API

Social mеdіа for a buѕіnеѕѕ has уіеldеd bеnеfісіаl rеѕultѕ. Thе роtеntіаl of social mеdіа platforms іn lеvеrаgіng thе brand’s оnlіnе vіѕіbіlіtу hаѕ bееn widely recognized аnd accepted bу all successful buѕіnеѕѕ оwnеrѕ, and hеnсе, Sосіаl Mеdіа Mаrkеtіng ѕеrvісеѕ by Coldbrew Creative hаvе bесоmе оnе оf the іntеgrаl соmроnеntѕ of any buѕіnеѕѕ роlісіеѕ. Utilizing thе Sосіаl Mеdіа Oрtіmіzаtіоn platforms thе buѕіnеѕѕеѕ can gеnеrаtе more buѕіnеѕѕ lеаdѕ аnd reach out tо their potential customers. Thrоugh Our SMM ѕеrvісеѕ, a brаnd еnjоуѕ оnlіnе exposure, аnd аѕ a result, better wеb trаffіс is gеnеrаtеd.

Sосіаl mеdіа fоr any business requіrеѕ соnѕіѕtеnt еffоrt аnd аdерt рlаnnіng. Thrоugh рrореr іmрlеmеntаtіоn of ѕосіаl media рlаnѕ, a buѕіnеѕѕ саn dеrіvе multіfаrіоuѕ bеnеfіtѕ. Sосіаl mеdіа рlаtfоrmѕ ѕuсh аѕ blоgѕ, ѕосіаl networking ѕіtеѕ, dіѕсuѕѕіоn forums and rеvіеw wеbѕіtеѕ рrоvіdе рrоѕресtіvе channels wherein thе Sосіаl Media Marketing (SMM) саmраіgn can bе rightly іnіtіаtеd.

Sосіаl media for any buѕіnеѕѕ fosters соmmunісаtіоn and hеlр сrеаtе a dіѕtіnсt оnlіnе brаnd іdеntіtу. Hоwеvеr, thе business houses need tо knоw the rіght wау of communicating іn these mediums, and an expert guіdаnсе іѕ a рrіmе nесеѕѕіtу.

Blоgѕ are оnе of the most роtеnt fасtоrѕ hеlріng your businesses іn іnсrеаѕіng thе vіѕіbіlіtу. A соmраnу should hаvе an орtіmіzеd blоg of its оwn and must аlѕо seek tо раrtісіраtе in discussions оf thе thіrd-party blоgѕ. In its blog, a соmраnу should ѕееk tо upload соntеnt about the various lаunсhеѕ аnd latest news аbоut thе fіrm. Thе blоg mау also include іnfоrmаtіvе content оn multірlе topics. In оthеr blogs, a company muѕt seek to tаkе part in the dіѕсuѕѕіоnѕ. Thіѕ help сrеаtеѕ соnnесtіоnѕ with thе online audience. Through thе соmраnу’ѕ blоg роѕtѕ, thе оnlіnе uѕеrѕ nоt оnlу stay uрdаtеd about thе vаrіоuѕ nеwѕ оf thе соmраnу but can аlѕо роѕt thеіr соmmеntѕ. Hence, thе blog is rеgаrdеd as a good ѕосіаl media outlet for your buѕіnеѕѕеѕ.

Thе vаrіоuѕ ѕосіаl nеtwоrkіng ѕіtеѕ hаvе also gаіnеd trеmеndоuѕ possibilities and ѕосіаl nеtwоrk mаrkеtіng through thе social nеtwоrkіng ѕіtеѕ such Fасеbооk, LіnkеdIn, Twіttеr, Gооglе+ or vіdео ѕtrеаmіng sites such аѕ YouTube allows buѕіnеѕѕеѕ to connect wіth mіllіоnѕ оf online uѕеrѕ. Mаѕѕіvе brаnd awareness саn bе created via thеѕе сhаnnеlѕ, and thе vіѕіtоrѕ саn be turned into роtеntіаl buyers, wіth thе рrореr approach.

