A Burly man is one who bears the weight of family, faith, provision, and fathering on his shoulders. A Burly man is one who loves being a man and all the responsibilities that go along with authentic manhood. He loves to work hard and play hard …
MakingWebsites.net worked closely with Jim Sellers and his crew a couple years back to create this incredibly unique web site — and even saw revenues from online product purchases start to pick up! But then tough times and the harsh economy slowed things down.
Now that the worst is behind us, Back2Burly.com will be coming back online in new and exciting ways! Check out what’s been there for a while via this temporary link … and then come back in days and weeks to come as the site takes on fresh new content and products at Back2Burly.com.
LEAVE A COMMENT >>
Check out the latest creation from MakingWebsites.net …
CorleyEventGroup.com
“The Corley Event Group, LLC, [was created] to bring excellence in events to those who will settle for nothing less.”
- Amanda Corley, founder
LEAVE A COMMENT >>
This is me just tryin’ out somethin’ new … so please bear with me — and definitely leave me some feedback!
The text below is a transcription of my first voice-recording on the topic of social media strategies. And this was recorded while driving on I-4 through the rush-hour traffic in the great city of Orlando, Florida!
Click below to listen to the raw audio and follow along through the transcript … or (if you’re really brave) just read the transcript text below without audio. I can’t believe I’m podcasting! 
podcast transcript:
OK, here’s the deal. For the strategy of using Facebook and Twitter the best for your business, what you need to do is first, of course, have a web site … and with that website, you need to connect it. Even if it’s just a “brochure web site”, you can still connect it to Facebook and Twitter just by using the right tools and having the HTML and some JavaScript on the page that pulls in those connections.
And so what you’re doin’ is you’re showing through Twitter your latest “tweets” on your site — and what’s cool about that is that it shows activity — it shows constant content that’s being updated daily, at least tweeting once a day — some people up to ten times a day! … will tweet something about their business, something interesting, something personal that connects with business.
But the coolest thing — the most real interesting, incredible connection between your website and social media is through Facebook! Because with Facebook, what you can do is you can have a profile (of any kind that you want), you know, whatever — it can be a personal profile — ideally …
Let’s talk about if you’re promoting a book. If you’re promoting a book … so you have a profile on Facebook that is the author. Then the author can have a page, and that page on Facebook can promote the book itself, that the author has written. And say the author is the author of multiple books. You know you could have a separate page for each book.
But then what you do is by having a page, you can ask people to be fans of that page. And so with being a fan of that page, or allowing people to be fans of that page … what you do then is on your main web site, you have some sort of a connect box … “Facebook Connect“. And so you actually have a box on your web site that allows people to click on a “become a fan” button. And when they click on that, if they’re already logged into Facebook — which, TONS of people now, when they’re browsing the Internet, they’re already logged into Facebook and then they’re browsing other pages!
So if you’re already logged into Facebook, you just click on the “become a fan” … and without even leaving the site, they are now a “fan”!
So you’re showing now, on your web site, this box that shows how many fans you have and allowing people to become fans, then that’s promotion enough, just to show that you’re popular … but what’s even cooler than that is once somebody becomes a fan … then you can, as the owner of that fan page, you can start to send messages — start to send promotions out to them. And … so you can go to your Facebook profile, go into your page, and then Facebook will allow you to send a message to ALL FANS, no matter how big the group is! I don’t think there’s a limit on it!
So you could have 10,000 fans and you send out one little message — a lot like a tweet [on Twitter] but through Facebook … and it would send out that message to those 10,000 fans with a link or whatever! … and that gives you a way to connect with them — that they don’t even know that they’ve subscribed … they don’t know that they’ve subscribed to … a … medium that allows the owner of that book site to send a message out [to them].
Say it’s something like you just got your book posted on Amazon, and you have a promotion code for them to get 20% off of that book. Well you could send a message to all the fans of your book [or of your other books] … saying, if you use this promotion code, you can buy that book on Amazon for 20% off!
And so it encourages people to go there. It also — that becomes a post on your Facebook of course — and so people can go to Facebook and find it there as well … and then you can tweet about it so it shows a Twitter entry there as well.
And so all of this is connectivity — all of this is multi-dimensional, cross-polination, of your brand — you know, showing activity … And so it’s really cool, and it makes it so much more powerful. Because you’re connecting with thousands of people through Twitter and through Facebook … and if somebody “re-tweets” one of your entries … then say you have 10,000 fans … one of those 10,000 fans sees that this is of value, and they want to “re-tweet” it to their thousands of people that are following them on Twitter … and it is SO COOL because you’re not only multiplying, you’re now … it’s where it’s exponential … and … it just goes on and on from there.
And so, I mean, this social media thing … when you get into really getting your message out there effectively, consistently … with a purpose … and make postings to your site … make tweets to go in your Twitter feed … allow people to become fans … and then even posting messages to those fans … with links … It’s just amazing how fast your business can grow!
LEAVE A COMMENT >>
Remember back in the 90s when it was all the rave to make sure you have a “hit counter” on your web site? The idea of course was to show how popular your site was based off of how many “hits” it had received — which was noted as how many “visitors” your site has received. So the higher the counter, the more credible the site was supposed to be.
However, the main issues with hit counters included:
- The initial number in the counter could usually be set by the site owner. So just like how you can order a book of checks starting with check number 298000 in order to show that your checking account has been around for a long time, you could do the same with your hit counter to falsify the popularity of your web site.
