Schipul Co Events Archives - Page 5 of 16 - Tendenci Blog

2012-05-242014-11-02

10 +1 Ways to Boost Your Event Registrations

As summer approaches, my inbox is filling up with event invitations to different organizations I participate in. This time of year is really busy for event marketers as you try and boost participation before your members head out to the beach for summer vacations.

It is tough for me to decide what to say YES! and RSVP to and what to respond with my regrets to and I’m sure for most event planners, you want to know how to get your core volunteers, sponsors and supporters to say Yes! to your event instead of other events filling up email inboxes.

So, I thought I would share 10 things you can do that will increase the chances that people will click to register for your event instead of one of the other hundred events going on in your community. Then, in honor of our upcoming Google+ for Business webinar and Google+ for Nonprofits Houston NetSquared June Meet-up, there’s +1 more tip to boost your event ticket sales.

10 +1 Tips to Increase RSVPs

1) Send Shorter Invitations

More and more people are reading their emails via their mobile phones. Keep your initial email invitation short and sweet with the basic event details: when, where, what and most importantly include why this event is important to your registrants and how much it will cost.

2) Link to the Event Summary

Instead of sending all the details of your event in the invitation, just include a link to your Tendenci Event page where people can go to click and learn more. Use Campaign Monitor’s reporting tools to track who clicks for more details and measure against your registrations to follow-up on those who read more and don’t register.

3) Include an Obvious Call to Action

In this case, you want intended guests to register for your event so include an obvious clickable button that someone could click from a mobile touchscreen and go to register and pay for your event.

Here is a great article from Smashing Magazine on how to design better Call to Action buttons that you can add to your email invitations.

4) Show Your Sponsors They’re Loved

Include your sponsors logos and a link to their site in your event emails. Then, use the link tracking reporting tools included with Campaign Monitor to measure and generate reports to your sponsors that show them who and how many event attendees are clicking from your email to visit their website. This demonstrates the value of supporting your organization and you can use this data to increase future sponsorship dollars.

5) Segment and Personalize Your Invitations

Segment your subscriber lists to send personalized email invitations and event announcements and post-event summaries.

Customizing event emails increases the chance that the recipient will open and register for your event.

Here are some different suggestions you can use for segmenting your subscriber lists:

Segment Guests who attended from those who didn’t attend the event
Segment by the role each person has in participating for the event: Staff, Volunteers, Attendee, Sponsor, Board Member
Segment by the event type that each guest attends more often
Remember that you can include one person in multiple list segments if they fall into multiple categories

Wondering how to create and use segments in your email marketing? Check out this great Help File from Campaign Monitor.

6) Send Regrets to Those Who Can’t Make it

Check guests in at the events and then send separate post-event updates based on those who made it versus those who didn’t make it to the event. Keep track of who has registered leading up to the event and boost last minute registrations by sending those who still haven’t RSVP’d an email with a special discount code.

7) Make Paying Really Easy

Once a recipient has decided to click through your email to register – make sure they can easily pay for and register for the event. Integrate your Tendenci website with one of our online merchant payment gateways to accept credit cards. Use a shorter registration form for them to register and pay that takes the basic details. Then send more information in follow-up emails about your event along with the registration confirmation.

8) Ask Invitees to Bring Their Friends

Make sure you include social sharing links and a “Forward to a Friend” call to action button to make it easy for your guests to share the event invitation with their friends, family and colleagues. Tendenci’s event registration form includes options for people to register guests – let people know when they register in your email invitation to encourage them to bring a friend.

9) Take Photos and Video of Your Events

We can’t say this often enough – take photos and record video at your events and share them on your website to show people what your organization’s events are like. Link to past event wrap-ups with digital media embedded in your email invitations to boost registrations. Send event attendees the photos and videos from events afterwards to increase engagement and build your relationships with your guests so they’ll keep coming back to future events.

10) Optimize Your Event for Search

Add keywords related to your event page on your website and your event will show up to new people who may not know about your event or be on your email or member lists. Here’s an easy 3-step way to figure out the best keywords for search engine optimization:

Think of what your event attendees might use to search for an event like yours
Go to Google’s Free Keyword Tool and enter in your search terms to get even more ideas for keywords related to your event
Then add your keyword phrases to your Tendenci Event on the Edit Meta Page to drive organic traffic to your event registration

+1 Drive Registration from Social Media Networks

Add social share buttons on your event page and share the event on your organization’s social networks. Tweet, post on Facebook, and +1 on your Google Plus Page with calls to action to register for the event.

Don’t forget to share it on your own personal networks and encourage your staff and volunteers to share the event details on their social media sites.

If you’re new to using Google+ Brand Pages, check out this great blog post on the Shipul blog talking about why Google+ is great for driving traffic to your website. And please +1 and follow Tendenci’s Google+ page: https://www.tendenci.com/!

And don’t forget to RSVP for our upcoming Google+ events and other web marketing and website training events on the Tendenci Events Calendar.

Talk to Us!

Do you have any great tips on boosting event registrations? Share your comments and questions below or shoot us an email and tell us how you are using email, social media, and your website for event marketing.

2012-05-232014-11-02

Google+ for Business Combines Social Media with Lead Conversion to Increase Your Sales

If you’re in marketing and wondering if you should be utilizing Google+ for Business – my answer is a resounding Yes!

I’ll admit that I was skeptical when Google+ first released Brand Pages and hesitated to commit to using Google+ as part of our web marketing strategy. There are so many different social media networks and so little time. I wasn’t eager to add another social network to my list. I was wrong to hesitate and thought I’d explain what I’ve learned and how Google+ helps your website convert leads into sales.

How Google Search Works (in a Nutshell)

Google is continuously improving their search engine software to provide more personalized and socially relevant search results for users. There are different opinions out there regarding just how much control we should give to Google in determining how personalized our search results should be, and I’m not going to go into that debate issue here.

Instead, I want to share Google’s brilliant business strategy that has made Data the currency of the internet.

The majority of Google’s products are 100% free and target individual consumers. We, the consumers, use these geeky web tools and instead of paying for them with money, we pay for them by giving Google certain permissions to collect and share information about us.

