Find us with inbound marketing | 2. Research-Theory-Statistics A Demonstration Project 8/15/2012 Land Between The Lakes National Recreation Area Jan Bush
Find us with inbound marketing | 2. Research-Theory-Statistics
Foundation of Knowledge This next section addresses some of the research, theories, and statistics that support our five marketing strategies discussed earlier in the introductory section.
Inbound Marketing – being where your customers can easily find you
Content Marketing – providing original and interesting content for readers
Permission Marketing – obtaining permission to direct message customers
Relationship Marketing – listening and conversing with target markets
Target Marketing – defining and targeting your customers in like groups
The overarching strategy of inbound marketing incorporates an emphasis on the other four strategies along with the tools and techniques in this eBook; social, mobile, and web. I also realize that like the broken Eggner Ferry Bridge incident from January of 2012, we all work with people, innovation, and weather – things can change in a nanosecond. The best part is that marketers are resourceful people. We figure out the best approach to reach our goals – like the rebuilding of the Eggner Ferry Bridge. What’s that old saying – nothing’s certain except death and taxes? Well I think we added a new one that’s certain – change. Eggner Ferry Bridge time-lapse http://youtu.be/4C_1pj75v5k
P.S. Photo by Denise; that spec in the water is a Coast Guard buoy.
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Contents Channeling the Marketplace Ten Ways .............................................................. 6 1 Product Placement ................................................................................... 6 2 Print ....................................................................................................... 6 3 Radio ..................................................................................................... 6 4 Television ............................................................................................... 7 5 World Wide Web ...................................................................................... 7 6 Mobile .................................................................................................... 7 7 Direct Mail .............................................................................................. 8 8 Internal Communications .......................................................................... 8 9 On Site ................................................................................................... 8 10 Quick Response (QR) Codes..................................................................... 8 Statistics ...................................................................................................... 9 Top 10 Stats .............................................................................................. 9 Digital Natives ............................................................................................ 10 The Digital Progression | A Partial Look .......................................................... 11 The Mobile Experience .................................................................................. 14 The Future Vantage Point ............................................................................. 17 A Future of Cluster Devices ........................................................................ 17 The Case for Technology Translators ........................................................... 18 Open Source Movement ............................................................................. 19 The Digital Federal Government Strategy ........................................................ 20 Anytime, Anywhere, on Any Device = Mobile Websites................................... 20 Government Resources .............................................................................. 20
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Find us with inbound marketing | 2. Research-Theory-Statistics Social Media ............................................................................................... 21 Advertising .............................................................................................. 22 Badges .................................................................................................... 22 Blogs ...................................................................................................... 23 Microblogs ............................................................................................ 24 Bookmarking ......................................................................................... 25 eCommerce ............................................................................................. 26 Location-Based Social Networking ............................................................... 27 Media Sharing Sites .................................................................................. 28 Message Boards ....................................................................................... 30 Podcasts .................................................................................................. 30 Rating sties .............................................................................................. 31 Social Networking Sites ............................................................................. 32 Professional Networks ............................................................................. 33 Community Q&A Sites ............................................................................ 33 Social News Service .................................................................................. 33 Wikis ...................................................................................................... 34 Website Guidelines ...................................................................................... 35 Comment Guidelines ................................................................................. 35 Privacy Guidelines..................................................................................... 36 Social Media Policy Tool Kit ........................................................................ 37
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Find us with inbound marketing | 2. Research-Theory-Statistics Ten Social Media Interface Guidelines + Government Guide ............................ 38 Gov Usability Guide ................................................................................ 38 1 Certify Privacy .................................................................................... 39 2 Interact with Members ......................................................................... 40 3 Encourage Self-Expression ................................................................... 41 4 Visually Advocate for Customer Content ................................................. 42 5 Build Connections ................................................................................ 43 6 Limit Abuse ........................................................................................ 44 7 Be Mobile ........................................................................................... 45 8 Deliver Fun......................................................................................... 46 9 Spread the Conversation ...................................................................... 47 10 Keep Technology Relevant .................................................................. 48 Search Engine Optimization - SEO ................................................................. 49 UX: The User Experience – some thoughts ...................................................... 50 Eye Tracking ............................................................................................ 50 Navigation ............................................................................................... 51 Breadcrumb Navigation ........................................................................... 51 Link Navigation ...................................................................................... 51 Navigation Hierarchy .............................................................................. 51 User Experience (UX) Testing – some tools .................................................. 52 Ethics ........................................................................................................ 53 Federal Trade Commission ......................................................................... 53 10 Commandments of Computer Ethics ....................................................... 54 Professional Rights .................................................................................... 54 Trademarks, Copyrights and Patents ........................................................... 55 Creative Commons.................................................................................... 55
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Find us with inbound marketing | 2. Research-Theory-Statistics Best Practices – Nine basic tips times three ..................................................... 56 1 Strategy ............................................................................................... 56 2 Design .................................................................................................. 57 3 Content ................................................................................................ 57 Best Practice Sites .................................................................................... 58 Glossary ..................................................................................................... 59 Resources & Bibliography ............................................................................. 61 Separate ................................................................................................. 61
In this section I offer a “top level” view of the websites, theories, statistics, and other bits of information I have found through my schooling and independent research on inbound marketing. There are millions of pages written on marketing and social networking. The links will get you “into the weeds.” If you wish to study the masters, Time has been publishing an annual listing of the top 50 web sites since 2005 as a good place to start. You can also find out your social media personality type at Mashable Social Media’s Infograph. It’s fun. The main message I hope to convey is that the customer experience is key to the success of any website, marketing campaign, social media platform, or face-to-face visit. As IBM so aptly states:
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Channeling the Marketplace Ten Ways With inbound marketing, you want to be where your customers expect to find you. This includes more than internet for most organizations.
1 Product Placement Often companies place products in games, movies, and television programs to establish a brand affiliation with the characters and content. At Land Between The Lakes, we often serve as a back drop for print articles, magazine photo shoots, news stories, and information videos. Another area worth exploring includes prize packages for media sweeps weeks for product placements.
2 Print Local tabloids, newspapers, and magazines help promote area industries and communities. I always recommend supporting the communities where you reside. Local stories are often picked up nationally. Remember to write feature articles and send out photos with captions as smaller news organization often appreciate the help. If your budget allows, run of the paper (ROP) and special section paid ads can be a part of your promotional mix.
3 Radio Successful radio advertising depends on frequency – how often the ad runs in a short time period. Multiple times during the day with a focused campaign provides the best coverage to promote a product. The return on your investment can be an expensive proposition if not done right. INC Magazine offers tips on buying radio on a budget which compliment my media buy strategy. Contributing to National Public Radio and Public Television in your area may also be an option for you.
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4 Television Like radio, television can be an expensive proposition. INC Magazine also offers tips on buying television advertising on a budget. When I worked for a television station in the 1980s we had a furniture advertiser that began with buying air time after midnight. He saturated the local market which was easy back then with only three local stations -- ABC, NBC, and CBS where I worked. Cable was in its infancy. This same technique can be used today as frequency is the key with any advertising. Today, many television and radio stations include a strong web presence with their local programming. These situations can offer opportunities for budget advertisers with special pricing.
5 World Wide Web This medium is right for everyone. You can showcase your products and services through videos, photos, and promote events directly to the public. The web allows customers to choose how much information they want. In the scheme of advertising, your best investment centers on your website. People expect to find information on the web while they are out and about. Just like newspapers of yesterday taught readers what to expect; so has the web. The web even uses similar language like banner ad, above the fold, and more. Moderating the activity that others post brings the biggest challenge. I aim for a conversational tone with customers’ positive and negative comments. This is a brand new world to many of us.
6 Mobile Mobile is unique as it is the most personal mass medium there is. Mobile offers us a direct relationship with our customers. Mobile interfaces in real world life through social media, web search, and location detection services. Smartphones constantly connect us to our worlds.
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7 Direct Mail In today’s communications, email ranks number one among consumers – for now. A database management system can help you systematically direct people to your website through regularly scheduled emails. Study the messages you receive noticing strategy and usage of key words. Coordinate email messaging with online and offline promotion to include advertising materials, feature articles, special events, and photos reinforcing the same messages on various mediums.
