The Startup’s Guide to Podcast Advertising

Despite being about as hip as the average mother (that is, not very), my mom is definitely in the know when it comes to cool new startup products.

Harry's Razors? She bought them for my dad. A Casper mattress? She's never slept better. An Audible subscription? Listening to Gone Girl spiced up her commute to work.

If you listen to podcasts, you'll know how my mom is learning about all these companies. Podcast advertising is taking off; so much so that in April of 2015, the Interactive Advertising Bureau published a 27-page "Digital Audio Buyer's Guide". In a single year, advertisers will spend $34 million on podcasts (and that's a low estimate).

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Of course, the rise in advertising is stemming from a rise in the podcasting industry itself. According to Edison Research, one-third of the U.S. population has listened to a podcast–a 300% increase since 2006.

So, if you're looking for a great way to get the word out about your startup, you should definitely consider podcast sponsorships. 

Why Podcasting Is Such a Great Ad Medium

As you no doubt know, most people pay little attention to traditional ads–if they don't ignore them completely. From banner ads on websites, which 99.8% of people don't engage with, to TV ads, which 37% ignore, most mediums have low interaction rates.

The recent rise in ad-blocking makes advertisers even more nervous.

Podcasts are different. Not only do people listen to the ads, they actually enjoy them.

First, most people simply can't ignore the ads. More than 25% of podcast consumers listen during their morning commute. Other popular podcasting activities include walking the dog, doing household chores, and working out. These activities don't allow you to fast-forward through an ad, nor do they let you focus on something else until the ad finishes.

But the vast majority of people don't want to. Podcast ads are considered fun and engaging. Many of them match the overall tone of the podcast; for example, PC's ads for Reply All (a popular Internet-themed podcast), feature a charming exchange between the Reply All host and a young couple, who agree they'd rather save their laptops than their wedding pictures.

Most ads are read by the hosts themselves, which makes you feel as though you're hearing about, say, Stamps.com from a friend rather than a self-interested stranger.

As Adam Sachs, CEO of ad network Midroll, told Fast Company, "That passive endorsement is really powerful."

The Set-Up

Before you can make any decisions, it's helpful to know the jargon.

Pre-roll: This 15-second spot opens the podcast. Usually, it has more of the traditional audio ad feel than the mid-roll, which can be more casual.

Mid-roll: These 30 to 60-second segments occur periodically throughout the episode. 

Offer code: Most podcast ads offer listeners a unique promo code, which allows sponsors to track how many conversions they're getting.

Native ad: The standard podcast ad consists of the host(s) reading a script into the microphone. However, you'll also hear the occasional agency-produced ad, with music, sound effects, interviewees, etc.

Outro: The final part of a podcast, during which the host can urge listeners once again to try out the company ("Don't forget to use offer code Take30 to receive 20% off your first Wayne purchase") or simply remind them of the sponsorship ("Thanks to Wayne for sponsoring this episode.")

Direct response: Since most podcatchers offer linkable show notes or captions, you can now provide direct links to your site or product page.

Podcatcher: A podcast player. iTunes still reigns supreme, but apps like Stitcher, Overcast, and Castro are gaining ground.

Finding Podcasts

The beginning step in any marketing strategy is to find the appropriate outlets.

You can tackle this project in two ways.

The first way is to identify shows your target demographic is listening to, contact those shows, and ask to sponsor them. 

Let's say your company provides millennials with simple, easy-to-use banking software. After some research, you decide to approach Night Vale and Rooster Teeth, two shows popular among millennials.

Pros: This approach is pretty low-budget. Also, it allows you to scout out niche podcasts that directly appeal to your core market–as opposed to hyper-popular shows like Serial that everyone listens to.

Cons: It's a pretty unscientific and time-consuming approach.

The second option is to work with a podcast network, like Midroll or Archer Avenue. They act as the middleman, matching you with multiple shows within their roster.

Pros: Almost all of the heavy lifting is outsourced. Plus, you can gain access to top podcasters (who may ignore you if you reach out to them independently).

Cons: It's more expensive.

While your decision will depend on how much you can afford to spend and the audience size you're going after, in general, I'd recommend starting with the first approach, seeing how it goes, and iterating on your approach, then moving to the second.

