We are pleased to announce our newly developed and very much anticipated SIDEBAR.  Its main role is to contain anything that is considered “Secondary Navigation” such as Footer Information, Copyright, Audio controls and Image Navigation.

  With the popularity of Social Sites, it also acts as the home for custom links to your blog, social media sites.

In the near future you will have the ability to load your own custom icons and set its own behavior.

SIDEBAR FEATURES:

1. Support up to 7 icons: Each icon can be either simple text, link to an external site, or have its own HTML code that (for now) will show up as a pop-up.
2. Clean new Icons: Icon sets will be added regularly giving you the ability to interchange them with a simple click of a button.
3. Animated Slide-Out on Rollover: When a user rolls over a button with their mouse, the button will slide out and will display the buttons name.
4. Color: Control both the idle and rollover color of the side bar.
5. Custom Links: Create up to 7 custom footer links.  These links can have:
  a. Simple Text on rollover
 b. Link to external sites such as Facebook or sponsors sites  
c. Its own Flash or HTML file that plays on rollover. Eg PAYPAL show cart.
6. Audio Tab: The new audio tab will soon act as a multiple track player.  Place up to 4 tracks in the background giving your site visitors to select tracks and link back to the original artists site

ACCESSING AND CONTROLLING THE SIDEBAR:
CONFIGURE > SIDEBAR tab.

How do you reach a worldwide audience without spending a fortune? The answer is online video.  It is the most popular way to reach your target audience and create brand awareness with a small amount of effort.  Communicate your values and vision directly to your audience so that it gives more depth about who you are.  Add this to your marketing strategy and watch the results come pouring in!

Videos create an instant rapport with your audience.  To do this successfully, you should give as much valuable information as you possibly can.  Anything that will help your audience is going to invoke trust and we all know that we buy something from someone we like.  The main thing to remember is what message are you trying to get across to your audience and in which way.  Is it meant to be light hearted or serious?  It’s always best to be yourself and keep it real as if you are talking to your clients face to face.

So you must create trust and rapport in order to capture qualified individuals who want more of the same content and can spread the word about your business virally for you.  Other highlights that can make your video more compelling are, studio tours, client testimonials, and videos and images from an actual shoot.

So how do you get started?
This question depends on how you want to present your image and your brand.  A more effective video will need to have a professional approach.  Some of you are tech savvy and can use your webcam and video editing tools to create a professional video.  However, if you are not technical and not sure how to produce a video yourself, it’s best to talk to someone who does such as a video producer.

Where do I post my video once created?
Once you have produced your video you should add it to your website.  Then proceed to post your video on top social sites such as You Tube and Digg.  Don’t forget that you will need to spend a lot of time building a friend base and networking with people who are interested in your content as much as you are theirs.

Take a look at what Kenneth Dolin used video on his website:

http://www.kennethdolin.com/about

So what are you waiting for?
Whether it is through your webcam or a professional video producer, get out there and create a video that will connect you to your clients.  This can ultimately result in more bookings and sales and who knows a long lasting relationship!

Are you using video to market yourself?  Tell us how it has helped you.

2008 marked the launch of Picaholic 2nd Generation.  We wanted to take this opportunity to thank everyone for your support and feedback.  Whilst we are in the midst of developing some new and exciting features, we are keen to share with you a few of the improvements that will be delivered in the next few months.

ADVANCED SERVER TECHNOLOGY

Your Picaholic site will soon reside on new hosting technology, enabling us to commission tens, hundreds or even thousands of servers simultaneously.  In basic terms, we can scale up before the traffic does, and serve your site FAST.

FULL SCREEN IMAGE GALLERY

Display your images the way they should be viewed: FULL SCREEN.  One of our coolest features to be deployed will support Full Screen viewing preserving the quality and emotion of the image.  A little zoom tool will also be added for that extra detail – perfect for Fashion designers, Photographers and Artists.

FONT LIBRARY

Typography is the foundation of visual communication.  Soon you will be able to choose from a list of pre-defined fonts, giving your site that extra finesse.

IPHONE & BLACKBERRY COMPATIBLE

With the popularity of people surfing the net using their handheld devices, your Picaholic site will automatically render and format your content to perfectly fit iPhone and Blackberry screen sizes.

CUSTOM PRELOADERS

When trying to wow your site visitors with full screen images, videos, and background music, file sizes are often larger than those used on a standard HTML sites.  Consequently, load time could take a little longer as well.  We are working on a small engine that will enable the use of custom pre-loaders.

REFERRAL REWARD PROGRAM

The success of Picaholic is really a tribute to all our members who have referred family and friends. We are now integrating a robust referral engine, that will enable us to track referrals and pay you promptly. For more information please send us an email to resellers@picaholic.com

Picaholic has deployed a few new features to the admin area - please read below for the update:

1. PUBLISH - CACHING SERVERS

Publish
Your admin area now resides on a dedicated CMS server. All content is saved and backed-up every 15 minutes. However, content that is uploaded in your admin area will NOT be visible on your front-end until you PUBLISH your site.

