Fresh Roasted from Digett

Why Content Strategy Matters

Amy Peveto — Mon, 14 May 2012 14:34:40 +0000

If you’ve put so much as a toe into the blogging/social media world, you’ve got an idea of the time and effort it takes to continually produce valuable, targeted content. It’s easy to get stuck on the details: headlines, posting frequency, moderation. But it’s important to take a step back and think about your goals, and what your content should actually be conveying.

The steps of deciding what content to create and share, how and when to share it, and what goals that content has all fall under the umbrella known as content strategy. Working through this process can be tedious, but it’s critical to your business’ success for several reasons.

Write right

Content strategy helps businesses identify and create the content their target audience actually wants. It’s a waste of resources to create content that attracts everyone except the people with whom you really want to work. Better to create content that speaks to your prospects and pulls them directly to you.

Cut costs

Knowing precisely what content you need to produce reduces the time and money you spend creating content that isn’t beneficial. Also, shifting your resources to creating only the right content means that your content’s value and effectiveness will increase.

Coordinate communications

A content strategy organizes not only content creation, but also online sharing and communications, website content, and “traditional” marketing (billboards, commercials, direct mail, etc.). Coordinating every aspect of your communication and advertising makes it easier for everyone to work toward the same goals.

Measure & sustain

Content strategy helps answer the world’s oldest marketing question: “What’s the ROI?” It gets your goals in place and allows you to develop the road markers you need to ensure you’re moving toward those goals.

Onward and upward

The importance of content is only growing. As the Internet and social media continue to have bigger effects on business, having a well-developed content strategy in place will help you focus and maintain your lead generation and branding efforts.

Elements of a successful newsletter

JD Collier — Fri, 11 May 2012 14:49:52 +0000

All of us get newsletters. I'm signed up for everything from my neighborhood news to web programming. The majority of these get less than a 10 second glance before I delete or trash them; but there are one or two I look forward to receiving and read everything they write. What makes these different?

Content is king!

The most important criteria for me (your customer) reading your newsletter is relevance. I am not going to read a newsletter about electrical engineering because it doesn't fit my interest profile.

There are two reasons I read your content:

Need - I read the newsletter for my neighborhood because it has information I need.
Want - I read a newsletter about web design because I want the information.

Both scenarios score high enough in relevance to me that I am willing to give a few minutes to the content.

Authenticity

After relevance, authenticity is vital. Authenticity may have become a buzz-word, but for good cause. If I have the slightest twinge that the newsletter is using marketing techniques disingenuously, my brain starts to tune out. People aren't stupid. We recognize marketing.

To clarify though, just because I sense marketing techniques in a message, I don't immediately tune you out. I understand and appreciate that your business is working to stay in business. So am I. If, however, the marketing techniques feel to me like you aren't helping me while I'm helping you, it feels like a bad relationship. I'm giving time and sometimes money and not getting a return on that investment.

Give me something

An added bonus of my favorite newsletter is that they almost always include free downloads of things I want. Free downloads are great … if I want the item. In my case, they are things like free fonts or photoshop textures.

The trick here is to offer things that the audience wants. This can be a challenge, but it is a wonderful bonus when it is there. I think it is one of the key reasons why my favorite newsletter is my favorite.

Layout

It doesn't have to be pretty, but it does need to be well organized. My favorite newsletter has the same header every time and then a series of articles; I always appreciate that there is a title and a four line teaser for each article. They also place a great image next to each article. I am a visual person and my favorite newsletter always has images that draw me in. Whether it is a silly image to illustrate a point or a specifically drawn image to quickly explain a concept, I appreciate it.

Clean, clear, quickly scanned … these are the rules that make me read on.

My favorite newsletter is from the Webdesigner Depot. Here is an example of the last newsletter I received.

Image credit: Webdesigner Depot Enews Header

Beyond "clean & user-friendly": websites with a better purpose

Valarie Geckler — Thu, 10 May 2012 16:24:41 +0000

When we talk to a client about their initial desires for a new website, 99% of the time the first comment is some variation of: I want a “clean” and “user-friendly” site.

On behalf of the web design industry, let me apologize for every ugly, tough-to-use website you’ve ever had the displeasure of navigating. I’ve seen them too, those websites of nightmares, and frankly, they’re ruining websites for everybody else.

Because the first thought about your new website shouldn’t be related to ease of use. Quality user experience is a given component of any project for any firm worth their salt. No, you should care most about what the website can do for your business.

How can my website bring me more business?

Almost a year ago, I wrote about how to take a hard look at your website and its return on your investment. When I asked “how can my website bring me more business?,” I advised that a website isn’t a good website unless it helps bring you more customers or leads.

That’s still 100% true. Your website and internet marketing efforts should be as effective as any sales person on staff or there’s room for improvement. Compelling content, good SEO and quality calls to action are critical to attracting and engaging customers, but let’s take things a level beyond that.

What makes any of those elements attractive and engaging?

Know who you are - What are your company’s strengths? What makes you truly unique? What will convince someone to do business with you above all others?
Know your audience - Who are you targeting? Don’t guess, know. What insights do you have into their behaviors and habits? If you have multiple audiences, understand what is distinctive about each group so you can address them specifically.
Develop a plan - Everything you do should be informed by your knowledge of your audience and understanding of your unique value proposition. What do they want/need that I can give? That’s key to providing content that draws in customers; that understanding will help optimize your SEO, SEM, social media, website, etc., for greater results.