8 Internal Communications At Land Between The Lakes, we have personnel spread across 170,000 acres. For years we have been producing an internal newsletter. Internal communications keeps everyone in the workplace informed, and often, your staff makes the best customers. Ensure you have one of your best people managing this critical communications product.
9 On Site On site signage helps visitors feel secure in knowing where they are or where they are going. The same can be said for a retail store as a National Recreation Area. Visual signage helps customers quickly find what they want and improves their experience with your brand.
10 Quick Response (QR) Codes Because QR codes allow for instant access to additional information, their popularity continues to increases as more consumers use smartphones. Consumers expect QR codes in retail stores, museums, and self-guided tours. One more reason why “mobile” leads the design process – more about that later.
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Statistics The results1 are in – mobile rocks, digital natives are here, and word-of-mouth (WOM) promotion is still number one – only now it’s online – eWOM – electronicword-of-mouth. Here are my top ten of interesting statistics in this new age of marketing. More statistics are interwoven though out this eBook and a great article of statistics for 2012 can be found at the social Skinny.
Top 10 Stats 1.
Google is the new Yellow Pages 2
2.
Pinterest drives more referral traffic than Google Plus, LinkedIn and YouTube combined
3.
Blog articles influence purchases
4.
Twitter users are young, smart, affluent, and tech-savvy
5.
There are 271 MILLION mobile subscribers in the U.S. alone
6.
With over 155.5 million users on Facebook, the United States ranks as number 1; Monaco has the highest penetration rate at 98 percent
7.
9 out of 10 mobile searches lead to action; OVER HALF lead to purchases
8.
There were 2.5 BILLION video views on ExpertVillage’s YouTube channel; IGN YouTube channel is next with 1.8 Billion video views on this channel for game reviews and news
9.
One out of every seven minutes online is spent on Facebook
10. Approximately 4 BILLION of the 6.8 BILLION people on the planet, use a mobile phone; in comparison, 3.5 BILLION of them use a toothbrush My favorites are number one and ten. It goes to show how versatile, accepted, and powerful in reach the internet and mobile phones have become in the world.
1
Stats were from HubSpot and Social Bakers http://www.socialbakers.com/
2
HubSpot http://blog.hubspot.com/Portals/249/docs/ebooks/120-marketing-stats-charts-
and-graphs.pdf [stats 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 9, and 10] Jan Bush
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Digital Natives Digital natives are coming of age and by 2025, people born between 1976 and 2000 will comprise 80 percent of the U.S. work force. Often referred to as Generation Y, this group are the first to be born into a digital world.3 In 2008, summer interns at the Berkman Center of Harvard University created videos based on chapters in the book Born Digital. I found their interpretations insightful and highly recommend you check them out. Youth and Media In February of 2012, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) released a Digital Textbook Playbook to help k-12 schools move to digital textbooks4 within the next five years. The FCC wants to connect schools with the future. Its education program focuses “on helping educators, students, and parents transform learning opportunities through the use of technology at school, in the community, and at home.5” Joplin, Missouri, took the lead into digital textbooks after a tornado devastated the town in May of 2011 wiping out the high school. Digital natives also have Neopets outranking Facebook on length of stay – 18 vs. 27 minutes. Welcome to generations of digital natives – it’s just the beginning.
3
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/45987983/ns/business-forbes_com/t/top-employers-gen-
y-workers/#.T0ElCLR-fbE 4
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/01/challenge-to-schools-embr_n_1248196.html
5
http://www.fcc.gov/blog/fcc-chairman-digital-textbooks-all-students-five-years
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The Digital Progression | A Partial Look 1969
Arpanet created by the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Project Agency
1971
First e-mail delivered
1981
IBM introduced us to the new Personal Computer
1982
I bought my first computer, the Osborne
1985
America Online (AOL) dashboard email service begins
1987
South by Southwest (SXSW) began and grew into a festival and conference combinations of film, interactive, and music annually in March
1988
International Telecommunication Regulations (ITRs) established under the authority of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU)
1993
World Wide Web donated to the world by developers at CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research)
1994
Netscape Navigator provided the first graphical browser
1995
Yahoo! began as a dashboard email service and has quickly expanded to all things internet including a search engine Craigslist begins as email messaging to friends eBay brings the auction online WikiWikiWeb gave us the first platform for crowdsourcing; based on the Hawaiian word for quick “wiki-wiki” Amazon launches to eventually become the world’s largest store
1996
World Public Library went online with a mission to promote global literacy
1997
Blogging begins Blackboard founded for educators
1998
Google opens its doors for searching and now much more PayPal begins online money transfers for payments; 2007 bought by eBay
1999
Napster introduced the world to music and peer-to-peer sharing Neopets started us owning digital pets
2000
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The dot.com bust
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Wikipedia started people’s encyclopedia iTunes changed how we buy music MeetUp began as a response to the attack on 9/11 to bring online offline BitTorrent protocol brought us peer to peer (P2P) sharing of files Creative Commons instituted flexible copyrights
2002
Plaxo began as an business address book Last.fm radio station launched in the United Kingdom
2003
LinkedIn for professionals began MySpace began as a social network site and moved over to music and entertainment Second Life introduced us to a virtual world Apple delivered the iPod delicious began crowdsourcing our favorite websites CouchSurfing began offering crashing at strangers’ homes WordPress began offering blog publishing tools Skype brought us visiting online with video in real time
2004
Facebook founded to stay connected with family and friends Tagged to meet new friends Podcasts began Digg founded to share stories on the internet Flickr opened up their image hosting services Vimeo started with a video sharing website Yelp opened for business ratings and reviews Google Books a library project to scan the world’s literature; to date over 20 million books have been scanned
2005
YouTube got online with even more user-generated videos to share Reddit began its crowdsourcing news service Disney introduced Club Penguin for kids Etsy brings ecommerce to crafters Blogster started giving us free sites with templates Google Earth released
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Twitter founded for micro blogging and news sources Spotify made music social Reputation began helping people and companies defend their online reputations TedTalks began bringing international speakers online to us for free; it started in 1984 as an invitation only think tank SlideShare launched improving death by PowerPoint presentations Amazon brings cloud computing to customers WikiLeaks site share for private, secret, and classified documents Reputation.com began online management of reputations
2007
Apple released its first iPhone smartphone platform Issuu began offering hosting of self-published magazines online Tumblr. began “tumbling” media into micro blogging for a creative social
2008
KickStarter began a new way to raise money – crowd funding govloop offers social networking for government employees
2009
Microsoft introduced Bing as a new search engine Foursquare introduced social location and local deals from retailers
2010
Pinterest content sharing boards begins through invitation only Apple released the iPad Klout begins tracking peoples’ influence and giving scores Instagram began as the new way to take pictures quickly through filters Stuxnet first government alliance weapon made entirely out of code
2011
Google+ began sharing circles and hangouts Amen began sharing the best and worst opinions through crowdsourcing Pottermore started for all things Harry Potter
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The Mobile Experience “Today’s mobile device is our true personal computer: always with us, connected to the network, and filled with new capabilities for getting things done, communicating with each other, and just killing some time.” Luke Wroblewski After reading Mobile First by Luke Wroblewski, my approach to web design and internet marketing beliefs changed. I now believe designing for users of mobile handheld devices comes first in the website design process. I’d read articles by Luke Wroblewski before on A List Apart and other sites. I watched him in his YouTube video on LinkedIn TechTalks. Others had talked about the onslaught of mobile usage -- but Wroblewski’s book, Mobile First, convinced me. Four main themes weave throughout the book: growth, constraints, capabilities, and behaviors. According to Wroblewski, the world’s mobile use continues to grow exponentially. He contends that constraints are good; they require designers and developers to cater to user needs creating better websites for all. He points out that mobile also offers users new ways of interacting with the device and other people -- enhancing the mobile experience for users through GPS, video, and other capabilities. He also recommends we align mobile design to behaviors by enabling easy access and use of our sites:
Anytime; Anywhere; Any Device6
6
http://www.lukew.com/ff/entry.asp?862
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Find us with inbound marketing | 2. Research-Theory-Statistics In December of 2009, Morgan Stanley released a Global The Mobile Internet Report that declared “Ramping Faster than Desktop Internet, the Mobile Internet Will Be Bigger than Most Think.” The five trends that forecasted Morgan Stanley’s prediction of the mobile onslaught have been spot on: 1. 3G networks – we are now into 4G (4th generation) 2. Social Networking 3. Video Sharing 4. Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) 5. Impressive Mobile Devices – think iPad introduced in 2010
When Morgan Stanley’s report was issued in 2009 people accessing the internet from their phones hovered around 31 percent. By 2012, it’s now at 55 percent.7 By October of 2010, A Pew Internet & American Life Project found that 96 percent of 18 to 29 year olds owned a cell phone.8 Another PEW9 report found that by April of 2012, adults in the U.S. owning cell phones reached 88 percent with over half (55%) accessing the internet from their phones. Of cell phone owners, 53 percent own a smartphone. This equates to “46 percent of all American adults own a smartphone.” The 2012 report identifies three higher than average user groups: 1. The financially well-off and well-educated 2. Those under the age of 45 3. African-Americans and Latinos
Other offerings mobile devices bring to the table are interactivity like location detection, social media integration, instant photo, video uploads, GPS access, games, entertainment, and more.
