The Internet has played a key role in the growth of Wellness Pharmacy® from a family owned drugstore opened as Harbin Drugs in Birmingham, Alabama into one of the leading compounding pharmacies in the nation. Outstanding service, attention to detail and leading edge industry knowledge were building blocks when the Harbin family focused the pharmacy’s service on compounding forty five years ago, and the commitment to quality and service continues with customers visiting daily from all over the United States. Physicians and patients click into www.wellnesspharmacy.com to fill prescriptions, order custom compounded medications, shop for nutritional supplements and tap into a vast library of health and wellness resources housed there. Infomedia designed and hosts the Wellness Pharmacy website.

The Wellness Pharmacy website expedites service to the company’s steadily growing national customer base. “The phones are ringing off the hook, and giving customers the convenience of placing orders on line saves time for everybody. Many of our patients choose to refill prescriptions and shop on line, so of course our site’s shopping cart function is key,” says Wellness Pharmacy marketing manager Caron Lassiter.

 “Many people find us on the Internet and submit questions. They may be looking for a doctor in a given city who specializes in a particular field of treatment. They contact us through the website and we are able to reply promptly.” Lassiter also says the national reach provided by the website is an essential tool in serving customers who turn to Wellness Pharmacy for nutritional supplements that are simply not sold by the big discount retailers. “We are able to provide professional grade supplements designed specifically for people who have allergies or sensitivities to preservatives, dyes and colors.”    

The Wellness Pharmacy website also serves as the home of the Autism Support Program,  a nationally- recognized clearinghouse for information on the use of bio-medical intervention to treat Autism. Wellness Pharmacy is committed to staying abreast of new medical research and sharing significant new treatment ideas and information with physicians and parents of children who have Autism.

Wellness Pharmacy continues to expand its reach and its customer base through its website that includes a robust library of articles on hundreds of health topics including natural hormone replacement therapy, vitamins and minerals, pain management and cardiovascular health. For additional information, visit www.wellnesspharmacy.com.

Infomedia SEO guru Jerry Brown presented a seminar on “Search Engine Optimization- What’s Legit and What’s Old News?” to the Birmingham chapter of the American Marketing Association June 17th.  SEO is known as one of the most powerful marketing tools on the Internet.

Jerry is recognized as one of the pioneers in Alabama in SEO; he specializes in helping companies drive traffic and increase sales through search engine optimization, pay-per-click management, site flow design, analytics, and other strategies. Brown’s address brought the audience up to date on big changes in the SEO landscape; he outlined new strategies that get proven results, and he covered outdated SEO methods that are no longer effective. Jerry and the Infomedia team are available for SEO consulting for businesses of all types. Visit www.infomedia.com for details.

 

We’ve all heard of them.  Many of us use them, some of us mock them, but what are these social networks anyway?  What is social media?  

Social media is technology that allows people to get information from each other rather than from big corporations and marketing agents--getting user-generated content from non-traditional news and information sources like blogs, social networks and videos. Unlike traditional media which is only one-way communication, social media allows for an exchange of information and ideas through collaboration, community and conversation.  

Before Web 2.0, our sources of information were mass media like books, radio, television and newspapers that were driven to our doors, offered in libraries, and streamed into our homes by radio and television. Now, our information is aggregated by RSS feeds, from our favorite blogs, from replies to questions on Twitter and Facebook and forums across the Internet.  Content is generated by "we"s instead of "they"s and Web 2.0 has become the era of Digital Narcissism.  

Digital Narcissism is the idea that everyone wants to be heard, everyone wants to be read, and everyone has an opinion that they think matters. Bloggers have saturated the market for web-based news and opinions, blurring the line between the reporter and the reader and crowding out professional journalists.  With the information superhighway so saturated with content, traditional mass media is being edged out and is on the decline.   

Whether it’s mass media, born of the Industrial Age, or social media, born of the Technological Age, the principals are the same: community, conversation and collaboration. Both models create a sense of community around the information, but Web 2.0 has fractured those communities into many smaller sects with much narrower scopes.  This allows the new media to be faster and more direct.  Blog rings based on the same ideas, Facebook Fans of certain types of content and forums concentrated on specific subjects provide rich and specialized content at the expense of traditional mass media.  

Society is now fragmenting with Web 2.0, and the physical presence of traditional mass media in books, newspapers, magazines, television, and movies is shrinking every day. Web 2.0 users watch network television at their convenience on the web, read the newspaper on screen, watch movies on their computers and share it all through social media linking and a variety of Peer-to-Peer (P2P) networks across the web.  The power of traditional mainstream media has been eroded by the emergence of new technologies and given way to a new user-driven media.  

So, what’s next? How can you make social media work for you and be at the forefront of the next revolution?   

"The digital presence is trumped by the physical presence.”   

The new new media can only take you so far; everyone can publish anything and you're competing against an unlimited number of peers.  When everyone can talk, what matters is who is actually saying something and who can back it up.  The physical presence--in seminars, book signings and conventions--will be the new age of real time media.  Your digital presence serves as a business card and a marketing tool, but it can't be all there is,   In the end, you are the face of what your business is.  

Web 2.0 will be leaving its narcissistic presence behind, and Web 3.0 will be Real Time Streaming content in which talent can be rediscovered and quality information reigns.

This weekend marks Memorial Day, a national observance first known as Decoration Day. It was meant to be a time to remember and honor our Civil War dead simply by decorating their graves. Over time, the holiday’s significance extended to honor all those who paid the ultimate price for our nation. Now, as America is at war, Memorial Day also provides an opportunity for us to reflect on and give thanks for the sacrifices of our soldiers still in harm’s way. 

In America today, Memorial Day weekend has become more of an occasion for rest and relaxation than for reflection about our heroes and the values they died to preserve. This weekend, I hope and pray that we can learn to do both – relax and remember. Let’s go to the ballgame, have that picnic, hug our kids, and have some fun at the beach. But let’s also remind ourselves, and our children, about what happened at Concord Bridge; the fields of Antietam; at the beaches of Normandy. Let’s explain to them why there was a Berlin Wall, what happened at Okinawa and the price that was paid to stop Hitler. Because the same resolve that allowed us to persevere in those conflicts will be necessary if we are to overcome our current challenges. 

In short, let’s take at least a moment to teach our children and grandchildren to love the things we love, and honor the things we honor. Finally, let’s remind ourselves as well as our children that all liberty is a gift from God and that each generation has paid in flesh and blood to preserve it. 

For those of you who want a place to start, try reading to your kids and grandkids these words from Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address: 

“We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting-place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead who struggled here have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here.”