The BerryPatchPartnership with RedberryDesigns equals a strategy focused business

 We have clients that have experienced anywhere from a 20% upwards to a 60% increase  in sales based on the strategies we have implemented for them.  If we had to point to the one factor that was consistent among the most successful of them, it would be the fact that they all have real tangible proven business plans. Redberry Website Design partners with small businesses to help them develop and  execute their growth strategies.  It has been our experience that our clients experience exceptional ROI relative to the investment required to retain our services.  One of the biggest challenges that we face when developing a marketing, branding, and  website development strategy for prospective clients, is their lack of business plans and concrete financial planning.    So I pose this question to you... Are you managing your business for success? ...or is it a series of nebulous conversations, strategies and tactics.  Here are some questions that you need to answer before attempting to either acquire outside investors or even before making your own capital investments in resource, services and capital.   

Does your small business, organization or non-profit?

1. Prepare an annual budget?          
2. Have financial statements audited or reviewed (not just compiled) by a CPA annually?         
3. Have a mission and vision statement made known to your employees and customers?         
4. Engage in planning beyond the current year?        
5. Have an outside board of directors to help guide your company?  
6. Have key performance indicators that are reviewed regularly?       
7. Have a solid growth strategy?     
8. Have necessary resources (people, money, etc.) to grow?
9. Have the desire, drive, and enthusiasm to grow and execute growth strategies?     

We would love to hear your comments, thoughts and answers to these questions.  Also if anyone has any additional questions that we have not thought of here please feel free to pose them here.

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Redberry Designs partners with you to make sure that the findability of your online business is pushed up to the top search engine ranking position.  Contact our team to get your project started today!  Click Here to Get a Quote Now!

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About the Author: Jannice Boyd Almansur (http://www.jannice.info/) is Managing Director of  Redberry Atlanta Website Designs. Redberry is an Agency that offers Branding, Website Development and Hosting Solutions and a full portfolio of business content marketing and brand identity solutions for small businesses. To learn more and to download FREE business tools and articles, as well as join their mailing list, visit the our BerryPatch Blog at http://www.redberrydesigns.com/BlogRetrieve.aspx?BlogID=419 and Redberry Atlanta Website Design website at http://www.redberryatlantawebsitedesign.com. You may print this article for personal use or republish it online only if it is left unaltered and in its entirety, including bylines, links and author information. Contact the author for all other permissions.

HOSTING PLATFORM

We have combined a solution

...that takes into consideration branding, marketing and providing more than just a website, but more so a full service hosting platform with a powerful completely integrated database, content management, e-commerce and email marketing solution.  

We give you, the small business owner, the powerful tools to level the playing field, allowing you to compete with the big guys...We put you back in control of creating lasting success!   More

Main Features

Our fully integrated system gives you the power of multiple software suites, easily controlled from one central interface. Managing your business has never been so simple!  Learn More or view Full Features

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Redberry Designs partners with you to make sure that the findability of your online business is pushed up to the top search engine ranking position.  Contact our team to get your project started today!  Click Here to Get a Quote Now!

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About the Author: Jannice Boyd Almansur (http://www.jannice.info/) is Managing Director of  Redberry Atlanta Website Designs. Redberry is an Agency that offers Branding, Website Development and Hosting Solutions and a full portfolio of business content marketing and brand identity solutions for small businesses. To learn more and to download FREE business tools and articles, as well as join their mailing list, visit the our BerryPatch Blog at http://www.redberrydesigns.com/BlogRetrieve.aspx?BlogID=419 and Redberry Atlanta Website Design website at http://www.redberryatlantawebsitedesign.com. You may print this article for personal use or republish it online only if it is left unaltered and in its entirety, including bylines, links and author information. Contact the author for all other permissions.

Using Windows Live Writer to post on the fly to your blog on the Redberry Website Design Blogging platform is a snap.  Just follow these easy steps to first download Windows Live Writer then connect to your blog on the platform.

Step: 1 Download and Install Windows Live Writer

• Use this link to access and download windows live writer.  http://explore.live.com/windows-live-writer?os=other
• Download the program
• Once the install begins >> select windows live essentials 2011

Be patient the download will take about 5 or more minutes.

Once the program completes it will auto launch.  It will ask you to create a Hotmail account.  Just follow the steps and the system will create the account for you.  Once you have your account allow the install to complete. You will have to close and re-launch Outlook.

Step: 2 Create a Hotmail Account and Launch Windows Live Writer

If the program does not launch automatically or take you to the set-up simply select your windows explorer (Short cut= Windows Key+E

In the search bar type “windows live writer” and the program will be found. Select it to launch the program.

