Low-cost, web-based tools have become indispensable for many small businesses and individuals, assisting with marketing, communication, productivity, finance and technical support. These web-based solutions offer many advantages over typical software, including no technicians to setup or support, no long-term commitments, compatibility with any operating system or computer and no updates required.

In our April Workshop, we’ll be reviewing several different web applications that are sure to help you or your business be more successful at a fraction of the cost of the alternatives. We’ll showcase the best options on the web to help your business grow and be more efficient in the day-to-day operations. Some applications that we’ll be highlighting include:

• Mint: Manage your budget, track your spending and monitor your financial accounts, all at no cost. — FREE
• Freshbooks: Billing, invoicing and online payment system that gives you a professional appearance without the cost. — FREE/Inexpensive
• HootSuite: Social media dashboard allowing you to update and manage all of your social media streams at once. — FREE
• Basecamp: Collaboration and project management at it’s finest — FREE/Inexpensive
• Remember the Milk: Task List management that allows you to set and receive reminders via email, SMS and IM. — FREE/Inexpensive

Do you have web applications that you use on a daily basis and that have significantly contributed to helping you or your business run smoothly? If so, we’d love to talk with you and potentially add your suggestions to our growing list of web apps that we’ll be discussing. Let us know about it by contacting us at webmaster@gahannaareachamber.com.

If this sounds like you, this may just be the position that you’re looking for.

We are a small interactive firm that is looking for a positive, organized administrative assistant to be an excellent representative of our business to clients, support staff in an operations-focused role and to gain knowledge of the interactive industry.

A typical day with us might find you…

• Scheduling meetings, workshops and other events
• Receiving and screening telephone calls and emails
• Prioritizing incoming information and appointments
• Acting as a liaison between clients & staff, via written and/or verbal communication
• Researching and facilitating social media and blog updates for the business
• Completing and reconciling invoices, estimates and expense reports
• Reviewing websites for issues on multiple computers
• Researching and reporting on various services
• Organizing files both on the computer and off
• Helping prepare and assisting with client training sessions
• Preparing various documents including:
  • PowerPoint presentations
  • Graphs/charts and other Excel-based documents
  • Proposals and Contracts
  • How-To Guides & Blog Articles with some direction

You’ll need these skills to pay the bills…

• Excellent written / verbal communication
• Solid attention to detail
• Self-motivated / self-starter
• Incredible organizational skills
• Experience on (or willingness to learn) a Mac computer
• Knowledge of the following programs
  • Microsoft Office (Word, Excel, Powerpoint)
  • Willingness to learn Wordpress/CMS (administration)
  • Facebook (Google+, Twitter, LinkedIn are optional)

We’ll love you even more if you can say…

“I have a personal website that is built on Wordpress.”

“The positive, energetic, yet professional tone of this job posting reminds me a lot of my personality.”

“I am not satisfied with my current knowledge and experiences, I want to learn more. . . especially about the interactive industry.”

“I love social media and have opinions on Facebook versus Google+.”

“If I don’t know how to do something or need to know more information about something, I Google.”

Compensation

• Salary dependent on experience (within the 20-25k range)
• Two weeks of paid time off, five sick/personal days and nine paid holidays
• Excellent growth (and training) opportunities for the right candidate
• A highly flexible work environment built around integrity, innovation and compassion

Additional Job Perks

• Great location near beautiful Creekside Gahanna
• Free parking in underground garage and direct access to office
• Delicious, unlimited Keurig coffee – Yum!
• Your own office with a window, complete with a new iMac computer
  
• Did we mention a highly flexible work environment?

Send us an email along with your resume to jobs@fourthfloorinteractive.com so we can take a look and start talking!

About Us

We are a small, award-winning, interactive agency located in Gahanna, Ohio. We are fueled by close to fifteen years of knowledge, a hunger to grow our knowledge, the desire to provide innovative solutions for our clients’ needs and an incredible passion for the work that we do.

Solutions provided to our clients include both interactive services, identity/branding services as well as print design and fulfillment. Examples of our interactive service range include, but are not limited to: websites, social media marketing, eCommerce, professional blogs, content management systems and email marketing.

