.

Where other businesses try to capture all potential buyers in one huge net and can only provide generic information to a wide scope of readers about the entire range of their products - the clever business, with their niche market profiles, will reach out to each subset and be able to provide them exactly what they are searching for.

5. Improved Brand RecognitionMany businesses fail to realize the importance of social media profiles when it comes to increasing brand recognition. These social media platforms have millions of daily visitors and provide an unequalled resource for rapidly promoting a brand, or product.Having a main website ranked high in a search engine for that particular brand name is great - as long as enough people are performing search queries using that specific brand-name keyword. Social media provide an easier solution for promoting brand recognition and this factor should be forefront in any social media strategy.Make sure the brand is clearly visible in a profile - include it in the profile title and bio; promote the brand discreetly in sporadic posts and if there is a brand-related business logo, this should be placed on the main profile page.

It has been suggested that a person needs to see, or hear, a brand name seven times before they consider becoming a customer. Social media offers a business the best solution for reaching the largest potential audience.By utilizing social media marketing and concentrating on these 5 important criteria, any business can potentially expand website traffic, sales leads and easily reach targeted customer bases. Social media marketing is starting to become very competitive, but not everybody has learned to optimize their campaigns and fully utilize the power of social media marketing. The business that learns to adapt its strategies and play to the strengths of social media is the one that jumps ahead of the competition.

More About Faith Monkey
Located in Denver, CO Faith Monkey is a leading solutoin provider of SEO, web marketing and hosting services. To Learn more about Faith Monkey, visit our website at http://www.faithmonkey.com/

Facebook As A Branding Strategy

2010-06-14T10:08:00.000-07:00

Thought I would share a great blog I read today.

If you aren't already connected to the social media revolution, it is timeto get your head out of the sand and harness the power of the digitalnetwork. If you want to get out ahead of your competition and makeconsumers excited about interacting with your brand, social media isthe way to go. It isn't an overnight marketing fix, it takes time tobuild a following, but if done correctly you can use social media todrive people to your website and ultimately to your front door. Are youready?After building your incredible website and blog, it istime to build a Facebook fan page. Before you run away at the thoughtof building your page, let me assure you that it is easy to getstarted, and I am going to walk you through it. But, of course, if youget stuck or need additional help with the more complicated aspects,we're always here to help. (But I promise; set up is easy.)

The first thing you need in order to create a Facebook fan page is apersonal profile. What? You don't have one yet? Time to get one! I amnot going to waste time walking you through profile set up because thesteps are pretty self explanatory. Just go to Facebook, fill out theinformation to get started and let the steps guide you. You canprobably set up a basic profile in about 15 minutes. After setting upyour personal profile, spend some time poking around Facebook andgetting to know the site - have fun. Check out some of your favoritecompanies' fan pages and connect with friends. Now to set up a fan page. Once you are logged into Facebook, scroll to the bottom of the page and click "Advertising," and then click "Pages."There is some great information here about fan pages, so take a momentto read through the information and when you are ready click "Create Page."As you go through the set-up process, remember that in any branding and marketing it is important to categorize your company in the right area to help people find you. So choose carefully.One of the greatthings about Facebook is the ease of set up navigation. From here,setting up a fan page is really about following the prompts. Ratherthan point out each step, let's look at the important ones to get yourpersonal branding going.

1) Photo -Before you do anything else, make sure you have the perfect photo for your page. Maybe your logo is the best photo for your page, but maybenot. Think about other branding materials you have, maybe somethingseasonal. Obviously, you want your fans to see your photo and recognizeyour brand - that's the goal. But if you have a creative image that isalso recognizable, it might help your fan page attract fans with anelement of fun.

2) Write something about your company- See the little box under your picture that says "Write somethingabout your company". This is very important because this is one of theitems that is visible on every tab of your fan page. This is yourelevator statement in 250 characters or less. Be sure to include a linkto your website here, and in order to make your link clickable, don'tforget the http:// before the www. (Note: this statement can bechanged at any time, so it is a great place to highlight a promotíon orother important happening for your company.)

3) Wall Settings- Another important tool in the set up of your page are the wallsettings. You have to decide if you want visitors to be able to postmessages for everybody to see or if you only want your messages shown.Unless you have a super controversial company, I recommend startingwith allowing everything. It will help you build your wall fasterbecause people like to post messages. If the posts become out ofcontrol or unflattering, you can always delete individual posts orchange the setting later. (You will find "Wall settings" under "Editpage.") Once you fill in all of the basic information, youhave successfully created a fan page. Don't forget, it is easy tochange, so don't sweat it. Now you are ready to take yourpage live. It is important for you to let people know about your page.This is where having an already active personal profile comes in handybecause if you already have a lot of "friends" who are interested inyour company, you can "suggest" your new page to them.

