When developing a social media strategy, we start with a measurable goal, such as selling widgets, promoting events, recruiting students, sharing knowledge, collaborating with peers, getting customer feedback, or anything else that furthers our plans. Then we identify our target audience, determine where they are spending time on line, and develop communications tactics meant to reach them—on their terms, in the spaces they use.

This latter step is important because people tend to be more comfortable conversing on their home turf. They may also find it easier to make a comment on the page they're on than to click through to someplace else. But once our audience begins to connect with us, they also need to know where they can go to get more information. Thus we need to provide some sort of home base that centralizes our messages and provides them with a destination where they can learn more about us, buy our widgets, join our project, etc.

Ideally this is a destination worth visiting, a place that gives them useful informative content—not just a sales pitch.

They found you on Facebook, but where are you sending them next?

Pittsfield Charter Township 2010 Master Plan

Your home base could come in a variety of forms. For some it's a standard Web site, for others—like Social Media Chat (#smchat) and the Cleveland Social Media Club—it's a Ning Network.

As I discussed in Goal-driven social media strategies & tactics: how are you interacting with your target audience?, my home base is this blog. My blog is only one section of my overall site, but it's the section I link to most often when Tweeting, answering questions on LinkedIn, etc., because it's the place where I can send people to get specific answers. Once visitors arrive here, they can then easily explore other portions of the site.

Whether a blog is right for you depends on your particular goal and the nature of your audience, yet blogs, by their nature, offer certain features that work very well with other social media tools. Today I'll explore some of those features by walking through a potential use scenario.

Blogging for Government Planning

Social Media Outreach Presentation Slides

This past friday I had the opportunity to meet with government (and other) planners when George Nemeth and I presented Social Media Outreach: Communicating in the Online World to Enhance Planning in the Real World at the APA Cleveland Annual Planning and Zoning Workshop.

Currently planners get a lot of their feedback from community meetings or e-mail. It's sometimes difficult to get community members to come out to an event to discuss the various options for building a new bridge, developing a new park, moving a shipping port, etc. In order to increase community involvement, planners are exploring new ways to share their plans and gather feedback.

As I was researching the ways that planners currently communicate, it occurred to me that blogs would work well for this purpose. They offer an easy way to post news, share documents and gather feedback through online comments.

In speaking with the group I learned that while most planning departments have Web sites, very few are using blogs and social media. This is also true of the general population, but in the past year we've seen Facebook and Twitter become more mainstream. If a planning department starts now, they can get their social media plans in place in order to be ready as more and more of their community members begin to use the tools.

A social media plan for the fictional town of Ohtopia, Ohio

Let's pretend that we're the Planning and Zoning Department for Ohtopia. Our town, somewhere in northeast Ohio, has seen growth as people have been moving out from the city and into our community. As such we're working on a new town plan to enhance the town center, create new public spaces and reduce traffic congestion.

Our goal is to increase community participation in our planning process and gather feedback from as many community members as possible. To accomplish this we've decided to add a blog to our Web site then share news (and drive traffic to the blog) through various social media channels. Here's how that might work.

Ohtopia Blog

We can start the process by reviewing our goals, and assessing the needs of our target audience, to develop an overall content plan and structure for the blog. We can then establish an editorial policy to guide our writers and assign a person (or team) to write and publish the content, respond to reader feedback, and monitor social media mentions of our department and plans.

Using an opensource (free) blogging platform such as Movable Type or Wordpress we can install a blog in a subdirectory of our main site, design it to match the look and feel of our main Web site, customize our menus and navigation based on our blog plan, and install Google Analytics to measure results.

Advantages of using blogging software for this project

• Team members can add content without knowing HTML, so the site can be updated in a timely manner.
• Entries are archived by date, so visitors can determine what information is most current and review how the process evolved over time. Such archives also form a historical record which may be useful for legal and other reasons.
• Events can be added to a calendar listing, so they stand out from other posts. Event postings can also link to Facebook event pages, E-vite, or other event sites one may use for attendee registration.
• Documents, forms and posts can be organized by categories and topics to make it easier for users to navigate and browse.
• Wordpress and other blogging programs provide on-site search mechanisms to make it easier for visitors to seach for specific topics.
• Blogs produce RSS feeds which can be used to automatically post headlines of recent posts to other parts of the Ohtopia site.
• Community members and local media can subscribe to the blog's RSS feed via e-mail, or by using a feed reader such as Google Reader, so they are kept up-to-date with the latest news.
• Entries can be used to embed photographs, .pdf documents, videos and other materials that augment the text.
• Visitors can leave comments on pages so that their feedback can be documented, archived and viewed by others.
• Readers can share posts of interest to Delicious, StumbleUpon, Facebook, Twitter or other social media services to help spread the news. (Plug-ins such as addtoany provide buttons that make it easy for visitors to share our pages.)
• The site team can share selected posts to other social media services to reach more of their community members.
• Team members can create a commenting policy, then edit/moderate comments as appropriate for foul language or other inappropriate behavior.
• Team members can respond to comments and use them to create an online dialog.
• Blogs enhance search engine optimization (SEO) by letting us easily produce fresh content in an SEO friendly format. By publishing the blog on our own domain we can take advantage of this to gain more traffic for our overall site.

Editorial Policy

Our blog could be used to:

• Announce town planning meetings/forums open to the public.
• Publish summaries of these events including meeting minutes.
• Upload maps, and planning documents.
• Post plan recommendations with requests for community feedback via comments.
• Alert the public to changes in planning and zoning regulations.
• Distribute building, zoning and other forms used by the public.
• Publish social media press releases complete with photos, video's planning documents and other information that will give media more details about our projects.

By using a blog we'll be able to publish our information in a more timely fashion and provide a forum through which our community members can respond to our plans and converse with us about our projects. Their comments and questions will also let us know what other information we should be publishing on the site.

Expanding our reach through social media.

Our blog will serve as our communications hub, but until we tell people about it, they won't know it's there. Through a combination of traditional and social media marketing strategies we can spread the word and reach out to our community.

The main audience for our blog includes local residents, residents of neighboring communities and local media. Secondary audiences include planners from other locales and others, interested in planning, who may learn from our process. To determine what social media tools to use we'll want to research the more popular social media services, and any niche services (such as a regionally based Ning Network), to see which ones our audience uses most regularly.

If our research shows us that our audience is primarily using Facebook and Twitter, then we can focus on those two services.

Facebook

• Create a Facebook fan page.
• Position ourselves as a resource for news of local interest by posting blog entries AND other news of interest to our community—the core focus can be planning but we may gain more readers by also linking to news items related to economic development, sustainability, public art, etc.
• Share photos of completed and in-process projects.
• Make Facebook events for our public meetings.
• Ask community members for feedback.
• Link to main blog.
• Join/fan other Facebook groups and pages that already appeal to our target audience, start conversing with them there (about topics related to those pages, not just about us) to build connections so we may invite them to fan our page.

Twitter

Cayuga County Planning Department on Twitter

• Create a complete profile with photo (or city logo), brief description of the department and a link to the blog. Also consider creating a special welcome page on the blog that is geared specifically to Twitter users and link to that rather than the main blog page.
• Position ourselves as a resource for news of local interest by Tweeting blog posts AND other news of interest to our community, as we do on Facebook. As there may be an overlap between these audiences, try to avoid duplicating links shared via Facebook.
• Use Twellow.com and related sites to find local Twitter users in our target audience.
• After having made 10-20 Tweets, begin following members of our target audience including individuals and local media. Do this in small increments (25 or so) to build the list gradually. If you follow 500 at once and only have 5 followers, users may not follow back.
• Follow back those who both follow us and who seem to have an interest in what we do. (But don't follow back spammers, and those who may be following just to build numbers.)
• Visit the stream daily to respond to followers, reTweet links/posts of interest to our followers, etc.

Blogging and related social media tools work well together.

In our pretend scenario, our blog provides the bulk of our content, but we also use Facebook and Twitter to share additional news and to drive traffic to the blog. This is a fairly simple scenario—a fully developed social media plan might include other elements and details—but it does give us an example of how a planning and zoning department might use a blog as the backbone of their social media plan.

If your organization has different goals, or a different target audience, you may find that something other than a blog is more appropriate for your needs. Blogs are not a one-size-fits-all solution. But, in many cases, a carefully planned blog can provide a good foundation for your social media efforts.

To further explore the pro's and con's of using a blog as the core component of a social media strategy, I'll be a moderating a discussion of the topic on #smchat, a weekly real-time Twitter chat focused on social media. The chat will begin this Wednesday, November 18, 2009, at 1:00 p.m. e.s.t. Please feel free to join the discussion there, or share your thoughts below.

