Social media, social web, marketing and Twitter hints, tips & advice – Liz Hover's Diary of a Web Gal

Before I was a web manager I was a publicist and a media officer (in the UK).

Ooh, do you know how many times jargon slips its naughty way into press releases? I tried hard to keep it away. Honest.

But almost as bad as jargon are those redundant little adjectives that seem to worm their way into press releases the world over. Sometimes it’s hard to avoid.

I read a great post today by Robin Wauters writing on TechCrunch: 10 words I would love to see banned from press releases.

My personal favourite is ’strategic partnership.’

Ouch.

Last week my blog got hacked.

It got hacked so badly that my host company advised I delete my blog and start over.

So for the last eight days or thereabouts I’ve been literally re-building my blog bit by bit, piece by piece.

Yes. I had a back up file but it refused to upload without errors so I ate a slice of humble pie and decided it was probably best to start from scratch anyway.

I have no idea how the hack happened although I suspect it was via WordPress.

I feel responsible for what happened.

I didn’t protect my blog adequately. And it can happen to anyone at anytime. I’m mad that it happens at all.

Evenings spent republishing posts made me neglect my person duties to my dawg Sadie Shih Tzu.

She got a new hair do on Friday and a Shih Tzu companion for a few days.

But today I decided it was time for some Liz/Sadie portraits to honour the re-publishing of my blog. See the whole portrait series.

Months ago when the new National Screen Institute website was a mere twinkle in my eye (I’m its web manager) I got asked lots of questions about how the new website would function.

How would the navigation work?

How would the content be organised?

So I settled into my favourite spot in front of a computer and began to create my vision based on meetings with colleagues and our design folks.

I used Word. I added text boxes with menu items. I broke down the navigation and content. It was rudimentary.

I’ve used SmartDraw and would use Word again in a heartbeat. If you know how to draw a text box and move it around in Word then don’t bother with anything fancier.

I essentially built what I now know was a wireframe.

Some time later I sat for several hours with our website developer and sketched out our new website based largely on my initial Word diagrams. Another stage in the wireframe process.

Why am I writing about this now?

Randa Clay published a post today about wireframing and I was reminded how important that process was for me and my colleagues in bringing this mythical new website to life. Suddenly ideas had a structure.

It’s one of the most basic steps in planning a new website.

Oh, and PS – developing a website is one job you’ll never finish. There is no end. I’ll write more on this in coming weeks. But eight months after launching our shiny new site, I’m about to redevelop one of its – if not THE – major parts.

I recently joined a group on LinkedIn for folks on Twitter. Watching all the discussions there I noticed one piece of advice lacking: a step-by-step guide to using Twitter. So I’m taking a stab at it.

1. Go to Twitter and sign up for an account (Get started – join button)
2. Complete the sign up form. Use your real name as your user name (unless this is your brand’s Twitter account). No spaces allowed so I am lizhover.
3. Skip the ‘See if your friends are on Twitter’ window.
4. Skip the ‘Look who else is here. Start following them!’ window.
5. Now you’ll see your Twitter home page where, once you start following people, updates – or tweets – will appear (also known as your timeline/Twitter stream).
6. In the top right hand of your screen click on ’settings’ – you’re going to add information about yourself and a profile photo – the first rule of Twitter. If you don’t, folks will think your account is fake.
7. Here you can also change your name and username if need be. Doing this does not affect your account or followers.
8. In the ‘More Info URL:’ field add your personal/company blog or website address.
9. In the ‘One line bio’ field add a straight forward, clear description of yourself. Do not say ‘I’m the world’s best marketer,’ or ‘I’m just a guy.’ This is your one line pitch about yourself or your company. Instead say something interesting. For example: ‘I’m guitar-playing, poetry-writing CEO of Big Bank.’ You’ve got 160 characters to use.
10. Don’t protect your updates unless you’re being stalked. No-one will be able to see anything about you if you do this. So you’re unlikely to have anyone follow you.
11. Save everything.
12. Go to the ‘picture’ tab at the top of the page and upload a square photo of yourself. Try to use a real picture of you or your company logo.
13. Save everything. Don’t be put off if you get an error or the message that ‘Twitter is over capacity.’ You’ll see the ‘fail whale’ a lot. Just keep hitting your back button and uploading your photo until it works. If you get fed up, move on to the next step.