“Clean” and “user-friendly” aren’t bad but you have more important goals for a truly effective web marketing effort. When you can ensure that everything you do has greater purpose, it’s easier to see greater success.

[Image Credit: thepanamerican]

Getting Meta Tags on Views in Drupal 7

Art Williams — Wed, 09 May 2012 14:16:27 +0000

Meta elements are an important part of any SEO and even Social Media strategy for a website. Drupal has a number of excellent modules for adding meta tags to nodes, but Views integration is lacking. To add meta tags to a view in Drupal 7 there are two meta tag modules and many hurdles to implementation.

Meta Tags Quick Module

The Meta tags quick module has the ability to assign meta values based on a path. So once you have your view set up you can navigate to the Meta tags quick module settings (admin/config/search/metatags_quick/path_based) and create a path-based meta tag for that view page.

At first glance this may seem like the simplest solution. But when we’ve used this module on a site it adds tabs to the views that say “Path-Based Metatags.” This is confusing for clients and many times breaks the clean look of the page (especially on a homepage) when there are no other tabs on the view.

The second issue we’ve found with Meta tags quick is that it is built on the Fields API. We saw this as a benefit initially, but in practice it is cumbersome. It requires setting up metatags on each and every content type when most of the time we want consistent meta attributes across all the content of the site. Plus if you ever try to remove Meta tags quick it takes some time since the fields it creates are left on the content types and have to be removed manually before the module can be uninstalled.

Lastly, in our opinion, the Meta tags quick module requires two additional modules to complete its meta features. The first is Page Title which adds the <title> tag to a page’s HTML. The second is the Open Graph meta tags module which adds opengraph style tags in the <head> of a page.

Aside: Open Graph tags, while not as well known, are critically important in the world of social media sharing. If you have a Facebook Share button on your blog post without Open Graph tags, you are leaving to chance the items that get sent to Facebook when that Share button is pressed. With Open Graph tags you can send the correct image, title, and description to Facebook.

Metatag Module

Metatag module is the successor to Nodewords in Drupal 6, and is designed to be the ultimate metatags module for Drupal 7. In its current state it already includes Page Title and Open Graph tags. The only necessary feature absent from this module is Views integration. Despite this missing piece we prefer Metatag over Meta tags quick because of its complete feature set and lack of dependence on the Fields API.

Make Every Page a Node

The workaround to the missing Views Integration in the Metatag module is to make every page on your site a node, then add any view as a block under the node.

For example, we commonly need a view to display a list of teasers for articles on a page. If you make the view a block and place it in the main content region under a node called “Articles,” you can add your meta tags to the node and not be concerned at all with the view’s meta tags.

A fringe benefit of this approach from the site builder standpoint is that breadcrumbs, menus, and pathauto all become easier to set up and work more consistently when every page is a node.

For the client, this approach makes more sense because the top textual area of all pages (including views) is now easily and consistently editable.

The caveat—and it can be big—is when a view has an exposed filter or a contextual filter that uses URL parameters to pass the values. It’s possible that this type of view won’t function correctly as a block without AJAX-ifying it, which prevents deep linking into the filters. This issue is so specific that we rarely run into it, but since it is a showstopper it needs to be mentioned. In those cases we just resort to using the Meta tags quick, Page Title, and Open Graph meta tags modules on the site.

Also worth mentioning is that there are two sandbox modules that claim to accomplish the goal of Views integration with Metatag. I haven’t had the opportunity try either and would hesitate to use them on a production site, but the fact that they exist makes me optimistic that the issue can be solved in short order.

If you have a solution of your own that works, or have an opinion about making every page a node, please chime in. We’d like to hear your thoughts and experience.

New site launch: MoxiePlay

Amy Peveto — Mon, 07 May 2012 13:53:57 +0000

MoxiePlay is the go-to website for women who love NFL football. Members are active on Facebook, but wanted an online hub where they could more easily talk teams, tailgating recipes, and maybe a little trash.

The goals of the MoxiePlay site were numerous:

Create a place where both die-hard fans and those new to the sport would feel at home.
Integrate closely with social media so that MoxiePlay’s thirty thousand fans can easily pass through from Facebook and share content back to their friends.
Keep the freshest news prominent.
Make it easy for users to communicate and add their own content to the site.

Joining two audiences

Whether they’ve been rabid fans since childhood or have never even seen a game, visitors to the MoxiePlay site always have something to do. Dedicated fans can argue the latest play on the forums, and football newbies can visit Sports University to learn the history and rules of the sport.

Integrating with social media

Because MoxiePlay’s presence began on Facebook, it was important that we give existing members a way to easily cross between the third-party site and the main website. Integrated social sharing makes it easy for members to share content to their personal networks.

Breaking sports news

The homepage “Top News” section automatically pulls in the latest NFL news from around the web, keeping the site current and its members informed of breaking news. During pre-season and season games, a ticker along the top of the homepage displays the current games and their scores.

Building a community

User-generated content is king on the MoxiePlay website. Once registered, members can start and join discussions on the forums, tag photos and images to team-related Flickr groups, submit tailgating recipes, and more. The “My MoxiePlay” portion of the website allows them to track the discussions in which they’re participating and make new friends.

The Drupal advantage

Building the MoxiePlay site on Drupal Commons made it easy to provide MoxiePlay administrators with more baked-in features than we could have built in-house for the same budget. Drupal Commons also allowed us to streamline members’ actions and make it easy for them to create and share new content.

Welcome MoxiePlay!

