I’m proud to be represented once again (the first time was in August 07) by my photograph “Dump Trucks at Davis & High House” as the SOT Picture of the Week.

I suppose this photo is newsworthy due to the pitched battle that was fought over the development of this land.

A grass roots public advocacy group, DavisAndHighHouse.org, formed to fight additional development at this corner in Cary. It proved a lightening rod for public dissatisfaction with development in general, tipping the balance in municpal elections. One term mayor Ernie McAlister was upset and slow-growth candidate Harold Weinbrecht took over in North Carolina’s sixth largest city (News & Observer, 10/9/07).

Slow growth may be in, but too late to roll back the tide at the corner of Davis & High House.

Special thanks to SmartGrowthGirl.com and to Dave DeWitt and Katy Barron at WUNC.

The Fashion Plate

Thanks Samantha!

Malls, mixed-use developments, shopping centers - call them what you will, they dot the landscape of America.

Many of the larger developments have websites. For the most part, they’re pretty awful. So, when we were asked to produce a new website for North Hills, a mixed-use development in Raleigh, NC, our goal was to help bring the category into a Web 2.0 world.

Two months after the launch, we have every reason to feel we’ve achieved. Stats are great, everything works, and best of all, a continuing content stream is beginning to bloom. It’s interesting stuff, too - stories, bios, pictures and video.

So here’s a checklist of things we think a contemporary mall or mixed-use website needs.

The Basics

1. A page for each merchant
2. A picture for each merchant
3. Descriptive text for each merchant (more than just a phone number and an outside link)

It is surprising how few big developments have reached this level of information. See our collection of links for malls and mixed-use developments on Delicious (and please feel free to add links to other sites in the category).

The Finer Points

1. Interactive Map
2. Continuing Content Stream
3. Ad Platform

(1) The interactive map is a challenging bit of engineering and UI. We’ll write more about it soon. (2) In most cases, developing a rich content stream requires cultural change for clients. Training and continued support are mandatory to advance evolutionary adoption of web 2.0 tools like blogs and twitter. (3) Big developments like North Hills have the potential to draw big traffic. Why settle for pennies on the dollar when you could have it all with your own ad platform? Tune in again for a discussion about implementing your own ad server.

Best Practices

To boost the performance of a site in this category as measured by key stats like Time On Site and Page Views, here are a few best practices we can recommend:

1. Minimize outside links
2. Run outside content in an iframe within your site
3. Drive traffic to niches with CPC advertising
4. Pay attention to what Analytics tells you about your audience

The Last, Most Important Point

Like all other advertising and marketing ventures, success is rooted in a good agency-client relationship. We are deeply grateful to Kane Realty Corporation for their vision and their patience throughout this project.

Special thanks to:

• Anna Smith
• Mike Smith
• Bonner Gaylord
• Jon Masterson
• Katherine Knott
• Angela Slater
• Paul Newcomer
• Walt Stewart
• North Hills Security

For Goodtree & Company:

• George Gumpert, master programmer
• David Holt, design
• John Dixon, flash
• Leslie Huffman, merchant database and blogging diva
• Hal Goodtree, precious little

Thanks also to Allen Weiss, Michael Kimsal, Lindsey Chester, Paul Harnett, Dorothea Bitler, Jill Harris, Fiquet, Kevin and Stacey Jennings, Wick Morgan and Jason Peck. And thanks to Jake St. Peter and Mike McTaggart for their generous time.

Please contact us for more information about mall, shopping center and mixed-use development websites.

Thanks also to our friends at North Hills and, of course, to Fiquet of Luxe Apothecary.

We’ll post our own story about the video shortly: How to make quality TV with a home video camcorder and a mic from yoor band.

Read the story behind this picture. Thanks to Wendy at the American Red Cross Flickr group.

Mission of the American Red Cross

Since its founding in 1881 by visionary leader Clara Barton, the American Red Cross has been the nation’s premier emergency response organization. As part of a worldwide movement that offers neutral humanitarian care to the victims of war, the American Red Cross distinguishes itself by also aiding victims of devastating natural disasters. Over the years, the organization has expanded its services, always with the aim of preventing and relieving suffering.

Donate to the American Red Cross.

Special thanks to Keith Weston.

See the photo on the WUNC/MySource page.

North Hills is focused on the development and management of retail and mixed-use properties of the highest quality where people will naturally want to live, work, shop, dine, play, stay and renew. - Kane Realty Corporation

A new website and internet features are planned.

