Girls In Tech

Extending the Web With WordPress CRM

I have to say it was a bit of a shocker to see Tim O’Reilly, the Godfather of Web 2.0, plug our new WordPress-to-Lead plugin during his keynote speech “The State of the Operating System” at San Francisco’s Web 2.0 Expo last week. He was talking about ways in which companies extend the web to benefit users and not just their own customers. I guess this means we are doing something right over here at salesforce.com!

Turn WordPress into A Lead Generation Machine With WordPress-to-Lead

We know that WordPress users have wanting a way to capture leads directly into salesforce.com, instead of losing them in their email inbox, as most WP contact form plugins tend to do. And we know that WordPress users would really like a custom contact form solution that doesn’t involve cutting and pasting code. So we’ve done it – we’ve created the WordPress-to-Lead for Salesforce CRM plugin – and easy to use contact form builder that captures leads directly into Salesforce CRM.

Most contact form plugins for WordPress send web inquiries to your inbox, which is a hassle if you get a lot of valuable business leads through your website. If you inbox is anything like mine, that message gets buried in 2 days. Ditto with any email conversation with an important prospect. With WordPress-to-Lead, you can now manage all your prospects, customers, and conversations in one place – your favorite CRM.

Building Contact Forms in WordPress has Never Been Easier

The best thing about WordPress-to-Lead (aside from its integration with Salesforce CRM) is that it is, hands down, the easiest contact form builder for WordPress. And I’m not just saying that because I work at salesforce.com – I’ve installed and attempted to configure at least 4 WordPress contact form plugins, and some of them are pretty hard to get working.

All you need to do is check which form fields you want in the WordPress-to-Lead plugin control panel, and publish the form to any page or post using the shortcode [salesforce]. That’s it. You can also publish a contact form to every page by enabling the WordPress-to-Lead sidebar widget. Don’t believe it’s that easy? Check out the WordPress-to-Lead video demo to see for yourself.

Why We Built WordPress-to-Lead for Salesforce CRM

This is a huge step up from implementing our traditional Web-to-Lead forms through cutting & pasting code to your webpage, especially since WordPress has that wonderful habit of stripping out the html tags you need for the Web-to-Lead form to work. Not to mention, Web-to-Lead still needs a lot of developer TLC for it to match the look & feel of your website.

WordPress-to-Lead is great for business owners who would rather spend time focusing on their business then configuring WordPress, or getting their contact forms plugins to work.

What’s even better than all that? WordPress-to-Lead is free. So turn your WordPress site into a lead generation machine today.

OMG! I Want it Now! How Do I Get the WordPress-to-Lead?

If you are already a salesforce.com user, just mosey on over to the WordPress Plugin Directory and download your free version of WordPress-to-Lead for Salesforce CRM today.

Then, visit our Wiki page for detailed instructions on how to install & configure WordPress-to-Lead

If you’re not a Salesforce CRM user, be sure to register for a free trial of Salesforce CRM before downloading the WordPress-to-Lead plugin

Much thanks to Metamorphosis Gourmet, a gourmet catering company in San Francisco for letting us demo this plugin.

About Lorna Li

Lorna Li is an Online Marketing Manager at salesforce.com, specializing in Social Media SEO. She also blogs at Green Marketing 2.0 and Green Marketing TV on Internet marketing strategies for green businesses & social enterprise.

Tags: lorna li, lornali, salesforce, salesforce crm, salesforce.com, wordpress contact form, wordpress contact form builder, wordpress contact form plugin, wordpress contact forms, wordpress crm, wordpress lead capture, wordpress lead generation, wordpress plugins, wordpress-to-lead, wordpresstolead
Posted in San Francisco | No Comments »

Girls in Tech Santa Cruz is proud to present:

Leveraging Today’s Technologies to Publish Your Book

Last year 764,448 titles were produced by self-publishers and so-called microniche publishers – up an astonishing 181 percent from the previous year – and just 288,355 titles were published through traditional publishers (down from 289,729 the year before). Book publishing is simply becoming self-publishing.

FastPencil Co-Founder and CTO, Michael Ashley will lead the conversation on how you can leverage today’s various technologies to get your book published.

Attendees will learn:

• How to publish your book including tips on getting started and uploading or importing existing content.
• How to share work with reviewers and editors through social media platform.
• How to utilize the social web to promote your book project while you are writing it.
• How to distribute your book.
• How to use free online tools to promote your book.

Attendees must RSVP here: http://publishingtech.eventbrite.com

Girls in Tech is grateful to have NextSpace as the event’s gracious host.

