Thanks so much to Jayne Conway and Lisa Tener for inviting me to speak to the Providence chapter of the National Association of Professional Women, an engaging and collaborative group.

Designated Editor’s blog readers may be interested in a post I wrote to recap some of the tools I find helpful in social media strategy, a step beyond LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Here I’ve highlighted some lesser-known tools and why you might consider using them, like Twibes.com — boosts your image as an expert — and  GeoChirp, which allows you to search keywords and see who’s Tweeting within 200 miles of any location.

Check it out & let us know your thoughts!

Recent events & accomplishments here at Designated Editor

1. Stranded in Italy by Iceland volcano (nonstop QT with Mom)
   
2. Offshore in Belize creating content for my client’s iPhone app for boaters (not ready for prime time yet)
   
3. Launched Newport Interactive Marketers, received very well by communications experts here
   
4. Helped launch Providence WordPress Meetup (although missed the first event, see #1)
   

In progress

• Completing design changes for the website and the blog
• Having WordPress custom theme developed and finalized
• Migrating Blog.DesignatedEditor.com to the WordPress platform
• Asking for advice on what’s the best way (from an SEO perspective) to filter Google juice from Blog.DesignatedEditor.com to www.DesignatedEditor.com

Perhaps you’re not super-familiar with Wikis, but you’ve at least heard of Wikipedia, no?

Brainstorm about how you can harness the power of a Wiki, where you can share concepts, photos, history, and invite members of your community to edit and elaborate on them. Similar to a blog, in some ways, but so much more interactive.

Before we get to the highlights
1. Thanks so much to the 20 designers, marketers, SEOs, writers, project managers, business development specialists, and sailboat dealers who joined us in Newport RI for Newport Interactive Marketers last night!
Stay tuned for details about our monthly tips & cocktails nights.

2. Extra special thanks to Matthew Mamet from EditMe offering a simple an affordable website and community platform

Web 2.0 is all about interaction, a Wiki enables multiple people to collaborate online
Communities aren’t just about text anymore: think video, images, multimedia

Tips for building communities

• Don’t get caught up in infrastructure
• Start small and work on gathering your people
• Want someone to feel like they stumbled across something great
• Try to enable conversations
• Want to be like a good host, want people to initiate posts and comments on their own

When your community is established

• What’s happening in the community that you didn’t expect? Encourage it!
• Do whatever it takes to get the rubbing sticks to become a fire
• Controversy isn’t always bad
  
• If someone or a topic is a wallflower, as manager you need shift from creating to encouraging others to create

Watch out for spammers & jerks

• It’s a sign of success although it’s discouraging
• Ask them to guestpost or take over a section
• Moderate: Be willing to kick someone out

Watch for signs of impending doom

• Pages not updated for 3 months
• Visitors haven’t been there in 6 weeks

Once the community is dead, it won’t revive: a la Friendster

Join us!
Subscribe to the RSS feed to hear about more about Newport Interactive Marketers.
Or follow Matthew Mamet on Twitter.

Most interesting session at South by Southwest 2010, confirmed my instinct

Twitter: #SXSW #brandsdontthink

“Brands Don’t Think Like You Think They Think with Barbarian Group’s Benjamin Palmer
South by Southwest Interactive 2010 catalog description:
“One of the hopeful revenue sources for many internet startups is “ad dollars.” How come they don’t usually show up? Turns out that what you think brands want from the internet is not what they want. We will share some tips and insights learned from working with nearly 100 brands in the last decade.”

Brands are built on scale and safety, not novelty

There’s a misunderstanding that brands want what’s next on the internet, but brand managers are not waiting around for what’s hot.

How brand managers see online advertising

• Good brands trust other good brands: safety in numbers
• There’s safety in numbers, allow brands to congregate
• Well-designed sites, apps, etc. are associated with trustworthiness
• Don’t want more ad space
• Don’t like banner ads
• Are interested in reach and scale
• Want their own brand differentiation
  

  Brands need to connect with online audiences and traditional agencies don’t solve those problems

Tim Ash — author of Landing Page Optimization Book
Siteturners Multivariate Testing Website Optimizers 
@tim_ash

The purpose of your home page is to get people off your home page

1. Let them discover: Who are you?
2. Then guide them here and there to get into more relevant content

Web design formula for conversions

2 columns only
Left column = your content, what you want visitors to do
Right column = validation, why you’re trust-worthy (see 4 types of trust, below)

Left column content

1. Headline: What is the page about? Underneath have 3-5 bullet points that summarize
2. Action block: colored box with pastel background call to action
3. Desired visitor thought-process: “What do I get if I push the button?

