Technology
Manage Your Online Content with SilverStripe
Posted by Jason Keene in New Media, Technology, Web on October 20th, 2009
With new technologies like wave, pubsubhubbub, and rss cloud being developed and adopted the real-time web is becoming more and more a reality. If you thought Twitter was overwhelming now, imagine when there is zero delay between your status updates and your follower’s peepers. Or when you receive a push notification on your mobile the second a transaction is posted to your account. It won’t be long before the real-time experience will be expected by users and this puts a lot of pressure on content providers who would historically hide behind the technical limitations of the medium as an excuse for providing stale content.
The demand for fresh content will force everything else on the web into the background. So why is your website’s content only being updated once every three months, if that? Why is it still being maintained by the resident of your agency’s cold damp basement? Someone with the communication skills of a caveman and just so happens to refer to himself as “Web Master” or “Master of the Webiverse” in some desperate attempt to live out his He-Man fantasies, “I have the power!” This just won’t do. The time has long passed for individual businesses to take control over their own online presence, this includes your website’s content! You’d think we would be well past this by now but I’m continually surprised by how many companies I advise that don’t.
The solution, get your hands on a decent open-source CMS to manage your content such as SilverStripe, Wordpress, Drupal, Joomla, etc, or insist that the web company or agency you work with provides you with one.
Why open-source and not a proprietary or home-brewed solution?
- There are no licensing fees.
- You are not subjected to vendor lock-in. In the event you have a falling out with your web company you have the right to both your data and the underlying system since it is an open platform.
- There is a huge community of developers from all over the globe continually adding new functionality to the system, and you get the result of their labor for free.
- Any additional functionality you’d typically need is available via a plugin or module and doesn’t have to be custom developed. If you want your site to integrate with your twitter feed, no problem!
- Since the source code is available for you to view and modify you can hire any developers with the appropriate skills to add in custom functionality without worrying about licensing issues or code obfuscation.
- Did I mention there are no licensing fees?
I recently have started to adopted SilverStripe as our primary platform for managing content. It is highly extensible and provides nearly all the functionality our clients typically need. If you find yourself in the above situation and want a system like this setup to manage your website’s content, we got you covered!
What you need to know about SEO
Posted by Jason Keene in Business, Social Networking, Technology, Web on March 23rd, 2009
Search engine optimization is one of those subjects that is veiled in an abundance of technical jargon together with misinformed sales folks relaying misinformed opinions to uninformed business owners, it is truly the blind leading the blind. Recently I was at SXSW conference and one of the SEO speakers likened most SEO companies to snake-oil salesmen. A lot of the tactics deployed by typical SEO companies are viewed by search engine services as malicious and will damage your rankings when you get caught, or at best, will simply be noneffective. I decided to write some information up on this subject. Hopefully it will be of some help to clarify what you, as a small business owner, need to know about SEO and how it can help you increase revenue in this struggling economy.
I’ve been a professional web developer for the past five years and in my opinion most SEO companies have an unsustainable business strategy. SEO companies are basically tasked with generating quality traffic to a business’s website from search engines. They can accomplish this by two means, first by trying to trick Google et al into increasing their ranking in search results by various means, the second way is to create relevant content and to eliminate any barriers to that content to make sure it is indexed properly. The former approach has a downside, that while these techniques might increase your ranking in the short term, you will be running the risk of being penalized for these tactics, potentially costing your company months of lost potential sales. The latter is the approach that I subscribe to, the downside being that there is no amount of money you can throw at the problem to increase relevancy, ultimately you just have to create relevant content. Thus, once a site is initially optimized and all barriers to your content are removed, the primary aspect that will drive traffic is the content, and that onus falls outside the scope of most typical SEO companies.
Having worked inside advertising agencies I know that the agency environment is the ideal environment to create relevancy. Having copywriters, artist, and developers all working in the same room creates a level of cohesion that delivers results. Having these tasks handled by separate entities typically results in a lack of communication and “passing the buck” when the results that were promised aren’t delivered.