FastPencil is leveraging the disruptive trends of self-publishing, social media, print-on-demand and eBook distribution to deliver a new unified online service that streamlines the book publishing process offering more control and higher margins for authors. The FastPencil writing and publishing service enables authors to create books online, collaborate, publish and distribute from one engaging, simple, cost-effective solution. For more information please visit FastPencil.com.

Tags: Author, book, event, fastpencil, girls in tech, NextSpace, publish, Publishing, write, write a book, writer
Posted in Events, San Francisco, santa cruz, Silicon Valley | No Comments »

During Internet Week, the array of tech events and parties in New York City are almost dizzying.

By the end of the week, it can be difficult to keep all the events straight and remember whom you met where.

That’s why GIT’s New York City chapter is proud to be a sponsor for the DaniWeb “Dinner with Dani” event. It’s a cross between speed dating, a dinner party and old-fashioned networking.

There are 12 tables and three courses. Those invited (fill out the survey to snag an invite) are shuffled between tables over the course of the dinner according to their interests.

You might, for example, be really interested in virtualization, want to talk to folks about SEO and want to pick someone’s brain about widgets. At a typical event, you’d be stuck with whomever you were seated next to or have to seek out people with other interests throughout the evening.

At the Dinner with Dani, you’d sit at one table for the first course (Table 1, “Web 2.0,” has a focus on widgets then), another for the second course (Table 11, “Internet Marketing,” will discuss SEO then) and another for the third course (Table 4, “Cloud Computing” focuses on virtualization then).

Each table has a sponsor’s representative, who will help guide the conversation and keep it on target.

This is how the setup will look:

TABLE #1 “Web 2.0″
Widgets  |  AJAX  |  Web Services

TABLE #2 “LAMP”
Linux  |  PHP  |  MySQL

TABLE #3 “.NET”
C#  |  IIS  |  Microsoft SQL

TABLE #4 “Cloud Computing”
Windows Azure  |  VMWare  |  Virtualization

TABLE #5 “Software Development”
C++  |  Java  |  Python

TABLE #6 “Web Development”
ColdFusion  |  CSS  |  Ruby

TABLE #7 “Databases”
Databases for Web  |  Database Design  |  DBs for Client/Server

TABLE #8 “Rich Media”
Silverlight  |  Flash  |  Photoshop and Design

TABLE #9 “Hardware”
Storage  |  Network Hardware  |  Gaming Rigs

TABLE #10 “Operating Systems”
Mac OS  |  Windows 7  |  Linux

TABLE #11 “Internet Marketing”
Social Media  |  SEO/SEM  |  eCommerce

TABLE #12 “Entertainment”
Mobile Apps  |  Media Center  |  Streaming Video

Those attending will have the opportunity to network in small groups with upwards of 36 people.

Then, after the three-hour dinner, the party at The Yard (55 W. 21st St., near Sixth Avenue) opens up at 10 p.m. to the general Internet Week public, with an hour of an open bar and festivities until 2 a.m. that include Rock Band 3, raffles and the chance to get your photo taken on the red carpet, plus other surprises.

The dinner is a wholly unique event, with invitations for just 100 or so people, so fill out the survey now for your chance to attend. And either way, you’ll want to come to the party and challenge your friends to a game of Rock Band 3.

Tags: DaniWeb, Internet Week, New York
Posted in All Chapters, New York | No Comments »

As we submerge ourselves deeper and deeper into the chasm that is social media, we are beginning to see the affect and evolution IRL (in real life).  The most humorous of these real life interactions is, of course, meeting a person IRL who you know only be their avatar.

It’s a little like online dating.  You get excited about the back and forth, the witty repartee on your social media drug of choice, and develop expectations that the real person will be even better  Sadly the trend seems is to the contrary.  In fact, as I traverse the social media event scene in Los Angeles, I have come across more avatars in real life and come to the realization that my social media induced fantasies have been reduced to little more than pixels.  Of course this is not always the case.  There are many sparking avatars that we come to love as real life people, capable of human interaction, in spite of the fact that their avatars look infinitely better than their real life counterparts (again, much like online dating).

Most recently, I had an experience that exemplifies the growing disconnect between online interaction and real life.  For many weeks I had been tweeting with an avatar who seemed to be in a similar social circle, in fact I had met him many times before in passing.  Many replies, retweets and DMs later, we found ourselves together at an event.  We shook hands, made small talk and enjoyed the evening in close proximity, interfacing with each other and those around us.  The very next day in response to a tweet about the previous night’s event I got a message stating how sorry he was that he missed me.  I thought to myself, “this is why we wear name tags while networking”.  The question is whether we should be offended by this disconnect.  Is it disingenuous interaction or just a slip of social graces more prevalent than ever due to the abundance of communication methods, handles and titles.

