Introducing a selection of Web 2.0 and social internet tools that build a Newsroom for your business.
A Newsroom is an area on a Web site specifically built for journalists. Journalists are forthcoming writing an article about your business when it’s possible to disseminate company news and information. RSS (Really Simple Syndication) is a factor in getting the content out there [aggregated on the Internet and through news readers], but is not the be all and end all. It is merely another powerful weapon in the arsenal of the Newsroom. Going beyond RSS the Newsroom provides rich content—images, video and audio capabilities—as well as social tagging and enabling wider reading on content subjects.
[Read more on How to make Web sites a haven for journalists]
27 May 2008
The landscape has changed when it comes to both Web and Public Relations (PR) professionals. PR cannot exist without social media, social networking, social bookmarking, tagging, RSS, E-Zines, Blogging, Vlogging, Podcast’s, SEO and Micro Blogging. If you’re in PR and you are not familiar with these terms you are antiquated. It is as clear cut as that. Journalists that you rely upon to get your story out have all adapted to these formats commonly referred to as Web 2.0. Clients demand web presence and not just a presence but a lively existence Online. Non adoption of the techniques required to make the clients voice heard will result in lacklustre success. This is nothing short of new information, PR 2.0—the term coined by Brian Solis—has been around since the 90’s.
[Read more on Digital Web and PR, The Lines Blur]
25 May 2008
I used to think my vocation would always be graphic designer. Christ, I even took a degree course in graphic communication. However, I haven't the foggiest about type setting or colour separation. These technical specifications are what graphic designers are au fait with—not me. This is why I soon left my course and landed my first Web design role at Diskeeper Corporation.
I knew my strengths lay in what we—online experts—have come to call today, digital media. Whereas the technical specifications of a graphic designer are type setting and colour separation plates, the Web designer working knowledge is in Web page expansion, graphical user interface (GUI) design and accessibility considerations.
[Read more on Why graphic designers are not Web designers]
19 May 2008
Okay, so I don’t normally go in for these ultra geeky posts but I think I have thought up a really helpful solution to tagging tweets in Twitter without disrupting the regular flow of a conversational tweet. I have been intrigued by the use of hashtags in twitter to store snapshots and ideas that may be called up in the future, for instance #idea. But I am with Dave Couston when it comes to hashtag use. I absolutely detest the thought of annoying people with something that is only meant for my own consumption, or the consumption of a small party of people involved in a unique hashtag.
[Read more on Twitter: Separating content from Hashtag Meta data]
5 May 2008
Xobni, pronounced zob-knee is the spelling of inbox backwards. Groundbreaking! It is also the name of new software currently in Beta and rated by Microsoft and Bill Gates. Xobni plugs into the Microsoft Outlook sidebar to bring a much more social way for relating to our contacts. Using a powerful analytics package it is able to show you who your top contacts are, send to receive ratios and map out the time of day you usually receive emails from a particular contact. The part that excites me most is the way in which it tracks conversations.
[Read more on Working smarter: Using Xobni to make Outlook social
3 May 2008
It shocks me to see web programming examples breaking the rules of accessibility and common practices in published books. I don’t feel it sets the greatest of examples to anyone trying to get a foot in the industry when supposed authorities on subjects cannot even get it correct in their own publications. Take Microsoft Press for instance. Programming Microsoft ASP.NET 3.5, published 2008. This is written by Dino Esposito, an authority on ASP.NET and AJAX.
[Read more on Why aren't experts like Microsoft being expert?]
3 May 2008
From experience, clients who commission DigiKev to build a small website solution, perhaps even just a mini site with a handful of pages, at some point in the future may require additional pages or sections to be added. Larger websites with a multitude of information and complex structures will more than likely require expansion or remodelling of the configuration to accommodate a new campaign style or to work more efficiently for search engine optimisation after studying the analytics.
[Read more on Working smarter: Building expandable, modular websites part I]
2 May 2008
From my experience, web designers fall into three distinct camps. The first is the graphic designer turned web designer. They have the fundamentals of page layout, an eye for detail and a strong grasp of design consistency and typographical techniques. The graphical web designer will more than likely be able to build a website in HTML, will have an intermediate knowledge of Flash animation and will get around this format using the timeline and visual tweening. Some will have a clear grasp of using style sheets and producing HTML markup which is both semantic and standards compliant. This is the camp I grew up in.
[Read more on Working smarter: Learning a programming language]
14 April 2008
Flash movies, subtle gradients, iconography. All just dressing up right? The small things. It is all about the small things that make a website stand out from the rest and usually it is these items that get overlooked by the web visitor, taken for granted even. Without them they would soon leave in a frustrated state never to return again. So what are these small things?
[Read more on What makes a website user friendly?]
10 April 2008
I need to start touting myself as more of an authority as a web designer: I am a great web designer and able to create cutting edge designs that fit into beautifully crafted style sheets and templates that take into account a major aspect of how websites function. Growth. The web designs I create expand and grow not just in main content areas but also anywhere else where content regions rest. For instance, navigational menus. There we have some excellent touting.
