nicomedia Newsletter #1

by: Phillip Barron - October 28th, 2009   Filed under: Uncategorized Add Comment

Clients and friends of nicomedia,

As many of you know, I started the website and digital media design company nicomedia to specialize in cultivating an internet presence for small businesses, non-profit organizations, and individuals. I work with a range of clients, from scholars and artists to doctors and lobbyists. In keeping with both my philosophy of making information as accessible as possible and with the transformative power of the Internet, this newsletter series is designed to empower you to manage your online presence as effectively as you can.

You have a new or newly refreshed website. How do you get people to look at it?

In this inaugural issue, I suggest four ways that you can attract new viewers to your website. More traffic to your site often leads to new donors for your non-profit, new customers for your store, or new clients for your business.

Search Engines

Chances are, most of the visitors to your website come from a search engine like Google, Yahoo, or Bing. Making sure that search engines know about your website and can read your website, then, is critically important to the success of your website. Designing a site so that search engines can easily access the keywords they need to connect the right people with the right website is a process called Search Engine Optimization (SEO). All websites that I design (or redesign) employ the best practices SEO design. Once the site is up and running, the primary tool we have for further leveraging useful information from the site is Google Analytics.

Google Analytics http://www.google.com/analytics/ is code, which you can embed in a website, that helps us track how the website is being used. Who links to your site? When someone lands on your site from Google, what keywords were they searching? How many people look at your site per day, per month, per year? All of these questions and more can be answered through Google Analytics. If I designed or redesigned your website, then Google Analytics is already installed. I use this to track how your site is being used and how to better optimize it. If you would like to receive a free, automatically-generated monthly report on your website’s traffic, just send me an email.

Social Networking

Social Networking can do more than keep you up-to-date with your friends. Premised on the idea that personal connections and advice matter as much as (if not more than) the vetted authority of a high Google ranking, social networking sites are the fastest growing segments of the Internet today. A recent WIRED magazine article noted that “over the past year, Facebook has… become one of the most popular online destinations. More than 200 million people—about one-fifth of all Internet users—have Facebook accounts.” LinkedIn, the most popular professional networking site claims “more than 45 million users representing 150 industries around the world.”

Because of their popularity, don’t underestimate their power to drive new traffic to your website. It is both simple and free to create accounts with Facebook and LinkedIn. As each website walks you through the process of creating your profile, be sure to add the url of your website in the appropriate place. It will be obvious.

Both Facebook and LinkedIn walk you through the process of creating your profile, but if you run into problems or have questions along the way, give me a call. I am happy to guide you through.

Once you create your profiles, be sure to add me as a Friend (Facebook) or add me to your Network (LinkedIn).

Business Directories

Ever wonder how businesses show up in Google Maps? You can make sure that your business shows up by adding yourself to Google’s Local Business Center. Visit http://www.google.com/local/add and
follow the instructions on the site to make sure that the address and contact information for your business is correct. Now you’ll show up when someone’s searching within Google Maps using a keyword related to your business.

Email Signature

Perhaps the simplest thing you can do (and you can do it right now) is make sure that your email signature has all of the contact information a future client, customer, or donor would need to contact you. If you add the url of your website to the bottom of your email signature, most email programs will automatically recognize the url as a hyperlink. And there you go, it’s that much easier for recipients of your emails to check out your website.

I hope you find something in this email useful to you. Feel free to pass this email along if you know of someone else who could use one of these tips. If you would like to sign up to receive this newsletter by email, you can do so here.



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client: Kenneth Lewis

by: Phillip Barron - July 23rd, 2009   Filed under: Uncategorized Add Comment

One of nicomedia‘s newest clients is Kenneth Lewis for US Senate, Inc. Kenneth Lewis is a Triangle-based lawyer who’s running for the US Senate. For this Democratic contender for the Senate seat currently held by Burr, my company is consulting on best practices in search engine optimization and helping the campaign reach into new media markets. (If any of my fellow bloggers would like to get in touch with Kenneth for a story or interview, send me an email.)

In less than a month’s time, the campaign has already raised more than $100,000, and looks on pace to raise more than $1 million by the end of the year. A July press release announced that

the Kenneth Lewis for U.S. Senate Campaign today filed its first campaign finance report with the Federal Election Commission showing over $100,000 raised in the first 21 days of operation.

Kenneth Lewis said, “As a member of Barack Obama’s North Carolina Finance Committee, I know how difficult raising political contributions in an economic downturn can be.  I have also seen a campaign overcome these hurdles with a compelling candidate and an equally compelling message of change.  I am humbled by the early support I have received both across North Carolina and across the country.”