Alright you have a page. You have suggested to all of your friends -now what? Now you start the real work. Marketing and branding takestime and attentiveness. You can't just set up this page and hope peoplefind you. If there is nothing on your page that interests people, noone will become a fan. Social media is fun - your fan page should betoo. Post interesting things about your company, but don't be afraid topost something fun too. Try posting open-ended questions (to enticeresponses from your fans) such as "What is your favorite XYZ?" "What do you plan to do for the XYZ holiday?" Posting links and/or photos are also a great way to get peopleinterested, plus they are more visually appealing so people are moreapt to pay attention. Posting links to your website has the addedbenefit of pushing people to your site to find out more. Try posting onyour fan page every time you update your blog - "Check this out" and attach a link to your blog. Remember, the most important reason you have a Facebook fan page is touse it as a branding strategy to promote your personal brand. So, ifyour company is very "green" conscious, share tidbits about beinggreen. If your company is all about marketing and branding (like us), you might post pictures of events, links to blog posts and informationabout the companies you help brand. Those are the basicfeatures of a Facebook fan page, but once you get going you willrealize that there are many more things you can add to your fan pagesuch as customizable apps, connecting the page to your Twitter feed,and much more. But you can't do any of the fancy things until you getstarted with the basics, so for now create your page and start buildingyour fans. Oh, and don't forget to include a new link on your websiteto let people know they can become a fan on Facebook. And that is how you can use Facebook as a branding strategy for your business.

More About Faith Monkey

Located in Denver, CO Faith Monkey is a leading solutoin provider of SEO, web marketing and hosting services. To Learn more about Faith Monkey, visit our website at http://www.faithmonkey.com/

Word of Mouth Marketing

2010-06-14T10:01:00.001-07:00

When Sally is not treated well at the local cleaners, she not only doesn't go back there, she tells others of her unpleasant experience. People talk! They talk about their frustrations, disappointments, poor service and inadequate products. Statistics indicate that every unsatisfied customer tells at least eight people about their unpleasant experience. People tend to readily talk about unsatisfactory service and yet what you want is to have them talk about great service. Imagine if every person who came to your center told eight people about how you are enhancing the lives of people everyday. The people you serve are you best vehicle for positive word-of-mouth marketing.

Tips for Generating Word-of-Mouth Marketing

1. Create a memorable, easily repeatable value statement.
Decide what it is that you want people to say about your center. What do you want people to think of when they think of your center? Make it easy for people to talk about you by giving them the words to say.

2. Provide quality service, and most of all treat people with respect.
Make sure respect is present in everything you do and say. Respect creates a feeling of honor which nourishes people at a soul level. Communicate your commitment to "respect" by the way that you speak; i.e. "We respect the difficulty you must face when . . ." "We respect your need to . . ." "We want you to feel like you've been treated with the respect you deserve . . ."

3. Ask people to spread the word.
Ask people to help you reach others who can benefit from the services you provide. With a little encouragement individuals will help you spread the word to others throughout the community.

4. Give people something great to talk about.
Do something extraordinary that makes people want to talk. What can you do that will just naturally get people talking? It could be a community project, a new service, an in-house program. Be willing to be creative and do something extraordinary that gets people's attention.

5. Stay in touch with people.
By staying in touch with people you increase the chance that they will mention and recommend your center to others. There are always plenty of reasons for being in touch with people. Make sure you don't get too busy to ignore those nudges to call people. Be aware and alert to opportunities to be in touch.

6. Acknowledge people.

Acknowledge people for being clients, contributors, vendors, community supporters. Make sure that the people in your life realize they contribute to the work that you do. Include people in celebrations and acknowledgements regarding the impact that the center is making in people's lives.Does your community really know about the value and benefit of your services? If not, they need to and it is up to you to get the word out. You can initiate a word-of-mouth grapevine that creates positive visibility and exposure. Creating this type of visibility is critical - it is the way that the people who want and need what you have can find you.