Continue reading %The Startup’s Guide to Podcast Advertising%

by Aja Frost via SitePoint

Interactive JavaScript Charts Using Data from Google Sheets

Meet my friend Jenny. She recently started coding websites. She loved her job and was very happy until she met Steve, who has a reputation of being, let's say, not a very easygoing client.

Steve had a lot of data in a spreadsheet and he wanted to display that on his website. Our friend (now Jenny is your friend too!) suggested that Steve make the charts in Excel and upload them as images to the website.

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But Steve being Steve, he wanted the charts to be interactive. Not only that, he also wanted the charts to get updated whenever he made a change to the data in his spreadsheet .

Jenny didn't know how to tackle this issue, so she came to me. And, being the good friend I am, I gave her this advice:

First ask your client to move his data to Google Sheets (because that's what all the cool people are doing nowadays). Then we can easily implement the features that he needs — interactive JavaScript charts and dynamic updating.

Her client agreed (luckily!), and Jenny and I coded rest of the solution. But how? Well, that's what this tutorial will teach you.

I have divided this tutorial into five easy-to-follow steps:

1. Exporting data from Google Sheets
2. Fetching JSON from Google Sheets via Ajax
3. Restructuring the data
4. Creating a chart with FusionCharts.
5. Customizing the chart

So without further ado, let's dive in!

Exporting Google Sheets Data as JSON

Before delving into how to export data, let's first create a sheet. Assuming you've got a Google account, you can do this by going to the Google Sheets page and hitting the Start a new spreadsheet button. In the spreadsheet that opens, create two columns: Actor and Income. Then fill your newly created sheet with some data. I've taken mine from here: The World's Highest-Paid Actors 2015.

As you can see, the left column contains labels for our chart, the right one values corresponding to those labels. For those of you following along at home, you can grab a copy of this sheet here (go to File > Make a copy).

The data available in Google Sheets can be exported to multiple formats like JSON, XML etc. And once exported to any of those formats, it can be easily accessed via the web.

To open your document to the web, you need to make the following changes to the document settings:

• Set the sharing of the document to either Public on the web, or Anyone with the link. To achieve this, click the Share button in the top right-hand corner, then click the Advanced option that appears in the bottom right of the pop up.
• Publish the document to the web. This option is available under File > Publish to the web

With these two changes made, the data in the document can be accessed in JSON format via: http://ift.tt/1T4wB54

You will need to replace SPREADSHEET with the ID of your Google Sheet, which in our case is 1Aoz_GcPYoEIMMNd1N_meYNOp8TJ0fCXpp1AoUhCpwZo. You can see the results here.

Using jQuery to Fetch JSON from Google Sheets

We will use jQuery's get() method to fetch the data from Google Sheets. You can include jQuery from a CDN as shown:

Continue reading %Interactive JavaScript Charts Using Data from Google Sheets%

by Rohit Boggarapu via SitePoint

Web Design Weekly #224

Headlines

The New Web Typography

Robin Rendle looks into how we should go about making rules for typesetting on the web. A well thought out post that is a great read. (robinrendle.com)

The current state of modular CSS (medium.com)

​Get multiple job offers from top companies with 1 application

​Web developers are in demand, so shouldn’t companies apply to you? On Hired, that’s exactly how it works. Get 5+ job offers from companies like Uber, Square, and Facebook with 1 application. Join Hired today and get a $1,000 bonus when you get a job! (hired.com)

Articles

The Conversational UI

The rise of applications no longer having a graphical user interface is an extremely interesting area that I’m sure becomes more common as tools like Slack continue to grow. In this post Matty Mariansky explores the current landscape. (alistapart.com)

Misconceptions of Tooling in JavaScript

Jack Franklin expresses his frustration with tooling getting in the way of learning the basics of JavaScript libraries and shares a simple React example. (javascriptplayground.com)

How to lint your Sass/CSS properly with Stylelint

Scotty Vernon talks about why we should lint our stylesheets and how to implement stylesheet linting into our build pipelines for both vanilla CSS and Sass. (creativenightly.com)

Managing Typography

Harry Roberts gives some great advice about managing typography headings across large and complex apps. (csswizardry.com)

Trends That Will Define Web Design in 2016 (sitepoint.com)

SVG Working Group Meeting Report (tavmjong.free.fr)

How we use Sass Maps (bigeng.io)

