These are my links for March 31st through April 6th:
- The Collective Intelligence Genome – Fascinating findings from research from MIT's Centre for Collective Intelligence showing ways you can use open source development or 'crowd sourcing' as part of a production or decision making process.
- One-third of users willing to pay for apps – Interesting mobile stats: just 35% of mobile users willing to pay for apps, highest in iPhone users, lowest in Android, although Blackberry users pay far more than iPhone users on average per app. This is definitely the growth area for digital content and services development, showing users will pay up for mobile content. But it shows that the serious money isn't in iPhone and producers should look at spreading their production and distribution across multiple mobile platforms.
- SEO 101: Everything You Need to Know About SEO (But Were Afraid to Ask) – Regular readers of this blog will know I'm no big fan of SEO (or 'snake something oil' as one social media guy I know described it) but in recent months I've mellowed on the subject – when using good navigation, good content and good structures supports people to find and discover good content I'm all for it and there's no doubt it's the affordable way for a small business to draw traffic to their e-commerce site. This is a brilliant guide – one of those that you can read and learn about 80% of what you need to know about SEO in one quick hit. Which is good because it means less time spent reading about SEO…
These are my links for February 7th from 14:01 to 15:59:
- Six Pixels of Separation: Stop lurking and step it up on social networks – There aren't a lot of great videos about digital strategy (hmm that gives me an idea…) but this one by Mitch Joel to promote his book Six Pixels of Seperation is really great and focus on the 'why' of digital strategy, rather than asking about the 'what' (the tools and technology). Spot on the money, and I'll be developing some further thinking on developing the 'how' through my clients and on this blog during the year.
- Perfecting Keyword Targeting & On-Page Optimization – I loathe the 'science' of search engine optimisation (or 'snake something oil' as a social media person I knew called it), but I'm realising in work I'm doing currently that it's actually still quite critical as a low-cost way to get the traffic to your site that you deserve. I'm recognising a growing gap between the 'being good' (aka 'built it and they will come') social media 'evangelists' and the web science as commerce SEO people (whilst I think both approaches alone are flawed, it seems hard to get these two groups to work together). This Aug 2009 is priceless, and could probably be described as 'the only SEO article you need to read ever'. It explains what the most crucial on page elements are and how you can optimise copy for them, but intriguingly contains a chart that reveal that on-page copy only accounts for a horrifying 15% of a web page's success. It's all about reputation, time in market, and link juice – thus showing that we need social marketing to make sites work.
- Behind the scenes of a travel feature – pt 1: transparency and the trouble with top tens – Travel writer Fiona Cullinan's blog is an experiment in crowd-sourced journalism. This 4 part article on how she used web 2.0 tools to crowd-source a top 10 article on romantic destinations was particularly interesting to me as I spent nearly 5 years editing a travel website (www.pilotguides.com) and wrote quite a few top 10 articles for magaznes too. The process is largely subjective, but Fiona tries to put some scientic approach to opening out access and reviewing the data. The verdict: crowd-sourcing takes nearly twice as long, with larger margin for off-the-mark content, but perhaps makes editorial richer and more diverse.
These are my links for January 31st through February 3rd:
- TRIZ – A powerful methodology for creative problem-solving – TRIZ is a technique of applying 40 different parameter queries to a problem which is used extensively by engineers. It's a technique that could, at some levels, apply to business process, e.g. considering segmentation, 'nesting' (store within a store), or local variations.
- Six Ways to Find Social Media Talent – Some savvy words from Harvard Business Review on recruiting social media talent – that elusive combination between deep social media skills and fit with advancing your business objectives – which involves, basically, empowering other employees to recruit using social media tools in those spaces.
- WikiLeaks whistleblower site in temporary shutdown – Sad news for open democracy: WikiLeaks, anonymous uncensored site closed due to lack of funds. The price of 'open information' is, it seems, to high.
- Context is King: How Videos Are Found And Consumed Online – Great article featuring facts & figures on how people are consuming video content online. As cable TV and web video has increased overall consumption, the attention span of video duration and spread of number of views has shifted downwards, creating a mass divide between amateur and professional content. There is a rise in niche content, but a decrease in the likelihood of having a 'hit' which could come from either user-generated or professional content.
These are my links for December 24th from 11:02 to 13:50:
- Social media as a crisis management tool – Some sage advice on using social media to manage problems in your organisation: keep people up-to-date, correct any factual inaccuracies, engage people and make sure the people managing your social media are knowledgeable.
- Build your own community or go where people are? Do both – An interesting view from Fresh Networks on working with social networks: engage with people in Facebook, YouTube etc. but provide another space to link back to which you control – this is a 'hub and spoke' model.
- Black Swans and Strategic Planning – Interesting aricle on strategic planning, knowing the uncertainties and horizon-scanning for current changes affecting your industry. Based on Taleb's "black swan" theory, the most unlikely events (e.g. financial crash) may have the highest impact on your business.
- Social Media Sites: Here to Stay? – Stats on global social media usage and profits. Including Ogilvy's five rules for social media optimisation:
o Make it easy for your audience to tag and bookmark your site.
o Reward backlinks
o Make sure your content can travel
o Enable mashups, applications that combine data from multiple sources into a single tool.
o Increase your site’s linkability.
