The Beacon Staff wrote nearly 200 blog posts in 2011!  So we are highlighting our Top 10 and want your help to identify the “Beacon Blog Post of the Year”.  Please check them out and leave a comment telling us which one you enjoyed most and why.  Some of these were actually written in 2010, but received enough views in 2011 to make the Top 10 List.

Top 10 Posts by Views

1. Slick Pop-up Video Player using GreyBox & Flowplayer by Thomas Brinegar

2. Google Analytics Event Tracking in a Template File by Eric Westerman

3. Google AI – Artificial Intelligence is the future of Google Search by Jeff Pickle

4. Robots.txt “Disallow” and “No Index” Meta Tag: What ‘s the difference? by Andrea Cole

5. Best PPC Call to Action Keywords by Jeff Pickle

6. Instant Messaging in the Workplace by Annette Fowler

7. XSL for Formatting pubDate from RSS feed by Tiffany May

8. TOMS Designs More Than Cool Shoes by Rick Boccard

9. 100 Call to Action Keywords for ad campaigns by Jeff Pickle

10. Facebook Developer Tools – URL Linter by Tiffany May

The Google Spirit stood among the search results, and pointed down to scroll. Scrooge moved his mouse, trembling.
The Phantom was exactly as it had been, but he dreaded that he saw new direction in its solemn algorithm.

“Before I draw nearer to that link to which you point,” said Scrooge, “answer me one question. Are these the shadows of rankings that Will be, or are they shadows of rankings that May be, only.”

Still the Ghost pointed downward to the search results by which it stood.

Scrooge paged and paged downward, trembling as he went; and following the finger, finally found a familiar link within
the list of the neglected websites bearing his own company name, Scrooge & Marley.

“Am I that person who ignored the move to social signals.” he cried, upon his knees.

The finger pointed from the listing to him, and back again.

“No, Spirit. Oh no, no, hear me. I am not the person I was. I will not be the person I must have been but for this decision.
Why show me this, if I am past all hope.”

“Good Google Spirit,” he pursued, as down upon the ground he fell before it: “Your nature intercedes for me, and pities me. Assure me that I yet may change these results you have shown me, by an altered organic marketing approach.”

“I will honor Web Marketing in my heart, and manage it all the year. I will live in the meta-tag Past, the link-building
Present, and the Social+ Future. The Spirits of all Three shall strive within me. I will not shut out the lessons that they teach. Oh, tell me I may ascend from the depths of this list.”

Happy Holidays From Your Friends at Beacon Technologies!

Cards of Holidays Past…

Greetings from the 2011 Beacon Holiday Party.

Beacon Technologies, Inc. is expanding its team and seeks qualified candidates for the following positions.  Please click on the link to learn more about each specific opening.

• Account Executive / Sales Representative
• Senior IT Project Manager
• .NET Developer

To Apply: send resume via email to: operations@beacontec.com

ABSOLUTELY NO WALK-INS or PHONE CALLS! Otherwise, your application may be rejected.

It’s been a fun week here at Beacon as the entire team has stepped up to raise money for the United Way.  It’s great to see everyone participating in the various activities to give back to the community. 

We kicked off United Way Week on Monday with a couple of guest speakers from the United Way along with a short video that showed exactly how the money we raise goes to help people in Greensboro area.   We also created 5 teams of employees that are competing against each other during the week.  Of course the teams came up with interesting team names and the trash talking began pretty quickly – all in good fun.  Team names were

• We’ll Kick Your ISAPI,
• Soup-A-Stars,
• Occupy Beacon,
• 404 and
• Gary and the Webonettes

The first event, which lasts all week, is Penny Wars (coins are positive, bills are negative).  Each team has a jar in the lobby for anyone to put coins or bills into.  Today is the last day for this event and I expect it will get crazy as the clock nears the 5pm deadline.  All of the money for this event goes to United Way.

On Wednesday, we had our Team Competition and brought in lunch.  It was a series of 6 events

• Bean Bag Toss
• Hall Bowling
• Beer Pong (w/o the Beer!)
• Balloon Pop (hilarious!)
• Putting (harder than it looked!)
• Tailgate Golf (outside)

Each Team accumulated points for each event.  Final results after Wed showed that every team is within striking distance to win the overall competition, so it comes down to the Penny Wars.

On Thursday, we had a silent auction for home made baked goods – dinners, desserts, snacks.  Great participation and personally, I wanted to have a bite of everything!  Very tasty and unique items were brought in.  All the proceeds go to the United Way.

Lastly, we have a 50/50 Coin Drop where individuals can drop coins into a water-filled jug into a shot glass.  Coins count for face value (quarter = 25 points; penny = 1 pt).  Whoever has the most points at the end of the week gets half the money in the jug; the other half goes to the United Way.  Again, the race is close and I expect coins to be dropping right up until 5pm today!

Although our primary objective was to raise money for the United Way, I believe we had a lot of fun and got to spend some “non-work” time together as a company.  Priceless.  Congrats to everyone on the Beacon Team for making United Way Week such a success… and special thanks to Suzanne Bugg who coordinated everything!

Beacon’s own Brad Henry is doing a Google Analytics user survey with one of the GA staff at The Google Analytics Partner Summit in Mountain View CA!