The majority of Google’s profit comes from ad revenues for pay-per-click, Adwords, and other online advertisements presented to consumers as we surf the web. Google is so profitable because it uses the data from consumers to personalize the ads each person views. This makes the ads more relevant and less annoying to the consumer and also makes the ad more effective and likely to result in a sale for the ad buyer’s business.

Talk about an awesome example of a win-win situation!

Google wins = they earn a profit
Consumers win = free tools they want and less boring internet ads
Businesses win = affordable online advertising with measurable results

The Proof is in the Numbers

Google works, and the proof is in the number of people who are using it. Here are some usage stats:

Around 65% of all U.S. internet searches are done using Google’s search engine. (reported by comscore.com)

According to an eweek.com article, Google averages:

1 billion searches each day
1 billion searchers each week
1 billion unique visits each month
And according to Google co-Founder Larry Page, there are over 100 million users on Google+.

Google has created a service that delivers personal, individual results to each of its more than 1 billion users, profitably.

How Google+ for Business Works

Anyone who creates a free Google account also automatically gets a Google+ plus account now. As I mentioned above, there are currently over 100 million Google+ users and that number is still growing. You’ll need to have your own Google+ personal profile set-up before you can create one for your business.

Google has some really great resources and training videos to help you set-up your organization’s Google+ Brand Page on the Google Plus for Business website. Schipul is partnering with Google’s Houston team to host 2 terrific and Free events: an upcoming webinar on May 29th and a hands-on workshop June 19th for those of you interested in getting help with Google+.

Google+ Brand Pages for businesses have some restrictions and you can’t just go start following all your clients or add them to circles immediately. Since Google’s business model demands protecting the privacy of its users and making sure we all enjoy using Google’s products, businesses can only follow users who first come and add your Brand Page to one of their circles.

Why You Want A Google+ Brand Page

schipul google plus search — Schipul's Google+ Brand Page in Google Search Results

Google+ Brand pages have started to show up in search results in a very noticeable way. For example, if I’m following a certain Brand on Google+ and do a search in Google, their Google+ page shows up on the right hand side at the top of the search results. Some Brands are starting to show up there even if I’m not currently following them or when I search anonymously.

Google hasn’t exactly explained why some Google+ Brand pages are showing up on search results when you aren’t following them, but Mashable has a theory that it could be related to Google’s Direct Connect program. The Direct Connect Program links your Google+ Brand Page and your website. I highly recommend you get a Google+ badge for your website and register with the program.

Google+ Secret Recipe for Higher Lead Conversions

If the premium placement of your Google+ Brand page on search results isn’t motivation enough to add Google+ to your marketing strategy, combine it with the Social aspect that Google’s integrated with their search engine and I believe you’ll see why I’ve changed my tune.

As marketers, we understand the value of relationships when it comes to generating leads that convert to sales. Referrals from existing clients close more often, faster, and at a reduced cost than cold leads. People are far more likely to work with the business a friend or family member recommends than go with a company they’ve never heard of.

One recent study shared on econsultancy.com’s website showed that 88% of consumers look at reviews from other customers before making a purchase decision. 52% of those surveyed said their purchasing decisions were influenced by their friends’ recommendations. The study also showed that just by having reviews or testimonials on your website increased your lead conversion rate by over 60% in most cases.

We already know that when your prospects come to your website and read positive reviews of your work, they have a higher chance of converting to become a client. Since Google+ results now show up on Google search results, Google+ gives prospects your positive reviews and recommendations from the search results page. Prospects can compare the results with other competing sites before clicking through to a website. If the research is accurate, then that means there is a good chance that more people will visit the websites of companies with more positive reviews from Google+.

As an added bonus, the Google search results from Google+ also show the searcher who in their network has +1‘d your business, implying they recommend you.

Google+ Brand Pages are the new digital version of the “Ask for a Referral” postcard used by traditional direct marketers. Asking for referrals has always been a very effective marketing strategy, in my experience.

Please +1 Schipul’s Google+ Page

Come check out Schipul’s Google+ Brand Page and tell us what you think about using Google+ for business.

Be sure to register for one of our upcoming Free Google+ training events before they sell out:

GOOGLE+ FOR BUSINESS WEBINAR – Tuesday May 29th, 2012 1:30PM to 2:30PM CST

Google Hands-On Workshop – Tuesday June 19th, 2012, Details to be Announced Soon!

2012-05-142014-11-02

The Big Secret to Making Your NonProfit Events Successful with Social Media

According to a recent survey by Constant Contact, 77% of event marketers from small businesses and nonprofit organizations use social media as a complement to their event marketing. The survey cited the top 2 reasons for using social media in conjunction with events were to attract new attendees and to reach past attendees with the overall goal being to increase awareness and attendance at events.

At the May Houston NetSquared meet-up, Wesley Faulkner shared ideas and actionable takeaways for integrating social media with your event marketing strategy. If you are like most nonprofits or small to mid-sized organizations, you may just want to keep reading how to increase awareness and registrations at your upcoming events…

The Big Secret

Wesley saved his Big Secret for event marketing success for the end of the evening’s meeting last Tuesday – so I won’t make you wait any longer to learn it in case you missed the meet-up:

“No event is ever really a failure unless you think it was.”

Take a moment, and let that idea fully sink in… if you are anything like me, this can be a difficult concept to grasp if one of your daily tasks involved managing events for your organization. As event marketers, we all want to say our event sold out, our attendees had the best time ever and we exceeded our Fundraising goal from sponsors and donors.

Let’s call it a Perfect Event when an event accomplishes all 3 of these objectives:

Sold Out
Amazing Attendee Experience
Exceeded Fundraising Goals

Perfect Events are extremely rare for nonprofit organizations. When you are a nonprofit planning an event with little to no budget, a small staff, and limited resources – chances are you are more worried about whether anyone will even show up than if you manage to pull off a Perfect Event.

What if No One Shows Up?

Hopefully, none of you have had to ask that question before an event – and I’m guessing there are more of you reading this that have had than anyone would guess. Generally, events work out and Perfect Events are rare but successful events are not rare when you put a little effort and planning into the details.