Blogging and Social Media Resources

• Copy Blogger: Copywriting Tips for Online Marketing Success
• Mashable: The Social Media Guide
• The 7 Harsh Realities of Social Media Marketing
• Bookmarks saved for the Planning and Zoning Presentation

Recommended Reading for Bloggers

Jeff Hershberger, who writes the blog, My Future Past, recently lent me Say Everything: How Blogging Began, What It's Becoming, and Why It Matters by Scott Rosenberg. I'm just about halfway through it now. If you want to learn more about the history and power of blogging, I highly recommend it.

heidicool.com is also on Facebook

Need more Web tips? Fan the heidicool.com Facebook page. I'm posting 1 tip/link there per day to offer ongoing advice on Web design, marketing and social media—without overwhelming your Facebook stream.

I shot this video riding the Health Line up Euclid Avenue. The quality is a bit dodgy and it isn't necessary to tell my story, except as an example of unnecessary use of video. Audio by Jacinda Espinosa / CC BY-NC 3.0. While I didn't discuss audio in this post, if you do a Google search, you'll find plenty of sources for royalty-free or Creative Commons licensed audio.

While it is true that long sections of text can seem more daunting on a Web page than in a book, that doesn't mean visitors don't read. Nor does it mean we have to throw out our words and replace them with video and pictures.

Instead we can pay attention to our line-lengths, break text into small chunks, use bulleted lists and add images or other media selectively, to enhance—not replace—our main message. Carefully chosen media can help us communicate, while poorly chosen imagery and video only serve to distract. Finding appropriate media can sometimes be a challenge, so today I'm going to discuss some options for finding/creating media that is suitable for your pages.

Audio-visual media isn't a substitute for meaningful content.

Internet users aren't shallow illiterates who will buy your widgets just because your video went viral. That may draw them to your site, but they'll need more to stay there, interact and apply to your law school or download your social media e-book.

Internet users come to your site with the hope that it will help them meet some goal or expectation. They're searching for information that will help them bake a cake, come up with a name for their new puppy, decide which graduate program to apply to, learn how to repair their washing machine, etc.

If we want our content to serve their needs then we need to consider what media will best communicate our message.

I have many dog pictures, but my friend, Ann's dogs, Scout and Kaya, passed away this fall, so I thought it would be appropriate to honor them here in the cute canine example.

• We can share a cake recipe with plain text. But photos and video can help us demonstrate the techniques used in the process and give sighted readers an example of how the cake should look when compete.
• A list of cool dog names with some background on their history will serve our readers needs. But our new dog owners will probably dig pictures of cute canines so it wouldn't hurt to sprinkle a few throughout our pages.
• Information about courses, faculty, current research and campus facilities will help prospects determine if our astronomy program is right for them. If we also add photos of the cosmos—taken from our observatory—and videos of our faculty and students, they can get a better feel for the department and begin to imagine what it would be like to be here.
• Washing machines aren't as complicated as nuclear submarines, but they are three dimensional mechanical devices. It may be hard to walk someone through a repair through text alone. But still photos with captions explaining each step, or video demonstrating the repair may make the directions more clear.

Found Media: stock and royalty free imagery

If you've just populated your database of dog names but only have photos of your pug, then you may be wondering where to get the rest of the puppy pictures you need to illustrate your site. If you've got a big budget then you can hire a photographer or license photos from a stock photography site.

If your budget is smaller, many stock sites also have low-cost or even free images available. You can also do Google and Flickr searches for images that can be licensed under creative commons. If you find a photo that doesn't offer such licensing, contact the photographer and ask if you can use the image. The Internet is a great resource for pictures, just make sure to follow copyright laws and never copy and use an image without the proper permission. Government sites by NASA and the U.S. Library of Congress are also a great source of royalty-free photographs. Both provide very clear terms of service.

Plan ahead. Start building up your own photography archive today.

Turning Point, by Philip Johnson on the campus of Case Western Reserve University

If you're a blogger or site owner who can take a decent picture, carry a camera and use it often. When I worked at Case Western Reserve I took photos at various special events, and I would grab the camera when I walked across campus, just to shoot random images—such as this photo of Turning Point—as I happened upon them.

As time went by I developed a rather large collection of campus shots that I could share with our designers, campus Web maintainers and others looking for pictures to use in their projects. To make these easier to find, I archived them on my Flickr account. This way when a request came in, I could just share a link and the requester could download the appropriate picture.

This also made life easier for me as I had thousands of photos to choose from when I needed images for a new Web page. For a campus etiquette dinner event page, I used a picture of a meal I'd eaten. For the transportation page I used a picture of a campus shuttle bus. For the Year of Darwin I used pictures from my vacation in the Galapagos. There were of course rare cases that required stock photography, but in most cases the photos I needed were ones I had already taken.

Building up such an archive may seem daunting, but if you start now—by taking pictures of anything that might relate to your organization or site—you will begin to build up a nice little collection. My friend Josh is currently planning a food related blog. He's now taking pictures of food, from cooking process to plate, whenever we eat together. By the time he launches the site this winter he'll have a variety of images ready for use.

Rottweilers dig video. I found this on YouTube, but my late Rottie, Shiloh used to watch T. V. and bark at the bad guys when they came on screen. I was never quite sure how he did that, he'd often bark before the plot had indicated they were bad. Perhaps it was in the actors' body language.

Embedded Video

If you are reading this then you already know that you can embed videos—from popular services like YouTube and Vimeo— on your own site. Continuing on the dog theme, I found countless files to choose from when searching for cute puppies and canines. I chose this Rottie because I rather liked that he was watching video too.

These services are great places to find videos that support your message. But again, it behooves us to be aware of copyrights. While users submit many videos that we can freely use on our own sites, some upload videos from movies and television that may be unauthorized. To be on the safe side, check the source and read the terms of service before embedding. Also note that if you are just copying and pasting the embed code from the video site, it may not validate correctly. If you want to ensure your HTML is standards compliant, try embedding your videos with .swfobject 2.0.

Build a video archive

If you have a video camera, you can also begin to build a video archive on these services just as you would build a photo archive on Flickr. Uploading videos to your own YouTube or Vimeo channel is also a good marketing idea as your channels can provide additional pathways to your site. This works most effectively if you take better videos than I do. My YouTube channel doesn't have many videos and they are mostly rather feeble things like driving through Cleveland in the snow.

If you're a serious videographer you'll want a professional quality camcorder, but for more casual shooters, there are many inexpensive options available. The Flip Camcorder is very popular among bloggers or you can use the built in video features now available in many phones and digital cameras. I shot the bus video on this page with the Canon SD1000 that I keep in my backpack when I'm not carrying my Canon EOS 40D. The video was an experiment I made in which I held the lens against the window to try to keep it steady. Alas it turned out to be somewhat more boring than I'd hoped, but I'm more of a still photographer. I expect you can do better.

When real world imagery won't do: cartoons and animation

I made this cartoon to illustrate my What I've
Been Reading in the Blogosphere page.

Sometimes we just can't find an image or video that quite serves our needs. If you want to illustrate how much trouble you have keeping up with all the blogs you follow, what do you show? Neither a screen capture of Google Reader nor a photo of a person staring at a computer quite makes the point. But a cartoon showing your thoughts just might. If you can draw, you can create your cartoon from scratch on paper or using a program such as Illustrator or Photoshop.

If you can't draw, you still have options. I started using Bitstrips last year to illustrate a presentation I was making. Since then I've made several cartoons—to use here on the blog—when I needed something more specific than a photo. If I had more time I could draw these by hand, but Bitstrips makes it easy to build cartoons quickly and to maintain consistent character styles throughout. Bitstrips is but one of many cartoon creation sites online, I've listed more below.

From text to animation via Xtranormal. If you're active in social media you might also be amused by the one I made called "Robots in Meatspace".

Similarly if you wanted to show a conversation between, let's say, a Web developer and a client who wants bells and whistles, you might not find it on YouTube. You could hire actors and shoot a video, but that might be expensive.

If you can draw and know how to use Flash you can make a nice animation, but it will take even more time than drawing your own comic strip. (I think it took me about 40 hours to create this interactive dungeon animation awhile back.)

Flash may give you more control, but new tools like XtraNormal let you write a script, and create an animation— from your text and stock characters—in a fraction of the time. It took me less than an hour to write and create this video about the Behemoth Corporation's Web project.

There are many ways to illustrate your point

If your Web site is an online catalog for your diamond jewelry collection, you're not going to grab the point and shoot camera to take the pictures. You'll hire a photographer. If you're promoting a luxury cruise line, you'll hire an agency to produce a professional video.