We loved working with MoxiePlay to grow their online presence and make this site the ultimate online sports media connection for women. Football season officially kicks off September 5 — let’s make it a good one!

How One COO Uses Social Media for Community Engagement [Interview]

Amy Peveto — Thu, 03 May 2012 22:52:12 +0000

Recently I was lucky enough to talk to Clinton Kabler, COO and co-founder of Book Riot, a website dedicated to books and reading. I love his no-holds-barred thoughts on social media and community engagement, and I think you will too.

Q1: Tell me a bit about Book Riot, what you do, and why you do it.

My business partner, Jeff O’Neal, and I started Book Riot to be the go-to voice for under age 35 adults who were, candidly, tired of the elitism that exists in the public conversation on books and reading. In addition, the shrinking number of traditional outlets covering books and reading are reaching an older audience — typically 60% are over age 44.

I read a lot. I’m not a lit snob. I’ll read The Hunger Games, and I’ll read 2666. I DON’T want to read a long winded review in the New York Times Book Review or the LA Review of Books telling me why I should or should not have enjoyed a book. Traditional book reviewers are academics and critics writing for their peers, not the public. Let’s be honest, traditional book reviewing is one of the biggest institutionalized circle jerks not owned by News Corp.

We started Book Riot to engage and delight the interested reader. Always books. Never boring. It’s a rockin’ community that would result if Engadget and Jezebel had a love child who geeked out on books.

I handle operations and revenue at Book Riot. Sadly, I’m a magnificently average writer.

Q2: What’s your social media goal/strategy? Was social media always part of Book Riot’s marketing strategy, or did you come to it later?

We built our platform to be social. If we weren’t social, we wouldn’t exist. However, we don’t believe in a one-way conversation. We believe in engaging with our community — democratizing the reading and writing experience.

What The Huffington Post has proved and traditional media outlets like the NYT can’t seem to grasp is that you must engage with your community. It isn’t enough for a writer to submit their article on deadline, take their paycheck and go away. They have an audience, and the gap between them and their audience has been flattened with social media. We EXPECT that our writers and the official Book Riot social channels engage with our community.

Q3: Who handles your social media? Do you have a dedicated set of people, or is it a full team effort?

Social media, regardless of your audience, is not something that can be done by your 17-year old nephew. It must have a strategy, and you must be committed to it. Else, don’t bother. Few things are more pathetic than clicking on a company’s Twitter link and seeing they haven’t tweeted for 18 months.

I’m a huge believer that the principles in Geoffrey Moore’s Crossing the Chasm apply to social media adoption:

Innovators → Early Adopters → CHASM → Early Majority → Late Majority

To execute a successful social media campaign, you have to know where the innovators in the community you want to reach live in the social media taxonomy. You can’t get to the Early Majority, where you will see real bottom line results, without successfully building your thought leadership with the Innovators and gaining credibility with the Early Adopters. The best way to do that — find the person who is a socially savvy thought leader and innovator, and contract them to run your social media.

At Book Riot we did that. Rebecca Joines-Schinsky was one of the independent book bloggers with the largest audience and one of the best monetized. As we built the pre-launch hype, we quickly realized that she would be perfect because she knew the Innovators and Early Adopters, and she had also successfully crossed the chasm herself. She could be the voice of Book Riot’s social initiatives. One of the best decisions Jeff and I made since starting Book Riot is contracting, then hiring Rebecca.

Q4: What (if anything) do you read to keep on top of your marketing strategy?

I come from a tech background, so Techcrunch is my go-to source because the number of startups out there making it easier to maximize marketing ROI is incredible.

Also, I believe in the first-hand referral. When a business partner or competitor adopts a tool or strategy with which I’m not familiar, I investigate. If it looks promising, I suggest to my team that we explore adoption. Right now, we want to democratize the traditional author interview and are looking at tools like OnTheAir.com and Spreecast.com for powering author interviews with a low cost of production, high-level of community and huge social potential.

Q5: How do you define social media ROI and/or success?

It depends on your business. If you are B2B, I would say establishing yourself as a thought leader should be first priority. If you are B2C, thought leadership gives you credibility that results in consumers returning and engaging. In both cases, social media builds community and gives your organization a public voice. Finally, it should become a customer engagement/support mechanism.

The ROI would be, can you drive customer behavior through social media initiatives. If you can, I would say your investment has provided a decent return. If you can’t you’re probably doing something wrong.

Q6: What would you say to a business that is hesitant to start using social media?

Don’t do it. If you are going to be half-assed about it, don’t waste your money. However, don’t complain when your competition starts eating your lunch.

Clinton Kabler, COO & Co-founder of Book Riot, is a reader and a magnificently average writer. He manages Book Riot’s business operations. Should you be curious to know how magnificently average writing reads, he suggests reading didactic placards at your local museum.

He holds an MBA from an East Coast university. Upon completing his MBA, he jumped into the West Coast startup world and quickly learned that he had wasted a lot of money on said MBA. When not being a husband and father, he runs marathons and cycles mountains. He splits his time between Vancouver (the one in Canada) and Brooklyn.

His tweets can be found @clintonk. Connect with him on LinkedIn.

(Editor’s note: This interview was edited for spelling and formatting.)

3 Small Modules That Make Good Drupal Websites Great

Art Williams — Wed, 02 May 2012 16:57:53 +0000

Identifying the difference between a good website and a great website has everything to do with the care put into the details. Elements the site visitor never consciously notices combine in such a way as to affect them on a deeper level to convey stability, credibility and competency.