Wesley gave great advice for those events when “no one shows up” – I put that in quotes because I don’t think most of us have had a true zero attendance for an event. If you’ve had an experience like that – leave a comment and share why you think it happened so we can learn from it. Wesley’s advice for those events with few attendees was to remain flexible and use the lower than expected attendance numbers as an opportunity to give those attendees the best experience ever.

“Not all events are a success; that’s the one thing you can’t control.”

If you throw a party and only 4 people show up, take photos, create an atmosphere online and more importantly, offline for those 4 people. You have far more resources per person to give them a great time than you would if 100 people were there so make use of it to give those people the best event experience ever.

Social media gives you the chance to show how awesome your event was, regardless of how many people were there by providing you so many different channels and ways to send your stories: LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, etc. Use social media and this advice to implement Wesley’s Big Secret so that none of your events will ever be failures.

Now that I’ve shared Wesley’s big secret from Houston Netsquared, let’s talk about the real guts of his presentation and how you can increase your event marketing to get closer to having more Perfect Events by using social media.

Different Strategies for Different Types of Events

Wesley recommends identifying which category your event falls into to first determine the best social media marketing strategy to use from three event types:

Traditional Events
Social Media Based Events
MultiFaceted Events

Each of these different event types will have different end goals for determining if they are a success. You’ll also typically find the events have very different implementation strategies, budgets, and audience sizes.

Wesley also shares the four types of people you want involved, ideally in both the planning and attending of an event. Those are:

Influencers
Loyalists/Legacies
Professionals
Hobbyists

Wesley talks more about these types of people on his blog here: http://wesleyfaulkner.com/social-media-and-events-an-evolution.

Traditional Events

Traditional events include events that have been around for a while and are usually an annual fundraising activity. Wesley shared ways he’s helped traditional events integrate social media into their events to make it easy and build awareness of the organization’s cause in addition to helping attract new participants.

Wesley states that “Events give people the opportunity to experience the struggle that you are going through to get to the finish line.” Find ways your attendees can share their accomplishments at each milestone during the event to enhance your social media marketing and event marketing campaigns.

Wesley uses the Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure as an example of how to include social media with the teams during the race itself to give the team opportunities to share their experience on social media channels. His team was taking photos at each mile marker and sharing with their online communities as they went through the race.

Another option you can try is to create Foursquare locations at each mile marker. Then encourage your attendees to “Check-In” on Foursquare. Then, use Wesley’s suggestion to offer messages at each mile with words of encouragement or a funny message on Foursquare so when they check-in, they receive a boost.

Nonprofit organizations use these special events to raise money and the key is to get your donors personally involved when you plan your next event. Think of ways to give people an experience and then, add the social media element by thinking of ways to make that experience share-able online.

Social Media Based Events

Social Media platforms like Facebook and Twitter have inspired fundraising and cause awareness events for nonprofits like Twestivals and Foursquare Day. These events are very different in that they typically aren’t planned in advance by a nonprofit organization. Instead, people who are active in their local communities and on social media sites online come together and organize the event.

Nonprofit event organizers should try and see the perspective that the people participating in social media based events are using their money as a “ballot” they give by attending events they’ve learned about on their social networks.

Unlike traditional events where you are trying to make your event share-able online, social media based events begin online and the key to success is to take the online excitement and buzz offline and in a format where people will come out and “vote” for your cause. This requires your organization to first be online and simple to communicate with. Wesley suggests you regularly look at who is following you on twitter and Facebook that are truly passionate about your cause and engaging online with you. Reach out to these “Superhero Volunteers” online and ask them to help organize and promote your next social media based event.

Multifaceted Events

These events are harder to describe because they take on so many forms. In fact the branding and purpose can differ dramatically depending on who you ask at the event. Large conferences like SXSW and Love Austin Week span multiple days and locations, and managing these requires an ability to reach a point and then just let them run. Some of these events will take on multiple themes and some events, like Movember, will span multiple cities and countries.

To make the best use of social media to promote multifaceted events, Wesley says “Go Nuts!” and find ways to get everyone involved and having fun online and offline. The best way to get people involved is to find ways to personalize the experience each attendee has at the event. For example, one event Wesley helped organize hired an artist who did charicatures of attendees for their t-shirts.

Here are a few more ideas that can help you personalize your event:

Personalize cupcakes, cookies, and other sweets for each participant
Come up with a signature cocktail for the event
Create a website just for your event
Offer customizable swag bags that your attendees can select items for before the event
Include Online Participants by sharing their tweets and offering event videos and photos on your website
Rent a photo booth or hire a photographer and send attendees home with a photograph in a frame highlighting your event

Succeeding in the Social Economy

I want to conclude my wrap-up with Wesley’s words of wisdom to keep in mind when you are venturing out into social media.

The social economy doesn’t use the same exchange that we do at a merchant level… Give before you ask and be mindful of your social withdrawals.
You have to sometimes have a team member or partner who helps you get to the next step – Don’t feel like you have to go it alone and you’ll go further when you combine resources. This is particularly true when you are combining social media channels to promote your event.
Be like-able and make it easy for people to find you and talk to you!

I want to thank Wesley for a great presentation that gave tons of helpful ways to make your events more successful with social media marketing. You can find Wesley’s slides from his presentation here – Social Media and Events: An Evolution.

We have photos from Tuesday’s Houston NetSquared group on the Tendenci Photos Album.

Connect with Wesley Faulkner online:

Twitter: https://twitter.com/#!/wesley83
Blog: http://wesleyfaulkner.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/wesley83

Join Houston NetSquared in June

Find out the details for future meet-ups on the Houston NetSquared Meet-up page and RSVP for our next meeting.

Please “Like” Houston NetSquared on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Net2Houston and share the meetup with your Tech and NonProfit Friends!

2012-04-272014-11-02

Southwest Airlines: Nuts About Social Media!

Southwest Airlines: Nuts About Social Media!

This week, Katrina Esco, Caitlin Kaluza and I had the distinct pleasure of attending IABC’s Southwest Airlines: Nuts About Social Media Luncheon at Brennan’s.

It was my first time at Brennan’s, one of Houston’s most prestigious restaurants (and also a Schipul client). The atmosphere was very formal, but the speaker, Brooks Thomas (@brooksethomas) of Southwest Airlines (@SouthwestAir) Emerging Media team was quite exuberant and quickly made it an entertaining afternoon of knowledge sharing.

