If you answered YES!, you are on the right track towards an online presence.

Now what if I asked this. Do you have a MEANINGFUL online presence?

This may take a bit more thought.

The truth is, the days when a web presence could exist as a simple website are gone. The online environment has evolved tremendously over the past decade with the inception of social media platforms and Web 2.0 capabilities. Because websites have evolved so aggressively, it is no longer sufficient to simply say “I am online”. In order to establish a true online presence, many factors have to be present and work in unison to reach this level of  transparency and consistency. In order to achieve this level of web presence, you only need two key elements. A meaningful social media strategy and a modern website that encourages conversation, informs users, and is updated consistently.

Social Media

In today’s closely connected society, the desire to belong to a community which is able to communicate with the world has increasingly highlighted social media as a powerful tool that can nurture this desire on a global scale. Whether you are part of an athletic or business community, it is essential to nurture social platforms as a pipeline to access and communicate to those who mean the most to you. May it be your clients, your competition, or potential customers, social media allows individuals as well as businesses to communicate on a virtual one to one level with those who matter the most. Addressing social media from a business perspective, social media provides a business with an opportunity to build brand exposure, create goodwill with consumers, and opens up opportunities to reach out to potential customers.

In addition to making vital connections with the business community, recent incorporations into Googles search engines have made social updates from Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ searchable. This means that your updates are no longer seen solely in the social media bubble. Social Media Marketing (SMM) is now a distant cousin of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and should be implemented with any online initiative.

Website

Organizational websites have become a pivotal part of today’s business environment. We like to communicate the fact that a website should be viewed as a dynamic online storefront, not a static business entity. In the tech age of the 2000’s, individuals make many generalizations based on the look and feel of a company’s website.

In the online community, society tends to make a lot of insertions on what a company has to offer by judging the book by its cover. Aesthetically speaking, a website should be well laid out and visually appealing just as a storefront would be.

So, do I need a website?

In short, Yes! A website enables your business to have a worldwide presence for a very small investment. Because websites are accessed via search engines by searching for keywords relevant to your business, you have the opportunity to be searched by potential customers from across the globe. The greatest benefit gained from an online presence is visibility. Being online now allows businesses to have their doors open 24/7, 365 days of the year. From a customer service perspective, this speaks volumes in terms of both customer satisfaction and sales revenue, both of which are positively affected by the proper utilization of Web 2.0 capabilities and social media that are integrated throughout websites.

In addition to capabilities, the world wide web is the new yellow pages. The most common way to search for a business is now through Google searches and is the destination where 90% of information gathering customers look. If for this reason alone, you should consider moving into the online environment.

For the company, 2012 brought new beginnings as well as new employees. We pride ourselves in the ability to help foster and continue develop the education of our employees in the workplace. The month of January brought three bright faces and bright minds to the table. A project manager, programer analyst, and talented graphic designer.

First, meet Steve, our programmer analyst. He is currently in his second year of the Programmer Analyst program at the College of the North Atlantic. Steve is a very talented individual who over the years has mastered three languages. English, HTML, and #Twitter. After graduation, Steve plans on bidding farewell to Newfoundland, moving west to Alberta or British Columbia where he will put his skills to the test as he hopes to jump into a systems analyst or program management position for a large corporation. To say hi, check him out on our team page.

Working creative wonders with the mouse, Tara was eager to jump on board at ECI and show us what she is made of. Now in her second year of the Graphic Design program at the College of the North Atlantic, Tara is grabbing at every piece of artwork we have around the office and adding her own creative flair to it. With graduation just around the corner, June 2012, Tara is going to keep her mouse clicking in the marketing environment with dreams of setting up as a freelancer further down the road. Come say Hi to Tara on her team page.

Last but not least is the smallest member of the team. Now, she may be small, but she holds her ground and knows how to tackle to do’s like she’s been doing it for years.  Meet Fallon, the last intern to join the ECI team. A third year Business Commerce student at Memorial University, with a focusing in marketing, thrives on being creative both at work and on the court as she soars through the air with her cheerleading team. She understands that her final two years of school will pass very quickly, but she is well prepared for what is to come. Fallon is doing her best to work in TV. Not acting, but developing television advertisements for some of the biggest companies around. She wants to combine her love of marketing and writing to create advertisements that are both unique and memorable. To meet Fallon, drop over to our team page.

