Broadstreet Blogs

Drupal Developers in South Carolina

It's been over 3 years since I started a Meetup Group for Drupal Developers in Columbia, SC.   The groups started out meeting at Richland County Public Libary (which is a Drupal site btw) and since has moved to the IT-Ology building at the corner of Sumter and Gervais in downtown Columbia.  

 

We have met over 36 times since February 2010 and this past week we had our best turn-out so far with 12 Drupal Website builders attending.    We discussed Drupal Commerce as well as responsive themes such as Omega.  We had several serious newcomers who wanted a better understanding blocks and views and some other more basic concepts. 

 

I spent some time showing people how to evaluate a Drupal module using the information on the Drupal module's project page and how to find the number of downloads for a particular version of the module.  

 

We've had over 60 people attend these meetings representing dozens of companies, government organizations, non-profits, and educational institutions. There is a continued growth Drupal Development in South Carolina,   and I am thrilled to be a part of it. 

 

If you're interested in learning more about Drupal, please attent our Meetups at IT-Ology the 2nd Monday of Every Month.    Also, I teach a Drupal 101 & 102 class every few months-- check the IT-Ology Calendar or signup for their newsletter for more information. 

Google's Gags 2013: We got fooled!

Based on the number of pranks Google has pulled over the past... four years, (at least), it should be no surprise that they kicked it in full gear this year. If your like me, however, with no knowledge of past pranks, it's possible you got fooled too. Or no, am I alone in this?
The first video I saw, as a subscriber to Google's youtube channel, was this:
Gmail Blue
For a product that actually was launched on April 1st (2004), you’d think Gmail would come up with something a little more involved than turning its interface blue.

So ofcourse, I instantly took to social media. "Is it just me, or is this an incredibly passionate, serious video introducing a product that's only difference... is that it's blue?" Not just blue, but completely blue. The video description did in fact make me lol, "Fast. Beautiful. Powerful."

But after a little more research, (clicking on their next video) I quickly realized that this was a joke. And my feelings towards Google changed drastically. Not only did they fool me, they made me laugh. Even if I didn't ever find out it was a joke, I still laughed. So job WELL done, Google. Very well done.

Youtube Shutdown
My favorite prank of this year has to be this one, the youtube shutdown, entitled Youtube's Ready to Select a Winner. Whattt?? So all this time I've been posting videos to youtube, I've been entering myself in a competition? No, no, no, that is unacceptable. I do not want my Redneck's Got Talent Audition tape to be entered into a competition against people like Charlie, in Charlie Bit Me!

This video was my favorite, because it applies to me - an avid youtube video uploader and watcher since the 9th grade. Not only that, but they brought in some of my favorite youtube sensations! iJustine, KassemG, Antione Dodson?! It shows how in-tune they are with their customers. They really know who's going to appreciate this joke, and who is relevant to the cause.

Google Nose
Okay, so if asked about this prank it might accidentally slip out as "my favorite," also. This one just gets me! Google Nose, is “the new scentsation in search.” (Punny. Very punny.) It’s exactly what it sounds like … a joke about smell-based search. If you were to do a search on Google.com, one of the search verticals at the top was “Nose (beta).” Plus, in certain Knowledge Graph results, the “People also searched” heading said “People also sniffed.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-P6jEMtixY&feature=player_embedded

They're so serious! Imagine if Google played a prank like this any other day of the year. They would totally get away with it.

Google Trends: Cold Searches
Google Trends decided to not only show “hot” searches, but for April Fools’ Day they would also show Cold search trends. This is stuff that nobody’s searching for, like “Y2K,” “Macarena step-by-step” and “prom scrunchies.”

It seems that April Fool’s Day is pretty much a national holiday for everyone that works for Google. I've never see anyone on the Web take the tradition of pranks and jokes as seriously as Google does. And believe me, there are way more pranks for this year that we weren't able to catch.

To read up on last year's pranks, check out this post from Search Engine Land, (since I am apparently 4 years behind on this.)

The 7 Core Components of an Exceptional Email

Did you know, with 91% of online consumers checking their email daily, email marketing is one of your best means of generating leads, and converting those leads into customers.

Broadstreet Consulting offers to help businesses earn the payoff of email campaigns by making sure you are maximizing conversions and clickthrough rates with every email you send.

To help you understand the layout of such emails, we put together the 7 core components of a 5 star email.

1. A Clear, Attention-Grabbing Email Subject Line.
To reach your customer, you have to be able to break through the noise of the other millions of email.  In order to do this, you have to have a compelling subject line that inspires your audience to click on and read your email.

2. Company Branding.
Make sure your email layouts mimic your overall company brand. You want the people opening your email to recognize who you are.

3. Personalized Content.
Personalizing is a great way to gain a competitive advantage in your email marketing. While there are many in-depth ways to go about this, this can also be done simply by adding the customer’s name to the beginning of the email.