Brooks serves as the Managing Editor for the Nuts About Southwest, their award winning blog that gives a voice to the employees and customers of Southwest. He began his presentation on the evolution of storytelling and how our society has formed so many platforms of expression: phone calls, texting, emails, Facebook, Twitter, and so many more. All age groups are getting in on this social media frenzy, including 50-something -year-olds (they’re the fastest growing group of users beeteedubs). And social media is literally at our fingertips; 40% of social media users access it through their phones.

Who should be writing the stories?

I’m glad you asked. Every employee has the opportunity to be a reporter. This way you can create a sort of “corporate newsroom” with in your company. He shares, “Empower your employees to have a voice and compelling stories will happen.”

Browse for content everywhere. You never know where a great story could come from. Your field employees can be pitchers, facilitators and reporters. This comes easier with an established internal communications team, education in storytelling, and empowering your people.

The blog basics of storytelling and creating compelling content that people actually want to read according to Brooks (also the title of his upcoming book. Not really. But it should be.):

Present an idea
Determine the media you’ll use
Establish a timeline so people will know when to expect the story
Be available to assist

I especially agreed with his point, “It’s a lot easier to catch a story when you’re ahead of it.”

AKA: Be prepared! Know your plans. Know what’s visual. Know your time frame. If you have a store opening coming up, get those cameras there to record it, tell people about it to get them to come, know when and where everything is happening so that you are READY when the time comes and you can get the best possible coverage of that story.

“We are story telling and everyone has a story. It is your job to find out what’s compelling on a day to day basis,” he said.

Also, to stay organized; keep your content rolling; and post on schedule, create an editorial calendar and set at least 2 weekly times to post so your customers have something to see on a regular basis. No more than 4 franchise posts a week because that’s when it gets too difficult to keep up with.

Hearing from Brooks and how Southwest Airlines manages their online presence and relationships with consumers was inspiring, to say the least. It’s easy to get caught up in tools and technology, but Brooks didn’t delve into that. His focus remained on the content and the people — it was about the stories and how we relate to one another.

It was a great afternoon of laughter and learning about why Southwest is such a powerful presence in the social media world and blogosphere.

We want to thank IABC Houston for another great event and Southwest Airlines for sending a great speaker who loves what he does (it shows!)

Schipulites and Brooks Thomas at IABC Luncheon — We had a great time! Thanks, Brooks! *Jazz Hands!*

More good news? IABC Houston has these events monthly so check out IABC’s upcoming events!

2012-04-042014-11-02

Schipul Releases Open Source Tendenci CMS for NonProfit Websites

We love Open Source and our clients do too! We often hear from clients that you only will use open source software to build your websites and the advantages of having an open source community of developers and designers are undeniable.

That’s why everyone here at Schipul is super excited to announce we can now offer you a new open source option in addition to Drupal and WordPress open source website development and design with our open source release of our Tendenci CMS for NonProfit Websites.

Tendenci is the First Open Source CMS Made Just for Non-Profits!

The open source release of Tendenci is now available as part at the Nonprofit Technology Conference in San Francisco going on this week, April 3-5.

If you are at NTEN NTC 2012, come to the NetSquared Local Community Organizers #12NTC Beerside Chat tonight at Jasper’s. Come learn more about the event and come hang out with us in San Francisco this week!

Here’s photos of the nonprofit tech conference that our team of Schipulites attending NTEN’s NonProfit Technology Conference are shooting and sharing daily.

What Does This Mean for Current Schipul Clients?

Here are some links with information for our current clients to explain what this means for you and your website, and what open source software is:

Open Source Tendenci FAQ for Current Tendenci Clients | From the Tendenci Blog

What is the Difference Between Tendenci Enterprise and Tendenci Community? FAQ

Open Source Hosting Prices and FAQ with the Tendenci Community

Download, Deploy and Host Your Own Open Source NonProfit Website with Tendenci CMS

We have set-up a public repository on Github for Tendenci where you can access the software for those looking to host their own Tendenci website here: https://github.com/tendenci/tendenci/. The Tendenci CMS is written in the Python programming language within a Django framework.

Visit Tendenci.org for information and help with our open source CMS.

If you have additional questions, comments, concerns, etc. please don’t hesitate to contact us, or post them in the comments below.

Get All the Open Source Tendenci News

Twitter’ @Tendenci
Facebook’ facebook.com/tendenci
The Tendenci Blog’ blog.tendenci.com

Sign up on our email list below to receive the latest updates about the open source release of Tendenci – The CMS for Non-Profits and Share the news with your friends!

2012-04-032014-11-02

To Our Clients: We Love You! (And with Open Source We Love You More!)

To our Tendenci clients –

Today, we released the Tendenci CMS open source (view the Tendenci GitHub Repository here). Tendenci CMS, or Content Management System, is the software that powers your website. We value you, and all our clients, tremendously and want to make sure we reach out to answer some questions you may have about this announcement and how it affects you.

What Does “Open Source” Mean?

Open Source means that the Tendenci code will be available from Schipul for anyone to download and install on a server to create a Tendenci website. The code is free, but it does require a specific hosting environment and programming knowledge to deploy a site. Open Source also means that other developers outside of our programming team can contribute to the code – build plugins, make changes to the interface, etc. The Tendenci “committers” (lead programmers) will remain gatekeepers of the core code, and incorporate the work of these outside developers as we see the benefit to clients.

What Does Open Source Tendenci Mean for Current Tendenci Clients?

In the short term, you probably won’t notice a difference. Your hosting won’t change, your cost won’t change, and your site won’t appear or operate differently.

Long term – The goal in going open source is to develop a larger ecosystem of developers who can update, add on to, and create websites with Tendenci (outside of the Schipul team). For you, this means more features available in Tendenci that aren’t currently, and the ability to customize your site to your specific needs. This also means that if you decide to, you can host your website internally or have another developer host or make updates to your website without Schipul’s involvement. We will do our best to keep our pricing competitive and maintain excellent customer service to continue providing the most value to those hosting with us.

What About Tendenci 4.0 Websites?

If your dashboard looks like the screenshot to the right, your website is currently powered by Tendenci 4.0 – the previous version of the Tendenci software, written in the programming language .ASP.

