Death, Taxes & the Internet

Three forward, two back: the proper way to fail

TechDept — Thu, 17 May 2012 15:24:20 +0000

We all go through it at one time or another. You’re working on a project and no matter how hard you try, you just can’t seem to get it to “work.” The colors are wrong, the type is inappropriate, the composition is hideous – it’s just a mess and you eventually write it off as a failure. Sometimes you have the luxury of hiding the whole thing in a folder in the very back of your hard drive, where no human eyes will ever come upon it. But what happens when you have a project that’s due in to your client at 8am, and it’s currently 3am and you’ve got absolutely nothing decent to present? Do you curl up into a ball and declare yourself a failed designer for all time? Or is there another way to approach this inevitable feeling which will leave you, if not satisfied, at least able to continue on with your life and your career with confidence? Let’s explore, shall we?

By Addison Duvall for Speckyboy, 11 May 2012

Create a setting and connect with emotions

TechDept — Tue, 15 May 2012 14:02:04 +0000

I recently moved the delivery time of my beloved newsletter to be Sunday morning (well, that’s when it launches here, though my New Zealander and Australian friends all get it on Monday). In the process, I talked to people about sharing this information over breakfast, and with a “second cup of coffee” sometimes. I basically set a scene in the reader’s head that we were having a personal chat over breakfast.

Ask yourself this: in trying to reach others for whatever your goal may be, is it facts or emotions that will win them over? Which do you think plays the bigger role? Related: what’s the benefit of creating an experience for your customer or prospect such that you tell a story with every aspect of your communications? Would you guess it’s not important, or do you think it merits a lot of thought and consideration?

By Chris Brogan for Chris Brogan, 14 May 2012

What are the most important social networks for business?

TechDept — Tue, 15 May 2012 12:16:28 +0000

If you’ve been involved with marketing on the web for 10 years or more, could you have imagined what the web looks like today back in 2002? Considering the changes over the past year between Google, Facebook, Pinterest and Mobile, looking ahead just 12 months can be a challenge. The state of constant change requires an adaptable approach. One that involves a cyclical process of planning, implementation, scale and refinement.

During that process of continuous optimization, it’s important to take the temperature of trends for your specific target market as well as at a broad level. I’d like to use this post to take your general social media temperature when it comes to the most important social networks for business. This is a gut feeling check for how you perceive the list below of social media/network properties that companies are currently using for business purposes.

By Lee Odden for TopRank, 09 May 2012

Reduce your bounce rate

TechDept — Thu, 10 May 2012 12:39:22 +0000

How do you keep visitors on your site longer once they’ve clicked through from a search result? David Deutsch gives the lowdown.

We all want to get our site to the top of Google. But that’s only half the story – what happens when people click through to your site? Do they hang around a while and check out what you have to offer – or quickly move on to the next result? Obviously we want the former to happen, so how can we make sure it does?

When visitors find nothing of interest on your site at first glance and leave immediately, this is known as a bounce. A website with a high bounce rate from good quality traffic sources is an indicator that the website isn’t performing up to its visitors’ expectations.

By David Deutsch for .net Magazine, 10 May 2012

Footer design trends

TechDept — Wed, 09 May 2012 14:45:40 +0000

The humble footer – long ignored by web designers – has become a site of a sudden burst of creative energy in the past few years, as designers realize the flexibility of the footer as more than a mere placeholder for contact and copyright info. Facilitating this change has been a gradual move away from a fold-centric design ethos, which focused on concentrating major design and navigational elements ‘above the fold’. With the abandonment of this “above the fold” design approach, the footer has become the unit of choice for experimentation with design and navigational elements.

This article takes a look at certain contemporary trends and best practices for footer design:

By Keith Bryant for Speckyboy, 01 May 2012

The power of negative reviews

TechDept — Tue, 08 May 2012 14:15:52 +0000

Zack King, community manager at independent marketing agency RPM, argues that negative reviews are an opportunity that businesses must embrace, for if they don’t, they may lose control completely.

The vast and continuous expansion of social media platforms has given consumers abundant opportunity to voice their opinion; both good and bad. This freedom of speech has made the public so powerful, it has shifted the entire relationship between brand and consumer and for this very reason, businesses are weary of embracing social media. Negative feedback can be seen to damage business; couple this with a consumers’ free reign to express themselves, and brands feel out of control over preventing the complaint going public. But brands aren’t so out of control as they might think. Instead of brushing negative reviews under the carpet, brands should proactively and transparently address complaints via social media, turning these negatives into a serious positive.

By Zack King for .net Magazine, 02 May 2012

Facebook is going public: Here’s what that means for users like you

TechDept — Tue, 08 May 2012 14:00:42 +0000

After spending yesterday selling itself to Wall Street investors, Facebook is set to begin trading on the NASDAQ next Friday.

How will Facebook change for you, the user, once its a public company?

Based on some of the company’s recent history, industry trends, and Mark Zuckerberg’s speeches, we think we have a pretty good idea.

By Nicolas Carlson for Business Insider, 08 May 2012

Twelve timeless link building tips for business blogs

TechDept — Fri, 04 May 2012 10:00:58 +0000

As a key component of a hub and spoke online marketing strategy, blogs can be very effective for social media network engagement, online PR, customer service, and as search engine optimization assets. While there are numerous cases studies of business blogs (I like to think Online Marketing Blog is one) providing tremendous value, blogs are simply software tools and what you get out of them is in proportion to how well you know how to use them. One of the common areas of lost opportunity with business blogs is link building.

Despite Panda, Penguin and maybe someday “Zebra?”, updates from Google to further filter out what constitutes useful content and links on the web, links will always be valuable for attracting traffic. Some online marketers chase exploits, tricks or shortcuts only to get spanked by a black and white named-animal update from Google. Why not spend that creativity on something of value and competitive advantage that withstands the advancing filters applied by search engines?

By Lee Odden for TopRank, 30 April 2012

Fifty fantastic tools for responsive web design

TechDept — Tue, 01 May 2012 12:35:29 +0000

To get started with building a responsive site, having a strong toolkit can make a world of difference. Here Denise Jacobs and Peter Gasston round up 50 great tools to aid the process of making your sites responsive.

As introduced/coined by Ethan Marcotte in both his article “Responsive Web Design” as well as his best-selling book, one needs three elements to make a site responsive: 1) A flexible/fluid grid, 2) Responsive images, 3) Media queries.

There are plenty of other great articles that cover motives, concepts, and techniques regarding responsive web design, so we’ll keep the focus of this article on some top tools that will help you become responsibly responsive.

By Denise Jacobs and Peter Gasston for .net Magazine, 24 April 2012

Five tips for great content curation

TechDept — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 09:47:30 +0000

Steven Rosenbaum is the CEO of Magnify.net, a real-time video curation engine for publishers, brands, and websites. He’s also the author of Curation Nation.

You’ve heard the buzz word — curation — being thrown around like it’s a gadget we all know how to work. In reality, good content curation isn’t as simple as pushing a share button. It’s actually a combination of finding great content and following some simple best practices on how to successfully share that content.

If you’re a curator looking for some boundaries in what feels like the Wild West, here are five best practices to consider.

By Steve Rosenbaum for Mashable, 27 April 2012