To learn a little more about our team, please visit our team page. www.EssentialCoding.com

We are not just another web development company. Over the past 18 months we have grown tremendously, opening offices in St. John’s, Corner Brook, Moncton, and Halifax. With addition of new staff comes new, youthful, insightful ideas and a sense of determination to do something disruptive and innovative within our industry; which is exactly what we do. Building websites is just one aspect of the marketing mix, and a single aspect of the new Essential Coding. With the development of a comprehensive marketing strategy, we have split the seams between mobile application development, eCommerce platforms (some of the first in the province), and SaaS based applications.

Essential Coding believes that every organization should have a consistent and effective online, mobile, social, and offline strategy.

Visit us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter.

We work fast.
We build brands.
We work on and off the web.
We communicate strategies.
We bridge marketing and IT.

We all wish the process of driving traffic to your web destination was a simple one. The fact of the matter is, its not. Driving traffic takes time and resources but is essential to articulate a relevant and successful web presence.

One of the simplest ways to drive web traffic is through blog writing. A blog is essentially a “web log”, or a user generated journal that is available for viewing on the web. These blogs come in many forms and in many subjects. Initially they were used for personal use, for example, a record of daily events or a synopsis of a weekend adventure. From their humble beginnings they have evolved into much more. Blogging is a great way to communicate and promote yourself on the web. Articles about daily workflow, office culture, and worldly news show your viewers that you have something worthwhile to say. Blogs work for you by attracting readers who are engaged in your relevant, up to date information. Not only do they attract readers, but the continual update of information will drastically improve page rankings for your website on Google.
Many organizations can be very skeptical of the effectiveness of blog writing. Listed below are just a few stats which affirm the performance of blogs.

- Blog at least 20 times per month and you can generate 4 times more leads than those who do not blog.

- Blog 15 to 20 times per month and your business can receive more than 2 times the traffic than those who blog only 4 times per month.

- Over a short time your blog archive will grow to a very attractive size. Businesses with 200 total blog articles receive more than 3.5 times as many leads as those with under 20 blog posts.

Blogging is becoming more important and popular everyday. Although they do take time and effort to create, the payoff is as impressive as it is tangible. However, if time is not on your side, many marketing firms offer blog writing services which can automatically release blogs on a set schedule.

Have you joined the blogosphere yet?

Devoted, imaginative employees are they well oiled cogs that keep the wheels spinning at Essential Coding Inc. The Essential Coding community is created around a relaxed, casual work environment that effortlessly produces IT and marketing deliverables.

The vision for Essential Coding is to give each client the professional assistance that is effective for the business: identify the needs of the business, create more brand recognition, and increase sales through the effective marketing of the business. What sets us apart from other marketing businesses are our professional worldwide contacts that work with us. Continuous communication within our small global community gives us the feeling that our half a world away partners are just down the hall. This saves all of us at Essential Coding a generous amount of time, and in the business world, time is money, and we don’t believe in wasting precious time.

Quick response code or QR codes are two dimensional barcode that is designed to have its contents decoded at an elevated rapidity or speed electronically. Two dimensional simply means horizontally and vertically. Research shows that QR-Codes based their origin in Japan and it was originally created by Toyota subsidiary Denso Wave in 1994. It later became well-known within the Middle East and Europe and it is mostly used in Japan, South Korea and United Kingdom. At first the QR codes were used for tracking parts in vehicle manufacturing, but as time went by their uses extended and became broader as it is nowadays used for commercial tracking application and in telecommunication industry where the mobile phone seems to pave way of their popularity.

QR codes connect mobile users to the web quickly and effectively. QR codes are mostly used to store data including URLs and addresses. Generally the amount of data that QR code can store mostly depends on the character set, version and error correction level.

If you’ve contemplated using QR codes as a form of marketing, your on the right track. QR is a great marketing tool that offers continuous marketing opportunities, with an outstanding development of mobile and smart phones. Their trending rate is increasing with it popularity and may also increase in future as research shows that it would likely trend high as QR codes are popping up everywhere especially with the new technology and mainly the development of smartphones that are now worldwide spread .