4. Value Proposition and Context.
An email should immediately address what your offer is, and why it’s valuable to your audience. Adding a value proposition for your offer as the first sentence in your email is the best way to accomplish this.

5. Obvious, Focused Call-to-Action.
Every email should have one single goal for the customer, whether it is to download an offer, sign up for a webinar or purchase a product. The call to action button must be prominently displayed in the email.

6. Relevant Image.
Incorporating images is another tool to ensure your email engages your audience. HubSpot’s Science of Email Marketing research revealed that 65% of people prefer emails with mostly images rather than text.

7.Unsubscribe Link.
The final element of a five-star email is also the only mandatory element in your email templates. You MUST add an unsubscribe link to the bottom of every email marketing message. Sending an email without an unsubscribe link violates CAN-SPAM regulations, can significantly damage your email sender credibility, and can even potentially leave your marketing open to costly fees or litigation.

 

 

With all the new methods of marketing, email remains one of the most productive means of generating leads and selling products online. By building optimized, well-designed emails and targeting content to increase conversions, an email marketing campaign can greatly increase your online presence.

How to Decrapify Your PC

When you start your computer, you may notice several programs launching themselves along with Windows. Maybe you want them there or maybe you don’t, but some applications run silently in the background every time you boot the PC that you may not even know about.

All of these automatically opening programs consume system memory which can drag down your PC’s performance.

We found an easy way to manage these startup programs so you can see what is running on your computer and disable the items you don't need.

Use the System Configuration Utility (MSConfig)

The System Configuration Utility, also called MSConfig, is a very useful tool for understanding and controlling startup programs. By following these 5 easy steps, you can decrapify your PC and increase the start up speed in no time at all.

1. Open the Start menu and type msconfig into the Search box.

2. Click the msconfig search result. The utility will open in a new window.

3. Click the Startup tab. You'll see a list of programs that start when your computer starts.

4. To stop a program from automatically launching when you boot the PC, uncheck the box next to its entry.

5. When you are finished deselecting startup items, click OK. You don't have to restart the computer immediately, but changes won't take effect until you do.

When you restart the computer, MSConfig will alert you to the changes. In the window that pops up, check the box next to Don't show this message or launch the System Configuration Utility when Windows starts, and click OK to prevent future alerts. You can always go back to MSConfig and undo or make additional changes.

Many entries have names that aren't self-explanatory, so we for caution research each entry before unchecking its box to prevent disabling important applications.

Other Methods

You can always find more ways to manage startup programs. Microsoft currently recommends a utility called Autoruns, which is more advanced than MSConfig. The method above should suit your needs, but feel free to explore other options if you are curious.

2 Tools for Keeping Your Great Tweets!

Do you keep track of interesting tweets you send?

Chances are if you tweeted, retweeted, or favorited a tweet, it was worth remembering. I constantly retweet links to articles I want to review later. But come on, how many of us actually spend the time scrolling through and picking out these old tweets? Not me!

But what if I told you it didn't have to be that hard?

Twitter stores the last 3,200 tweets you sent, but let's face it, it's not an easty-to-view format.  Allmytweets.net is an amazing site that allows you to view these tweets in a bulleted easy-to-view format. All you do is enter your twitter id and it immediately loads your tweets.

Some say it will retrieve slightly over the limit allowed by twitter, but I haven't even tweeted over 1,500 tweets yet, so I couldn't tell you based on experience.

 

If you could easily separate interesting tweets from tweets you don't care about, would you do it?

Diigo is a bookmarking tool that allows you to highlight text and attach sticky notes to specific parts of web pages.

After creating an account, you have the option of installing Diigo's own toolbar or adding a Diigolet to your bookmarks toolbar. From then on you can easily store text from any web page (ie. twitter) in your own library.

All you do is choose which color highlighter you want to use, then highlight the text as if you were copying and pasting it.

 

Then it immediately saves the text to your Diigo library where you can easily review or remove it later.

Diigo provides several easy ways to then share your library of notes and highlights.

Web Services

 

There is also an option to link your account to twitter.  So for example you could:

a). Favorite tweets in twitter and automatically save them in Diigo.

b). Only save favorites that have links.

c). Automatically tag items coming from twitter e.g. tag them ‘tweets’ so you know they came from twitter.  Also tag items with hashtags already specified.

While Diigo may seem like a hastle at first, it's totally worth it. Just take your time figuring it out and experimenting and it can become an amazing tool for keeping your great tweets!

Excellent Marketing Campaign via Social Media #DietCokeBday

Diet Coke turns 30 this year, and everybody is talking about it!

On July 29th the brand launched an excellent marketing campaign, using a FREE marketing tool, twitter, to get its loyal customers fighting for a chance to win free Diet Coke for a year.