SEO is not for everyone, in fact Google does everything in their power to provide your relevant content to its audience, it is how they make their money. Make sure to take this into consideration when allocating your marketing dollars, is a huge SEO budget truly worth the investment? I’d say for 80% of small businesses out there, all they need is an initial audit to remove barriers to content, and optimize their site’s content for specific “ready to buy” keywords. This will give you maximum return on minimal investment.
Below you will find some references on the subject that I would highly recommend reviewing before you make any decisions on SEO for your company.
On SEO and Search Engine Spamming
The Web, Evolved (and You)
Posted by David Alexander in Advertising, Business, Marketing, New Media, Technology, Web on March 2nd, 2009
“Hello, my name is Dave.”
“Hello Dave, nice to meet you… so what do you do, anyway?”
“I work as a Web Developer over at CEA Marketing.”
“Oh, cool.”
This is inevitably followed by a blank stare. It’s at this point which I’m always torn, do I go off on some suitable explanation of “web developer”, or do I just move on. Sometimes I use the word “programmer”, which seems to give non-techies a better picture, but I try to avoid the (unfortunate) nerd stigma as often as possible. Fact is, I help make the web work, writing custom-made software that runs on the web. As you may know, the web is a network of computers that has rapidly matured into a platform for providing all kinds of services. You probably use many of them: shopping at Amazon, auctioning at eBay, checking your email on GMail or Yahoo, searching the web with Google, IMing friends or networking on Facebook, checking your bank balance and paying bills online; they’re all applications that run on the web, built by web developers.
Sun Microsystems, most prominently known for their development of Java, says “The Network is the Computer”, and it’s true. What good is your computer if the internet is out? I don’t even bother to sit down at mine if my internet service happens to be out. The web was originally built as a method of sharing textual information, a task at which it still excels, but is has grown to be far more than that. The web has advanced so much in fact, that in the near future it is even poised to replace giants like cable television, print newspaper, broadcast radio and landline telephones for a very large portion of the consumer base.
The modern web is a highly visual medium, and is fertile ground for advertising and sales. Marketing agencies and the businesses they serve have quickly embraced this new platform as an incredibly powerful, interactive, and cost effective 24/7 outlet for reaching customers. Due to its interactive nature, marketing agencies need programmers to make the web work, to make it do things besides display unchanging text and pictures.
Life moves quickly, arguably faster in technology that anywhere else. The web is at the cutting edge of this tide. It’s therefore advantageous for companies to understand and consider the possibilities of web applications when they approach a marketing company that offers them. Just like traditional software, web applications can be built to offer almost any sort of functionality you can imagine. From processing sales, tracking conversation rates, and promoting customer feedback to managing customer databases and more. Web applications are the most cost effective way of increasing efficiency for any business.
Web development is a custom-tailored solution, so be sure to include questions about development in your dialog with a marketing agency. Consider it more than just a website, more than a brochure online; it is a tool, an organism, a machine that works for your company, it has no limits as it is naturally an extension of the abilities and functions of those who create it (by way of us, that’s you!). Programming is about solving problems, so when you consider a website or web application for your business, consider the problems that you have, inefficiencies that slow you down, or abilities that you don’t yet have at all, and see if they can’t be solved with a web-based application.
Builder sells 51 homes from cutting edge, personalized, multi-channel campaign.
Posted by Kelly Bosetti in Business, New Media, Technology on February 27th, 2009
Hey Everyone,
I’ve been getting lots of calls and emails from people wondering what is working in this tough market for new home sales. Several of my clients have done very well with their campaigns by utilizing our PURL technology. I have a recent case study I would like to share with you and explain the benefits of using PURLs. In addition to the instantaneous lead follow-up and outstanding tracking capabilities, this is the highest performing cost effective marketing technique available today. I’ll be giving a webinar later next week so if you care to check it out, just click on the link below.
https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/550382608