The takeaway?  Weblebrities (as they have come to be known), have usually created online personas for a reason.  Leave them there, keep your web fantasies intact and grab an Us Weekly.

Laurel Kaufman
Managing Director Girls in Tech, LA
www.ak-cg.com

Tags: attorney, avatar, business woman, girls in tech, laurel kaufman, Los Angeles, real life, social media
Posted in All Chapters, All Chapters, Girls In Tech, Los Angeles | No Comments »

We are excited to announce an exclusive partnership with Pinchd! Join the member-ship only GIT San Francisco group on http://pinchd.com/girls-in-tech. Now you can, stay up to date on what members are doing, share ideas/plans that other members would be interested in and easily meet-up with others outside of just formal events.

Pinchd! will be formally launching at our May 20th Spring Fling Mixer to help with sign-ups, explain their services and sponsor a raffle for attendees.

Posted in Girls In Tech | No Comments »

More and more we all turn to Google for answers to our every day questions.  Dear Google: how far in advance can I buy movie tickets for the new Sex and the City Movie? Dear Google: will vitamin C serum really stop these fine lines around my eyes from getting worse?  We ask Google for answers from our Blackberries and iPhones over lunch.  We ask Google for measurement conversions when cooking – how many cups are in a pint?  We even ask Google for answers to medical questions.  But can we ask Google for legal advice? Google can answer everything else, right? So why not legal questions? Can’t Google lower our business’s legal costs?

True to my attorney-self, I answer: it depends. Yes, Google can answer any legal question you pose and make you more knowledgeable about a relevant legal issue.  No, Google cannot apply the law to your business’s particular legal situation, taking into account the variable factors that inevitably make each legal issue unique; nor can Google identify related legal issues that will arise in the future and help you avoid costly legal mistakes.  Additionally, while there is a wealth of legal information online, only some of it is reliable.  Attorneys are increasingly using websites and blogs as a marketing and referral reinforcement tool, providing basic legal information in their areas of practice and legal updates on emerging issues.  As a result, there are a growing number of attorneys providing sources of legal research online; and when you pose your legal question to Google, Google will faithfully respond by providing you a list of links to numerous potential answers, including links to these websites and blogs.

When determining the reliability of a legal resource on the Internet, use common sense.  The best sources of legal information are on state and federal government websites and state bar association websites.  Both of these sources provide information which can be very helpful for businesses in a variety legal practice areas.  For example, The State Bar of California’s website provides information on bringing a case in small claims court, which is often an effective recourse for recovering outstanding unpaid accounts.  State and federal government websites also generally have business portals, combining online business resources, including legal resources, in one place on their websites, such as the U.S. Government’s Business.gov.

When viewing legal information on individual attorneys’ and law firm’s websites, take a look at the attorney profiles to give you a sense of who is giving you the advice and what their experience is.  Most of the largest law firms, which charge many hundreds of dollars by the hour for their legal advice, frequently post articles about emerging legal issues in just about every area of the law.  Because these law firms are protective of their reputations and tend to hire highly qualified attorneys, their websites and blogs can provide a reliable source of legal information.

At the end of the day, however, actual human attorneys are in a better position to answer your legal questions than Google, although Google can certainly make you a more legally savvy business woman.  

Tags: attorney blogs, attorney websites, blackberries, business woman, girls in tech, Google, iphone, legal, legal information, Meredith Davis Williams, State Bar of California
Posted in All Chapters, All Chapters, Los Angeles | No Comments »

Come join us for our Spring Mixer to celebrate the extra hours of daylight and mingle with other Girls in Tech members, fans and supporters! Feel free to bring friends, and no one needs to be a Girls in Tech member in order to attend this event.

We will also be debuting an exciting new strategic partnership with Pinchd! Stay tuned for more details in the coming days and for your opportunity to join the Girls in Tech San Francisco community presence on Pinchd!

http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#!/event.php?eid=120512511307753

Posted in San Francisco | No Comments »

TEDxSoMa has announced that it will hold its second event on Friday, the 21st of May. You have to think that because their first event was so popular & successful, they just had to throw another one!

Here are some highlights from the last TEDxSoMa:

The event featured…

• A very intimate physical event, with a very big global footprint
• 45 attendees, 12 speakers, 8 sponsor guests, and 8 volunteers were physically present for the event
• Over 110,000 people tuned in online for TEDxSoMa
• Over 1,000 listens and 60+ total hours on Stitcher Radio
• Over 6,000 post-event views on YouTube
• Over 1 million social media impressions in January
• Over 6,000 unique views for TEDxSoMa.com in January
• Stellar graphic recording from Diana Arsenian

To view video from the event, go to their site at:  TEDxSoMa ’10

You can also find more highlights, here.   We’ll post any updates on TEDxSoMa II as they roll in!

