Subscribe & Follow
Partner Offers
Discover
Categories
Archives
Follow us on twitter
-
Michael Klett
Senior Web Applications Developer
Twitter - @moklett -
Mike Arsenault
Brand Strategist
Twitter - @mikearsenault -
Casie Gillette
SEO Manager
Twitter - @casieg -
Jeff Sargent
Web Development Manager
Twitter - @jeffsargent -
Ben Madden
HR Coordinator
Twitter - @benmadden -
Jeremy Butler
Online Marketing Manager
Twitter - @jeremyrbutler -
Jonathan Kay
Ambassador of Buzz
Twitter - @grasshopperbuzz -
Adam Majid
Front End Developer
Twitter - @dijama
-
-
Authors
Team Blog
Learn from the experts of the Grasshopper Team. From design to engineering, customer service to marketing, Grasshopper employees are dedicated to making sure they follow our core values and that our customers reap the benefits.
Friday Flix: Grasshopper Goal Scorers
Along with basketball, indoor soccer is one of the team sports we participate in outside of work. With Ben Madden as our goalie (and MVP), Grasshopper takes the “field”, has some fun and once in a while, scores some goals.
SEO & Analytics: BFFs
As the SEO Manager here at Grasshopper, a large part of my job is ensuring customers and potential customers find our site. Even more importantly, that they find our site and convert.
As a small business, you probably hear that you need to have a website and you need to be doing SEO. Yes, both of those things are true but what is the point of spending all that time if you aren’t going to do it correctly?
Here at Grasshopper we use analytics every step of the way. We know what keywords are performing the best both traffic wise and conversion wise. We also know what content appeals to our users (and the search engines) and in turn, we are able to create a better and more defined SEO/content strategy.
Analytics can offer some extremely valuable data and is vital in improving your website. But how can you use analytics to guide your SEO efforts?
Friday Flix: Grasshopper Takes the Court
Here at Grasshopper we spend our days making sure we are creating the best products for entrepreneurs and giving our customers the best service. How do we spend our evenings?
One night a week, members of the Grasshopper team participate in local coed leagues for basketball and soccer (softball come spring/summertime). While we haven’t had much success in the winning category, we have a good time and get some exercise.
Company sports are a great way to help your team members let off some steam at the end of the day and build friendships with other employees.
Check out some action from the basketball game last night:
Curling for a Better HR?
So in previous blog posts, I have revealed my music geekiness and now the spirit of the 21st Winter Olympics, I can officially revel another strange but true thing that I have gotten into: Curling! Yes, curling, the ancient Scottish game (dating back to the early 1500’s) that involves sweeping the ice to get a 19.1 kilogram stone across the ice into concentric circles.
For those who don’t DVR every match on the obscure NBC channels, here is a quick breakdown: The game, which is often called chess on ice, involves alternating teams “throwing” the “rock” across the length of an ice sheet to try to be the closest to the center of the concentric circles on the other end. The person who “throws” the stone needs to rely on their teammates to help find the right angle to release and while the sweepers brush the ice and listen to their teammates to glide the stone towards the scoring circles (or the house). Granted for the record, I have tried the sport just once but started recording every match I could with the 2006 games*.
Cameron Spencer/Getty Images
What you may ask does this have to do with my day job?
Formidable Apple App Store and the World Rivalry? How This Can Benefit You!
With the recent announcement at the Mobile World Conference, It will be very interesting to see who wins this war of apps – whether it is Apple or WAC.
Industry giants all over the world are uniting to build the so called ‘Wholesale Applications Community‘, an open marketplace for mobile applications. And I hope this works.
Imagine the opportunity it can create for an entrepreneur who is into the business of creating mobile apps. Just one app can potentially be sold to over 5 billion subscribers around the world. While not all these subscribers currently use Smartphones, think of the potential this can create.
It is time for mobile application developers to start thinking global.
Creating a “Recruitment Culture” for Your Organization
One very important step to building a recruiting strategy is creating an internal recruitment culture. A recruitment culture is a mindset where every employee in an organization is responsible for helping to uncover talent.
Referral bonuses are part of an employee referral program but in creating a successful recruitment culture employees must understand that it is in their best interest to work with the best talent available and to understand the role they can play in securing that talent. A recruitment culture dramatically increases the amount of people and hours involved in recruiting without hiring additional recruiting staff.
To be successful, employees in an organization need to understand that because of their professional and social networks, they can play a significant role identifying talent brought into the organization.
Because these employees are not recruiters and are doing the actual work in the area being recruited there is automatically more credibility than if the candidate were speaking with a Recruiter or Human Resources Representative. The employee is also currently performing the job the prospective candidate will be doing, so the employee can explain the work much more accurately and give an expectation of what it is like to work for the organization.
Friday Flix: 3 in :30 with Jonathan Kay
Meet Jonathan Kay, our Ambassador of Buzz here at Grasshopper:
Friday Flix: Andy Heads Into the Ocean…in January
At the recent quarterly planning meeting in Florida, Andy (who regular Friday Flix viewers are surely familiar with) decided to take a dip in the ocean…after some encouragement from co-founder David Hauser of course. A dip in frigid water is sure to get the mind going…it’s where the best planning is done. Enjoy and Happy Friday!
Why I Now Hate Tiger Woods Too!
I tried to stay out of it. I didn’t offer an opinion on the scandal. I didn’t visit TMZ one time. What Tiger Woods does with his life is not for me to judge. But now he has really gone and pissed me off.
Well geez Casie, why has Tiger Woods made you so mad?
I’ll tell you. Tiger Woods is still bogarting the “voice mail” search results!
With real time search results, Google has put Tiger Woods all over the first page and pushed us voice mail providers down, down, down! I figured after the first couple weeks or so, it would go away, but nope, still there. Twitter results, news results, US weekly…Damn you Tiger!
So what happens when a huge news story breaks and your business happens to be effected?
Technology & Crisis Response in 2010
How Social Media is Helping in the Haiti Relief Efforts
On January 12, a 7.0 magnitude earthquake struck Haiti focusing in on the capital city of Port-au-Prince. As the world has watched on TV the heart breaking pictures of a city of 2.5-3 million people in ruins, it seems they have also picked up their phones and texted in financial support.
Five years ago this wasn’t an option. Today we have mediums like Twitter, Facebook and text messaging to not only spread the word, but help raise money. According to BusinessWeek, $8 million has been raised in the US through a ‘Text Haiti’ appeal that lets mobile-phone users make a $10 donation to the Red Cross via text message. Twitter and Facebook have played a huge role in spreading that campaign.
Google is also helping. On the Google home page you can find a link “Information, resources, and ways you can help survivors of the Haiti earthquake.” that brings you to a site with information on ways to give to organizations such as Care, UniCEF, Yele Haiti and the Red Cross as well as the Google earth view of the Post-Earthquake imagery.
Technology has certainly played a large role in the immediate actions of this crisis, especially the fundraising. I may not be able to donate the $1 million that Google is, nor the $1.5 that Giselle is but I can post the ways to help.
Here are two numbers in the United States.
-
SMS text “HAITI” to 90999 to donate $10 to Red Cross relief efforts
-
SMS text “YELE” to 501501 to Donate $5 to Yele Haiti’s Earthquake Relief efforts
* Chargify is also matching dollar for dollar up to $1000. Check it out.