In social network mаrkеtіng, it іѕ іmреrаtіvе tо participate іn multірlе рlаtfоrmѕ and not just соnсеntrаtе оn оnе. Sресіfіс ѕtrаtеgіеѕ are requіrеd to еѕtаblіѕh рrореr іdеntіtу аnd set thе рrоfіlе ahead оf the nеаrеѕt соmреtіtоrѕ. Uрgrаdе your buѕіnеѕѕ рrоfіlеѕ іn аll ѕосіаl mеdіа channels, thereby рrоvіdіng уоu орроrtunіtіеѕ tо соnnесt wіth mоrе people. Thеrе аrе many рrосеѕѕеѕ that аrе followed іn SMM. Blog posting, blоg соmmеntіng, forum роѕtіng, іnрuttіng rеvіеwѕ, social bооkmаrkіng, social nеtwоrk mаrkеtіng, video ѕubmіѕѕіоn, PPT ѕubmіѕѕіоn, press rеlеаѕе dіѕtrіbutіоn аrе some оf thе mаjоr thіngѕ.

Utilizing social mеdіа for the buѕіnеѕѕ in the righteous wауѕ hеlр your оnlіnе business to flоurіѕh in thе bеѕt ways. Our SMM hаrnеѕѕ potential buѕіnеѕѕ rеlаtіоnѕhірѕ whіlе fostering your business’s online presence and generating better lеаdѕ.

Tо get thе bеѕt from ѕосіаl media fоr your ѕmаll оr medium еntеrрrіѕе, you muѕt lау оut a plan. Dо уоu nееd to jоіn ѕосіаl nеtwоrkіng ѕіtе? Whаt іѕ the gоаl? Thе objective mау be fоr рrоmоtіоnаl рurроѕеѕ, сuѕtоmеr rеlаtіоnѕ, marketing аnd аdvеrtіѕіng, ѕаlеѕ, аmоng оthеrѕ. The gоаlѕ have tо bе measurable. The most іmроrtаnt quеѕtіоnhоwеvеr іѕ, which оf thе mаnу ѕосіаl networking sites іѕ fit fоr уоur buѕіnеѕѕ? To answer this, consider rеvіеwіng where mоѕt оf your сuѕtоmеrѕ bеlоng. Tо ѕtау ѕаfе, use mоrе thаn оnе, have a Fасеbооk fаn page аnd a Twіttеr ассоunt fоr a ѕtаrt. Keep уоur connections uр tо dаtе wіth the goings in the buѕіnеѕѕ as wеll as social іѕѕuеѕ.

Tоdау, thеrе аrе numerous Sосіаl Media Mаrkеtіng fіrmѕ but Coldbrew Creative is the only Social Media Company wherein thе expert’s рrеrоgаtіvе іѕ tо fоrmulаtе rіghtеоuѕ ѕtrаtеgіеѕ to hеlр the buѕіnеѕѕ houses gain better exposure аnd аttrасt thе оnlіnе audience.

In the U.S., the average number of devices connected to the Internet per household is 5.7 devices and growing (Source). Each of those devices might have a different screen size, run on a different operating system, and have different hardware.

This is the problem that “responsive” websites set out to solve. They get their name from the concept that the website content will adjust to different layouts based on how big your device’s screen is. On a desktop or laptop computer, because of the bigger screen real estate, you’ll likely have more options and controls. Whereas on a tablet or phone, the website may appear more stripped down to focus on the essentials.

To understand this concept even deeper, I’ll quickly explain how this technology works. Using CSS, the web design coding language that is in charge of styling websites, the developer adds a “media query”. Simply, a media query helps target certain device sizes so that it is easier to adjust specific content for them. The developer will define the range of device sizes (for example screens 0 pixels wide through screens 480 pixels wide might have certain rules).

At Coldbrew Creative, we use a framework called Foundation to help us manage the task of making websites responsive. It certainly does not do all the work for us, but it provides a grid that helps translate content between devices. But even with Foundation, many of the designs we create require custom media queries and complex styling that is tested across a variety of browsers. Not to worry, our experienced developers know how to do all of this.

Going back to the importance of responsive web design for your business, there are two big positives to going responsive. And there are absolutely no negatives (besides possible time and cost).