There are three small modules that I find make a big difference in the way a visitor/client interacts with a site. By “small” I don’t mean code size, but more about feature set. They each do one thing very well and have become an essential part of our builds.

Custom Breadcrumbs

The custom breadcrumbs module provides the flexibility to build breadcrumbs that have a specific hierarchy based on node type or any other node parameter (through php). This aligns your breadcrumbs with the node paths that you’ve established with pathauto.

The breadcrumbs that are baked into Drupal core do an adequate job, but we find that this is one of those details that is more important than it seems at first glance. The more consistently all of your menus, breadcrumbs, paths, and page titles align, the clearer it will be to a user how everything fits together.

Custom Contextual Links

Contextual Links is one of my favorite additions to Drupal 7. Those little gears that expand with links that are contextually aware provide a quick way for your site managers to know if and how they can interact with a section of the site.

But wouldn’t it be great if you could add your own items into those menus? Custom Contextual Links (CCL) module does just that.

To create a link you specify the Title (the text of the link that is displayed), the URL (path of the link) and then the context in which the link should appear. It’s this last part where the magic happens; I can choose to place my custom link on a specific node, all nodes of a content type, a block, a view display, or a group of view displays. I have yet to find a context that isn’t covered by this module.

As an example of this modules use, I commonly create a custom contextual link on the homepage rotator that links to a view so that the site manager can rearrange and edit the rotator items. The contextual area is the logical place for the site manager to look for this link.

The icing on the cake with this module is that it supports some basic actions such as:

Publish/unpublish content
Make content sticky/unsticky
Promote/remove content from the front page

Search Configuration

Every site we build has some content type that shouldn’t be searchable. For example, the homepage rotators. They are just promo items and don’t need to be searchable, but Drupal 7 doesn’t offer any search customization beyond nodes and users and content ranking settings.

Once you turn on the Search Configuration module it does two things:

The permissions page (admin/people/permissions) now has options to toggle permissions to search each content type per role.
A new fieldset called “Additional Node Search Configuration” appears on the search settings page (admin/config/search/settings).

The first item allows me to solve my problem of visitors being able to search rotator content. I can now allow administrators to search for rotator content, but only allow visitors to search the blog content types.

The second item the module adds gives us a new settings that control how the advanced search form renders and can override field labels on the search forms.

Details Modules

As the brilliant architect and furniture designer Charles Eames said, “The details are not the details. They make the design.” These three modules are details modules that many sites would leave out in favor of bigger features. But we agree with Eames. Fine tuning the client/visitor interaction with your site is never a waste of time.

Image: Wikimedia Commons

Why Dropping Your Blog for Facebook is a Bad Idea

Amy Peveto — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 14:16:43 +0000

Last week I tweeted out a USA Today article with some statistics on why companies are quitting blogging in favor of social media. I’m glad to see companies embracing new technologies, but troubled by their reasons for abandoning blogging — and the possible ramifications of that abandonment.

Why they’re quitting

Companies are falling into the accidental trap created by well-meaning marketers. We say things like “Blogging is free!” and write articles like “Set Up Your Free Blog and Start Blogging in 15 Minutes,” but what doesn’t always come across right away is that blogging (when done right) takes time — lots of it.

Employees get all spun up about blogging, but when they realize that writing articles, moderating and responding to comments, and dealing with various legal issues/red tape takes over their calendar, they quit because it’s too much work.

Secondly, companies quit blogging because they don’t see results. The reasons for this are varied:

Results aren’t instantaneous. When a company isn’t seeing results and are told that in order to they’ll need to—you guessed it—work more, they’re likely to quit in frustration.
It’s the wrong content. Blogs should not exist solely to pitch a company’s products and press releases. Companies that blog that way are unsuccessful, and give up.

What they’re doing instead

According to the research cited in the USA Today article, companies like Bank of America have left their blogs to gather dust and moved onto platforms like Facebook and Twitter.

“Blogging requires more investment,” said profession Nora Ganim Barnes. “You need content regularly. And you need to think about the risk of blogging, accepting comments, liability issues, defamation.” Apparently the idea is that social media requires less effort than blogging, and is less risky.

Why this is dangerous

Dropping blogging in favor of social media because the latter is “easier” or “less risky” is the dumbest thing I’ve heard in the last year. If being on social media requires less investment, less content, and less risk, you’re doing it wrong.

What’s more, leaving your blog for social media can be detrimental to your search engine rankings, branding, and business. Moving to social media takes ownership from you and gives it to someone else.

Ownership

I believe your website should be the hub of your business’ activity. Every radio ad, television spot, tweet, Stumble, and post should funnel visitors directly to your website, which in an ideal world contains even more valuable—and branded!—content that converts them into leads and sales.

If you outsource this activity to Facebook or Twitter, that central hub is gone. The content you post isn’t really yours — plus it has to cut through the noise and distractions every social platform presents. All your content is on a third-party website over which you have little control.

Also, if you aren’t creating your own content, what are you sharing on social media? If you want to do more than promote your products or services, it’s better to share valuable content you have created yourself than content created by someone else.

SEO

People may be sharing and re-tweeting your social media content, but if your website is static and dull, it’s unlikely that anyone is linking to it; and because linkbacks are critical to ranking in Google searches, not having any is going to affect your site’s position in search results.

Consistently sharing helpful content on your website is one of the most effective ways of getting backlinks and rising higher on search pages. Google does index individual social media interactions, but those posts do not always present the ideal image of your business. Wouldn’t you prefer that someone who searches for you finds your website homepage or FAQ, and not that Facebook post with the picture of the office cat’s birthday party?

