Quite a number of our clients use blogs for business to establish an online presence and publish informative and searchable content to the web. Of those blogs/websites, we always use WordPress because of the flexibility for custom design and access to a seemingly endless array of community applications.  As powerful as WordPress is, it is not always the easiest application to use for non-technical business owners and employees who want to provide more than just text and links. However, there is a solution.

Windows Live Writer is a free, downloadable desktop application that runs on your Windows PC and allows you to publish pictures, videos, and other rich content to your blog/website. There are also a number of useful free extensions available that you should check out if this is of interest to you.

As an example, I will use it to show you some recent blogs/websites that we have launched in the past week or so.

Here is an example of how you can use Windows Live Writer to create a table, format, insert pictures and links. No html knowledge required.

Business	Location	Business Type	Website
Red Rover	Corvalis, Oregon	Software
Eagle Gate	Salt Lake City, Utah	Education
SouthernLINC	Atlanta, Georgia	Telecom
Big Valley Honda	Reno, Nevada	Retail
The Godfather	Las Vegas, Nevada	Entrepreneur
International Bank	Concord, New Hampshire	Finance

You can also use it to insert videos or maps. I’ll just stick to the same example as above and show the locations of these particular clients.

View Larger Map

You can also input tags that specifically relate to your blog post, which help with search engine optimization.

tags: blogging tools windows live writer

When you are ready to publish your post, simply click Publish, and it will also do a quick spell check for you. If you are not ready to publish yet, simply Save Draft for later, or set the publish date and it will post automatically. There are several other handy little features for you to explore and find on your own.

To get started, simply go to the Windows Live Writer page to download it. Once you have installed the application, go to “Weblog” in the upper navigation and select “Add Weblog Account.” There you will be asked to give the url of your blog, as well as your username and password. That’s it! You can even add other blogs if you like. It will detect the styles, plugins, categories, and recent posts for each one.

A key component of a successful blogging strategy is doing it fairly frequently The more empowered you and your colleagues are to publish content to the web the more likely you are to do it. I hope this helps.

I was recently working with one of our designers from the Creative Services team to produce this ad for the Nevada Business Journal when it occurred to me that I have never blogged about the work we do for the Las Vegas Monorail; therefore, I am taking the opportunity to do so now.

Before starting a relationship with Twelve Horses, the Las Vegas Monorail did not sell tickets online. This was in part because they did not have the technology to take online ticket purchases, as well as the fact that they needed an enhanced web presence. What we helped them uncover was that a lot of opportunity existed to create new relationships, increase awareness, and generate a greater demand for tickets.

If the Las Vegas Monorail was going to sell tickets online they would need an ecommerce solution that was flexible and customizable. For example, Las Vegas receives a plethora of different groups to the city. If the Monorail was going to service these customers they would need to be able to handle large group purchases, as well as offer special incentives to encourage them to do so. Furthermore, non-technical staff would have to be able to manage it whether it was adding groups, defining the ticket price, specifying date ranges, managing the payment options, setting shipping preferences, and much more.

Needless to say we built it for them. Here is a look at some of the features of the Las Vegas Monorail Ticketing Platform.

Managing Channel Partners

The Las Vegas Monorail works with a number of channel partners and groups. The ticketing platform allows them to set-up a revenue share with these partners, as well as implement their own branding and images online, in emails, and print. It is extremely flexible. For example, they can run multiple promotions at once. This was the case for the recent Consumer Electronics Show (CES) where there were two different promotions – discounts for attendees and discounts for exhibitors.

Ticketing

The ticketing features are very diverse and capable of handling a multitude of different scenarios. Additionally, integration of ticket tracking and reporting is providing the Monorail with deeper customer insight, which enables to provide a higher level of customer service. Here are just some examples:

1. Automated postings of ticket blocks and and auto removal of postings by set parameters such as date of expiration.
2. Discount Codes defined and assigned either randomly or branded such as “CES2008.”
3. Overrides conducted either temporarily or permanently to groups, types, or partners.
4. Tiered ticket pricing based on quantity, time purchased, or aggregates.
5. Logic in the ticketing prevents, for example, trying to use standard postal delivery when it is international.

Fulfillment

The ticketing platform is flexible enough to allow the fulfillment of tickets via email, direct shipping, and soon – mobile.

1. Electronic delivery allows the customer to print the voucher at home and redeem onsite.
2. Email confirmations sent automatically with purchase confirmation, canceled order and refund, and tickets shipped. Email templates also include branding based on channel partner and/or promotion.
3. When the Monorail handles the print fulfillment they can download all the contacts and do a mail merge on all their envelopes, mailing labels, and tickets.

Customer Service

1. The customer service module gives the Monorail the ability to look up the customer based on any information they give.
2. Those with set privileges can void and change tickets, which reconciles on the financial side and funnels down to the various communication channels.

Reporting

1. The Dashboard shows financial report summaries and projections, so they know how they are doing.
2. Integration with Salesforce matches opportunity numbers to promotions so they can track real-time ticket sales and the success of a campaign. It also allows them to see important items such as what a particular vendor or channel partners agreement was from the previous year.
3. Redemption tracking not only makes sure the ticket cannot be used again, it also lets the Monorail know where and when the customer scanned the ticket, so they can better understand traffic and know where there major stops are.

All of this may seem like a lot, but this is just a brief overview of everything the Las Vegas Monorail Ticketing Platform can do. Suffice to say, the integration of this ecommerce solution has unlocked another channel of additional revenue for the Monorail, and because it is business automation at its best, it is completely scalable and requires very little additional internal resources to get it done.

tags: online, ticketing, ecommerce, solution, business, automation, las vegas, nevada