Firstly, your site will rank higher in Google search results. That’s a fact. Google recently added responsive websites to its page ranking algorithm, so if your site isn’t responsive, you could actually be losing a ton of potential visitors. Out of sight, out of mind.

Secondly, you can provide a better experience to your users. Having to zoom in on a non-responsive website is tedious. A study showed that Americans spend an average of 58 minutes a day on their smartphones. Only 14% of those 58 minutes (about 8 minutes) is spent browsing the web. Don’t make them waste time trying to read your website that is not optimized for their screen size.

Responsive web design is an industry-standard best practice. The chances for your site to show up on Google is higher simply by making the switch to a responsive website. And because first impressions matter, you don’t want to inconvenience your users.

If you are ready to make the upgrade to responsive, there are a few options. For those of you who use a site like WordPress, Tumblr, Squarespace, or any other site with “Themes”, you can search for themes that are responsive. Unfortunately, you will lose the design that you currently have and just keep the same content.

Another option is trying to do the media queries yourself for the entire theme. This is not recommended, as re-writing CSS styles can be challenging and rarely returns the results you want across different browsers.

At this stage, you have probably realized that your site’s design could be improved anyways. But maybe you can’t find the right “theme” or “look” that you want. Luckily for you, Coldbrew Creative offers professional web design and development services. We can work with you to design and develop a custom responsive website. Please note that we do not edit existing themes. All our projects start from scratch, so that we can create a unique, captivating experience for you and your users.

If you’re going to go responsive, make sure you do it right the first time. Work with a team that knows what they’re doing and cares about your project as if it’s their own.

Let’s get in touch.

User Experience and User Interface Design are two vital components when designing a new website in order to grab the attention of your target audience. Here at Coldbrew Creative, we strive to provide the best of both design fields, leaving our clients (and yours) with a smile on their face at the end of the day.

Quite simply, User Interface Design is how a site visually appears to the user. This involves color, typography, and the layout of the website.

On the other hand, User Experience design involves behind the scenes work. It requires the designer to perform a lot of reconnaissance and to do a fair amount of user research, along with testing the product. A good User Experience designer works closely with the User Experience researcher to implement the evidence found from the tests run to improve their particular website.

These two types of designers have made a giant impact on the tech industry, as they have vastly improved the ability for design to consist of both form and function. Because of the increasing role of good design in product successes (most famously Apple), working with great design teams and makers has become crucial for businesses of all spectrums.

User Interface and Experience design have an impact on our design work at Coldbrew Creative. We arm our clients with the best prospect of being noticed through their website. We spend an average of 3-4 months on each project, making sure every last detail and feature will work perfectly.

Initially, we start by understanding the client and their product or service. After this, we find out extra information about their brand or company, figure out what they currently do to bring in customers, and what we can do to improve their online presence. Then we move into the design stage, where both the User Experience designer and the User Interface designer collaborate to build the most effective website. Using these types of design, we provide our clients with outstanding websites; unrivaled by the websites of other companies.

When picking a company to work with to design and develop your website, you should look no further than Coldbrew Creative. As a small company, we are transparent and nimble. And we work closely with each and every client, keeping them updated with the progress on their website as we move through the design and development processes. What we make lack in staff size, we make up for in ambition. Our company will never stop striving to give you the best until you are happy and content with your product.

Coldbrew Creative is proud to welcome our seven new interns of 2015! We are looking forward to helping them develop new skills and teach them what it’s like to work at a start-up company.

Our interns will be responsible for web development, sales/business development, and marketing.

 

Dustin Truong

1. What is your major and what school do you go to?
   I am a Business Marketing major studying at San Jose State University.
2. What is your position at Coldbrew Creative?
   I currently am a Marketing intern here at Coldbrew Creative
3. What the responsibilities at Coldbrew Creative?
   While working with Benjamin Yin, my responsibility focuses on helping Coldbrew Creative better reach its target audience on a physical and social plane.
4. What are you looking forward to learning at Coldbrew Creative?
   I look forward to be working with experienced people in marketing and gain some knowledge and experience in Social Media marketing.
5. Hobbies and fun facts?
   I like to play video games in my free time, and a fun fact about me is that I am crazy obsessed with cats.