7
http://www.lukew.com/ff/entry.asp?1602 Recap of Karen McGrane’s presentation at An
Event Apart in Washington DC 2012 8
http://pewinternet.org/Media-mentions/2010/Survey-96-of-Young-Adults-Own-Cell-
Phones.aspx 9
http://pewinternet.org/Commentary/2012/February/Pew-Internet-Mobile.aspx
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Find us with inbound marketing | 2. Research-Theory-Statistics We all want to take advantage of these capabilities knowing people will be standing, walking, riding, sitting, while they navigate through our sites with “one thumb and one eyeball” as Wroblewski reminds us. We need to keep the size and reach of the thumb in mind while designing our site. I used to joke with my two teenagers that they would have “thumb-itis” by my age – their thumbs fly across their screens. Smartphone owners use their phones 84% of the time from home, 69% while shopping, and 47% while commuting.10 I think you miss the point if you just remove content from the desktop website to make it fit on the mobile site. Josh Clark likens this to removing chapters from a novel just because it’s being produced in paperback.11 According to Clark, “Any piece of content needs to have one address.” I believe in this one web concept. In Brad Frost blog on content parity, Frost emphasizes that people on mobile devices want your real site. In the blog he offers samples of websites gone bad on mobile devices and turned me on to WTF Mobile Web; pretty funny – and insightful. The reason for the site is to offer visual proof why sites need to adjust to today’s mobile society. On Christmas Day 2011, consumers activated over 6.8 million Android and Apple mobile devices.12
10
http://blog.compete.com/2010/03/12/smartphone-owners-a-ready-and-willing-audience/
11
http://www.netmagazine.com/opinions/nielsen-wrong-mobile
12
http://www.smartonline.com/mobile-2/looking-back-at-2011-the-year-of-mobile/
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The Future Vantage Point “The best way to predict the future is to invent it.” Alan Kay
A Future of Cluster Devices Scott Jenson lives by that quote and looks into our future world of personal technology in his blog, Beyond Mobile: Future explorations of the mobile lifestyle. Jenson is passionate about mobile and what mobile offers as it gets “smaller, faster, and cheaper.” In an April 2011 blog, he talks about the power of devices overcoming the need for single source applications. Jenson describes three clusters that will connect us to our worlds in the future. 1. Fixed Cluster: this cluster seamlessly syncs in real time from one device to another. While listening through headphones, we can walk, drive, work, and return home without a break in service using smartphone, car stereo, work computer, and home stereo system. Jenson uses Pandora as a primitive version of his Fixed Cluster Model. 2. Personal Cluster: this cluster represents the hidden devices we will have with us at all times. Our smartphone will be the source of our radio-frequency identification (RFID) sharing our profiles with others, letting sales people know what we want as we enter the store, talking through earpieces, reading texts on our watches, and wearing smart jewelry advertising our causes. 3. Opportunistic Cluster: this cluster opens up the entire world as we pass through bus stops, movie theaters, retail stores, museums, airports, and more. Our devices will access the information we need. This cluster will let us peek into stores, know when the next bus comes, or an alternative flight when weather changes the schedule. We will live in a “geotagging” world. [Job opportunities here!]
You can get more of Scott Jenson in a video presentation beyond mobile web.
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The Case for Technology Translators In September of 2011, Ben Hammersley spoke about the need for translators of the future to the leaders of today in his speech Check against Delivery to the United Kingdom’s cybersecurity organization, Information Assurance Advisory Council. Hammersley speaks of the technology revolution that started in 1989, the same year the cold war ended, and the next year when the first web server was turned on. This generation holds the leaders making decisions today about our future. Hammersley admits that Moore’s Law makes it more difficult to plan with the fast pace of computing power and the decline of costs. As an example he warns that a two-term Prime Minister would be using a smartphone 64 times more powerful than the one used during his/her first election. Policies, Hammersley warns, “need to be written with that future in mind.” He cautions, however, that decision makers today have a propensity to “dismiss technology-not-being-good-enough-yet.” His fundamental truths include 1. Whatever technology leaders dismiss today, will be here tomorrow. 2. Our lives now require the internet to live. We expect freedom of speech and constant access to our choice of sites. 3. As always, technology “creates new norms.” Hammersley uses the phone number as an example. A phone number used to represent a place; now it’s a person. Another more subtle change moved us from relying on professional critics to relying on friends, neighbors and even complete strangers for their opinions on movies, restaurants, and more. Children of today expect the television to have a touch screen. Teenagers know the price for free social networks; it’s their personal data.
Technology evolution has us wanting it all on our own terms. Hammersley cautions that the biggest blow to society might just be industry and leaders “not understanding the place in society that data has taken.” We need translators between the two groups of tech savvy and tech hesitant. As Hammersley puts it, “we are living through the greatest revolution ever seen in the potential for human achievement and human connection.” Let’s nurture it.
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Open Source Movement The Walt Disney philosophy built an empire on “open source” material. Disney based his movies on original workings of others, mostly fairy tales from the brothers Grimm. You can find the complete works of the brothers for FREE at the Guttenberg Press organization. Guttenberg offers over 40,000 eBooks that are in the public domain. People can self-publish here also. My personalized eLibrary card gives me an electronic bookshelf to fill with my choice from two million books at WorldLibrary.net. This library is free for use like the brick and mortar version. The difference is this library is available to anyone, anywhere around the world, and on multiple devices. A membership of under $10 a year is requested; not required. You have a profile and can share your books with others as they share with you. Again for free, Project Literature offers to the world works by Kurt Vonnegut, Charles Dickens and Mark Twain to name a few. Formats offered include downloadable PDF files, text files, Mp3 audio files, and Kindle Books. Hardcopies can be found at Amazon with a link from each book’s page. An open source mindset originated with software and coding and today we have Open Source Initiative. This organization maintains a standards body for the common good. Affiliates include Mozilla foundation, Linux, Drupal, Python, Creative Commons, and others. Like many of the other affiliates, Mozilla Foundation promotes “openness, innovation and participation on the internet.” What have these organizations brought into the world? It’s brought parity between rich and poor nations through freedom of information. Next step is open education. The U.S. Department of Education (ED), Open Society Foundations (OSF), Participatory Culture Foundation (PCF), and Creative Commons (CC) have united to work towards open education for administrators, educators, and students alike. This ushers in new generations of people who are even more dependent on free data. Will it be free? Only the future and the generosity of big business will tell. Jan Bush
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The Digital Federal Government Strategy “Mobile technology is changing the way people find and use information and services. How does government interact with the public in this anytime, anywhere world? Based on your input, we’ll launch a community-generated wiki with tools to help you build and implement a mobile strategy for your agency and to share resources among agencies.” GSA Mobile Government It’s here…
Anytime, Anywhere, on Any Device = Mobile Websites In May of 2012, the Federal Government released its digital strategy: Building a 21st Century Platform to better serve the American People. The federal government has been my “go to” expert since I started my Interactive Media Master’s Program in 2010. Now in 2012 the federal governments’ strategy is decisive: anytime, anywhere, on any device.
