The Web Smart Blog
The Web Smart Blog exists to extend the information provided in our monthly Web Smart Newsletters. Web information changes so quickly that a monthly publication can't cover enough ground. Also, additional information to past topics can't wait for future publication so we add related newsletter information here.
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Get Yourself Out There
February 11, 2008 at 2:30 pm by Chris
Brian Solis says that lack of comments means lack of influence, but I say don't expect a ton of comments unless you are approaching A-list (or even B-list) status. In fairness, Solis also says that "measuring the success of a blog based on the amount of comments is just lame," and I completely agree. In fact, according to Jakob Nielsen's study, 90% of online community users are lurkers, meaning they read but don't comment, while only 9% contribute a 'little' and 1% contribute actively. While this study is not specific to blog comment participation, it's likely that the principle is applicable though the numbers may have a "+ or -" factor. This means that the majority of your blog readers will probably not be commenting on your posts anytime soon.As is obvious to anyone who reads this blog, I don't get a ton of comments, so this isn't going to be one of those "I did it and so can you!" posts. Like Brian Solis says above, comments are not always going to be the best judge of the current success of a blog. However, there is always room for improvement, and as readership increases, so, too, should commenting. So, my blog has a way to go. There just is no magic wand to use to instantly get lots of traffic to your blog. There are ways to gradually increase the amount of activity on your blog, but to do it, you've got to get yourself out there. Establish Your Hub The first step is to give readers a way to find your blog. If you already have a website that gets some traffic, your blog can be integrated into your existing site's structure. If your blog is your online hub, you can use your profiles on various social networks to point readers your way (to learn more about this, see an earlier post titled Is that Really You?). Read Other Blogs to Stay Informed Next, you'll need to find and start reading other blogs that deal with the same topics that you deal with on your blog. Being familiar with the larger conversation is crucial to both gaining readers and being properly informed on those subjects that you plan to write about. Use a feed reader (we like Google Reader) to subscribe to the RSS feeds for these blogs and get into the habit of reading through your feeds daily. If you've come to the determination that blogging is important enough to your web strategy to actually create one, you'll also need to realize the importance for making time to read other blogs. Once you've done that, you'll probably find yourself asking how anyone could possibly keep up with the amount of information delivered via RSS to their computer every day. Here's how. Leave Comments, but don't spam. Finally, reading other blogs will help you stay informed, but it won't help you to get noticed. Remember, at this point, you're just lurking (not that there's anything wrong with that!). However, at some point you'll probably have something to add to the conversation that's happening in the comment threads of the blogs you're reading. That's a good thing, and you should do it. Most blogs allow you to add links to your comment, so if you have a blog post or webpage that is relevant to your comment, this is your chance to share it with the community. The more you participate by sharing insightful and valuable comments, the more you'll be able to share links without spamming the other readers of the blog. Participating in this way is crucial for developing recognized authority in regard to your area of expertise. (In the spirit of conversation, here's a link to a blog post which asks how bloggers interact with comments. The comments thread to the blog is a fairly good indication of people's varying opinions on how to interact with comment on their and others' blogs.) Then What? Once you're off and running, there are several other strategies you can employ to get a sense for how your blog is doing, including setting up an RSS feed for search results for your name or your company's name online. If your blog has become a significant part of your online strategy, being aware of your online reputation will become more and more important. It will also give you a chance to respond quickly to those blogs that have noticed and mentioned you (for positive or negative reasons). |
Tags: seo blogging google rss
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It's All About Skimming
February 7, 2008 at 11:00 am by Chris
Mark and I recently had a chat (of which you can read a transcript on his blog) about how anyone could possibly keep up with the amount of information delivered via RSS to our computers every day. Every day you gasp? How about every hour!? I mentioned to Mark that one of the most important skills to develop (I can't believe I'm calling this a skill, but...) is to be able to skim through that information well. Good skimming means that you can quickly scan an article and determine if its content is relevant to you, then either decide to read it more closely or file it away for future reference, and maybe even share it with a friend who will find it interesting while you're at it. If you can't skim well, you'll never keep up!Skimming might not be necessary if everyone blogged in the same manner. Think about it: if every blogger decided to post one substantial and high-quality post a week, readers would have more time to digest the information. We'd probably have to subscribe to fewer blogs in order to feel like we're keeping abreast of things, too. However, this is just not the reality. Even magazine and newspaper columnists, who have traditionally written daily, weekly, or monthly columns, these days keep blogs on which they post several times a day (if not several times an hour). This is is just the pace at which information moves now. However, because there is so much information being passed back and forth, it's likely that much of it won't be relevant to you. Unfortunately, you won't know one way or another unless you start sifting through it.  If you take a look at my Google Reader trends (see image above), you'll get a better sense of what I am talking about. Notice that over the last 30 days, I read (skimmed, more likely) through 4,715 feeds- that's around 157 feeds a day! You can tell from the chart that most of my feed reading (skimming, again) is done earlier in the morning. This is a good time for me to catch up on this stuff before my phone starts ringing. Good thing I'm a morning person... Also, notice that some of the feeds I subscribe to update between 10 to 40 times a day! Granted, some of them are from fulltime journalists who are paid to do it, but this gives you an idea of the pace and frequency I mentioned above. Believe me, my job keeps me plenty busy, so I don't have time to settle down and really read all of this content- and I wouldn't really want to, either. Remember, much of it is not going to be relevant to me. But, some will be very relevant to me, so if I don't skim through all of it, I won't find the 'some' that is worthwhile. 