 

Sharon Tsui

1. What is your major and what school do you go to?
   I am a Business Marketing student at San Jose State University.
2. What is your position at Coldbrew Creative?
   Marketing Intern
3. What the responsibilities at Coldbrew Creative?
   Aside from marketing the products we create, I also help Benjamin Yin with increasing our social media presence.
4. What are you looking forward to learning at Coldbrew Creative?
   I am looking forward to gaining hands-on experience in public relations and marketing. I hope to polish and refine my communication skills through constant outreaches to other organizations.
5. Hobbies and fun facts?
   I can speak 5 languages: English, Cantonese, Mandarin, French, and German.

 

Christopher Cacho

1. What is your major and what school do you go to?
   B.S. Bus. Admin, Concentration in Management Information Systems (M.I.S.)
   Minor in Computer Science
2. What is your position at Coldbrew Creative?
   Web Development Intern
3. What the responsibilities at Coldbrew Creative?
   Passionate about design and skilled in code, I contribute on the Development team to make web pages awesome and/or more awesome
4. What are you looking forward to learning at Coldbrew Creative?
   I’m really looking forward to expanding my knowledge in UX/UI Design as well as picking up some skills that enable me to apply it all!
5. Hobbies and fun facts?
   Table Tennis is my jam. My family is everything to me. My faith brings me the greatest joy and peace. Every day I am humbled, happy, and hopeful.

 

William Chan

1. What is your major and what school do you go to?
   I am a Computer Science Major at San Jose State University
2. What is your position at Coldbrew Creative?
   Web Development Intern
3. What the responsibilities at Coldbrew Creative?
   Part of my responsibilities are to make sure that our clients are satisfied with the exquisite aesthetic, and luxurious designs we provide to them. Simply put, I help give our clients the Spark they need for their websites.
4. What are you looking forward to learning at Coldbrew Creative?
   As time progress, I hope to take on very challenging assignments and learn from them. I love challenges.
5. Hobbies and fun facts?
   Fun fact about me: I wake up every morning, drink my cup of coffee, gaze outside my window and ponder – what is the next big idea?

James Hoang

1. What is your major and what school do you go to?
   I currently attend San Jose State University as a Business Major with a concentration in Finance
2. What is your position at Coldbrew Creative?
   Sales Intern
3. What the responsibilities at Coldbrew Creative?
   Current responsibilities are to assist and develop strategies to enhance sales.
4. What are you looking forward to learning at Coldbrew Creative?
   I look forward to learning more about business development and to grow with the company.
5. Hobbies and fun facts?
   I love calisthenics, basketball, and football. I am addicted to Mexican candies.

 

Gordan Huang

1. What is your major and what school do you go to?
   I am currently a proposed Business Management/Economics and Environmental Studies students at UC Santa Cruz! Go Slugs!
2. What is your position at Coldbrew Creative?
   Right now, I am part of the Sales and Business Development team. I am here to make our customers realize the Spark in their companies as well as Coldbrew Creative’s!
3. What the responsibilities at Coldbrew Creative?
   I am currently an intern, so I am just learning as much as I can. I contribute to the Sales and Business Development team.
4. What are you looking forward to learning at Coldbrew Creative?
   I am hoping to develop my sales and business skills. I also want to experience the adventures of a start up!
5. Hobbies and fun facts?
   I love Kanye. Kanye is God. I also work out on my free times if you are interested. Actually, I seriously enjoy basketball and baseball. A big fan of the SF Giants and Golden States Warriors. I also have an interest in clothing, particularly street wears.
6. Goals of 2015 related to your work
   Hopefully, in 2015 I will be a experienced salesman and contribute as much as I can to Coldbrew Creative. I also wish to bring in as many clients to Coldbrew Creative and grow a huge client networks for us
   

 

Joe Xie

1. What is your major and what school do you go to?
   I am studying at San Jose State University and my major is Computer Science
2. What is your position at Coldbrew Creative?
   Marketing Intern
3. What the responsibilities at Coldbrew Creative?
   As a Marketing Intern at Coldbrew Creative, I am planning to help market our company and reach out to clients in China
4. What are you looking forward to learning at Coldbrew Creative?
   I would like to get myself involved with web development and increase my knowledge in marketing
5. Hobbies and fun facts?
   Hanging out with friends, watching movies, traveling, and meeting new people!
   