Government Resources Data.gov and Data.gov communities This site offers support in various communities like Business USA, Developer, Education, Safety, and Semantic Web (3.0 web) Digital Government Strategy (May 21, 2012) Digital Government: Building a 21st Century Platform for Federal Government Agencies to better serve the American People How-To.gov How to guidance on all things web including mobile Mobile Apps Gallery Sample of some apps Mobile Gov Wiki Public government wiki for sharing anytime, anywhere, any device efforts Usability.gov and Usability Guide eBook Guide for developing usable and useful websites WhiteHouse.gov/digital gov Updates and tracks government progress
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Social Media “Daily life is connected life, its rhythms driven by email, text messages, tweets and Facebook updates.” Networked: The New Social Operating System13
This is how we communicate with each other; how we share our lives, keep up with family and friends, read the news, buy our books, and learn. Social media has become THE common thread in our lives. By design, social media is participatory. Your customers want to be heard; they’re talking to you through social media. We need to listen. IBM declares we are in the era of the Chief Executive Customer and predicts that Chief Marketing Officers (CMO) will be out spending Chief Information Officers (CIO) by 2017 for company information technology (IT) needs. In a Forbes article, Pay-It-Forward Trumps ROI Where Social is Concerned, Anthony Leaper explains that being social is measured through quality customer experiences. Leaper states, “Social gives you an opportunity to engage with customers, just like corner store shopkeepers used to, but this time on a global scale.” With quality experiences, customers will become loyal customers. Fast Company polled some of the “savviest users” of social media for their best practices. Here are a few of my favorites:
13
“If all you do is respond to complaints, that’s all people will send you” “Everyone’s an influencer”
“Not everything will work, and that’s fine”
“If fans distribute your content without your permission, offer to help”
http://networked.pewinternet.org/
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Advertising Fast Company also offers us a few numbers on advertising costs in an August 2012 article.14 Here is the basic cost to reach users; check out the details online.
$800,000
161 million U.S. users
$25,000
Tumblr
4 million U.S. unique users
$500,000
YouTube
26 million U.S. unique users
$120,000
18 million U.S. adults
$617
usocial.net
4,000 Facebook Fan bots
$77
buytwtterfollwers.org
5,000 follower bots
Badges Online badges come in two forms of recognition, as a badge symbolizing a cause and badges as rewards for accomplishments. The Center for Disease Control offers various badges in support of health issues for posting on websites. This type of badge could be used to highlight special events, anniversaries, and more. Digital badges recognizing accomplishments can be displayed publicly online enabling bragging rights for participants. This open dialogue helps to motivate others to move forward with the learning process or complete tasks. Most take pride in the rewarding system. A grantor must verify that badges have been earned. The grantor can be a parent in some cases, or fellow students for easier ones. For more challenging or complicated tasks, a program grantor may need to be established. Mozilla Open Badge Infrastructure “supports the issuing, collection and display of badges.” We all want recognition and what a fun way to do give it!
14
http://www.fastcompany.com/3000047/pricey-investments-fickled-followers-run-down-
social-media-numbers Jan Bush
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Blogs There are many benefits for an organization that blogs. You have a platform that you control to tell your story your way. Consistent blogging gives your company a human voice to your customers. It also improves your skills in communicating with, and listening to, your customers. Blogging also offers a known, safe place where you can direct customers to go for information, or educate them on new products and services. HubSpot research15 found over 50 percent of the global population read blogs at least monthly. Many people read daily and admit they are influenced by blogs. In addition, companies who blog report 55 percent more website traffic. Blog sites like the Big Think provides a good example of the quality of content people seek. Blogging support services include Blogger, LiveJournal, Typepad, Wix, and WordPress.org | WorddPress.com. The difference between the two WordPress organizations is that WordPress.com provides themes and offers free hosting. You are limited to customize. WordPress.org is the software which also has free themes; these you can access the code to tailor to your image. The dot org site requires a separate hosting service and you are responsible for upgrading and maintaining your site.16 Some of the same people work at both. Whatever you choose to write about, write with passion.
15
http://www.slideshare.net/HubSpot/marketing-charts-graphsdataapril2010slideshare
16
http://en.support.wordpress.com/com-vs-org/
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Microblogs Microblogs have become popular for their quick and organic process of sharing small bits of data – text, photos, music, and videos. Instant publication can be a rush, so be careful with these sites. Twitter and tumblr are some of the more popular services. Niche interest sites like StockTwits have proliferated using the quick data streams. Tumbler offers blog pages which are quick and easy to manage and share your talents; popular site with artists, designers, and photographers. Some great tips for news outlets come from journalism.co.uk which includes going for quality at tumblr versus quantity. It’s a different crowd at tumblr. Specialty sites like Miro community helps with video websites helping with video contests in addition to focusing on hosting interesting videos.
Do not be tempted: “this is amazing,,just 3 day I can get 10000followrs,,go up visit here (URL link).” Bad grammar and punctuation should give you a clue this is sketchy. Make your customer experiences positive experiences. If your content relates to your customers, you will get the following you want – and a dedicated one. The numbers tell you if you are doing a good job. A lot of people buy robot followers and really should not. Now there is a Twitter Faker Score keeper you can run on your site and that of others. 17 This was my score. You can build a story timeline with Storify capturing tweets, Facebook submissions, video and photos. News media groups are experimenting with Storify. Here’s one from NBC about the #drought2012.
17
http://www.fastcompany.com/3000359/buying-twitter-followers-beware-statuspeople-
service-exposes-social-medias-black-market Jan Bush
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Bookmarking Bookmarking services let you collect tweets, videos, blogs, articles and more, usually in topical categories, to store and share with friends or people around the world. Delicious, squidoo, and StumbleUpon are three of the more popular services for web discovery. You can actually “stumble” through the web with a Stumble button. Let them know what you like to get relevant sites. Squidoo is bookmarking on steroids -- complete with trophies. Pages are called “lenses” and original content is required. Check out lens master MJs Consignments on Squidoo who is also an eBay top seller. Bruce Eisner [Ehrlich] “top lens” offers visitors Left Brain right Brain Test page. The masters intersperse purchasing opportunities from sites on specialty sites Marbles the brain store, Amazon, and their own sites. Bruce’s pages lead to Mind Media a registry of self-improvement and self-help media and site links. Remember you must have passions to lift you above the noise.
Pinterest’s popularity skyrocketed with content sharing among women in 2012. This infograph gives an overview of member demographics. I enjoy it myself as you can see if you go to my board showcasing my “office.”
Click infograph to view larger version
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eCommerce As squidoo attested to in Bookmarking, the internet has made selling online easier each passing year. Smashing Magazine features 35 Beautiful E-Commerce Websites in a 2010 article worth visiting. Storefront sites give you the freedom to acquire your goods and promote your site. I know a few folks who have handmade crafts or fine art work for sell on Shopify and Etsy. Purple Rain Jewelry and Creativity Continuum have had some success online. Purple Rain works her online store with craft show appearances and aftermarket sales. Creativity Continuum posts store connection on her blog for direct buy. When buying online, people want a secure website; they want their information encrypted. Visual cues are closed padlocks or https URL. For more informant on Website Certificates go to the Department of Homeland Security’s understanding Web Site Certificates. If you become a member of Amazon’s Associates Program, you can earn up to a ten percent referral fee. Participation is free and a great way to earn a little extra. According to Internet Retailer, by 2016 e-retail spending will increase by 62 percent with U.S. shoppers contributing $327 billion. 18 [That Amazon associate’s program is sounding better every day!]
18
http://www.internetretailer.com/2012/02/27/e-retail-spending-increase-45-2016
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Location-Based Social Networking Location-based social networking websites use smartphones to enhance a mobile life. Players can check-in to retail shops for discounts, find restaurants and services nearby, and let friends and family know where they are at through foursquare. When you connect it to your Facebook page, you have a custom tailored program that matches your interests. The ultimate in location-based adventure social networking is Geocaching. Most people log on with their Facebook account and post accomplishments on Facebook in addition to the Geocaching site. Geocaching is a “Free real-world outdoor treasure hunt.” Many families participate together. Land Between The Lakes holds hundreds of sites including this historical tale geocache at Cherry Cemetery in Tennessee established by the River Valley Geocaches. Based on the game scavenger, this location-based online game, SCVNGR, challenges customers to visit sites and perform tasks earning reward points along the way. This game connects to Twitter and Facebook. According to the information video, with SCVNGR you “go places, do challenges, have fun, share with friends, and unlock rewards.” A SCVNGR template for museums looks easy and a lot of fun.
