June 28, 2010 / Comments Off on How to Ensure Content Quality on the Fly / Posted in: Blog
In Breaking More Than Just News, Richard Ingram says it’s more important than ever to check and recheck your content before publishing it – especially when you’re under deadline:
As Google begins to apply further weight and prominent positioning to live search results the pressure for some to publish useful, usable, and shareable content fast will no doubt increase. Those editorial workflows, style guides and quality control checklists – considered mere obstacles during moments of high publishing intensity – have never been more vital to ensure the web content you publish is accurate, consistent, relevant, and supports your overall web content strategy objectives.
June 21, 2010 / Comments Off on Get to The Point Faster / Posted in: Blog
Eric Reiss offers 20 tips on writing for the web that will help you make sure your information is clear, objective, and structured to quickly get to the point. For example:
Take a critical look at what you’ve written. I often discover that if I cut out my first paragraph, I will improve the text 100%. On the web, visitors want you to get to the point. They’re not on your site to admire your fine writing.
June 18, 2010 / Comments Off on Social Media Roundup for June 18, 2010 / Posted in: Blog
Twitter Places
There is a huge amount of information that streams through, but depending on the topic, it is not always relevant to your particular geographical location. To help solve this problem, Twitter is launching their Places functionality. Users can tag locations to tweets, or browse tweets in a location of their choosing. If you find yourself at a sporting event, you can log into the stadium Twitter Place and see what everyone else is saying at the stadium. Places will be fully integrated with Foursquare and Gowolla, and API enhancements will be created to ensure all developers can use the full potential. Twitter Places will be implemented for 65 countries around the world in the coming weeks, so everyone keep your eyes peeled for the add location option below the tweet box!
How The World is Spending Time Online
It feels to many of us that Social Media has been gaining steam for years, and it looks like the momentum has just begun. Nielsen has released a study that found users are on blogs/social networks for 22% of their online time, an increase of 66% since last year. Blogs and social networks are also visited by three quarters of all global consumers, which is up 24%. These numbers are incredible, and clearly shows that social media is here for the long haul! So where do you spend your online time?
Principals of Measurement
KD Paine has a great live writeup about the recent International Association for Measurement and Evaluation of Communication (AMEC) event in Barcelona. Delegates from 33 countries voted, and passed the seven proposed key principals. It is great to see that standards are being agreed upon for measuring PR and social media, and even more so that there is a focus on measuring the business results rather then just the media results.
USA vs England
World Cup fever is in the air! This week brings us another viral video that illustrates a USA vs England game with stop motion photography – using Lego! Who will win? You’ll have to watch it to find out!
June 14, 2010 / Comments Off on Building Online Community? Mimic the Methods of Passionate Amateurs / Posted in: Blog
Looking to build an online community for your company’s products or services? Learn from the amateurs who build communities rooted in interest and passion for a topic:
They pick a simple technology they know how to use. By coincidence, this is also a simple technology their audience knows how to use.
Amateurs don’t try to grow big. They focus on making the community fun rather than huge. If they don’t want more members, they don’t try to get any more members.
Amateurs don’t abandon the community when they find a new job, or get given a promotion, or their work load picks up. They make the time every day (or evening) for the community.
June 11, 2010 / Comments Off on Social Media Roundup for June 11, 2010 / Posted in: Blog
Bing Adds Facebook & Twitter Updates
Bing lovers can rejoice! On Wednesday Microsoft launched their social implementation of Bing, which indexes data from Twitter, Facebook fan pages, and Facebook updates that are shared to “everyone.” There is also the functionality to play/pause the feed which will refresh the content or keep it static. The social view of Bing can be found @ bing.com/social.
Google Announces Caffeine
This week Google announced the details regarding their new and improved indexing system Caffeine. The new system will provide more content, and 50% fresher more relevant results from web searches. This is a fantastic update for those looking for the most recent article, stories, blogs posts, or forum threads. Google states that content on the web is blossoming, and to ensure scalability, Caffeine will add hundreds of thousands of gigabytes per day to their web index! Wowza!