We launched our new website on Friday.  Ideas and concepts have been bouncing around the office since the beginning of the year.  We have been actively working on it since May.  As always, I get deeply involved because the website represents my company, a business that has consumed my life for 13 years.  However, with this new launch, I am overwhelmed with pride, not so much in how the website showcases our collection of web services and the many accomplishments we’ve achieved over the years, but in the people that work here.  They know that this is their company too.  They take pride in what they do.  They truly work together, leveraging each other’s strengths, to make this company what it is.  Our clients benefit greatly from this… and so does Beacon.  As a small business, it’s easy to get caught up in the daily grind, with our “heads down”, focusing on today’s tasks.  Whenever I take a step back to look at the big picture, I always say “Wow”. 

When we discuss website design with our customers, we talk about the goals of the website and how the design facilitates those goals.  We talk about all the various components, features and options available.  For this project, we went through the same process internally.  Trust me, the Beacon Team enjoyed pushing back on me whenever I tried to skirt the process – treating me like they do any other customer – because they believe in the process and they know it produces quality results. 

Whenever we launch a new website for a client, or complete a project, we always send out an internal email that announces the launch, points out all the cool features and tricky development, but most of all, this email acknowledges all the employees that were involved in the project and their contributions.  Well, with the launch of our new website, the list seemed endless.  Every member of the team contributed.  Every member wanted the site to be the best, represent what they do every day and meet the business goals that I had discussed with them.  Congrats to the team (again).  I am very proud of this website, but I am more proud to have such a great dedicated team here at Beacon.

Thirty years ago last week, IBM  introduced its first personal computer - the 5150.

Its very reliable. The computer never has failed me when I work from home.

Maybe because the computer is encased in steel.

And a very happy 80th anniversary to the Bakelite telephone!

I think this one I have in the pic above is a Model 500 Rotary Bakelite Phone.

My productivity does suffer a little when I work from home.

Time for an upgrade?

Well sadly, this is my last blog post at Beacon.  It’s been a great 10 weeks.  I really have enjoyed my time here.  Looking back, I can’t think of anything negative to say about my experience.  I want to take the chance to kind of do a recap of my time here.

When I came in the first day, I will admit that I was pretty nervous.  I hadn’t really had a lot of exposure to the kind of work that Beacon does so well.  I knew what most of the terms were from talking to a friend of mine who has been doing similar work.  However, the WMS team here helped me learn the skills I needed.  Everyone took time to show me how to do certain tasks and helped me with understanding the clients I worked on as well as what needed to be done for each client.  As the weeks have gone by, I have grown more confident in doing SEO work, managing social media campaigns, and working with PPC campaigns.  I know that I still have a lot to learn in these areas, but Beacon has given me a strong foundation on which to build.

I know that people traditionally think of internships as being filled with a lot of grunt work.  Getting coffee, running errands, doing tasks that no one else wants to do themselves.  That is far from the case here at Beacon.  As you can tell if you have been following my blog posts thus far, I have been an equal member of the WMS team.  I have shared the same responsibilities as everyone else.  I’ve done the same tasks for my clients as they did for their clients.  Often times, interns don’t get to offer advice and feedback during meetings as it is intended that they learn by watching.  Again, this is not the case at Beacon.  The WMS team meets weekly to brainstorm ideas for clients as well as share interesting articles or other helpful information and tools.  The leading of the meetings rotates each week and regardless of the fact that I am an intern, I led the meeting twice during my time here.  I also contributed equally with the team as much as possible.  I will admit that I often did sit back and listen during meetings.  I know that I do not have nearly the amount of knowledge or experience in this field, and as such I wanted to try to learn as much as possible when everyone was together sharing ideas.

Looking back, I have gained a lot of valuable experience.  There are several tasks and projects that I was able to work on and contribute to during the 10 weeks.  I can honestly say that anyone who is looking for an internship should consider Beacon.  The atmosphere, company culture, and employees all lend themselves to a great work environment.

Thank you to everyone here!  It’s been a great experience and I have learned a lot from you all.

As a sales professional, I’ve long been told about the importance of listening.  There is a seemingly endless list of cliches that are overused to instill this mantra.  I get it and do my best every day to practice it.  With out listening to the prospect/client needs, you can not possibly provide them with the right solution.  It makes sense.

I bring this up, because Beacon is a relationship based business whose success is critically dependent upon client interaction and listening.  We are lucky to have many successful client relationships, but I wanted to use this blog post to highlight Dusty Staub of Staub Leadership International.

Staub Leadership is a long time Beacon client who has worked with us across all of our service offerings, including: web development, managed hosting and web marketing.  They provide leadership coaching to  individuals, teams and organizations in the form of workshops, keynote speeches, webinars, books and other published works.   When Dusty and his team speak – people listen.

So when Dusty came in last week for a regular strategy meeting to discuss how his business can benefit by sharing his nuggets of wisdom with the masses via Twitter, there was a lot of listening going on.  Dusty spoke about his strategic plan for his business and we offered a web marketing road map for getting there.  When Dusty speaks, he can’t help but talk ‘shop’ and as he does it is impossible not to be inspired.

As we interact, great ideas are shared and the energy builds.  By the end of the meeting @Staubleadership had already begun tweeting from his newly installed Twitter for iPhone App and has great plans for keeping you in the know about his regular strokes of genius, trips, books, articles, events, etc.

This level of client interaction and face to face collaboration is why I joined Beacon.  Staub is a great example of how a client relationship can be mutually beneficial.  So thank you Staub for the years of patronage and inspiration.  We enjoy working with you and there is no doubt that not only you, but the entire ‘Twittersphere’ will benefit from your new presence.

If you are interested in learning more about how Beacon’s approach to social media can help grow your business, please give a call – we are here to help.