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Media Sharing Sites Media sharing sites can offer the most fun for many of your customers and can be your place for creative outlets for staff and customers alike. Vimeo and YouTube offer video postings which can be historical or hysterical. One of my favorites encompasses both – The Internet in 1969. My all-time favorite video is Typography: If by Rudyard Kipling with a close second going to A Day Made of Glass…Made possible by Corning. The next big trend includes episodes of quality productions. An Australian blog, Smart Company, offers advice on setting up a branded channel. This Cat in the Class video epitomizes the popularity of online video – capturing the unexpected; then sharing. I think many of us celebrated when Twitter added photo and video sharing just for this reason – which brings us to our newest member: Ink361 provides a site browser for your Instagram photos which also offers social media actions. You can like and comment on photos, follow people, and Ink361 founders promise more socializing will be coming. Now you can host all those photos taken with Instagram that you shared through Twitter in one place.
The Flickr community shares photos and videos among family and friends or with the world. Many entries fall under Creative Commons and can be used by the public. In August of 2012, an entomologist discovered a new insect species in a photograph posted on Flickr.19 Flickr MeetUps happen around the world with San Francisco serving the largest membership.
19
http://www.cbc.ca/news/offbeat/story/2012/08/14/insect-species-flickr-discovery.html
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Find us with inbound marketing | 2. Research-Theory-Statistics SlideShare helped me improve my PowerPoint skills and understanding of social networking. I follow Heidi Miller in Seattle and yiibu in the United Kingdom. There are slide shows that are both beautiful and educational—which is not an oxymoron. Dear Photograph is an interesting concept of joining the old with the new and sharing your thoughts. One of my favorites features a mother daughter relationship. A book on submitted photos hit the stores in May of 2012. To quote Time Magazine regarding this site, “Looking at the family photos of strangers was never so transfixing.”20 It’s a pretty cool site.
20
http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,2087815_2087868_2087873, 00.html #ixzz23ah1aSx4 Jan Bush
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Message Boards In the beginning, we had message boards. Now we have instant messaging like AOL Instant Messenger, Microsoft Office Communicator, and Google Talk and Video Chat plug-in. Before Skype added their instant message service, we would meet in groups for class using Internet Relay Chat (IRC) service as we never seemed to have the same instant messaging service among all us needed for the meeting. IRC is a little bit archaic but works well.
Podcasts Podcasts offer great learning opportunities and provide additional interests to your blogs. You can treat these as interviews with special guests, book reviews, or instructional topics. I use Audacity which is a free audio recorder and editor that I have found easy to use. When recording, headphones with a microphone provide a professional sound quality. Purchase two sets if you plan on conducting interviews. You can find a directory at Podcasting News listing pod sites from iTunes to Podcast Alley, a popular podcasting site. Podcasting News also offers tips and how to videos and articles to help develop your podcasting talents and to promote the finished product. One free instructional video on Garage Band taught how to use enhanced techniques adding graphics, hyperlinks, and artwork synched in to the audio. Podcasting 101 on Podcasting Tools appears to be a thorough instructional on how to podcast. The Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) offers interesting interview and strategies, National Public Radio (NPR) provides their on air shows for later listening, the Social Media Examiner focuses on social media topics, and other special interest sites exist. I enjoy the interviews from On Being with Krista Tippett.
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Rating sites “User reviews of products and services carry tremendous weight with consumers conducting research online.” Time Magazine21 Yelp is a user review site that averages 78 million unique visitors a month in the second quarter of 2012. 22 In Mid-August Yelp improved its customer experience to offer a homepage that includes what your connections are “yelping” about. 23 Trip Advisor provides a similar service for the travel industry. Reviewers often send in photos to document comments. TripWatch, their weekly e-newsletter, offers travel tips. Trip Advisor24 is owned by TripAdvisor Media Group that includes many travel sites like EveryTrail. The site also builds city guides throughout the world. Trip Wow features an animated map to add to your TwipWow free slideshow that people post online, share with friends and family, and download for a lifetime of memories. Great customer experience given here.
If you want to know what kind of influence you have over others, you can find out with KLOUT. This site rates you. Sign in with your Twitter or Facebook account and KLOUT will run you through 400 variables to find where you stand in the world. 21
http://moneyland.time.com/2012/07/06/the-yelp-conspiracy-how-a-group-of-businesses-
conspired-to-get-better-yelp-ratings/ 22
http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2198503/Yelp-SEO-Campaign-Highlights-8-Local-
SEO-Best-Practices 23
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57493250-93/new-yelp-site-highlights-your-social-
connections/ 24
http://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/tripadvisor-hacked-member-emails-stolen/
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Social Networking Sites Google+ is the new kid on the block and offers an alternative to Facebook. I personally like the “circle” structure of placing people in groups where you can share with a few or with everyone, including the public if so desired. The beauty here the choice is yours to make. I also find hanging out with people as a fun way to catch up. In August of 2012, Google+ announced the addition of vanity URLs. This will improve the site. Guy Kawasaki wrote a book on how to master Google+ selling for $2.99. Facebook ranks number one in the United States with a 51 percent penetration into the populations. There are 160,694,600 Facebook users. Walmart, Target, Subway, Disneyland and Starburst are the top retail brands while the top media sites include National Geographic, Discovery Channel, History Channel, Cartoon Network and Picnik a photo editor.25 People share with family and friends located all over the world. It’s how baby boomers travel and still keep in touch with the grandkids back home. The Newsroom can keep you updated on new products, privacy and more. Facebook is so big you can always find some fun posts. It’s like the People of Walmart photos. There are plenty of sites that cater to interest groups. Amazon provides virtual shelves for our books bought through Amazon and we can add our own on Shelfari. You set up through your Amazon account if you have one. American Airlines offers Black Atlas as a “Passport to the Black Experience.” Festival.net lets you post events for crafts, music, art, and home and garden shows. Whatever your interest, you can search for it online and find others who are interested in the same topic for you to share and network.
25
http://www.socialbakers.com/facebook-statistics/united-states
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Professional Networks If you are looking for employment or want to network with other professionals, Linked In fits those needs.26 Plaxo provides an electronic address book keeping track of your networks’ new jobs and addresses. After College specializes in recently graduated students for entry level positions and internships. 27
Community Q&A Sites From expert opinions to insightful comments, community wiki sights provide answers to your questions. Quora is Time’s favorite.28 Aks.com and Yahoo! Answers are other popular sites.
Social News Service Find out what people are talking about on the web; sign up with a social news service. Digg is where you find out that Scientists Invent Healthy Chocolate -- I can understand why that story rose to front page news! Chocolate is one of our main food groups in my family. Reddit accepts submissions from all over the world of user generated news. I can be anything from asking questions about where to go, pictures of dogs, found articles, comics, and more. It’s a hodgepodge of information satisfying all kinds of taste. Just search a topic and you will find it here. Again special interest topics are prolific. The fan-based Bleacher report centers on sport and athletes. Techmeme gathers technology news from around the world.
26
http://business.time.com/2012/04/18/linkedin-will-outlive-facebook-heres-why/
27
http://gigaom.com/2012/08/14/do-college-students-need-their-own-linkedin-
aftercollege-thinks-so/ 28
http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/0,28757,2087815,00.html
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Wikis The most famous wiki of all is Wikipedia, a collection of articles that’s populated through crowd sourcing. Wikis offer a platform where multiple people can enter information and build content in a collaborative environment. The word “wiki” is Hawaiian for quick.29 Wikipedia provides a Manual of Style guide on the basics of contributing to a wiki. The layout guide shows how to add headers between sections that automatically form into the table of contents. Wikispaces offers free hosting space for educators. Samples can be found on their site from educational users. In grad school, we used Blackboard where we collaborated in classes, sharing what we learned and our research results.
The National Archives have requested people to help transcribe historical documents through a wiki. This is a continuation of their Citizen Archivist where you can tag records, edit articles, and share documents. The value of crowdsourcing with wikis is a smart way to go.