Caching Servers
By Publishing your site, you are pushing content to our Cached servers, visible
to your clients. Our caching engine dramatically accelerates your frontend speed as well as SEO exposure.

2. PAGE SPECIFIC SEO TOOLS

We have updated our Page Specific SEO tools.  On the EDIT PAGE tab of each page your will find the following:

2.1. META TITLE
This is a title you give your page within the meta. Keywords should be used in this title because search engines will use the words in the title to help index your page.

what is the “best” possible title tag?
“keyword phrase” : site title
http://www.wolf-howl.com/seo/optimal-titles-seo-case-study

2.2. META DESCRIPTION
Meta description is one of the most important SEO tools. It has three primary uses:
1. Describe the content of the page accurately and succinctly1.
2. Serve as a short, text “advertisement” in the search results2.
3. Display targeted keywords, not for ranking purposes, but to indicate the 3. content to searchers.

- Always describe your content honestly.
- Character limits - currently Google displays up to 160 characters, Yahoo! - up to 165 and MSN up to 200+ (they’ll go to three vertical lines in some cases). Stick with the smallest - Google - and keep those descriptions at 160 characters (including spaces) or less.
- Write with as much sizzle as you can while staying descriptive - the perfect - meta description is like the perfect ad - compelling and informative.
- It’s extremely important to have your keywords in the meta tag.

2.3. META TAGS (keywords)
Meta Tags are “snippets” of the page description, and offer additional information
about a webpage.  We recommend using the Google Keyword Tool to help identify keywords.
https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

3. BULK DELETE OPTION

Probably our most anticipated update, is the Bulk Delete option. The system will now enable you to select multiple images, or even an enitre page with a single click. Next to each item (page, image, video etc) there is a Delete Checkbox. Simply check the boxes for items you wish to delete and press the “DELETE CHECKED” button.

Add a fav icon to your site - check out the Picaholic admin area under general settings.

Picaholic.com, the leader in editable flash websites, has released a new feature “Password Protected Pages” to their system.

Create custom portfolios or pages that are password protected for only select clients to view.  This allows you to display proofs on a professional basis.  You will have the ability to give your client a direct link to the page and a password.

“I cant believe how it easy it is – I zipped an entire folder of images, create a page, protect it with a password and upload to the system, all with just a few simple clicks.” says Justine Perl from Perl Photography.

Impress your clients by giving them the ability to view prints online before ordering.  The password protected area also gives you the option to protect not only galleries, but also every page layout that Picaholic offers.

Founder of Picaholic, Avishai Ungar says  “Many of clients use Picaholic as a means to communicate with existing clients to streamline their business.  The password protected pages is just the beginning of some of the features which will be implemented over the next 12 months.  We will be expanding into ecommerce functionality, blogs and networking opportunities for our members.”

Picaholic.com, the leader in editable flash websites, has just released “Tune-a-Holic Studio”, an added feature to their existing system for performers and musicians that need to showcase their music online.

The newly developed system, allows musicians to create a professional flash website displaying music, videos, hi-res images, and email capturing tools. Picaholic’s world-renowned editing suite, is feature rich, yet easy to use. With only basic computer skills, musicians can now create a captivating flash website in a matter of hours.

“It’s a brand new world–and the great thing about it is the rapid word of mouth. Having a website, especially for a fighting artist, is an empowering tool.” says Rocco Deluca of band Rocco Deluca and the Burden.

With no restrictions on disc space or bandwidth, musicians can upload unlimited number of tracks or albums as well as full video clips that stream at huge 1000×600 pixels.

“I use my site to keep our fans updated with all our latest news from gigs, CD releases, clothing launches, mixes, and all other things Vinyl Disciples. Its also a place for people to get to know who we are as musicians.” says DJ Mishaal Alireza of Vinyl Disciples.

Tune-a-Holic Studio will give artists a new platform to distribute their music, build relationships with their fans and promote their site to increase recognition and sales.

“Musicians understand the tremendous value in owning their own fan base. More and more are moving towards launching their own websites. They use sites like MySpace and Facebook, where they don’t know the users, don’t have control over them, and funnel them to their own websites, where the sky is the limit.” says Avishai Ungar, Co Founder of Picaholic.

Tune-a-Holic Studio is the answer for musicians who don’t have the time, knowledge or funds to consider and implement all the variables involved in developing a high end flash website.

“As a DJ and musician, there are many places to have your music and information listed such as MySpace and so on, but I feel I can do more with a site that is my own. I can customize it to fit all my needs. Picaholic is the one site that allows me to do all my changes as soon as possible that MySpace does not allow.” says DJ Mishaal Alireza of Vinyl Disciples.

For a limited time, Picaholic is offering its Tune-a-Holic studio for as little as $180 a year. This includes hosting, unlimited technology updates, free support, and constant feature releases to help improve your site.

Visit our site for more information:www.picaholic.com