Resources
I regularly add new stuff to this list so please check back from time to time.
Jump to a section on this page:
- General reading – social media
- Website design & user experience
- Writing for the web
- Understanding digital image formats
- Search engine optimization (SEO)
- Promoting your social media profiles
- Twitter resources
- Facebook resources
- Blogging resources
- Flickr resources
- RSS resources
- Other stuff including a social media toolkit
General reading/selected articles
- If you read nothing else on this page – read this online marketing guide by Julie Giles. Ignore the web series stuff. This is a guide for everyone
- Spice up your social media strategy – essential reading
- Engage or die – why you should bother at all with this stuff
- What the fuck is social media? (brilliant slideshow)
- A guide to social media (chart)
- 20+ super cool websites about tech, marketing, design and blogging
- Boag World – web design podcast with excellent advice/tips
- Social media revolution - video about the impact of the internet
- Five reasons social media marketing comes last – get your business ducks in a row first
- Self promotion through social media – don’t be a narcissist
Website design and user experience
- The psychologists view of ‘User Experience / UX Design’ – an excellent article explaining how people use the internet.
- 15 annoying website designs you must avoid – essential reading for website owners
Writing for the web
- 7 best practices for improving your website – excellent reading
Understanding digital image formats
- Understanding digital image formats – if your website or blog has lots of images, please read this.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
- What is search engine optimization? – great 3 minute video for newbies
- The SEO’s Handbook – 53 resources for first-time SEO’s
- Google Starter Guide to SEO – downloadable PDF
- The 4 basic areas of search engine optimization – very useful
Promoting your social media profiles
- Twitter demographics – who are these people on Twitter?
- Twitter Media – case studies and guidelines for media organizations and journalists
- Twitip – Twitter tips and advice
- Twellowhood – finding people on Twitter
- Twitter Monitter – monitor mentions of your brand
- Trendrr – monitor brand mentions and more
- Selective Twitter Status for Facebook – post your tweets to Facebook
- TwitterFeed – publish your web content on Twitter
- Splitweet - tweet from more than one account
- HootSuite - tweet from more than one account, manage a team of tweeters, pre-schedule tweets and more
- Bit.ly – URL shortener
- Creating a Twitter background design – how-to and best practices
- Free Twitter Designer – a website that will create your background
- Spice up your Twitter background – Brilliant post with everything you’ll ever need to know about creating a Twitter background
- TwitPic – post photos to Twitter
Folks to follow on Twitter
- Liz Hover (that’s me)
- 8 things you may not know about Facebook – essential reading
- Facebook stats – every statistic you’ll ever need
- Why we’re evaluating Facebook fans all wrong – an important message in this article about the value of a Facebook fan.
- 10 tips for posting on your brand’s Facebook page – very useful stuff
- Killer Facebook fan pages – 5 inspiring case studies
- 21 creative ways to increase your Facebook fanbase
- Facebook widgets (badges etc.)
- The most successful Facebook ads (chart)
- Facebook’s news feed and attention rationing – are your fan page updates fading into obscurity because of algorithms?
- Facebook Flow – extensive Facebook tips and tricks from fellow Canadian Garin Kilpatrick
- For the advanced: Facebook Markup Language and also Facebook Markup Language tags
Blogging
- Platforms: Blogger | WordPress.com (hosted by WordPress) | WordPress.org (self-hosted) | Tumblr | Posterous
- Tumblr versus Posterous – blog platform showdown
- ProBlogger – king of bloggers. Check out the archives section first and scan the whole page.
- 31 Days to Build a Better Blog (blog challenge book) OR read the blog posts from the 2007 challenge
- WordPress tutorials covering all levels from beginners to experts.
- Step-by-step beginners guide to using WordPress.org to create a basic website
- National Screen Institute blog section
- Hi, I’m Sadie Shih Tzu – my dog’s blog
- Blog directories - http://www.blogcatalog.com/ & http://www.blogflux.com/
- 3 examples of CEO blogs (getting your boss online)
- 7 blog design tips from a content strategist – don’t let the title put you off. This is one of the most useful blogging posts I’ve read
- Teach, or your blog will die – excellent article about why you need to use your blog to teach your readers
- Writing titles for your blog posts – how to write headlines that make people want to read your stuff
- 10 things you can write about on your blog – stuck on your next post? Get some inspiration
- What Perez Hilton can teach us about blogging – essential reading
- Bloggers Domain – A – Z of blog tools and resources
- Blog Coaching Boost – blog resources for small business and mummy bloggers
- Easy WordPress Guide – a guide to help you understand the basics of WordPress
- 353+ blog post ideas to inspire you – stuck for content ideas? This list will fix that
- Selection of 12 WordPress.org themes | selection of 10 WordPress.org themes | more WordPress.org themes | even more WordPress.org themes | 10 more WordPress.org themes
Flickr
RSS
- What is RSS? – ProBlogger
- What is RSS? – Website dedicated to explaining RSS
Other stuff
- Google Profile – this is my Google Profile
- FriendFeed – this is my FriendFeed
- StumbleUpon – this is my StumbleUpon
- LinkedIn – this is my LinkedIn
Social media toolkit
- A sample social media toolkit by Chris Brogan (sign up required)