- Hit counters were most often JavaScript-based, and the number was incremented every time the page was loaded. So you could hit refresh on your browser and watch the number go up one — and then click refresh again and watch it go up again! Not so accurate for counting how many “visitors” have been to your site.
- If you were truly honest in coding a hit counter into your web site, you would start the counter at “0″ or “1″ to show truly how many page views you had received on your site. And the problem with that is how pathetic it looks when somebody comes to your site, sees that you’ve only had “19 visitors to this site since May 5th, 2008.”
So by and large, hit counters are no longer used on web sites — unless just used as a crude administrative monitor of your site traffic.
And how does this relate to social media? Well, how do you show that you are popular on Facebook? It’s by how many “friends” you have! And similarly with Twitter, it’s how many people are “following” you. Right?
But the cool thing about social media is that you can’t fake it — at least not without going to an extreme amount of effort to taunt hundreds or thousands of real live people to friend or follow you! And isn’t that what marketing is all about anyway?
So the real challenge is how to implement social tools on your web site without looking “wimpy” with only three followers and 12 fans.
LEAVE A COMMENT >>
Discover Spanish is the award winning language learning system used by thousands of individuals of all ages, schools and organizations throughout the United States and many countries around the world.
MakingWebsites.net was recently retained to support the technical, automated sign-up and billing processes that are key to this business model each and every month.
We’ve been honored to support Discover Spanish clients who purchase annual licenses to access this incredible online learning experience, and we look forward to many months ahead as we help literally thousands of new subscribers Discover Spanish!
LEAVE A COMMENT >>
Growing Home – The Lake Mary Story is a 60-minute documentary film currently being developed and funded by those who love the city of Lake Mary, Florida. The film will trace Lake Mary’s rich history and describe in detail how the city grew from a sleepy little village to now become nationally recognized by Money Magazine as one of the best cities to live in America.
GrowingHomeFilm.com is a collaborative effort between MakingWebsites.net, The Crawford Group, and Image Designs.
LEAVE A COMMENT >>
Storyville Coffee Company is sponsoring a nationwide tour of 20 private concerts to raise awareness and money for International Justice Mission, a human rights agency that rescues victims of slavery and violent oppression. And in order to publicize these exciting events, Storyville is sending e-mail messages to friends, neighbors and business associates.
However, when Storyville began sending out plain-text emails with their PDF flier attached, they found the response was less than ideal. So they hired MakingWebsites.net to convert their PDF flier into HTML e-mail messages that would be much more light-weight, more visible to each recipient and better facilitate responses from those who will attend each event. See the finished HTML email! >>
LEAVE A COMMENT >>
Cece Glover is a professional photographer who loves using her camera and a blog to document the intricate details and natural beauty behind each unique person and photo shoot. She uses natural lighting to accentuate honest details and individuality, and then writes many of her photos into her “twenty3moments” blog to capture the truly unforgettable landscape of each person and who they are at that moment.
Cece started writing her stories on a customized Blogger blog but quickly found that Blogger was far too limiting of the layout and embedded photo dimensions. So she hired Andy Corley of MakingWebsites.net to create an even more customized WordPress blog and then transport her Blogger blog into the new site.
Now that Cece’s blogging possibilities are virtually limitless, she’s excited to continue publishing her stories with even more energy and creativity!
[developer note: The photo slideshow at the top of rapturephotoart.com/blog is dynamically populated from a MySQL database, and that database is populated using the extremely user-friendly SlideShowPro Director online application.]
LEAVE A COMMENT >>
rapturephotoart.com
100% Flash-based photographer’s web site, with galleries and site text saved as XML data. A blog was also set up for regular updates and to encourage site traffic from social networks. This site has been created entirely by MakingWebsites.net with incredible photography from rapturephotoart.com.
PangeaAdventureRacing.com
Very data-intensive web site, using PHP and MySQL to track events, races, team and participant statistics and much more. The overall project, site design and layout was done by PH3, and MakingWebsites.net was sub-contracted to do the database design and PHP programming.
BackToBurly.com
Simple CSS, PHP and MySQL web site to encourage men — especially fathers — to get out and do manly things with their kids. Apart from the logo design, this site has been created entirely by MakingWebsites.net.
SouthAmericaMission.org
Non-profit, database-driven ministry web site, using PHP and MySQL to describe the ministry, report news and giving opportunities, and specific pages for each missionary on staff. The overall project, site design and layout was done by PH3, and MakingWebsites.net was sub-contracted to do the database design and PHP programming.
New Tribes Mission (ntm.org)
Absolutely full-featured non-profit, database-driven ministry web site, using PHP and MySQL to promote and support the ministries of more than 3,000 missionaries worldwide. This site is multi-lingual, multi-national, and is populated daily by editorial contributors from more than 20 countries through a custom-coded content management system and secure “members” area.
Andy Corley, the founder of MakingWebsites.net, has helped manage the development and continual programming and support of ntm.org since 2004 when the site’s graphic design, database structure and PHP programming were sub-contracted out to a local company in Orlando, Florida. Andy continues to be a consultant for NTM on this project.
WomenInDiscipleship.org
Non-profit, database-driven ministry web site, using PHP and MySQL to describe the ministry, publish weekly devotionals, and provide access to various Bible studies for women. Apart from the logo design, this site was created entirely by MakingWebsites.net.
LEAVE A COMMENT >>
