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

This weekend I whipped up a post for One Degree about blogging.

And I’d love you to read it if you’ve even remotely considered blogging and quickly swept the idea away.

What’s One Degree? It’s a website for Canadian marketers like me. I tweet for One Degree.

Thanks to Peter Mosely (the boss at One Degree) for asking me to write the post.

(BTW: I’m cool with punctuation but my headline font isn’t. It doesn’t have any apostrophes).

There’s been lots of buzz around a new service – currently only in use by a small group – called Google Wave.

In September more folks will be able to use the service but it still won’t be available to the wider public.

Described by Google as ‘… a new model for communication and collaboration on the web…’ it’s hotly anticipated that it will become the next big thing in online communication.

My Canadian One Degree tweeting pal Corby Fine has written an excellent post disecting Google Wave and I strongly encourage you to read it for further details about how this tool might become part of your everyday communication in the not-too-distant future.

In January I published a post listing over 20 cool tech, design and marketing cool websites for website folks. I promised to add more sites as I found them.

Instead, I’ve created a new post for ya. There are so many amazing and inspiring websites that have helped me as a blogger and web manager that I wanted to collect them in one place.

I use Twitter daily and, thanks to the folks I follow, have discovered some brilliant websites and very talented people. They are included here too.

1. Webdesigner Depot – Not only does this site look delicious, the content rocks too. Webdesigner Depot covers stuff on design, coding, typography and Photoshop tutorials. I think I’ve added almost every one of their recently published posts to Twitter.

2. Stuart Robertson/Design Meme – I discovered fellow Canadian (and web manager) Stuart Robertson through Twitter. I’ve sought his advice and expertise and enjoyed his many Twitter updates. This guy knows where it’s at.

3. Movie Marketing Madness – I’ve discovered so much stuff on this blog and posted links to a lot of it on my work website – National Screen Institute – Canada (NSI)

4. CinemaTech – This is a super useful blog run by Scott Kirsner who recently published a very interesting book called Fans, Friends & Followers about building an audience and a creative career in the digital age.

5. I Love Colours – An inspirational and beautifully designed website about technology, typography, graphic design and WordPress stuff.

6. DesignM.ag – This has to be one of my absolute favourite websites. I subscribe to their daily feed and am always excited about their brilliant articles and resources for web designers. Steven Snell does a wonderful job of collating tons of information.

7. Vandelay Design Blog – Another treat for web designers. These folks always put together inspirational collections of cool websites and other useful bits and pieces.

8. Grace Smith – I’m a big retweeter and this cool chick from Northern Ireland provides so many amazing links to web related stuff. Grace is another of my top peeps on Twitter. Grace rocks.

9. One Degree – I gotta toot my own horn here. One Degree is an online publication about digital marketing, online communications and social media. I recently started tweeting for them at @onedegree.

10. Mari Smith – Mari is one of my favourite folks on Twitter. This Scottish-Canadian chick is a complete hub of information on all things social media. And despite following a zillion other folks she always finds time to respond to direct messages or @replies.

I love email. And so I religiously read everything that arrives in my inbox. This includes over 20 email subscriptions from technology, web design, blogging, social media and marketing websites.

I couldn’t do my job without a lot of the information that comes my way.

One of the requirements of website management is the need to continuously nuture your knowledge base. I find these email updates are one of the best ways to stay in the loop.

So I get some of these sent to my personal email address and others go to my work account. If you’re trying to absorb this much information you’ll need to be pretty organised about how and when you read the updates.

Of course email alerts don’t work for everyone. And most if not all of the sites I list below also offer other ways to subscribe. Or you could just regularly visit these sites. But that’s a heck of a job.

