The basic idea is not a bad one, save money and time on creating images for use in websites and marketing collateral. The outcomes are horrible.

• Note: we do this too by using CC-licensed images from Flickr, but we are not using this for branding but for the random image use fun factor.

They are Actually Ignored by Users

They are ignored by users, eye-tracking studies show. This means that they are a waste of bandwidth and cause meaningless clutter on a website.

They do not Communicate the Brand

The thing that makes stock photos good (lack of context, essentially no strong meaning) are the thing that makes that weak. They essentially do not communicate a brand or an offering except in the most generic way. Worse, your customers could swipe the photos (or pay a small fee) and use them for themselves, doh! This is clearly a high risk area, where an organization does not even own its own brand visuals.

• See More articles on Stock Photos from Rich Quindry.

They are Inauthentic in the Age of the Internet

Trends on the Internet are for transparency and authenticity. Having images which are highly unlikely to be realistic simply engenders some mistrust in communication with the organization which uses this kind of messaging.

They are Ubiquitous

The bad thing about stock photos also happens to be the good thing. They are used by many, many organizations. This is an actual opportunity to differentiate from those organizations and show what you really are about. The real you.

They are Awesomely Bad

Even Maddox takes a swipe at stock photos.

The same goes for images, and not just pretty pictures, which are of course important, but the geeks among us also love a great infographic. These are both engaging and informative, and link-and-share-worthy.

Viral Videos and SEO

A lot of the viral video and guerilla marketing is not a whole lot more than social hacking, spam, linkbait/viewbait and of course, hopefully, an engaging video. The classic post on the topic of viral videos from 2007 was pretty much a tell-all in tactics, some illegal and many ethically challenged.

Video SEO

A much less interesting post from 2010 gives a few clues for SEO and Video but they really only amount to:

• Keywords in title and tags
• Multiple versions with different metadata (actually at multiple sites as well)
• Google Video Sitemap submission.

Viral Images, Flickr and Interestingness

A fantastic set of comments on Flickr interestingness was posted as part of the description of the interesting photo of haybales above. The main aspects has to do with timing, comments, sharing, linking and liking behavior.

The photographer and writer Kevin Dooley also discused subsequent changes to the interestingness algorithm that took place 18 months after the original posting.

Viral Infographics and SEO

Infographics can be extremely effective in communication of complexity and especially for processes, comparisons or things which change over time. The notorious author of the video virality post from 2007 mentioned above has created a company that focuses on virality of information, rather than the virality of ads. He has some useful links and examples of viral infographics which are making an impact for the authors and brands being depicted.

Of course the SEO and sharing/linking behaviors also apply.

Advantages

• Faster to write, read and edit than using rich text editors
• Smaller to store in the database and therefore faster to retrieve
• Can be extended to include a variety of media using short codes
• Any text editor can be used to include the formatting
• Formatting is done semantically by the writer rather than added later by a different person

Markdown

Markdown is a free and open source formatting syntax and translation tool that supports a variety of platforms, most notably WordPress. The markdown syntax is transformed into HTML on the fly. Using markdown requires th following:

• Installing a plugin to enable Markdown on the website
• Learning the Markdown syntax
• Understanding the SEO and semantic aspects of the HTML equivalences

Markdown Syntax

Italics

_Text_ (single underscores) = <em>Text</em>

Displayed usually as italics. For initial introduction of key terms or proper nouns, or anything that was previously marked up by a single quotation mark (predating use of italics in typesetting).

Bold

__Text__ (double underscores) = <strong>Text</strong>

This is displayed as bold but semantically is used best as a label inside a sentence or paragraph, for example in long bulleted lists.

Block Quotes

> Text (greater than sign and a space) = <blockquote>Text</blockquote>

This should have two hard returns before and after its use. The blockquote is used for long quotations or for a pull-out. Usually formatted as indented and italicized.

