Washington Wine Sales Site Design

Washington Wine Sales is a distributor of smaller and boutique wineries from the Pacific Northwest, including Cave B Estate Wineries, Dumas Station, JLC Winery, Page Cellars, and Haystack Needle. Owned and operated by my father, Bob Shearer, Washington Wine Sales distributes to restaurants, bars, grocery stores and specialty shops across Western Washington. Because of their ever changing selection and limited runs of specific wines, a dynamic web site was a must. I chose the build this site on the WordPress platform due to its user-friendly interface and slick, out-of-the-box functionality.

The site is based off of the Vigilance Theme, a clean two column design with plenty of room for custom elements. Among these, I created:

• A modified banner image to function as a secondary nav menu between winery-specific pages.
• A rotating sidebar image module to display wine country landscape photos.

While the client’s main goal with the web site was to promote his wineries to potential new accounts, it has already proved to be a resource for end-users looking for additional information about the wines themselves. After the site was built, I coached the client on the best practices in blogging with WordPress. Future plans for the site include a related posts element within each individual winery page, and a dedicated area for listing where each wine can be purchased by the public.

Visit Washington Wine Sales >>

Travel Blog is Up

Given my recent decision to head to Europe this fall, I decided to set up a separate blog to chronicle that trip, and serve as a centralized location of all my previous and future trips worth noting. Check it out at travel.jeffrshearer.com!

Why Should I Follow You?

Every day I see a commercial, hear a radio spot, or visit a web site that asks me to “follow us on Twitter”, or “like our page” (read: Become a Fan). But they almost never tell me why I should do so. These days, its hard to ignore social media, and many businesses have jumped into this new realm to some degree. But in the vast majority of cases that I’ve seen, these businesses lack any cohesive strategy.

Being a social media marketing professional, I can’t help but explore these companies’ various social networking profiles, because all too often their various networks have minimal updates, and almost never do they have anything that would compel me to follow/like them. [...]

PubSubHubbub – The Real Time Web Comes to WordPress

Earlier this month, WordPress announced it had flipped the switch on PubSubHubbub for its 10.5 million blogs on WordPress.com, and began providing full support for anyone on WordPress.org too. Other than the silly name, I didn’t fully realize the gravity of this new functionality until I recently implemented it on my site.  But you might be asking: What exactly is PubSubHubbub?

Its basically a publishing/subscribing platform that essentially allows for nearly instantaneous communication between publishers and subscribers. You may be familiar with RSS (Really Simple Syndication) in which you subscribe to the “feed” of a dynamic web site, oftentimes a blog like this one. RSS makes it easy to read and keep up to date with blogs and news sites that interest the subscriber, and are  typically organized in a reader, such as Google Reader. The RSS reader then periodically checks the blog’s feed for new content, and then displays it to the subscriber once the publisher makes it available. The only trouble with this arrangement is that the whole process is not instantaneous. The reader checks the feed often for new content, but its a pull-based scenario. The reader won’t know you have new content until it goes and checks. What if the publisher could automatically notify the reader, and thus the subscriber, the instant that it posted something new? Thats PubSubHubbub. [...]

How To Optimize a Google Local Listing – Local Search Basics Part II

For many small businesses, local search is becoming a crucial part of their online strategy. In one place, customers are able to learn about the services and products you offer, look up directions to your business, read reviews from other customers, and compare you with nearby competitors, all without even visiting your web site. If you haven’t yet, check out how to claim a Google Local listing.

So now that you’ve claimed your listing, you’re done, right? Wrong. Just like your web site, optimizing your listing is the key to getting found.  While creating your listing or claiming an existing one will get you listed, where you show up is crucial. I’ve outlined a few of the generally accepted best practices in local search engine optimization below.

But first, lets clarify exactly how rankings on Google Local work, as they are a different beast than your average search. At its core, Google Local is an extension of Google Maps, displaying relevant businesses, destinations, and landmarks to users searching a specific geographic area. Thanks to the advent of Google Universal Search, these geographically relevant results are now integrated into the main search results of Google, bringing more relevant results to users in less time. Google will only choose to display the most important listings on the main search results page, while the rest are hidden unless the user clicks “see more results”.  So your goal, just like with your web site, is to rank as close to the top as possible for your chosen keywords, thereby garnering you the greatest amount of exposure to potential visitors. So how exactly do you climb the rankings? Read on to find out!

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How to Claim a Google Local Listing – Local Search Basics Part I

If you are a local business with a web site, there’s no doubt you want to optimize it to rank as highly as possible among your competitors. But what a lot of people forget about is their listing on Google Maps, that allows people to look up directions to your location, write reviews, or learn more about your business at a glance.

Since Google has started using universal search to combine photos, videos, and maps into the main search results, ranking well in Google Local is becoming increasingly important to your online marketing strategy.

It’s easy to claim your listing, but optimizing it isn’t always so straightforward. Google recently did a major revamp of the Local Business Center, and has continually tweaked and changed the system since its inception.   In this two part series, I will show you how to claim your listing, and how best to optimize it. [...]

Social Networking on the Xbox 360: How to Do It Right

Earlier today, Director of Programming for Xbox Live, Larry “Major Nelson” Hyrb asked his sizable twitter audience the following:

What new features would you like to see in the Xbox LIVE Twitter or Facebook applications? I think we know…but tell us

Months ago, Microsoft was first to take a step into the social networking space, adding apps for Facebook, Twitter, and Last.fm to Xbox Live, the pay-to-play online network of the Xbox 360 gaming console. The Twitter app was essentially a simplified client to view and send tweets, with support for twitter search and trending topics as well. Though it worked just fine, there was hardly any value to tweet on the Xbox, for without a keyboard, the process of posting and responding to tweets proved to be quite laborious.

The Facebook app took the integration further, allowing users to post status updates along with the ability to edit their profile, and view photo albums. Arguably the most useful feature though was the ability to find facebook friends that also have Xbox Live. This Facebook app was a refreshing step in the right direction of integrating social media with gaming platforms in a truly useful way,

While I gave each app a fair shake, there wasn’t much substance to them, and little incentive to use them again (with the one exception noted above). I had all but forgotten about the whole affair until I saw Major Nelson’s tweet this afternoon, and that got me thinking. [...]

U2’s YouTube Concert Grabs 10 Million Live Streams

Posted via web from Jeff’s posterous

Post to Facebook Pages, LinkedIn and More | CoTweet

Posted via web from Jeff’s posterous

MySpace’s U.S. Traffic Falls Off a Cliff

via mashable.com

I must have missed the boat on MySpace during its heyday, but it certainly has lost relevance recently. The one thing I have always appreciated on MySpace is the music aspect. Perhaps this is just a sign that their intended size is no long realistic, and they should be refocusing on the needs of bands.

The music-focused social network market seems much less competitive than the general do-all be-all that Facebook has come to dominate. I could see MySpace making a strong case against the likes of Last.fm.

Posted via web from Jeff’s posterous