[Read more on Working smarter: Web design tutorials]
9 April 2008
I have found that I seem to be only able to focus on one thing at a time in my life, whether it is my passion for mountain biking, designing websites and running a freelance business or writing entries for my blog. I don’t know whether it is anything to do with the old wives tales of men being unable to multi-task but more along the lines of the way my mind works in terms of being a creative entity and a bit of a free spirit. That’s my theory anyway. I seem to get caught up in something I enjoy doing and all my passion goes into that one thing allowing everything else to just slump by the wayside.
[Read more on Working smarter series]
31 March 2008
I haven’t stopped, seriously. Since the end of February I have been designing, creating, building and testing websites. The freelance work has really been flowing in from several different sources which have been fantastic but unfortunately something has had to slip. That has been the time to sit down and write entries for my blog and to go and read others and see what is occurring amongst my community of contacts.
[Read more on And breathe…]
6 March 2008
Two weekends a go I embarked on what I thought would be a rather large but tasty blog post reviewing the new Waitrose website which had adopted all manner of social interactions with its users. It honestly began as a blog post but as I got into it and further into the Waitrose website I found that I was no longer writing a blog post, it had become an article. At the point where I had reached in the region of 4000 words I was advised by my good friend David North that it was an article and I should distribute it as such. Thanks David, you are very right.
[Read more on When a blog post becomes an article]
Partner in crime, Mark Steadman who has kindly given me a weekly spot of talking absolute rubbish and biting the bit on the latest news on the podcast New Media Junkie has just unveiled a very neat website which will allow you to get in on the action too. So how is this done? Well I am sure like most people you have those annoying things that eat away at your very core. I thought so. Well rather than bottling them up and letting them fester, a public service is at hand. It’s name, Dial-a-rant. In Mark’s words “You can now vent your spleen on a world stage, by calling +44(0)121 288 9321 from a phone or dial.a.rant from Skype. So now for just the cost of a local call you can share your anger with the world!” you must then claim your rant by entering your details on the Dial-a-rant website and the best rants of the week will appear on the weekly podcast released every Sunday at New Media Junkie. This is a fantastic service and I am sure that I will be making good use of this too.
19 February 2008
There is a bug going around Birmingham at the moment and I have caught it. It’s the blogging virus and it is spread through close contact, speech, hearing and touch. Yesterday evening was the second Birmingham bloggers meet up and it was a much more interesting dynamic than the last. Not to say the first was bad, I got a lot out of it and we discussed some very interesting topics but this time with around twenty people and with such a mixed bag of styles and genres of blogging it really had a zing about it. Without meaning to exclude anyone’s particular style of delivery, to give you a flavour there were political bloggers, press bloggers, social media analysts, Birmingham promoters, personal bloggers, rant specialists, podcasters, creative and design promoters and a cartoonist.
[Read more on Birmingham blogging bug pandemic]
18 February 2008
Last week proved interesting, firstly I took up an offer by Rhett Soveran of Epiblogger; Rhett was looking for willing bloggers to have their posts critiqued for upcoming posts on writing samples. I obliged his offer and my post ‘Social media transparency pitfalls for businesses’ was selected. Rhett put together ‘Blogging in the Microwave Age’ which is a very interesting read on fragmentation of posts and he showed some insights into my blog post structures that I didn’t even realise I was doing but are working well from what I hear. I leave bite sized chunks to reel in the readers and progressively lengthen the paragraphs as I reach the conclusion.
[Read more on A blog critique, new media junkies and the second Birmingham Bloggers Meet]
13 February 2008
Just to make it perfectly clear from the outset, I am not here to preach how others should conduct themselves but I do find it very interesting the idea of having an ethical code of conduct for blogging and the use of social media. In this article I explain how I go about blogging and my personal use of digital and social media. There is no official blog etiquette or ‘blogiquette’ as I will name it however there are some unwritten rules that the blog community use. The important thing to remember is that each blog is the personal space of the individual or collective that blog there and as with house rules, each blog will live by a certain set of morals and behaviours so laying down a definitive etiquette will never be possible. When I initially thought about and researched what I would include in this post I guess you could have said it was off of the back of frustration of not being treated as I would treat visitors to my website. A rant felt very fitting at the time. Instead I have looked more widely than my personal annoyance and decided that I would describe how I abide by my own set of blog ethics and what I deem as good practice.
[Read more on Blog Etiquette]
11 February 2008
Friend and colleague, Mark Steadman is a self confessed new media junkie. As a result he has brought together the website ‘New Media Junkie’ which is the home of collective thoughts, silly bollocks and generally interesting emails that are circulating at the time. Mark is a big fan of radio and ever since he was a young lad he has had high aspirations of becoming a radio disc jockey. Unfortunately he is condemned to a life of developing websites. We both must have done something hideously awful in a previous life to have not only been lumped together but to be thrown into such a frustrating sport as hunt the error message problem. Fix the bloody CSS issue in Safari or dream-crusher (Marks’ fond name for FireFox) is another we while away the hours together to.