But whether you're a large university, small business or independent blogger, there are many times when having an image archive, or the ability to create something on the fly, will best suit your needs. There are many tools available, all it takes is a bit of creativity. Also remember, when using non-text media to augment your message, be sure to include alternative content for those with visual, hearing or related impairments. Additional media only adds value if everyone gets the message.

How are you illustrating your sites? Are there other tools you've found that help you develop images and other media to better convey your message? If so, please share them in the comments below.

Online do-it-yourself media tools

• Bitstrips
• Pixton
• Strip Creator
• ToonDoo
• XtraNormal

heidicool.com is also on Facebook

Need more Web tips? Fan the heidicool.com Facebook page. I'm posting 1 tip/link there per day to offer ongoing advice on Web design, marketing and social media—without overwhelming your Facebook stream.

As some of you know, I regularly participate in a variety of real-time chats on Twitter, including #smchat, a weekly discussion of best practices in social media. On Wednesday September 30th at 1:00 p.m. e.d.t. I'll be moderating #smchat as we discuss what social media tactics people have implemented, how they have measured the results and how they have performed.

To prepare participants for the event I thought it might be helpful to give some examples.

Many people are jumping on the social media bandwagon these days just because they feel they should. One hear's people say "Everyone's on Twitter and Facebook, we need to start Tweeting and put up a Facebook page." Needless to say this isn't usually the best approach. Before picking tools and tactics one must assess needs, develop measurable goals and identify a target audience. Once that is done, then one can start developing strategies and tactics to connect with that audience (in their space, on their terms) in a way that will serve one's goals most effectively.

Your goals are set, what's your social media strategy?

To get things started, I'll give you an example of some of the things I've been doing. One of my goals is to get you (or someone you know) to hire me to consult on social media, offer guidance on search engine optimization or design and build a Web site or custom Wordpress blog. My audience includes small to medium sized businesses, academic departments at universities, individuals and others who may need such services. My strategy is to position myself as a reliable and knowledgeable resource for information on Internet marketing and related topics.

Tactics to implement this social media strategy include:

• Sharing links to worthwhile articles and videos via Google Reader Share, Delicious, Facebook, Twitter, Digg, StumbleUpon, and so forth—and conversing with people in those spaces.
• Blogging in-depth articles on Web related topics here on the Web Development Blog.
• Commenting on other blogs.
• Networking with special interest groups on LinkedIn, Ning and the real world.
• Answering questions on LinkedIn. (You can read more about my LinkedIn Q&A strategy in Maisha Walker's Inc. blog, The Internet Strategist in the article, Building Your Tribe - 6 LinkedIn Success Studies (final/part 3). Read the complete series to learn about the myriad ways you can use LinkedIn for business.)

This blog serves as the foundation for all of these strategies. It provides a destination for traffic from the social media services and offers content for me to share via those services. Since it is built as a part of my overall site, it also gives visitors quick and easy access to other information such as the services I offer, my portfolio and my contact form—and I'm working on some site changes that will make that even easier.

Time is a major cost factor in social media

Measuring marketing results is fairly straightforward. If I want to know which activities are driving the best traffic to my Web site I can look at Google Analytics to see who is visiting from where, how long they stay on site, how many pages they view, etc. This tells me that LinkedIn brings in more new traffic while Facebook brings in the most repeat traffic. Visitors from LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter all also read more pages and spend more time on site than visitors from StumbleUpon.

In terms of leads and sales I can count the requests for proposals that come in via LinkedIn messages, Facebook mail and my contact form. Measuring the ROI comes from comparing my time investment to the results. In direct mail one measures the cost per sale in terms of dollars spent. When implementing my own social media strategies I must measure the cost per sale first in hours worked, then use that to calculate costs.

Social Media goals come in many flavors—not just marketing

Networking with peers, monitoring your products and brand, enhancing customer service, collaborating with colleagues, sharing policies and procedures, listening for ideas, sharing knowledge, and other functions are also popular and practical uses for social media. Here are a few more examples of strategies and tactics one might use for a few of these goals.

Listening for ideas via social media

During last week's meeting of the Cleveland Social Media Club we listened to a panel discussion in which members of the local media discussed how they use social media. Panelists included:

• Kaye Spector - Health and Medical Reporter, The Plain Dealer
• Howard Fencl - Assistant News Director, WKYC-TV
• Joseph Sheppa - Interactive Content Manager, WVIZ/PBS & 90.3 WCPN - ideastream®
• Scott Suttell - Managing Editor, Crain's Cleveland Business
• Denise Polverine - Editor in Chief, Cleveland.com

As one would expect, these media outlets are all using Facebook and Twitter to publish headlines and links to stories or videos on their Web sites. But they're also listening for information. News travels so quickly via social media that it's not unusual for them to first hear something on Facebook that they can later confirm through other channels. They also listen to their followers to gauge interest levels in certain topics and events. If their Twitter followers are all talking about X and not about Y, then the newspapers, magazines and T.V. stations know that their readers and viewers have an interest in hearing more about X.

Others—including bloggers as well as those in mainstream media—use social media to listen for ideas. When I answer questions on LinkedIn, I can see if certain types of questions in my field are trending. This can give me ideas for blog posts I should write. I also read blogs and listen to podcasts to keep up with information and get new ideas.

For instance yesterday, while listening to Diggnation, I discovered that Adam Savage, co-host of Mythbusters reads a wide array of blogs and visits Digg.com daily to get story ideas for the T.V. show. He's using the same technique for mainstream media that I use for my humble blog. By simply following my own listening routine, I discovered what he was doing so that I could use him as another example in this post.

Measuring the results of listening is somewhat murky. If you need to justify this use of time one could create a spreadsheet that would tally how many ideas you find each day then develop a ratio comparing "finds" and usefulness to "time-spent." But if you are also reading and listening to increase knowledge it may be harder to quantify. How does one measure the value of such activities? I know that everything I learn in this field makes me better at what I do, but I've not come up with a calculation to demonstrate how much more effective I may be now than I was 5 years ago when I knew less. What I do know is that I will better serve my readers and clients if I keep striving to learn more.

Social media strategies in local politics

Ari Herzog and Jill Miller Zimon are both long-time bloggers, who I've come to know through their blogging activities. Jill is a writer and political analyst who blogs at Write Likes She Talks. Ari is an online media strategist and community manager for business and government who blogs at AriWriter. Each of them is running for City Council in their respective home towns and each is using social media in their campaigns.

One could argue that political campaigning is similar to mainstream marketing, but I think it also bears a particular connection to brand management. When running for office, candidates need to increase name recognition, build a positive reputation, let voters know about their goals and demonstrate how they would serve their communities if elected.

As writers, Ari and Jill have an advantage in this sphere. Each has produced a wealth of online material that is part of the online historical record. If you read their blogs, you will see that they are both candid and direct. While I eschew the word "transparency" they've both exhibited the real meaning of this in their writing. Neither hides behind jargon or political doubletalk, they speak their minds so that you can tell exactly what their position is.

Their similarities extend to social media. As you can see from the links below, each of them is using an array of social media services, and neither is new to this medium. While their strategies may have some subtle differences, both are using social media to spread their message and to let voters know that they are listening.

Jill Miller Zimon - campaigning for Pepper Pike, OH, City Council

• Friends of Jill Miller Zimon for Pepper Pike Council - Facebook Group
• Friends of Jill Miller Zimon for Pepper Pike Council - Facebook Page
• Jill Miller Zimon for Pepper Pike Council (Main Web site)
• Friends of Jill Miller Zimon Flickr Photos
• Jill Miller Zimon on LinkedIn
• Zimon for Council on Twitter
• Jill Miller Zimon You Tube Videos

Ari Herzog - campaigning for Newburyport, MA, City Council

• Ari Herzog for Newburyport City Council - Facebook Page
• Ari Herzog (Main Web site)
• Ari Herzog for Newburyport City Council Campaign Blog
• Ari Herzog on LinkedIn
• Ari 4 Newburyport on Twitter

Measuring the success of their campaigns will be relatively easy. They'll either win or lose. But measuring the impact of social media on the campaigns may be trickier. Will having more Facebook fans make a difference? Does it help to drive Twitter traffic to your site? How does one measure voter engagement? Blog comments? Online donations? Volunteers? How would you measure the results?

What strategies are you using for social media?

Frank Eliason has had great success using http://twitter.com/comcastcares to provide proactive customer service to Comcast customers. The Cleveland Social Media Club used it's Ning Network in conjunction with Google docs to collaborate on our Welcome to Social Media eBook. Companies and universities alike subscribe to Twitter searches to monitor brand and product mentions. What other ways would you use social media tools to serve your specific goals? How do you know if your strategies are working? Do you have measurement techniques in place to gauge success?

