web

Today’s Digital Consultant Links for March 14th

These are my links for March 14th from 12:13 to 17:21:

Fans, Friends & Followers: Building an Audience and a Creative Career in the Digital Age – Here's a great time-limited gift: download Scott Kirsner's free e-book 'Fans, Friends and Followers' (132 pages) but ONLY for the duration of the SXSW festival. It's a great idea for how independent creatives can begin to forge careers using online and social marketing tools. And a great example of creating scarcity in the (abundant) digital age – grab it while you can!
Strategy Basics: It’s Really all about having a Plan – The smart thinking people at Carsonified, the web design specialists, have a smart view about developing a strategy: "At the heart of it all “strategy” is just about having a plan for the thing you are working on."<br />
They use the example of creating a useful iPhone content app to meet a client's sales goals.
Tories promise fast broadband – The election fight is heating up, and broadband is becoming another leverage of differentiation: Tories say the majority will have 100Mbs fast broadband by next parliament, Labour want universal access at lower levels (2Mb) by 2012 and superfast by 2017. Interesting split and not an unexpected divide: Labour want access for all quickly, Tories want quicker access for some giving industry in cities a competitive advantage globally. Whoever wins the election, we should see the speeding up of networks as a priority.

These are my links for December 21st through December 23rd:

500 Internal Server Error – 500 Internal Server Error
Browser Size – A neat tool that lets you see how visitors view your website who are using different browser sizes and programes, which can show you where the majority of people will start to see content drop out from the right or drop down 'below the fold' of the web browser.
The End Of Hand Crafted Content – Tech Crunch's excellent Michael Arrington on the worry for online publisher that re-writes and lack of attribution from online sources will lead to a wealth of 'fast food' content where journalism is pushing out the skill in the online – as well as print – space. "The disruptors are getting disrupted". A gripey moan? Well maybe, but I go with him that there's little income now in quality journalism as well all become sapped into the Google link well…

These are my links for December 12th from 10:51 to 10:53:

How To… Aggregate online User Generated Content (UGC) for your website – Another article by a great female marketing expert in Nottingham (on a roll today), Carol Jane Lyon from PCM Creative has produced this publication as part of the Arts Council's 'Get Ambition' programme getting arts organisation up to speed with the use of web 2.0 technologies. This is a practical guide to online publishing, RSS, tagging and user generated content.
Strategic thinking, a marketing mindset, and a clear direction make great businesses – Great article by Clarity Marketing's Francine Pickering on linking your business strategy with a strong marketing strategy for success, along with a video of Nottingham University's Tony Watson showing successful entrepreneurs had strong strategic thinking skills coupled with an emphasis of doing as well as thinking. I would say the same applies to your digital strategy: it needs to complement and enhance BOTH your business and marketing strategy and be applicable and 'doable' to your work and measurable in its successes and complement both the way your business work in the online environment, and your marketing strategy for reaching and selling to customers.

These are my links for December 11th from 14:03 to 14:07:

Seth’s Blog: Is it too late to catch up? – A great nugget from the often eloquent Seth Godin on how a company who have done little or nothing in the online space can play catch-up: start with basic stuff: email, e-newsletter, reading and bonuses for online engagement. Do stuff and learn as you do. I disagree though about not having meetings about web strategy: strategy can go alongside (or before or during) the doing to add value.
Serious games: key trends for the healthcare sector – Another article I wrote for the Engagement Strategy journal for healthcare and pharmaceutical marketing leaders. This is about serious games, an area I've been involved with for many years, giving an overview of serious gaming trends in mainstream health games, and also specialist research and software. Includes interviews with Playgen and Active Ingredient.
Social media as a healthcare research tool – I forgot to link to this before…my head was full of forthcoming holidays and suntan lotion.
Here is an article I recently wrote for Engagement Strategy, a journal for healthcare and pharmaceutical marketing leaders, which is all about social media and online tools used for research – i.e. the bit before you do the engagement with people. Includes an overview of sentiment analysis, crowd-sourcing and open innovation.

These are my links for November 2nd from 09:17 to 12:36:

User-generated video to broadcast on Dublin streets this Christmas – Here's an example of web culture traversing to mainstream culture: Zozzy TV will allow people to "streetcast": broadcast their 30 sec films on a screen in Dublin's major shopping streets (interspersed with adverts, presumably). One to bring to other shopping districts?
Major console games maker mulls a move from UK to Ireland – Scotland is losing its status as a producer of quality games as more developer threaten to leave to exploit tax breaks in other nations. This time Realtime Worlds threaten to move to Dublin – not known as a centre for games as yet but it's certainly developing the infrastructure for a digital production economy.
Report claims illegal downloaders buy more music – A report by lefty-think-thank Demos, paid for by Virgin Media, claims downloaders spend 50% (£33) more on music each year, and would download more if prices reduced to 45p a track. I'd question this research generally though: Virgin have lots to gain from a decrease in peer-to-peer traffic clogging up their network, and it's based on what people say they would do rather than proving behaviour and outcomes.
12 Essential Plugins that Extend WordPress as a CMS – If you're a web developer working with clients to develop websites built on the awesome, free WordPress system, these plug-ins are great for increasing the editorial rights, changing images and adding custom forms amongst other things.