[Read more on New Media Junkie]
10 February 2008
Another fresh spring morning in Birmingham and DigiKev is sitting on the steps of the ‘Floozy in the Jacuzzi’ by Victoria Square working on a blog post about the effects of social media and how it can benefit both businesses and individuals. He has decided to take his laptop into the centre of town to, in his mind, blow away some cobwebs and get some new perspective by writing in unfamiliar territory. He has done it before and knows it works, so, confidently he bashes away at the keyboard of his laptop while the rest of Birmingham revolves around him, hurriedly carrying out Saturday morning tasks, shopping frenzies and commutes to work. WebBrochure, an acquaintance of DigiKev is part of this melee of Birmingham society and enters Victoria Square from New Street and spots DigiKev doubled over his laptop.
[Read more on A morning blogging in Birmingham]
9 February 2008
Good afternoon, this is DigiKev and I will be your captain today aboard this digiJet Boeing 737 from Turin to London. We will be cruising at 34,000 feet and expecting turbulence today as we look at ways to push your writing techniques to the limits and out of the comfort zone. We will be turning the seatbelt light off shortly which means you may release the clasp but we do recommend you leave it loosely fastened so you are not disturbed during the remainder of this flight. A Light refreshments trolley will be passing through which offers a choice of tea, coffee, water and soft drinks as well as a selection of hot and cold food which will be supplied by the cabin crew. Audio headsets are also available at a cost of £1 sterling or €1.75. We apologise for the delay today, this was due to a refuelling failure with one of the trucks at Turin. We are aiming to arrive into London Luton Airport at 5.15pm local time. I wish you all a pleasant and relaxing flight and am rest assured we will aim to keep turbulence to a minimum as we steer you through the possibilities available to you in keeping your blog writing techniques fresh and engaging. I will now pass you over to the cabin crew who will be performing pre-flight checks and taking you through the safety procedures.
[Read more on plane talk on blogging and writing techniques: Part II]
1 February 2008
Over at Epiblogger the guys Rhett and Lee have been writing a series of blog entries on how to get the most out of writing posts by trying different styles such as using a narrative or taking a first person view. This is a great way to liven up posts and not only makes it fun for the writer as well as a challenge, but hopefully will be appealing to the readership too. In my last two interlinking posts I used a dialogue between myself and a fictional client in the first instance and with Dr. Pete in the second. Now with this article I am writing it on an easy jet to Turin.
[Read more on plane talk on blogging and writing techniques: Part I]
29 January 2008
After writing my post “Socialites prosper as the aloof fail” I came across Dr. Peter J. Meyers, a usability expert who wrote an article, When Is Usability Bad for Business? Part of his post related to what I had written on business transparency. I made the argument that businesses should be completely transparent and offer a complete social media experience in order to get down to grass roots with their readership and allow comments and postings from them. I had said that whether the comments were positive or negative feedback, a constructive twist could be applied by ensuring the business took on board problem areas and put them right hence improving business to peer relationships.
[Read more on ‘Social media transparency pitfalls for businesses’]
26 January 2008
Client:
“We are happy to embrace social media but if we are going to enter a forum and help our public with their questions and issues we would like to pose as a ‘valued customer’ of the company who has had a high-quality service and wishes to scream and shout about it rather than having a representative of the company.”
DigiKev:
”This is not a very sound thing to do, in doing so and repeatedly being the ‘valued customer’ you will be rumbled. It hardly takes a lot to know that the so called valued customer is a representative of your company. The community you are trying to embrace will ignore you, or worse you will be flamed and spammed and bad-mouthed until you are so buried you won’t be able to see above ground. The press will likely catch on and your good name will be dragged through the dirt.”
[Read more on ‘Socialites prosper as the aloof fail’]
22 January 2008
Stefan Lewandowski and Jon Bounds have launched In The Big Picture today. I was very lucky to get a sneak preview at The Birmingham Bloggers Meetup a week or so a go. The idea is to make a big picture of the West Midlands in 2008. There will be a World Record attempt to gather as many photos together as possible into a huge montage. The website makes clever use of the Flickr API. Simply login with your Flickr account details or create a new account from the In The Big Picture website to take part.
[Read more on ‘The BIG Picture’]
14 January 2008
Kitchen Garden Café in Kings Heath was the meeting ground for likeminded individuals linked by their common interest in blogging and social media. On Thursday 10 January 2008, Nick Booth (Podnosh) arranged for the informal gathering with no agenda but to discuss blog writing, share knowledge and to build a community of blog writers around the Birmingham area. Some of the individuals that I met there were Dave Briggs, Stef Lewandowski (3form, Creative Republic, Type Records…
[Read more on ‘Birmingham Bloggers Meetup’]
I write in response to Patrick Collinson’s report in the Guardian money supplement, 12 January 2008 on Peter Lorimer’s plight of five betting shops in his home town of the Green Lanes area of North London along a 300 yard walk to his local post office. I knew that my home suburb of Erdington in Birmingham was also rife with these establishments but to what extent I did not…
Holding your hands up to a mistake will improve your relationships with subscribers of your web service. Founder of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg in his last 3 posts has held up his hands to mistakes made. Mark thanks those that have given him feedback on how the service could be improved and what hasn’t worked. This is great feedback for a company to receive; I can imagine a lot of offline marketers would be overjoyed to receive such honest, constructive criticisms...