Paragraphs

In between paragraphs, use of two hard returns (enter, enter) will indicate a paragraph break =

<p>Paragraph text here.</p>

Bulleted Lists

* Bulleted list item (asterisk + space) =
<ul><li>Bulleted list item</li></ul>

All lists should have two hard returns before and after the list, and a single hard return at the end of each list item. Sub-bulleted lists can be added by simply indenting four spaces, as such:

* Bullet
    * Sub-bullet

Renders as such:

• Bullet
  • Sub-bullet

Ordered Lists

1. First
2. Second (number, period, space) = ordered list
<ol><li>First item</li><li>Second item</li></ol>.

Renders as:

1. First
2. Second

Indented list items can be added as with sub-bullets, by adding four spaces.

## Subhead ##
### Sub-Subhead ###

All subheads should be preceded by double enter and have a single or double enter afterward. These are equivalent to:

<h2>Subhead</h2> and
<h3>Sub-Subhead</h3>

H3s are not necessary for any given web page, but can be used if it is particularly helpful for the information being presented. Most subheads should have keywords in them, and at the same time appear natural to the reader. They should be fairly short, perhaps 3-7 words. And they should indicate the contents of the section.

URLs are created with anchor text and destination and optionally a Title attribute. For example:

[Anchor text](http://domain.com/page.html)
[Anchor text](http://domain.com/page.html "Title")

Note that there are no spaces between the square brackets or parentheses, only within the Anchor text, if needed. Note that email addresses can be created with a simple enclosing with angle brackets, e.g.,

<name@domain.com>

In addition, if the Anchor text is the same as the full URL, simply use the same angle brackets as with an email address:

<http://domain.com/page.html>

Horizontal Rule

--- (three hypens) = <hr /> horizontal rule

Additional HTML Characters

In addition to these shortcodes, there are several HTML entities which should be used when writing copy for the web:

© = copyright sign

— = m-dash

• A wider dash which replaces a double hyphen to create a dash between parenthetical asides.

& = ampersand

• Note this should not be used in any subheads or link titles, but only in body text.

™ = trademark TM

® = reserved mark R

HTML Table in Markdown

Markdown extra has a nice readable syntax for table markup. Note the colon at the end of the second column divider, that signifies right alignment.

| Item   | Cost |
|--------|-----:|
| Flight | 5000 |
| Taxi   |  900 |

Renders as:

YouTube Videos

We use the Smart YouTube plugin that allows us to set the width and height for body and sidebar, and embed a YouTube video by adding a v to the http in the YouTube video URL, as follows:

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=us5mc-cyNos

Renders as follows

www.youtube.com/watch?v=us5mc-cyNos

Flickr Images

Flickr is an extremely useful way of storing and managing images. There are several advantages:

• Faster than uploading and managing images to a WordPress installation
• Essentially a free-to-use distributed cache server, faster to serve images
• Allows for effective discovery and image search results ranking
• Provides useful links back to the pages using the image
• Image URLs can be reused on any given website
• WordPress plugins allow for support of gallery and tag-based collection display

Flickr Shortcodes

Currently we recommend the use of an updated version of the Flickr Gallery plugin. There are some bugs that have crept into this plugin especially with the use of flightbox as the lightbox.

Use Flickr Gallery for images

Flickr Gallery is useful and has been around a long time. It supports different sizes and floating left or right. The default size has been adjusted to the 640 longest edge (if landscape it is 640px in width, if portrait it is 640px in height).

[flickr]imagenumber[/flickr]
[flickr size=”small” float=”right”]imagenumber[/flickr]

The imagenumber is the unique number assigned to any given image in Flickr. This number is located in the URL of the Flickr image page. What is useful is that any flickr image publicly available can be embedded (not only one’s own images). For example, this search will provide the list of interesting Creative Commons’ licensed images.

• http://www.flickr.com/search/?l=commderiv&ss=2&ct=6&mt=all&adv=1&s=int

Flickr Gallery Thumbnails and Lightbox

Slickr Flickr has a much faster lightbox effect currently. There are many other options including transitioning slideshows. See the Slickr Flickr site for more detail.

[flickr-gallery mode=”tag” tags=”tagname” tag_mode=”all”]

This will display a set of up thumbnails with lightbox effect, that have been tagged with “tagname”

Additional Note on Alt and Title

To make it simple and automatic, we use an additional plugin called SEO Friendly Images. This is then tuned so that Alt and Titles are added based on the page title. This does not require any user intervention.