I met Lewis’ wife and his precocious daughter Evan at Camp Wellstone in June, and Holly convinced me that Kenneth stands a strong chance of unseating Burr. North Carolina is already showing a more progressive face in national politics: North Carolina’s electoral votes went to Barack Obama, and Tar Heel voters unseated the former chair of the Republican Party, Elizabeth Dole, in the last election. Kenneth’s business savvy and experience leading finance operations for the Obama campaign in NC will be welcome help to the national and statewide efforts to retread the economy.

 
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a palette similar

by: Phillip Barron - May 26th, 2009   Filed under: Uncategorized Add Comment

Attentive readers may notice that I’ve recently added a Creative Commons licensing badge to nicomachus.net. I’ve meant to add it for some time now, and older versions of nicomachus.net bore the badge. In the process of switching to WordPress (in 2007) and revamping the (visual) theme for the site, I lost or decided to shed most of the blog links and other sidebar items I had collected. So after a two-year hiatus, it’s now back.

from wallygs Flickr

from wallyg's Flickr photostream

You’ll notice too that I’ve recently updated the look of this site, which I hope is both pleasing to the eye and quick-loading on your computers. One feature that I want to draw your attention to is the navigation system in the top left corner of the screen, which is a story in itself.

The vertical bars, which switch to black when you hover your cursor over them, are meant to mimic the fluted columns of doric and ionic architecture (e.g. the inset grooves of the columns supporting the Parthenon in ancient Greece). I don’t really expect anyone to pick up on this bit of visual rhyming, but it represents part of the style I am developing on both this website and, more specifically, on my business’ website. You see, as a perpetual student of ancient Greek philosophy, I look for ways to incorporate and exhibit some of the virtues of Plato, Aristotle, and Plotinus’ ethics and aesthetics. After all, one of the most important things one can do with one’s life is to develop a sense of style that ultimately guides all of one’s decisions and behavior.

red_spectrumFor the palette, I knew I wanted to use a spectrum of shades of red. I found inspiration on the bedside table.

The concept for the vertical bars fits most squarely into my other website, the one for my web-design and digital media company, nicomedia. I decided to use the vertical bar concept, although mirrored, on this website as well in order to imply the connection between the ethic of my business and and ethic of my personal site — both sites, just as both the commercial and civic motivations in my life, are inspired and led by the same background.

header for nicomedia's website

header for nicomedia's website

in the footer at Ogilvy Durham

in the footer at Ogilvy Durham

So, if it’s not obvious from all that I’ve said here, I put some thought into this design. A moment of panic, then, was understandable last week, when I noticed that another local website design company is making use of a similar navigation system. Ogilvy Durham’s blog site lists their most often employed tags in shades of red not unlike the pile-of-books palette.

While it struck me at first as a strange coincidence that two website design firms in Durham would develop and employ a navigation system so visually and behaviorally similar, after an email exchange with the Senior Art Director at Ogilvy, it’s clear that we simply share both an affinity for red and black (OgilvyDurham because red and black are Ogilvy colors generally, nicomachus.net because of the political symbolism behind the colors) as well as a design intuition.

 
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NO to electronic billboards in Durham

by: Phillip Barron - March 24th, 2009   Filed under: Uncategorized 7 Comments

At its meeting tonight (7 pm, March 24, in the Herald Sun Community room), the InterNeighborhood Council (INC) will debate and vote on two resolutions concerning the billboard industry’s request to be able to upgrade billboards, to move them to new locations along I-85, 15-501, 501, 147, and Hwy 70, and to turn as many as 25 into the digital display variety that can show a different ad every eight seconds.

One resolution, put forward by the Watts-Hillandale neighborhood, asks INC to support Durham’s current billboard policy, which has served the City well since the 1980s.

The other resolution, ostensibly put forward by the Rockwood Falconbridge neighborhood, supports an effort led by Fairway Outdoor Advertising to overturn Durham’s current policy and open the door for electronic billboards in Durham. Of note is the fact that Rockwood’s resolution is being put forward by a resident who is also an attorney with K&L Gates — a firm representing, you guessed it, Fairway Outdoor Advertising.

UPDATE: According to an email from Tom Miller and Josh Allen of Watts-Hillandale, the second resolution “was put forward by the delegate from the Falconbridge neighborhood and was supported by Patrick Byker, the delegate from the Rockwood neighborhood.”

So, is that what INC is for? Is the InterNeighborhood Council of Durham just a shill for corporate entities who find local stand-ins to help manipulate community politics? Does the Rockwood neighborhood really support overturning Durham’s ban on new billboards?

Below is an opinion column from today’s Herald Sun. Penned by Durham residents John Schelp and Larry Holt, the column introduces a new website, which I am happy to host, and explains why new billboards in Durham is a bad idea.

