What is Agile Development?

Agile software development refers to a group of development methodologies based on iterative development, where requirements and solutions evolve through collaboration between self-organizing teams. Here are Momentify we are choosing to use a modified version of the SCRUM development method.

The Reason for Change

One of the big criticisms of SCRUM development is that it’s life cycle is too short and it doesn’t preserve the equity built into brands due to it’s lack of planning up front. We understand this concern, but it couldn’t be more wrong given the current socioeconomic climate in the digital world. Things move faster than you could ever plan for. Just look at the recent “Man You Could Smell Like” campaign from Old Spice, it gained them a 4.6% market share worth millions of dollars using a plan that was reacting to the publics comments live via you tube. There is no way Old Spice could have predicted that the videos put up would have millions of views, or even which video would be the most popular- but what they did predict was that people would be attracted to the personal feel of the campaign as a whole. That was their big idea, a set of socially driven commercials promoting  an old school brand. Your big idea may be to attract more corporate clients with a new website, or expand the reach of your pizza shop with a local TV commercial.  Whatever your big idea is, you need to get it started and react to the results.

A key principle of Scrum is its recognition that during a project the customers can change their minds about what they want and need (often called requirements churn), and that unpredicted challenges cannot be easily addressed in a traditional predictive or planned manner. As such, we adopt an empirical approach—accepting that the problem cannot be fully understood or defined, focusing instead on maximizing the team’s ability to deliver quickly and respond to emerging requirements.

For more information about our new process, read on.

With our service lineup here at Momentify we’ve been getting asked a lot- how do i know if my website is accessible? While the answer is usually complex there are a few general checks you can do to see if you’re site follows web standards and is able to be accessed by the broadest possible audience.First, lets define web accessability. What is it and why should you care…

Web accessibility is the internet equivalent of a wheel chair ramp or prescription glasses. With an accessible website there are considerations taken into the design that will be apparent to certain users and make it possible for them to use your website. By designing the web accessibility guidelines you will also present your site as intended to the search engines- who look for certain behavior in the code of a site to rank you above or below your competitors. If you’d like to chat more about accessibility feel free to give me a call- for now let’s get on with the list!

Does your site use flash?

Flash is an inherently inaccessible  part of a website.  While it is great for large brands like Nike of Pepsi to offer interactivity to their brand, it is a poor and expensive choice for most businesses and will effectively serve as a barrier to search engines, blind users, and the elderly who commonly will scale text larger so they can view it comfortably. Google currently claims to see some of the code in flash and their are ways to optimize it for search engines, but as a general rule if you want an accessible website. Stay away from flash, ask your developer for HTML5 alternatives.

Is your text contained in images?

Many small businesses we consult with are completely content with how their site looks, what they hate is how it performs. One of the biggest offenders to a client with this problem is text contained in images. It doesn’t scale properly, it adds to page load times, and is not  seen by search engines. You can tell if your text is contained in images by clicking and dragging around it. If you can select the text character by character, you’re most likely in the clear. If you select  large squares or rectangles- it’s time to talk to a developer about having your site reworked. This is most  commonly found in navigation elements where a designer has attempted  to beautify a site, and inadvertently made it inaccessible.

Is your navigation standardized?

Maintaining a consistent look and feel throughout the design of a site is very important. If your site changes navigation from page to page then you have created a confusing layout for your visitors to navigate. Imagine walking around a house where the walls were constantly moving, it would take you quite a while to get where you wanted. Pick  either vertical or horizontal navigation and stick with it, your visitors will thank you.

How does your site fare?

After taking a look at these three quick checks how does your site look? Leave a comment here and we’ll point you in the right direction if you need help!

One of the things I hear the most when I bring up Twitter to clients is “I just don’t get it”, and I definately understand where they are coming from. It’s a confusing beast to tame- but when you learn how leverage the users there it can be one of the best ROI marketing tools your business can use. When you start treating your followers like people walking into your store, or customers on the phone you’ll start to see how powerful twitter is.

To get you started here’s a few Twitter tips for beginners:

General Twitter Tips

Getting more followers

1. Give away something to those that follow you (services, iPods, ect)
2. Break news before other people do.
3. Follow people your interested in and send them a REAL direct message.
4. Keep an eye on trends, participate in them.
5. Use hash tags to connect with people you don’t know.

Business Twitter Accounts

1. Make no more than 10% of your tweets marketing related.
2. Personally sign tweets with the Carrot key.
3. @ Reply everyone that isn’t a spammer
4. Integrate twitter with your website.
5. Schedule and track your tweets with CoTweet

Golden Rule: Treat twitter conversations like conversations in real life

Using these techniques I have personally gone from under 200, to over 2000 followers in just ONE month. Probably even more after this article gets popular on Digg and you see my twitter name (@andrewpflynn) here in this article.

Do you have a Twitter tip you’d like to add? Just leave a comment here and I’ll add it to the list with a credit to your twitter name next to it.

Again, don’t forget to follow me on twitter for more tips like these in the future!

