We are proud to announce the launch of the completely redesigned website for Algonquin Commons!

Inland Real Estate Corporation approached us with the unique challenge of creating a website that needed to be a bit more dynamic than our traditional build.

1. They needed an editable merchant directory with individual merchant profiles.
2. They needed to be able to post individual Events, Promotions and Job Opportunities for each merchant.
3. The data from each Event, Promotion or Job Opportunity needed to dynamically populate the merchant profiles.
4. All of these pages, in addition to other standard pages such as Directions, Contact Us, etc., needed to be editable within an intuitive administration interface.

 We had our work cut out for us.

We decided to use WordPress for the CMS. It’s a popular choice of ours since it is open source and incredibly easy to use. Unfortunately, WordPress does not have a built-in method for creating custom write panels.

Enter Magic Fields. There are a couple of WordPress plugins out there that have similar functionality, but I’ve found this one to be the most powerful. In addition to the standard Posts and Pages write panels that WordPress comes with, Magic Fields allowed us to create the additional write panels for Merchants, Events & Promotions and Job Opportunities. These custom write panels include fields beyond the standard Title and Content fields, such as Store Hours, Address, and more. Having that data separated out made it pretty easy to lay out our theme. I highly recommend this plugin to anyone looking for this type of functionality.

Our designer really knocked the theme out of the park. The rich graphics and unique interior pages impressed Inland right out of the gate. After a few rounds of minor tweaks, we now have an excellent solution that gives Algonquin Commons an attractive and scalable web presence.

Head over to ShopAtAlgonquinCommons.com now to check it out!

WordPress and Typepad both have their merits.  We at Raidious choose to work with WordPress because it allows us complete control over the design and coding of the platform.  This ensures that we have access to make any changes necessary to allow for scaling and flexibility of the blog.  Another major perk is that the code lives on our server, we own it, and can do anything we like with it.

Typepad is a great option if you don’t need as much control over your blog.  If you just want to pick a design and start writing, then this may be the way to go.

Below, I will go into more detail on some of the key differences between these two platforms.

When comparing these two platforms, the power of crowd-sourced development cannot be ignored. When thousands of minds are all actively helping drive development, you end up with a quality product.  Typepad is great for entry-level bloggers, but when it’s time to step up and build powerful, solid, and secure platform, we recommend WordPress.

It’s now been one month since my sojourn to Austin for South by Southwest Interactive. As I’ve decompressed and looked back on the experience, the importance of content for brands has become even more apparent. As I mentioned before, the most popular panels at SXSWi were all about content. Creating content for brands, journalism for brands, and utilizing online channels to publish and promote that content.

Everywhere I turned at SXSWi I saw evidence of this. Many teams had been deployed for various blogs and sites, the Austin Convention center was constantly crawling with Canon 5Ds, Flip Cameras, iPhones, and other assorted camera gear.

What some people saw as production crews, I saw as modern ENG (electronic news gathering) teams. Raidious is a content company. Owned media is our center, and quality content creation is a key element of that. Many times we deploy ENG teams to gather stories or elements of a content plan.

Wikipedia has a very broad definitely of ENG, but the core is as follows:

“It can mean anything from a lone reporter taking a single camcorder out to get a story, to an entire television crew taking a satellite truck on location to do a live report for a newscast.”

I was most excited to check out NPR’s team at Stubb’s BBQ during SXSW music. The coverage they were providing of the line up on DATE was incredible. Their team featured an entire live production crew, mutliple cameras, live HD switching, social media monitoring and promotion, and on air talent – all being broadcast and interacted with LIVE online.

Raidious has experienced a lot of success in deploying ENG teams for our clients – we’ve produced huge batches of video content to activate trade shows online, and utilitized mobile technology such as iPad to report back on events as they unfold. This can create an incredible synergy of content. This is one of they many ways we help brands shine online.

Tip o’ the hat to Social Media Today for seeing fit to feature my recent Raidious blog post “Social Media Strategy: Are You Marketing or Communicating?”

If you read the article, feel free to give it a comment. If you haven’t, go on over and check it out.

In Early December, Chandler was kind enough to share a link to Rush Coil’s 8 Bit Christmas album with me. While Rush Coil’s record was great, I was more impressed with the little gem at the bottom of the page: a standalone commenting system.

Curious, I dug a little deeper to find Echo from JS Kit. I have worked on projects in the past with a WordPress back end that only provided comments on a page, and while not free ($12/year at minimum), Echo is a much easier approach to providing comments on any page.

Filed away as a great standalone option for comments and not much else, while catching up on Google Reader today, I ran across this article from Social Media Group. I spent some time watching Echo’s trailer video (embedded below), and it  looks to be a very promising comment replacement system as well.

Attracting comments on original posts is something that is becoming harder and harder to accomplish in today’s world of networks, aggregation, and conversational link sharing. Echo does a great job of capturing all of that conversation on the original post, in addition to providing an  authentication system via FaceBook, Twitter, etc.

Social Media Group’s article mentions a  TechCrunchIT pilot  regarding the quality of comments improving with this authentication.

When TechCrunchIT piloted the service they found that when they forced authentication via a social network before commenting was allowed, the quality of the comments increased considerably.

I do have reservations with replacing built in commenting systems with an external system, as this obviously presents an additional layer of moderation and maintenence, but Echo is definitely something worth looking into and experimenting with.

Update

Our friend Doug Karr from DK New Media is using Echo on his Marketing Tech Blog. Check it out and leave some comments!

On Monday the Federal Trade Commission changed the rules for advertisers and bloggers and how they communicate to the public.  Starting December 1st bloggers that review products must divulge their relationship with the advertiser.

Why change the rules for these seemingly innocent bloggers?

Well for starters the current endorsement and testimonial in advertising rule hasn’t been visited since 1980, four years before wunderkind Mark Zuckerberg (founder of Facebook) was born. And with the continual change of the online social construct (Twitter, Facebook, etc), marketers are seeing the value of the brand journalism that review bloggers do.

For instance, if you follow a home restoration blog regularly, and have for some time, you have a certain amount of trust in what that blogger is writing about. You visit there site for all sorts of reasons: for simple maintenance tips, for help on design options and to see what cute thing their kid did today. This person is real to you and help guide your decisions in everyday life. Therefore you have a right to know if Lowe’s or Home Depot is covering the cost of this bloggers materials or writing them a $5,000 check every month. That is what the FTC wants to clear up.

There are probably bloggers out there clamoring at the thought that they will no longer receive “FREE” items from advertisers. First off, if this is why you blog I can’t help you. Secondly, you as a person have a choice to talk about any product you want, good or bad. That advertiser wants you to write a glowing review, but your opinion is worth more than a pair of adequate sneakers.

“the rules are looking ahead to a quite possible future when there is a market to buy ‘authentic’ public endorsements.” Jonathan Zittrain, professor Harvard Law School and co-founder of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society

Raidious Digital Content Services isn’t in the game of “ghost blogging” or misrepresenting brands. We believe in leveraging owned media to engage the relationship between the user and the brand. Posing as an “earned media” source is underhanded and we are happy the FTC is stepping up to stop this practice.

More Reading:

• NYTimes article “Soon, Bloggers Must Give Full Disclosure”
• Time’s “25 Best Blogs 2009″