Blogging is social media

Companies tend to split “blogging” and “social media” into two separate buckets, but the truth is that blogging is a cornerstone of social media. Blog posts are your content that brings links back to your website — blog posts should feed your social media activity, not be replaced by it.

Buckle down

As both the Digett blog manager (read: she-beast) and owner of a personal blog, I understand the time blogging takes and the stress it can cause. But the results are worth it, and sometimes you just have to suck it up and try harder.

More on blogging

[Image: openDemocracy]

CiviCRM and Drupal, the dream team!

JD Collier — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 16:14:57 +0000

I'm just going to get this out of the way: CiviCRM is complex. Of course, it is complex. We are not comparing CiviCRM to a simple blogging platform or little piece of software to perform a simple task. CiviCRM is a constituent relationship management solution. It is a great solution to manage non-profits, advocacy and any membership-oriented organization.

What is it?

A little of everything:

Contact management
Contributions
Communications
Peer-to-peer fundraisers
Advocacy campaigns
Events
Members
Reports
Case management

So, of course CiviCRM is not simple. How could something as complex as the needs of a CRM be simple?

Why I like CiviCRM

For over a decade, I managed and consulted on faith-based CRM solutions. These solutions had the same requirements that I've seen in CiviCRM, but for some reason I hadn't heard of CiviCRM itself. I wish I had!

I like CiviCRM best and here's why:

CiviCRM is paired with Drupal. I never found a solution for faith-based organizations that included a great CRM and a great CMS. In my experience, one of them always lacked something. What's better is that CiviCRM data is exposed to Drupal so I can use the power of Views and other Drupal standards to pull in CRM data.
CiviCRM is Open Source, using well-supported technologies. When an organization chooses CiviCRM, they aren't using a niche technology that no one can support. PHP, Drupal, MySQL … these technologies are well supported. An organization choosing CiviCRM knows the system will be able to grow with their needs.
CiviCRM already has the main functions I searched for when evaluating CRMs. In addition to the main functionality needed, CiviCRM can also manage advocacy campaigns, pledges/contributions, grantors/grantees and volunteers.

No robust CRM solution should be attempted without guru support. Train your employee with similar skills, hire a (well vetted) consultant, hire a company like Digett.

Continue reading

A First Look at Drupal Commerce: More Than a Module

Art Williams — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 15:45:46 +0000

Last week we were evaluating solutions for a client and I had the opportunity to install and test Drupal Commerce (DC) for the first time. Digett and I both have a long history of Ubercart use, but since we made the move to Drupal 7 in the middle of last year none of our new website builds have needed a full shopping cart system.

This client is currently using a LMS combined with a CMS (Joomla) to sell and manage access to online and offline learning products. The list of products is small, but each product includes an extensive list of individual pieces of content (video, audio, surveys, and text). If we could reduce the complexity of these systems by using Drupal for everything, it would be a huge win for the client.

Getting Started

There are two paths you can take to get Drupal Commerce up and running.

The first option is to install Drupal and Drupal Commerce, along with all its dependencies (Ctools, Views, Entity API, Rules, and Address field) from scratch and configure everything to work as you prefer.
The second option is to use the Commerce Kickstart distribution.

At Digett we have a Drupal 7 base installation with all of our favorite modules already pre-configured the way we like them; for me it would have taken much longer to reproduce all of that work on Kickstart than to just install Drupal Commerce from scratch.

If you are starting without an existing site or don’t have your own distribution/base install of Drupal, I recommend sticking with Kickstart. Kickstart also gives you a chance to test Drupal Commerce with very little investment before going back and building it from scratch.

Drupal Commerce (D7) vs. Ubercart (D6)

Drupal Commerce is very tightly integrated into Drupal 7 core, Views, and Rules — so much so that it’s sometimes not clear where to go to customize certain parts of it (the answer is usually Views or Rules). This tight integration means that much of Drupal 7’s entity model is leveraged in Drupal Commerce, thereby reducing the duplicate work for the DC developers. It also means that once you overcome that feeling of wondering how to get into the store administration area and accept the fact that it’s just all Drupal administration, then DC begins to make so much sense.

In contrast, Ubercart in D6 was really a stand alone program that used Drupal's nodes and exposed itself to Views. This made the administration of your store feel separate from administering Drupal.

I think that the less experience you have with Drupal the more this will feel like the better way. And clients seem to understand that separateness very well. It will remain to be seen how our clients respond to Drupal Commerce. But worst case scenario we will have to create administrative views and dashboards to help the client with DC.

Lastly, Drupal Commerce has a different approach to Products and their variations. Instead of adding variations to a product node as in Ubercart, each variation is created as a standalone product. But those products are not directly addressable. Instead you create a “product display” content type where you can select a list of products to be displayed.

Think of it like inventory in the stockroom (product) and a point of sale display (product display). This approach can accommodate nearly any ecommerce situation since most of the advanced logic is created in Rules without coding new modules.

My Impressions

I’m initially very positive on the way Drupal Commerce is built and functions. I think the decision to base it so deeply on Drupal’s entity structure is best in the long run. I’ve seen complaints about needing to creating a new product for each product variation, but I see how this approach provides much more flexibility. And there are already some projects focusing on making simple product variations easier to build.