Our unique blend of creativity, technology and marketing expertise allow us to achieve our primary goal: helping our clients’ businesses succeed.

Join us for the September 8th Gahanna Area Chamber Membership Breakfast to learn how to get the most visibility for your time spent on the social media scene. We’ll share the differences between the various social media outlets, help you determine which are most applicable for your business or professional approach and teach you how to avoid sinking all of your time into social media. We’ll cover the following social media outlets:

Google+, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn

Gain the knowledge you need to skyrocket your business today!

About Our Speaker

Jennifer Chiappisi, of Fourth Floor Interactive, will be our speaker for our September membership meeting. With over 15 years in the interactive industry, Jennifer Chiappisi has extensive experience with web design & development, e-mail marketing and social media marketing. Her greatest passion is helping her clients achieve success, which she accomplishes through her commitment to stay up-to-date on the newest technologies & techniques. She is the owner of Fourth Floor Interactive, a talented, award-winning interactive agency located at Creekside.

Branding Goals

With their branding, we worked with the Chamber’s Marketing Committee to come up with logo concepts that were more contemporary and felt a stronger connection to the community of Gahanna. We worked carefully to balance the similarities within the Chamber’s branding to the city of Gahanna. We wanted to bring in some of the area’s identity to the logo, but with many confusing the Chamber as a government-aligned organization, we wanted to make it different enough that the two would not be aligned with one another.

Bringing in the Members

Once we had it narrowed down to two polarizing options, the Chamber’s Marketing Committee determined that it would be ideal to get opinions from the member base of the Chamber.   On behalf of the Chamber, we sent emails out to their 400+ member directory giving them a simple opportunity to vote for one of the two branding options we presented to them.  We received a phenomenal response back, with an open rate of over 37.55% and a click-through (voting) rate of 58.29%.  Offering this opportunity to Chamber members not only helped us get an idea of the public acceptance of the branding options, but it also helped members feel more involved and excited about the changes to the logo.

The Results

One of the two branding options pulled ahead ever so slightly in our voting poll and upon presenting our findings back to the Chamber, they agreed that the winning branding option would become the new brand of the Gahanna Area Chamber of Commerce.  See both the new and old logos below:

COLUMBUS, OHIO (April 30, 2010)—Fourth Floor Interactive was recognized last night as one of the state’s top digital and interactive talents at the inaugural Ohio Interactive Awards.

Fourth Floor Interactive received two award(s) for Sectors/Industry: Other and Social Web: Blog for their work with Mark Steele Photography. The awards were presented during a recognition ceremony at the Arena Grand Theatre, in Columbus.

A total of 16 awards were presented in the following categories: Advertising, Sectors/Industry, Social Web, Best Integrated Campaign, Best Use of New Technology, Interactive Marketer of the Year and Interactive Agency of the Year. Winners were chosen by a panel of marketing industry leaders who work with and represent some of the world’s most recognizable brands and Fortune 500 companies. Entries were judged on strategy, execution and results.

“Ohio is home to some of the best and brightest digital and interactive professionals in the world, who do incredible work for both major and emerging brands,” said Bryan Huber, principal of huber + co. interactive and a founding member of the awards program. “The Ohio Interactive Awards were created to showcase and recognize that tremendous talent.”

Founding sponsors were huber + co. interactive, TeamBuilder Search and 247 INTERACTIVE. The promotion sponsors were TechColumbus and Kessel Communications. Event sponsors were Resource Interactive, Paul Werth Associates and CRM Metrix.

The Ohio Interactive Awards bring attention to the outstanding digital and interactive work being done in the State of Ohio. Detailed information on the awards can be found at www.ohiointeractiveawards.com.

Related Stories

Top Interactive Talent Receive Inaugural Ohio Interactive Awards [Business Courier, Cincinnati]
Top Digital, Interactive Talent Receive Inaugural Ohio Interactive … [PR Newswire]

At Fourth Floor Interactive, we have a commitment to our clients and ourselves to strive to always exceed expectations, to surpass all assumed barriers. That’s visualized in being “Fourth Floor” Interactive located on what is the physical barrier of top floor within a three story building.