Tools / Resources

Vision API

The Google Cloud Vision API enables developers to understand the content of an image by encapsulating powerful machine learning models in an easy to use REST API. Pretty crazy stuff. (cloud.google.com)

Chainable BEM Modifiers

Jordan Lewis explains a variation of the popular BEM methodology that they currently use at Envato. Dubbed BEVM, it provides the ability to quickly and concisely configure HTML modules and keep their codebase under control. (youtube.com)

Rebound.js

A simple library that models spring dynamics for the purpose of driving physical animations. (facebook.github.io)

Draft.js

A rich text editor framework for React projects. (facebook.github.io)

Screencasts on a (Performance) Budget (daverupert.com)

Speech Bubbles with SVG (thenewcode.com)

Firefox DevTools Reload(mozilla.org)

Inspiration

Logo Experiments

Bryan Braun explores ways to create a logo with modern front-end techniques. (sparkbox.github.io)

How and Why GitHub Switched to SVG for Its Icons (github.com)

The difference between a goldfish and a human (markboulton.co.uk)

Jobs

Front End Developer at GIPHY

We’re a wildly creative and passionate group of GIF-obsessed individuals continuing to build out what we believe is the future of GIFs. We have big dreams and goals for 2016 and are looking for like-minded, talented people to join us. (giphy.com)

Application Engineer at Vimeo

Vimeo’s mission is to empower creators to make, share and sell amazing videos directly to viewers worldwide, in the highest quality possible and with no interruptive advertising. If you’re dying to help us take Vimeo to the next level, we’re dying to hear from you. (vimeo.com)

Need to find passionate developers? Why not advertise in the next newsletter

Last but not least…

Look Ma! No media queries! (codepen.io)

A love letter to jQuery (madebymike.com.au)

The post Web Design Weekly #224 appeared first on Web Design Weekly.

by Jake Bresnehan via Web Design Weekly

How to Empower the Amazon Echo with IFTTT

The Amazon Echo is a voice enabled speaker and personal assistant that has a range of capabilities which grow every day. As a developer who is fascinated by both the Internet of Things and artificial intelligence — the Echo holds so much potential!

The best way to begin experimenting with your own Echo customizations is via IFTTT (If This Then That), a service that allows rule based actions and triggers between a range of devices and services with no programming required. In this article, we will explore a few examples of functionality that the Echo can achieve when paired with IFTTT.

If you are in Australia — like me — and aren't quite sure how to get your hands on an Echo and set it up to work here, I have a quick guide on how to set up an Amazon Echo in Australia that I wrote at Dev Diner on this very topic! Whilst you can't get everything to work just yet, developers can get enough working that you'll be able to develop for the Echo in no time.

Completely New to IFTTT?

If you are completely new to IFTTT, we have a more generic overview of how it works in an earlier piece on Connecting LIFX Light Bulbs to the IoT Using IFTTT. We've also connected it to Node.js via the IFTTT Maker channel and WordPress via the IFTTT WordPress channel. Throughout this article, if you find any concepts in IFTTT a bit confusing, check the earlier articles — however I've aimed to structure this so that most readers can pick things up solely from this article.

Connecting Your Echo to IFTTT

To enable any of the below capabilities, we need to add the Amazon Alexa channel to IFTTT. Head to the Amazon Alexa page and click "Connect":

From here, you will be prompted to enter in your Amazon account details. Make sure you put in the account details for the account which your Echo is assigned to (if you have multiple accounts):

Agree to give IFTTT access to all of your Alexa information by clicking "Okay":

When you've granted it the right permissions, you'll be directed back to IFTTT and should see a "Channel Connected!" message:

From there, the steps for beginning a new recipe with the Echo are always the same, as the Echo is only a trigger in IFTTT — not an action. In other words, you can only use the Echo in IFTTT to cause actions to occur, you cannot get IFTTT to make the Echo speak back to you or look up information (I hold out hope that this will be a future addition!).

To create a new recipe, as always, you head to the top right hand corner and click your username. Then click "Create":

From there, search for the Amazon Alexa channel. It will also appear if you search for "echo", so you can find it in a range of ways!

From here, the trigger option chosen will differ depending on the recipe we want to create. Each recipe below will start from this point in the process.

Connecting the Echo to LIFX Light Bulbs

Whilst there is a LIFX skill you can install onto the Echo, it didn't work for me when I tried to use it. If you also have the same issue, you can use IFTTT to achieve the same results, just as we did within the Connecting LIFX Light Bulbs to the IoT Using IFTTT article here at SitePoint.

