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Re: Marketers Need to Learn to Code: How to Get Started

cool — Wed, 12 Jun 2013 16:06:25 -0000

Great advice. I'm a front-end Web developer, who came to the field via marketing. In the early days I just wanted to know what made HTML tick, then I started using it more and more. Now building Web sites is what I do, but my marketing background provides a strategic framework for how I approach Web projects.

Most marketers won't follow my path, but I agree that they will find it useful to know a bit of code. Learning this helps one to understand the limitations and the opportunities of online communication.

On the design side, it helps explain why we don't have the same control of typography and positioning online as we do in print. In terms of accessibility we see how the use of semantic HTML and other practices can make our pages accessible to those with hearing, visual and other impairments. Coding helps us understand that we're working beyond 2 dimensions and must think carefully about our user interfaces.

In the end no matter how much we code ourselves, what we learn helps us to communicate more effectively with developers, programmers and others with whom we work. And when we're communicating well as a team, we're more likely to communicate well with our clients and end users.

Re: What’s in Your QR Code?

cool — Sun, 06 Mar 2011 20:34:10 -0000

I'm creating a new landing page on my site listing the main places to find me online and contact me. I'm going to create a QR code for this to put on the back of my next round of business cards.

I tend to put a contact link and a link to a Delicious tag (where I've saved relevant sites) on the last screen of my slides for presentations, but next time I think I'll include a QR code for that as well. Then people can either write down the address or scan it from the screen.

As an end user I tend to use them most often when downloading apps to my Droid X. Many of the review sites include QR codes that take you to the app page in the Marketplace. I've found this to be very handy, esp. for apps that compete with others with similar names. It helps to ensure one gets to the right place.

Recently I saw them in use for an online tour. My mom and I were on the media christening cruise for the Disney Dream (thx mom & Disney for letting me tag along). Disney gave each media participant an iPod Touch to use for self-guided tours of the ship. They had signs around the ship with QR codes on them. When you scanned the code it took you to a presentation about that part of the ship. I think this usage could be useful in many locales. One could put them on kiosks for city tours, on signs for museum tours, etc. I'd also like to see them in shop windows so that visitors could scan the code to come back to the store or restaurant's Web site.

While it is only a matter of time before something new supplants them, there are oodles of ways we can use these for the time being. That said, Kelly and John make a great point about their usage. We can't just make these codes for the heck of it. If we're going to use them we should put careful thought into the pages, places, or messages that the codes go to. As with any technology we need to think strategically and not just use it because it's the latest tool available.

Re: How to Claim Your Blog with Technorati

cool — Thu, 13 Jan 2011 12:02:17 -0000

Let us know if you get any decent data from it. I've noticed that it's been far less useful since some time before the 2009 redesign. Back in the day I used to rely on it as a great way to find other blogs that linked to me and now it hardly captures any of them. Actually it is only doing so for one claimed site. I just put in a new claim on my main blog to see if it will make a difference since it still hasn't been added to their index. (After 2 years)

Re: Do You know When Someone Is Stealing From Your Site?

cool — Mon, 03 Jan 2011 15:32:46 -0000

That's good to know that you are in good shape in terms of proving ownership. The tricky bit is deciding whether or not it is worth the battle. I guess it depends on how much damage the plagiarism causes. I've never gone that route because I don't see my copier's taking away revenue or reputation, but one can imagine circumstances that would be different.

Re: Do You know When Someone Is Stealing From Your Site?

cool — Mon, 03 Jan 2011 14:43:54 -0000

Sigh, I wish this wasn't such a common problem. There is a site in Argentina that has been copying my blog posts for years, with no attribution. I left a comment on the site but they didn't respond. The latest culprit is a Web design firm in Virginia that is copying the posts to their blog. They are linking to me at the bottom, so I suspect this is more a matter of ignorance regarding copyright and I've not yet called them to task about it. (Though of course in this business, they should know better. )

As Bob mentioned, Google alerts on keywords or even your post titles are a good way to track these. You can also set up an RSS feeed by running similar searches on Google Blog search.