GAHANNA, OHIO (April 2, 2010)—Fourth Floor Interactive is pleased to become the newest tenant of C|Suites at Creekside Gahanna (Creekside).  They will be located on the third floor of 1000 Creekside Plaza with their office opening in the beginning of April 2010.

Fourth Floor Interactive brings with them a unique blend of creativity, technology and marketing expertise that they utilize to deliver custom, innovative solutions for their clients.  Their business is fueled by a passion to help their clients’ businesses succeed in the interactive world, pushing past the limitations of the current web and excelling in the interactive industry.

They have over ten years in the industry and are well-versed in all things interactive including: web design, web development, social media (Twitter, Facebook applications, consultations, training and measuring results), eCommerce, search engine marketing, online advertising, content management systems, mobile and much more. They are also incredibly talented and knowledgeable in brand identity design and print marketing and design.

About C|Suites

C|Suites Executive Offices offer both virtual and executive offices with high-quality furnishings and sophisticated interior design. They also provide impressive conference rooms, kitchen facilities, inviting lounge areas, an elegant lobby and private parking. The offices and services that C|Suites provides create an excellent atmosphere for their client’s businesses to thrive in.

Contact: Kandace Watkins, Business Manager (614) 416-8088
Website: www.csuitesoffices.com

About Creekside

Creekside Gahanna is a mixed-use community development located in the heart of Olde Gahanna. Situated on the eastern bank of Big Walnut Creek, Creekside offers a metropolitan lifestyle and casual suburban charm in a natural setting with beautiful views of the creek and surrounding Creekside Park. The development features an elaborate water wall, a lagoon supported by imported natural limestone, two waterfalls, a performance stage, and gorgeous public plazas. Creekside is the center point of numerous Gahanna events, including Blues and Jazz Festival, Gahanna Holiday Lights, and The Summer Music Series.

Website: www.creeksidegahanna.com

Make sure to check back here in a few months to see the changes and leave your comments on our updated design!

This year we offered a great option to our current customers to get into the swing of the things with an option to send out their Holiday greetings through the form of an email newsletter. We’re happy to say that many of our customers took us up on that and have received glowing responses from their partners, clients and customers. The overall response was so great that we here at Fourth Floor Interactive fully plan to offer a similar option for the first part of the new year as well, in the form of a informative, new year well-wishes email template. Here are a few of the designs we created for our clients for the Holidays.

Finally, we want to leave you with this happy holiday video from Beeker, the Swedish Chef and Animal of the Muppets. Happy Holidays everyone!

While Wordpress is technically an open source web application, making it essentially ‘free’, these types of web applications also come with their share of set-backs.  In Wordpress (and other open source web applications), there is often little or spotty documentation in regards to manipulating the data provided with Wordpress-defined functions.   We’ve come to find that many of these functions that are built-into Wordpress are not always documented within their site, especially when it comes to functions that deal with Wordpress categories.  For this reason, we’ve decided to share some of our findings:

get_query_var(‘cat’)

This function can be used within category.php, single.php, etc.  It will return the current category ID if there is only one category assigned to the post or will return an array of categories if there are more than one.

Code Example:

$fourthfloor_CurrentCategories = get_query_var('cat');

To retrieve the ID from each category assigned to the post, reference it within a for loop (or foreach if you so choose) as the code example below:

for($x=0;$x<sizeof($fourthfloor_CurrentCategories);$x++){
   print $fourthfloor_CurrentCategories[$x]->cat_ID;
}

get_cat_name($my_category_id)

This function can be used within category.php, single.php, etc.  It will return a category name (this is the name, not the nicename/slugname) when you pass a valid category id (numerical value) to it.

Code Example:

$fourthfloor_CategoryName = get_cat_name(5);

get_cat_id($my_category_slugname)

This function can be used within category.php, single.php, etc.  It will return a category id (numerical value) when you pass a valid category slugname/nicename (this is the nicename/slugname, not the name) to it.

Code Example:

$fourthfloor_CategoryID = get_cat_id('fourth-floor');