29
http://computer.howstuffworks.com/internet/basics/wiki.htm
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Website Guidelines Comment Guidelines Comment policies help your visitors know that all comments may not be posted. There is discussion of this practice as some organizations do not allow negative comments. The standard is to allow legitimate negative concerns and address them in a professional manner. In looking at what other organizations have formulated for comment guidelines, I found the Center for Disease Control Facebook Page Guidelines a good example to emulate. The CDC has been the leader in social media communications for the federal government and the CDC guides have been influential in my philosophy on social media. From Facebook CDC page: Therefore, a comment will be deleted if it contains:
Hate speech
Profanity, obscenity or vulgarity
Nudity in profile pictures
Defamation to a person or people
Name calling and/or personal attacks,
Comments whose main purpose are to sell a product, and
Comments that infringe on copyrights,
Spam comments, such as the same comment posted repeatedly on a profile,
Other comments that the CDC Social Media team deems inappropriate.
All links posted as comments on CDC posts will be reviewed and may be deleted.
Repeated violations of the CDC comment policy may cause the author to be blocked from the CDC Facebook page. (Source: https://www.facebook.com/CDC/app_192223444203970)
These are typical standard statements. A disclaimer that: “comments and links do not represent your organizations views,” is also advised. If you are away for regular time periods, you might want to include a comment that: “the site is not monitored around the clock.” An email contact and link to an official website appear to be standard practice in this section of your policy.
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Privacy Guidelines Everyone wants their information kept secure while visiting your page. The right to privacy is part of our Bill of Rights and the Privacy Act of 1974. The American Library Association offers greater depth into the privacy issue and provides us with this appropriate quote from George Orwell: “How often, or on what system, the Thought Police plugged in on any individual wire was guesswork. It was even conceivable that they watched everybody all the time. But at any rate they could plug in your wire whenever they wanted to. You had to live—did live, from habit that became instinct—in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinized.” —George Orwell 1984 Your privacy policy needs to cover these five items: 1. No personal data record-keeping systems that are designed to be kept secret from the public are allowed. 2. For personal data record-keeping systems, there must be a way for individuals to know what is in their file and how it is being kept. 3. Individuals must have a way to correct information in their files. 4. It is the responsibility of any organization using personal data record-keeping systems to ensure its reliability and prevent its misuse. 5. The purpose of obtaining personal information may not be changed without individuals' informed consent. (Source: http://www.valid-computing.com/code-of-fair-information-practices.html)
Not one for reinventing the wheel; I went to Free Privacy Policy, filled out a form, and [drum roll please] I now have a private policy statement. If you search the words “free privacy policy generator” you will get quite a few companies that can help you write your policy. Remember I am just sharing with you my experiences; not endorsing unless I say so.
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Social Media Policy Tool Kit Many organizations and private industry provide guidelines which you can reference when formulating social media guidelines for your organization. These guidelines provide overviews and suggestions. It’s always best to have your legal counsel ensure that your policy fits your organization. The Social Media Organization provides an open source tool kit to develop a formal social media policy for any organization. The Organization’s three fundamental obligations of any social media outreach program include (1) full disclosure and truthfulness, (2) monitoring the conversation and correcting misstatements, and (3) provide social media policies and training for your organization. A committee compiled the social media policy check lists from best practice submissions of their member organizations [demographics of $1 Billion a year]. It appears to be very thorough in its checklist. The toolkit addresses: 1. Disclosure of Identity 2. Personal and Unofficial Social Media Participation 3. Social Media Outreach Campaigns 4. Truthfulness 5. Advocacy Programs 6. Compensation and Incentives 7. Agency and Contractor Disclosure 8. Vendor Questionnaire 9. Monitor and Respond 10. Policies and Training 11. Creative Flexibility 12. General Best Practices (Source: http://www.socialmedia.org/disclosure/)
If your site includes a blog, you might want to check out the Electronic Frontier Foundation legal guide for bloggers living in the United States.
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Ten Social Media Interface Guidelines + Government Guide When you join an internet community, do you follow friends and family and trust their judgments? Or do you lead the way in becoming one of the first members to a new community? Either way, we know there are some intrinsic rules that social network sites follow that allow you to trust it with your personal information and come back to the site time and time again. Here are some best practices:
Gov Usability Guide I am listing my top ten recommendations that could be added to the “government bible” on Researched-Based Web Design and Usability Guidelines. That bible was written in 2006 – the same year that Twitter emerged on the scene and two years after Facebook. It is still relevant today except for the lack of social media topics. I advise you to download and refer to it. It’s a great resource for internet marketing and web design even though much has changed in our lives since it was written -- so on with my additions: 30
30
Since I suggest these be entered into the book, I wrote them similar to the book for easy
insertion in case the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) ever asks me. Jan Bush
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1 Certify Privacy Guideline: Ensure trustworthiness by securing members’ personal information at all times and enabling members to decide what information is seen by whom. Transmit information over secure networks using encryption. Maintain a valid certificate to further protect visitor privacy. Comments: Social media sites are designed for social interaction. The more visitors feel secure, the more open they will be on your site. Members are responsible for most of a social media site’s content through “crowdsourcing.” When members generate content, they usually promote what they’ve posted. The most popular sites refresh constantly. According to Matt McGee on Search Engine Land the per-second count is:
Facebook status updates: 700 per second
Twitter tweets: 600 per second
To reach and maintain these interactive numbers, people trust these sites to protect their identity from theft. Sources: Understanding web site certificates; VeriSign Authentication Services (Now from Symantec); TRUSTe
Example: Although Web Biographies site intrigues me and appears to be a great place to collaborate with family members on your ancestral roots, the certificate expired in May of 2011 and this security warning stopped me from registering. [Rightly so, the site has been pulled down by August 2012]
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2 Interact with Members Guideline: Know what your members like and individualize recommendations back to them; provide feedback when an action is performed – such as “message sent.” Comments: One of the easiest ways to find friends and family on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and other sites is through the popup “people you may know.” This is especially critical for “early adapters” and actually anyone self-establishing on a new site. Online retail outlets use this technique constantly. I’ve noticed a trend in online retail to incorporate more interactivity on their sites; blurring the boundaries between online retail shopping and social media sites. This trend will deepen members’ dependency on recommendations from the sites they visit -- and belong. Sources: multiple examples from actual sites; List of social networking websites
Examples: I knew one of the three people that popped up at log-in and immediately sent an invitation to “connect” through LinkedIn. Urban Outfitters’ online catalog offers automatic suggestions on each page and encourages consumers to provide reviews and ask questions. Urban also exchanges friends’ wish lists.
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3 Encourage Self-Expression Guideline: Provide personalization opportunities like profiles that include birthdays, favorite things, friends and family lists, photos and other avenues for selfexpression that’s appropriate for your networking site. Comment: People like attention. According to Michael Goldhaber in his Wired article Attention Shoppers “...attention - not information – is the natural economy of cyberspace.” In order for people to receive the attention they deserve, their profiles must reflect their basic demographics plus their likes, dislikes and other interests including group memberships. In addition to family and friends, likeminded people will find them and want to become cyber friends. Keep in mind that personalization will need options for people to opt in to provide the information or opt out. Let your member decide. Sources: Facebook’s Design to Standards; Joshua Porter’s blog Google’s Social Design Best Practices; Social media: the attention economy explained; Wikipedia’s Social Networking Service; Guy Kawasaki’s Linked In makeover
Examples: Guy Kawasaki before in 2007 and after in 2011
Member Recognition on LinkedIn discussion pages is similar to eBay’s top-rated seller designation.
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4 Visually Advocate for Customer Content Guideline: Keep your design simple and consistent throughout with easy navigation and visual references enabling your members to showcase their contributions to the site. Customer content reigns on social media sites. Comments: Provide clear directions that feel intuitive. Your subscribers want to easily navigate, upload, share, and use “their” community. Members want their content or that of their friends to be the most important item on every one of their pages. Let members know what their friends are doing. Sources: You should follow me on Twitter; How Design Impacts Social Media; Facebook’s Design to Standards
Examples: Deviant Art keeps the background simple to showcase their members’ work. Facebook also adheres to a simple and consistent design.
