My point here is this: like it or not, there are multiple browsers out there, and there can be annoying differences in how each of them render code. You really need to make sure that most, if not, all visitors to your site can view and use it as you intended. It’s probably virtually impossible to get your site to look and act exactly the same on all browsers, but you need to at least spend a good amount of time (and ideally you are, or use, a good programmer that can diagnose and fix stuff).

As with just about everything, there are services out there to help. Browsershots is a free site that lets you submit a page to over 60 browser variations, and returns to you screenshots of your URL in each. It’s not instantaneous, however, taking at least a couple to complete the task. Another option is Browsercam. Browsercam is a paid service ($60-$100 per month depending on the plan you select), but it’s much more powerful than Browsershots, allowing you to check and optimizer your site on mobile devices and check javascripts, DHTML, forms and other dynamic functionality on any platform.

So that’s about it for this entry. Pretty basic stuff, but it’s an area I’m finding people are overlooking.

A couple weeks ago, Boston-based communications group Cone released the results of a study they conducted that gauged whether Americans expect companies to have a presence in social media.

Some highlights:

• 43% said companies should use social networks to solve customers’ problems
  
• 41% said companies should solicit feedback on their products and services
  
• 37% said companies should develop new ways for consumers to interact with their brand
• Men are twice as likely as women to interact with companies via social media

There’s also a great presentation that Universal McCann made available awhile back that surveyed 17,000 Internet users from 29 countries. Some more interesting nuggets can be mined from this one, such as:

• 44% of people surveyed have a blog (compared to 28% in 2006)
• 57.5% have a page on a social network (compared to 27% in 2006)
• 69% visit brands’ official websites for product information
• 82% prefer to search for information on a search engine or to read people’s comments on personal profiles on social networks like Facebook

Stuff to sink your teeth into, to be sure.  Moral of the story? Get social media on your radar immediately. If you don’t know where or how to start, you can always contact Shaw & Todd.

This installment was one of the somewhat controversial Ameriquest ads from a few years back. Many felt these to be in extremely bad taste, and truthfully I can see how some people would take offense (although these same people should really lighten up a bit). I’m not going to get into whether or not I feel this ad is effective. I just find it funny (and obviously memorable).

As most know, Google and other search engines use complex and super-secret algorithms to determine the page rank of a site; incoming links and the quality of incoming links being among them. So don’t just think if you have a thousand sub-standard sites linking to yours, that suddenly you’ll shoot to the top. Thanks to search engine analysis techniques like TrustRank, quality is more important than quantity.

Here’s what I mean. Say you own an agency that specializes in business-to-business advertising, and that’s a keyword you’d like to own. In a perfect world, you’d have hundreds of sites and/or bloggers, posting something to this effect:

“I recommend Shaw & Todd highly. They’re a top business-to-business advertising agency.”

As shown here, the desired keyword is linked back to your site. This would be a home run.

Since we’re talking perfect worlds here, you’d also want these links to be posted on sites that the engines deem content rich information portals. I’d rather have my agency be linked somewhere on the AdAge site than something called “The World’s Worst Website“. I know this seems blatantly obvious, but hey, it needed to be noted.

So how should you go about getting more backlinks to your site? The first thing is to focus on your site itself, and get it as ship-shape content-wise as possible. No sense spending time to get people to link to you if you’ve got a crappy site. Consider creating something for your site that could go viral. Something that people will want to link to (a game or video perhaps) . This is known as “link bait”.

Next, do a Google search on the keywords you desire and visit the sites with the highest rankings. See if you can get any of those sites to link back to you. Then I’d advise visiting a backlink tracking site, such as Backlink Watch. These sites let you view who’s currently linking to you, which is always interesting and sure to spark some ideas. Also plug in the websites with the top search engine rankings in your desired keywords, see who’s linking to them, and try to them to link to your site.

Well, I guess that was more than a few words. That’s all for now on backlinking.

Kudos to those involved with the study. While there’s nothing earth-shattering about the findings, we need data like this to pore over. So before I lead you to the report, I do want to offer a quick comment on the top answer to the question: “In which social networking sites do you currently participate on a professional basis?” Number one answer: The Science Advisory Board, by an enormous margin (69% to 2nd place finisher Nature Network’s 24%). Huh? Here’s why: over half the survey participants were registered members, and most likely active participants, of the SAB. So maybe that result is a bit skewed. I can accept that. Otherwise, there’s some great info in there, and therefore a must-read for anyone currently marketing to the life scientist.

Check out the study here.