Article Content Strategy New Technology, and Balancing the Fun with the Practical published on May 5, 2009 Following technology trends on the web is a dizzying pastime. New programming languages rise to popularity seemingly every month and the buzzword-laden web frameworks make their introductions and dance on stage for half a verse before bowing out to younger, fresher technologies. When deciding which pieces of new technology to build into your web presence, there are several things that a developer should consider and some simple guidelines to pull in new, fun technology. Read Now About
Article Which social network presents the most real value to your company? by Christopher Butler on May 4, 2009 If you've got a moment to answer this poll, please follow the link and submit your opinion. I haven't closed the poll yet, but as of the morning of 5/05/09, the results are shown in the animation I've included after the jump. Each slide is 7 seconds, the full animation will rotate forever. It looks like LinkedIn is the clear winner with 53% of respondents choosing it as the most valuable social network to their business... Read Now About
Article CRM Service in Web Development – The Long Term Relationship by Mark O’Brien on May 1, 2009 What do clients expect of their web developer after their web site is built? This industry is a far cry from most all others in regard to the post-project needs of the customer. The main reason for this is that websites are never truly done. Cars are basically done when they are built, it is the same with homes, and even with most services rendered. As Chris Butler likes to say, "the internet is a work in progress." Simple tune-ups aren't enough. Websites need to be in a state of continual improvement and positive growth, lest they give the impression that they are aging and irrelevant. As Newfangled has been developing sites over the past fourteen years, we have come across a few nuggets that I consider to be fundamental truths of the web, and that quote from Chris is one of them. Read Now About
Article Two Year’s Worth of Newsletter Tracking Data by Christopher Butler on May 1, 2009 In the comments from this month's newsletter about managing a newsletter campaign, a reader asked if I had a longer range for our newsletter tracking data (I showed about 6 months on the newsletter). He was interested in whether there were some reasons that the tracking numbers were so varied that would be easier to see with a larger swath of data... Read Now About
Article What is Growth? by Christopher Butler on April 29, 2009 One thing we're really trying to do at Newfangled is get to a point of serving fewer clients at a higher level. There have been times where we have succumbed to financial pressure and taken on projects that were just not a good fit for us. Whether it was an issue of capabilities or relationship, ignoring a bad fit is always costly. These projects tend to go over budget and disappoint the client, making the ongoing relationship a tense one at best. We're learned this lesson well, and are being very mindful to make business decisions, like being ok with taking on fewer clients, that help us work toward better positioning ourselves and better qualifying projects that will enable a great working relationship, for the long term... Read Now About
Article Managing a Newsletter Campaign by Christopher Butler on April 29, 2009 In last month's newsletter, How to Write a Newsletter, I focused on the importance of making writing a priority at your firm, how to plan an editorial calendar and research your topics, and the relationship between your email and website newsletter content. Now that we've gotten a conceptual grounding for a solid newsletter writing approach, the next step is to makes sure you're doing all the practical things that will make your campaign effective and productive. Read Now About
Article Ford’s Blogging Strategy: Win by Christopher Butler on April 27, 2009 AdAge has an article about an interesting blogging strategy taken by Ford Motor Company, who has lent 100 Fiesta's to bloggers who will post their experiences over six months of driving them. I liked this quote from Fiesta Product Manager Sam De La Garza... Read Now About
Article Prospect Experience Design “You don’t find anything out until you start showing it to people.” by Christopher Butler on April 24, 2009 David Kelly, founder and CEO of IDEO Product Development and professor at Stanford, spoke at Stanford's Entrepreneurial Thought Leader Speaker Series about design as an iterative process. You can watch his entire talk at the link I provided, but I pulled one quote that I thought was relevant to the thinking behind our grayscreen prototyping philosophy... Read Now About
Article More on Twitter by Christopher Butler on April 23, 2009 Twitter talk is going nuts since celebrities like Oprah and Ashton Kutcher have started using it. In fact, did you know that Twitter traffic has jumped 43% since Oprah's 1st tweet and more than 1 million new users joined since then? That's huge. Accordingly, there's plenty of Twitter coverage in big media outlets like the New York Times. Here are some opinions... Read Now About
Article AdAge in a Recession by Christopher Butler on April 22, 2009 I smiled when I saw this graphic on the cover page of AdAge from earlier this month (of course, I only received it in the mail today, along with last week's and this week's issues). But I appreciate their honesty, saying that ultimately, less ads doesn't necessarily mean less quality. Advertising Age isn't the only magazine out there losing advertisers, and therefore, getting thinner. In fact, did you know that only 42 magazines saw ad page increases in 2008? Read Now About