One last point. Most people who value reading (myself included), will be initially disgusted by the notion of skimming as a means of staying informed, especially when it comes to content that is professionally relevant. In this regard I think two ideas are important. First, blog content is meant to move at a faster pace, so reading a blog post and reading a book are going to be very different experiences. Blogs will not render books (actual books or ebooks) irrelevant anytime soon. This is a good thing. While ideas can be batted around in blog posts and stimulate lots of conversation, books are still needed to present ideas in a well developed and well researched manner. Second, the accelerated pace of blog post publishing is similar to that of book publishing. In fact, statistics from 2004 show that a new book of fiction is published in the United States every 30 minutes. And that's just fiction. Only in the United States. In 2004! This is why a recent book titled How to Talk About Books You Haven't Read, by Pierre Bayard, shouldn't be scoffed at. Bayard points out that the only way for anyone, especially scholars, to keep up with the amount of information being put out there is to simply be aware of what's being published, because let's face it, you can't read it all. He even points out that sometimes it's more important to be aware of how a book fits in to the larger trends/mood/zeitgeist (wow I've used that word twice in one week on this blog) than to have actually read it. Have I read Bayard's book? No. ...His point, exactly! If skimming is legit for books, it had better be legit for blogs. |
Tags: books blogging google rss
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Understanding Bounce Rates
February 5, 2008 at 11:00 am by Chris| Understanding bounce rate is an important aspect of analyzing your overall statistics, especially when it comes to determining the effectiveness of an individual page. The bounce rate measures the number of visitors to a website that leave before a specified amount of time has elapsed (this time period varies among analytics tools, but typically it is 30 minutes). This means that if a user accesses your site and leaves it within 30 minutes or leaves their browser idle for that time, they will be registered as a bounce. The bounce rate for an individual page of a website is determined by the number of users that access a page and leave the site without clicking to another page within the specified time period. Avinash Kaushik, Google's Analytics Evangelist, has blogged about measuring the effectiveness of your web pages and writes: "My own personal observation is that it is really hard to get a bounce rate under 20%, anything over 35% is cause for concern, 50% (above) is worrying. I stress that this is my personal analysis based on my experience, but hopefully it gives you a feel for what you are shooting for."One thing to keep in mind is that your expectation for meeting Kaushik's standard on any given page of your site should also be measured against the entrance sources for that page. Depending upon how a user is referred to your site, his or her understanding of the relevance of your site's content to their query will vary quite a bit. For example, if a user searches for "Chris Butler blog" and clicks the link on the search results page that leads them to my blog, it is quite possible that they will immediately leave once they realize that my blog is about web technology and strategy (perhaps the Chris Butler they were looking for is a wedding photographer). The point is that the more specific the search query, the more likely that a user will come to your page "pre-qualified" for the content he or she is about to receive and will not leave the page immediately. 
If you take a look at the image to the left, you'll see the top seven entrance sources for this blog, and the corresponding bounce rates for users that entered from those sources. Notice that users that came to my blog directly register a very low bounce rate. This is to be expected since these users know the blog and therefore know generally what information they will be getting. On the other hand, notice that users entering the blog from Google register a higher bounce rate (overall, not too low, though). This is likely due to what I mentioned above about search query specificity. In fact, one of the top search terms that lead users to my blog is "alexa above the fold," yet I only used this phrase once in my blog in a slightly peripheral comment. This means that users coming to my blog after having searched for that phrase should be expected to register a relatively high bounce rate (their bounce rate is 40%). One of the best ways that I have found to increase the number of "pre-qualified" users has been to post my blog articles to Digg. Since I've just gotten started with this, my Digg performance isn't that significant, but what has been important to me is that the users that do come to my blog via Digg register a very low bounce rate consistently. This is because Digg allows you to post a link to an article and then place it within a set of pre-defined categories. If a user clicks to your article from Digg, he or she will theoretically have at least narrowed down to a category of interest and will be "pre-qualified" for the information you provide. |
Tags: seo google search analytics
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Great Analytics Blogs
February 5, 2008 at 10:00 am by Chris| There are several blogs dedicated to educating us about analytics. Here are some worth checking out: The Official Google Analytics Blog Occam's Razor by Avinash Kaushik Web Analytics World by Manoj Jasra You could also subscribe to this Google Blog search RSS feed for "google analytics" or set a more refined one up for yourself. |
Tags: google analytics
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Landing Page Optimization Seminar
February 5, 2008 at 9:00 am by Chris| Today only: VKI Studios, a Google Analytics and Website Optimization consultant, will be running a webinar titled "Landing Page Optimization: a process using Google Analytics and Google Website Optimizer" today. You can register here to participate. |
Tags: analytics
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Sitelinks and Search Snippets Updated
