Headstand Media

Headstand Media and its customer, Southport Grocery & Cafe (SGC), are pleased to announce the launch of a new “Web 2.0” e-commerce website at www.southportgrocery.com. The new site is the result of several months of coordinated business strategy planning and communication between Headstand Media and Southport Grocery & Cafe.

A Healthy Business

Southport Grocery & Cafe was founded by Lisa Santos, fulfilling a life long dream to open her own food service business. Lisa has built a thriving Chicago Lakeview neighborhood business at their Southport Corridor location (near Chicago’s Wrigley Field). The business has received many local and national awards and media attention for their modern and new, yet accessible and comforting food and dining atmosphere.

Get “The Cupcake”

Southport Grocery & Cafe is also the place to get “The Cupcake” - the best cupcake in Chicago! The new website will soon facilitate online ordering of these incredibly delicious treats for overnight delivery anywhere in the continental US.

Community

SGC approached Headstand Media because they desired to grow their business through a more effective and targeted online presence, that harnesses many “Web 2.0” networking features such as blogs, RSS feeds, tagging, commenting, and more. These features are designed to build upon and extend the warm and inviting personality of the physical location with their existing neighborhood and customer base, into a growing online community.

Project Design and Technology

The new web interface design is based upon the pre-existing SGC branding standards. Headstand Media recommended the search engine friendly WordPress content management system (CMS), along with the CubeCart e-commerce shopping cart system. These open source tools allowed Headstand Media to provide a rapid redesign and implementation schedule when compared to a custom built application.

“I am increasingly impressed with the simplicity, flexibility and extendability of these open source Web 2.0 tools,” commented Randal Birkey, Headstand Media founder. “I have a hard time recommending other solutions to my customers these days because of the incredible value that can be found in using open source tools and working within the collaborative open source community.”

Headstand Media, Creative Strategist Benjamin Nelson also added that,

“Web technology should be a servant of the creative and business objectives, and not the other way around. We are discovering how well these open source tools accomplish that.”

Finally, Kyle Williams, Headstand’s SEO Specialist commented that,

“WordPress and some other open source tools like it can be great helps to our customers in maintaining search engine friendly websites. These Web 2.0 tools force our customers to follow good SEO principles and techniques as they manage the content of their sites.”

Hello everyone!

We have decided to not host a Nightstand event this month due to our busy schedules and work loads. We just haven’t had the time to put one together for you. We’ll plan on putting one together for July 31, 2008.

Randy, Benjamin and Kyle

Last night Headstand Media hosted Nightstand 6. Thank you to all who came out and participated in our discussion on email marketing. We had a great time of networking, discussion and learning.

Steve Robinson, Regional Development Director for Constant Contact, was our presenter for Nightstand 6. Constant Contact is an effective, affordable and easy to use online email marketing tool designed to enhance a businesses image and its communication with customers and prospects. View the summary of his presentation below, as well as the full PDF version of the presentation ready for download.

Summary: Steve discussed the 3 Keys to E-mail Marketing. We first talked about what E-Mail Marketing actually is, then moved on to what it can do for your business. We compared Email services (such as Constant Contact) with Outlook as well.

3 Keys to E-mail Marketing

• Build Your E-Mail List with Permission
• Set Your Objectives, then Determine Format & Content
• Segment Your E-Email List
• Bonus Point: Track Your Results

3 Keys to E-mail Marketing (PDF 1.1 MB)

Thanks again to all who attended. Please leave comments, questions and suggestions off of this post. Feel free to pass our Headstand blog and Nightstand information to anyone else in your network who you feel would enjoy and profit from coming to a future Nightstand event. You can view photos from Nightstand 6 by clicking on the Flickr icon to the right.

Subscribe to the Nightstand RSS feed:

Nightstand 6 will take place on Thursday, May 29, 2006 with food and drink available from 6 PM-7 PM, followed by introductions and then our featured presentation.

Email Marketing with Constant Contact

This month our guest presenter will be Steve Robinson, Regional Development Director for Constant Contact. Constant Contact is an effective, affordable and easy to use online email marketing tool designed to enhance a businesses image and its communication with customers and prospects.

Steve relies on his 18 years of experience in business development, sales, and fund-raising to help businesses, nonprofits, and associations learn how to build lasting relationships through permission-based email marketing.

We will learn more about how email marketing with Constant Contact can help a business to grow. Steve will address how to create professional looking emails with Constant Contact’s permission-based email marketing program.

Topics covered during this overview of email marketing include:

• What is permission-based email marketing?
• List building and segmenting lists
• Setting objectives and determining formats
• Tips on tracking results are included as well!!