We want to trigger our lights via voice. To do this, we use the Echo trigger channels "Say a specific phrase" trigger:

From here, we set up which phrase we want to use. As an initial test, we can put down "turn on my light" and then click "Create Trigger" (note — your phrase needs to be all lowercase for it to be accepted):

Continue reading %How to Empower the Amazon Echo with IFTTT%

by Patrick Catanzariti via SitePoint

Scheduled Backups for WordPress for Free in 5 Minutes

No matter how many times you read about it on the web, you just haven't got around to backup your WordPress website, despite all the hours you’ve put into it. There are tons of reasons for you not backing up - it’s too expensive, takes too long to setup, if your server gets hacked your backups might be lost as well, etc. - you get the picture. But hackers and server hardware issues won’t listen to you whining about how long you worked on your website, and once it gets hacked, it’s pretty much gone forever without backups.

And that’s why, you need to take action NOW. Setting up scheduled backups in WordPress can be surprisingly easy. What if I told you that there was a way to backup your website for free, with the backed-up files stored outside your server in a secure cloud environment, that can be setup in 5 minutes? You’re in luck. I present to you, the WordPress Backup to Dropbox (WPB2D) plugin.

Advantages and Disadvantages of WordPress Backup to Dropbox

Many WordPress experts might point out that there are many other more robust backup applications, as well as many powerful paid options. However, for most users, WPB2D is more than enough. The WPB2D plugin is great in that it's incredibly easy to setup and also very easy to use. I set it up on one of my WordPress sites 2 years ago, and it has never had an issue ever since. It’s great for setting up once, and just leaving it there. Here’s an image of the plugin in action:

Continue reading %Scheduled Backups for WordPress for Free in 5 Minutes%

by Ryan Chang via SitePoint

Building a Hacker News Reader with Lumen

In this tutorial, we’re going to build a reader for Hacker News. We will be using the Hacker News API and the Lumen framework to implement this.

The final output looks something like this:

If you’re excited, let’s go ahead and jump right into it.

Installing and Configuring Lumen

The first thing that you need to do is to install Lumen. You can do so with the following command:

composer create-project laravel/lumen hnreader --prefer-dist

Create an .env file with the contents:

APP_DEBUG=true

APP_TITLE=HnReader

DB_CONNECTION=mysql
DB_HOST=localhost
DB_PORT=3306
DB_DATABASE=hnreader
DB_USERNAME=homestead
DB_PASSWORD=secret

APP_DEBUG allows us to turn on debugging in Lumen so that we can see the errors in the app. And the DB_* is for the database configuration. We will be using the MySQL database for storing the items that we will be getting from the Hacker News API. This way, we won’t need to make a separate HTTP request every time a user accesses the app. You will probably just leave the values for DB_CONNECTION, DB_HOST, DB_PORT as they are if you’re using Homestead Improved. Of course, we need to create the database, too.

mysql -u homestead -psecret
CREATE DATABASE hnreader;

Next, let’s open the bootstrap/app.php file and uncomment the following line:

Dotenv::load(__DIR__.'/../');

This specific line loads the configuration options from the .env file created earlier.

Also uncomment the following line so that you can use facades such as DB:

$app->withFacades();

Database

For this app, we’re only going to need one table for storing the items that we’ve fetched from the API. You can create the table by creating a new migration with the following command:

php artisan make:migration create_items_table

That will create a new migration in the database/migrations directory. Open the file and update the contents of the up and down method to the following:

public function up()
{
    Schema::create('items', function(Blueprint $table){
        $table->integer('id')->primary();
        $table->string('title');
        $table->text('description');
        $table->string('username');
        $table->char('item_type', 20);
        $table->string('url');
        $table->integer('time_stamp');
        $table->integer('score');
        $table->boolean('is_top');
        $table->boolean('is_show');
        $table->boolean('is_ask');
        $table->boolean('is_job');
        $table->boolean('is_new');
    });
}

public function down()
{
    Schema::drop('items');
}

What the up method does is create the items table.

Continue reading %Building a Hacker News Reader with Lumen%

by Wern Ancheta via SitePoint

How to Create a News Reader With React Native: Setup and News Item Component