More About Faith Monkey

Located in Denver, CO Faith Monkey is a leading solutoin provider of SEO, web marketing and hosting services. To Learn more about Faith Monkey, visit our website at http://www.faithmonkey.com/

Web Marketing Ideas You Can Actually Use

2010-06-14T09:53:00.001-07:00

The Web is full of information, articles, videos, white papers, e-books and all matter of research and information. Some of it is very, very good, and some of it is misleading and irrelevant. Somewhere in the middle, falling squarely in the category of spectacularly mediocre, is the vast majority of the rest of it. Our business model here at Faith Monkey is about always trying to improve, learn, and grow your business, then you've probably been frustrated in your search for truly useful information that you can actually use to improve your marketing, branding, and sales efforts. There seems to be a wide choice of articles dedicated to surefire courses on do-it-yourself marketing that will make you a Web-Media-Mogul overnight (usually available for a mere three payments of twenty-nine, ninety-five) and of course, there's always lots of stuff on how you just got to get onboard with the next big social networking fad. Excuse me while I delete another email about an absolutely fabulous linking strategy I just can't líve without. It's all too familiar and for the most part, a waste of time. If this nonsense were really the answer to growing your business, then you'd already be rich, sitting on some beach sipping pina coladas, and not hunched over your computer trying to find something useful that will actually help.In

One Word Or LessWhen it comes to marketing, it really doesn't matter what venue, method, or media you employ; marketing is simply a matter of effective 'communication,' easy to say, not so easy to do.Your ability to communicate is the key to marketing success, or conversely, your inability to communicate effectively is what is holding you back. So the time has come to grapple with the real problem, and that is, how do you communicate your marketing message in the most effective manner to your audience; how do you tell your brand story so people pay attention, and care. The first thing to understand about marketing communication is that text messaging, Twitter and all other limited, one dimensional solutions, stifle the very thing that's necessary to implement effective marketing communication: the nuance, depth of understanding, and emotional value inherent in what you provide - the very thing your audience needs to know about what you sell. The key being 'why they need what you offer' not 'what.'Communication Is A Complex ProcessThe second thing to understand about marketing communication is that it involves five critical elements in order to be effective: the Message, the Method, the Messenger, the Audience, and the Venue.Ask yourself, why are you on the Web at all? If it's because everybody else is on the Web, then you're not ever going to have the marketing breakthrough you crave; but if it's because you have something to say, a story to tell, a reason for people to say, "I need some of that!" then it's time to get serious about developing the right message, delivered by the right messenger, sent to the right audience, and employing the Web venue's best method of multidimensional communication - Video.This is nothing new. Web Video is now accepted as the most effective communication tool available to Web businesses, so what is the difference between Web Videos that are an utter waste of time, and worse, counter productive, and Web Videos that turn companies into marketing phenoms?

Unlike one-dimensional forms of communication, Web Video delivers your message by accessing multiple senses using visual and auditory techniques. Just by adding a human being as presenter goes a long way to making an impact.Because video communicates by accessing multiple senses on both a subliminal and direct level, it demands knowledge and expertise in concept creation, writing, casting, graphic and motion design, video production and editing, audio, music and sound design, as well as the ability to get it all to work together in an effective presentation delivered on time and for an affordable investment.

But all of this expertise and skill can be wasted if your video campaign lacks an identifiable emotionally relevant conceptual design. One of the hardest marketing concepts for bottom-line oriented business executives to accept is that the value of their offering is found in the emotional satisfaction their product or service provides. Telling people what a company does alone is not marketing, telling them why they need what you do is. Companies that focus on 'the what' turn their products and services into commodities and products that are indistinguishable from the competition, but companies that focus on the emotional value they provide, deliver the answer to the question, why people purchase from one company and not from another.Effective Marketing Communication is Concept BasedAll good marketing is based on an emotionally based concept. This is especially true on the Web, where content and attention span go hand-in-hand. If your Web marketing is not interesting, informative, and entertaining, it won't ever be memorable; it won't ever have the lasting impact you need to meet your sales and marketing objectives. Effective marketing communication starts with an emotionally charged concept, one that can be spun-out into a long-term presentation strategy, a concept with legs. Coming up with an appropriate concept that will work for your product or service takes a bit of creative thinking, but it really isn't as hard as you think. One caveat that often escapes clients, when they come to us with their ideas is that the concept must be executable for the available budget. Anybody can come up with fantastic ideas that are impossible to implement or cost prohibitive. The trick is to develop a concept that can be implemented on time and on budget. Executable Brand Video Campaign ConceptsOne method we use to develop affordable brand video campaign concepts for clients is to combine the emotional value proposition the client offers with a recognizable presentation trope. Tropes are metaphorical expressions, or in this case, storytelling-scenarios that audiences recognize and accept in terms of their implied expectations and implications. Used properly within the context of a Web Video presentation, tropes can simplify and shorten a complex message, and provide cover for what would otherwise be a boring, blatant sales pitch, or desperate plea for business. Human beings are all programmed for pattern recognition, it is a basic skill needed for survival, and it's been hardwired into our DNA. Our very survival as a species is dependent on our ability to recognize danger and opportuníty. Business and marketing is no different. And that is what makes communication tropes effective. This intrinsic aspect of our nature allows professional video marketing experts to tap into the motivational triggers that govern our subliminal decision-making responses, the kind of responses that get people to purchase what you sell.

