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For many web workers, the central hub from which they manage their online identity and portfolio is, or features, a blog. Using a blog to represent yourself has many purposes, including acting as a C.V., establishing your identity as an authority in your field, and providing a launchpad for your various social network profiles.

Those are all very good uses, and benefit you as a web worker immensely. The only question I have as a visitor is, how do they benefit me? Yes, they help if I’m considering you as a prospective contractor for a job, but if I’m not, then the site quickly loses relevance. A blog should be doing work all the time, even when it isn’t speaking directly to your professional history and identity. Here’s how to make sure it is.

Source: www.salon.com/…

RO »» This can apply to company blogs to. Providing extra information on your website via a blog attracts visitors to your site and thus makes more people aware of your business and its services. Think of it as marketing in the information age.

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The importance of keeping business websites up to date: Are you losing money, stature and customers through your out-of-date website?

A few years ago, it was sufficient for a business simply to have an online presence. However, technical developments such as e-commerce functionality and interactivity have turned the modern business website from a collection of static text pages into a commercial powerhouse. Web 2.0 tools and software are creating new opportunities both for marketing and interaction with customers, with options such as live chat support, interactive feedback and personalized interfaces. The rise of Google and the success of its PageRank search results have changed the way people look for websites, and the way businesses think about how they are found and what to offer searchers when they arrive.

Viewed through a modern lens, many business websites have simply not kept pace with technological developments. Instead there has been a tendency for businesses to build a website, put it out on the Internet, and then assume that leaving it there is enough. Even large companies with dedicated in-house staff often focus on one aspect of their websites to the detriment of others; for example, content over features, design over content or software over design. Instead, Web designers should take a holistic view of their sites as organic and constantly evolving entities, incorporating relevant content and features as well as identifying the value in new technologies and leveraging them to benefit both the business and the consumer.

• Read more: Keeping business websites up to date

Adding and editing content via wikis growing in popularity at companies

Just as employers are figuring out the role of blogs, their value and downside, along come wikis. Actually, wikis have been around for quite some time, but experts say it’s just now that mainstream employers are starting to tap into the power of such Web sites - where users can add and edit content at will - as a means of collecting employee knowledge and enhancing productivity.

Even as the research firm Gartner Inc., based in Stamford, Conn., is predicting that by 2009 half of companies worldwide will be using wikis, employers ranging from investment banks to book publishers to nonprofits are using them in a variety of ways.

Source: www.newsday.com/…

RO »» Websites hosted with Reliably Online have wiki capability pre-installed, it just needs set up and customized for your business. Contact us if you think your company website could benefit from having a wiki.

It’s no longer just about food and service. A new restaurant’s success often depends on the buzz it creates before the doors have even opened.

… If Chambar was perhaps the most anticipated restaurant ever to open in Vancouver, it would also become an unwitting model for “Opening Soon” blogs. Contrived by restaurateurs as diverse as Sean Heather (The Irish Heather, Salty Tongue, Shebeen et al), Brian Fowke (Rare One), and Tom Doughty of the soon-to-open Fuel, these blogs were added to restaurant websites, or started in culinary websites such as eGullet, WaiterForum and Urbandiner.

These blogs take the food-obsessed through the travails of real estate deals, renovation and licensing hazards, physical exhaustion and emotional upheaval. More importantly, they take foodies inside, so that they feel let in on trade secrets. They feel empowered, and ultimately gain a sense of ownership in the project. Importantly for the restaurateur, the blogs provide a platform of eager customers on opening night. Forget old school marketing and expensive public relations tactics, and even artfully created websites: blogs are essentially free and easy …

Source: www.vanmag.com/…

RO »» Have a budget but need to create some buzz for your endeavour, contact Reliably Online to discuss the possibilities.

Reliably Online is pleased to announce the launch of its new and improved website. Please have a look around tell us what you think.

Reliably Online has refined its customer-centric system for creating and managing the design and development of websites. Using our template based layout system and WordPress for content management we can quickly and efficiently create a custom website for your business. SEO is also incorporated into our Standard Website Package so that your website will not only look and function well, it will be found.

Contact Reliably Online to learn about what we do, what we can do for you and what it costs.