EvoBloggito

If My Reader Could Contain Only 10 Feeds

Author: Ray Gulick; Published: Dec 25, 2009; Category: Blogging, Business, Communication, Design/Development, Marketing, Search/SEO; Tags: Blogging, Communication, Education, RSS Feeds; No Comments

I have a lot of blogs and news sources in my reader. So many I can’t possibly read them all every day and stil get any work done. But there are relatively few I consider indispensable, and on the face of it, they don’t seem to have a lot in common. Subject-matter-wise, they’re all over the board. There is a common thread, however; or maybe a couple of threads. Each of the following does at least one of two things on a consistent basis:

1. challenges me to think about something in a new way
2. offers usable information that I can incorporate into what I’m doing

Now that I think of it, those [apparently] rare ingredients comprise a recipe for blogging success. I know my own posts can’t boast of either more than occasionally, and perhaps it’s the consistency that’s the real trick with the recipe. Each of these are very successful blogs with lots of readers, so they’re obviously doing something right.

My most valued feeds, in alphabetical order:

Chris Brogan – The guy is practically synonymous with social media in general, and blogging in particular. He preaches the word on social media as a marketing strategy to the faithful, the backsliders, and the non-believers. And he knows what he’s talking about. A must-read for people involved even peripherally with online or social media marketing.

CSS-Tricks – One of the few web dev blogs that consistently presents useful and interesting information. Chris Coyier puts out nuts-and-bolts stuff, like explanations of absolute and relative positioning, centering a navigation bar, etc. But he also offers code snippets, downloads, and a forum. Worth a daily visit.

Duct Tape Marketing – John Jantsch offers practical and pragmatic advice for small businesses. He’s packaged his approach in a book, webinars, and a 14-lesson training program. I have bought and read the book, and recommend it highly for small business owners. His blog posts prod and educate. His website is full of links and resources. If you own a small business, you should be reading this blog.

Fuel Your Creativity – For me, FYC is more about inspiration than anything else—a site that feeds the designer part of my soul.

Hubspot – Hubspot is working to bring measurability to social media marketing. Their blog is a major training resource for business people trying to figure out how to benefit from "attraction" marketing, as opposed to "interruption" marketing. They sell a service that helps measure the effectiveness of online marketing efforts, but they’re not pushy about it. And they offer free webinars and a lot of great how-to-market-online information.

Seth’s Blog – Seth Godin does blogging all wrong. He doesn’t allow comments on his posts, his blog is hosted on Typepad rather than on a webhosting platform he controls, and he apparently spent no more than a couple of minutes customizing his blog’s appearance. But Seth is a marketing guru’s guru and an iconoclast’s iconoclast. He can succeed by doing things differently because he’s Seth Godin. He delights in flipping concepts on their heads. He turns kvetching into a useful exercise in logic. And often, he asks some interesting questions. His posts and observations are usually short, often simple, and almost always thought-provoking (consider that a warning).

ThemeGrade – ThemeGrade fills an important need in the world of WordPress blogs: it reviews and rates WordPress themes on code and SEO compliance based on standardized testing. Before ThemeGrade, it was up to you to figure out if it was a good idea to install and spend time modifying that cool theme you loved the look of. TG ranks themes with gold (currently about 3% of submitted themes), silver (13%), bronze (31%), or no rating (currently 53% of submitted themes). We’re proud to say our Evo4 CMS WordPress theme was rated silver.

WNYC’s Radio Lab – Maybe the most interesting audio on the Internet. Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich have fun exploring interesting ideas and we get to go along for the ride. The audio programs get posted about every other week, so this isn’t a daily listen. The podcasts are 15-60 minutes each, and every one is more than worth the time.

WP Beginner – There are several "How-to" WordPress sites, and a lot of them are good, but WP Beginner is my favorite, because it usually serves up something I need or have wondered about. And though it’s suitable for beginners as its name suggests, there is plenty of advanced information there also, simply and straightforwardly presented.

Zen Habits – I’m a regular reader of Buddhist and zen materials. Being mindful and present, appreciating simplicity: these are things that are difficult to bring into our working lives. But that’s what Leo Babauta’s blog is about, and I appreciate its quiet, gentle, and practical advice about working, living, and balance.

So that’s my list of indispensable feeds. I hope there’s something on it that helps you. If not, well, we don’t have a complaint department, but feel free to tell me what should have been included on the list. And Merry Christmas.

