Broadstreet Blog
After being my home page for over 6 years, iGoogle will be retiring tomorrow. I will miss it so much!
I had my favorite shortcuts right there, and some CNN breaking news, a quick look at my Inbox... did I mention that I will miss it?
Any suggestions on what I should replace it with? I've been looking at http://www.reddit.com/r/drupal/ and Hacker News - https://news.ycombinator.com/ but I still haven't found the best home page.
Bye Bye iGoogle, my friend!
Read More...
We at Broadstreet are happy to announce that, in conjunction with IT-Ology, we are offering free training for Drupal, the open source content management system used to power some of the world's largest websites.
The class, Introduction to Drupal, will take place on Saturday, October 12, 2013, from 9:00 am to 3:00 pm at the IT-Ology training center on 1301 Gervais Street in Columbia.
The course will be led by SC Drupal User Group leader Tom Sliker, and will cover an overview of Drupal as well as more advanced site building topics. By the end of the training each student will have their very own, fully functional Drupal website.
To sign up for the class, please visit ColaTechEvents.com.
Read More...
This week I attended my first DrupalCon, the semi-annual gathering of a diverse group of people devoted to the health & development of Drupal. After being involved with Drupal for over five years and attending many Drupal Camps, it was a thrill for me to finally make it to "The Con."
One of the great things about Drupal is the fact that thousands of people contribute to the project. This makes the code better but also has created a community of givers and volunteers. Understanding that, I started my week by volunteering to help setup the venue on Sunday afternoon. Being severely jet-lagged I only lasted a few hours, but I got to meet several other Drupalers who were volunteering their time. Many thanks to Adam Hill of Consult and Design for leading and managing the team of volunteers throughout the week.
Read More...
I'm tired of the generic terms I see listed as ways to improve your online presence. "SEO, Social Media, Blogs, Link Sharing," etc. These are all very broad terms that go much, much deeper. To learn how to do it right will take years of research and experience.
For those of you who honestly want just a few, simple techniques to improve your online presence, here it is.
Clear call to action. Keep your visitors engaged.
A call to action (CTA) is a set of words, graphics, or buttons that prompt a user to take immediate action or continue on an intended path toward completing your end goal. Every website should have a clear purpose, some goal they want their users to complete. And it should be obvious to both the business, and the consumer.
As an example, last month we did some major revamping of one of our sites. We realized that our call to action could be a litte... louder.
This call to action is what the search engine ad links to now when they search for terms related to Isuzu Trucks. It's very clear - if you are shopping for an Isuzu truck, call now, or request a specific part.
Read More...
Would you like someone at Google to take a look at the search engine performance of your small website? Sounds like a dream? It's a dream come true.
Google is asking small business owners to submit your site through this Google Docs form explaining why you think your small website deserves to be higher up in the search engine results.
Google's interest? Google is looking for feedback from a wider range of business owners. They want to collect more data on small website ranking. And, I love this, they want to see more examples of "small sites/mom-n-pop shops." That's us, that's our customers. And it's about time the cream of the crop rises to the top.
Read More...
Facebook made some significant changes to the Facebook Promotion Guidelines that, frankly, many small businesses were ignoring anyway.
The terms and conditions have often been overlooked and/or difficult to understand for the average mom and pop store owner. I've spent a great deal of time trying to remind small business owners that they can't run promotions on their Facebook page without an app. Then they show me examples of many Facebook pages doing exactly that and my only response is to shrug, "Try it."
Related: Increase Your EdgeRank on Facebook Pages
Read More...
The SC Drupal User Group meets the second Monday of every month at the IT-Ology building in Columbia, 1301 Gervais St, 2nd Floor. http://it-ology.org Our next meeting will be Monday, Aug 12, at 6:00 pm. IT-Ology is on the 2nd floor. If you park in the garage and walk across the bridge, you will be there.
Read More...
Lately we have been investing a lot of time in developing mobile-friendly Websites. A good example of this is the site we did for Al's Upstairs Italian Restaurant in Columbia, SC. After we got the site up and running, we started checking the analytics to find that 42 percent of visitors were using a mobile device, with over half of these being iPhones.
I was not surprised to see these kinds of numbers for a restaurant site. I pictured folks talking with friends or family and doing a quick search for a local restaurant, or even for Al's in particular. But I went back and checked the statistics of some of our other sites, and we are seeing Mobile usage of OVER 25 PERCENT for all of our sites, including some industrial sites such as BusbeeTruckParts.com and BlackJackFrame.com.
Read More...
The giant world that we once knew has become a lot smaller in the past several years. Customers who were once distant our now just a click away, and customers who would have never met are now joined together over the web discussing the quality of our business. The economy has crushed us with tighter lending and lower consumer demand. Society has made a shift towards supporting small and local businesses.
These changes feel a lot like a small town. Small town businesses have long been dealing with customers sharing their personal experiences at the local coffee shop, tight local lending and low consumer demand.
So if the business world is more like a small town, can we learn anything from small town businesses that would be useful? Yes! Here are seven specific principles that work for all small business today.
Read More...- ‹ previous
- 7 of 15
- next ›