What To Include In Your Social Media Strategy

2010-06-14T09:44:00.000-07:00

Creating a “buzz” around products, services, businesses or an event is a requirement from all clients. There is no social media marketing wand that someone will wave and a target audience will automatically start coming to your site. And what works for one brand may not work for another.

The process of creating buzz doesn’t start from creating a Blog or creating a video, it’s a social media strategy that encompasses social media and word-of-mouth marketing. We have compiled a list of social media tools that companies use to build their social media marketing mixes.
1. BlogsBlogs have become a great tool for social media marketing. First because, if optimized correctly, they can be used to drive traffic to a website. A good blog will help in creating internal links, fresh content, active community, or non-search engine traffic.

Examples of popular blogs where you can create your account are:
Wordpress
Blog.com
Bloggers.com
Typepad, etc.

2. MicrobloggingLike blogs, microblogs offer huge opportunities for business promotion. That is both through content consistency and good optimization. Two of the most used are Posterous and Twitter.

3. Online VideoThe importance of online videos has rapidly increased during the last few years. To read more on this topic, have a look at our blog on The Growing Importance of Online Video (http://www.syscomminternational.com/blog/). Popular video sharing websites include YouTube and Vimeo.

4. PhotosharingSocial media is all about sharing! Therefore, there are numerous platforms that allow photo sharing with your friends. Some of them are: Flickr.com, Memeo.com, and Photobucket.com.

5. PodcastingPodcasting is part of the new media tools that are offered to both promote your brand and your products/services. Check out Blip.fm or RadioPodcast.fr.

6. Presentation SharingAnother great way to put your brand’s name in the spotlight is by offering presentations on topics of interest for your audience on presentation sharing websites. They are increasingly gaining in popularity nowadays. Some of them are:
SlideShare.net
MyPlick.com
Scribd.com
AuthorSTREAM.com

7. Social Networks: Applications, Fan Pages, Groups, and PersonalitiesSocial networks are the place to present and promote yourself as well as to keep in touch with your targeted audience. You can read a list of the most popular on our blog on Top Social Media Network Sites (http://www.syscomminternational.com/blog/top-social-media-network-sites)!

8. Crowd Sourcing/VotingCrowdsourcing is an effective model because it can be used for developing programs, marketing efforts, research, and education. For example Dell has used Crowdsourcing as a distributed problem-solving and production model and has reduced costs and increased their efficiency. Also look at the Grand Challenge for FNIH (http://www.fnih.org/) to see a crowd sourcing campaign.

9. Bookmarking/TaggingSocial bookmarking is a method for Internet users to share, organize, search, and manage bookmarks of web resources.Examples of popular social bookmarking websites:
delicious.com
Digg
Diigo
Fark
Mixx
MyBlogLog
Newsvine
Propeller
Reddit
Slashdot.org
StumbleUpon
Yahoo!
Buzz

10. Discussion Boards and ForumsOnline forums are a great way to market your products/services and interact with other professionals or your audience. Engaging your audience in your niche forum can bring high value to your site and brand too.

11. Content AggregationContent aggregation offers you the chance to bring all news and feeds around your online community accounts in one place. Some say this is the future of social media. Emerging content aggregation websites:
Bloglines
FriendFeed
Lifestream.fm
Lijit

12. Brand MonitoringSocial media is also offering a variety of tools that help businesses understand the positioning of their brand. Popular examples are:
Buzzlogic
Radian6
ReputationDefender

13. Ratings and ReviewsThe best way to find out where your website stands or how your brand is perceived by others is through ratings and reviews. See Yelp, or GetSatisfaction.