Browser Wars

The Browser Wars are proliferating with multiple platforms. There are actually four companies (one a nonprofit foundation) involved, and the browsers themselves are fragmenting:

• Internet Explorer (Microsoft), v.7, 8, 9
• Chrome (Google),
• Safari (Apple), including versions for Iphone, Ipad, MacOS as well as Windows
• Firefox (Mozilla Foundation),
• Opera (Opera)

Because there are multiple platforms which each have unique built-in browsers and the inability to add others,

Of Internet Explorer, v.6 went from 22% to 9% of Internet Explorer share. v.7 went from 32% to 19%. V.8 went from 46% to 64%, and v.9 went from 0 to 7%.

Note that the overall share of Internet Explorer went from 59% to 44%.

Firefox Holds Share

Firefox has an enormous number of version numbers. V.3.6.13 is the largest single version at 16%, and the 3.8 series is around 50% in total. Overall Firefox stayed at around 21% of visits.

Google Chrome

Chrome is even more version-segmented than Firefox. Chrome went from 5% to 12% of visits.

New Mobile Browsers Emerge

Android is now 1% of visits. Opera mini makes up a small number of visits, but still ranks as the 9th most popular approach with Mozilla-compatible agents (some of which are mobile) coming in at the 7th.

Apple Safari

Safari’s 53x (5.0.3) series makes up a majority of versions, though there are many sub-series accounted for. The 653x (v.5.0.2) is the second most popular.

Overall Safari went from 7% to 20% of total. This includes ipad and iphone access as well as MacOS and Windows.

Opera

Poor old Opera comes in at 1% as well, but down over the previous year. A really excellent browser descending into irrelevance.

India Traffic

In another dataset with a large amount of traffic from India, the following differences are found:

• IE predominates at 42%
  • IE 8 at 62%
  • IE 6 at 18%
  • IE 7 at 13%
  • IE 9 at 7%
• Firefox comes in at 28%
• Chrome comes in at 22%
• Safari is 6%

Operating Systems

This data is not necessarily accurate but does give some idea as to the order of magnitude:

• Windows from 84% to 73%
• MacOS from 11% to 18%
• Iphone from 2.4% to 3.7%
• Ipad from .1% to 2.2%
• Androd from .9% to 1.3%
• Linux declining from 0.9% to 0.6%

Screen Resolutions

The real story here is the proliferation of different resolutions and the flattening out of screen resolution popularity.

• 1280 x 800 is the most popular resolution but declined from 23% to 20%
• 1024 x 768 is the second most popular, but also declined, from 27% to 17% (ipad in portrait mode)
• 1366 x 768 increased from 5% to 12% (popular 13″ laptop resolution)
• 1440 x 900 had a slight increase from 7.7% to 8.2%
• 1280 x 1024 declined from 10% to 7% (non-widescreen aspect for 20-21″ monitors)
• 1920 x 1080 increased from 2% to 4% (popular 23-24″ monitor resolution)
• 1680 x 1050 decreased slightly from 4.1% to 3.9% (another common monitor resolution)
• 320 x 480 is clearly a mobile screen (portrait mode) increased from .7% to 3.5%
• 768 x 1024 is a portrait-mode (e.g., ipad) that went from .1% to 2.1%

There are hundreds of combinations but a few others of interest:

Width Issues

• 2560 is the largest width (27-30″ cinema displays), and increased to .5% with a width of 1920 at 5.5% of visitors
• Interestingly the 800 x 600 ebook common display and the 768 x 1024 ipad portrait mode offer an interesting opportunity. While resolutions will change with lowering of costs at higher resolutions, the 6-7″ and 9-10″ form factors will not (nor will the human eye). Pinch-and-zoom interactions help navigate an interface designed not for a different resolution, but for a different form factor.

Height Issues

• 396 is the smallest height but this declined from 2.9% to .6% so that 480 is the successor minimum with 600 as a more common minimum with over 3% of visitors. over 30% have a height of 768 or smaller and more than 50% have a height of 800 or less.

