In almost seven years of doing custom development work at Live Oak, we have never standardized on a single content management system.

That’s right, never, until now. With each new site we built (and we’ve built dozens), we would start from scratch. Sure, we borrowed a bit here and there from previous projects, but each customer was different and everyone wanted it done based on their own needs. Although in the end, a lot of the components were the same, there was always something different. We sat down one day and figured out what core components were the same across every site. Then we had our baseline. This lets us jump start, even a custom deployment, by nearly 80-90% right from the start.

You can’t forget about the Total Cost of Ownership.

Most people who evaluate content management systems either start with open source (free) or commercial (paid) options. With paid solutions, it is pretty obvious where some of the costs are derived. You buy the software, install it on your server, configure it, implement your template, load your content, etc. When evaluating open source solutions, you still have all of those activities, with the exception of the cost of the software. But, when you ask anyone who has ever deployed a commercial content management system, the cost of the software is usually the smallest investment. In the open source world, you may end up saving a few thousand dollars on software, but you’re having to settle for something built for the world, not something built for you. You end up installing a winnebago when you may just need a pop-up camper, or end up trying to convert your pop-up camper into a 3-story mansion. Architecture is important and to a hammer, everything looks like a nail. (just for the record, at Live Oak 360, we LOVE open source software, use it daily, and contribute where we can to make it better)

Leaving it on the table.

Content management systems are typically designed for one purpose - managing content. Makes sense, right? The problem is that the CMS powers your website. Your website is the most important marketing and communications platform that your company has and it is about so much more than content. Every public interaction that you have on the web somehow drives people back to your website. Every email communication that is had refers to your website. Your contact forms, lead generation, webinars, press releases, demonstrations, etc. — all lead people to your website. So, shouldn’t your website be better integrated with your sales and marketing processes? Better yet, shouldn’t your content management system facilitate the implementation, use, and evolution of these tools?

Built-in Stagnation - CMS as a SaaS

Most websites receive functional updates every 18 to 24 months. Think back in your own life 18-24 months and about how much technology has changed. That means that your website is sitting idle, dormant, and is being covered with more and more cobwebs every day. Bloom CMS is updated quarterly to ensure that your website is continually being updated with the latest in proven web technology. Not necessarily the latest whiz-bang feature or effect that clutters the message, but technology that has been proven to add value. No more moss, cobwebs, or dust — just your best foot forward every single day.

Marketing Activity Augmentation

Marketing budgets are tight and marketers are already overworked. Marketing teams are shrinking and their responsibilities are growing daily. What marketers need are partners who can help them determine what technologies can deliver the most to their top and bottom lines. Bloom CMS eases this concern by researching new technologies, features, and trends and rolls them into each quarterly launch. This gives the marketer a continual refreshing holster of ammunition from which to arm themselves. This replenished arsenal gives them an edge over those teams who are trying to keep the plates spinning all by themselves.

Last Thursday (June 19th) was the first Interactive Austin conference. This year’s title was “Social Commerce at Work.” Live Oak 360 was a sponsor for the event and we were very excited to be involved. The event was sold out, which is always a great thing to hear and the first sign of a good event. The sold-out status was the first indicator regarding the demand and interest regarding social media in Austin. It’s no secret that social media is a hotbed of activity in this town. We’re all in sync with Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter. SXSW ensures that all the geeks can showcase their expertise by flocking to Austin each year in March. From the list of attendees and conversations that I had with them, social media is starting to make a dent in the enterprise. Small business folks see it as a way to get ahead of their larger competition. Enterprise folks see it as a way to tap into the smaller, but hungry markets. And everybody sees it as the next big thing. We had attendees who were buzzword-oblivious, but we also had folks that were heavily into all the latest social environments. From the back of the main conference call, looking out into the sea of laptops showed a combo of twitter.com and twemes.com/fg2 on nearly every screen.

The panelists were amazing. I thought they did a great job of really helping folks understand the momentum that is building and the amount of opportunity that is out there. What it boils down to is that we’re at the cusp of the social media wave. Those of us who have been “on the scene” for the last couple of years may be growing tired of the buzzword-bingo articles and conversations, but nevertheless, the opportunity is real and the market is ready.

Unfortunately, in software development, many tools do, for all intents and purposes, spring into existence. It’s not that there isn’t a human developer who writes them; it is the case, however, that developers often write for the short-term and, after realizing a shortcoming in their work, later bolt on a “quick fix.” This cycle continues indefinitely until the work becomes a gargantuan spaghetti monster that is the subject of children’s horror stories.

This trend extends past projects and applications; it’s present in languages, too. The classic example to point to is C (or C++): while it’s an immensely powerful language, it has a lot of errata, backwards approaches, and annoying syntactical inconsistencies. My primary development language right now is PHP, which suffers from similar issues (my usual example is $needle and $haystack arguments being taken in different orders within string functions). This sort of thing happens because the language wasn’t deliberately developed from the start. Few people sit down with the intent of writing a language; often, they only believe they’re writing a few constructs. When your view is that narrow, you’re more likely not to pay attention to issues like internal or external consistency, the primary indicator of good API design. Conversely, languages like Python and Java, which are deliberately designed, show a much greater level of consistency and attention to detail.