Please feel free to share your ideas and experiences in the comments below and/or during next Wednesday's live #smchat. If you've not previously participated in a Twitter chat, you can learn more in my article, Twitter chats: if you can’t meet in real space, meet in real time. I look forward to reading your ideas and suggestions.

Social Media Measurement & Chat Resources

• #smchat Schedule
• #smchat Network on Ning (for ongoing discussion)
• Tweeting With Your Twitter Community: How To Participate In A Twitter Chat
• Introduction to Measuring Social Media for PR/Marketing
• Measuring Social Media ROI: Does size matter?

heidicool.com is also on Facebook

Need more Web tips? Fan the heidicool.com Facebook page. I'm posting 1 tip/link there per day to offer ongoing advice on Web design, marketing and social media—without overwhelming your Facebook stream. (I just need 13 more fans to get a custom url; let's see if we can make that goal this week!)

Content is the core of on-site search engine optimization.

• You must provide useful information that people will seek.
• This information should incorporate words and phrases that people will actually use when searching for what you offer.
• Such words or phrases must be specific enough to distinguish your content from others.
• But…these words should also be generally used and understood by your target audience.

Word choice and SEO: striking the right balance

The above guidelines seem rather obvious, but it's often hard to find that sweet spot between a phrase like auto racing—which is so broad it will generate 32,300,000 search results—and a phrase such as "subaqueous auto racing" which generated 0 results at the time I wrote this. (Note: because I've used this phrase repeatedly, this page will probably soon become the 1 result for the term...unless some of you go out and create competing content.)

Here on the Web Development Blog, as you know, I write about topics related to Web development. In an ideal world I'd rank well for the phrase Web development but it's too common. It can also mean different things to different people. I'm a long-time blogger, but I only make a few posts per month so I can't compete with Wikipedia and other major players on such a frequently used term. But if I get more specific, I can do well. Today this blog came in 4th out of 231,000,000 results for web development blog. My old blog (which links to this one) comes in 7th, so for now at least I'm getting two good results for that phrase.

Write first for readers, then for SEO

While robots crawl the Web, they do so to help people.

I didn't get these search results by analyzing my site and stuffing the phrase "Web development blog" every place I could find. I just used the term in the most obvious places: in the section title, the primary menu, and anywhere it naturally fit in the text. If you write for humans (rather than robots) you'll naturally include many of the relevant words and phrases in your text, but you may still need to do a bit of fine-tuning to match your vocabulary to your readers.

When we're writing for the Web, we're usually writing about subjects with which we are very familiar. We may use specialized vocabulary that makes sense to us, but isn't used by our readers. This could include technical terms pertinent to the field, regional terms specific to where we live or even phrases specific to our organization.

In order to make sure that our copy is both easily understood and easily found via search, we need to take a step back and read/edit the content with our readers in mind.

Choosing reader-friendly phrases for SEO—an example from higher education

Colleges, universities and other non-profit organizations all depend on fund-raising to serve their missions. Some organizations call their fundraising departments "Advancement." Others use "Development" or "Philanthropy." Alas those outside the non-profit world, including many potential donors, don't see those terms in the same way as insiders. Someone involved in manufacturing may think of "Development" in terms of product development. A recent graduate may consider "Philanthropy" to be the realm of the rich—and not realize it also includes his/her $25 donation to the annual fund.

Schools that use simpler phrases such as "make a gift for XYZ" or "give to XYZ" make it easier for donors to find their giving pages. For example, if I Google give to Dartmouth, the first result takes me to their Why Give page which also includes a direct link to their online giving page.

Why worry about SEO when we link to Giving (or whatever) from the home page?

If I know that I want to find something on a particular site, I'll just type the address in the url, then use the navigation or on-site search to find what I seek. I'm not everyone. I know many people who will use the Google search bar even when they know a site's address. Dartmouth alumni and friends may very well Google "Give to Dartmouth" rather than going to http://www.dartmouth.edu to look for the Giving link. Thus it's helpful that Dartmouth ranks #1 on that phrase. Organizations that have large sites—common in academia, Dartmouth has more than 300,000 publicly indexed pages—rely heavily on on-site search because they offer so much information.

Taking advantage of long tail search terms

Horses have long tails, so can you.

While a phrase like give to Dartmouth is both specific and direct, we can also get good results from phrases that are more unique. Awhile back, in SEO - keywords do the darndest things I asked if you were getting traffic from unusual words or phrases you didn't expect. My friend Wayne mentioned, via Twitter, that he gets traffic on phrases we might not want to repeat. David commented that he is getting good results for "Long haired guinea pigs."

I just looked at my analytics again and am now getting results on click here, have you tried jargon and rt hacool. These actually appear in my top 10 which surprised me, but these are still logical. I've written posts advising against using click here and against business jargon, and hacool is my Twitter ID. (rt stands for reTweet which means to forward someone's message on Twitter.)

While these and more general phrases such as "Web development blog" or "blog website tutorial" appear among the top 10 phrases bringing traffic to my site, niche-specific phrases make a significant impact. The phrase quantify and visualize twitter search results produced 5 visits from people who spent an average of 16:50 minutes on the site and visited an average of 7.6 pages.

Admittedly, 5 visits isn't many. But when you also get 2 for how to start redesigning your web site, 3 for cool html blog, etc. they start to add up. People visit this site via almost 2,000 keyword combinations (many of which may be variations on a theme). The top phrases may bring hundreds of visits each, but when added together it's the little niche terms that bring in the majority of traffic. The collective success of these individually smaller elements is what is meant by the long tail.

Woohoo! My site has the #1 spot for "subaqueous auto racing"

While niche phrases produce traffic, they still need to be relevant to our content. When Google indexes this page, it may get the #1 spot for "subaqueous auto racing." But placing high in search results is only half the battle. Such results only matter if people are searching on that term AND if I provide useful information on the topic. You and I both know that this article is about word choice and SEO. So if anyone searches that phrase hoping to learn about underwater car racing, they will be sorely disappointed and leave the site. Some marketers like to brag about making the first page of search results, but if the phrase doesn't bring visitors it isn't helping.

When editing copy for SEO it's easy to get wound up worrying about what phrases you should rank for, but if you write for your readers and apply common sense, you'll start to see meaningful results.

SEO Keywords and Phrases Resources

• Fast keyword Research With Google's Wonder Wheel
• Google Adwords Keyword Tool
• Google Webmaster Tools: SEO
• How to Find and Target Long Tail Keywords for More Search Engine Traffic
• Researching Longtail Keywords with Google Adwords
• SEO Advice for Bloggers, Straight from the Horse’s Mouth

heidicool.com is also on Facebook

Need more Web tips? Fan the heidicool.com Facebook page. I'm posting 1 tip/link there per day to offer ongoing advice on Web design, marketing and social media—without overwhelming your Facebook stream.

Postscript: Google works fast!

As of 3:50 p.m. e.d.t today, September 10, 2009, this page did come in at #1 for subaqueous auto racing. Here's the screencapture of the Google results page. I have a Greasemonkey script installed on Firefox that also includes Twitter results. As a result of looking this up I'm now also finding reTweets and links I didn't yet know about.

United Airlines received a ton of bad publicity after their baggage handlers broke Dave Carroll's guitar. According to Carroll, United did later offer to pay for the repair. He asked them to make a charitable donation instead, which they did.

But imagine the other possible responses they could have made. What if they made a video explaining how they are going to correct the problem to prevent future mishaps? Or a video about the charitable cause that will benefit from their donation?

If they did this the bloggers and media outlets who post Carroll's United Breaks Guitars video could also post United's response and the world would see that they took the problem seriously—all for much less than the cost of a television ad.

Today I had lunch with John Heaney, a local Cleveland entrepreneur, marketer and social media advocate who also blogs about marketing at Orange Envelopes. One of the topics we discussed was the hesitancy some organizations have about implementing social media strategies.

Issues about controlling the message, intellectual property, firewalls, time commitment, return on investment (ROI), measuring results and goal setting are all common concerns, but in particular John raised a point that I've been hearing a lot about lately: negativity.

Specifically we've both heard from individuals and companies who worry that if you're participating in social media, you run the risk that people will say something bad about you. This is true, but the risk is there whether you are online or not. No matter how ethical or clever you may be, someone, somewhere, will be ready to disagree. There's no getting around that. None of us is capable of pleasing everyone all the time. But if we're participating ourselves, we can:

Listen:

People will talk about you or your organization whether or not you can hear them. Ignoring them won't keep the criticism at bay, so you might as well pay attention. If you set up Google alerts on your name or brand, subscribe to Yahoo and Google news search feeds, Twitter searches, etc. you can find out what they're saying about you—be it good or bad—immediately. If we know what others are saying about us on their blogs, our blogs, Twitter, Facebook, online media, discussion forums and elsewhere, we have the opportunity to take advantage of that knowledge and use it productively.

