Ask Andy - Micro-Consulting
June 30, 2008 by Andy Brudtkuhl · 1 Comment
We are the experts - so you don’t have to be.
Today we are launching our Ask Andy project. Ask Andy is a micro-consulting effort that attempts to reduce the amount of fluff from traditional consulting. We are trying a simple, question and answer, a la carte consulting model.
- Free: Our free service is a simple Q&A with no guarantees of response or quality or length. You may get a link for a response or a thoughtful analysis
- Micro: This is our Twitter-like micro-consulting feature. For $10 you have 140 characters to ask your question and we have 140 characters to answer the question
- Quickie: Within one day we’ll get back to you with a 1-2 paragraph response
- Analysis: Within three days we’ll deliver a brief, one page analysis for your question
- Case Study: Within five days you will get a two page analysis case study with research regarding your question
Andy Brudtkuhl and 48Web are experts in web strategy, internet marketing, internet advertising, internet business, Google Analytics, Google AdSense, Google AdWords, Google AdManager, Google AdPlanner, Search Engine Optimization (SEO), web services, web trends, web tools and productivity services, WordPress, content management systems, custom web development, XHTML, CSS, JavaScript, ASP.Net, among many others.
Wanna try it out? Check it out!
What is Micro-Consulting? Read about the model on Get A New Browser.
Corporate Website in Five Years
June 30, 2008 by Andy Brudtkuhl · Leave a Comment
Jeremiah Owyang recently held a contest on his blog to answer the question: “What is the future of Corporate Websites in 5 years?”. Being a web strategy *firm* I felt it appropriate to answer the question here.
First of all I see the market already trending from the stale, static, “brochure sites” into the next level of interactivity. While this trend is great (albeit late) the interactivity, at this point for the majority, appears to be one-way. It’s great for a company to use a CMS or blog to keep their website constantly updated. Consumers (and Google) love that. But the future is in transparent, two-way interaction.
Corporations will be “crowd-sourcing” their corporate website, bringing down the wall, and letting user generated content flow to the top - whether good or bad. Corporate websites will be the center point for discussion between the consumer and the business. They will (and should start right away), using crowd sourced systems for feature requests, feedback, and ideas (a la Dell).
Social Media tools, services, and communication will be a cornerstone for successful corporate web presences. These tools will promote and facilitate the practice of Word Of Mouth Marketing (WOMM) as well as the implementation of crowd sourced content.
And that’s just the tip of the iceberg for a web strategy of the future. This does not take into account your relationship with partners and ways you can empower your employees using these social, transparent, and external sourced web technologies… That’s a whole different ball game that should be embraced in an overall web strategy.
Are you interested in taking your website to this level? Want to formulate a web strategy that is transparent? Let us know.
Live with Zane Safrit this morning
June 18, 2008 by Andy Brudtkuhl · Leave a Comment
I will be discussing IowaFlood.com with Zane Safrit live this morning on BlogTalkRadio at 9:30 AM CST.
Zane Safrit talks about small business, innovation, word-of-mouth, leadership, generating positive cash-flows, topgrading, social media, blogs and bloggers, the economy…maybe even current events like politics. It’s personal, passionate, opinionated. And helpful.
We’ll be discussing social media and its convergence during disasters. We’ll be welcoming questions! Enjoy.
UPDATE: Here is the show…
Building IowaFlood.com
June 13, 2008 by Andy Brudtkuhl · 1 Comment
I’ve been asked a several times how I built IowaFlood.com and how it was done in 2 hours. Even though this is my business, I will share the secrets with you - because we are about education first here at 48Web.
Platform: WordPress
We are, self-admittedly, WordPress ninjas here at 48Web. Most of the projects we work on use it as a platform - proving it is not just a blogging tool. WordPress is the CMS / blog platform that powers the IowaFlood.com website. It gets auto updated from RSS feeds from Google, National Weather Service, Yahoo! Pipes, and others. Most of the main content (ie Videos and Pictures) are manually blogged by me. And we used a popular WordPress theme, called Morning After - which by this time has been heavily customized by me.