To make it easier to find these, I'd also recommend including links to your site in various places in your posts. I have mine set up so that the headline links to the original post and I sometimes include links to other posts I've written in the text. Links to images also count. (Run a blog search on links to your domain as a way to find these.)

Scrapers may often remove the headline link but they don't always get rid of the links w/in the text, so this can help.

As to how to stop them, who knows? Sometimes a politely worded e-mail that gently advises them on copyright law and blogging etiquette will get them to change their tactics. Others just don't care. But if one has been blogging consistently, one should be able to prove originality not just on time-stamps but on the tone and style of writing. (If you share via social media, your Twitter, Facebook and other timestamps also count.) The layout can also help. Content scrapers don't always use the same CSS styles when repurposing content. I've noticed that my stuff often looks wobbly when republished elsewhere because the pictures aren't in the right places. If one were to take it to court I think such nuances would probably be persuasive. (Though I'm not an attorney so this can't be taken as legal counsel.)

http://www.plagiarismtoday.... also has a lot of good information on this topic. I usually include a link to their site in my e-mail requests for take-downs.

Re: Socializing Blog Comments for Improved SEO

cool — Tue, 21 Dec 2010 10:14:27 -0000

Travis, I like your 3 R's. To me the SEO value of comment links isn't just the backlinks for (which are often rel="nofollow" anyway) but the ability to forge connections with like-minded readers who may be part of our target audience and may genuinely be interested in the links we might share. To that end I really should comment more often.
What the spam commenters seem to forget is that no one will click on those links, unless they found value in the comment to begin with.

While many comment so that Google will count the inbound links (if they are not nofollow) they seem to forget that the true value lies in the people who click through from the blog where the comment was made. These are the people who really care about the topic to begin with.

That said, my advice (which I shared awhile back in "Enhance your reputation & increase traffic by joining discussions on other blogs") has always been to comment when your instinct is to react. Say something if you can add to the conversation, but don't bother if you are just scratching your head thinking "I should post something here, but I'm not quite sure what to say."

Note to Ben: I typically include links (such as the above) in the context of the comment if they are really specific to the topic and add to what I'm already trying to communicate. (I also do this with LinkedIn answers.) If I don't have something that specific, then I just leave my blog in the url field. Or as in the case of this blog I sign in with whatever service seems most relevant.

Re: The Problem with Thought Leadership

cool — Thu, 18 Nov 2010 05:21:45 -0000

@Dannybrown Well I guess our ideas begin with thoughts.... ;-)
I think the people (whatever we call them) who come up with new ideas and approaches can (but don't always) serve as educators. In some cases they might teach and guide people towards best practices or new methods, but they should also encourage people to use critical reasoning to develop their own new ideas, and build upon what they learn. Perhaps what a thought leader should be is someone who inspires others to take their own thoughts and further develop them into ideas they can apply to their business, life, etc.

Re: The Problem with Thought Leadership

cool — Thu, 18 Nov 2010 04:26:09 -0000

It seems that it really comes down to semantics. I've always considered "thought leaders" to be those who are the first ones to come up with an idea, or to regularly come up with new viewpoints or strategies in a particular subject area, and who then share those ideas with others. So I guess I hadn't considered it so much as guiding but more as being in the lead as one might be when one is winning a race. But when you look at the phrase from your perspective, I agree, we can show people the kool-aid, but we can't make them drink it (or think it.)

Re: The curation for what ails us? When good ideas are oversold

cool — Mon, 27 Sep 2010 04:25:57 -0000

Ian, thanks for the link. I think "Content Curation" is suffering the same fate that happens to any shiny new trend. People jump on the band wagon and look for ways they can use the new thing to take short-cuts. Or they purport that it's some magic bullet that will make us rich while also curing baldness and global warming. But as you and your readers know, that's no more true for content curation than it was for social media or personal branding.