Because you already have a blog as part of your website on the Redberry Website Design platform you click Add blog account, and then follow the steps to set up your blog in Writer.

(This is the link to how to connect to the your blog on our system with windows live writer)

Step: 3 Set-up Your Redberry Website Design Platform Blog

Using Windows Live Writer for Blogs

Contents  [hide] 1 Configuring The Blog Account 2 Configuring FTP for Image Uploads 3 Working With Blog Posts 3.1 Opening, Editing and Deleting Posts 3.2 Creating A New Post 3.3 Draft and Published Posts 4 Supported API Capabilities

 

The system uses the Metaweblog API, allowing you to use a variety of third-party blogging clients to control your blog externally.

Configuring The Blog Account

Step 1: Select The Blog Service

Make sure you have your credentials for your an existing blog created in the Admin.

You will need the following Items:

• remote posting URL for your blog to be added to this (http://mysite.com/MetaweblogAPI.ashx)
• username and password you use to login to the Admin Console
• root URL of your website
• FTP Host Details: FTP hostname: and FTP host Username:

If it's your first time running Live Writer, it will automatically prompt you to create a new blog account, otherwise, open Windows Live Writer and select "Create new Blog Account."

The first window you should see will ask you which blog service you are using. Select "Other Blog Service" and click "Next"

Step 2: Enter Your Blog Details

Enter the web address of the blog, followed by the username and password you use to login to the Admin Console.

This is the web address of your blog: It should look something like this…

http://yourcompanyname.redberrydesigns.com/_blog/yourblogname

If you do not have this information you can contact Me or Shafik or pull up your blog in your browser and copy the full address.  Make sure that you copy the main blog address not the address of a post or secondary page. 

Your Username and password are the same as what you use to log-in to your website admin area. If you do not have those use the link above to contact us.

If you'd like Live Writer to remember your password, click "Remember Password."

Click "Next"

Step 3: Select The MetaWeblog API

Under "Select Blog Type", choose the "MetaWeblog API" and enter the following URL, substituting "http://mysite.com" with the root URL of your website.

http://mysite.com/MetaweblogAPI.ashx

Enter this in the

Remote posting URL for your blog

http://yourcompanyname.redberrydesigns.com/MetaweblogAPI.ashx

or http://yourwebsitedomainname.com/MetaweblogAPI.ashx

Click "Next"

Step 4: Do Not Load Blog Theme

Our Blog API does not yet support previewing of themes/templates.

When asked if you'd like Live Writer to detect your blog theme and create a temporary post, click "No"

Step 5: Assign A Blog Nickname - You're Finished

If you'd like to assign a blog nickname that will only appear in Live Writer, enter it here.

Click "Finish" and you're done.

Configuring FTP for Image Uploads

Live Writer can automatically resize, upload via FTP and then embed images in your blog posts. To set this up, go Blogs > Edit Blog Settings and then select the "Pictures" tab from the left.

Step 1: Select “Upload pictures to an FTP server” then click “Configure FTP…”

Step 2: Enter your FTP details as you would for any regular FTP client.

Under “Publish pictures into this folder”, type /blogimages - this will be the directory in which embedded images will be stored.

Provide the absolute URL of this directory under “URL of picture publishing folder”, ie. mysite.com/blogimages/

Step 3: Now, when you click "Insert Picture" from the Live Writer interface and insert an image from your local machine, this image will automatically be uploaded via FTP and embedded in the blog post upon publishing.

Step 4: Working With Blog Posts

Opening, Editing and Deleting Posts

Go File > Open, then select the name of your blog from the left sidebar to see a list of all existing blog posts.

From here, you can open, edit and delete existing posts.

Creating A New Post

To create a new post, go File >> New Post.

Draft and Published Posts

Save as draft: If you'd like to save a draft of your blog post in the system to work on at a later date, simply click "Post Draft To Blog" from the "Save Draft" drop-down menu.

This will store the draft blog post in the system, but set the release year to 9999 so it is not displayed on the live blog.

Clicking "Publish" will set the release date to the current day, making it live.

Publish (makes post live): Clicking "Publish" will make the current post live on the front end of your blog.

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Redberry Designs partners with you to make sure that the findability of your online business is pushed up to the top search engine ranking position.  Contact our team to get your project started today!  Click Here to Get a Quote Now!

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About the Author: Jannice Boyd Almansur (http://www.jannice.info/) is Managing Director of  Redberry Atlanta Website Designs. Redberry is an Agency that offers Branding, Website Development and Hosting Solutions and a full portfolio of business content marketing and brand identity solutions for small businesses. To learn more and to download FREE business tools and articles, as well as join their mailing list, visit the our BerryPatch Blog at http://www.redberrydesigns.com/BlogRetrieve.aspx?BlogID=419 and Redberry Atlanta Website Design website at http://www.redberryatlantawebsitedesign.com. You may print this article for personal use or republish it online only if it is left unaltered and in its entirety, including bylines, links and author information. Contact the author for all other permissions.