A competition via @DietCokeUS asked consumers and fans to tweet the love through birthday wishes, haikus, finishing sentences, etc. and hashtag it #DietCokeBday. The winners received a year’s supply of Diet Coke and a surprise 30 second party with the DC Crew.

With over 200,000 followers, you can imagine the number of free promotional tweets pushing brand image and awareness.  Not to mention the significant increase in customer loyalty. Just hearing about the campaign (and not being a part of it) makes me want to go out and buy the diet soda, because who doesn’t want to be apart of something so huge, so unique, and so full of energy?

Watch any of the videos Diet Coke posted of the 30 second parties, and you’ll understand.

According to the Diet Coke brand page, it’s been the top diet soft drink in the world since 1984, after only two years of being on the market. Today it maintains that position as well as the no. 3 spot for soft drinks in the world.

You don’t get stats like that with a mediocre marketing strategy. No, you get it by thinking outside the bottle.

The Grocer’s recently published “Top 100 Advertisers Report” showed that Coca-Cola has cut ad spending by 6.6% in 2010 and invested more into social media.

“Coca-Cola’s social media strategy is clearly about long-term sustainable engagement, developing advocacy and encouraging brand loyalty,” says Matt Rhodes of socialmediatoday.com.  

“Social media is not just about campaigns or generating buzz around a new product launch. It can be used to engage with consumers on an ongoing basis in order to deepen relationships with a brand.” 

Clearly the Coca-Cola company is taking its social media marketing very serious. The company published its Online Social Media Principles, stating, “These Online Social Media Principles have been developed to help empower our associates to participate in this new frontier of marketing and communications, represent our Company, and share the optimistic and positive spirits of our brands.”

It then goes on to list the five core values of the company in the online social media community, which are

1) Transparency

2) Protection

3) Respect

4) Responsibility

5) Utilization

So if you want to follow somebody, (pun intended), you might want to follow the successful marketing strategies of @DietCokeUS.

Me, the Soup Nazi, and iPhoto Faces

I've had my iMac for probably 3 years now, and I have to say I'm still not really a "Mac Person" like so many are.  I love how reliable it is, but a lot of things annoy me about it-- why can't I make a window larger by dragging the top left corner? , for example. 

And so my screen saver is whatever I selected the first time I setup my Mac.  It scans all the photos on my computer and displays them as a slideshow, and it's always fun to watch it, but occasionally I see a photo I would like to email or post on Facebook.  I don't have a good way to find a photo like that. 

One way I do that, though, is to use the iPhoto "Faces" feature, which lets you tag photos (like you do on Facebook), and then it goes out and tries to find photos of that same person.    Here's what it looks like on the Faces home page:

 

You may notice that Ronald Reagan is my photo album, and so is Elvis, The Soup Nazi, and a few others you would recognize.  The Soup Nazi's face was  identified in this photo of me wandering the streets of New York looking for Seinfeld trivia: 

 

Once I tagged his face as "Soup Nazi", iPhoto wants to find other pictures of him and that's where the fun begins.  Here's the result, and it makes me laugh every time:  

Beginning with Bing

Happy 4th of July to everyone.  I'm going to try to consistently blog.   It takes discipline of which I have very little.  I've been meaning for some time to try switching to Bing.  Why?  Because some people say it's better and I've heard some interesting things.

   The thing I heard about that I like was showing me organic search results with a right sidebar that shows what my friends have said about the topic recently.  When I started using Bing, it had an animation come up and tell me about that right sidebar, but then it turned it off.  So I needed to learn how to turn it back on.

I googled, "Why is Bing better than Google", and within a click or two I saw an ad or a link for "Google Graveyard" which turned out to be anti-Google propoganda put out by Microsoft

    How did I so quickly get directed to TNW (The Next Web).  It was a cute, friendly blog about a person who built a "Graveyard of cancelled Google products by a helpful Microsoft employee."   All good fun, I'm sure.

     Okay, so on my other screen is the front page of TNW and the big ad says Google:  part of the next web family.   So this is actually Google putting out an article about these Microsoft guys who did this thing on their Pinterest page.  

The reason I so quickly ended up at TNW was because the entire bottom section of the page, below the search results was "News and Notable from across TNW:"

     Founded in 2008, The Next Web is one of the world’s largest online publications that delivers an international perspective on the latest news about Internet technology, business and culture. With an active, influential audience consisting of more than 5.1 million monthly visits and over 7 million monthly page views, The Next Web continues to expand its global presence on its website with the addition of new channels and content partnerships, as well as through events in North America and Europe.
      That's an exact quote from their home page.  You can learn more at http://thenextweb.com/about/

     Which one would I click on?  I was on the front page of Bing and I was afraid to click on something?  That's not good for business.  Then I notice to the left of this, the "Search History", my search history is cab vomit fee, sliker, Usain Bolt Running, and why bing is better than google. 