The funny thing is that none of these concepts are new, they just seem to take on a new life, and new interpretations, once they get a popular label. In the end I think the cool heads will continue to prevail. Those who apply common sense and include content curation as part of a broader communication strategy will see results. Those who seek only to save time will scratch their heads and complain that this "content curation" stuff doesn't work.

Greg, I think you are right about Keepstream, it has great promise as a curation tool. I recently gave a Webinar on Content Curation and used http://keepstream.com/hacoo... as the place to share the links to sites I referred to in the presentation. In the past I've used Delicious for this purpose, but Jim had suggested I try it out for this and it seemed to work out pretty well. (I'm in Cleveland, so I know Tim & Jim from when they were still here working on Corkshare.) Tools like this can be great both for collecting related links (as a personal record) and for sharing them with specific audiences. I think there will always be room for tools such as Keepstream, that don't make false promises, but simply help us curate more effectively.
.-= Heidi Cool´s last blog ..Will you link to me Things to ponder before asking this question =-.

Re: I May Be Repeating Myself Now, But I Really Do Think We’ve Mutated

cool — Mon, 13 Sep 2010 13:31:38 -0000

I've always worked better with a bit of background noise. In high school I usually had the stereo or T.V. on in the background. In college I would study in the pub rather than the library because I found a steady hum of low conversation to be less distracting than pure quiet punctuated by occasional whispers. So I suspect that we each have different needs. Yet at the same time it's interesting to see how things evolve as we spend more time online. I happen to work on the Web, but I wonder if having a personality that was more used to a bit of noise and tangential interruptions primed me to adapt more quickly to this world.

Re: The Changing Face of RSS

cool — Mon, 13 Sep 2010 12:53:00 -0000

I switched from Bloglines to Google Reader quite awhile back because the former seemed to have a lot of technical problems and I liked Reader's sharing capabilities.

Despite a lack of mainstream adoption, I still find RSS to be very useful and continue to educate clients about ways to use Google Reader to not only keep track of their blog subscriptions but also as a tool to find content to share via social media, and to monitor brand and product mentions. Usually once I turn them onto Google Reader they wonder how they coped without it.

I use Google Reader to find the posts I share to Twitter and my Facebook business page. I also use Google Reader's sharing mechanism to share with my GR sharing page. This feed then also posts to a page on my site called What I've Been Reading in the Blogosphere and also posts those links to my personal Facebook page. (I'm using Yahoo pipes to merge that feed with a feed from Delicious which then gets posted to Facebook via Ping.fm.)

On the other end of things I use RSS feeds to pull headlines and updates into My Social Media Profiles, where I describe some of the services I use, and pull in recent updates below the description. Naturally I don't advocate using RSS to scrape and re-post full articles, but I do use it actively both to consume and post content in various spaces.

As far as RSS robbing page views, I don't worry about that too much. I've set up Feedburner to work with Google Analytics so my feed shows up in my referring traffic data. Only a fraction of people are reading via the feed, but I still like that it is available for those who use it. (Even at the risk of certain content scrapers who I know are grabbing my content...a pox upon them, bah!)

While I found this post today via Twitter (I have you in my mktg column on Tweetdeck), I am also subscribed to your blog, so if I'd missed the Tweet I would have seen it later this afternoon in Google Reader.

Re: Social self-importance: Why content curation will never be king

cool — Thu, 09 Sep 2010 05:00:53 -0000

Agreed. I've been blogging for over 5 years (not as often as I should) and my blog has become the backbone of my communications strategy. Curation helps me augment my message in a variety of ways. On the blog I typically link to 5-6 external sites at the end of each post to give readers access to additional resources on the topic. On my Facebook page I share one link per day, but I also include an explanatory paragraph to go with the link. I started using Facebook this way to fill in the gap between blog posts. But I've also found that this helps me cover a broader array of topics and perspectives than I might with just my own content.

If I only wrote without curating, my audience would get a less complete picture of my niche (Web design, mktg, social media.) If I only curated, without writing, they'd get broad coverage without the depth or insights of my philosophy. By blending the strategies together I can provide more comprehensive coverage to my readers.
.-= Heidi Cool´s last blog ..Will you link to me Things to ponder before asking this question =-.