Twitter Announces in House URL Shortener
My momma always said that clicking on shortened links is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you’re gonna get! Twitter has announced their plans to improve how shortened links are viewed in tweets, by implementing their own service. The new feature will shorten links using the t.co URL, but the actual link or variation of the link will be visible within the tweet, which wont count towards the max character count. Twitter hopes this will remove remove the obscurity from shortened links and let users know where they will end up. The new shortener will be rolled out during the summer, and be tested by twitter and developers.
Test Your Focus
The New York Times has released an online assessment that will put your focus and task juggling skills to the test! Living in the digital world of today, our brains are hit hard with multiple stimuli at the same time. Managing the information can be difficult, as Kord Campbell found out when he missed an email that could have cost him $1.3 million. The key is knowing your strengths and weaknesses, as it will help you create more efficient personal workflows. Research has shown that heavy multitaskers have trouble focusing and shutting out irrelevant data, and in turn experience more stress.
Adidas racks up the cameos in Star Wars Cantina 2010
Just in time for the FIFA World Cup™, Adidas has released a new Star Wars themed video for their Adidas Originals collection. It has quickly reached over 2.7 million views!
See if you can spot David Beckham, Daft Punk, Snoop Dogg, Franz Beckenbauer, Noel Gallagher, Ian Brown, Ciara, Jay Baruchel, and DJ Neil Armstrong.
June 7, 2010 / Comments Off on How to Position Collaboration Software in Your Organization / Posted in: Blog
Gia Lyons offers a visual guide to the role of collaboration software vis-à-vis email, instant messaging, conference calls and in-person meetings, content management systems, and existing intranets.
SBS addresses all the messy collaboration that goes on before some thing becomes a Something. –Roy Wilsker
June 4, 2010 / Comments Off on Social Media Roundup for June 4, 2010 / Posted in: Blog
AP Stylebook Adds Social Media Guidelines
The Associated Press has recognized that social media is being used more and more by professional journalists. To help facilitate the evolution they have released the 2010 Edition of the AP Stylebook which includes a new section dedicated to social media information and policies for platforms such as Facebook and Twitter. The stylebook has gained a serious online following of nearly 46,000 followers.
The style book is easily ordered, and the updates specifically illustrate how journalists can utilize social media for their work, and ways to verify the sources found through these platforms. Additional information is documented that relates to terms such as blog, app, friend, unfriend, RSS, search engine optimization (SEO), trending, widgets, and wiki.
Mark Zuckerberg has a Nixon Moment
Kara Swisher recently grilledMark regarding privacy and policy changes that have caused online civil unrest and widespread criticism. Mark created a “great moment in internet history” when he took off his company issued hoodie for the first time on camera, while sweat visibly dripped from expressionless face. In a shot of irony, the CEO of a company who wants everyone to share was reluctant to divulge his personal thoughts, or specific details regarding their revenue model and the rationale behind privacy decisions. On the upside, Facebook has launched a fan page for privacy which will help keep people informed and encourages feedback from users.
Microsoft Live Essentials Wave 4
After describing future updates to Hotmail and Messenger, Microsoft is at it again for their Essentials. The main improvements revolve around making it easier for users to do three main tasks; creating and sharing polished photos or movies, organizing your email accounts in one place and adding productivity tools, as well as syncing files across the computers and workplaces enabling instant access from anywhere. Products included in the Essentials toolkit are Messenger, Mail, Writer, Photo Gallery, Movie Maker, Family Safety, Sync, and the Bing Bar.
Coke & Mentos Powered Rocket Car
Many of us already know what happens when Coke and Mentos are mixed (see explosion), but Stephen Voltz and Fritz Grobe have taken it one step further! The white coat duo built a custom car chassis, mounted 108 2L Coke Zero bottles and then added 648 Mentos mints. The Results…? See below!
It costs time (and indirectly – money) for your audience to read what you write. And, they expect a good return for that investment. You will know whether you are succeeding in influencing your audience in a positive way because the audience will tell you…by the way they respond to your content.