Upload a bigger profile picture. (Difficulty 1/5)

You probably didn’t know this, but your profile picture can be as large as 600px vertically on Facebook pages. Take advantage of this to promote an offer your running, or an advantage to using your service or business.

Add a Custom tab (Difficulty 4/5)

Using the FBML tab application you can essentially embed a full blown website into a tab on your Facebook page. This is a little more difficult that normal Facebook moderation but will defiantly set you apart from the rest of the pack when it comes to social media.

Add a tab for Twitter (Difficulty 2/5)

Facebook can be a pain to log into and update, but you can still participate with your fans by embedding twitter into a tab and updating your stream from your cell phone. Seriously it couldn’t get any easier to keep your fans in the loop with what is going on at your business.

Add a tab for Flickr (Difficulty 2/5)

Something interesting happen at your business but don’t have a content management system to update your own website? Embed flickr into your facebook page and use the simple tools at Flickr to get your photos on the web and in front of your customers.

Add a tab for Employee Profiles (Difficulty (4/5)

Would you want to talk to a brick wall or a pretty sign? Probably not, but thats all your facebook page is without some human personality behind it. Upload a custom page with profiles of your employees to give a more human vibe to your fans.

Participate with your fans (1/5)

If a customer walks into your business, or calls you on the phone you would never ignore them. But often times businesses will create a Facebook page and just leave it dormant while fans are constantly attempting to participate in the stream. Reply to every single one of your fans, and moderate them very lightly.

Do you have any tips for Facebook pages that have worked well for your business? Leave a comment and let us know here!

Make your content Lovable.

Making a website lovable is the hardest part of developing the brand of a business on the internet. There are many unpredictable variables that we still have no idea how to take into consideration when writing a social media plan. Will people leave comments on You Tube? Would they prefer if we uploaded to Vimeo instead? Will uploading to both sites hurt the feelings of one community or the other? We have no idea, but you also had no idea if your first love would say yes and you still if you could go on a date.

Here are a few things you can do to make it easy for your users to love you:

• Make your website easy to link to. The embed code from YouTube is a great example.
• Create accounts absolutely everywhere. Clamio is great for this, $129 bucks and you’ve got accounts on 300 networks.
• Include links to “favorite” your website at the bottom of each of your blog posts. Share This for regular websites, or Sexybookmarks if you’re using WordPress are both great tools for this.

Speak to your customers.

First step get a blog. Next step, speak honestly and openly about your business. Be creative, if you were trying to catch the attention of a party you’d do crazy things like buy the entire bar shots or jump into a pool naked off the roof of a hotel. Sure, the pool analogy might be a little crazy for some of our clients but for many that would be a hell of a social media hit.

Here are a few ways to make your web presence speak to your customers:

• Let your customers know what’s up  on the inside. Behind the scenes blog entries are great for this.
• Make a video podcast. Pictures can tell a thousand words, and videos have  millions of pictures.
• Search for potential customers with problems you can solve on twitter.

Build a community.

Accepting comments and input from  your customers is essential to any marketing campaign. You’re website needs  to make it as easy as for customers  to give you feedback. Don’t require long registration forms and verified logins just to leave a comment. Customers are doing you a favor by participating with you- accept their feedback and thank them for it.

Here are some ways to listen to your customers:

• Start a forum, make sure it’s free.
• Add a comment form to your blog. Make it threaded to encourage conversation.
• Use Hootsuite to manage multiple social media accounts.
• Start a social network with Buddypress.
• Give away something for free to members of your community. Expect nothing in return.

Make it something you can feel.

DC shoes is one of the companies with a history of finding social media gold. The trick is that they don’t leave it online. They make it real, with TV shows and Live Events. You need to get out there and go beyond just providing great content. Go to trade shows, chamber meetings, or any events in your industry. Find out who the movers and shakers are and talk with them. If you’re smart and can find ways to set yourself apart you’ll be the cream that rises to the top. If you’re lazy and dumb you’ll fail just like you would have in the business world 20 years ago, it’s just a little more accelerated now.

Here are some ways you can get some real human interaction out of the web:

• Go to an event and hand out stickers for free.
• Make a DVD of all your social media hits and send it to customers for free (require them to sign up for a newsletter).
• Put your product in the wild, tape it being used. (see the Keyboard Theory)
• Make it easy for fans to organize meetups in their area. (see Diggnation Live Shows)
• Make merchandised material, don’t look to make a profit on it.

Above all, trust success will come.

While all of the factors that have an impact in social media promotion are still unknown, we can always fall back on basic human instinct. If you feel tricked or taken advantage of you are going to be pissed off. If you’re treated with respect and feel included in a community you are going to support that community with everything you have.

Seriously, if you’re going to do all of this and not trust your customers to like your brand than you should choose a different business because your life is going to be miserable. Let them talk about you everywhere. Facebook, Yelp, Twitter, Gowalla. Respond to them every chance you get, and only moderate when they are being obscene. It’s a simple policy of openness and honesty, not some bullshit 30 page handbook that you hand to all of your employees.

So that’s what we do. What do you think?