There will be time for Q & A and interaction with Steve following his presentation. We typically end by 8:30 PM, but attendees are free to come and go as needed.

We look forward to seeing you at Nightstand 6!

Please RSVP!

Confirmed Attenders:
Steve Tanner - Kidology
Diane Chewning - Scholle Packaging
Paul Berg - Paul Berg Photography
Branden Stuck - Kidology/Sony
Kerry Cleary
Scott Ruth - Scotty Man Media
Derek Taylor - Taylor Design Studios
Donna Kae Nelson - Illustration
Dwight Nelson - HBN Design
Chris Arndt - Moody Bible Institute
Erik Vorhes - Tanagram
Kent Thompson
Patrick Flanagan - ShopLocal
James Bardwell - CTL Group
Lauren Dillon - Sunshine Gospel Ministries

A group of Nightstand regulars met on April 24, 2008 for general networking, discussion and brainstorming on topics related to Web 2.0, web technology, business, online communities, social networking and many other topics. We enjoyed our discussion around Giordano’s pizza, soda drinks and other goodies.

Each attendee was given time to introduce themselves, and to describe their particular job and organization. Their website was projected and showcased for everyone to view, and some organic discussion ensued around each site. Many great questions were asked with everyone participating by contributing their perspectives or suggestions.

We also spent a fair amount of time discussing and brainstorming other topics to be covered in future Nightstand events. These topics include:

• Web 2.0 Features
• Web 2.0 - What Is It?
• How to Market with Web 2.0
• Content Management System Options - WordPress Demo
• Pimp Your CMS - How to customize and personalize a CMS website
• Web Databases: What are they and how do they work?
• API’s: What are they and how do they work?
• Social Networking platforms compared and contrasted
• Flash Basics

Randy talked about a few special guest Nightstand events he is working on. We will have a guest from Constant Contact in May to talk about their email platform and services. He is working on getting a guest speaker from McDonald’s, and a group from an agency in Holland, Michigan.

A few other topic ideas included:

• Web Graphics Basics: formats, tools, how to
• Alternative revenue strategies for non-profits
• How to make $ with websites: affiliate marketing and other revenue models
• How to market and promote yourself on the web
• The web and the “long tail”

Even after the event was “over” several more discussions in smaller groups evolved around specific challenges that attendees were facing in their organizations. These included Web 2.0 feature integration and related database integration and migration.

Click on the Flickr badge to the right to view more pictures from Nightstand 5. If you have other topics you would like to discuss at an upcoming Nightstand event, please leave suggestions as comments.

Headstand Media is pleased to announce Nightstand 5 scheduled for April 24th, from 6 to 8:30 PM. We’ll serve drinks and food at 6 PM while guests arrive and to facilitate informal networking. We’ll have short introductions right around 7 PM, then go into our featured discussion.

Build Your Own Nightstand

Sometimes it is just good to sit and talk with friends about ideas, trends, developments and experiences related to our lives with: emerging technology, Web 2.0, online communities and social networking, new media and communication in our changing world.

Headstand Media will guide us in an open-ended discussion and conversation on new things we’ve seen, questions that have come up, experiences we’d like to share, developments on the horizon - encouraging all of our guests to participate and contribute.

So, we invite you to bring along your ideas, thoughts, experiences, issues, questions or news to contribute. We’ve got plenty of white-board space, and a laptop and projector to view websites or resources online that will help our discussion.

We have a speaker and topic lined up for May, but we’ll also spend some time brainstorming on future topics and presentation resources that you’d like to see covered in the months ahead.

We encourage you to invite friends and associates who may be interested in this topic. We only ask that you RSVP!

We’d love to see you there!

Confirmed Attendees:
Randal Birkey - Headstand Media
Benjamin Nelson - Headstand Media
Kyle Williams - Headstand Media
Steve Tanner - Kidology
Scott Ruth - Breakthrough Urban Ministries
Chris Arndt - Moody Bible Institute
Richard Ellison - Cultivest
Branden Stuck - Kidology, Sony
Kent Thompson
Tim Schwaar

Invite a Friend!

Hello to all our Nightstand friends. Due to vacation and travel schedules this month, we are not hosting a Nightstand event on March 27th, as would normally have occurred. Instead, we are planning to host Nightstand 5 on April 24, 2008. We will be sending an email to our Nightstand invitation list prior to that date in April, with information on the topic and featured presenter. We will also post that information here for all of you who have subscribed to our RSS feed.

Have a great Easter holiday and spring break, and we’ll see you in April!

Randy, Benjamin and Kyle.

Last night Headstand Media hosted Nightstand 4. Thank you to all who came out and participated in our discussion on online communities. We had a great time of networking, discussion and learning.