Drupal Commerce was blazing fast to configure. In less than five hours (including the time spent watching some of the tutorial videos from Commerce Guys) I had a fully functioning test site with Drupal Commerce configured to allow access to a particular node of video content when a particular product was purchased just as the client needed.

DC’s use of Rules for most of the logic, while providing an overwhelming capability for customization, could be a barrier for certain groups of Drupal users who are not used to Rules. If you’ve not used Rules much, it’s worth the effort to develop some experience there. It will help you in all of your Drupal development.

The one major downside of Drupal Commerce is lack of documentation, but Ubercart isn’t any better in that area. The video tutorials from the Commerce Guys make up for it in some areas, but for something like an ecommerce solution, documentation with screenshots will be critical to making DC accessible for the non-developer, site builder.

In all, I would wholeheartedly recommend Drupal Commerce for a new ecommerce site. I know Ubercart also has a D7 version now and it is based on Entity API, Views, and Rules too. DC and Ubercart even have similar numbers of site installs on their D7 releases, but it seems to me that the bulk of the Drupal community is focused on Drupal Commerce.

The flexibility and speed of development are refreshing in ecommerce software. With another 12 months of development, community support, and documentation DC could be a force to be reckoned with in ecommerce as an industry, not just on Drupal.

Benefits & Challenges of Pro Bono Work

Amy Peveto — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 14:00:57 +0000

Depending on your industry, you may at one time or another be asked to do some pro bono (“for the good”) work. These can be opportunities to help both the customer and yourself, but present unique challenges that need to be understood before diving in.

Note: For purposes of this blog post, I’m referring to pro bono work done for non-profit or charitable organizations — not for companies that can afford to pay but don’t think they should have to. That’s a different can of worms.

Benefits

Lending a hand

Whether you’re designing a new website, helping someone file for 501(c)3 status, or providing any other service, there’s a great deal of joy that comes with helping someone else. Non-profits, especially local ones, often start out with so few resources that any help you provide pushes them forward by leaps and bounds.

By doing pro bono work for an organization that couldn’t afford it otherwise, you help increase their reach and hopefully the amount of good they can do for others.

Give to get

It’s selfish but true: if you help someone now, they’re more likely to return the favor later. Helping an organization in need can result in business references, positive word of mouth from the organization, or in payment at a later date once that business has grown.

Similarly, prospective clients or customers will see that you are passionate about what you do, are willing to help others, and still create a valuable product or service even if there’s not much in it for you.

Learn by doing

Working pro bono is a great way to learn:

How non-profit or charitable organizations function from a business perspective.
What different organizations’ audiences need — war veterans, for example, have an easier time using websites with graphical navigation and calm colors.
Whether working with these types of organizations full-time is something you would enjoy.

Challenges

Unfulfilled promises

Any of this sound familiar?

“We’ll put a link to your website on ours.”
“We’ll recommend you to everyone.”
“We’ll pay you back once we get our grant.”

It doesn’t take much asking around to find people who have heard such promises from organizations for whom they worked for free; what’s harder to find are people who have seen follow-through on those promises.

Often this is a result of a lack of the organization’s ability — they really might not ever be able to pay you back, or the references they give aren’t the right match for your company.

This problem can, unfortunately, come from either way. Depending on a company’s culture and workload, some may equate bro bono work with being able to slack off; the final product may be less than what was promised, and everyone comes away dissatisfied.

Scope creep

It’s easy to fall into this trap when doing pro bono work. A small non-profit comes to you for help with copywriting, and somehow you end up helping them organize and promote an event — and you get paid for neither.

Smoothing the process

If you decide to do some pro bono work, there are a couple things you can do to help ensure a positive experience for everyone involved.

Follow your passion

If you’re asked to do pro bono work, or are choosing between two organizations with whom to partner, go with your gut. Is the organization and its mission something about which you can be passionate? Working for free is less frustrating if you enjoy what you’re doing, and your final result will showcase that passion.

Put it in writing

Work together to create a contract or statement of work that includes each party’s responsibilities and a set completion date for all work.

Even if no money is exchanging hands, the process of putting down the project’s elements and any “payment” (i.e., they’ll recommend you to five businesses this year) gives all parties a frame of reference and can provide the gentle pressure needed to make sure everyone does what they say they will, when they say they will.

Get to give

Ask for a small fee for one aspect of the work you’re doing. This can cover at least a little of your time, and vets the organization who wants to work with you — if they’re not willing to pay a little in exchange for a lot, it could be a red flag that you shouldn’t work together.

What’s your experience with pro bono work? Leave your thoughts and additions to this list in the comments.

[Image: Valerie Everett]

Wordpress vs. Drupal: The Prize Fight!

JD Collier — Fri, 20 Apr 2012 13:32:13 +0000

I have developed very large, very small and every size website between. I have rolled my own CMS, used (and even developed extensions for) Typo3, Wordpress, Expression Engine, Mambo & Joomla, WebGUI, SharePoint, MonkCMS/Ekklesia360, DotNetNuke and Drupal. By far, I have been most loyal to Wordpress and Drupal.

At this point, however, I find myself wanting to focus 100% of my attention on Drupal. For the smallest, for the largest and for all the sites between, I prefer Drupal.

Often I feel there is a fight between Wordpress and Drupal in my head. Recently, though, Drupal knocked out Wordpress and now I consider myself to be Drupal at my core. Here's the play-by-play of the fight. (Note: I'm not going to go deep into each point.)

Round 1: Suitability to task

Drupal is heavier, but can respond to more unique scenarios. Drupal comes in with a flurry of punches!

