Social Media mashups / hubs – no value added

I must admit I had my team queued up to tackle this as a project. We had wireframes, etc. Then it hit me where is the value added? I couldn’t answer my own question so we shelved the project. For those of you who don’t know what I mean here are a few examples of […]

Read more
Starting a client project right

We have been honing our skills at taking on clients over the last year so I wanted to share a few documents that help us get off to the right foot. New client marketing survey ( send this before first meeting to get their ideas) Project service agreement ( this doc is kind of overkill […]

Read more
Charging for web services in higher ed – rev gen

Lots of people ask what its like to run a pay to play or revenue generating shop. I tell them it is a double-edged sword. We do charge here, we charge per project. We will work with pretty much anyone on campus assuming they have the budget. We have to charge because we have so […]

Read more
On branding

I have worked with many groups recently that have problems comprehending what a brand is. Here is a simple attempt to help As I tell others I don’t expect people to need to understand the ins and outs of branding. Same as I don’t expect someone to know how to make sausage. I just expect them to consume it. […]

Read more
Dealing with social media trolls

Maybe it is because the holidays brings out the best in us all, but I have seen a lot of people talking about how do deal with negative people AKA trolls on social media. I would suggest taking the approach that many universities have which is to make a social media response guide. The first […]

Read more
Mobile sites, apps and responsive – oh my

I have seen a lot of people struggling with mobile apps, sites and responsive recently. A lot of people get caught up on the shiny object of an app but in most cases an app is not the solution. My thoughts are app, if done at all should be done last for a few reasons […]

Read more
FIU Calendar now open sourced

Since I know people are always looking for calendars I thought I would mention that we just open sourced ours today Here is a live example http://calendar.fiu.edu/ Here is the github repo https://github.com/fiuwebteam/Calendar We would love to be able to collaborate with other institutions to make this a stronger tool. For those of you here […]

Read more
Change agent manifesto: how to build web culture on campus

We have made great strides in the web community here on campus. I decided to write a proposal to speak at the HighEdWeb conference on the topic so I have been reflecting on how the community has grown and how we can continue to grow the FIU web community. Proposal Here is the proposal I […]

Read more
Inbound linking strategy to get to the top listing on google fast

Approximately 1 week ago we launched a site for our client the FIU President’s Council. This was a brand new site starting from scratch, not an existing site. We had great on-page SEO, meaning we have page titles, meta tags, headers etc. But for a site that is undiscovered or not yet relevant,  even the best […]

Read more