Re: How Do You Know Who To Interact With On Social Media?

cool — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 09:44:13 -0000

Sharon,
Agreed, if you never post anything that you wouldn't want your mother/grandmother etc. to see then you should be pretty safe. When I first joined Facebook I was working at Case Western Reserve Univ. That was back in the days when only people with .edu accounts could use the service. So most of the people I connected with were students, faculty and staff at Case and other universities. It was a different world back then, but when the boss finally joined I did follow her and didn't think anything of it. Then again I wasn't playing Farmville, etc. and didn't spend much time on FB during the day, so it wasn't much an issue.

Re: How Do You Know Who To Interact With On Social Media?

cool — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 09:24:21 -0000

Sharon,
I think you made a very valuable point about following more than your target audience to plan for the future. Obviously this wouldn't take a shot-gun approach of following everyone, but I think we can each probably identify multiple target audiences that we may have today or in the future.

My blog focused on my main business goal, but we each have multiple goals. One common to most is using social media to gain knowledge by connecting with peers and thought leaders in our industry. Another might be to make local connections for both business and personal reasons. We may also follow people with common interests such as photography, science and cooking. The intriguing that about that is that we never know when that photography blogger we follow will lead us to some other great connection more related to one of our other goals. So on Twitter at least I have a fairly broad following approach, I follow people that seem interesting for a variety of reasons and I interact with them via conversation as time/opportunity allows.

I do also follow prospects and clients on Twitter, but I understand the hesitancy for people to follow the boss on Facebook. In that scenario I think it depends on who your boss is, how well you get along and how well that person understands social media. I don't think we can make a definitive ruling on the subject but instead make decisions on a case-by-case basis.

This should be a great chat discussion. It also reminds me how much I miss the former Twitter feature that let us see Tweets when our friends replied to people we aren't following. I used to jump into a lot of conversations and meet new people when that feature was enabled. Now meeting friends of friends takes a bit more effort.

I don't know if I can make this week's chat yet, but if not I look forward to the transcript.

Re: Picture This

cool — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 11:03:45 -0000

Nice tips. I'd also mention that if a Flickr (or other) photo isn't licensed under Creative Commons, you can also e-mail the photographer to ask for permission. I take a lot of photos too and have often given people permission to use them for non-commercial purposes, while others have done the same for me. Government sites such as NASA and the Library of Congress are also a great place to find copyright free images.

I tend to use mostly my own photography on my blog, but when I need something else, I often turn to other options such as making comics on Bitstrips, animations on Xtranormal or finding videos on YouTube. I wrote a post awhile back at http://www.heidicool.com/bl... in which I discussed some of these other options as well as suggestions for things like building up your own photography archive.

Thanks for sharing these tips and for reminding people to respect one another's intellectual property.

Re: How social networks reshape business by reshaping us

cool — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 08:02:31 -0000

I still have to watch the video, but what you've described so far, makes sense. Something I've noticed online is how I end up connecting with similar or overlapping circles in the different social media spaces. I'm continuously awed by how readily we find one another in networks as large as Facebook and Twitter. I first noticed it on Flickr, then Pownce and it continues to happen. While on one level it seems naturally that I'd find other people interested in things like Web, mktg and social media. Other non-business topics such as photography, science and even sometimes sailing are also in the mix. But the connections aren't just forged by the topical information we share, it seems that people in my circles often have similar attitudes. We may have disparate beliefs on religion and politics, but we bond over the things we have in common or the other qualities that we respect in others.

Similarly, some attitudes can have a negative effect. A colleague once posted something on Facebook that showed that she had a certain unusual spiritual belief which affected her attitude about a certain politician. I won't say what it was, but it was just wacky enough that even the most open-minded people we knew just shook our heads in disbelief that she'd shared this thought in public. My reaction was surprise. I knew we disagreed on some things but now thought of her as a bit of a kook. While I tried to compartmentalize this knowledge in my head, forever after I found myself questioning her opinions on even the most basic matters. This was a problem, because in the process of losing respect for her, I was also losing confidence in her ability to do her job even though that had nothing to do with the idea in question.