Learn:

Criticism comes in many forms. Some people (trolls) like to leave rude blog comments or make nasty remarks about your brand just because they're angry or they like to stir up a bit of controversy. But other comments can be more constructive. If someone complains about your customer service or your product, this points out a potential problem. You can now determine if this is something you need to fix or if it was just a one-time issue. Someone's product problem could also give you a great idea for a new product or a new version of an existing one. If someone's critique can lead you to build a better mousetrap, then it's worth a listen.

Evaluate:

What was the context of the criticism? Does it have a bearing on your reputation? Your customer service? Your product design? Should this information be passed onto others in your organization, or can it be safely ignored?

Rebecca Kelley, Director of Social Media for 10e20, recently wrote a critical blog post about a panel discussion she attended, Black Hat vs. White Hat Social Media and the Battle for Common Sense. In the original post she had made some negative remarks about Beth Harte who is the Community Manager at MarketingProfs and very well regarded for her knowledge of social media marketing. (I read her blog, The Harte of Marketing and follow Beth Harte on Twitter.) Beth evaluated the situation and chose not to respond. As it happened, other people reacted for her. Readers responded in ardent support of Beth. Rebecca read their comments. She then toned down her blog entry, documented the change and contacted Beth directly to arrange to discuss the panel more thoroughly. Beth and Rebecca each listened and evaluated the situation so that the matter could be peacefully resolved.

You don't need to act on every mention that is made of you, but if you listen regularly you can develop a system of triage in which you determine which mentions deserve which reactions. If you do this regularly and establish a policy, you'll be prepared for the big nasty—that seemingly harmless negative reaction that will get you bad international press if you don't respond in the right manner.

Act:

Once you've evaluated a comment—and deemed it worthy of a reaction—it's time to use that knowledge productively. Can the comment help you improve your widget design? Send it to your product development team. Has it shown a weakness in your customer service department? How can you fix it? Frank Eliason of Comcast became the international poster boy—for using social media to enhance customer service—when he start solving people's problems on his Twitter account, Comcastcares.

Respond:

Let the person who made the comment know what you intend to do. As I recently wrote in Here’s how one web designer deals with negative comments, I like to take a deep breath and step back a bit before responding. If during your evaluation you decide that a response isn't necessary, then you can get back to other matters. But if a response is warranted, then one wants to react clearly and tactfully. Did the person point out a problem that you are going to solve? Explain how you will solve it. Was the comment the result of a misunderstanding? See what you can do to clarify the confusion—while allowing the commenter to save face. If you take the diplomatic route then you both have a better chance of coming out with your reputation in tact. If you respond in anger you'll just make the problem worse.

If you can't solve the problem, do your best to explain why in a manner that will let the commenter know you really did your best. Share the situation with higher-ups in your organization, find out if there is a way to turn the problem into an opportunity, and keep listening.

Establish a baseline reputation via social media NOW.

I've been telling people for years that they need to establish their online presence before someone else does it for them. It behooves us all to take control of our own message. If I'm a small business without a Web site or other online presence, then the only things people will find when Googling my business will be reviews from others, media mentions, social media comments and other opinions written from an external perspective. If I build a site (or hire Heidi to build it for me), start a blog, create a Facebook page, share tips on Twitter, etc. then I can share my expertise and let people know what my business stands for.

What John cleverly pointed out, during our lunch, was that this social media presence also serves to establish your baseline reputation for providing good customer service, offering educational content or whatever else you might be communicating through social media. If you've been doing this regularly, then next year, when customer X blogs about your lousy information resources, he won't have as much clout. Other readers will see that most customers love your blog, enjoy using your customer discussion forum, follow your Tweets, etc. Customer X isn't speaking for the masses, but is instead in the minority.

And, since you are already listening, you will now be ready to respond to customer X in a timely and appropriate manner. If all goes well X can join the majority of your other happy customers. This is a far better outcome than you'll have if X writes a song—extolling your failures—that just happens to go viral on YouTube.

Related Social Media Resources

• A Chronology of Brands that Got Punk’d by Social Media
• Biggest Mistakes Made by Social Media Gurus
• Chicago Domino’s Gets Social Media Right!
• My biggest social media mistakes by Mack Collier
• Top 10 Twitter marketing blunders in photos
• United Airlines Online Public Response to Dave Carroll YouTube Video: 9 Tweets

heidicool.com is also on Facebook

I'm using the page to share one Web related tip or link each day, so that you can get more tips between blog posts—without being overwhelmed by a plethora of links. Become a fan today to receive these updates.

Sample page using semantic mark-up as viewed in Firefox.

Sample page using non-semantic mark-up as viewed in Firefox. Give or take a few pixels these look pretty much the same.

Sample page using semantic mark-up as viewed in Internet Explorer 6. As you can see, the banner breaks in IE 6 but everything else looks pretty much as expected. The page also breaks in IE 7 and IE 8 though the IE 8 version looks different. I've included these samples as a reminder to always check sites in multiple browsers.

Sample page using non-semantic mark-up as viewed in Internet Explorer 6. Again it looks almost the same at the semantic version, even breaking in the same manner.

The other day, Aaron Rester posed this question on Twitter: Webbies: any advice on explaining semantic HTML to non-webbies?

I wrote back that I usually show them some source code and walk them through things like using h1 and so forth for headers. That is what I usually do. In fact I'd just done that the other day when I was showing someone the changes I would recommend for search engine optimization (SEO).

But the question made me wonder if my explanations were adequate. If someone doesn't know anything about HTML or other mark-up languages, will such an explanation make sense? Or is there a better way to explain the differences between structural and presentational mark-up to clients and new Web designers?

Why do clients and other non-webbies need to know about semantic HTML?

Typically this topic comes up most often when one is discussing issues related to search optimization and accessibility. If a client needs to enhance their site for SEO, I may be recommending changes to the code that they won't even see when looking at the page in their browser. Understandably they will want to know why they should pay me to do things to their site that they won't notice. The changes we make may not be visually apparent, but they will convey additional information to Web browsers and search engines that can aid accessibility, usability and searchability.

What is semantic HTML?

Semantics is the study of meaning. Merriam-Webster's Online Dictionary provides us with a definition that relates closely to how the term is applied to HTML "3 a : the meaning or relationship of meanings of a sign or set of signs; especially : connotative meaning." HTML uses elements that convey structural meaning to Web browsers and other user agents such as search engine crawlers.

Writing a page in semantic HTML simply means that you are applying the appropriate structural elements to the various bits of content on a page. Huh? Code elements act like labels that tell the Web browser what each section of content is. HTML gives us structural elements to indicate headers, paragraphs, lists, tables and so forth. If I want to tell the browser to start a new paragraph, I'll type <p>. If I want to start a new subhead, I'll type <h5>.

Then isn't all HTML semantic?

You would think so, but no. Web browsers can be both fussy and forgiving. I can code the same content in multiple ways that will each look very similar when viewed, but will actually convey differing amounts of information to user agents.

Instead of using an <h5> I could use <p><strong>in front of my subhead and make it look the same as it would using <h5>. Such usage would be considered presentational mark-up. It can affect how the header looks, but it is not semantically correct because it doesn't let user agents know that this is a subhead. If a Web designer applies the incorrect elements to page content, the site may look perfectly acceptable. But it is not passing on vital information that user agents may need to:

• Help a visually impaired visitor navigate the page using screen reading software.
• Tell Google and other search engines what topics are the most important ones on the page.
• Show that you are citing a reference document such as a book.
• Indicate that you are presenting computer code, etc.

Same content, different mark-up

To illustrate this point I've created 2 very simple Web pages, one uses semantic mark-up and one using non-semantic mark-up. Basically the non-semantic version uses <p> for just about everything. When you view the pages through a regular browser you'll see that the semantic and non-semantic versions look pretty similar. They both look normal in Firefox, Safari and Opera, and they both break in various versions of Internet Explorer. You don't see the difference visually until you look at the pages in the text browser, Lynx.

When viewing the semantic page on Lynx, we can see that there is order to the page; it looks a bit like an outline. The menu looks like a menu and the headers standout to provide an introduction to the other text.

HTML elements in action, offering added information to user agents

Text readers for the visually impaired and search engine spiders are getting even more information than we can see in the Lynx semantic html example. They know that each menu link should be distinguished from the next. The use of an unordered list for the menu tells user agents to separate these links in a way that use of <p> does not, and allows users of screen readers to jump through or skip these elements to proceed to the main text. In the non-semantic version this is not clear, a text reader may speak all of those links together, making it more difficult for the user to navigate.

