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Tag: blogging

More CSS and JavaScript goodness from Ryan

November 7, 2011 Ryan Rauh is one of our Dovetail guys, and he's recently started blogging over on Los Techies, where he’s already been posting some great stuff.   He’s got a couple of good posts on CSS, and he recently shared the video from his JavaScript talk at Austin Code Camp.   I know I’m learning from him (especially with his JavaScript knowledge).   Great stuff Ryan – keep it up!

Subscribe by email

May 28, 2008 Those that know me are well aware that I'm a big fan of RSS feeds. But, I do realize that not everyone has yet jumped onto the RSS bandwagon. So if you'd like to subscribe to my blog by email, you now can. Simply click the Subscribe by Email link, and you'll get updates delivered right to your Inbox.   How about giving RSS a try? Confused about RSS? No worries. The folks over at Common Craft have put together a simple video explaining RSS in plain English. Check it out:   If the embedded video doesn't load, this is the direct link to the video.   Let your Feed Reader bring updates to you I use Google Reader for reading feeds. It's easy to use, web-based, and free! And when I find interesting articles in Google Reader, I share…

FreshBooks roadtrip: a great example of getting personal with customers

April 11, 2008 Becky at the Customers Rock! blog recently detailed the FreshBooks roadtrip, which is a great example of how a company can stay connected with its customers. I love this: This was not a product roadshow.  This was a listening tour. I also really like how they're using face-to-face conversations, but also expanding their conversations using a company blog, a roadtrip blog, and Twitter. Awesome.

Perspectives from a sales guy

February 14, 2008 Kent Valentine, a member of our sales team, has dunked his toe into the blogging waters.I'm looking forward to reading his tales from the field, which I'm sure will offer a different perspective than what us techies have to say.

A simple blog comment turns around a customer experience

July 23, 2007 I've blogged in the past about turning blog entries into customer experiences. Here's a recent real-world example of that. Adam Esterline reviewed Watir as part of a web application testing comparison.  In his own words, "I did not give Watir very high marks." Bret Pettichord, our Test Architect here at Dovetail, and a core contributor to the open-source Watir project, left a comment on Adam's blog, simply asking for more info about Adam's experience using Watir. Bret's comment was a pretty simple one, but it engaged Adam. Enough so to prompt Adam to revisit Watir, and try again, this time with much better results. Even more so, it was enough to get Adam to post a follow-up praising Bret: This is great customer service. Bret saw that our team was having problems and responded thoughtfully. There's no fancy CRM software involved…

Real blogs are written by real people

April 29, 2007 Sara Smith from ViaMetric has an interesting post titled A blog is not a brochure. Amen! (Full Disclosure: ViaMetric does some marketing work for us) My favorite line from her post: [Blogs are] your chance to show your customers that your company is run by actual living, breathing humans who like to think about things, and sometimes even write about them  She hits the nail on the head with this one. And it's so easy to tell when a blog is written by an actual human, speaking in their own voice, wanting to engage in a conversation, wanting to share information. Those are the blogs I connect with. Because you're connecting with a person. Not a sales or a marketing message. Sara goes on to say: For a great example of how it can be done, check out the blogs written by…

My Google apps get a style makeover

A cleaner, more functional GMail I use GMail for my personal email, and functionally it's great, but I always thought it could use some help in its look and feel. Even the new beta of Hotmail has a nicer look. Not any more. Lifehacker recently rolled up multiple gmail enhancements and styling into one package: Better Gmail. I love the Super Clean skin, and the Conversation Preview option is sweet - simply right-click on a message to preview its content in a popup bubble.   Goodbye Newsgator, Hello Google Reader I've played with Google Reader here and there, but the look and feel of Newsgator Online kept me with Newsgator. However, using the Stylish extension, with the Google Reader theme, makes for a much nicer looking Google Reader. This was the final straw that pushed me to move away from…

Turning blog entries into customer experiences

April 12, 2007 John Ragsdale points out a new product that allows companies to monitor what's being said about their products and services in the blogosphere. We've been talking a lot about this here at Dovetail, specifically how a post on a blog or forum can be turned into a customer experience. I've mostly thought about identifying problems that customers may have posted about, but John points out another interesting aspect, identifying expert users who are very knowledgeable about your products, with whom you may want to align. Very cool. A negative blog post about your company, product, or service can automatically create a support case, and the company can reach out, hopefully turning a negative customer experience into a great one. Proactively. Nice. John also talks about identifying new content sources, which I completely agree with. I pointed out in an earlier post that there's…

Wired magazine discusses the See-Through CEO

April 9, 2007 Wired magazine has a very good article this month titled the See-Through CEO. Interestingly, two members of our technical team forwarded this article to me this morning. A few gems from the article: The new breed of naked executives also discover that once people are interested in you, they're interested in helping you out - by offering ideas, critiques, and extra brain cycles. Customers become working partners. Google is not a search engine. Google is a reputation-management system. Being transparent, opening up, posting interesting material frequently and often is the only way to amass positive links to yourself and thus to directly influence your Googleable reputation. Putting out more evasion or PR puffery won't work, because people will either ignore it and not link to it - or worse, pick the spin apart and enshrine those criticisms high on your…