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5 Build Connections Guideline: Encourage friendships through group activities; share likes/dislikes and relevant information for friends, family, and people of similar interests. Let people organize their connections with many options. Comments: People tend to hang out with people who enjoy doing the same things – book readers discuss plots, wine connoisseurs talk grapes, naturalists compare hiking paths, and researchers compare findings. The more diverse opportunities your site offers for people to find commonality with others, the more popular your site will become. Sources: Why New Media Are Becoming Your New Neighborhood
Examples: Connecting people to people through group forums and providing a sense of belonging encourages new friendships and a better customer experience. The experience project offers a repository of personal stories while Amazon provides mini-store fronts to let your friends know what you are reading.
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6 Limit Abuse Guidance: Provide mechanism for members to self-govern the site. Comments: As more traffic flows through an interactive site; odds of people posting inappropriate content increases while odds of finding such postings decrease. By providing buttons or pull down menus for members to report abuse, your site will remain attractive to the very people you want as members. This type of control helps to bring a sense of ownership to your online community also. Sources: The Elements of Social Architecture; Harvard Program on Network Governance
Example: YouTube now offers viewers the ability to flag content.
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7 Be Mobile Guideline: Make sure your site functions on all mobile platforms from smart phones to the new tablets and all the way to desktop monitors. As mentioned earlier, the Federal Government mandate for agencies is Anytime, Anywhere, on Any Device. Comments: Innovation, improved technology in devices, decreased costs with mass production, and advanced coding of HTML and CSS3 have propelled smartphones into the hands of anyone who can afford a usage plan. In the United States, 46 percent of all adults own a smartphone.31 Sources: Why New Media Are Becoming Your New Neighborhood; QR codes connect smartphones to Internet; The Arab Revolution and Social Media; Gigaom.com; PEW Internet
Example: With the inclusion of QR codes on in-store tags and print advertisements, mobility is another area where online retailers are driving consumers to the internet through their smart phones. I still find it a novel activity to scan the codes into my phone and be taken immediately to the retailer’s internet site.
31
http://pewinternet.org/Commentary/2012/February/Pew-Internet-Mobile.aspx
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8 Deliver Fun Guidance: Interactive sites offer games, contests, surveys, puzzles, trivia, cyber gift giving and more activities. Create new, fun things often for your members to do, compete, and share. Make it individual for self-expression. Comments: Members enjoy playing with their cyber friends. Adding new activities keeps your site dynamic in the eyes of your members. Sources: Games; The Elements of Social Architecture, Facebook Shows More Love to Developers
Examples: Sample of games available on Facebook – “challenge your friends.”
The Experience Project provides a different level of activity to its members. I am challenged – how would I be defined in the dictionary? A ten word story is another challenge I may take on. I may join.
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9 Spread the Conversation Guideline: Provide mechanisms for mini blogging, commenting, discussion groups, email, instant messaging, sharing of photos, and other avenues for communicating to family, friends and colleagues. Comments: You want a place where people can help each other with advice and information sharing. LinkedIn is a leader in this area; their discussion groups are extensive. The Experience Project has shared over 8 million real-life experiences from April 2007 to June 2011 which comes to 6,000 a day. Keep your audience engaged and active. Sources: Google’s Social Design Best Practices;
Why New Media Are Becoming Your New
Neighborhood; The Experience Project; The Death of SEO
Examples:
LinkedIn encourages topical discussions and The Experience Project asks its subscribers a daily question for discussion.
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10 Keep Technology Relevant Guideline: Provide your customers with the technology they expect. Comments: With technology outpacing its past performance 100 fold, your site needs to be fresh and up to date for a younger audience. If you cater to an older crowd, you may want to slowly integrate new technologies and ways of doing things on your site. Right now, smart phones lead the new market opportunity. Be prepared for the tablets and whatever else is coming soon. What’s important is that you and your site are not left behind. Sources: Wikipedia New research shows smartphone growth is global; Building a Responsive, Future-Friendly Web Starbucks invests $25M mobile in payment venture
Examples: The 2011 Nokia “Advanced Smartphone” offers touchscreen display and internet access. The 1983 pushbutton Motorola Dyna TAC “Advanced Mobile Phone System” made and received telephone calls. [Wikipedia]
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Search Engine Optimization - SEO As technology improves and advances, web search engines change their game. Search engines continue to “crawl” and build indexes of a site’s key words for relevancy as before – only different. Today the more active a site is, the more times search engines will crawl your site for updates and to check key words. Popularity of sites now plays a major role in the algorithm search ranking. The more sites that link to your page and the more people who like your page, the higher you rank in organic searches32 -- since you’ve now become “popular.” You are providing what users want – the ultimate user experience success story. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the science behind your website being on page one or page 1,001 when someone searches your key words. The science includes:
Designing clean, correctly coded websites offer all the standard parts visitors expect to find from a site like yours;
Developing original (unique33) content people want and will link to it;
Identifying relevant key words that describe your product or service in words most likely used by customers searching for your product or service:
Using descriptive key words in page URLs, titles, meta descriptions, and alternative texts for photos and graphics;
Setting up your site map for search engines like Bing and Google;
Managing the site with care – and daily:
Adding content on a regular basis to improve your site being indexed; 34
Ensuring outbound links work;
Utilizing 301 Redirects: o
Passing deleted or consolidated pages to the new, modern URL;
o
Directing non-www searches to www site to eliminate two versions of your website which dilutes organic search results;
Moving seamlessly from desktop to mobile platforms
32
Organic search implies that no payment has been made for your ranking.
33
Uniqueness offers new information on a topic to readers rather than a rehash of old.
34
HubSpot tells us the tipping point is 21; more than 21 new entries a month improve SEO.
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UX: The User Experience – some thoughts Eye Tracking
This heat map clearly demonstrates the “F” pattern generated when people browse a page online to determine whether to read it or not. Your first line needs to tell the story that people want in order to draw them into your site. That’s something to remember when we layout pages and write copy including attention grabbing headlines.
http://styleguide.yahoo.com/writing/write-web/eyetracking-where-do-readers-look-first
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Navigation Breadcrumb Navigation Believe it; Hansel and Gretel theory works. Breadcrumbs let digital travelers easily retrace their steps across your site – especially those travelers who wish to dig deep into your information. Except for the top level landing pages and the home page, visitors rely on breadcrumbs; now a standard practice.
Link Navigation Let your reader know where they are headed; use the proper name of the source. Using the descriptive name or title allows the reader to know where they are going without having to read all the fine print around the link. It also helps with search engine optimization. Use nouns as the anchor in your link. Visually show it is a link with the words underlined. It’s a standard practice to only use underlined words as links. People have been trained. If you have a photo or graphic that naturally relates to another page or section on a page, have it link to it. People expect photos to link to something; do it if it makes sense. Photos and graphics would be a secondary link; keep your text links. You want those search bots to read the key words in your links.
Navigation Hierarchy Help visitors to your site visually decide whether they are on a landing page, your home page, etc. Then when visitors move to the next level, they know it. Keeping navigation simple with visual clues makes for a better user experience. Consistency rules when designing website navigation.
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User Experience (UX) Testing – some tools Steve Krug’s book Don’t Make Me Think has been my guide through user testing. I find his books easy to understand and read. Krug also offers test scripts, consent forms, and chapters for download. Results from my testing and how we work it will be included in a later section. An incredibly easy tool comes from UserTesting.com. Within two hours I had three complete user tests. My advice is to read Krug’s book and then hire these folks to do the test for you. Cost was reasonable. This is a testimonial. Steve Krug’s site http://www.sensible.com/ UX Booth http://www.uxbooth.com/ UX Magazine http://uxmag.com/
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Ethics Ethics served as one of my last classes in my master’s program. We wrote about the deep web, trolls, and The Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998 -- DMCA. This course inspired many of the links and topics in this ethics section.