These user agents can also tell that the first header is more important than the second because it has been coded as an <h3> while the second header is an <h4>. Headers are ranked in order of importance from 1-6. Here we're using an <h1> for the site name, the most important header on the page. Search engine crawlers will see words in an <h1> as being more descriptive of the page as a whole. This is useful for search engine optimization, because we can include our keywords and phrases in our various headers to let the search engines know that core topics we are covering on the page. Thus on this page you'll notice that I've used the phrase "semantic HTML" in both the text and subheads (which in this case are <h5>'s.) That said I've not used it in every subhead because having these headers make sense to you, the reader, is still more important than SEO. People come first, then robots.

In this example I've focused on just a few a few of the many HTML elements that are important to semantic mark-up, but hopefully these will give you a clearer sense of how such usage can help SEO and accessibility. Other elements such as address, cite and blockquote can add additional meaning to a page's code. You can learn more about other elements and related issues in the reference links below.

Semantic mark-up, validation and content

It's always a good practice to validate your code to check for errors and potential problems, but site validation doesn't guarantee that you've used the best mark-up for the site. While the validator can make sure you've used allowed elements, it has no way of knowing if you've them in the most appropriate manner. Both the semantic and non-semantic page samples used in this post were produced using valid W3C standards compliant XHTML and CSS. One is clearly better formed than the other, but both also break in Internet Explorer.

Thus it's also important to check sites in multiple browsers and to simply think carefully about how visitors will read the site. If my samples were for real sites, I'd fix the IE problem, but I used it here to remind us that using valid semantic code is just the beginning. There will always be additional details we must consider.

It's also worth noting that, when it comes to SEO, a semantically well-formed site is not a substitute for good content. Search engines such as Google are designed to help users, like you and me, find the most relevant pages for the information we seek. With that goal in mind they have to accommodate a wide variety of coding differences. If your competitor has great content and plenty of good inbound links, while yours does not, then his/her site will still win out, even if the code is atrocious. But if you can produce great content and present it in the appropriate format you will be off to a good start.

Semantic HTML Resources

• The Elements of Meaningful XHTML (presentation showing examples)
• Fangs Screen Reader Emulator
• Guide to Semantic Use of HTML Elements
• Illinois Information Technology Accessibility Act Implementation Guidelines for Web-Based Information and Applications 1.0
• More than one H1 on a page: good or bad? (Video by Google's Matt Cutts)
• Semantics in HTML 5
• W3C Semantic Data Extractor
• W3C: G115: Using semantic elements to mark up structure

Rather than leaving you with a file not found error, I'll turn this into an experiment. The note I left to myself was:

"keywords must rank high, but also be used by real people to find your stuff. intro to longtail, etc."

My plan is to dig into the idea that you can rank well for a phrase that seems useful and have it not bring traffic. Or you can rank well on a longtail phrase that seems so bizarre you wouldn't expect it to bring any traffic at all. For example try Googling Bill is Braising Shrimp. I used this phrase in a recent blog entry. It's an odd combination of words, so I'm not surprised that I rank high on it. But it's also brought 43 visitors this month. That is not something I would have expected.

What about you? Have you found SEO success through phrases you might not expect? Do you have tips you'd like to share with people trying to hone in on keywords as they develop their content? Is there anything you would like me to discuss as I elaborate on the topic?

I look forward to hearing from you!

July meeting of the Cleveland Webbloggers

Social media is a great way to make face-to-face connections. I started going to our Cleveland Webbloggers meet-up group last summer. These real-life meetings have given me a chance to get to know the personalities behind the usernames. When we gather together, be it in a small group like last week or a larger assembly of 20 or more, we'll talk about anything from writing and blogging platforms to Cleveland politics and philosophy. The mood of the group sets the topic and the tone. But at it's core, the Cleveland Webbloggers group gives us a chance to share ideas and best practices with our peers, whether they blog professionally or just for fun.

Of course, as you know, one can only cover so much material in one monthly meeting. And not all of our peers are local. To reach others in our topical niche, particularly those who may come from other industries or backgrounds, we reach out through the Web. Each week via social media services such as Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, StumbleUpon, blogs, etc., I connect with people all over the world, from Syracuse to Singapore.

Most of this is done via time shifting. If I'm still up and Tweeting, when my friend Wayne gets to work in England, it means I've stayed up well past my bedtime. While that is not unusual, it is more often the case that Wayne will share a link via Twitter or save a bookmark on Delicious while I'm off dreaming about vampire sea turtles discovering underwater time portals—or whatever other nonsense floats through my mind. After I wake up I'll see what he and the other Europeans have shared so that I can respond, share my own links, and so forth. Generally speaking this works quite well.

Time-shifting is incredibly useful, but sometimes it's just more efficient to meet in real-time. Skype calls and chat rooms are quite handy when you know the participants in advance. But for larger topical meetings—open to a wide audience—real-time chats via Twitter are a popular alternative.

Last night I spent 2 hours chatting with 100+ fellow bloggers on my couch.

100 people would be a tight fit even on a giant couch like this.

As you may have guessed, my couch doesn't have enough room to accommodate 100 people. But it does have plenty of room for me and my laptop—through which I can login to Twitter and start chatting with bloggers, social media advocates or any other group that meets regularly online.

What are real-time Twitter chats and how do they work?

Real-time Twitter chats are typically held on a weekly basis, though scheduling may vary. Each topic-based chat picks a recurring day and time to meet, then assigns a unique hashtag for users to add to their Tweets. The hashtags mark the Tweets as belonging to the chat so that users can easily follow the discussion through a variety of online tools.

At the start of a chat, a moderator/host will typically ask people to introduce themselves, then ask questions or suggest specific topics for discussion. Some chats may follow a rigid format such as devoting 15 minutes to each question, while other chats evolve more organically. I participate regularly in two chats:

• #blogchat, hosted by @MackCollier is a forum for people to discuss issues related to blogging, including writing, marketing, blog platforms, RSS feeds, design, etc. Meetings are held Sunday nights at 9:00 p.m. U.S. eastern time.
• #smchat, hosted by @SourcePOV (Chris Jones) "explores Social Media best practices, and new ways to drive value in this space, with thought to collaborative innovation and viable knowledge networks." Meetings are held Wednesdays at 1:00 p.m. U.S. eastern time.

Other popular chats include #journchat ( journalists, bloggers and public relations—one of the oldest and most popular chats), #litchat (for booklovers) and #eventprofs (for event planning professionals). Meryl K. Evans assembled a very useful list of Twitter chats on her blog. New chats are constantly being added, so the list is now maintained as an interactive spreadsheet. Whether you are interested in agriculture, design, or food, there's probably a chat available to suit your needs. If not, check the schedule, choose a time, pick a hashtag and start one yourself!

Tools for following Twitter hashtags

If you're following more than a dozen people on Twitter, you've probably noticed that it gets a bit noisy. Trying to follow a hashtag in the middle of your normal Twitter stream can be even more difficult. Thankfully there are a variety of Twitter services and tools that can help. Here are a few of the more popular ones.

Tweetchat

Twitter Search

If you search on a particular hashtag, such as #smchat, Twitter search will pull up a list of all the most recent Tweets including that hashtag. If you see a Tweet to which you would like to respond, you can just click the reply button, write your message and type #smchat at the end of your Tweet. Then return to the search page to continue reading.

TweetChat

Sign into Tweetchat using your existing Twitter ID and password. Then type in the hashtag you would like to follow, such as #blogchat, and TweetChat will present you with a page listing all of the current #blogchat Tweets. Tweetchat features a box where you can type your Tweets and also includes buttons that make it easy to reply or retweet messages.

Tweetgrid

Tweetgrid works similarly to Tweetchat and is the service I use most often. Simply search on the hashtag you wish to follow and you will be brought to a page listing the recent Tweets with a feature enabling you to reply, reTweet, etc. If you select the "party" option instead of the "search" option you can also designate your username and the username(s) of the chat's host. This will bring up a page showing separate columns for the main stream, your own Tweets, and those of the moderator. This can make things a bit easier to follow.

What the hashtag?!

This user-editable hashtag encyclopedia let's users follow a chat as they would in other tools, but also let's moderators add descriptive information about the hashtag to the page. Users may also create transcripts of chat sessions based on date-ranges. These can be printed to .pdf files to be saved for archival purposes. As an example you can read the .pdf transcript from this week's #blogchat.

Monitter

Monitter is a tool to let you monitor keywords used on Twitter in real-time. When you enter the site you are presented with 3 columns listing various searches. Replace the search in any column with a hashtag, @username or plain word to follow it's mentions. You can respond to conversations by clicking a reply or retweet button appearing under each Tweet.