     I will admit to searching for sliker and why bing is better than google, but the other two there is no way I ever typed or searched for.   Who is Usain Bolt Running.  I may have seen a web page with him on it, but I certainly didn't search for this.  This should not be considered Search History, in my opinion. 

So I click on Cab vomit fee and learn that throwing up in a cab in Chicago now costs a $50 surcharge.  http://now.msn.com/living/0630-drunk-cabs-vomit.aspx?ocid=ansnow11

So I'm back to the home page.  Got to see what's up with the girl on the pole.  This is Microsoft so I'm sure it's family friendly.  I click on it and see that... whoops... it wasn't some woman on a pole, it was Taylor Swift holding her guitar.   Man, getting old takes it's toll on your eyes, that's for sure. 

NOTE TO TAYLOR:  I know you search the blogosphere daily to find out what people are saying about you, so I know you'll see this some time.  I hope I didn't offend you and PLEASE don't write a song about me. 

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_-1GM7VDiWKE/TBBHAXDUx2I/AAAAAAAACvM/Tf-RsXWAdSs/s1600/Taylor+Swift+With+Guitar.jpg

How To: Create Your Own Twitter Background

So you want to create your own background image for your twitter account, but don’t know where to start. Been there!

What’s the right size? Should it be a gradient, a photo, a logo, etc.? Should it have words? How do you avoid it looking perfect on a small screen, but screwed up on big screen, or vice versa?

Well we have a few helpful tips for you based on our experience!

1) Setting up the main background

I was lead to believe that the image should be 2560 x 1600 (about 35 x 22 inches).. WAY too big!  Then I read somewhere that recommended about 14.5 x 11 inches, still not right! After making my own measurements based on the inaccuracy of the first images, I came to the conclusion:

Perfect image size: 1700 x 900

That’s about 24” wide by 12” tall. It gives enough breathing room for large-screen monitors, showing up perfectly on both my large screen pc at home and my small screened MacBook.

We want to keep the main background simple. If you have too much going on, your image is likely to go over 800K and you won’t be able to upload it to Twitter.

Too much could also turn people away, if it is too hard on the eyes. Keep it simple.

My favorite technique has been using a soft gradient over a slight pattern or design.

Because Thompson Rental Services uses this image pattern as a background on their website, I incorporated it into a black and white gradient to use for a Twitter background. You should keep in mind a central theme (colors, logo, etc.) when creating your background image.

2) Creating a Side Graphic.

When creating a background for Twitter, what we like to do is put anything worth seeing on the left side where it can be seen. This is called a side graphic, and can include a logo, important information, URLs, or anything else relevant to your account.

I learned to make a separate image for this with a transparent background, at 120 x 350px.

It can be wider if you need it to be, I have made one at 250 x 350, but you definitely don’t want it to be any taller than 350 px because it will get cut off on small screens such as a MacBook.

To the left is an example of a side graphic made as a separate image at 120 x 350 px.

After making the image, with a transparent background, merge the layers and copy the image onto the background image created in step 1.

 

2) Save it and Upload it.

You can save the file as a GIF, JPG, or PNG. But make sure it is below 800K. This may mean saving it with a high quality, at an 8, rather than maximum 10. But it will not make the image look any worse.

To upload the background, click on the link to view your profile and go to "Edit your profile" on the right side of the header. You will see 7 tabs on the left, click on "Design," scroll down to "Customize your own," and "Choose File."  You can then edit the background and links colors to match your new background, but make sure you click "Save Changes" before you leave or nothing will be saved!

This is how our example image looks on a large screen vs a small screen:

Mike Mooney on Viral Marketing

“Will it blend?” is a marketing campaign started in 2004 by BlendTec that Mike Mooney brought to our attention during the Broadstreet Bridges conference. It is “the best case study with viral marketing,” Mooney says.

With a $50 budget, George Wright bought a lab coat and basic necessities to film short youtube videos of BlendTec’s CEO Tom Dickson crushing various objects in their blenders.

“Blenders aren’t cool. Blending crazy stuff is.” – Mike Mooney

It is an amazing story of how a business can utilize the web as an inexpensive, easy and successful marketing tool.

Within 5 days Mooneys says BlendTec had 6,000,000 views on youtube. Today they have 188,000,000 views of the video series and their sales increased by 1,000%.

Did you get that?

BlendTec’s sales have increased by 1,000%

 

These industrial blenders are now costing from $300-$400.
When it comes to viral marketing, you have to use imagination, creativity, and you have to dream big because the sky’s the limit.

Watch our video from the Broadstreet Bridges conference to hear Mike Mooney talking.

Below is the video of BlendTec that Mooney shows during his speech.