Posted in All Chapters, San Francisco | No Comments »

Santa Monica College and The City of Santa Monica bring together business leaders for an insightful discussion on “Digital Entertainment”.

Join Los Angeles Business and Industry Executives as they share cutting edge insights on monetizing digital entertainment, discuss new and future business models for digital media across platforms and the impact of this evolving industry will have on our future workforce.

Scheduled Speakers: (Subject to change without notice)

Alex Barkaloff, Executive Producer, Digital Media, LIONSGATERichard Bullwinkle, Chief Evangelist, ROVI CORP (formerly Macrovision)

Eric Mark, Partner, DELOITTE MEDIA ENTERTAINMENT

Rob Schonfeld, Vice President, Pay Television & Digital Distribution, DISNEY ABC

Rob Salvatore, CEO/Co-Founder, TONGAL

Moderator; Emily Della Maggiora, President, Treehouse Strategies Inc.; Santa Monica College, Workforce & Economic Development

Schedule:

5:30pm Onsite Registration Opens & Check-in
6:00pm Welcome
6:00-6:30pm State of the Industry
6:30-7:30pm Digital Entertainment Roundtable
7:30-8:00pm Audience Q/A

Location:
Santa Monica Library
MLK Auditorium
601 Santa Monica Blvd
Santa Monica, CA 90405

Registration:
Free admission. Registration required.

Sponsors Include:
ThinkLA.org
Bizmore.com
GirlsInTech
Small Business Development Center (SBDC)

For more information, please contact Sandra Sanchez at sanchez_sandra@smc.edu

Tags: education, entertainment, event
Posted in Events, Girls In Tech, Los Angeles | No Comments »

As I was fortunate enough to attend the retreat at which this interview took place (as a participant) I decided I would leave it to the pros to handle this one!   So what follows is an interview with Bronwyn Saglimbeni — public presence expert & coach — as conducted by a good friend of Girls in Tech, JD Lascia.  Text of his post and a link to video of the actual interview is below for your reading and viewing ~ Thanks JD!

Speakers get guidance on how to enhance their public appearances, by JD Lascia

I’ve been aston­ished by how many of my friends and col­leagues have thrust them­selves into the pub­lic eye by writ­ing books, appear­ing on pan­els or going full tilt into pub­lic speak­ing. I’ve even detected a small uptick (finally!) in the num­ber of women appear­ing on stage at tech conferences.

I’ve spo­ken at my fair share of public events, and what pub­lic speak­ers often have in com­mon is an uncer­tainty in how to engage the audi­ence with com­mand and assur­ance. That’s espe­cially true of many women, who’ve been taught by the cul­ture to prize “false power arche­types” rather than being true to their own voices, says Bron­wyn Saglim­beni, a pub­lic pres­ence coach in Sil­i­con Valley.

“As women, we need to come up with our new power archte­types,” she said at a recent Girls in Tech retreat in Santa Cruz, Calif. “Unfor­tu­nately we’ve been fed a steady diet of false power archetypes — aggres­sion, inti­ma­tion, or lean­ing too heav­ily on our sex­u­al­ity, or hid­ing behind our sexuality.”

Saglim­beni offers coach­ing on speak­ing, pre­sent­ing and how to attain “true power.” “It hap­pens when per­son­al­ity aligns with pur­pose to serve the greater good,” she says. “Where does the pur­pose of our work life and per­sonal life inter­sect? Dur­ing pub­lic speak­ing, what are the ele­ments of our per­son­al­ity that need to be brought for­ward? Every time we have an oppor­tu­nity to get up and speak, we have to really cher­ish that time and nail it.”

Common mistakes in public appearances

Body lan­guage and pos­ture often an issue for speak­ers. “Often we’ll hold our hands in front of our bod­ies, or we hold them behind our backs, or in front of our mouths — and the prob­lem is those are not pow­er­ful posi­tions,” she says. “The other thing I see is that peo­ple tend to get very seri­ous when they take the stage. … We need to let go a lit­tle bit and have fun!”

Women often find them­selves per­plexed on how to behave in a largely male cor­po­rate set­ting. Says Saglim­beni: “If it’s a very seri­ous board room filled with male exec­u­tives, you can meet them there. But you can also estab­lish cred­i­bil­ity and start inject­ing a lit­tle bit more of your­self. Room read­ing skills are very impor­tant. It helps you tai­lor your mes­sage, know when you’re los­ing peo­ple, and know when you’ve got ‘em.”

Her firm Bron­wyn Com­mu­ni­ca­tions works with cor­po­rate clients to improve their pub­lic speak­ing and media rela­tions skills.

Watch the Video on Vimeo, HERE

Posted in All Chapters | No Comments »