If you offer advertising (or want to) on your business website or blogs, you may have been holding off because of the cost of using online ad management systems. Sure, there are “free” ad networks, but most of those don’t allow you full control over the ads that show up on your site. Google’s Ad Manager allows you to sell ads, but also to supplement those ads with ads from Google AdSense and other ad networks. TechCrunch has more information: Google Will Now Manage Your Website’s Ads, as well as Ad Operations Online: Google Ad Manager out of Beta; All AdSense Publishers Can Use It.
Archives for August 2008
Quick bite – show / hide button in Rails, RJS
Sazbean is about online business strategy and we work hard to keep this blog as accessible to our readers as possible. ‘Say it with words, not code’ is one of our guiding principles which keeps us honest when covering technical topics with applied business uses. A principle, I should add, that I will be flagrantly ignoring for this post.
It isn’t always wise to hold back that urge to express our deeper technical understand of a subject we are passionate about. Instead, we have opted to create a segment called quick bites that will be short, technically focused example posts about some subject we are currently working.
I was recently building a UI for a client in Rails and found a good use for a show/hide button in the design. Show/hide buttons, as their names describe, reveal content when pressed and then hide it when pressed again. Typical example code for this using Rails and Javascript might be…
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To PR or not to PR
There has been quite a lot of press lately about whether or not you need a PR firm for your business. At the top of the current buzz is a blog post Jason Calcanis, CEO of Mahaolo, wrote: Jason Calcanis On How To Get PR For Your Startup: Fire Your PR Company. An excerpt:
My philosophy of PR is summed up in six words: be amazing, be everywhere, be real.
You don’t need a PR firm, you don’t need an in-house PR person and you don’t need to spend ANY money to get amazing PR. You don’t need to be connected, and you don’t need to be a “name brand.” Silicon Alley Insider – Jason Calcanis On How To Get PR For Your Startup: Fire Your PR Company
Obviously this post has caused a bit of a storm of PR and marketing folks looking for blood. But the fact is that most small businesses (tech startups or otherwise) don’t have the budget for an expensive PR firm. Jason has some great tips that businesses of any size can put to use – whether or not you use a PR firm. An overview of the ten tips:
- Be the brand
- Be everywhere
- Always pick up the check — always
- Be a human being
- How to bond with a journalist
- How a CEO should e-mail a journalist
- How a CEO should speak to a journalist
- Invite people to “swing by” your office
- Attach your brand to a movement
- Embrace small media outlets
Do you have your own tips for PR? Please share in the comments….