Social media marketing | Liz Hover's Diary of a Web Gal

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?

Blimey I’m a bad blogger. I get email updates everyday from sites like ProBlogger and Daily Blog Tips. I would get a slapped wrist from them for being so lazy with my updates.

We’re due to soft-launch our new website in just a few days. Gulp.

The test site is looking good with still a few tweaks to be made. I’ve been busy trouble-shooting a bunch of things in anticipation of said launch.

Today I worked out how to record voicemail messages on to my computer using Skype and Pamela. The Pamela files get saved as MP3s into a folder on my hard drive so I can open the file and edit it. Horrah! And all for the cost of a cheap phone call on Skype. The only limitation with the Pamela basic application I downloaded is that I’m limited to 15 minutes of recording per call. Fingers cross no silly bugger leaves us an extra long message cos we’ll be screwed.

And as a result of this, I also set up our podcast hotline which allows listeners to record a comment about the podcast. I hope to use some of these in future podcasts.

My editor and reporter are working on some of the video interviews tonight.

We’ve more or less finished the audio interviews. I’m just waiting for the final few from my editor. I ended up recording the general intro and outro for all podcasts myself. I had asked my husband but he’s up to his eye-balls in his own work chaos so to save time I did it. As I previously mentioned, I’m no silky-voiced diva but I think it will work out just fine for now. The intro and outro top and tail all the audio interviews that appear on our website.

Our website folks have been working on the never-ending report that I lovingly prepared for them. There have been design changes and revisions to the way the CMS works. It’s a long road but I believe we close to the end of this part.

I’ve also been preparing information my bloggers. I’ve put together a kind of ‘Promoting your blog 101′ document which will help them get the word out about their blog on our website.

Tomorrow I should be testing the test site again! I’ve also got to move a bunch of content across to the new site. And then we’re just days away from our soft-launch. I’ve written a – heck, I don’t know what you’d call it – it’s not a news release but more of an info bulletin for our soft-launch audience telling them what we’ve been doing with the website and what we’d like them to do now they have their eyeballs exclusively on the site.

It’s all about feedback.

Today I sent the content management system to all our staff to test.

There’s still lots of polishing and fixing to be done but I’m keen to hear about staff experiences with the system. I gave them the user manual, a spreadsheet on which to report any problems and a mini-test (for wimps who can’t face the big mother).

I’ve already had some feedback to which I’ve been replying, ‘Write it all in your report.’

I’ve heard mutterings from my neighbouring colleague as she wrestles with this entirely new ‘thing.’ ‘Refer to the manual,’ I shout across the office. And if it doesn’t make sense, write it in your report.’

Oh what fun this is.

Yesterday I handed over a bunch of video for editing to the journalist we’ve hired and got the first version of our opening video intro that will appear on all our online video. With a few tweaks we’ll be good to go.

Can’t remember if I mentioned we’ve ordered a professional microphone for our podcasts. It arrived. (Horrah!) But we couldn’t open it because the case was locked. And guess where the keys were? Inside the locked case. So we’re waiting for additional keys. Jeez.

I recently performed a scientific experiment regarding the side-effects of CMS testing. I can exclusively reveal that continual website or content management system testing can cause:

1. Excessive drinking
2. Excessive smoking
3. Excessive blogging as a form of escapism
4. Excessive reading of other blogs as a form of escapism.

I also looked at how this condition can be treated. The most effective treatment methods are:

1. Excessive drinking
2. Excessive smoking
3. Excessive blogging as a form of escapism
4. Excessive reading of other blogs as a form of escapism.

While on my escapist journey, I did stumble across a full Flickr gallery from Betsy Jean 79. I now know who Blythe is. I now understand what Blythe Knits are. All was revealed to me here.

I’m off to read up on internet advertising. After Mr Nielsen told us it was all a waste of time back in 1997, I still have to advise others on the matter. And I don’t think it’s dead in the water just yet.

Yesterday I spent pretty much the entire day going through the new website using the content management system. I’m not done yet.

Spotted lots more things which need fixing – wrote 10 pages of notes for our web folks. Gee, bet they’ll be chuffed about that!

There are some silly things like not being able to create a new blog post yet I can create a new blog category. Click to comment on a post or post a new comment and the screen goes blank…

We have a member area which right now doesn’t allow people to view all members. This features is supposed to be a networking tool. No point if you can’t see the other members.

Then there’s style stuff like use of capitalisation and titles.

The list goes on. I’ll continue to test today and Friday and probably over the weekend before typing up my list of lovely observations for the web folks.

Today I got my paws on the much-talked-about content management system.

This week I’m testing it out. This is the second time I’ve tested it. “Hmmm… what is this ‘testing’ you talk of Web Gal?”

A content management system does as its name implies: it helps to manage the content on your website. If you have a blog, it’s a bit like a glorified version of blog posting. The content management system (or CMS as it’s often referred to) allows me to organise words and images and make them look good on my website. I can use the CMS to create a new menu item or delete one. I can move things around. It cuts out the need for someone who knows code. (What is code? It’s the crazy algebraic-like stuff that tech people use to make websites. By some freak of technology the code translates into glorious design and wonderment on a website. It’s normally called HTML code.) I don’t know much about code – a little, but not enough.

CMS is great for me and companies like the one I work for because it means lots of people – under guidance – can update web pages. I stress under guidance because you don’t want a bunch of people within your company getting their dirty mits on the website and chucking the style guide out the window and… well… messing things up. Which is why you have people like me who can oversee and guide people through this process.

Anyway, I got my own dirty mits on the CMS today and found all manner of things that need fixing.

For example, our website offers users a profile page. Users can upload a photo of themselves (like Facebook, but not like Facebook). Armed with my own photo I was ready to click a button that said ‘Upload photo’ alas no such button could be found. Apparently it was enough to just click ‘Save,’ and then my photo appeared. Not good enough for sometimes stupid people like moi. I need to action something to know it’s working.

There are many more small things like this that need fixing before I turn over the testing to the wider staff team. (WARNING: moan approaching. I spent half an hour formatting a blog posting for our new website only to save it and have it disappear into the blogosphere). So I hope you understand why I need things fixed before letting others use this system.