And, of course, all these rules apply to frameworks, also. There are hundreds of PHP frameworks available. Literally, there are hundreds. Some of the more famous PHP frameworks available are CodeIgniter and CakePHP. It seems like every developer has written a framework, or at least endeavored to write one. In general, developers write miniature frameworks for themselves to make repetitive tasks take less work (convenience methods); in other words, they are writing just a couple of constructs. As needs grow, so do the number of constructs. Eventually, the developer or group of developers sit down to make their convenience code into something more useful–namely, a framework.

That’s what sets Acorn apart; Acorn was deliberately developed.

At Live Oak 360, the development team realized first that we needed a robust framework to enable us to do custom software development without unnecessary limiting us; since we’re in the custom development business, you never know what a client might want. This framework, therefore, had to be robust and scalable while also being quite fast. The final goal of the framework was to be a philosophical guide and fence for us as developers–we wanted our code to be as reusable as possible, which meant moving to a completely object-oriented environment as well as following preset guidelines to maximize code portability.

With all those things in mind, the Live Oak 360 development team sat down to write “Acorn”, our development framework. Every object, method, and approach was debated; the whiteboard in our conference room was top-to-bottom, right-to-left packed with scribbles. My own whiteboard contained list after list of objects and methods, which I edited and amended constantly, wanting to make sure that they made sense, were consistent, and were as obvious as possible.

The final product was our core development framework. Acorn has now had its chance to run through the ringer a few times; we’ve used it for almost every project we’ve done since, such as Be Green Now (http://www.begreennow.com), Home Auction Live (http://www.homeauctionlive.com), and Austin On Demand (http://www.austinondemand.com). We believe that we’ve created a quality and consistent framework.

Toward that end, we’re going to be releasing Acorn as an open source product in the near future. We’d like to share what we’ve done with others, with the hopes that other developers looking for a deliberately designed object-oriented framework will find what they seek in Acorn, and so that the open source community can improve on what we have begun.

So, my advice to you — be ready. You never know when the person at the other end of the line with have their checkbook out with pen in hand. Be ready.

1. Company A spends thousands of dollars a month on paid search and send the clicker to the home page of their website. Those that do send them to a page other than their home page, don’t have optimized landing pages that speak directly to the audience (persona-based communication). Those that do speak to their audience, have a compelling offer, and are doing their best to connect seekers with the pot of gold don’t leverage intelligent analytics to tell them what is working and what is not and therefore they never tune their campaigns.
2. Company B has implemented a commercial analytics program, but can only figure out how many visitors and page views they have. They have never taken the time to truly learn what the tool can tell them and how to make changes based on the information they are learning.
3. Company C says, “We need a page on MySpace and a Facebook application” and has no idea why, how to measure its success, and what to do with it once they have it.
4. Company D has a form on their website where customers can say, “I’m interested in spending money with you.” and they fail to give the salesperson any more information with the lead beyond what the prospect typed into the form.
5. Company E has an eCommerce engine or shopping cart full of products they are ready to sell, but they have them hidden deep within their website and not easily visible from the first click.

Can you relate to any (or all) of these 5 examples? Are you wondering if your business is leaving money on the table? These are exactly the types of questions that our Digital Landscape Management program is designed to answer. Interested in a 2-minute assessment to see where you stand? Visit www.liveoak360.com/dlm and find out today.

Live Oak 360 assists companies in the management of their digital landscape through interactive consulting, customized software development, conversion acceleration and social networking applications. The new corporate name showcases a cyclical growth engine, an ongoing business process employed by the agency, that discovers client needs, develops custom solutions and then cyclically re-evaluates and refines the solutions as client priorities change over time.

“Our focus is to grow and manage a 360 degree view of our clients’ total interactive presence – their digital landscape. Our name also embodies our iterative process which is essential to that goal,” comments Andy Meadows, President and CEO. “The 360 process empowers the Live Oak team to step in sync with clients, at any point within their development process, and to create custom software applications in alignment with corporate goals.”

The firm’s capabilities, commitment to customer service and integrity have provided opportunities to develop a myriad of enterprise web applications, such as e-commerce, multimedia, and open source technologies. They are a full-service technology solutions provider with personalized service-orientation focusing on the following applications:

• Web development – public web sites, intranets and extranets
• Social media and community sites - web properties that are driven by users, including blogs, discussion boards, video logs, video sharing sites
• Business-driven technology solutions
• Enterprise web applications
• E-commerce systems
• Custom application development
• Business-class hosting through LiveOakHosting.com

Drawing upon proven industry experience and open source expertise, the Digital Landscape Management™ company is able to develop scalable and efficient customer driven applications. Live Oak 360 integrates marketing and business activities, provides in-depth business intelligence, and increases visibility with key audiences, which, in turn, improves website profitability for clients.

About Live Oak 360

Live Oak 360, an Austin, Texas-based web technology services company, specializes in Digital Landscape Management™ consulting, customized software development, conversion acceleration and social networking applications to assist companies in the management of their digital landscape.

