Each day, BubbleLife gathers thousands of articles from hundreds of sources and then delivers the right news to the right people via web, email and mobile delivery. More importantly, BubbleLife content and Neighborhood Marketing Center features are now routinely built into websites and lead capture efforts requiring round-the-clock readiness. -- In other words, BubbleLife's servers are busy all day and all night.
Geeky Stuff First
So, a few months ago we set out on a project to make sure that BubbleLife would be available 24x7 with no exceptions. The only way to achieve this was to make sure that every major part of our server setup was redundant. Redundancy means that any hardware problem is either not noticeable or fixable in a matter of minutes.
What we came up with is a diagram that looks like this:
This is geeky stuff, but it simply means that we have multiple web servers processing requests. If one has a problem, the other takes over. We have two database servers storing the same data. If one has a problem, we simply switch to the other. Everything is backed up. The nice part of this setup, is that, as we continue to grow rapidly, we can just throw more servers into the mix.
The bottom line to all of this, is that we hope nobody notices how we've set things up. Things should just work without interruption. Which, when you think about it, is what you want from the people whose services you depend on.
One interesting tidbit, we're in the same facility that houses Wordpress, Vonage and many big name companies. I don't think we have the same number of servers (yet), but it's good to know the staff knows how to keep things running.
Now the Cool Stuff - More Graphs!
As we push content out to our customer's customers, we can often watch the impact it has on their blog visits, Facebook visits and websites. Naturally, we wanted to be able to better quantify these results and make sure that what we do works and that we can demonstrate the value of an active neighborhood strategy. So, we've started working to bring more data into BubbleLife so you don't have go as many places for this information.
Bottom line is that we now regularly pull data and track:
- Website visitors
- Facebook usage
- Twitter followers
- LinkedIn connections
Though you can find this information in other ways, our automated approach means that we do the tracking and deliver the reports without any real effort on your part. Each day we poll your web and social media sites and provide a single place to see results. When you combine this information with the data you already get with the Neighborhood Marketing Center you get a really powerful way to see what's going on, where you need to focus and what worked in the past.
But Wait There's More!
So now that we have all this data, how do we get it to you without overwhelming you or turning you into a graphing wizard? The answer - GRADING! We now take all the information we have and turn it into a simple letter grade. A for doing a great job to F for need some work. Better yet, we tell you what to do to get your grade up such as "post an article" or "grow your database". We've broken the tasks into four areas:
- Content - Are you creating stories and materials that customers can act on or pass to their friends and family?
- Reach - Are you growing your database of contacts and connections to improve your chances of word-of-mouth business?
- Promotion - Are you reaching out to new customers?
- Capture - Are you setup to capture potential customers on your website?
If neighborhood businesses are doing well in each of these areas, they are maximizing their chances of success.