Tweetdeck

Tweetdeck is an Adobe Air application that you can use instead of the Twitter Web page for all of your Twitter activities. I use it because I can create columns multiple columns on topics such as Cleveland, marketing and higher education to which I can assign the users I follow most frequently. Tweetdeck also lets you filter columns by keywords, follow Facebook status updates and create search columns. The latter is another popular way to follow a hashtag or chat.

While these tools are helpful for following Twitter chats, they're also handy for following hashtags for other reasons. People use hashtags for topical searches such as tracking #recipes people post on Twitter, following Tweets related to conferences/events and to keep track of trending topics such as the Iran Election or Spymaster.

Twitter real-time chats offer access to new insights and opinions

As I hinted in the beginning, real-time chats give us the opportunity to connect with people we might never have the chance to meet locally. They give us access to people from a variety of backgrounds and experiences. I find this useful because it gives me insights into different perspectives.

For instance, recently on #smchat a lot of discussion has been focused on the topics of intellectual property and knowledge management. This is a concern for many companies exploring social media. They want to share information with customers that will help sell products and they want to share knowledge with other business and government collaborators as part of product development. But they also need to safeguard trade secrets and other confidential information. So the question for us is, how do they manage both? Should companies restrict access to technologies that make sharing easier? Should they open up technologies but educate users about policies regarding what should and shouldn't be shared? If we as social media advocates come up with solutions, how do we educate the corporate leaders who would implement such policies? How does the model change based on the industry in question or the communications goal? These are hard questions, so naturally we could spend months or years trying to sort this all out.

What's intriguing about this discussion is the variety of minds adding input. When I worked for a university I pondered communications concerns with colleagues in my department, the attorneys' office, ITS or with clients in other campus departments. I might also ponder such ideas with others in higher education or Web development. But I rarely had the chance to hold such discussions with attorneys, engineers, marketers, accountants, etc., working in industries ranging from consultants and government contractors to advertising agencies, restaurant managers and manufacturers—all at the same time.

I find this useful because people in industry X may be facing challenges that those of us in industry Y never encounter. By bringing everyone together we have a unique opportunity to learn how these questions impact others and we can take away knowledge that we can put to use in our own fields. This strikes me a an incredibly valuable way to collaborate.

Twitter chats are a great way to find cool Tweeps

Of course, useful insights tend to be shared by smart minds. The people who provide the ideas are people worth following. I often follow (and am followed back by) dozens of new contacts after a good chat session. While many Twitter users are overly concerned with gaining a large quantity of followers, my focus is on quality. It's hard enough to follow 1,000+ people, so if I'm going to do it they better have something useful to say. The people I meet during Twitter chats do.

This sounds great, but seriously, how could you possibly have a worthwhile discussion in 140 character Tweets?

Before I started attending chats I wondered the same thing. It's challenging to make a point in 140 characters, especially when those characters must also include the hashtag. But in a way it's easier in real-time. If you make point A, and I respond with point B, you'll see it right away. Then you can respond back and things start flowing like a normal conversation. You may have to break up an idea into a few separate Tweets, but somehow it all comes together.

Conversations begun during Twitter chat can also continue later in other venues. For instance #smchat has a sister site on Ning through which users can post discussions, questions, videos and other documents. Mack Collier, posts a recap of the #blogchat on his blog to which users can add additional comments. With all of the social media tools available, there's always some way to continue the conversation.

If there's a Twitter chat related to your field of interest, I highly recommend giving it a try.

Twitter chat and hashtag resources

• Fast & Furious - Twitter Chat (reactions from a guest chat host)
• #hashtags directory
• List of Twitter Chats
• Tweet Your Message to a Larger Audience with Hashtags
• Tweeting With Your Twitter Community: How To Participate In A Twitter Chat

Writing comes in many forms and styles. When eating, we find it easier to use the right utensil for the food in front of us. In the case of ice cream, most of us would prefer a spoon to a fork. When it comes to the Web, we're given a variety of opinions as to what is the correct form or style.

Web copywriting myths aren't consistent:

• Web readers have short attention spans. Give them short paragraphs with bullet points, so they don't have to read.
• Long form marketing copy sells. Write long descriptive pages emphasizing features and benefits, continuously repeating your call to action while hinting at the wonders that await.

There's a kernel of truth in each of these philosophies. But in the end, a copywriter's job is to communicate, in as many—or as few—words as it takes to convey the message to our readers. In my mind there isn't a style specific to the Web. It's not a matter of choosing the fish fork for a brochure and the snail tongs for Web copy. Instead it's a matter of tailoring your copy to your particular communications goal and your intended reading audience.

While I've written several articles about writing on this blog, this one is meant to be more of a general overview of my writing philosophy. At the end I've also included links to more detailed entries on this subject.

Sales Copy

Whether we're trying to sell handmade jewelry, promote an event, entice students to apply to our degree program or generate sales leads, we're asking our readers to make a decision. My goal in writing sales copy is to help them make that decision (to buy) more easily. A simple—jargon free—product description, coupled with a list of features and benefits lays the foundation.

The description tells them that our offering may be the right solution for their needs. The features and benefits explain how and why it can solve their problem so they can determine if it is the best solution for them. If a product or service is complex, we can then link to additional information such as fact sheets, product specifications, case studies and testimonials that demonstrate both how the product or service works, and how it has worked for others.

An educated consumer is a happy consumer. When we give our customers the facts they need to make an informed purchasing decision, we give them the tools they need to make that decision now—without hemming and hawing while wondering if our wondrous widget is right for them. Naturally your product or service must live up to expectations, but if your copy helps customers buy with confidence, you can reduce the possibility of buyer's remorse while paving the way to customer satisfaction. Satisfied customers are repeat customers. They're the one's who'll keep your business running, from now into the future.

Bill is braising shrimp.

Buy our product. Save time. Eat well.

Just because our copy is informative, doesn't mean we don't have room for creativity. "Bill is braising shrimp" is the headline I used in an ad for a law book. It was part of a series of ads promoting the time-saving features of the product line. Bill had time to cook a nice dinner for his friends because our book gave him the information he needed more quickly, so he didn't have to spend his evening in the law library.

There's a story to tell behind each of our product's features or benefits. We can use such stories to lend a snappy headline and explain, in human terms, how our offering can benefit customers in ways they will easily recognize.

Informational & Educational Copy

Clarity is as key to sharing knowledge as it is to selling products. Many organizations use knowledge sharing content in support of their sales and customer service efforts. Others may use it to provide an educational service. In either scenario, the goal is to educate readers in a way that will let them apply this knowledge to their own lives.

When writing informational copy, I try to think of myself as a teacher whose students may come from a variety of backgrounds and skill levels. If I want to teach them how to do X, or help them understand how Y works, I start with the basics. As with sales copy, there may be an opportunity to tell a story, or use an example that will resonate with readers. But to start, I'll begin with a simple premise, then walk readers through the process step-by-step. I want to provide enough details to be thorough. And I want to use language that is precise but easily understood.

I harp on language, because it can so often befuddle. If I start telling you "how to maximize your ROI using on-site SEO to leverage combinatorial search algorithms", it's going to sound like a bunch of business-speak gibberish. It will make you have to work harder to understand my meaning, while making me look like a pretentious fool who may be using buzzwords as a substitute for real knowledge and experience. If my goal is to share knowledge, then I want to package that knowledge in words and sentences that you will quickly and easily understand.

Whether you're explaining to children that the earth revolves around the sun, or teaching your customers how to install additional RAM on their computer, you want to keep it simple enough to follow, and thorough enough to be complete. If we do this properly our readers may take it for granted that our copy made sense. That's O. K. Our goal is not to impress them with the effort it took to write, our goal is to communicate. If our readers can leave our page, having grasped the knowledge we intended to share, we've done our job.

Writing to connect with readers

If you're reading this, you've probably visited many a Web site over the years. You've encountered sites that compelled you to buy a widget and tell all of your friends about your great experience. And you've visited sites that sent you away—muttering in frustration as you wondered what rabid badger was hired to write such drivel. In either case you know what works and what doesn't. If you have a story about a Web site that either succeeded or failed—in connecting with you as a reader—please feel free to share it in the comments.

Related writing articles

• Beware of your vocabulary
• Copy Writing: Long vs. Short, Does it Matter?
• Building your site: Tertiary pages—When more is more
• Marketing is matchmaking: making introductions through lead generation
• Say what you mean—don’t let jargon drive your visitors away.
• Voice and Tone: Writing to reflect your personality as well as your message (Part 1)
• Voice and Tone: Writing to reflect your personality as well as your message (Part 2)
• Web writers: What are we? Journalists? Marketers? Information Providers? Opinion makers? Scholars?
• Writing to be understood by your audience

The above Flash animation file is a mini-Web site used for demonstration purposes. Were it standing on its own a user would see it as a multi-page site with an image on the front page that is used to navigate to interior pages.