While I can build any site using either platform, that doesn't mean I'd want to. In a complex website, you have many different types of content — home page rotator, articles, blog posts, general pages, calls to action, testimonials … the list goes on and on.

Drupal wins on custom content types. It is possible with both platforms, but it is simpler to set up in Drupal.
Even the simplest brochure or blog site will need some extra piece of information. Drupal blocks are more robust than Wordpress widgets.
We often need to display data in a unique way. Drupal views is the most powerful way to make the web page do whatever I need. In Wordpress, I can do similar things in the PHP of the theme, but it just doesn't compare.

Round 2: Ease of development

Wordpress sucker punches Drupal on theme simplicity. Seriously!

When I develop a site in Wordpress, I have never started from a pre-built theme. I start with beautiful, clean HTML/CSS markup and then add in Wordpress theme API calls.

Drupal needs this simplicity in theming. With Drupal, I start from a base theme like Zen and bend the base theme to my design. This is fine, but on more than one occasion I have found myself spending too much time looking for a style class in the theme — if the code had all been mine to begin with, I would have been faster.

The learning curve for Drupal is steeper — I hear this a lot. I disagree! Every platform requires a developer to check the API documentation. I have used Wordpress navigation countless times, but I still have to check the syntax of the specific api call from time to time. In Drupal, I do the same thing. The documentation for both platforms is rubust. If you know PHP I think they are the same.

Round 3: Robust platform

Knockout! Drupal wins!

Drupal has modules, Wordpress has themes. I can do amazing things with each.

Drupal knocks out Wordpress with Views, Blocks, and Content Types! Enough said.

Wrap up

Today, I can still deploy a small Wordpress site faster than a small Drupal site. That does get Wordpress a number of points for small web shops working to stay profitable. But, by working hard to define consistent processes and keeping our base installation of Drupal up-to-date, we can now set up a Drupal site in about the same time as a Wordpress site. Then, when the client asks for X new function, we smile because we used Drupal and the unique thing they asked to do is possible because it is Drupal.

This is an opinion piece, and as such, I would very much enjoy hearing how you agree or disagree. I'm all ears.

Creating Content: Agency vs. Freelance

Amy Peveto — Mon, 16 Apr 2012 14:18:21 +0000

I’ve said before that content is the foundation of a successful marketing strategy. And I’ve ~~harped~~ written extensively about ways to create that content. If you’re unable to do your own writing, I recommend hiring someone to do it for you. There are two ways to go outside your company for content, and we’ll take a look at both now.

Hiring an agency

A content marketing agency is a company that writes content for other companies. They employ a bevy of writers who, depending on the agency, create everything from blog articles to whitepapers, infographics to social media content.

Pros

One-stop shop - Agencies do more than provide writers. Many assist you in identifying target audiences, creating editorial calendars, and coming up with topics; they also present reports on how the content is performing, and can be a great ally when it comes to making decisions about what strategies to try.

Another great thing about hiring an agency is that all the writers are in the same place, and you only need to to communicate with one or two people. In contrast, you may have to individually hire a handful of freelancers who then need to be contacted and managed individually.

Wide subject matter expertise - Because an agency employs many writers, their expertise is going to be more varied; you’re more likely to find a social media expert and a mechanical engineering expert under the same roof. This decreases the amount of time you have to spend searching for individual writers in separate places.

Boost in Google News - Google News likes websites with multiple authors. If you’ve got a handful of writers from an agency posting to your website daily, you’ll be ahead of the game.

Cons

More expensive - All the help an agency provides through strategy, recommendations, planning, and reporting comes at a premium. Be prepared to pay more than you would to a freelancer. Which leads to...

Paying for what you don’t need - Depending on your knowledge of your audience and strategies, you may not need help with strategies and recommendations. Some agencies are willing to accept writing-only jobs, but others may not be able to work with you without including a strategy component in their pricing.

Where to find them

There are lots of articles focused on finding a content marketing agency, and it’s a subject too complex to delve into today. A couple of (very) high-level things to keep in mind:

Does the agency have experience writing for your industry?
Do they have good strategic planning skills, and can they manage a larger project from start to finish? Whitepapers and webinars, for example, can take months to plan and execute properly.
Do they keep SEO in mind for every piece of content?
How do they measure success? Do they measure it?
Ask for referrals, and follow up with every one.

For more on finding and choosing a content marketing agency, check out this handy scoring method.

Hiring a freelancer

A freelance writer is an individual who makes part or all of their living by writing content for others. In contrast to an agency, these writers work for themselves (even if they coordinate their jobs through a website or other entity).

Pros

Simpler hiring process - Hiring a freelancer can be as easy as posting to Twitter and asking for recommendations or applications. It may take a few phone calls, but generally you can hire a freelancer quickly and without much fuss.

Less expensive - Agencies tend to run on a monthly payment model, but freelancers usually charge by the hour or word. If they’re not writing, you don’t pay.

Available in a pinch - It may be that you’re posting content regularly already, but need some help during your busy season (tax time, Valentine’s Day, Christmas, etc.). You can hire a freelance writer to write one article, pay them for their work, and not need to do so again for six months or a year.

Cons

Fewer resources - There will only be so much content you can get from a single freelancer. Depending on their workload, they may be writing content for other companies or organizations, and may not have as much time to dedicate to you as would an agency employee.

Narrower expertise - No matter their intelligence, a single person can only know so much. If you need content covering divergent topics, you may need to hire multiple freelancers to write it. This increases the time spent directing and managing multiple people.