14. WidgetsFor those who are trying to promote their own brands, they can create personalized badges, using interesting widgets on Facebook, Twitter, and other networks or by simply using WidgetBox or SpringWidgets.

15. WikisWikis are our online encyclopedia. A short list of wikis:
Wikipedia.org
Citizendium.org
AboutUs.org
Pbwiki
PBworks.com
Wetpaint.com

Along with all the new ways of publishing your content on networking sites, it is important to publish your articles on publishing sites like EzineArticles, eHow, Google Docs (docs.google.com), IdeaMarketers, Yahoo Articles Group (groups.yahoo.com) and submit your press releases on important specialized sites like i-Newswire, PR.com, PressReleasePoint, and PRLog.org.
Social Media Marketing can be very confusing at times. There are lots of networks and channels to choose from. Creating a presence on all the channels is very time consuming and randomly choosing a network is not a good social media strategy. Companies are struggling to understand what social media marketing mix they should use to make their brand successful in the online world.

We suggest it is important to identify which channels are suitable for your business depending on your target audience. Businesses must plan a step-by-step online marketing strategy and brainstorm ideas with their online marketing agency that will work for their products/service.

More About Faith Monkey

Located in Denver, CO Faith Monkey is a leading solutoin provider of SEO, web marketing and hosting services. To Learn more about Faith Monkey, visit our website at http://www.faithmonkey.com/

Wanna Rank Higher In Googles New Search Engines

2010-06-14T09:15:00.000-07:00

A great blog I read this morning.

Recent changes to Google make it seem like Google is no longer just one search engine but a combination of 6 or 7 different search engines all rolled into one. Your SEO efforts should now be geared to ranking high in these search engines as well as in traditional organic search. A little while back, I wrote an article entitled "The Five Pillars of Google Search" and had I known how important those pillars would become, I would have paid more attention to them. What I didn't factor into the equation was Google's whole re-structuring of its SERPs interface or landing page. It really is a whole new Google with not just one search engine but a combination of 6 or 7 search engines all competing for your attention.

The new left side column with its new functions and displays, opens up new opportunities for webmasters to get their listings within Google on that all-important first page. There are also many new ways to view the results such as view everything, or you can view with more or less shopping links. Plus, you can also view Google results for books, maps, blogs, updates, and discussions - all new ways to get your site or links into Google. Throw in the Wonder Wheel and things are indeed looking very different within the new Google SERPs. As a full-time online search engine marketer, I should have expected something like this but the recent changes within Google has been totally unprecedented. We have seen major updates before, some of them very disruptive like the Florida update, but with Google Caffeine, MayDay Update, new layout and the recent shakeup of its Algorithm, Google has fundamentally changed how its organic search are ranked and used. Before I start sounding too cryptic, these recent changes seem to be a "coming together" of all the different types of searches in Google, which have been around for some time. Now it seems with the new interface architecture... each type of search is given more importance or rather more of an equal billing or footing within Google. There are now multiple ways to get your links viewed and hopefully clicked within the most important search engine on the planet.

First, I always try to start any piece on Google or the search engines with a disclaímer. Mainly, in the course of running 9 or 10 websites, I keep a daily monitoring of the keywords which produce revenue, some of these keyword phrases have been monitored by me for 6 or 7 years, but they are only a small sampling of keywords and sometimes drawing or making conclusions with such a small sample can be misleading or downright wrong. So take any of the following information on Google with this point in mind, just one webmaster observing what's happening with Google and putting in his two cents worth. Now, the reason I say "Google's New Search Engines" is the feeling which has gradually crept into my daily marketing - it feels like you're no longer dealing with one organic search engine but 6 or 7 different search engines. Let me explain, for years Google has been presenting results for not just static webpages but also for images, videos, news, blogs and shopping/products - but recent changes have shaken up things significantly.With the recent changes, Google seems to be placing more importance on these new ways to search. Videos have taken a big step forward and can now pop up on the first page and stay there. Producing a video is now one of the fastest ways to get on the first page of Google, even for very competitive keywords. While many online marketers are taking advantage of this fact, it is relatively new and you can have a much better chance of ranking for a video instead of an ordinary web page in Google. It can happen almost instantly.