Engine: Yahoo! Pipes
I have used Yahoo! Pipes for many projects and there was no where else to look when the need came up. Pipes are doing two things for IowaFlood.com. First off I am using it to search, parse, and aggregate multiple news sources for posting to the website. Secondly, it provides the “Social Media Firehouse” widget you see on the top right that aggregates information from Flickr, YouTube and other sources based on a context I provide it.
Aggregator: Custom
The aggregator portion is some software I wrote that powers a number of websites, including IowaBlogs.net and centraliowabloggers.com. Basically it takes the output of Yahoo! Pipes and auto posts it to WordPress via an API wrapper I wrote to the XML-RPC API built into WordPress. This runs on a timed basis which is how the website is fed a lot of content.
Social: Twitter
The social tool of choice was obvious - Twitter. With the local #dmtweetup Twitter community in Des Moines I knew it would be easy to mobilize. In order to effectively aggregate the tweets into the system I asked everyone discussing the flood to use a hashtag - #IowaFlood. Using Twemes.com I created a hashtag widget that you see on the front page of IowaFlood.com.
Contributions: Many tools
In order to make it easy for as many people to contribute as possible I used a few things. First I set up a form at WuFoo so people could share their stories and upload pictures for me to post on the website. Secondly, I allow people to setup their own account on WordPress using the “Contributor” role so they can post content themselves. I asked that people upload pictures to Flickr using the tag #IowaFlood. Then, a Flickr group was created as well to organize the photos. I used Meebo to create an embeddable chat room for real time discussions. People also started using Twitter to communicate many messages to me, such as alerts and places needing sandbag help, for me to post on the website. And last I set up an email address for people who wanted to forward pictures to me (iowaflood[at]gmail.com). And last, we are using PayPal for donations that will go to the United Way of Central Iowa.
I think that’s about it… If you have any questions, leave a comment.
IowaFlood.com 72 Hours Later
June 13, 2008 by Andy Brudtkuhl · 2 Comments
Wow.
What a ride the last few days have been. It’s been about 72 hours since I launched IowaFlood.com and I can say I have learned a lot, and not just technical but about Word of Mouth, Citizen Journalism, our local community, and the generosity and communal nature of Iowans. So almost 72 hours, 3 servers, and 40,000 hits later let me recap the story.
First off, I have been asked on several occasions why I built this website. My first response was, “Because I can”. This was not meant to be arrogant or egotistical - just straightforward. I knew the mainstream media would not embrace the social aspect (at least not til I showed them how). I know the technology like the back of my hand (more on that later). And I knew I could get the word out - through the local twitter community.
My second response is that social media and citizen journalism are, by nature, a de-centralized system. There’s conversation going on in Twitter and on blogs. There are photos being uploaded to Flickr and forwarded via email. There are videos popping up on YouTube. Unless you have your ear to the social ground this great content may have passed you up. Enter IowaFlood.com. The goal was to centralize this ecosystem of user generated content into an organized flow for the mainstream public to follow.
Did you just do it to make money off ads and generate traffic from a disaster? This is a valid question, since I do run ads on the website. The answer, wholeheartedly, is no. I did this for my home state of Iowa and everyone who is looking for information on a natural disaster. I did it for social media and citizen journalism. I did it for you. The money from ads (which is approaching $5) will go to pay for the website, which thus far has cost about 50x the ad revenue to scale the hosting, database, and bandwidth. This was all gladly paid for by 48Web. Any money made on advertisements above and behind the hosting costs will go to charity.
I want to thank the local Des Moines twitter community. I just built a website - you created the value. I also want to thank everyone for their nice comments and support - that makes it all worth doing.
– Feedback –
WNYC Interview on The Takeaway (MP3 shortly)
Nathan Wright on Citizen Journalism
Todd Mundt on HyperLocal Reporting
Jake Bouma
Rush Nigut
Troy Rutter
Nathanial Payne
I also want to thank the Des Moines Register for contributing to the site. Their cooperation was much needed and much appreciated.
And more coming in…