Since 2009 we have been rewriting Tendenci – Tendenci 5.0 – in the programming language Python, a more advanced programming language that gives us greater flexibility.

All Tendenci 4.0 clients have the same set of modules and features. In the past if a client requested a custom feature, we had to either find a way to roll it out to all client sites, or say no. Several features (for instance a searchable database of Attorneys) are not applicable to all clients, but exist on every Tendenci 4.0 site. The latest version of Tendenci works in a different way. Tendenci 5.0 has a Core that include pages, forms, users, events, etc. that apply to virtually all clients. From there we install additional features that are custom to each client using Plugins. For instance, a client may want a Staff module, Video Gallery, or Locations Module depending on the organization’s needs. Things like workflow, interface, and design can be custom to your organization.

Tendenci 5 is the version of Tendenci that we will be taking Open Source.

I Have a Tendenci 4 Site. Should I Upgrade to Tendenci 5?

Web technology changes frequently. We recommend clients consider revamping their website about every 5 years – so you are utilizing the latest technology and your website reflects your brand in the most current light. That being said, upgrading a website is a process and represents a cost, so for some organizations we understand that budget constraints mean a website redesign may not be at the top of your priority list. We aren’t going to stop supporting Tendenci 4, yet long term all of our clients will need to upgrade to keep up with the latest technology. We hope that the additional features of Tendenci 5 & the lower hosting cost as a result of new efficiencies is compelling to upgrade.

The caveat here is that while Tendenci 5 is far advanced beyond Tendenci 4.0 in many ways, there are specific features that are not yet available in Tendenci 5. For a list of Modules that have changed in the new version, visit this help file.

If you are interested in learning more about upgrading to Tendenci 5, please contact our Business Development team at 281.497.6567 ext 700

How Can I Learn More About Tendenci Open Source?

The details of Tendenci Open Source CMS are available at tendenci.org.

Also follow us online to keep up to date with the latest Tendenci Open Source details:

Twitter – @Tendenci
Facebook – facebook.com/tendenci
The Tendenci Blog – blog.tendenci.com

Additional Questions, Comments, Concerns, etc. please don’t hesitate to email us at opensource @ tendenci.org, or post them in the comments below.

Thank you for being a client!

2012-03-222014-11-02

Houston Website Designers Seminar Explores Crucial Client Conversation Topics

Tuesday, I had the opportunity to attend the Houston Website Designer Series monthly seminar, hosted by the Art Institute of Houston. Aaron Long, a VP here at Schipul, was one of the presenters alongside Bo Bothe from BrandExtract, Joe Robbins from Joe Robbins Photography, and Tom King with Forward Marketing.

The presenters each shared stories and tips from their past experiences working on website design projects with clients to an audience of Houston developers, designers, and design students. I gained new insight about how a design project can either go smoothly and stay within budget or go horribly wrong and become very costly solely on the basis of the types of conversations the agency or designer has with their clients throughout the project.

Designing a Website is Complicated

The process of building and designing a website is often more technical and time intensive than most people realize. There is also the added challenge that our clients want a website for marketing their products and services to generate new leads. This adds complex elements to the project to ensure proper branding, communication of the company and what you do, has calls to action and specific content for search engine marketing, plus custom development like a shopping cart for e-commerce, event registration, site login and permissions capabilities, etc.

Designing a complex website requires excellent 2-way communications between the client and the project managers and account executives. As in every industry, this presents a challenge sometimes. Lawyers struggle to explain complicated legal contracts with their clients, real estate agents have to explain the title and loan processes to clients, and doctors find ways to discuss very private, medical issues with their patients.

The Keys to Successful Communication

Education

As each of the presenters shared their tips for improving communication, Education was at the core of each success story.

Tom King on Designing Content Strategy

Tom King explained the complications of explaining to clients the importance of creating a content marketing strategy before the website design project kicks-off and integrating the strategy with the overall project. Many clients want their website to be found in search engines and by new leads, and don’t realize how much time and research is involved in identifying the right keywords and creating the content that will go on the website before it launches and after it launches in an ongoing effort to boost search engine rankings.

To educate clients and prospects, Tom shares videos and resources from Google’s Zero Moment of Truth education series and shows clients these 2 videos that share the Coca Cola Content 2020 strategy:

Tom explained that he shows prospects these videos before the sales meeting because “if they watch these and don’t get it, then we won’t work well together.”

Bo Bothe on Designing Brand Identity

Bo Bothe’s presentation walked the audience through communicating with Marathon Oil’s executives as BrandExtract managed the project to redesign Marathon Oil’s entire brand identity. According to Bo, education about every step of the project down to teaching Marathon Oil the finer aspects of just what a logo is, was critical to the success of the project.

You can see the results of the rebranding in this video:

Aaron Long on Designing Software

Aaron Long’s presentation stresses the importance of educating clients on the differences between software and preferences in order to keep projects within budget and time lines. Aaron communicates to clients that the purpose of software is to lower costs, and content management systems are software that are already built and will lower the cost of the website project if clients use it. Preferences, on the other hand, raise costs and when a client wants to customize software for their project, they need to be aware that custom software development is the most expensive thing in a project.

One tip Aaron shared during his presentation is that it is up to the designers and developers to ask clients more specific questions about what they envision the end result of the website to be. Don’t just accept it when a client says they want a shopping cart feature with their website, dig deeper and find out what products the clients will sell with the shopping cart, what special functions will this cart need to do for selling products, shipping, collecting customer data, etc. Aaron suggests showing clients working sites with examples of what is standard so clients can better understand what they are buying when they are buying the software.

Here’s Aaron’s presentation slides to view his other tips for educating clients on the more technical side of a website design project:

10 Things Clients and Web Developers Should Talk About

View more presentations from Aaron Long

Joe Robbins on Designing Web Photography

Joe Robbins brought his experience in creating professional photographs and images for advertising in print and on the web to the seminar to share the importance of having quality photographs on your website. He discussed the conversation designers should have with clients and recommended educating clients on the costs associated with photographs along with the pros and cons for hiring a professional photographer compared to stock photos and photographs already owned by the client.