Personally, I like using the YouTube platform because it is also owned by Google and they no doubt can easily tap into all the background stats on a video such as comments, viewer ratings... and so on. In other words, Google has always favored ways to make their SERPs more democratic and user generated/rated videos are the perfect match. So too are blog posts and entries, these can be easily monitored and (comment spam aside) are more democratic since it's harder to fake Diggs or Re-tweets. All of these social bookmarking systems and sites provide the search engines, especially Google, with some very helpful user-generated rankings and ratings. Blogs now also have two subcategories - Twitter/Facebook Updates and Forum Discussions, which are now being displayed separately. Google seems to be placing more importance on popular Posts, Diggs, Tweets... in their SERPs.

Again, I find using a simple Google owned program like Blogger to be an effective way of ranking high in Google. For example, my posts in Blogger are indexed in Google within minutes, this recently seems to have been sped up and we are moving more towards instant search results. Another instant way to get your content onto the first page of Google is to use a News Release. Google has always listed News Items on the first page but this now seems to play a more important role, especially when you consider all the new features in the left side column. Surfers will probably stay on that first page longer and you have a better chance of getting your news item read.Within the last couple of years, I have started doing Press Releases, mainly through PRweb but there are lots of free programs you can use. I also like posting my articles to American Chronicle since Google News picks up and displays a lot of these items. Again, like videos, getting your News item listed is almost instant and within seconds you can have traffic flowing to your site. Images and image search has always been an important feature of Google Search. One that online marketers and webmasters have taken advantage of by creating images to match the main products or keywords of their sites. Now image search, itself, is much more varied and has many more options to re-define your image search, for example you could target a certain color or line drawings. Regardless, images can be an easy way to get traffic from Google.Within the shopping results is the place to be featured if you have a product to sell. This is the old product listing (Froogle), which Google has renamed to Shopping or Product Search. For those into onlíne marketing, this is probably the most important listing as you're sure to attract specific buyers who are in the right mind-set to purchase.

To learn more about submitting your products to Google Product Search go here.

More About Faith Monkey
Located in Denver, CO Faith Monkey is a leading solutoin provider of SEO, web marketing and hosting services. To Learn more about Faith Monkey, visit our website at http://www.faithmonkey.com/

Why To Build Multiple Niche Websites And Leverage Them

2010-06-11T09:45:00.000-07:00

This is a repost of a great blog we ready today!

Having a single website allows you to showcase all your services in one place. Imagine having multiple websites, each of which focus on a different service altogether. A single e-commerce website is likely to contain hundreds of pages which describe each product in detail. Having multiple micro websites would allow you to categorize the products and list them in their respective niche website.

In simple terms, multiple niche websites or micro sites support the main website by focusing on the content and driving traffic to the main site. You should build multiple niche sites only if you have the required experience in each niche. You must remember that each micro site requires a lot of time and resources dedicated to it.

You Can Build Multiple Niche Websites In The Following Way:
Use a different domain name for each micro site. Create a sub domain for every niche website. Create subfolders within the main website. Each of the above can be used depending on the resources available to you. But, the best results for organic seo will be achieved by creating a different domain for every niche website.

Advantages of Having Independent-Multiple Niche Websites:
No Fear of Website Downtime. Even if one of the website goes down, all the other micro websites will be live and running. If you have one main website and there is a system downtime, you will lose a lot of traffic and mainly, conversions. Increase in Quality Back Links. You can link each of your micro sites to the main website. This will increase the number of good quality backlinks to the main website. Eventually it will lead to higher ranking and more traffic to the main website.
A Number of Authoritative Websites. If you optimize the micro websites well, over a period of time they will begin to hold well on their own. Such websites go on to become authoritative in their niche. This makes the entire experience of creating micro sites worthwhile and truly enriching.

You Can Expand Your Online Empire.

Multiple niche websites give you a chance to take your business to the next level. Once your micro sites start ranking well in local search engines, you can focus on getting into the top results of other countries.

You Can Tap Into the Needs of the Visitors. Web Analytics tool plays an important part in understanding the visitors behavior. You can use the web analytics tool to understand the influence of your micro sites in every country. This will enable you to analyze the market of your services in other countries. You can gain important insights and make strategic decisions for your business with this data.

The most successful example of multiple niche sites is that of Google. Google has tightly integrated all its micro websites (e.g. Google AdWords, Google AdSense, Webmasters Tools etc) and turned each of them into an authoritative website.

Building multiple niche websites and maintaining them is not an easy task. With enough time and efforts they bring successful results in the form of lead generation.

More About Faith Monkey

Located in Denver, CO Faith Monkey is a leading solutoin provider of SEO, web marketing and hosting services. To Learn more about Faith Monkey, visit our website at http://www.faithmonkey.com/