Current Recommendations

Design for Five Experiences

• 3.5″ mobile (480 x 800 to 640 x 960)
• 6-7″ tablet (600 x 800 to 800 x 1024)
• 9-10″ tablet (1024 x 768) as well as the classic netbook size (1024 x 600)
• 11-13″ Laptop (between 1280 x 800 and 1440 x 900 with 1366 x 768 as the middle point)
• Desktop monitor (2560 x 1440 maximum, but targeting 1920 x 1080 is ok, and few people would use this large of a screen without resizing the browser window or changing from native resolution on a 24″+ monitor). The point is to have a graceful degradation of any background images or monitor-wide graphic display and wrapping.

Of course this is a bit overwhelming, and should be done in stages:

• Target a consistent look and feel for resolutions 1024 x 768 (ipad) and 1440 x 900 (macbook air)
• Make sure it looks ok at 1920 width (24″ monitor)
• Check on navigation (pinch-and-zoom) on an Android and Iphone/Ipad Touch
• Take a look at how this works on a 7″ tablet (Samsung Galaxy or similar)

On to Apps

Once the basic website experience is configured and tested, it is time to think of designing apps that provide enhanced experiences to smartphones and tablets, as well as the desktop. More on this later.

PageRank, Alexa, Keyword Ranking

When looking at SEO performance, there are several popular indicators to track:

• PageRank
• Alexa
• Keyword ranking

These all provide some amount of information, but are partial at best. Other factors need to be considered, especially business metrics.

• PageRank is a very crude indicator but it does show relative standing between websites, and is shorthand for generic relevance. Usually inbound links are the main factor contributing to PageRank. Inbound Links (and linking domains) combined with PageRank give a sense of the value of the links.
• Alexa data collection is suspect as it relies on browser plugins. Actual impressions in the search engines and actual visits to the website better give a sense of real performance. In addition, and better competitor measures are available, such as PageRank, keyword rank, links and indexed pages.
• Keyword Ranking is a proxy for organic traffic from a given keyword based on an estimated clickthrough rate. There are many reasons why a given ranking rises or falls. Inbound links and indexed pages are the two most important metrics.

Still, Keyword Ranking is a very poor indicator of Internet Marketing success, as ranking can go down while customers, revenue and profits increase. There are many possible reasons for this.

Metrics which Matter More

• Traffic combined with engagement metrics (pages per visit, time on site) (available in Google Analytics)
• Indexed pages (available in Google Webmaster Tools, competitors can be viewed using SEO Site Tools chrome plugin)
• Impressions and clickthroughs on organic search (available in Google Webmaster Tools)
• Impressions and clickthroughs on paid search (available in Facebook ads and Google Adwords)
• Inbound links (available in Google Webmaster Tools, competitors can be viewed on OpenSiteExplorer and Yahoo SiteExplorer)

Metrics which Matter Most

• Cost-per-click for SEO and SEM, conversion rates (pct of clicks which turn into customers)
• Profit margin per customer, excluding marketing costs
• Waste/loss from unsold inventory
• Brand awareness (hard to measure, but search on brand name and clickthrough on brand name impressions in Google helps identify this)

What SEO and SEM Can and Cannot Do

• SEO can’t fix a bad business model. If the cost of sensible and effective SEO or SEM (advertising) exceeds the profit margin on a per-customer basis, the business model needs examination.
• SEO can’t fix a bad website, if product or service information is unclear, prices are hidden, or the text and images are confusing, then the customer won’t understand what is being offered, and won’t buy.
• SEO can point out the important factors for managing websites from a search engine perspective, and can help the search engines understand the content, so that it will be deemed relevant to the correct searches.
• SEM can help reach potential customers. In addition, SEM can be used to help test out new offers or geographically target.

Strategies and Tactics for SEO

So what can one do if the Alexa, PageRank and Keyword Ranking is below expectations?

• Content strategy should be focused on having various types of content that surrounds the brand and offering. Tactics for reuse and leveraging of content magnifies value for cost. Bottom line: Increase the quality and amount of content, and find ways of leveraging the content.
• Linkbuilding tactics should be diverse and sustainable. Increase the number and quality of inbound links and ensure that appropriate anchor text is being used (e.g., links with keywords in the linking text).
• Social Media tactics need to be included. Social media and social networks help increase referral traffic as well as generate links.

Create and execute an affordable, effective and sustainable set of strategies and tactics and balance this with the inventory and profitability of the business.

Relentless Cheerfulness

Pinata – After being beaten with sticks, must still give out candy. In other words, other’s negative behavior does not get them down.