Photography for Website Designers

View more presentations from joerobbins

Joe explained that “a well designed website is very important, but if your choice of photography is poor, all that hard work could come to nothing. A visually arresting site can be the difference between a sale/inquiry and the customer leaving your site prematurely.”

Website Design is NOT About the Design

Although you might find this ironic, not one of the speakers for a website designer seminar spoke about graphic design for websites or talking to clients about design for the website projects. They all stressed the importance of creating a website that marketed and sold your company online to obtain new customers.

Tom King’s remark was that content brought new visitors to your website via search engines and not the design or appearance of the site.

Bo Bothe insightfully said “You can’t just make things pretty anymore, you have to make things that work.”

“Funny makes money, not necessarily pretty” was the comment from Aaron Long regarding creating websites that drive revenue.

And Joe Robbins demonstrated how to incorporate quality photography into your website for a more visually appealing site that reflected your brand in the same way companies use glossy print advertisements offline.

The presenters recommend that we steer our focus away from the flash-based, graphic-heavy websites that make it difficult to add and edit content on and also are poorly ranked by search engines. Instead, focus on a strategy that integrates your marketing efforts with your website design.

This seminar explained the importance of talking with and educating clients and hopefully the videos and presentations I’ve included from the seminar will give you a better understanding of the process involved with building a complex website. I encourage you to attend the next Houston Website Designers Seminar coming up in July if you are interested in learning more. The seminars are always free to attend.

If you want to learn more about Schipul’s website design process to build complex websites that generate leads and revenue for companies, contact us and check out our training calendar for upcoming web marketing events and webinars we’re hosting!

2012-03-222014-11-02

SXSW 2012 Surprises | O/S Tendenci, Mobile Kills Privacy, Space Gets Interactive

Tendenci Heads to SXSW Interactive 2012 to Announce Open Source Plans

If you haven’t yet heard the exciting news, Tendenci announced plans for an open source version of our CMS for nonprofit websites at SXSW Interactive 2012 in Austin, Texas. There is a press release with all the details and a great blog post from Ed Schipul, CEO and founder. Check out our photos from SXSW 2012 on our website and there are more coming soon.

SXSW always has a ton of new software tools and web innovations being released and this year was no different. The big themes for 2012 focused on social discovery mobile apps and Outer Space. I also brought back some lessons learned about the importance of protecting your users’ personal information and data.

Mobile Apps Invade, Kill Your Privacy

Everywhere you went at SXSW, people were talking about “social discovery” and mobile apps like Highlight, Ban.Jo, and Glancee were being downloaded by attendees. If you haven’t heard about social discovery mobile apps, then be prepared because this is a little creepy: when you download one of these social discovery apps, you give them permission to access your social networks like Facebook, Twitter, and Foursquare and then they automatically notify you when anyone of your friends or contacts is nearby. As in, physically near you – and they also notify your friends and contacts when you are near them if they have the app on their smartphone.

You can be walking into a Starbucks and this app will buzz you and tell you who else you know is in line for their morning cup ‘o joe. The idea behind social discovery apps is to make it easier for you to find out when your friends are nearby, or people you have been talking to online, so you can meet up with them in real life. That sounds great – until you remember you accepted that random Facebook friend invite for that friend of a friend of your aunt and now your iPhone is telling you they are nearby and want to chat with you.

Finding the settings to turn off the apps’ automatic discovery and sharing of your location can be near impossible too. You can read one horror story from TechCrunch journalist, John Biggs, when he talks about how the iPhone social discovery app Highlight basically shared his cell phone number with approximately 140 strangers in an SMS invite fiasco.

Key Lesson Learned – Protect Your Users’ Privacy

I am often asked by our clients about how best to grow your online communities and these apps present challenges that make it too easy to accidentally turn off a potential member and to scare off your website visitors who fear their privacy and personal data isn’t being kept safe.

I don’t want to come down too harshly on social discovery mobile apps and I did download and use the Ban.Jo app while I was at SXSW and had fun using it. I think these apps have a time and a place for using them, and then you uninstall them until the next big social event. The big problem I had was how hard these apps make it for users to control the privacy settings and allow us to choose exactly what data is public and what is private.

I don’t know about you, but I want the ability to use software applications to store my personal data and to connect with friends and colleagues without having to “sell out” and give up control and ownership of that information.

That’s one of the reasons we’ve focused on building so many permissions options into the Tendenci CMS software: both content-specific permissions to give you full control over who can see and change your website content as well as user and member-based permissions to give your staff and volunteers selective access to do what they needed to on your website without having access to the areas they didn’t need.

The first thing I did when I came back from SXSW was create 2 new Help Files on Tendenci’s permission settings so our website Admins can go and take full control over your site’s content. You can check them out online and let me know if you have any questions after reading through them:

Tendenci’s Site-Wide Permission Control Settings

Tendenci’s Content-Specific Permission Control Settings

Outer Space

SXSW 2012 showed that Space is still inspiring people to create innovative technologies, build new communities, and play Angry Birds.

SpacePoints: Space Outreach at Ludicrous Speeds! gave me the opportunity to lead a core conversation on crowdsourcing the application development to build online communities. You can check out the SpacePoints application, now officially in Beta and share your secret space story about what excites and inspires you about space.

How to Win Friends and Influence Space Exploration was a great panel that shared how people passionate about space are meeting online and creating offline friendships while driving innovation in space exploration. I had a chance to hear from Astronaut Ron Garan and the leaders in aerospace talk about how the Space Tweeps Society, NASA, commercial aerospace companies, and ordinary space nerds were making a difference.

A License to Rhok shared how NASA and the open source community is developing Random Hacks of Kindness (rhok) to solve some of humanity’s greatest challenges. Developers and Non-Developers alike can get involved and find ways to make a difference and solve global problems through programs like the International Space Apps Challenge coming in April, and Launch.Org, which is collaboratively led by NASA, USAID, Department of State, and NIKE.

Angry Birds Space Launched in style with a Flash Mob Dance Off in the streets of downtown Austin. Here’s a video from YouTube:

Meet Us at NTEN’s NTC 2012

Our next excursion to a big conference will be in San Francisco for the NTEN 2012 Nonprofit Technology Conference (NTC) April 2nd through April 6th, 2012. We’ll be out there learning about what technology problems nonprofits are struggling with and giving attendees the first look at the O/S Tendenci Community CMS.