14. Find people on Twitter – this is the time consuming part. Canadian and US folks: Go to Twellow which lists folks on Twitter from across the Canada and the US. Scroll down to the map and click on your location. You can see who is on Twitter based on regions and provinces. Look through everyone. To see their Twitter profile, look for this line in brackets (Liz Hover is lizhover on Twitter). Hit the highlighted word and you’ll see my Twitter page. Read through some of my tweets and if they interest you, hit ‘follow.’
15. Every time I post something to Twitter it will show up in your timeline/Twitter stream.
16. You can also use the ‘Find people’ search function on Twitter. Look for it at the top of the page. Choose the ‘Find on Twitter’ tab. Don’t bother with the ‘Suggested users’ tab. As I understand it these folks have paid big bucks to be profiled here. A bit like ads on your Google search results page.
17. The first method I used to find great people to follow (which is the way you engage in conversation on Twitter and what makes it such a cool thing) is to find people you like and see who THEY follow. When I first joined Twitter I spent hours searching through the list of folks that others follow. I actually found that the best way to unearth some amazing people on Twitter.
18. Enter a keyword such as ‘marketing,’ or ‘Manitoba’ to help narrow down your results.
19. Then click on a peron’s name and take a peek at what they’re tweeting. Like it? Then follow them.
20. You’ll notice some folks will start following you back which means your tweets will show up in their timeline.
21. Once you’ve got a few people to follow, it’s a good idea to add an update – or a tweet. Don’t write about how your meeting went over, what you had for lunch or how you were stuck in traffic. Try to find meaningful information to share with others. Introduce yourself (and remember your tweets are limited to 140 characters). Take a look at other people’s tweets and see what sort of stuff they’re posting.

    

22. Because posts/tweets are limited to 140 characters, you’ll need to use a URL shortener to compress long website addresses. There are lots of providers to choose from. Twitter uses bit.ly by default. I use Cligs because it has an analytics function allowing you to see how many people clicked on links you included in your tweets.
23. Links are good. Many people use Twitter to share information. If you post a particularly good link (with a short description) it may get re-tweeted. This means that someone following you liked your tweet and forwarded it to their followers. If you do that you must credit the original source and include ‘RT.’ For example ‘Twitter SMS will come with a huge price tag for Canadian users http://ping.fm/GDgeo (RT via @mashable).
24. When you refer to any other user on Twitter you should use the following format @username – don’t worry about any other bits of the address.

Still Twitter-curious?

The excellent website Webdesigner Depot has trumped my effort above with a thorough and easy to read ultimate guide to everything Twitter. I highly recommend you head on over and check out their alphabetized glossary, a list of popular Twitter applications and instructions for incorporating Twitter into your website and blogs. UPDATE: July 21, 2009 – Webdesigner Depot has just published part two of the ultimate guide to everything Twitter.

When we launched the National Screen Institute website back in June 2007 there was a huge hunk of work that went before.

It’s a super busy time and inevitably things get missed.

I’m entirely self-taught when it comes to website development and had only myself to rely upon – we worked with a brilliant bunch at Tactica but even they can only do so much.

So when I heard about the ultimate website checklist the first thing that went through my head was, ‘Crap, I could have done with that 12 months ago.’

Which is why I’m writing about it here to help anyone else that’s in the web development and launch process.

The list was created by Box UK – web consultants based in London and Cardiff.

Download the website launch checklist and find out more about Box UK.

Yep – it’s May 27. Almost one month after our original soft launch date. But today – finally – I hit the send button and a message was delivered merrily to our beta phase testers giving them access to the test site.

I’ve already had hiccups. The audio videos all sound like chipmunks – well they didn’t when I tested them ALL. SOS email already sent.

I pretended to be an innocent visitor tonight and treated myself to a short film posted to our site and loved it – even though it was 20 minutes long. I think I paused once to refill the wine glass. And I have the shortest attention span. I’m terribly impatient. A small personal achievement then.

Our beta test group is around 500. I’m prepared for the feedback. Some will love it, some will feel mediocre and others will hate it. I’m not in love with it – it’s not MINE per se so I’m feeling a sense of neutrality. Which doesn’t mean I don’t care. Far from it. I just know that you can’t please everyone all of the time. And I also know that this site was built after feedback from many so some of the better ideas (IMO) may have fallen by the wayside because others thought they knew better and they had bigger swords than me.

I read a very interesting article tonight on the Advertising Age website.

Fear not dear reader, I’m still in the land of the living.

Website tweaks and fiddles have consumed my time. And when I wasn’t doing that I was sipping chilled white wine, spending time with the husband or sleeping. Oh, and possibly shopping.

I’ve spent much time trying to upload video to YouTube and Yahoo! Video. Turns out my files were just too darn big. That’s what you get for being new to a lot of this. I almost broke out the champagne when it finally worked.

We’ve got a great bunch of video and audio interviews under our belts and will continue to gather more.

There is a tendency to just gather new content at break neck speed without giving much thought to what we’re getting or whether it’s worth it. My philosophy has always been (and will continue to be until my visitors tell me otherwise) that quality of content over quantity and frequency of renewal wins out.

So, most things are in place and we’re very close to soft-launching the site which will be the real test and will probably drive me to drink copious amounts of wine – heck, what’s new?

As I’ve mentioned before, we’re launching to a select group – around 500 people. Who knows what will be revealed during that all-important phase? It’s all a learning process.

I’m off to a conference in early June to learn more about all this jazz. Wonder if there’s anyone else out there dreaming the same weird dreams as me and dwelling on stuff that most people don’t?