Visit this site to learn more about why Durham has as few billboards as it does, and how you can help keep it that way.

The billboard industry is campaigning hard to overturn Durham’s existing ban on billboards. To counter the misinformation coming from industry, folks in the community are launching a new website today at http://SupportDurhamBillboardBan.com/.

On this site, you can see photos of billboards over homes in East Durham, video clips of blinking electronic billboards in action, and a thoughtful presentation supporting Durham’s current ban on billboards.

Overturning Durham’s ban on electronic billboards would open the door to big, bright, blinking billboards on I-85, 147, 15-501 and 70. Do we want large billboards at the top of tall metal poles — flashing ads every eight seconds — near homes, schools, parks and places of worship?

The site outlines many reasons to oppose the billboard industry’s attempt to overturn our ordinance.

Billboard taxes and the local economy: Billboards are not taxed on the amount of revenue they generate. So, billboards contribute an extremely small amount to Durham’s tax revenues.

Fairway Advertising paid just $2,605.60 in taxes last year. Just $2600 for the 46 billboards Fairway owns in Durham. Many single family residences in Durham pay a lot more than that.

Replacing standard billboards with electronic ones would generate 10 times more revenues for billboard owners — from $2,000 to $14,000/month (Inc. magazine). And yet, tax revenues would remain tiny.

Adding insult to injury, if local officials wanted to remove an electronic billboard for any reason in the future, Durham taxpayers would have to compensate the owners for lost revenues.

Jobs: Durham would see few economic benefits from new jobs, since billboard companies employ very few people (mostly managers and sales personnel), and Fairway’s offices are in Georgia and Raleigh. Fairway’s impact on Durham’s economy is negligible.

Public Service Ads: A common industry tactic for undermining public opposition to electronic billboards is to offer free billboard space to non-profit organizations. The industry has employed this tactic in Durham, asking City Council members to name their favorite local non-profits then approaching the groups and offering them free billboard space. This explains why you’re suddenly seeing non-profit billboards around town.

The often unnoticed irony in this tactic is that the ads on electronic billboards change about 10,800 times/day. So, we can see PSAs for anti-drinking programs followed by ads for Bud Lite and Seagram’s Vodka.

Billboards and the environment: Electronic billboards have a big carbon footprint — equivalent to that of about 13 houses. At the same time citizens are being urged to use florescent light bulbs to reduce our individual carbon footprints, we’re being urged to embrace billboards and their energy consumption?

Public safety: Anything that distracts a driver’s eyes from the road for more than two seconds significantly increases the chances of a wreck. Electronic billboards are designed to attract drivers’ attention and are an intrinsic safety hazard. Do we really want drivers on our increasingly congested thoroughfares intentionally distracted by attention-grabbing electronic billboards?

Aesthetics: Durham citizens, neighborhood groups, and local officials worked hard to reduce billboard blight along our highways and in our city. There have been a many, many letters to the editor from Durham citizens who oppose electronic billboards and a only a few supporting the billboard industry, with most of those coming from the Friends of Durham/Chamber of Commerce camp. Some of these letter writers have blamed local government for the deterioration of billboards in Durham. The fact is that current ordinances allow billboard companies to make annual improvements in order to maintain their billboards, but the industry has allowed its billboards to deteriorate anyway. These billboards may be ugly, but don’t blame current ordinances or local government.

The Chamber’s efforts on behalf of the billboard industry to overturn the current ban on electronic billboards, despite citizen outcry, begs the question: Why are the City and County giving the Chamber $128,000 in taxpayer subsidies/year so the Chamber can turn around and lobby local officials on behalf of outside interests that contribute little to our local economy or quality of life?

And it’s inexcusable that billboard industry lawyers target a Planning staffer because the facts she presents don’t support their client’s attempt to overturn Durham’s ban on electronic billboards (Officials’ objectivity questioned, Herald-Sun, 3/08/09). Surely, the billboard industry isn’t suggesting that relevant facts should be kept from the public?

As a recent article points out, there are plenty of compelling reasons not to overturn Durham’s ordinance (Planner: Proceed with caution on billboard issue, Durham News, 2/07/09)…

  • Fairway’s billboards now produce about $2,600 in county tax revenue; switching some to digital “would still not generate significant revenue”
  • Local government cannot require the signs to carry public-service messages
  • Digital billboards could be found to violate the federal Highway Beautification Act
  • Allowing digital billboards while safety studies are pending could expose Durham to liability for accidents
  • Full sunlight reaches about 6,500 “nits;” a digital billboard can reach 10,000 nits.

Please visit our new website. Electronic billboards are a bad idea for Durham. Together, we can stop the billboard industry.

 
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