Open Source The programming languages that I use are all open sourced. That means the software required to run them is much more accessible and well supported. It also allows quick development when using third party API's and an active community to feedback and improve code. It also means that some applications are extremely quick to deploy - there is a lot of sample code out there and Frameworks that have already been built.

From the low level languages actually running the servers to the higher level languages that make your website usable, there is no proprietary software. That means no licenses as well, keeping the pounds in your pocket and not the corporations.

By using open source software, where standards are paramount, you can guarantee that your site is interoperable with other services. For example, XML, the language that powers your RSS feeds would be harder to syndicate without an open definition of the file structure. Luckily, most languages are led by consortiums and advisory bodies and take feedback in their development from all organisations.

Social Network Integration The power of Social Networks in todays world is immense. Think about how many people in your organisation are using Facebook to talk to friends, Flickr to share their photos, Vimeo or YouTube to share their videos and Twitter to keep in touch on an hourly basis.

Leveraging the audience of these technologies can be a big undertaking but with the right approach, you should be able to use them to help your business grow. You can run an advert campaign targeted specifically to your key demographic to raise awareness of your product or servce. Or you can be a bit more creative and look at what content you have to offer online and try to integrate using one of the many API's that are made available by most major services onto your own site. Why not, for example, post images from your Flickr page directly on your site?

Another advantage of working this way is that you then have less maintenance work to do around your own social web. Instead of having to amend the same content in two or three locations, you can save time by picking an online service that will play nicely with your other services and just update that one location.

Social Technologies The way people are using the internet is changing every day. Increasingly, people are spending more of their time on social netowrks that allow them to interact with their friends and peers. Using the platforms to create a presence for your organisation allows your customers to interact with you on their terms - when they want and how they want. By keeping an open mind and instead of trying to deliver a message to them it is widely accepted that this is the place that your customers will give you good old honest feedback. Open your ears and listen to what they found good and bad about what you offer. Ask them for feedback on products or projects you are thinking of working on. In my experience inside these networks (perhaps it is because I have worked with some popular and well loved brands), your customers will appreciate a platform to voice their concerns.

This dialogue will help build on existing relationships and also encourage new ones in the future. It is very important that whne you launch a presence, you take good care of building and maintaing the dialogue - to appear fresh one day and not post or respond to anything will have the exact opposite effect that you want to have - you will appear more out of date than you would if you didn't have a presence at all! Make sure that you have someone in your organisation who can take on this role - perhaps a secretary who may know all of your customers aready - perhaps more than you do!

Advertising Depending on what your product or service is, it may be worth allocating some of your marketing budget to an online advertising campaign. There are many different ways to approach this. You can identify popular websites in your market and advertise on those sites. Or you could use the money with Google Adsense for example, to help improve your conversion rates through Google Searches. The same applies to Yahoo! and the rest of that crowd. You can also spend part of your budget within a Social Network.

There is one huge advantage to doing this - because the social networks know who their users are (date, gender, marital status and their likes/dislikes), you are able to take advantage of that by promoting to the demographic that you want to and not blank canvassing everyone. This will undoubtedly result in your CTR (Click Through Ratio) being substantially higher than a relatively blind campaign that search engines and other websites may be offering.

Please feel free to get in touch for a friendly, informal conversation about how you can effectively use an advertising campaign to help you.