Writings from Force 5 Basecamp

10/13/10

You’ve probably seen them. Tucked in the lower corner of a magazine ad, on the back of a business card, on a bus sign or even on the entire side of a building. It’s an increasing trend in advertising that some say is a fad, and some say the next great new way to promote. What are QR Codes? QR

10/11/10

The first movie I can recall seeing in a theatre was the 1971 James Bond 007 film, Diamonds Are Forever.  Yes, at the tender age of six, I became a fan of James Bond movies.   I was too young at the time to appreciate James for his prowess, his daring, his panache.  What I loved about Bond films were the

09/16/10

What are Response Headers? Response headers is data that gets sent from the server to the browser. The data can include date & time, content type (ex: text/html, text/javascript), and server information (ex: Microsoft-IIS/7.0). Why is it important to hide them? Security. At the most basic level it will not broadcast what operating system the web server is and which

09/13/10

As a Certified Brand Strategist here at Force 5, I am always on the look out for brand done well and brand that needs help. Both are easy to spot. I have found two examples of wonderful brand ambassadors locally and want to share them with you. The first example of a great brand ambassador is one of my favorite

08/23/10

400 million…500 million…..and still growing. Whether you “like” it (pun intended) or not—Facebook is dominant in helping companies build relationships with their clients. Look at the chart in the article below (thanks to AD Age…)—and with the likes of Starbucks having 12.7 million fans, and growing at almost 79,000 a DAY-you can’t help but consider facebook as a dominant player

07/06/10

In a previous post I showed how-to add specific page keywords & descriptions while using ASP.NET with Master Pages. Compared with the latest ASP.NET 4 version, this technique was not coder friendly. In ASP.NET 4 adding page keywords and descriptions is as easy as this shown below. protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e) { // page keywords Page.MetaKeywords = “keywords

06/24/10

As a marketer I’m always looking for inspiration, and I’m certain most of us who work in the industry would like nothing more than to conceptually develop and execute the next big idea.  Some of you might wonder what I mean – big idea seems slightly vague I assume.  In this instance I liken a big idea to something that

05/21/10

In case you haven’t noticed the web is changing. There is a huge movement underway toward clean, simple, user friendly websites that promote productivity and, consumer interaction. The average consumer doesn’t care how creative a design team you have or, how technically advanced your development team is. They want information. Honest, peer driven information. Whether a potential customer is at

05/07/10

Sitemap.xml What are Sitemaps and why are they important? Sitemaps are a tool for developers to inform search engines about the website content that is available to be indexed. The sitemap protocol is made up of XML that contains a list of URLs, last modified dates, and page priorities for your website. Here is a quick sample in simple form

04/14/10

You finally decide your company needs a new website, but you have no idea who to call. You check the yellow pages, Google web design, ask friends and family, and you’re still overwhelmed with all the choices. Who do you call when your brother-in-laws sisters boyfriend will do the job for $500. “We Are Web Sites”, the best web shop

04/05/10

Lately, we’ve been busy – busy ideating that is. Ideating – which is a fancier term for brainstorming – is a core necessity or foundational step within an advertising and marketing agency’s process of generating creative ideas. In almost every case, these creative ideas deliver a need or provide a solution to a client problem.  However, good ideas don’t have

03/26/10

More and more businesses are moving to Facebook as a platform to reach new customers and communicate with existing customers. It is becoming increasingly important to set yourself from the pack in the world of Facebook business pages. Make sure you are getting the most out of your Facebook business page by following Force 5’s Do’s and Don’ts of running