BASIC WEB 2.0 FOR REALTORS

We’re always going on and on about Web 2.0 for Business. It sounds good in theory, but how does it translate for specific business needs?

Julie’s a Realtor®, so the first thing to tackle was pulling in the MLS listings for her area. No biggie. Basically, it’s a snippet of code you can include in a web page along with a unique ID. See it here.

Next, we bolted on a WordPress blog with an old-time theme by GetTemplate. Don’t forget Askimet for security and Google XML Site Map for search. Naturally enough, realtors have a lot to talk about and share, so we re-published the blog on the home page as html using Feedburner.

ADVANCED WEB 2.0 FOR REALTORS

Here’s where it gets interesting.

• Del.icio.us Feed

Julie’s all about knowing the area. The best restaurant - ask Julie. A place to hike? Julie. So how could we build a links page that would be easy for a busy realtor to update? The answer: set up a del.icio.us site for Julie, grab the feed and re-publish it as her Community Info page.

Kudos to George Gumpert for nailing this down. We really love this feature - Julie’s already using it to help differentiate herself from her competition.

• Web Video Testimonial

We used our favorite MiniDV camera for web video, shot outside and plugged in a mic we borrowed from the band. Video can be so much more persuasive than text on the page - see the video for yourself.

STUFF FOR EVERY BUSINESS

• Google Analytics - Every website for business should have Google Analytics. It’s free, it’s fascinating, it’s vital.

• SEO - it pays to get it right with Meta Tags when it comes to the relevancy with your page text. We like SEO Analysis Tool by SEO Workers.

There ya have it - the birth of a new empire. Thanks again Julie!

Awards are scheduled to be presented in April 2008 in San Francisco.

“The State of Things” on WUNC chose this photo as the Picture of the Week.

Thanks to Dave DeWitt and everyone at SOT!

Here’s a permalink to the picture in flickrspace:

Old Blue School Bus

Google and other purveyors of search are notoriously secretive about how they crawl the web. But the basic parameters are well known.

1. When you first post your website, you can expect the search engines to find and index you within 4-6 weeks.
2. At the time of your initial indexing, the search engine tells itself to crawl your site again, say in another six weeks.
3. If nothing has changed, the ‘bot may instruct itself not to revisit your site for a greater period of time, say 12 weeks.

Static (unchanging) websites invite a self-fulfilling decline in search ranking.

If nothing’s changed in 12 weeks, when will the ‘bots return? 20 weeks? 24?

We offer no examples here, but one needn’t look far.

Dynamic websites (call them evolutionary or organic if you like) change and grow over time. In the B2B space, look at OR-Live, a web portal for physicians. In the B2C market, look at Gayout, an international travel & leisure site by Andre Gayout (he coined the term “nouvelle cuisine” back in the early 1970’s).

Thanks again to our friend Gary for hipping us to one more reason why all small-to-medium enterprises need to have a dynamic, Web 2.0 site.

Peter guessed Stuyvesant Town on the eastside of lower Manhattan. Right you are, Peter!

Peter has received an iTunes Gift Card from all of us here at Online Copywriter for his correct response.

Stay tuned for more pointless contests and meaningless self-promotion.

The first link was for a gent named Alex King, a software developer who co-founded Feedlounge. Turns out there’s lots of great info on this site; we especially liked Alex’s favorite utilities and add-ons for Mac & Windows.

Lots of people make lists of stuff, but Alex’s utilities are really the cream of the crop. You probably have a few of these already, but check out the list for more really good stuff that’s free or shareware.

Here’s a couple more utilities (mostly for Mac) that we find useful in our work as online writers:

Transmit - Easy FTP and secure FTP. User friendly enough for noobie writers.
MacLorem (thanks to David Holt) - need Latin text (ipsum lorem stuff)? MacLorem generates latin text, Greek, Celtic… everything but Klingon.
Calendar Clock - Handy little pull down calendar that resides in your menu bar
Gmail Notifier - another menu bar app - this one notifies you when you have gmail.
SyncTwoFolders - one of the better utilities of this type. Even worked syncing two dreaded iTunes libraries.
Wiretap records any sound that is playing through your computer. We use it to record interviews conducted on Skype. Also good to record radio streams like our favorite KCRW.

Thanks again, Alex! If anybody else has a cool app, send it along and we’ll give it a try.

Andy generously spent the better part of an afternoon last autumn talking with our writer Hal Goodtree and others about the nuances and techniques of writing a successful blog.

It’s taken us a while to gestate the information. But, as Ann Landers used to say, it’s never too late to say thanks.