Creating a Faux Double Background with Absolute and Relative Position

Author: Ray Gulick; Published: Dec 21, 2009; Category: CSS, Design/Development; Tags: CSS, Design/Development; 6 Comments

Recently, I had a need for two background images on a page I was asked to create to display a client’s online Christmas card. The background required a blend, easily made with a vertical gradient image. On top of that, another background image was to appear partially hidden behind a horizontally centered div that held a Flash movie. Further, the second background image had to adjust position as the browser window was made narrower or wider.

First, I Googled "two background images CSS." The solutions I found were complicated, or the background images didn’t move, or making them work with all browsers (I’m looking at you, IE6 and IE7) required some hacks. I’m not completely above using hacks, but I’d rather avoid them if possible.

Then I remembered that absolute and relative positioning create some interesting effects in layering elements. By specifying the second "background" image with absolute position, and applying a percentage on the right, I was able to make the image slide across the screen as the browser window was made narrower or wider. Applying relative position to subsequent elements allows them to appear "on top" of the image. See the demo here.

For the demo, the original client info has been replaced with Evo info (to protect the innocent, and because this is my blog post, so there!). Also, the content div does not include a Flash movie, and the div is transparent so the partially hidden image can be seen in full.

Here is the basic page structure as rendered by the CSS, numbered in the order in which the elements appear on the page:

Following is the CSS (classes important for the faux background effect are bolded):

* { margin:0; padding:0; }

body { font-family:helvetica,arial,sans-serif; background:#ccc url(images/bkgrd.jpg) 0 0 repeat-x; text-align:center; color:#777; }

.background2 { position:absolute; top:0; right:65%; }

.logo { width:740px; text-align:left; margin:0 auto; position:relative; }

.content { width:740px; height:370px; margin:0 auto; position:relative; background:#555; filter:alpha(opacity=60); -moz-opacity:.6; opacity:.6; }

.content p { color:#fff; padding:80px 80px 0 80px; line-height:150%; }

.links { width:740px;  text-align:left; margin:0 auto; position:relative; }

.links p.left { float:left; display:inline; font-size:11px; letter-spacing:.1em; padding:18px 0; }

.links p.right { float:right; display:inline; font-size:11px; letter-spacing:.1em; padding:18px 0; }

a { text-decoration:none; border:none; }

a:link, a:visited { color:#777; }

a:hover { color:#000; }

.content a:link, .content a:visited { color:#ccc; }

.content a:hover { color:#000; }

Download the files»

The Surest (and most common) Way for Companies to Shackle Their Social Media Efforts

Author: Ray Gulick; Published: Dec 18, 2009; Category: Blogging, Business, Communication, Marketing; Tags: Business, Communication, social media; No Comments

More and more companies seem to be getting the message: social media (blogging, Facebook, Twitter, etc.) presents great opportunities for making connections with their customers and would-be customers. And yet, many of them get it wrong, mostly because they fail to grasp that social media is not just another variation on broadcast media.

There is a scene in Cool Hand Luke, in which the warden (Strother Martin) says to Paul Newman’s character, Luke: "You ain’t gonna need no third set [of shackles], ’cause you’re gonna get your mind right. And I mean RIGHT." That’s what needs to happen with corporate marketing managers and small business owners before they venture into social media: they need to get their minds right.

Here’s an all-too-common scenario:

1. Marketing executive, experienced in managing marketing campaigns, ad campaigns, and PR campaigns, decides to "get into social media."
2. She has her ad agency create a blog and set up a Facebook fanpage. She gets her PR group to develop some social media-flavored promotional and marketing messages.
3. She assigns some junior staffers to create social media content using the messages: blog posts, Facebook updates, tweets, etc. All of this content has the hollow, promotional, not-fully-human, fingernails-on-chalkboard sound of corporate messages delivered out of context.
4. After several unfruitful months trying to make her messages "go viral," the marketing executive believes there is no ROI for social media. She tried it, and it doesn’t work. And she’s right. Her old-school, promotional, broadcast media approach to social media is guaranteed to fail. Every. Single. Time.

What marketing people and business owners need to understand is that creating an effective social media presence is like joining a conversation. Conversations happen between people who listen and respond to one another; they are not a series of carefully polished and self-interested messages. These kinds of conversations, based on listening and responding, generally lead to relationships, because we all value someone who listens to us.

