Inbound Marketing University (June 15–19) is a free retraining program for marketers who want a competitive edge in the workforce. (I would also recommend it for business owners, who should develop at least a glancing familiarity with 21st century marketing tools and strategy.) The IMU program includes ten webinar classes and one review session, and [...]
Putting out the Fire When a Project Goes “Boom” As an independent Web designer and strategist, I wear a lot of hats, one of which is a firefighter’s helmet. Sometimes, despite your best efforts, a project explodes in your face. Whether or not you are at fault, you have a seriously unhappy client on your [...]
Some days (like today) I get terribly frustrated working in a field where anyone with a copy of Dreamweaver can call himself a professional Web designer. I’ve had too many clients whose sites needed to be rebuilt from the ground up thanks to shoddy work. Some of these clients hired not one but a series [...]
Social media is a brave new world of opportunity for marketers who understand that you don’t go into social spaces to market. Its code of behavior isn’t canonized (unless you count the excellent Word of Mouth Marketing Ethics Code of Conduct), but conversation about how to behave abounds. (Take, for example, Aliza Sherman’s recent article [...]
I just attended a fabulous Hubspot Webinar called “How to be Smarter than Your PR Agency.” Inbound marketing wiz Rebecca Corliss, along with Hubspot Marketing VP Mike Volpe, provided a wealth of information on writing highly effective press releases (also known as news releases these days, since they are no longer accessible only to members [...]
Twitterfeed, a free service that automatically tweets your blog updates, has been running awfully slow for me lately. Seriously, glaciers migrate faster than my posts do to Twitter. I just deleted my Twitter feed and am trying out the Twitter Updater plugin for WordPress.
Volunteer work has always been part of my career as a Web developer. That work has almost always resulted in new business. I didn’t set out to make money from volunteering or offering reduced rates for nonprofits, but I found that making time for it has benefited me fiscally, socially, and spiritually. I’ve built three [...]
Accessibility testing is a big job. Our major accessibility standards, Section 508 of the 1998 Rehabilitation Act and the international protocol Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0, include criteria that can be checked by machine, but much of the testing requires human judgment. For instance, a machine can check that every image has an ALT [...]
With Access U right around the corner, I feel inspired to revisit one of the most important, yet most often overlooked, considerations of Web site design—accessibility. The federal government acknowledged through the 1998 amending of the Rehabilitation Act (Section 508) that access to information is a civil right. I would like for this to be [...]
Don’t Be a Twit—Be a Tweep! Back by popular demand! This information-packed, hands-on workshop will help you understand what Twitter is and how to leverage it for your business. The workshop will be held on Tuesday, May 5, from 6 – 8 PM at my home in Round Rock. The cost is $40. Call 512-244-7880 [...]