Cheerleader – Announces new features and cheers on the accomplishments of both the company and its customers.

Provides Personalized Service

Concierge – Provides one-on-one attention with issues needing ot be resolved outside the community setting.

Intuitive and Aware

Sponge – Absorbs the emotional temperature of the community in order to monitor health, satisfaction and engagement.

Empath – Keeps track of vibrations from the community, Twitter, Facebook and other sources to sense the slightest disturbances in company-customer continuum.

Effective Gatekeeper

Spam Warrior – Always vigilant for spammers and ready to break out the ban hammer when necessary.

Traffic Cop – Routes requests to the right people within the organization.

Social Media Mastery

Mediavore – Is a master of forums, social networks, YouTube, webcasts and other various media channels required to get the job done.

Conversation Management

Gardener – Watches over threads, customers or ideas, while tending diligently to them.

Sculptor – Massages the noisiness of a community into actionable data that benefits both the customers and the company.

Other

Of course the above job description is incomplete, but does go a ways with showing what kinds of competencies are needed to be an effective Community Manager. In other words, someone who does not have these competencies should not be given the role without training and mentoring.

• Profile image
• Page name and url
• Various types of wall posts
  • Including using Facebook as a page
• What to post
• When and how often to post
• Autoposting from an RSS Feed
• Encouraging community involvement
• Astroturfing (what not to do)
• Custom home pages on Facebook pages
• The proper Social Media mindset
• Facebook page advertising

Profile Image

• The profile image is vital, and needs to be clear, precise, and communicate your brand. Both the full image (which displays on the main page) and the smaller cropped icon (which displays with every post) should be optimized for brand recognition and identity.

• Image size: 180×382 is a maximum long-portrait size. Note that this profile essentially has two components: a header taking up about 40% of the image (with 10% border area), and the bottom 60% which can be used for specific messages. GiltGroupe does a good job of this.

Page Name and Page URL

The Facebook page name can be changed until the page reaches 100 fans. At that point it cannot be changed. Ever. It is therefore important to consider carefully the name of the page:

• Not too long (as it is added to every single post on the page wall)
• Some kind of brand name should be considered
• May want to consider keywords for SEO, as the Facebook page will show up in search results

Once the page has 25 fans a unique URL can be created, e.g., www.facebook.com/uniqueurl. As with the Page Name this should be considered for shortness, brand name and SEO keyword targets, but with an even greater focus on memorability/recollection.

Types of Wall Posts

There are several ways/types of information to post to the wall, both automated and manual. For control of look-and-feel it is best to perform this manually.

• Link to offsite content (with image)
• Post image to a different public page (not yours)
• Add images to an album

Link to offsite content

Offsite content can be both one’s own website or some other website. Both should be included, rather than restricting content to one’s own site. This way the page is perceived not only as promoting itself but also providing useful and/or interesting news/information from other sites.

Whenever possible, the content linked to should display an image, so that an image is shown on the wall and the news feed.

Post image to a different public page

This should be done on other public pages which allow postings. Images show up as large pictures and can have URLs provided in the posting, pointing to off-site content. In addition, it is possible under the Account menu to select Use Facebook as Page, and thereby post on other pages as your own page.

This helps people find your page (since the page is now the poster). In addition, the fact that this posting was done by the page is inserted into the Facebook page wall of the posting page account (and includes a repetition of the image itself). In addition, the image that was posted to a different public page is displayed as a recent photo at the top of the posting Facebook page.

Add images to an album

The best way is to have five new images and add them to an existing album or create a new album. Three of these images will display in the post (which can have additional information and links included in the wall post), and five of these will then replace the images along the top of the wall.

What to Post

This is the heart of the matter. Post something that is useful, interesting, engaging, outstanding and/or actionable. Consider this the vowel rule of content.

Posting something like coming soon or under construction is none of these things and should be avoided. Posting exhortations or flogging a sale should be done only if the audience will find these things interesting or outstanding. Just because a salesperson, the social media manager, or the company things something is interesting does not mean that the target audience will feel the same way.

Regarding sales or special prices, it is important to provide advance notice and a time frame for taking action. This will show people the value of liking the page.