For those of you who don't have, or cannot see Flash content, the introductory page has a photo with an image of 2 mausoleums. Clicking on the left mausoleum takes you to a page with photos and clicking on the right one takes you to a page featuring Author Rimbaud's poem, Ballad of the Hanged.

A few weeks back, in Is Flash evil? No, but Flash-based sites can be a marketing nightmare, I discussed some of the potential problems Flash-based sites can create in regard to search optimization and accessibility. Today I'd like to continue the discussion with a focus on usability. Before I start discussing examples, I do want to make a few things clear.

Not every Flash-based site suffers from every problem I'll address. There are many very talented designers who are doing interesting things with Flash, while also working to keep usability in mind. This article isn't for them. It's for the designers, either new to Flash, or less well-versed in HTML, usability and accessibility who may not realize these problems could be lurking on their sites.

Also, if you are a designer who is producing Flash based-sites that overcome these challenges, please feel free to share your tips and examples with us in the comments below.

The Flash user experience: don't let design interfere with usability

Flash has some cool features. It let's us control typography, offer interactivity, make things move and is scalable. These features are all quite handy, but they also provide us with opportunities to confuse and annoy our site visitors. To illustrate this I've included some examples of typical Flash problems in my sample sites, Angst Space and Shapes.

Note: I found many real world examples I could have used for this article, but rather than publicly criticizing the designers—by pointing out that site X is really cool, but broken—I thought it would be more tactful to create my own samples.

1. Introductory animation.

Many sites, even HTML sites will begin with some sort of Flash splash page. This could include an animation, video, company motto, etc. Hopefully it also includes a "skip intro" button because in most cases these intro pages take time to load and don't offer informative content.

Back in 2002 when I took a Flash class at the Cleveland Institute of Art, I too succumbed and made Flash intro pages. I did a site for a concert series called Thursdays in the Park, and the intro page had moving colored dots (from the event logo) and included the names of the bands which fell into a list one by one. The intro then directed users to the main static page.

I built the page that way because I wanted an excuse to put my new Flash skills to work, but the animation didn't offer any value. I thought it looked cool because things moved, but most users, especially those under 30 who grew up with the Internet are not impressed by shiny moving objects. They've seen it all before. All they want is to get the information they need as quickly and as appropriately as possible. All I accomplished with the page was to show that I knew Flash.

The Shapes site includes a short animation of shapes morphing into one another. It gives the user a visual clue that the site is about shapes but animation wasn't required to convey that idea. Mostly it's just shapes moving about for the sake of movement.

If your subject requires animation to illustrate the topic, then it makes total sense to incorporate motion into the project. But if you're sitting at your computer, scratching your head as you ponder what what you might animate to introduce topic X, then you probably don't need animation at all.

Graphical navigation

Designers are often looking for new ways to present navigation beyond the traditional menuing system. This can be fun, but if users don't figure out the system immediately they may leave before they get a chance to see your content. Our attempts to be clever may instead hinder the visitor experience.

I once saw a site that had a row of colored squares under the primary navigation menu. It also had a left side menu, so I thought the squares were just decorative. Then I happened to mouse over one. Lo and behold it opened up another secondary menu (different from the side menu). I only discovered this hidden menu because I was moving my mouse around the page. I suspect many people never saw it and were stuck grumbling at the page trying to figure out how to find what they were looking for.

Traditional menus are boring, but they're familiar. Site visitors are used to the way they work. If you're targeting an audience that is more likely to go mouse-exploring, a unique navigation system may be just fine. But if your audience is more mainstream, don't hide or camouflage the menus, they may not know where to look. Offering a familiar interface can help make sure you don't confuse your visitors.

In the Shapes and Angst Space sites I used graphic elements, such as shapes, photographs and icons for navigation. I didn't put a lot of content on these sites, so most of you probably figured it out, but some of the sites I've seen in the wild are much more confusing.

The Shapes site also includes sections of hidden content that designers sometimes include on Flash sites. If you mouse over things or click in places that don't seem obviously clickable you'll discover an easter egg and extra bits of information. That's fine for Shapes, because none of this content is important. But if I were promoting a degree program or trying to sell widgets I'd want to make such information easier to find.

When designing for the real world, I find it is safer to err on the side of simplicity. If I want to make sure that all visitors can navigate to X and Y and can easily read B and C, I'll offer text-based options for familiarity and accessibility.

Sizing and scrolling

As mentioned, Flash is scalable. I can make a .swf file of any size then publish it large in one place and small in another. The only things that don't scale well will be raster images (such as photos) included in the file and some type elements (depending on your settings.)

Alas, there seems to be a secret cabal of designers who create Flash sites and embed them in their HTML at sizes, that probably look superb on a 24" cinema display, but don't fit in the browser window on my Mac. And for some reason these sites don't offer scrollbars. I saw one last week that did this. I could navigate using the links in the top menu, but I couldn't read the text on the bottom of the pages or view the footer. I went to the contact page to try to let them know about the problem…but the submit button for the form was below the fold. Since I couldn't scroll down to it, I couldn't press it, and they never got my message.

This is a troubling issue because if visitors can't easily navigate, or even read all of the content on a site, then they will leave. This site was for a Web design firm, so they're potentially losing clients due to this one, easily fixable issue.

As an example, take a look at Angst Space at full size. When viewed on my computer I can see just the top part of the photo of the mausoleums. I can click on those and get to another page, but then I can't read the full text on the poetry page, or interact with the images on the photos page.

I come across such sites at least once a month, but I find it mystifying, because this situation is quite easily prevented. I use swfobject 2.0 to embed Flash .swf files (and videos, etc.), and when I use it normally, as I did for the medium-size version of Angst Shape, the scrollbars are readily available whether you need them or not—just as they would be in any normal page.

To remove the scrollbar for the full-sized example of Angst Space I actually had to add overflow:hidden to the body element in the CSS file. I don't know if the sites I find are disabling scrolling on purpose or if it's a result of using invalid code to embed their .swf files, but if you're building sites in Flash, be sure to test them on a variety of computers to make sure you're visitors aren't experiencing the same problem.

Flash and the Mobile Web

As I was writing this I sent out a Tweet asking if anyone had any Flash pet peeves they thought I should include. Interestingly the first two replies related to hand-held devices. Given the wide array of mobile devices and their respective browser platforms it is still a challenge to create sites that work well on a wide variety of gadgets, but Flash adds to this challenge.

1. As interactive strategist, Kati Davis (@katidavis) points out, Flash doesn't work on an iPhone. And it doesn't look like it will anytime soon. If your audience includes iPhone and iPod Touch users, you will want to provide some way for them to access alternative content. I see more and more friends browsing sites via iPhone now that they never would have tried to view on mobile phones a few years ago.

Developers used to focus on providing mobile support for specific types of sites: event schedules, news, directions, store hours, etc. But now people could be browsing anything from Amazon to your blog on their iPhone, so it makes sense to keep these users in mind.

2. Mobile devices that support Flash are still small hand-held gadgets with tiny screens. Designer Alan Houser (@alanhouser) said, "I'd say there will be a ton of issues when using flash content on mobile devices. Literal fat-finger issues." This is a rather important point. If a site like Angst Space was reduced to fit a mobile device that supported it, the icons and thumbnails that users click would be super tiny. Thus it would be tricky to click on such items using a touch screen device.

Admittedly I don't know that much about Flash and the mobile Web, but Adobe does. They've created Flash Lite specifically to generate content for mobile devices and are working with manufacturers to implement this on many different devices. If you're a Flash designer who wishes to offer support for mobile devices, visit Adobe's Mobile and Devices Development Center to learn more.

Flash Usability Conclusions

The issues I've addressed today seem rather obvious and simple, yet I still come across many Web sites don't address these problems. As Web designers/developers we're creating communications tools. We're trying to convey some message to our audience so that they can respond by buying our products, applying to our universities, reading our blogs or whatever else we hope that they will do. If that's our goal, then we just need to put the user foremost in our mind when we design our sites. Whether we're developing in HTML, Flash, Silverlight or something else we'll all be better served if we make sites that are easy for our visitors to use, read and navigate.

Flash and Usability Resources

• Adobe Flash Developer Center: Testing and Usability
• Alertbox: Jakob Nielsen's Newsletter on Web Usability
• Flash Resources Listing (Univ. of Minnesota, Duluth)
• Usability experts are from Mars, graphic designers are from Venus (old but interesting)
• 50 Beautiful Flash Web sites - Some of these sites are astoundingly cool to look at, yet some also have usability issues.