Articles – Page 30 – Thoughtfaucet

Google Adwords for Nonprofits Video

: Image via CrunchBase

Burlington Vermont community television CCTV recently did a live webcast with Matt Dunne, Google Community Affairs. In that webcast Matt covered a lot of the basics of the Google Grants program and how adwords can be used. Even if you are a for-profit business, this video might serve as a great introduction to what Google Adwords is and how you might use it. Enjoy. Continue reading “Google Adwords for Nonprofits Video”

Google Adwords Grants for Non-Profits

Many non-profit organizations would be able to realize their mission goals better with a little more traffic to their websites. Google Adwords, those little ads on the sidebar of Google search engine result pages, are designed to increase website traffic.

Google has a grant program available to non-profits that gives the non-profit free advertising via the Google Adwords program. There are some requirements:

501(c)3 status
all the other stuff associated with normal Adwords accounts.
active participation with your Adwords campaigns

501(c)3 status is pretty straightforward. You’ve either got it or your don’t. The stuff normally associated with an Adwords is also straightforward (no bait-and-switch etc).

But what if you’ve never done an Adwords program before? How do you handle the “active participation” requirement? That’s where Thoughtfaucet would like to help. Continue reading “Google Adwords Grants for Non-Profits”

Observing use of augmented reality with The Sinjensen5000

I’ve been working a bit on augmented reality (AR) projects lately and one of the things that commonly comes up is: yeah it’s fun but so what? I know what I think of augmented reality and what all the other tech-geek-blog-twits think of it. But what about “normal” people? How do they use it and interact with it? It seemed that the only way to get around the “so what” issue was to start doing some observation and testing. Time for an analysis and creativity mashup. Continue reading “Observing use of augmented reality with The Sinjensen5000”

SEO nineball and other emergency search engine optimization tactics

: Image by m.toyama via Flickr

This weekend a friend here in Burlington, Vermont emailed and described a situation involving SEO woes. Perhaps it’s a situation that sounds familiar: A brand new website has been created in anticipation of an important event and the site isn’t ranking or even showing up in Google. The event is less than a month away. The keyword isn’t especially competitive but the few competitors are well-trusted media and e-commerce sites.

I’m fond of saying that search engine optimization is an endurance sport. It’s pretty difficult/lucky to get a site ranking on search engines quickly. I took a quick look at the site. It was gorgeously designed but lacked many of the important features of search engine optimization; basic and rudimentary features. Like headlines in the code. The poor coding of the site had a lot to do with the situation. But what to do now that the site was up and the event looming?

My friend isn’t a computer techy so I tried to focus on things that don’t involve code except where it would really make the big differences. Here’s what I told my friend: Continue reading “SEO nineball and other emergency search engine optimization tactics”

Ten Thoughts on Usability Guidelines

: Image via Wikipedia

Getting through cultural issues in developing software or other marketing materials that others in your organization (or client organization) is often more challenging than writing, optimizing and testing code or even designing the interface. Here are some things I’ve learned about creating styleguides for use in intranet projects (AKA the thing that tells everyone how they should be dumping their brain into the system):

Make it as short as possible. Remember that people have jobs to do and it’s better that they put the info in the intranet incorrectly than not at all.
Use visual examples of positive and negative use. Make sure that these visual examples clearly show why the “on-guideline” version makes their life easier. If it doesn’t make their life easier, perhaps the guideline isn’t required.
Try to incorporate the guidelines into the application/site itself. If you want specific header-tags used for headlines, have a separate text-entry box that formats the headline to your tag spec. If you want people to only use italics or bold for specific types of knowledge, include a short instruction right next to the text block. Anywhere that you can include instruction and advice right in the interface is worth far far more than the actual document in terms of getting the organization to adopt your standards.
Include links to specific guideline sections right in the interface (an extended version of item 3). Have “read more” links in your in-interface advice that go to short pop-ups (ala a help system).
Each entry of your guideline might consist of one brief sentence describing the rule, one brief sentence describing why the rule exists, and positive/negative examples. Avoid paragraph length text.
Now take that same document from item 5 above and reverse it so that you start with a problem-based statement and then a solution (your rule).
If you’re comfortable with the risk, consider a wiki-type intranet system. There’s always some busy-body who will enjoy going through and making the content conform to the guidelines.
Before/During/After roll-out, survey the users to see if they understand the guidelines and whether the guidelines are valuable or not.
Determine how you/your boss/your stakeholders/etc will measure the success of your guidelines before roll out. Keep this in mind as you design and deploy.
Continue measuring and improving your intranet with the guidelines involved.

