Social Media for Business

I work in self storage with my wife. We’re managers at a local storage facility in Bend, Oregon. We’ve been hacking away at social media for the business for awhile now…about a year. We’ve seen little to no engagement. I’ve been struggling with how to make it work and we finally figured it out (I’m pretty sure).

Over the last few months I’ve come to learn that social media for business isn’t about pushing content. There are specific techniques that work and they aren’t silver bullets. Social media is about directly connecting with the people that care about your brand. These people want to engage with you but not if all you do is shove sales promotions and uninteresting info at the.

Successful use of social media in business involves having a consistent brand image and a story that matters to our target audience. In self storage we struggled to come up with a theme or vision. It wasn’t until an outside source helped us understand what our story was. It’s simple and obvious but we couldn’t see the forest for the trees. Our story is about the things people store. We’ve crafted our entire content strategy around the unique and sentimental items that people care about.

As we move forward with tenant spotlights and humorous videos and pictures we hope to strike a cord with the community of people who have used, are using and will use self storage. This is a long term vision that will take work. We’re setting up a campaign to create compelling content that is interesting and fun. And that’s the key.

At its core, social media is where people spend time to be entertained and to connect with people and entities that interest them. To engage with the community we have to create content that is meaningful to them.

The things people store are the very core of our business and we care deeply about these items just as our tenants do. Our social media vision is to embrace this truth and share that passion with our audience. It’s not about tricking people into liking our Facebook page, it’s about being honest about who we are. As we engage our audience where they are we will see them engage with us.

WordPress and Nth-child

I’m building a new personal website. The process has been educational and enlightening. I’m excited to have something new. I’ve built the design around a navigation tutorial from here.

You’ll notice the original nav tutorial uses nth-child and other selectors that don’t work in IE8 and lower (I decided my site should support IE8+). The site stayed that way until I was ready to browser test. After a couple hours of research and testing I realized that nth-child is a really useful tool but for those who want compatibility with IE8 and lower, it’s not a real option. Now I understand why there’s so much fuss about IE compatibility. In the end I switched nth-child to first/last where I could and then just used classes everywhere else. The transition was easy and even though I spent about three hours on the issue it was time well spent to learn the tradeoffs between new features and compatibility. Note: I stumbled on some JavaScript solutions that would fix some of the incompatibilities but I decided the added complexity wasn’t worth it. Classes worked great without using any fixes.

I’m in the process of learning how to build WordPress themes and I’m using my new site as a guinea pig. Instead of jumping right in. I decided to build the static site first and then build a theme around it. I’m not sure if this is how other people do it but I think it’s a good way to start.  Because my new site will showcase my work and serve as a blog I will be integrating custom fields and posts. I’m not sure how to do that yet but Treehouse has in depth tutorials.

Enabling Spontanious Web Development Teams

Goal: to enable individual developers and designers to work together towards a common goal.
Method: by creating an online space where users can create informal teams of 1 or more people.
Process: a user creates their profile, they start a team for completing a specific goal, they invite specific people to join the team or they leave it open for anyone to join and then everyone in the team works to complete the goal.
Tools: the team-space would have automatic communication tools, source code management (SCM), shared file storage for photos or other generic file-types, bug tracking and document creation.
  • Communication Tools

Upon logging in and entering the team-space the user automatically becomes apart of a team chat–both voice and text (the users microphone is muted upon entry to the space). The team-space also contains a news feed for more persistent messaging.

  • SCM (git-like)

Version control has been done before and if the platform can use an existing service through APIs that would be a preferable option.

  • File Storage

Online file storage has also been done well so using existing services would be key.

  • Bug Tracking
Simple tracking feature to assign a bug to a member and then complete it or reassign it.
  • Documents

These documents would be used for defining the project and its goals. They could simply be pages of that team-space (made public if the team desires).

Miscellania

  • Each team-space would have a public-facing page that would describe the project and allow for other members of the community to comment on the team/project as a whole. The content of the public page would be controlled by the team.
  • The creation of this platform would focus on seamlessly integrating existing services and only creating new services if they don’t already exist.

Benefits

  • The platform enables spontaneous collaboration between developers and designers who otherwise would not be able to work together as efficiently (if at all).
  • It facilitates a community where users can find like-minded people for the purpose of connecting in small groups.
  • The team-space is one location where team members can “meet” to collaborate.

Changing Direction

Call me crazy but I’ve been working on a web development project that the client has put on hold (perhaps indefinitely). I was having a hard time starting anything else because this project is at a level that I really need more experience with and I have a tendency to start things and not finish them. I didn’t want this to be one more thing I didn’t finish. My plan is to work on this project until its completely done and ready to deliver. That way, if the client does want to continue I’ll be a month ahead of schedule. Otherwise, I will have gained valuable experience and the satisfaction of completing a project.

The last three nights have seen me programming for 3.5 hours each night. I’ve made a lot if progress in that time and have been able to tackle some code that was difficult a few months ago but is easier now. Its given me a renewed sense of achievement and courage as I get ready to change careers and do web dev full-time.

In fact, that’s my New Year’s resolution. Sometime within 2013 I want to begin working in web development full-time. Before I jump ship from my current job, which provides decent pay, I’ve set some goals.

I want to have completed a handful of small to medium projects and display them in my portfolio. At least one of those projects should be pro bono, another should be something that I am deeply passionate about and a third project should be something I build and give away as an open-source web tool. If time allows, I’d like to experience modifying and creating WordPress themes.

I’m excited for the future! I feel really blessed to live in a country where I am free to change the course of my life as I desire. Many citizens of other countries do not have such freedoms and opportunities.

Where can I get paid to study paradigms?

I want a job where I get paid to think or write about systems, paradigms and perspectives. Preferably in technology, the internet and community culture in general. Is that totally nerdy?

Does such a job exist and if so where can I learn more?

Held Captive by an Idea

Have you ever been held captive to an idea that you simply can’t put down? Over the last two weeks I have been spending every spare moment either reading about or trying to define an idea. I feel bad because I haven’t been able to think of anything else or be pro-active at home or work.

Last night and today I successfully put my thoughts into words and fully defined the idea. It feels great to finally get it out of my head and onto paper.

Have you ever experienced something like this?

A Place to Hang Your [Online] Hat

This idea will not let me go. I can’t stop thinking about it and I would love for a few people to fully understand it so they can tell me whether I should move on. Seriously, I’ve been staying up until 2am on recent nights trying to define this and to absorb related information. My wife would be grateful for your help :)

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