This is a guest blog post from Richard Larson and it may contain promotional items.
Drupal is in a word AMAZING. Well let's make that several words. AMAZING, STUPENDOUS, the best thing since sliced BREAD (and we all love turkey sandwiches except when all the little turkey bits end up in the keyboard.) The crazy thing is that the average website owner or blogger doesn't know as much about Drupal as they should.
Now this is something that needs to change. Drupal is one of the most sophisticated content management frameworks around and the best part is that the end user of Drupal themes doesn't need any programming skills to install or administer Drupal. Drupal is easy to use and sophisticated. Now this is such an easy sell.
Here are some quick ideas on how to sell Drupal and help get the word out!
Promotional Items: Turning mere T-shirts into Dynamic Drupal Duds
Promotional products are still one of the cheapest and best ways to create brand awareness. Promotional items these days include everything from T-shirts to USB drives sporting your logo. Mouse pads, pens, coffee mugs, computer bags, the list of great promotional items is endless. The best part about promotional products is that they linger around for years. I even still have a much worn multi-colored Apple Logo T-shirt. Look around your own home or office and start noticing all the promotional items you use everyday. Shouldn't every Drupal designer make it their mission to sprinkle Drupal pens around every Starbucks in America and the UK? Eventually people will start wanting to know, what is Drupal and where do I get one.
Design a Logo and Use Dumb Drupal Wordplay to Sell It
Drupal has one very good thing going for it and that's the D. Successful branding and advertising starts with developing a great Logo and some catchy phrases that are easy to remember.
D is one of the easiest letters in the English language to play off of. There are tons of fun terms that are just begging to be attached to Drupal. For example:
- Drupal Dude
- Drupal isn't for Dummies
- Dynamic Drupal Hero
- $Paypal? Get Drupal $$$
Drupal as a term just lends itself easily to creative ways to make advertising slogans. Warren's Gecko's got nothing on Drupal.
Remove Computer Speak When Selling Drupal
One of the reasons Wordpress has been so successful is that it captures what it does in one word and this word is easy for the everyone to understand. Now Drupal themes are a little bit more complicated to sell because they do a lot more than Wordpress. However, here are some words to avoid when trying to sell Drupal, Words such as: "Programming interface," "Framework," "core" "CMS" can cause some clients confusion. Just replace all these computerese with "blog software" or "Website wonder machine." These are terms the average client can understand and appreciate.
This is just a quick blog to encourage the Drupal community to actively promote the wonders of Drupal and help further the Drupal brand. There are some 17,000 contrib modules out there, isn't it time more people knew about them?
Richard Larson is Brand Manager for www.gopromotional.com, the leading supplier of promotional items and business gifts in the UK and the USA.