Sneak previews and beta stuff

: Image via CrunchBase

I write a weekly column on marketing, technology and analytics in highly competitive lead generation business of real estate for Inman News.

One of the fun things about doing the column is looking at new tools and technology. Even more fun is determining how these tools might be used to generate revenue either directly or through learning more about target audiences.

Here are three articles about tools that you might find useful, even if you’re not in a lead generation business model.

Keep in mind that all of these tools are in some form of beta so yourileage may vary. But if you ever wished you had started using something early on, now’s your chance.

Cotweet

Everyone loves short-form publishing platform Twitter these days. If you are trying to manage multiple Twitter accounts, looking to schedule posts, and are looking for a Tweetdeck-like search then Cotweet might be worth learning to use.

CoTweet: teaming up on Twitter

Foursquare

Here’s a fun game that combines Twitter and text messaging with exploring your city. Still very much in its infancy, Foursquare is pretty focused on nightlife and gathering info about fun places in specific locations. If your business is very “local” focused (and especially if your business is in the restaurant/club/hospitality industry) Fousquare might be worth a look.

Taking social media beyond square one

Google infrastructure update

When you look at your traffic reports chances are good that the site delivering you the most visitors is Google. Learn about the upcoming infrastructure changes at the most-used search engine.

Decoding change in Google search results

Social Media Strategy: a presentation at Blogger Connect SF 2009

Gahlord Dewald (center) speaking about social media strategy and analytics at Blogger Connect. Jeff Turner on the left, Dustin Luther on the right. (Photo: Dale Chumbley)

I was a part of the “Social Media Strategy” session at Inman News’ Blogger Connect conference in August 2009. The room was packed as everyone seems to want to know more about social media these days. I was fortunate to be paired to present on this topic with Dustin Luther, founder of the RainCityGuide blog and prolific consultant on all things social media.

I went first, including some broad groundwork on social media strategies in presentation, then Dustin gave some excellent advice on using Facebook (I think I’ll finally break down and make a Page as a result of his info) and the power of Friend of a Friend marketing, and then we ended with open question/answer.

My half of the social media strategy presentation focused on the following items:

Primary difference between social and non-social media is control. Controlling social media is a challenge. Become comfortable with this lack of control.
When using social media for marketing, the reach -> acquisition -> engagement ->conversion -> satisfaction customer life cycle is changed. You will need to be engaging to your audience before you acquire them to your site or cause.
Instead of trying to integrate a lot of social tools into your existing marketing plan, consider going further and changing the way you do business. Become a social business by using social tools for non-marketing operations things like customer support, internal feedback/HR, public intranet etc. Build “social” into your company’s DNA.
Meet the challenge of web analytics in the social media sphere to learn how to engage your audience.

Following the presentation, I had the opportunity to lead a section in the “Live Lab” where conference attendees could come up and ask any question about web analytics, SEO, site development or social media strategies and tactics. This session was exceptionally lively and fun, given that it was hands on with real world problems and not simply a rehash of “best practices.”

People liked this presentation.

The little things: some graphic design for the Lake Champlain Quadricentennial Celebration

In 2009 Vermont celebrates 400 years since Samuel de Champlain arrived at Lake Champlain. The festival commemorating this included over 150 events in ten days.

Thoughtfaucet was happy to lend a hand with a variety of small graphic design projects that came up in the midst of the festival. Each of the pieces created for the Champlain 400 required careful management of a myriad of small details: lists of performers and their hometowns for the premiere performance of a dance piece by Heddy Maalem, fitting extensive menu descriptions in a small table-tent display, conveying the breadth of the festival in print advertisement that was to be run in French and English. These sorts of small maneuvers in tight spaces plus managing the multitude of corporate logos and adhering to existing festival branding examples.

Together we were able to make some nice, well-made, focused marketing pieces. Small? Yes. None of these projects were national branding campaigns, billboards or poster series. But they were the pieces that individuals held in their hands and saw. A table-tent inserted into the lives of people who might be interested in a culinary exploration of French-American or Native American cuisine. An ad in a Montréal arts magazine, carefully reviewed for proper accent marks. A dance program and DVD design that got everyone’s name in on a tight deadline. Corporate, government and foundation sponsors properly and accurately credited throughout.

The little things matter just as much as the big things. Sometimes more.