January 22, 2008 at 10:00 am by ChrisIn a past post (Sitelinks and Search Snippets) I mentioned that Google was rolling out a more expanded snippet for URLs that included a mini sitemap for the URL shown. I had also mentioned that Google had not implemented control of these site links for webmasters. As of recently, this is no longer true. Eric sent me the following screenshot (see below), showing that you can now control the sitelinks using Google's webmaster tools.  |
Tags: seo google search
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Sitelinks and Search Snippets
December 10, 2007 at 10:00 am by Chris
Several Newfangled clients have asked recently about Sitelinks, the list of links that display below some search results in Google which often look like a mini sitemap of the site linked in the results. Google introduced Sitelinks as a snippet feature to make it easier for users to get to the pages on your site that they want. They do this by analyzing your site's structure to find simpler ways to navigate it. Currently, Sitelinks are controlled by Google alone, so there is no way for you to ensure that your site will have them in its snippet. However, a well-structured site that is fully indexable by Google will be more likely to be chosen for Sitelinks. Google has recently updated the algorithm to show up to eight Sitelinks per site, double the amount that used to display, as well as increase the number of websites that will appear in Google with Sitelinks included in their snippet. Also, Matt Cutts, of Google, has recently created a nice short video explaining the overall 'anatomy' of a search snippet. You can read his post here, or watch the video below: http://feeds.mattcutts.com/~r/mattcutts/uJBW/~3/191055117/ |
Tags: seo google search
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Internet TV on Windows Media Center
September 27, 2007 at 8:45 pm by Chris| Today, the Windows Vista Team released two blog posts discussing Internet TV on Windows Media Center: New Extenders and Internet TV Unveiled for Windows Media Center "Today at Digital Life in NYC the eHome Division and partners together announced new Extenders for Windows Media Center. In combination with the new Extenders, we're also releasing a beta of a new feature for Windows Media Center called Internet TV." For its lineup, read the above article. Streaming Internet Content with Internet TV Beta to Windows Media Center "On September 28th, users of Windows Media Center for Windows Vista (in the U.S. at this time) will see a new option under "TV + Movies" - the beta version of Internet TV." For a review, read the above article. |
Tags: windows video microsoft web20 internettv television
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NPR's OnPoint on Internet TV
September 23, 2007 at 8:00 am by Chris| OnPoint, an NPR show, which discussed internet TV (you can listen here). Host Tom Ashbrook interviewed Joseph Menn, a reporter from the LA Times, who discussed some new programming that will be featured only on the web. Another guest was Mark Kvamme, venture capitalist at Sequoia Ventures (they funded YouTube), who, among other things, discussed Funny or Die, a user-generated content site that mixes celebrity comedian videos with your videos and lets the user decide who's funny. The thrust of the conversation was how advertisers are adapting to web entertainment, and how the web allows them to know more about who they're selling to. |
Tags: NPR video web20 internettv television
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It's All About Video!
August 7, 2007 at 5:30 pm by ChrisThis year seems to be all about video. The good thing is, we know it, and our clients know it too. But more importantly, our developers know how to do it well. Below are three examples of video applications for three very different clients.
On the left is a screenshot from www.geiconsultants.com, a website we built that went live in June. GEI is a large consulting firm that wanted to use video on their new site to showcase their people and give visitors a better sense for who they are as a company. While video is showcased all over the site, some pages have a special two-video module, which our developer, George Wamichi, built using ajax to allow a user to toggle between two different videos. (Try it out here.) Another cool aspect of what George built is that the video player and video files are both pulled from another database that the client controls and matched up using our tools. This way, the flash player interface and the video files can stay separate and not clog up the site's bandwidth. We also worked with Studio Module on this project, which is why it looks so darn good!
Pictured to the right is the homepage for a website we just built for Rottman Creative Group, an agency in the Baltimore area that focuses on work for non-profits and associations. Their portfolio is full of awesome work, which they can upload to their site in almost any format (quicktime, flash compositions, flash video, images, etc.) thanks to our developer, Steve Brock. Being a creative agency, Rottman designed their own site and had the zany idea of slightly rotating many video files that appear on the site, which left Steve scratching his head as to how to program the site to do what they needed. Of course, Steve always comes through- even if it takes him all night! This tool allows Rottman to upload any kind of video at a normal size and aspect ratio, and it appears skewed to fit the playful design without any degradation of quality. 
Pictured to the left is the video player on the homepage of www.ineoquest.com. IneoQuest creates hardware for IP video, so they naturally wanted to use video on their site to promote their products. What they needed was a simple flash-based video player that served up videos as they produced them, and which allowed the user to select them from a queue. Our developer, Forrest Oliphant, built this player, which became the basis for a NewfangledCMS video component that we offer today! The visual design was created by our own design team, led by Creative Director Justin Kerr. I have a feeling that we're just now scratching the surface of how video is going to impact what we do at Newfangled. Don't believe me? Check out how many of Eric's newsletters have been about video (or use video)! Good thing Eric knows how to predict the future... |
Tags: video clients developers
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