If you are going to be attending NTC or are in the San Francisco area and want to schedule a demo, send me an email and let’s connect!

You’ll soon be able to download Tendenci’s new open source version and we are looking for developers and designers to partner with us and grow the O/S Tendenci Community and platform. You can sign-up today for a free trial and find out what Tendenci websites can do to help your nonprofit organization succeed online at http://signup.tendenciapp.com!

Check out upcoming Tendenci training webinars and see what events we’ll be at on our events calendar and watch new Tendenci Help Videos weekly!

2012-03-162014-11-02

Tendenci, the NPO CMS website software, is going open source thanks to Matt and Dries

UPDATE 4/3/2012: The Tendenci Open Source Download is available on GitHub here. Also view Instructions on Hosting Requirements

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We are making Tendenci open source. Yes really. Official Tendenci Open Source Press Release here. So what is Tendenci?

Tendenci is an Open Source Software for Associations (AMS) and Built Specifically for Non-Profits.

That’s it. Sounds simple but organizing people, especially members of non-profit organizations (NPOs), is a real challenge. And designing software is a challenge too. Therefore focus produces better results.

We’ve talked about making our product open source for years internally. So why now?

The tipping point for me was last year at our bi-annual conference where we had the privilege of hosting two open-source visionaries Dries Buytaert and Matt Mullenweg on the stage at the same time. Dries is the founder of Drupal and Matt is the founder of WordPress.

Their WordPress-Drupal talk at SchipulCon 2011 moderated by David was absolutely inspiring to me. Here were two men who give their product away for FREE but still create jobs with over 100 employees each. The video is on WordPress.tv here.

One thing Matt said during the talk was:

People being told what to do and working for money are never going to match people working for passion and a community.

— MATT MULLENWEG

Matt’s right. I do things for free with a greater passion than what I do for the almighty dollar. I’ll spend 5 hours editing photos for a volunteer event out of passion for the arts. Or to support and remember our troops. Because I am passionate about both. I am passionate about non-profits and service to community and country, which is what drove me to start programming Tendenci in 2001! And yet paradoxically I have always kept Tendenci proprietary. My vision for the company is:

To Connect and Organize the World’s People. Do Good.

Thus we are making our code open source for the NPO community to use, build upon, download and do as they wish. And yes, we fully realize our competitors will be the first to download. But hey, maybe they have some great ideas for integration plugins and they can make a profit too. It will be released on GitHub to coincide with the NTEN conference in San Francisco next month.

Why am I doing this? It is me (Ed) making an ideological decision. I didn’t say “logical” I said “ideological.” I want to change the world. After travelling extensively and earning a degree in Political Science I’ve become more aware that we are part of a global community. I want to leave the world a better place than when I arrived. Yes, seriously!

Open Source enables us to DO GOOD at a higher level than our pure proprietary model allows. “To connect and organize the worlds’ people. Do good.” As goes the vision so goes the company. Enzo the (talking) dog in the amazing book The Art of Racing in the Rain says:

That which you manifest becomes you.

What Enzo was saying is that when you are driving a race car you can’t look at the wall to stay away from it. You need to look at the road way up ahead so you are prepared BEFORE you get there. And proprietary is limited by resources in ways that open source is not. We can manifest more good being open source.

Matt and Dries convinced me that we can build an open source product through a global community to change the world, AND still create jobs and make a profit. Thus after 14 years in business and having started programming Tendenci in 2001 (11 years!) I am ready to make the jump to open source.

What technology is behind it? It was originally written in ASP. Not anymore. On January 22nd 2009 our programming team convinced me we needed a complete rewrite because the only people who know the Tendenci 4 framework are people who work at Schipul because I never documented it. Ooops. So over the last three years we have done a COMPLETE rewrite of Tendenci from the ground up using the best-of-breed open source technology. At a technical level our programming team recommended the Django/Python/mySQL/Ubuntu “stack.”

That was a big decision. I’m committed and I am 100% positive this is the right path forward for us, our clients and NPOs everywhere. (We plan to have a github repository available by NTEN if not sooner. See you in San Francisco y’all!)

Thanks,

QUESTIONS? (POST IN COMMENTS WITH MORE QUESTIONS)

Is Tendenci really built specifically for non-profits and will memberships be included in the open source download?

Yes and yes. Memberships are included in the base download. As are membership benefits like pricing for events etc.

Can businesses still use Tendenci?

Yes, most definitely. In fact with the new plug-in architecture and the new templating system, you will have even greater flexibility.

For example, WordPress is used as a great CMS system and we build a BUNCH of WP sites for businesses, organizations, individuals, artists, and non-profit organizations. WordPress rocks. It has a ton of great add-ons. Yet its DNA is fundamentally a blogging platform. Tendenci is fundamentally a CMS for non-profits.

Will Schipul, the company behind Tendenci, continue to build and support Tendenci?

Yes. Absolutely. I LOVE THIS SOFTWARE! And our programming team is excited to be a part of the open source community. We are not going anywhere. Quite the opposite – we are getting even more energized about it!

While I like being able to download it if I want, I’d rather not deal with all of that. Does Tendenci offer hosting?

Absolutely. Visit www.tendenci.com and click the “Free Trial” button and you are up and running. Work with your own developer to configure it to your specifications or call us at 281 497 6567 and we can help.

We are a web design firm. Can we sell Tendenci sites and host them on our own servers?

Yes. That is how open source works. And we need design partners as well to help with clients who choose to host with us. And theme and plug in-developers too. You can find out more by checking out our Partner Programs.

How will you stay in business if you just give away your product?

I not only expect to “stay in business” but I expect our profit and revenue to go up through lower cost cloud based hosting at Amazon and increased volume. Lower costs means higher usage pretty much in every economic model I have ever seen.

And Tendenci being open source creates an ecosystem for other developers to develop apps on that meet the needs of their specific clients.

Why make Tendenci Open Source now, in 2012? Why the timing?