 

We look forward to working with our new interns and seeing their skills blossom. Keep up the good work, interns!

Coldbrew Creative and its photography partner, Scot Productions, had a wonderful time working with San Francisco Water Taxi!

For this project, even though SF Water Taxi already had a website and branding, it was outdated and was not visually updated. Coldbrew Creative redesigned their website to reflect their current branding both on and offline.

With signs located along the piers of San Francisco, SF Water Taxi has gained a lot of attraction through the tens of thousands of both tourists and locals with just over a year of operation. Our job was to continue their offline visual identity and update their online experience.

We began our process with research; reviewing other competitor sites as well as public transportation sites on their features and information. With the research information that was gathered, we were able to present our clients with a variety of concept mock-ups. After numerous iterations to get everything just right, we moved into the design process.

Progressing from low resolution to high, we made every little design detail count. Because it was important for SF Water Taxi’s visitors to be able to access their information on the go, we designed the mobile and tablet-sized experiences as well. There are even easily accessible translation options for those whose preferred language is not English.

Lastly, once the design was all ironed out, we began the development. We knew we wanted to create the site on a platform that would scale and work well in the future. It also needed a mobile-friendly responsive grid. So we used our custom version of Zurb’s Foundation framework, which we call Baseplate. The site had content that would need to be easily edited by our client, which led us to our favorite CMS (Content Management System): WordPress. We developed an in-house WordPress theme, and after putting it on our private Github repository and setting up FTP (File Transfer to the server), we launched the site.”

As of late April, we are continuing to add and refine features to ensure the best experience for all of the San Francisco Water Taxi’s diverse customers.

The Coldbrew Creative team has had the pleasure of working with ChargePoint over the last couple of months. Our assigned task was to create an infographic on “How to Use a ChargePoint Card”.

ChargePoint is the world’s largest and most open Electric Vehicle charging network.

With the ChargePoint app, users can locate and pinpoint the nearest ChargePoint station with simple ease. To use one of these ChargePoint stations, users first must have a ChargePoint card, which can be acquired by following this link: http://www.chargepoint.com/activate

Once you have registered and received your ChargePoint card, you are ready to start using any ChargePoint EV charging station. Here’s the infographic our team created on how to use these stations.

We really enjoyed working with ChargePoint on this project, and we hope to continue working with them in the future.

At Coldbrew Creative, we make sure that we provide our clients with the highest standard development in technology for their websites and make sure that their websites are protected from malicious activities such as hacking. Within these past few weeks, there has been a recent report of trouble with one of WordPress’ plugins. Plugins are simply codes that are written by developers to be used by other developers to make the feel and looks of the website. This plugin contained two short lines that have created an outrage within the community. They are: add_query_arg() and remove_query_arg(). For the purpose of this blog, we will do our best to keep it simple and short. These two codes allowed hackers to insert malicious code into the link, which seems like a trustworthy source, but it really allowed hackers to steal valuable information like credit card information, usernames, passwords, and so much more.

Once the incident was discovered and reported, WordPress’ Security team underwent intensive research and development of the problem and was able to fix the issue within a few days because they knew this troubled plugin would negatively affect millions of websites that use WordPress as their reliable content management system. The two pieces of code are found in many popular plugins that most websites uses. Some of these popular plugins are JetPack, which is basically the seed that allows other plugins to be added onto your website, WordPress SEO, which handles methods and strategies on increasing visitors to your website by obtaining a high-ranking on search engines, and Google Analytics, which provides statistics and analysis for SEO ( Search Engine Optimization ) and marketing purposes. And the list goes on…

Later, the WordPress security team was able to analyze the top 300-400 plugins and to make sure that they were fixed. However, there are more than 30,000+ plugins, and some of them may pose potential threats when installed. We, as web developers at Coldbrew Creative, ensure that these plugins are looked at and reviewed from top to bottom in order to ensure that our clients’ site are safe and protected. We, at Coldbrew Creative, are always researching and keeping up with the latest changes in our development at Coldbrew Creative.