Blogging

Why do some websites fail to achieve objectives? How can you whip an underperforming website into shape? Which elements are the most critical when initiating a website redesign project? How can small businesses cost-effectively add sophisticated capabilities like custom search and social networking features to their sites? What separates effective navigation from poor design?

Learn the answers to these questions and more in some of the best blog posts and articles on website design published so far in 2008.

A Small Business Year-End Web Site Checklist by Search Engine Land

Search marketer Matt McGee provides an outstanding 10-point checklist of items that site owners should check (at least) annually, including domain registration, contact form operation, autoresponders and outbound links.

15 Ways to Get Your Website in Gear by iMedia Connection

Lisa Wehr, CEO and founder of Oneupweb, writes that if your online marketing efforts are coming up short, it may be a good time to take “a systematic look at how your website is performing and (develop) a strategy to address its shortcomings.” To this end, she recommends reviewing 15 areas, including navigation, interface design, architecture, PR and SEO.

Site Redesign: 4 Vital SEO Tips for Web Designers by Search Engine Watch

Noting that, “Many times when companies consider a site redesign…their rationale may be that they need better ‘marketing fluff’…Rarely do you hear companies say, ‘We need to redesign our Web site because it wasn’t built for SEO,’” Mark Jackson, President and CEO of Vizion Interactive, outlines the four essential considerations in a redesign. Included in his analysis is an intriguing suggestion for a CMS, and the introduction of the term “Flashterbation” (using Flash for no real reason) to the web lexicon.

Write in the Quiet to Get Your Point Across by E-Marketing Performance

Michelle Montoya provides three writing tips for getting your message across to “scanners,” the significant portion of online readers who “want the message as quickly as possible and don’t want to have to read through a bunch of muck to get to it.” Key to this is using “quiet times”—those short sentences mixed in among your paragraphs that really get your point across.

Top 10 Reasons A Website Fails To Perform by Internet Search Engine Database

You spend significant time, effort and money on a website redesign, and then get lackluster results. Why? Gary Klingsheim, Vice President of Moonrise Design, nails it in this list of 10 factors to examine, including poor definition of your target audience, underestimation of competitors, and inconsistency in design and content. Obviously, this is a great post to read before undertaking that redesign effort.

How To: Create a Great 404 Page Not Found Error Page by Conversation Marketing

Ian Lurie supplies step-by-step instructions for creating a more engaging and friendly 404 error page for your site than the standard “This page cannot be found.” As he points out, if someone mistypes a URL or follows an incorrect link from another site, why drive them away with a boring standard message? For some really creative ideas, check out 404 Pages - Funny, Geeky, Disturbing from Squareoak.

Using Google’s Custom Search Engine for Internal Site Search by Ask Enquiro

Manoj Jasra, who writes a lot of great stuff on web marketing, explains why Google’s Custom Search tool is excellent way to add this functionality to your site in this brief but informative post.

Google Wants to Help Web Sites Make New Friends by The New York Times

Saul Hansell, editor of the New York Times Bits blog, explains the features of Google Friend Connect, which lets small website publishers add social networking features to their sites. As Hansell writes, Friend Connect gives website publishers an easy way to let users log in then link their profiles from other social networks (including Facebook, LinkedIn, Plaxo, Hi5 and Google’s Orkut), and “add OpenSocial applications, written by Google and other companies.”

The 19-Hour Website Analysis, in 20 Minutes or Less by Internet Search Engine Database

Stoney deGeyter, website design expert and owner of Pole Position Marketing, explains that “Investing in SEO and PPC marketing, without having performed a thorough (usability) analysis of your website is largely an exercise in vain.” He then provides a 19-step guide, with links to prior articles, to analyzing and improving your site’s usability looking at factors like on-site search, about us, contact and FAQ pages.

The Best Damn Web Marketing Checklist for Website Navigation by Search Engine Guide

Yet another highly useful checklist from Stoney deGeyter, this one detailing 21 considerations for effective site navigation, including consistency, proper categorical divisions, and the use of absolute links throughout the site.

