Blog & Free Advice
How to Use Facebook Questions and Places: Part 1
In the last month Facebook has released two new features - Questions and Places. Questions lets you post queries to the Facebook community and Places allows you to share your location with your Facebook friends. While neither of these functions are new to the web, they are significant because of Facebook’s size. With 500 million users, the potential audience reach for both of these features is massive. Facebook Questions Facebook Questions was released in...
Schedule Posting Test
You can ignore this message. I’m testing the schedule post function because there seems to be a conflict with the server time and the localization settings. Dreary, I know. Skip down and enjoy the AT&T post instead.
The Promise of AT & T (from 1993)
This montage of AT&T ads came from a 1993 Newsweek CD-ROM, when Newsweek thought that one day, magazines would be sent to you in CD-ROM form, sponsored with ads. It’s an interesting view of the future. What is your business promising?
Is Your Website Frustrating Users? What To Monitor in Google Analytics
Last week we looked at website usability and the three golden keys to creating better online user experiences. Google Analytics can be a useful tool when reviewing your site’s usability and there are a number of ‘red flags’ to watch out for. These red flags indicate that your site is frustrating users rather than engaging them. Bounce Rate. Bounce rate shows you how many people are landing on your site and...
Search Engine Optimization and Social Media Optimization
A number of big industry players and knowledge seekers have reported recently on various aspects of search and social media. Forrester reported in The Future of Search Marketing, there are a number of things we can expect in regards to search and social media: * More content and ways to search * Richer search engine interfaces and ads * Overlap with social and mobile * Increased automation * Improved analytics What does that mean in terms of maintaining and refining...
Website Usability: Get Your Site Ready For Fall
It’s August and, albeit reluctantly, we are busying preparing for Fall. What better time than now to review your website’s usability? Todd Sieling of Corvus Consulting recently presented at the SFU Summer Publishing Workshops on usability and outlined his three golden keys to creating better online user experiences. He’s been kind enough to share them with us: The Three Golden Keys of Usability See Through Your Audience’s...
Social Media Is Not a Substitute for Search Marketing: The Two Go Hand In Hand
Why you need Social Media AND Search. With tight budgets, companies are trying to make decisions about where and how to allocate resources. The much-lauded options for social media are ever present in the press, which pushes many to shuffle resources from search marketing to social media. But really the two should operate hand in hand. Social media is all about content creation. Search is all about indexing content and making it easy to find. ...
Best Book and Technology Blogs
Registration for BookCamp 2010 opened last week and we’re getting excited for a full day of book and technology-related discussions. BookCamp Vancouver is a chance to bring the publishing and technology community together to discuss the future of books and book-like technologies. There are a number of blogs that do an excellent job of exploring these topics and, in preparation for BookCamp, the following are blogs that we recommend putting on your reading list: ...