Resource for Software Developers

Welcome to the latest news from TalkIT. This month’s is about digital marketing. How to tell the world who you are? How to reach the audience for your services? This follows from the July Newsletter on how to design websites that look good and work These ideas are based on the lesson we have learnt over the last 3 years at TalkIT. We have used digital marketing extensively to launch our developer e-learning and classroom training. Take a look at our recent Tweets to see what we have been up to.

Content

Our Core Values Resource for Software Developers Our Most Popular Posts Find the Site with AdWords Count Visitors with Analytics Can You Solve This Coding Problem? Other Bits

Our Core Values

From the start we wanted to communicate our values to our intended audience. We first spent some time working out what exactly those core values were. We then designed the website and related marketing campaigns to convey these. In this way we build and kept in touch with our audience. This increased the number of visits to the website and the sales of our online tutorials. It also provided us with valuable feedback. When we listened to our audience they told us what they wanted. We were aware that less that 7% of website visits were from the UK. So we thought about how we could shape our messages for an international audience. This included reaching people in India, South Africa, Russia and the United States. Our social media post were translated into Hindi and Russian. See more at Our Story.

Our aim is for the website to be a highly effective resource for software developers. It now contains hundreds of blogs, videos and tutorials. Some blogs are aimed at technical readers. They share our passion for software development and technology. Other blogs are aimed at a wider audience. These cover other things like creativity, education and being more productive. When you register on the site you can opt to get a monthly newsletter. The newsletters are then easily available as blogs from the website. They are also posted on various LinkedIn Groups. A big part of creating the blogs was including interesting images. These images can really bring the text to life. They also emphasise our belief that technology can be fun. The blogs invite readers to add their ideas. This has worked well on LinkedIn where they have led to ongoing discussions. Take a look at our recent blogs to see what we have been saying.

Our Most Popular Posts

We realised that our developer tutorials appeal to a young tech savvy audience. So we decided that social media were good channels. We now have over 7500 followers on Twitter. We also post on FaceBook, Quora and Google Plus. Our most popular posts contain code puzzles. These invite immediate interaction. Others contain humour and playful images. These themes fit well with how people interact with social media. By focusing on dynamic content rather than on sales, we have built our audience. Tweets contain links to relevant pages on the site. This increases site visits. To make our posts easier to find they include relevant hash tags. We used Twitter analytics to measure the audience’s engagement with posts. This again told us what was working and what to change. Take a look at our recent Tweets to see what we have been up to.

Find the Site with AdWords

Though social media is great, it is rather a scatter gun approach to reaching an audience. As a more focused alternative we also run AdWords campaigns. You have probably noticed the when certain keywords are entered; ads appear alongside Google’s search results. The benefit of this is that people can immediately find the online service they are looking. For example; if “C# tutorial” is entered as a keyword, an ad with a link to TalkIT’s tutorial will appear. I found that setting up display ads, keywords and landing pages took a bit of learning. But AdWords is a useful marketing channel. We pay Google only when the link is clicked on. AdWords is a sophisticated marketing platform, based on this Pay per Click (PPC) model. It can be used to monitor which ads & keywords actually convert in to sales. This is valuable feedback on the returns of our marketing investment.

Count Visitors with Analytics

Another web monitoring tool is Google Analytics. This provides a mass of information about who visits the site. Also exactly they do on the site. The detailed reports include the number of visitors, the time they spend on the site and the pages they visit. The demographic reports show the countries they come from. This can again tell us what works and what to change.

Can you solve this coding problem?

Practice your JavaScript skills. Let’s look at OOP. What is the output from these statements?

 var employee1 = {};

employee1.name = "John Smith";
 employee1.salary = 10000;

function payRise(amount) {
  this.salary += amount;       
  return this.salary;
 }
 ...

employee1.payRise = payRise;
var newSal = employee1.payRise(1000);
 document.write("New salary for employee1 is " + newSal);

What sort of thing is employee1? And name? … And salary? Why not add your own JavaScript puzzle? More in our HTML5 and JavaScript course.

Other Bits

We have just published another Java tutorial. You can learn the language in simple steps by creating a game. You can also watch the videos for this on YouTube. The tutorial is the conclusion of the Java course. It provides an opportunity to use the skills covered in the course. Start the course now. The first tutorial is a free trial. Java Course TalkIT has been very active on social media recently. We have been posting on coding, new gadgets and IT humour. Why don’t you connect with us on Twitter or FaceBook? You can follow all the latest news and let us know what you think. @NowTalkIT NowTalkIT What Web Developers actually do?http://ow.ly/SJSls We will help you to build real application. http://ow.ly/SJS8U Which programming language should you learn first? http://ow.ly/SJRNF Time management. Learn how to prioritize and meet #coding deadlines http://ow.ly/LdiRG .Net and SQL in-class training tailored to your needs. See courses:http://ow.ly/SJRxx Win a TalkIT course Gold subscription. Do a quik survey.. http://ow.ly/SNrbx Learn #csharp #java #python #html5 http://talk-it.biz/where-to-start/ Start from the beginning and develop your skills! New courses in #SQLServer #csharp #MVC. Onsite or training centre. Customised to requirements. http://ow.ly/SNpW9 http://ow.ly/RnQsI What’s the difference between programming languages? http://ow.ly/SJLve TalkIT What do programmers actually do? Become a programmer today. http://talk-it.biz/where-to-start/ Coding puzzle. What is the outcome? http://ow.ly/SJKVS I want to learn programming. Where do I start? http://ow.ly/SJKnB Join our #SQL Server course in #Bristol. Get 10% discount. http://ow.ly/SJYnK SQL Querying course in #Bath 16/11/15 2 days 10% discount. http://ow.ly/T73xz How to code creatively? How to be more http://talk-it.biz/2014/12/7354/ Learn Java by building game – new tutorial released October. http://ow.ly/SNrDN Do you value internet more than water?http://ow.ly/SJJuo What makes a good course? How to learn effectively? Why do courses fail? http://ow.ly/SJZDx Coding #Quiz. Solve 5 #puzzles to learn to code. http://talk-it.biz/2015/06/coding … http://ow.ly/SJILj

Thanks to Andy Olsen for code snippet

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