Previous posts in this series:

Best of 2008 (So Far) - SEO Guidance, Part 1
Best of 2008 (So Far) - SEO Guidance, Part 2
Best of 2008 (So Far) - Search Engine Marketing, Part 1
Best of 2008 (So Far) - Cool Web Tools, Part 1
Best of 2008 (So Far) - Social Media Optimization, Part 1
Best of 2008 (So Far) - Blogging for Business, Part 1
Best of 2008 (So Far) - Web Marketing Research, Part 1

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Best of 2008 (So Far) - Website Design, Part 1

A good way to get your name out there along with links back to your site is to read similar blogs and leave comments on them. However, when doing this, you should take a few things into consideration out of respect for your potential clients, the owner of the blog you’re posting on and […]

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Etiquette for building links through comment posts

Over at Six Pixels of Separation Mitch has posed the question “What are your best practices for Social Media Marketing?” and has asked people to highlight what they consider to be their most important Social Media Marketing practice. There have been some great posts on this subject including Being Vigilant, and building a DINU.
While […]

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Best practice in social marketing campaign

Tim Young (TY): You’re correct. Socialcast is focused on using social dynamics to solve organization’s internal information problems. The Socialcast application is a customizable internal corporate social network designed to allow the employees within a company to share information, ask questions, get answers, and engage more deeply in their daily work. It’s a secure, private site that can either complement or replace a traditional intranet depending on the needs of the company. Our tool focuses on capturing the tacit knowledge held by multiple generations and geographically dispersed employees, resulting in a knowledge-sharing and collaboration portal that unites the minds of a company’s entire workforce.

WMC: For many enterprises, employee knowledge is spread across documents, databases, emails and other systems. A common approach to addressing this is through enterprise search. How does Socialcast integrate with enterprise search platforms, such as Microsoft FAST, Attivio or Endeca?

TY: Currently we offer a robust search interface from within the Socialcast application but we recognize the need to interoperate with organizations existing search products and platforms. We are currently in process of working with a number of enterprise search providers to connect our Socialcast API into their search products. We hope to make some exciting announcements around this effort during the fourth quarter of this year.

WMC: Who do you see as the primary competition for Socialcast?

TY: Socialcast is a unique application that blends a traditional consumer social networking layer with KM tools to capture and share tacit knowledge. This unique approach allows Socialcast to solve specific information challenges that companies are currently facing included knowledge retention and socialization. Many large enterprise vendors (Microsoft, IBM, Oracle) are beginning to add “social” features to their existing product suites but they are merely feature add-ons and not the core of a product. There are also a number of smaller enterprise vendors that are bringing social software to the enterprise but like Socialcast each has a unique focus and approach; Socialtext with wikis, ConnectBeam with social bookmarking, SelectMinds with alumni focused networks.

WMC: Anything else people should know about Socialcast?

TY: Socialcast brings a unique and effective approach to social networking and messaging in the enterprise that was born from building highly successful consumer social networks. At our core Socialcast has always been focused on making product decisions based on extensive research and data mining. Our product development is heavily customer and end user centric in its approach and methods. We invest heavily in research and development to bring impactful and meaningful product innovations to the market. Currently we are engaged in research in network science, collective intelligence, flock theory, emergence behaviors, and conversation theory.

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Contact Tom Pick: tomATwebmarketcentralDOTcom

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WMC Interviews: Tim Young of Socialcast

A good blog post is in essence a question; purposefully opinionated, or better yet, outright wrong. It demands interaction.

The blogger’s job is to provide the question, provoke debate, and invite the community at large to pool its immense knowledge and take the conversation further (which characteristic distinguishes the blogger from the journalist). The conversation is the reason why we prefer blogs. If it weren’t for the dialog between writer and reader, we may as well just pick up a newspaper or listen to the damn radio.

This is how it was always supposed to be. But typically, either this does conversation not really happen at all, or else it is so slow and disjointed as to suck the life out of the whole process. Blogging platforms and the blogosphere as a whole have failed miserably at enabling effective conversation.

But it would appear that the landscape changing, and that the evolution of conversation is changing the nature of blogging itself. To demonstrate this, we look at a particular, regular post by Robert Scoble, and look at how the conversation now shifts from one forum to another (and more importantly, why). This will demonstrate how the blogosphere is becoming less about the blog, and more about the conversation. Which trend has wide-ranging implications, and points the way for future Web communication both in the Blogosphere and beyond.

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Transforming Blogs Into Conversations: Scoble, Silverlight and FriendFeed