A blog attracts both new visitors and search engines to your site. Providing fresh content on your blog can increase the frequency of search engine spider visits and this promotes the ranking of your site in search results as an authoritative web site. The higher your site ranks in searches, the more likely qualified potential customers are to visit it and make a purchase or engage your services. Your blog simply makes your website easier to find. Your content in the blog is there to attract, acquire and engage customers. Here is a guaranteed approach to using keywords properly to increase search engine rankings of your website.

Your blog posts should not only be relevant to your business’ products, services or industry, they should make ample use of the important keywords that people associate with your business. A keyword is a word or phrase that relates to your niche. These keywords are used to search for your business on the internet. Google, for example, even provides tools to allow you to determine the best keywords related to your products or services.

These words should then be generously incorporated into your blog posts in a natural density that is both readable and logical. The subjects of your blog posts can be taken directly from your top keywords.  In addition, by working your location or business name into the blog post text, this will provide clear associations of your keywords to your location and/or business to the search engines.

Avoid over use of keywords by writing for humans. The complex algorithms that search engines use to rank sites have evolved to the point that simple keyword stuffing is considered an unethical practice because what you actually do is use the keyword in question throughout the text suspiciously often. Having in mind that the recommended keyword density is from 3 to 7%, anything above this, say 10% density starts to look very much like keyword stuffing and it is likely that will not get unnoticed by search engines. A text with 10% keyword density can hardly make sense, if read by a human. Google some time ago imposed a penalty for web pages that are keyword-stuffed and over-optimized in general; will result in lowered rankings. As long as your blog posts are written for humans to read and understand, then you should have little concern over possible ranking penalties for using keywords in your posts. A good rule though is to keep your keyword density around 2%. That percentage is for each keyword or phrase, not for all the keywords you might have in that post. If your keyword density is too high it can appear to the search engines that you are keyword stuffing. With the Google keyword tool, you can enter a few key phrases from your blog post and find out which terms are being searched, then nudge your post in that direction … go on, try it.  It’s fun.  There also is a tutorial to help you figure out how to use this tool and you can find it here.

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Redberry Designs partners with you to make sure that the findability of your online business is pushed up to the top search engine ranking position.  Contact our team to get your project started today!  Click Here to Get a Quote Now!

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About the Author: Shafik Mansur is CEO and Director of Marketing of Redberry Services Redberry Designs. Redberry is an Agency that offers Branding, Website Development and Hosting Solutions and a full portfolio of business conversational marketing and brand identity solutions for small businesses. To learn more and to download FREE business tools and articles, as well as join their mailing list, visit the Redberry Services Redberry Designs website at http://www.redberryservices.com. You may print this article for personal use or republish it online only if it is left unaltered and in its entirety, including bylines, links and author information. Contact the author for all other permissions.

Whew...Shafik and I have been working on our portfolio and updating some social media pages for our business. We are amazed at how much work we did in 2010 and how many new Redberry Designs creations exist because of that work. Please take a moment to visit our new portfolio... if you know anyone that needs a fresh look for 2011 please share it with them as well... http://www.redberrydesigns.com/

Findability! It's all about building a resource rich community...

Redberry Designs is an agency specializing in Online Marketing Solutions, Brand Identity Consulting and Website Design and Hosting for Small Businesses. Website design, development and content marketing is all about developing compelling brand messages that resonate with the target market and ideal clients and is most effective when used strategically and incorporated into the fabric of your business. Creating effective conversational based content and encouraging client engagement through the use of social media (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube and Buzz etc.), online public relations, online community platforms and emerging web technologies is part of Redberry Designs' commitment to the sustainable success of small businesses.

Use this link to check out my Google profile portfolio... A Google profile is very effective way to organically promote your businesses...contact a Redberry Designs team member to learn more about other ways we can help you optimize your findability!  Contact Us Now!

	Redberry Support Services, LLC offers clients a professional office assistant service that operates with consistent quality control and client care as directed by our management team.  Most importantly, our professionals customize services to meet the objectives and goals of each individual client.Supporting small business owners, by giving them more time to do what they are passionate about – Our goal is to give back to our clients some of the precious time to improve their lives and grow their businesses.

Feel free to grab a cup of tea and a cookie, put your feet up and take a look around. You'll find heaps of great content and information about my business, and there's plenty of goodies.

I hope you enjoy and feel free to let me know what you think!