Where to find them

Look for a freelance writer as you would any other employee. Depending on your business this may mean:

Asking for recommendations on your social media channels
Looking for writers on LinkedIn
Posting an ad on your website, in your newsletter, or in an industry publication

There are also dozens of reputable websites where freelance writers post profiles, previous work, and make themselves searchable by companies seeking writing services. These places include:

Please note that Digett has never used any of these services, and cannot vouch for the quality of your experience. Do your research and see which sites have a reputation for being the best.

Parting shots

Whether you decide to hire an agency or freelance writer(s), remember that great content is what leads to more website traffic, more qualified leads, and more business. Choose the options that make the most sense for your customers and your business and you can’t go wrong.

Like that? Read this

[Image: bgottsab]

Why do we talk about Drupal so much?

Art Williams — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 17:53:05 +0000

As a client or potential client of Digett you probably have taken a look through our blog posts and wondered why we bother posting technical articles about Drupal. Some people think, “That’s not what a client wants to read.” or “Prospects aren’t interested in all that technobabble.” But as a client—ours or anyone else’s—the technical materials should be important to you too. Here’s why and what you can learn from our example.

Actions Speak Louder

Too many times have I been on a website and seen Joomla, Wordpress, Drupal, and Dreamweaver all listed as the expertise of a small firm. Anyone can list off all the top content management systems (CMS) and claim to be an expert, but the more likely scenario is that they are proficient at one or maybe two and passable at the others.

So how can you tell if someone really knows Drupal (or any other platform)? Read their technical posts and the comments. Are the posts educational and do they talk about applying technical knowledge on the topic? Do they have comments and are they from other developers? Do the comments support the notion that the author is an expert on the topic? You don’t have to completely understand all of the technical language to get a sense of whether the author knows what he or she is doing.

Enthusiasm is Contagious

A large part of the purpose of any website is to attract traffic and build a community. Talking about things that interest you is a way to do both. The interesting thing about being interesting is that when one tries to be interesting they often fail, but when one gets excited about something others get excited too. Evangelist John Wesley, famously said, “Catch on fire with enthusiasm and people will come for miles to watch you burn.” You don’t have to be the most polished writer to talk about what interests you — just “catch on fire with enthusiasm.”

Our technical posts about Drupal have brought in a substantial increase in overall traffic to our site. And while much of that traffic is from other developers and not prospects, the traffic increase has a positive effect on our credibility with search engines.

Drupal is the Bomb

Lastly, Drupal is on an upward trend in popularity and awareness, and has been for a few years. There are some large Drupal firms with sales efforts out talking about Drupal among enterprise clients. While we didn’t choose Drupal for this reason, we are positioned to ride this wave of growth due to our established expertise in Drupal and experience with building visually appealing, clean and user friendly sites.

So Drupal is not only what we are enthusiastic about, but it is a positively trending topic in web design. We blog about Drupal so much because it brings together both of those reasons while providing evidence to prospects of our technical expertise.

Image: Icanhascheezeburger.com

Why CEOs Should Use Social Media

Amy Peveto — Mon, 09 Apr 2012 14:13:09 +0000

Many CEOs are hesitant to use social media, citing fears of negative feedback, bad handling of crises, and lack of measurable and healthy return on investment. But as social media becomes ubiquitous and younger CEOs who grew up using it bring that expertise to their own businesses, knowing and leveraging social media’s value has become crucial.

Business benefits

Mashable’s The Future Social CEO infographic has lots of info on the CEO of the future, but it also includes some current statistics that may surprise you:

45% of businesses have reduced their marketing expenses using social media.
48% have generated more qualified leads using social media.
35% of those businesses have used social media to close business deals.

Gain consumers’ trust

The 2012 CEO, Social Media & Leadership Survey revealed that 82% of respondents are more likely to trust a company whose CEO and leadership steam openly communicate via social media. Also, 77% of respondents are more likely to buy from brands whose CEO and/or leadership team uses social media to communicate.

Humanize your company

The Madmen days of high-rise offices and dry, useless press releases are over. It’s time to start interacting with customers on their turf, and be willing to give a little to get something in return. Ask questions, give away gifts (no strings attached), and focus on your audience instead of your business.

Lead the way

As a CEO, part of your job is to be a visionary. You are the leader of your company; how can you expect your employees to innovate or be “authentic” or “engaged” with your customers if you’re dragging your feet?

It’s trite but true: great leaders lead by example, and attitude reflects leadership. What kind of leader are you?

More CEO resources

[Image: AltMuslimah]

Fresh Roasted from Digett

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Measure & sustain

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Why Dropping Your Blog for Facebook is a Bad Idea

Why they’re quitting

What they’re doing instead

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Ownership

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CiviCRM and Drupal, the dream team!

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A First Look at Drupal Commerce: More Than a Module

Getting Started

Drupal Commerce (D7) vs. Ubercart (D6)

My Impressions

Benefits & Challenges of Pro Bono Work

Benefits

Lending a hand

Give to get

Learn by doing

Challenges

Unfulfilled promises

Scope creep

Smoothing the process

Follow your passion

Put it in writing

Get to give

Wordpress vs. Drupal: The Prize Fight!

Round 1: Suitability to task

Round 2: Ease of development

Round 3: Robust platform

Wrap up

Further reading

Creating Content: Agency vs. Freelance

Hiring an agency

Pros

Cons

Where to find them

Hiring a freelancer

Pros

Cons

Where to find them