I was aware of what was happening and kept trying to keep myself from judging, but it still made an impact. Something that had nothing to do with work had in fact affected it. This example was more extreme than most, but it did make it clear to me that the non-business things we share and the way we share them can provide the clues others use to understand how and if we fit in their worlds.

Re: 30 Social Media Strategies You Need to Know

cool — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 04:21:09 -0000

Great tips so far. From writing great content, to engaging people and not being selfish, I see a common thread. To do many of the things people have suggested we have to listen to what others are saying. So that's my tip. Listen to what your friends/fans/followers say and use that knowledge to write and share links that they will find useful. Listen to your customers for feedback about not only your product and brand, but your niche as a whole. Listen to members of your target audience to see what they are talking about and want to know about. Listening gives us the cues and clues we need to strategize and act. I wrote a bit more about that at this article about listening to monitor brands. (This includes some suggested strategies and methods such as using Google Reader and searches plus links to other resources.)

Re: Breaking (Ice Cream Franchise) News!

cool — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 06:58:32 -0000

How odd. One hopes this is based on some sort of research or at least their shipping records. Perhaps most customers prefer the regular Vanilla over the French Vanilla? My favorite Baskin Robbins Flavor is Daiquiri Ice.
I used to get it more often back when they had a store at Cedar and Fairmount. It seems like there aren't as many of them around as there once were. Were they impacted by the growth of options available in grocery stores? It seems like they started closing more locations after we were seeing more specialty ice creams available in the retail market. I expect chains like Ben & Jerry's also had an affect. But I think they still serve an important niche so I'd like to see them make a comeback. Perhaps they are.
I just checked their site for locations. Last time I had checked, the closest one was at Richmond Mall, but now I see they have one again at Chagrin and Lee and there is one at Mayfield and Belvoir. Perhaps this old brand is getting new life.

Re: Stagnation & Self-Righteousness

cool — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 06:42:00 -0000

Well said Danny!

When we see mistakes being made I think we can examine them from an educational perspective to see what can be learned and how we might make things better, but we don't need to mock or ridicule others to do that. As many have said we're all still learning, no matter how long we've been working with social media. If we can work together and share best practices and advice rather than pointing fingers we can all gain knowledge and improve our strategies. This also helps our collective reputations more than does name calling.

I also think that many of the mistakes that may seem so obviously stupid to us are often the missteps of the beginner who is just finding his or her footing. I expect we all stumbled a bit when starting out. (And will stumble more as we continue to learn.)

The knowledge that we take for granted now wasn't always in our heads. It came with time and practice.

I was reminded of this last fall when giving a presentation on social media to a group outside of our industry. Very few in the crowd were even on Facebook let alone writing blogs. We talk amongst ourselves so often in this industry that we forget that we've acquired knowledge over time that others may not yet have. So we can't really blame them for not knowing the things that we have learned over the course of the past several years. What we can do instead is point them to resources and information that will guide them in the right direction.

Re: Why Do You Blog?

cool — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 02:52:32 -0000

Thanks for posing the question and writing this post. It's interesting to see the variety of ways blogging can appeal. I started my current blog when I was Webmaster of Case Western Reserve University because I wanted a way to share announcements, tips, advice, etc. with the other Web maintainers on campus. Over time I discovered it was being read first by people at other universities and then outside academia as well. Overtime I expanded what I wrote to include advice on marketing, social media, writing and other topics related to Web development. I left the university a bit over a year ago to venture forth on my own, but I kept blogging for similar reasons. Some of the advice I give is useful to clients, some is useful for peers. While I didn't plan it at the time, the blog has also played a key role in developing my personal brand. Blogging also helps me learn. When I write about a topic I have to dig deeper and often do some additional research to be able to explain it properly to my audience. I gain new insights from this process and often learn things I hadn't known when I first planned the entry. So the blog works for me on many levels. And sometimes it's just a good outlet when I feel compelled to write.
My recent post Content Curation- Learning from others and sharing their knowledge