Think of it this way:

How would you react if you were in a conversation with another person about how to barbecue spare ribs, and someone walked up to butt into the conversation with "I know you’re interested in spare ribs! This week only, I’m offering customers 20% off on all spare ribs, limit 5 lbs. per customer, offer void in combination with all other promotions." If you’re like most of us, you’d ignore that person in the hope that he would go away. If he persisted in pressing his own interests without making an honest attempt to form a relationship with you, eventually you’d probably excuse yourself. If you’re more direct, you might let him know that he’s interrupting a private conversation in which he is not welcome.

On the other hand, what if he walked up and hovered near you and the person you were talking with, listening intently for a few minutes before asking, "Excuse me, but how do you make sure your ribs stay juicy? Mine are often dry."? Most people would welcome him into the conversation, and within a relatively short period of time, would welcome any information of value that he brought to it (assuming he continued to listen and respond appropriately in your conversation).

You gotta get your mind right. And I mean RIGHT. Then start blogging and setting up Facebook fanpages.

An Invitation to All New Mexico Business and Professional Bloggers

Author: Ray Gulick; Published: Dec 16, 2009; Category: Blogging, Business; Tags: Blogging for Business, LinkedIn, Networking; 2 Comments

I did something out of character a couple of days ago. I started a LinkedIn group: New Mexico Bloggers. For the most part, I’m not a group kind of guy (at least not in an active sort of way), but I want to encourage business and professional blogging in New Mexico, and this is one way of doing it. Ideally, such a group could provide both support and connections for New Mexico bloggers.

A lot of what happens with the group depends on me getting the ball rolling. So I have some work to do. LinkedIn is not quite the platform I had hoped it would be (a lot of spammers and blatant self-promoters), but it’s possible to have meaningful group interaction in a self-policing group.

The group will be platform-agnostic. We really don’t care whether your blog is on WordPress, Blogger, TypePad, Drupal, or any other platform. All bloggers have certain things in common, from the "blank screen" to strategic issues about how to grow your audience and how to utilize your blog to reach business and professional goals.

And then of course, there is the issue of blogging in New Mexico, a state that’s often behind the curve in technology and related trends. While I don’t see blogging as primarily a technological activity (the technology aspect is relatively trivial), most of the people I’ve talked to who don’t blog cite technology as one of the barriers for them ("I’m just not a computer person!"). To me that’s like refusing to drive to a restaurant because you’re "not a car person," but that’s another blog post.

So this is an invitation to all business and professional bloggers: meet me (and hopefully a lot of other New Mexico bloggers) on LinkedIn for discussions and other forms of group therapy. I’d like to create some in-person meetups as well, if the interest level supports them.

Five Fundamental Website Design Principles We Think About at Evo

Author: Ray Gulick; Published: Dec 8, 2009; Category: Accessibility, Communication, Design/Development; Tags: Accessibility, Communication, Design/Development; One Comment

Disclaimer: not an actual Evo
web designer.

There are lots of approaches to website design. Other designers may legitimately find much to disagree with in this short list, or have items to add (please!). But these are the over-arching principles I try to adhere to in designing sites. At least they’re the ones I can think of right now.

The header, footer, and side navigation or subnav areas should be thought of as a "frame" for website content. They should be attractive, well-organized, functional, and support the brand, but visually, they should not compete strongly with page content for attention. If you have a boring website, the way to fix it is not to make the header and footer more exciting (which does not necessarily preclude the need to redesign the header and footer). If your website lacks excitement or interest, put your time, budget, and energy into making your content more exciting and useful.

Be semantic with content structure. When the style sheet is turned off, the content on the page still needs to make sense. If it doesn’t, it impacts our next principle:

Accessibility is not optional. Accessibility starts with recognizing that not every website visitor sees or experiences websites the same way you do, and caring about their experience. The next step is to understand how their experiences may differ, and making accommodations so they can access the content. It’s easy to overlook accessibility if it’s an after-thought: it has to be a priority.

Prioritize content. What’s the most important content on each page? If it’s important, make it prominent, because expecting people to read carefully to extract the nuggets is unrealistic. This means highllighting content by various methods, including subheads, boxed content, color, scale, and bullet lists. And white space.

Footers are useful for other things besides holding copyright info. It used to be that footers were barely used and little noticed. Blogs have changed that, and the aesthetic works well on "traditional" websites and blog-based websites. While they are still not (and shouldn’t be) a place to put content that needs to be emphasized, footers have become a good place to put tags, social media links, contact info, marketing messages, and other information in addition to the copyright statement and links to the privacy policy.