Finer details to keep in mind

• Guide the user from general to specific
• There has to be a clear visual hierarchy
• Don’t give everything
• Don’t surprise
• Have a tagline that actually says what you do
• How far do people scroll? put trust symbol near the top
• Do they actually reach the bottom of the page?

Don’t do anything unexpected or surprising

• No hoverovers
• No whitebox popovers for testimonials
• No scrollbar
• Only supply them when someone asks for it

How to determine whether your forms killing your conversions  (recommended tools, below, enter in)

• Which form fields are left blank?
• Which forms/fields causes the most delay?
• Which links are hovered over but not clicked?
• Funnel: Landed on the page, filled out the form, finished the form
• Look at how long it’s taking to fill out each field?
• Do we need to ask that?
• Are we asking in the right order?
• Why is this happening?
• Which fields are blank?
  

More design and usability take-aways

• All visual elements distract from goals
• Determine exact amount of emphasis for key elements
• Don’t let others’ logos take over attention, don’t make them full color

Improve a landing page design before you publish it

• Why go live with a page you’re unsure of?
• Think about wasted time
• Provide a cleaner visual profile
• Streamline your content

4 types of trust

• General clean site
• Appeal of authorities
• Social consensus: 1 million downloads
• Trust marks, not a trust mark if it’s not recognizable, use most relevant

Bottom line: Your visitors don’t care, have 8 seconds to get them to care

Recommended tools

 UsertesTing.com
 Mosquito Interactive
 CrossBrowserTesting.com
AttentionWizard.com

Perhaps it’s not who should be creating businesses’ web content, but is it the right person or team?

Please participate in Designated Editor’s survey on successful company blogs.

Stemming from a recent comment on the post: “Blog and content strategies with Stephen Turcotte of Backbone Media at the Boston SEO Meetup”

Comment: seo wrote:
Thanks for sharing your notes here. The thing is, a “company blog” for
a larger company is very different than a blog from a small business
owner. The company bog hires someone to write regular entries who
considers it a job, and their heart isn’t in it. A small entrepreneur
is writing what they live everyday – their company, their baby. Much
different animal, and different rules have to apply.

Suzanne of Designated Editor wrote:
Hi
and thanks so much for sharing your thoughts. As with anything, I’d say
it depends. I agree with you: It’s probably not reasonable to expect
passion from a far-flung, minimally paid writer. Perhaps posts like
that are the new keyword-stuffing? Shoveling out content that’s
relevant but not especially useful.

On the other hand, there are key factors, to successful company blogs:

1. The employee’s passion
2. The corporate culture.

You might be interested in my Southwest
Airlines post “Scattered by thousands of miles, but online we can be
right next to each other” Employee Engagement & Social Media on a
Low-Fare Budget -Southwest Airlines’ Millie Richter.

Meanwhile, Designated Editor creates content for many entrepreneurs, small businesses, and some larger companies.

What we find: The business owner or the marketing team faces a variety of challenges:

• Limited time/staffing, busy working on other things
• Writers’ block
• Unable to transition from “sales” communication to information-based that users expect for online content
• Can’t create enough content quickly enough to fulfill SEO or other campaigns

Launching
Designated Editor as a small business provides a great deal of insight
to the passion that enlivens corporate blogs. Like a great actor vs a B
actor, we’re able to transfer that experience and “heart” to our
clients’ online presence.

SXSW posts forthcoming!

Energy level is still high; I saw a Tweet that said something along the lines of “gorging on awesomeness.” Like Sunday’s sessions, there’s just so much to choose from, I thought I’d ask which sessions you’d like to hear about.

Here are the options, please comment & scroll down for 5 p.m. (CST) sessions if you’re seeing this late:

Monday, March 15th

Concurrent sessions

Don’t Get Sued! A Guide For Content Creators

Funding Your Projects from the Crowd

Managing Your Content Management System

More concurrent sessions

Best Practices for Contextual Applications

Conducting Great Interviews

Indirect Collaboration: Collective Creativity on the Web

Making Content Relevant To Me, Here And Now

5 p.m. concurrent sessions

Augmented Reality – Gimmicky Trend or Market-Ready Technology?

Coconut Valley – Building a Tech Community on the Beach

Passionate People: The Key Ingredient to Social Media Success

Please comment and thanks for the help!

Previous SXSW posts:

Which SXSWi sessions should I blog about?

Thanks to Michelle for voting on Sunday’s SXSW session selections