What better time? Thanks to our clients we grew another 20% in revenue and earned a fair profit last year. We have been profitable since 2002 and are completely self funded so I didn’t have to call a banker or a board that doesn’t understand SaaS and open source to get approval to make this decision. I simply listened to our clients. I listened to our employees. I listened to our stakeholders. I listened to Matt and Dries. And I made a decision that is best for everyone including non-profits all over the world given Django is multi-language.

And hey, financially we are strong and what better time to give to the open source community than during a recession and at a time of strength? I would have done this years ago but you can’t build an open source community around a proprietary technology like ASP (what I originally wrote it in). It was the rewrite of Tendenci by our young and talented programming team that is allowing us to make the move now.

Why is open source so important for NPOs? Do they really care?

Yes, yes and more yes. Just ask them.

According to the NTEN 2011 survey 33% custom built their web sites (perhaps on top of open source), 10% used proprietary products, cloud based or not. The remaining 57% strictly use open source software. Excluding non-profit hospitals and other niche verticals, I believe open source web technology probably accounts for close to 70% of the market by number of NPOs. PHP based CMS systems like Drupal, WordPress and Joomla currently fill this need, and they are great products.

I believe opening Tendenci up as open source provides a fourth viable option to meet the specific needs of non-profit web sites. And Tendenci is built in the Python programming language on the Django framework which opens opportunities up to developers who prefer Python.

Or to put it another way, I believe proprietary SaaS products that target the non-profit community will only survive if they focus on very specific niches because they are excluding almost 60% of their target audience. As a VC would say, that sort of limits your “addressable market.” Our proprietary competitors don’t share this belief. And I didn’t either last year. I’m a convert. And I ask you,

Would YOU rather know you can download all of the technology for your site if you wanted to?

Of course your answer is yes. You want open source because you want and deserve to control the destiny of your web presence.

That is why my personal blog and this blog are on WORDPRESS! I believe WordPress is the best blogging platform around. I love it. I started with a paid hosted site at www.wordpress.com. And at some point I wanted more control so I migrated to my own server (we have a few. #heh). Shouldn’t you have that same freedom as a non-profit?

Well, now you do.

How can I get a copy of the source code and start working on it now? (I’m writing this on 3/15/12 – the Ides of March indeed)

We hope to have a public repository available on github by NTEN next month. The (slight) delay is simply because we built our hosted environment to use three distinct servers, search index, web server and CDN. That won’t make sense to 99% of the people reading this. In English it means “we built it for BIG HUGE SITES. We need to make that part optional so a small NPO can download and run it on their own web server without having to buy three slices at Amazon. We’re working on it! And I can’t wait!

In the meantime, you can sign-up on our website and we’ll be sending an email with the download link to you as soon as it is ready.

(Note: We do have a few select beta testers with early access working on the SpacePoints site. We’ll get it available to everyone soon.)

What other questions do you have? Hit us up in the comments below!

#peace

https://www.tendenci.com/help-files/topic/94/

2012-03-062020-09-04

AMA Houston – Mobile Marketing for NPO/SIG

The Event

The Houston AMA hosted a seminar on mobile marketing for NPO’s and SIG’s. It was very informational with a forward looking perspective. In summation, the landscape of marketing is changing as mobile devices become more predominant in the market. Following is a summary of the critical information at the seminar in case you missed out.

The Facts

More people will connect to the Internet through wireless devices than through cable-based connections this year, and for the foreseeable future. Smartphones are outselling PC’s and tablets. (Yes that includes you iPad!) In accordance, marketing and advertising must adjust their content for this unwavering trend. The first step is to know the characteristics of this new target market.

Who Are We Dealing With?

The answer is the mobile audience. This mobile audience can be grouped by a few key factors:

ALWAYS ON (connected 24/7)
ENGAGED (very active with content)
IMPATIENT (want it now)
YOUNG (ages 18-44)

Tailoring the Message: Keys to Success

As the mobile market progresses, the winners will be those who adjust their content for this fast-paced, impatient crowd. The critical factors are as follows:

Loading Speed

One of the first factors is loading speed. The experienced advertiser will tell you that you have less than 30 seconds to grab the reader’s attention. If 5 of those 30 seconds are spent loading the page, then you’re off to a bad start. Yes, mobile performance is much more tedious than desktop performance. Here are some websites to visit if you’re having trouble with your loading speed: YSlow, and Mobilewebbestpractices.

Engaging Content

The content also needs to be engaging. If the webpage does not incite some course of action or immediate entertainment then again, your 30 seconds are up! This is a small part of Schipul’s SEM strategy that is proven to be very effective; get them involved quick. A quick scan of your website does not bring members, and therefore does not produce sales. Interaction is the key.

Simplicity: Navigation and Presentation

The most crucial factor is simplicity. Apple is a good example of this. If the content or navigation of your site is difficult or requires too much time, you will lose your audience. The content and presentation need to be universal and simple. Most people use the Internet for finding data. Know what they are looking for, and make it easy to find and use. Here are some simple dont’s:

Don’t

Write content into images (prevents copying and pasting)
Have too much distraction (including flash based images and adds)
Use a bunch of social widgets (again, distracting and cluttered)

Where this is Heading

Mobilization

If you want your company to stay current and your advertising to produce results, its time to mobilize your site. Many companies have already produced landing pages especially for mobile devices. This means that when I view a website on my iPhone, I won’t have to stretch out the page and hunt in order to find things. Many companies have produced apps for the Apple and Android platforms that are much more appealing and involve no screen expanding. They fit the phone and are seem even more simple and universal for users.

The Future: Responsive Website Design

The problem is that these apps are costly and must be made for multiple platforms in order to reach the full mobile audience. The future is responsive website design. With this flexible design style, the content adjusts for the device, and eliminates the need to produce content on multiple platforms. Here are a few websites to try: (make sure to minimize them and then resize the window to various sizes and shapes)

If you tried re-sizing the window, you noticed that the content continues to adjust to the size. The flexibility of this structure will eventually lead to responsive design replacing individual platform apps.

How to Deal with It: Strategy

The next step as a marketer or advertiser is to form a customized strategy for your business. Here are some general concepts that will help this process in terms of the mobile audience:

Create “Look @” not “Listen to” media
Faster is better
Simplicity is the key
Clearly call them to action, and keep them engaged

Hope this helps to give a general glimpse into the future, and where we need to be looking.