When and How Often to Post

According to recent data, the optimum time to post is Noon, Eastern Time, and at a rate of 0.5 posts per day. Your targets may vary geographically (and adjust for time zone).

Autoposting with RSS

The excellent RSS Graffiti app allows for configuration of posting from the RSS feed of a website (especially effective when using Feedburner).

Community Engagement on Facebook

One goal is to get people to spontaneously post to your page. Even if the questions are simple, easily answered ones, they should always be answered clearly, courteously, and briefly, with accompanying URLs preferred.

Astroturfing

Astroturfing is fake grassroots activity, that is, pretending or deliberately creating the impression of a natural and autentic reaction. For example, if several employees like their own post or their own page, that is astroturfing. The key, like anything, is to avoid these practices. Once the organization is caught doing this, or even if someone only suspects they have, they will lose credibility. In Facebook, it is good to only do this on occasion and in relation to other people’s content (e.g., like other people’s comments on the page wall). Liking one’s own content is a bad habit that should be avoided.

Custom Home Pages

The use of FBML the Facebook Markup Language and especially the Static FBML app allows for customization of the default tab of the facebook page. This is useful to get people to “Like” the page. Once they like the page the visitor can be directed to the facebook page wall or a different page.

Proper Social Media Mindset

Tim O’Reilly, the oracle of Silicon Valley and one of the thought leaders on Social Media has provided a useful way of thinking about Social Media:

> The secret of social media is that it’s not about you, your product, or your story. It’s about how you can add value to the communities that happen to include you. If you want to make a positive impact, forget about what you can get out of social media, and start thinking about what you can contribute. Not surprisingly, the more value you create for your community, the more value they will create for you.

Facebook Page Advertising

Once a Facebook page is properly set up with a good amount of content, an ongoing Facebook ad campaign is recommended. There are a number of things that a well-managed (but low cost) campaign will tell you:

• Cost per click in different demographics, geographics and psychographics (can target by city)
• Can tell which ads and what content has a higher liking conversion behavior

In addition, an ongoing campaign keeps the CPC down. The budget minimum of $1 USD and bid of 0.01 USD means that a lot of information can be derived for very little cost.

Suggested Security Practices

• Have one unique password per site/account.
• Generate and manage the password with an encrypted password management tool, e.g., KeePass
• Keep backup of the encrypted password management tool in the cloud, e.g., Dropbox
• Encrypt files/drives which contain confidential information, so that in the event of intrusion, the files/drives will not be accessible, using strong encryption, e.g., TrueCrypt
• Get in the habit of deleting email that has confidential information, such as passwords
• Force the use of https:// for email (setting in Gmail/Google Mail)

• Market size growth in the North American market is a healthy 16% which makes it a hypergrowth area. Nom nom nom.

SEO, PPC, Social Media, Mobile Trends

• More is being spent on SEO, but fewer companies. This makes sense as SEO is not for everyone, but when it works, it usually is effective to do follow-on investments
• PPC is the same story, fewer people buy ads, those who do are buying more, on average.
• Social media budgets will be increased and more people are participating in social media. (Expect social media price inflation as a result). Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and LinkedIn are the top social media sites.
• Mobile is seeing a lot of growth and interest, as well as localization/location-based search and advertising. Foursquare on the rise.

Challenges for Social Media

• Measuring ROI
• Integration of analytics

• Claim they monitor their systems and can tell when there is downtime, but I have had to report downtime to them over a dozen times.
• Sometimes they email back and say everything is ok when it is not
• Can go days without any status update on a system that is completely down
• Are incompetent enough to have mounted the backup disk on the same box as the primary disk and when they cannot get the primary disk to behave properly are unable to get at the backup disk (aka do not restore on secondary hardware)
• Negative ratings of support handling have zero effect on subsequent support and no follow-up by management
• They offer multiple IP addresses but in the past have randomly reassigned IPs without any notice (resulting in sites that are improperly redirected)
• Invoice weeks in advance

I really don’t understand how these people are in business. For me it is a matter of how much time it would take to move hosts, vs. trying to schedule a migration. I’ve learned that bad hosts won’t give you the luxury of scheduling a migration so simply do it immediately.

Never use SEO Host they are the worst hosting company.