Steve Tanner, Director of Web Operations for Kidology.org, was the guest presenter for Nightstand 4. Steve’s presentation was entitled: The Changing Face of Online Communities. View the summary of his presentation below, as well as the full PPT version of the presentation ready for download.

Summary: Our conversation explored the shift from place-centric communities (message boards, chat rooms) to people-centric communities (blogs, social networks, buddy lists, mobile phone), and what that means for today’s online projects, from commercial to non-profit. We looked at the underlying principles that apply to all online communities, independent of type, technology, and purpose.

Talking points on Online Community

• What is an online community?
• Why do people participate in online communities?
• Trends: Place-centric vs. People-centric
• So what? Why should I care about online community?
• 10 Guidelines to ponder before jumping into online community

The Changing Face of Online Communities (PPT 3 MB)

Thanks again to all who attended. Please leave comments, questions and suggestions off of this post. Feel free to pass our Headstand blog and Nightstand information to anyone else in your network who you feel would enjoy and profit from coming to a future Nightstand event.

Subscribe to the Nightstand RSS feed:

Headstand Media is pleased to announce our 4th Nightstand event scheduled for February 28th, from 6 to 8:30 PM. We’ll serve drinks and food at 6 PM while guests arrive and to facilitate informal networking. We’ll have everyone introduce themselves right around 7 PM, then go into our featured presentation.

The Changing Face of Online Communities

Our conversation will explore the shift from place-centric communities (message boards, chat rooms) to people-centric communities (blogs, social networks, buddy lists, mobile phone), and what that means for today’s online projects, from commercial to non-profit. We’ll also take a look at the underlying principles that apply to all online communities, independent of type, technology, and purpose.

Steve Tanner has been professionally managing online communities since 1998, working with Fortune 500 companies as well as non-profit organizations. With a background in mass communications, including journalism and broadcasting, along with technical computer science proficiency, he’s nurtured a diverse group of community-building situations to bring relationships and technology together.

For the past 4 years, Steve has served as the Director of Web Operations for Kidology.org, a non-profit, community-driven resource for those who work in children’s ministry. Prior to that, he worked professionally in the fields of online community management, marketing, and copywriting. On the side, he’s an avid blogger and beverage enthusiast.

We encourage you to invite friends and associates who may be interested in this topic. We only require that you RSVP!

We’d love to see you there!

Confirmed Attendees:
Randal Birkey - Headstand Media
Benjamin Nelson - Headstand Media
Kyle Williams - Headstand Media
Steve Tanner - Kidology
Branden Stuck - Kidology/Sony
Derek Taylor - Taylor Design Studio
Kent Thompson
Dan Cummings - ShopLocal
Eric Vorhes - Textivism
Donny Williams - TLN
Becky Williams - DePaul University
Bunmi Onibokun
Scott Ruth - Breakthrough Urban Ministries
Cindy Kurzma

Invite a Friend!

Last night Headstand Media hosted our Nightstand 3 event. Thanks to all of you came out and participated despite the snowy weather. We had a great time of networking, discussion and learning.

Kyle Williams, SEO Specialist at Headstand Media, was the guest presenter for Nightstand 3. Kyle’s presentation was entitled: SEO Marketing Basics. View the summary of his presentation below, as well as both a PDF and PPT version of the presentation ready for download.

Search engine marketing has changed from being an optional traffic source, to a requirement all website owners must include in their overall business strategy. Applying proper search engine optimization practices to an un-optimized website will often increase traffic base many times over. Having the right fundamentals in place can create a snowball effect, where visitors not only find your site from search engines, but continue coming back.

Fundamental SEO Concepts

• Use keyword analysis tools such as WordTracker or Google AdWords to find out what terms ‘real people’ search on related to your business. When choosing keywords to target, try and pick phrases that are as specific as possible. These are generally less competitive and will yield a more targeted visitor.
• Have your website created with as much text as possible, while not sacrificing design aspects. Search engines cannot read the text used in your images.
• Take advantage of the benefits in using CSS (cascading style sheets) vs. traditional table-based layouts. CSS provides a good foundation for proper SEO techniques.
• Search engine optimization is a natural process. Think about whether the SEO strategy benefits your users. If the given technique is being done only to improve your search engine rankings, it may be a bad idea.

SEO Marketing Basics (PDF 850 KB)
SEO Marketing Basics (PPT 150 KB)

Check out the photos we posted on flickr. Feel free to comment and tag these photos as you see fit!

Thanks again to all who attended. Please leave comments, questions and suggestions off of this post. Feel free to pass our blog and Nightstand information to anyone else in your network who you feel would enjoy and profit from coming to a future Nightstand event.