A recent San Diego Refresh meeting found me in a room full of fellow geeks learning about microdata and the semantic web. What I thought was going to be a new look at SEO turned out to be a very in-depth look at where the web might be heading.
The session was led by Barbara Starr (@BarbaraStarr) and the information here is distilled from notes I took during the session. As such, attribution is appropriate. Thanks again, Barbara, for a great session!
WIIFM (What’s In It For Me)?
A great teacher once told me that you need to tell people what they’re going to get out of a learning session before you start. For this heady topic, I think this is more true than ever. Here’s what you should get out of this post:
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I was asked recently what my favorite Gaping Void piece is. I experienced a brief moment of intense stress, similar to the feeling I’m sure I’d have if someone offered to buy me any vehicle in the world but I could only choose one. Several rushed through my mind but I kept coming back to two of them. Hope I’m not breaking the rules too blatantly.
Brief back story: Gaping Void is the “brand name” of Hugh MacLeod, cartoonist, author, blogger, and general creativity muse. Hugh was the first blogger I ever started reading. I have no recollection of how I found his site though I’m sure it had something to do with one of his cartoons I found somewhere. This was several years ago and after that first encounter, I forgot about him entirely until maybe a year later (I’m guessing 2006 at this point) when I felt this strange need to find his site again. It took a while (I completely forgot the name, URL, everything) but I finally found it and when I did, I was elated. I started reading Hugh regularly and was particularly affected by his creativity manifesto, how to be creative. Since then, I’ve been a huge fan… bought business cards with his cartoon on one side, bought his book Ignore Everybody
, and get his daily cartoon.
That’s the card I put together about 3 years ago. I was finishing up a Chemistry degree at SDSU, blogging about sustainable transportation, and felt like I had a lot more to offer the world. My blogspot address was on the back of this card so you’ll notice I wrote “joshcanhelp.com” on the top in ball-point. It was a transitional period, what can I say.
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If you work with a site that publishes articles on a regular basis then you should be familiar with how your content performs and where people are coming from. It’s also important to keep an eye out for problems, traffic spikes, and a new incoming traffic sources. This guide is a quick overview of basic Google Analytics (GA) for content site managers.
In an effort to help the content managers for SocialMediaToday.com (and sister sites), I came up with this quick guide to using GA. I believe that content managers should be able to answer 5 basic questions on a weekly basis. Additionally, if you own a content site but do not directly manage the content, this will give you a good sense of how “well” your site is doing (depending on the goals you have for the site). Please note that this information works for any analytics program though the screen names will, of course, be different.
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The number-one cause for broken pages, missed messages, mysterious errors, and general frustration is, from where I stand, uncorrected fat-finger errors. I say uncorrected because the problem isn’t the mistake, it’s that the mistake is made live and propagates. So, I’m proposing a simple solution: the F-word.
Two kinds of typos
To be clear, I’m only speaking about one kind of typo here as there are two types:
- Typos that cause problems
- Typos that don’t cause problems
A misspelled word in your blog post, content page, or email probably isn’t going to cause a problem. What will cause a problem is a typo in a link, file structure, or code file. Additional problem-causers:
- Misspelled names (people hate that)
- Misspelled URLs (people hate that too)
- Misspelled word in headlines (might not cause a problem but it’s a big typo, literally, so it’s extra embarrassing)
- Incorrect date on a publication
A new name for a problem-causing typo: the F*CKING Typo
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Something interesting happens when you let someone into your life to take care of things you’re unable or unwilling to do for yourself. There’s this fascinating level of intimacy that develops over a short period of time as one aspect of your life or business is cracked open and laid bare before someone else, a person with which you may not already have a relationship.
In order to fix the leaky pipe, get the car to start, or, in my case, remedy an ailing website, you have to give someone the keys and stand back. We, the service providers, have to get up close and personal with the inner workings of your house/car/website/life to correct the problem. It’s this unintentional close examination of what’s broken and the surrounding area that can tell a distinct story to the people who want to listen.
This idea of service provider intimacy isn’t new (is anything anymore?) but the point was made very clear to me recently.
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I was asked recently by a potential client what my “philosophy of the web” is. What seemed like a strange question at first made perfect sense when I thought about it a little more. We have an approach or philosophy about business, art, relationships, science… almost anything involving a verb. So why wouldn’t we have one for working with and on the web?
"mediocrity now howls in protest" by Hugh MacLeod
Without sounding overly simplistic, I think there are 3 types of businesses on the web, each with their own web philosophy:
- Ones that try to milk or exploit the web (think spammers, Zynga, the “make millions on Google” crowd). These people aren’t always dirtbags nor are they breaking the law but they’re looking to take everything they can get without giving much back.
- Ones that just see the web as another medium to conduct business. Decisions on the web are made the same way any other decision in the business is made. Should we change our health care provider? Should we move our office to another city? Should we invest time in a Facebook page?
- Ones that have a sincere passion for the web and what it can do for people. These are people who contribute valuable work to open source projects, manage vibrant communities of people, and write about these things because they can’t help themselves.
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