Here are my picks in no particular order:

• One Degree – the inside scoop on digital marketing and social media for Canadian marketers.
• ProBlogger – created by uber blogger Darren Rowse, the site is dedicated to helping other bloggers learn the skills of blogging, share their own experiences and promote the blogging medium. Includes well over 3,500 articles, tips, tutorials and case studies.
• TwiTip – also from Darren Rowse, a tips site for Twitter users who want to improve their use of Twitter.
• Skidzopedia – a blog offering updates about the latests gadgets, softwares, news and reviews.
• MediaShift - tracks how new media – from weblogs to podcasts to citizen journalism – are changing society and culture.
• VentureBeat – Silicon Valley news about tech money and innovation.
• Mashable – the world’s largest blog focused exclusively on web 2.0 and social networking news.
• MediaPost – resources for media, marketing and advertising professionals offering news coverage, event information, a social network, and industry jobs, directories and research. Folks can subscribe to updates from over 20 blogs.
• Media in Canada – the latest news keeping media and marketing execs up to speed on the Canadian media scene.
• Micro Persuasion – a blog exploring how emerging technologies are revolutionizing marketing and communications.
• Silicon Alley Insider – news, commentary, and discussion about digital publishing, entertainment, news, music, social networking, mobile, and gaming.
• All Facebook – the unofficial Facebook blog.
• Seth Godin – Seth has several sites. I currently subscribe to Seth Godin’s Blog which offers riffs on marketing, respect, and the ways ideas spread.
• John Battelle’s Searchblog – thoughs on the intersection of search, media, technology and more.
• MakeUseOf – news about cool websites, software, and how-to articles.
• NETTUTS – a site aimed at web developers and designers offering tutorials and articles on technologies, skills and techniques to improve how you design and build websites.
• Six Revisions – a blog that shares useful information about web development and design, dedicated to people who build websites.
• ZDNet – technology news and reviews.
• Blogging Me, Blogging You – marketing, blogging, social media, PR and technology news.
• TechCrunch – a weblog dedicated to obsessively profiling and reviewing new Internet products and companies.
• Daily Blog Tips – erm, I think the title speaks for itself.
• Web Design Ledger – written by web designers for web designers. Web design related knowledge and resources. Topics range from design inspiration to tips and tutorials.
• ReadWriteWeb – a blog that provides web technology news, reviews and analysis.
• Smashing Magazine – trends and techniques in web development. They don’t provide email updates so I follow them on Twitter.
• The Web Squeeze – web design articles on business and computers to web development tutorials on topics such as CSS, PHP and Javascript.
• PR 2.0 – Brian Solis’ blog covering marketing and technology.
• Blogsessive – blogging tips for bloggers.
• Six Pixels of Separation – fellow Canadian Mitch Joel blogs about marketing and communications. No email updates so I check this site manually when I remember.

If you’re launching a new website that has tight timelines, make sure you manage users’ expectations. One way to do this is to launch your site in beta. Lots of people do this including Google, CNN and Microsoft.

There’s a great article on One Degree. The author (who I think is Clay Mitchell) says, “The beta theme is a potentially powerful tool for online marketers because it acts as a cue to website visitors. Basically it indicates that, while a website is designed to provide a certain type of experience, its present version may not be able to satisfy visitors’ expectations. As with many websites in development, visitors may encounter functionality problems, navigational issues, missing tools, and a whole range of possibilities.”

Today in one of our website meetings we agreed to a longer ’soft launch’ period and a ‘hard launch’ in beta. (For those that don’t know, a soft launch is limited and may include a small group. A hard launch includes the masses.)

It was important that my work folks understand we cannot launch a site and expect that site to work perfectly when we’ve only tested on, say, 300 people. We will never know if it works perfectly until we have a large number (meaning: the regular visitors to our current site).

There is a vast difference. A small number of users on your site in its early incarnation may unearth some problems. A large group of users will allow you to see the site being used on a routine basis.

Take Oprah Winfrey. She’s a chick with a lot of cash. She did a webcast and her site, struggling with the strain of 800,000+ users, crashed. This article from the Huffington Post says that the media empire queen had employed the best dudes in the business to put together and execute her webcast. Importantly the article also says how was Oprah to know the site would crash? Until she had 800,000 hungry fans rushing to hear the word of Winfrey (i.e. putting the site to use under routine conditions) it’s hard to predict what will go wrong.

I just found a website made for me: One Degree.

They offer the inside scoop on digital marketing and social media for, get this, Canadian marketers. I am in website heaven.

[Update: May 14, 2009 - I now tweet for One Degree on Twitter.]