Federal Trade Commission The Federal Trade Commission protects consumers by applying federal guidelines for fair business practices. The FTC governs much of the social media world. Most recently privacy issues were settled with Google and Facebook. If online activity targets youth, it’s good to be familiar with the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). Recently the FTC settled with Reebok and Sketchers for claiming their shoe designs helped you “tone” your muscles just by wearing them. (You can find two pairs of Shapeups in my closet right now!) They violated the Truth in Advertising Practice. Just the other day in the comments section of a blog, a commenter was chastised for not disclosing that he wrote the book in question. The ethical thing to do is always disclose who we are and who we work for in a clear, concise manner. FTC offers guides for testimonials and endorsements that are now the law. While monitoring the traffic about your organization, disclose be honest and forthright in all communications. A partial listing of FTC guidelines that govern social media and advertising include:
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Guides against deceptive pricing Guides against bait advertising Guides for advertising allowances and other merchandising payments and services Guide concerning use of the word ''free'' and similar representations Guides concerning use of endorsements and testimonials in advertising Guides for the use of environmental marketing claims Children's online privacy protection rule Standards for safeguarding customer information Can-spam rule [Commercial Electronic Mail Message]
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10 Commandments of Computer Ethics Stanford provides an open source Encyclopedia of Philosophy that offers a thorough background on information ethics that has grown to include computer ethics. My class at Quinnipiac University offered a link to computer commandments: Thou shalt not: 1. Use a computer with the intention of harming other people. 2. Interfere with the computer work of others. 3. Look around and snoop in other people's computer files. 4. Use a computer to steal anything whatsoever. 5. Use a computer to bear false witness, in any shape or form. 6. Use a copied or original version of proprietary software for which you have not paid for it yourself. 7. Use other people's computer-based resources without permission or authorization. 8. Appropriate other people's intellectual work for your own use without their knowledge and consent. 9. Create programs without thinking about potential social and personal consequences of those programs. 10. Use a computer in ways that are disrespectful or discourteous towards other people. (Source: http://www.valid-computing.com/the-ten-commandments-of-computer-ethics.html)
Professional Rights The Electronic Frontier Foundation offers information on Coders’ Rights and Blogger’s Rights which includes a legal guide for bloggers living in the United States. Again, these guides provide good information as a knowledge base and to formulate company policies. An attorney can offer professional guidance.
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Trademarks, Copyrights and Patents The federal government describes intellectual property as “imagination made real.� As I discovered in researching about ethics, the internet has challenged the traditional belief in intellectual property. This challenge has caused a divide between closed and open source factions -- a worldwide issue. Trademarks and Service Marks: http://www.uspto.gov/ Copyright information: http://www.copyright.gov/ Patents: http://www.uspto.gov/patents/index.jsp Intellectual Property: http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/ac/ahrpa/opa/museum/1intell.htm Creative Commons: http://creativecommons.org/ The Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998: http://www.copyright.gov/legislation/dmca.pdf
Creative Commons Creative Commons serves as a leader in the open source movement. For free, you can license your work under Creative Commons and share it at the level you feel comfortable sharing. You can also find others who share their work. Flickr was one of the first hosting sites that gave customers a choice to use Creative Commons licensing; it is now the largest user. GlaxoSMithKline surrendered over their data antimalarial sets in hopes that many scientists from around the world will analyze the data to make a better, more effective medicine. Find out more about the different licenses types on their website.
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Best Practices – Nine basic tips times three These practices I have gleaned from my two years studying interactive media.
Adapt or die.
1 Strategy 1. Focus on the user 2. Implement a mobile strategy first 3. Use one address for each page 4. Determine where users expect to find each page; multiple links are fine 5. Know what information your customers want from your site 6. Organize so information is only three clicks away; more in depth information at four 7. Register with appropriate external apps like Google Maps 8. Decide if you need a separate app 9. Set up for one-entry; many places [Blog, Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, etc.]
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2 Design 1. Use a responsive and liquid type design to flow between screen sizes 2. Keep the important stuff above the fold – line of sight is important 3. Use touch with standard gestures 4. Tie it all together for a consistent theme and image 5. Think users first, then content 6. Follow standard practices and use defaults like drop down menus 7. Use image scaling and keep images clean of text 8. Use a prototype online available to share with stakeholders before launch 9. Use templates from Blogger, WordPress, Wix, etc. (My advice!)
3 Content 1. Follow William Zinsser’s advice; write with35 a. Clarity b. Simplicity c. Brevity d. Humanity 2. Use 100 words or less on pages; keep it short and to the point36 3. Write unique and fresh content that customers want 4. Use humor 5. Entertain your readers 6. Write strong headlines a. Headings might be all people see to decide to read or not b. Tell the story c. Use as page name 7. Use photos and videos from staff and customers 8. Keep your words in positive speak, eliminate negative words; rewrite if needed 9. Implement active commands; let your reader know what you want them to do
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Good article about applying these principles to coding
http://www.agiledeveloper.com/articles/PrinciplesForCoding.pdf 36
http://styleguide.yahoo.com/writing/write-web/get-point
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Best Practice Sites For more information on best practices, these sites offer tips as do others. Check the Epilogue for a complete list of references, category links, and bibliography.
A List Apart
Future Friendly Resources
Mobile Web Best Practices
UI Patterns Design Library
W3C Mobile Recommendations
The Web Ahead Weekly Podcasts
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Glossary This glossary contains terms I have found useful to understand in my studies. Some came from a class posted on a Google Site called Social Change | Social Media. I use a great resource, PC Magazine’s Encyclopedia with over 20,000 terms. Another place I travel for information is Wikipedia and I just found from Ireland, the Sacred Hall of Computer and Internet Terms and Acronyms.
In any case if I run across a
word I do not know, I search for it on the internet – it’s called “Google it.”
API: Application Programming Interface
B2B: business to business
B2C: business to customer or consumer
Bit Torrent: peer to peer file sharing protocol
Blogs: website logs
Botnet: zombie army of computers
Cloud Computing:
Creative Commons: way to protect information through open source sharing
Crowdsourcing: completing tasks through the efforts of contributors; invitations to contribute are disseminated through Twitter and other social media, personal and business websites, and online forums
DMCA: the Digital Millennium copyright Act
DNS: Domain Naming System
eCommerce: online storefronts conducting business with financial transactions
Edutainment: educating through entertaining such as games
Hacker: GOOD: people working to understand the world around them and BAD: people wanting to hack into computer systems for personal or loyalist gain
ICANN: International Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers; volunteer organization coordinating the Internets’ DSN
Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3): FBI and Bureau of Justice Assistance
ICT: information and communications technology
IETF: The Internet Engineering Task Force
ITR: International Telecommunication Regulations
LBS: Location Based Services
LULZ: a derivative of LOL (laugh out loud) used as a point system by trolls [see below definition] how many laughs they got out of an indicent they caused
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Malware: malicious software up to no good
NGO: nongovernment organization
OWOM: online word-of-mouth marketing or eWOM: electronic WOM
Open Source: available for personal and commercial use; many ask for donations
P2P: peer to peer
POI Locator: location based service for uploading points of interests (POI)
ROI: Return on Investment which is the cost of bringing customers into “the door” for the amount of promotional efforts and advertising dollars spent. Also known as ROR: Rate of Return.
RL: Real Life
RSS: Really Simple Syndication
SDO: Standards Development Organization
SMTP: Simple Mail Transfer Protocol
SMS: short message service, a text-messaging service that allows short text messages between land lines or cellular phones.
SNS: Social networking sites
SSL: Secure Sockets Layer
TLS: Transport Layer Security
Trolls: people who enjoy making life miserable for others through internet harassment, leaking information out about organizations, and hacking into systems
Twitter: an instant messaging service allowing up to 140 characters sent. Tweet: message sent through Twitter account. Retweet: (n.) a forwarded Twitter message. (v.) forwarding a Twitter message.
URL: Uniform Resource Locator, the global address of webpages URI indicator
UX: User Experience
Widget: a small software application embedded in a webpage; examples include chat, donate now buttons, and social media icons. These applications provide for interactivity on websites. Visitors can converse with someone online in real-time, donate money through electronic transfer, and share webpages/webpage content with others.
Worm: standalone malware that replicates itself to spread to other computers
WYSIWYG: What you see is what you get
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Resources & Bibliography Resources and the bibliography will reside under separate cover for thoroughness and relativity to all sections of this project. It will be updated as I move through the internet researching topics to insure what I knew yesterday did not change today.
If you have any questions, feel free to email me at the following address. It may take me awhile to answer depending on my workload. Thanks. Jan JanBush@findusmarketing.com
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@JanBush2 www.findusmarketing.com Kentucky USA
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