The firm’s name embodies a cyclical growth engine that discovers the needs of clients, finds the strategic solution that is the best fit and then cyclically evaluates and refines the client solutions based on the clients’ evolving business needs. It empowers the team to step in sync with clients, at any point within their development process, to create custom software applications in alignment with corporate goals and to maintain iterative improvement for clients.

Drawing upon proven industry experience and open source expertise, Live Oak 360 is able to develop scalable and efficient customer driven applications. Live Oak 360 integrates marketing and business activities, provides in-depth business intelligence, and increases visibility with key audiences, which, in turn, improves website profitability for clients.

Live Oak 360 has developed solutions directly for Buffalo Technologies, Time Warner Cable Media Sales and Green Mountain Energy. Through strategic partnerships, the firm has customized applications for AMD, Symbol Technologies (now a division of Motorola) and World Vision.

For more information, visit www.Liveoak360.com.

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All names are the trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners.

Conversion - what you want the seeker to achieve while they are on your website

Persona - how you classify that person into a given segment (VP Marketing, Purchasing Agent, Member of the Press, Investor, etc.)

Recommendation - what you do or say that accelerates the process of conversion

If you know that for a typical conversion, it takes 10 clicks for the average seeker to connect with the goal, what can you do that will accelerate the process from 10 clicks into 8, 6, 4, or less. Knowing what motivates the seeker, what answers they seek, and how to streamline the connection is the key. Many companies have access to this information already, or have the tools at their disposal to find out. The trouble is, most folks don’t know how to use them. Do you?

If you’d like to learn more about our Conversion Acceleration program or CPR process, please contact us to set up a free consultation. It’s what we do!

What is a Digital Landscape and why would you want to manage it?

Digital Landscape - all online venues where your brand is discussed, listed, or visible. This includes blogs, online magazines, partner sites/directories, social networks, and third-party tools that integrate and report on this activity (clipping services, analytics applications, hosted applications, etc.). The Digital Landscape is vast and rapidly growing on a continual basis.

Managing the Digital Landscape is no simple task. Depending on the size of your business and reach of your brand, your Digital Landscape could be immense. Knowing how to leverage the available tools and resources to understand and monitor your Digital Landscape is critical to the future of marketing organizations across the globe. Once you realize the value of harnessing and directing your Digital Landscape, you have just achieved a new level of understanding the digital marketplace.

Want to learn more about Digital Landscape Management? Contact us for more information.

Google, Open Social, Social Media

Out of all the new web technologies of the past few years, only social networking has failed to find traction in the corporate world. While some organizations have tried to build networks within Facebook, the simple fact is that public social networks are closed, difficult to adapt to corporate needs, and fail to show real return. Top Facebook applications, for example, include “Free Animated Gifts,”"Funwall”, and “Top Friends.” In fact, in the Business section no application beyond the Fantasy Stock Exchange that has more than 300 active daily users. While some social networks can provide valuable business connection services, in most social networks its all about being social.

The challenge businesses face when considering building their own social networks is that they would be inherently non-social. Faced with the need to constantly register, filter, and participate in multiple closed networks, vertical social networks and applications could never gain the participation needed to make them valuable to their participants. What has been needed is way way to tear down the barriers between social networks (aka, the “walled gardens”), allowing participants to opt-in and opt-out, immediately be placed in communities of interest and form connections without repeating their information, and provide controlled access to portions of their profile while interacting with custom applications without exposing their entire on-line profile.

With the release the OpenSocial APIs from Google, already embraced by LinkedIn and other social media platforms, business now has access to tools that allow for the creation of managed social networks that can adapt to the needs of customers, partners, and employees.

One scenario would be lead acquisition. Imagine a potential customer coming to your web site through a simple process of joining your corporate social network. Immediately, their profiles, interests, and connections are available. With their permission, you could provide them connections to current customers that are also in their own social network for references. Their interest profile could immediately connect them to sales team members best suited to their industry or level of interest. They can immediately be linked into your customer support applications. A business can accelerate their sales cycles and increase their customer loyalty. Through the Google APIs, a business could even provide their custom social network applications to other social networks, allowing a customer currently on LinkedIn or Salesforce.com to access directly and share with their other contacts the business’s own embedded information and social network functions.

Industry adoption of Google APIs, which appears to be happening at lightening speed, is only part of the equation. For a business wanting to harness the power of social networks, the other half is a solid, proven social networking platform that can be customized for their specific needs. Live Oak 360’s new Social Network Platform for Business provides the core components needed to implement a corporate social network. With built-in support for the Google OpenSocial APIs, you can immediately implement a true collaborative social network, build custom applications that can be distributed to other social networks, and incorporate profiles, applications, and activities running on other social networks. With management tools to measure collaboration, use, and participation, you can feed incoming profiles to your Salesforce.com applications. Support your own lead generation, customer service, and partner collaboration applications. Incorporate a social network into your own intranet to build collaboration and communities of interest in your own organization.

Google has leveled the playing field for social networking. Organizations that recognize the power of social networking have waited for true cross-network applications. With built-in support for Google OpenSocial, Live Oak 360 can deploy your custom social network that opens the world and keeps you in control.