Re: Redesigning My Blog Layout: Do You Like?

cool — Fri, 14 May 2010 10:22:42 -0000

I like the idea of the wording, using verbs like "read," "visit" etc. to prompt action (rather than just listing "archives"), but think they may be more visible as list elements. So basically I'm suggesting a hybrid. Cheers. - H
.-= From Heidi Cool to you: Should we stay or should we go? Responding to Ning’s new pricing plans. =-.

Re: Redesigning My Blog Layout: Do You Like?

cool — Thu, 13 May 2010 14:16:30 -0000

Ari,
I didn't mind the sidebar being on the left, but then again the menus on my site are on the left, so that's probably just my preference. As for the archival links, I like having the sentence structure there because the words guide users to action, but wonder if they would pop more as list elements. It could look something like the following list with bullets:

Explore Ariwriter:

Visit the archive,
discover how to contribute an article, and
read the latest about social media marketing.
.-= From Heidi Cool to you: Should we stay or should we go? Responding to Ning’s new pricing plans. =-.

Re: How to Use WordPress for Business

cool — Tue, 04 May 2010 10:45:59 -0000

Tiffany, thanks for including me in this article. Given the variety of blogging and CMS options around it's very easy for businesses to wonder what CMS will work best for their purpose. I've met some clients who worry that a free solution such as WordPress might not be as robust as a paid solution. But as we walk through the features and issues, just as you've done here, they are reassured. More importantly they are pleased with the final result, particularly the fact that they can easily update the pages themselves without having to learn a complicated new technology.

As one who builds sites in WordPress, what I like most is that it brings endless possibilities for tailoring the site to a client's specific needs. Each time I build a site I discover something new I can do, because both WordPress.org and the user community are continually adding enhancements, plug-ins and recommendations. In the end it's the open-source nature of the product that allows it to evolve so rapidly, in response to our needs.

Your readers may also be interested in reading my friend Wayne Smallman's new e-book, How to use WordPress to manage your company website. Wayne is a Web developer in England. His free e-book offers many tips on making the most out of WordPress for business, and just came out last week. For companies already using WordPress it can serve as a handy reference document.

Re: What Is the Focus and Purpose of Your Blog

cool — Thu, 15 Apr 2010 02:51:35 -0000

My Web Development Blog has evolved over the years as it has adapted to both reader needs and my own goals, but the main premise is to share tips and best practices (and encourage discussion) regarding Web development, marketing, social media and related topics.

To keep on track I think it's useful to create an editorial policy for the blog, just as one might for a magazine. The act of defining the policy helps the blogger get a clear picture of his/her mission and the publishing of the policy (as an "about page") helps new visitors get their bearings and understand what the site is about. This can also be useful if they are pondering whether or not to subscribe.

If anyone is porndering writing such a policy I wrote this post, 5 reasons your blog should have an editorial policy awhile back. I agree that in many cases our purpose could be somewhat broad, but I think putting some time into defining what this is (if only for ourselves) can help us both as writers and as readers.

Re: Inactivity Matters: 83 Percent of Online Friends are Fakes

cool — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 05:05:52 -0000

That reminds me, we never did pin down a time for Skype, though we did get a few messages exchanged. That said, I will respond to people on LinkedIn more quickly when I know them or if they are asking a specific question. Some folks send a lot of mass update messages, but since those are more like announcements, there is usually nothing much to say in response so I don't reply.

I find that when I get to know people online, I tend to follow them in more different spaces as their importance (to my world) increases. The more we converse in one space the more likelier we are to converse in another. On the other hand sometimes I look at my Facebook wall and have to scratch my head wondering who people are. As for Twitter I really only expect to know a mere fraction of them.
.-= From Heidi Cool to you: Dust off those pixels: your Web site may be due for spring cleaning. =-.