SF Startup Marketing Meetup Group
I attended a Mozilla Labs meetup event a few months back and loved the format. About 6 startups each presented for 10 minutes on how they scaled their applications. Each one presented a great story on the tools and technology they used and how the team worked together to build great products.
I started thinking about connecting with other marketers in a similar fashion so went looking for other meetup groups with startup marketers, but I couldn’t find any. Sure, there were marketing groups about all sorts of interesting topics, but none specifically focused on the challenges we face as startups. Thus, the SF Startup Marketing meetup group was born.
Traditional marketing sucks! No budget, no resources, just pure creativity and innovation is what startup marketing is all about. You love it. You thrive on it.
Join the SF startup marketing meetup group and share your successes (and failures), how you executed them and what you learned with the group.
Each meetup we’ll pick a new topic and have marketers present their stories. Topics might include acquiring customers, demand creation, blogging, analytics and measuring marketing effectiveness, social media marketing, optimization, search engine marketing, building an affiliate program, viral marketing, community building, and generally how to do more with less.
Both B2B and B2C marketers are welcome. It’s definitely an “in-the-trenches” kind of meetup group where it’s not just about trends and strategy, but how marketers are actually executing and the technology we’re using.
If you want to meet other marketers like yourself then join the meetup group and help us plan our first event!
Create Buttons for Your Website without Images
I’ve been trying to learn CSS because I truly believe that every modern marketer should be proficient in HTML and CSS to do their job well. It’s a *pita* to have to ask a developer (in this case my husband) every time I want to make a change to my website. While I’ve gotten along pretty well with my HTML skills, I’ve yet to fully master CSS (I can hack it a little, but I don’t know the core as well as I should).
I needed to make a button for my website and I didn’t want to call our graphics guy. My husband showed me how to do it in CSS and…voila - just 15 lines of code and it works without any images needed.
Here’s the code:
And here’s what it looks like:
It only works with a plain color as the background, so if you want a gradient you’ll have to use an image. It’s easy to customize, but I’ve also left some elements out so it will pick up the style of my website. For advanced customization you might want to define the font-family, hover effects, etc.
- a.erinbutton - name the css class anything you like
- background-color - set the hexadecimal code, in this case pink
- border - remove the line altogether or set a solid border
- border-radius - this is for creating the rounded corner effect
- padding - give the button a little room to breather around the text
- color - color of the font, in this case white
- font-size - how big do you want the text
- text-decoration - turns off the automatic underlining of the text since it’s a hyperlink
- div style - used to change the alignment of the button (i.e. if you wanted it centered on the page use text-align:center
- class - reference the css class outlined above, in this case I’m creating the CSS within the page instead of a separate style sheet in case you don’t have access to the CSS
- href - where should the button send you when clicked
- Google Erin Colbert - text for the button to display, “sign up” or “click this” work too
The Value of Design to Startups
“Addictive User Experience (Design) and Scalable Distribution Methods (Marketing) are the most critical components of success in consumer Internet startups, not Pure Engineering Talent.”
“It certainly doesn’t hurt to have code jedis at the helm of your starship, but engineering for consumer Internet startups need only be competent. The real challenge is finding designers and product managers who can build an awesome product experience, and marketers who can figure out effective, scalable, integrated distribution strategies.”
- The Value of Design to Startups, Dave McLure
