YouTube as HTML5 Video Helper

As I mention in the podcast, YouTube is one way to go to save yourself the encoding hassles. It also exposes your video to the huge YouTube audience and you get optimized video for all devices. KenMorico.com was one of the first Web sites that featured HTML5 video back in June 2010 and I learned a lot of lessons.

Podcast

More Info:

• New KenMorico.com Launched With HTML 5 Video
• LongTail Video’s HTML5 Reference Guide

Some large companies can do this because their Websites have been around for a long time and are usually updated by people in the organization who get paid to do it full-time. Successful individual bloggers with good page-rank will almost certainly outrank any small business. New blogs, even with some search engine optimization, will usually drop to the lower ranks in search pages.

Here’s a great video explaining real-time marketing and how it can be done featuring David Meerman Scott:

David Meerman Scott from National Speakers Bureau on Vimeo.

I do have some ideas about how to increase your chances for a higher news ranking. Subscribe to the blog and stay tuned. In the meantime, see this reader-favorite post on juicing your site performance for the new Google.

LINKEDIN / CAREER

Managing Your Career Online | Trafcom News Podcast - An interview with Martin Buckland about managing your career online.

LinkedIn tips from Chuck Hester | Trafcom News Podcast - Chuck Hester’s advice for getting more value out of LinkedIn; using Groups and Answers.

NEWSJACKING

Newsjacking | Marketing Over Coffee Podcast - David Meerman Scott’s new book Newsjacking / Newsjacking as Real Time Marketing /  The Lifecycle of a News Story / Good Judgement, Newsjacking and Larry Flynt.

Newsjacking | Six Pixels of Separation Podcast - David Meerman Scott discusses Newsjacking and riding the news.

CONTENT MARKETING

David Spark on Content Marketing | For Immediate Release Podcast - Shel Holtz talks with David Spark about companies becoming publishers, how to ensure that content is shared and how to assess its value.

WHAT ABOUT BLOGS?

Dell Chief Blogger Lionel Menchaca | For Immediate Release Podcast - Where do blogs fit in the social media mix? Lionel Menchaca talks about Dell’s overall social media approach and its evolution.

TWITTER AND NEW JOURNALISM

Journalism and the New Media with Jay Rosen | Six Pixels of Separation Podcast - Jay Rosen talks with Mitch Joel about new media and journalism.

Yes, there are new services. Faster services. Services that feed the ego and spin content. I believe short-form content has its place. But after awhile short-form content makes me feel like I’ve been in Vegas for a week listening to the ringing of slot machines non-stop. Twitter never stops. Good content, bad content — it’s just too much and the pressure to Tweet is great because you feel you will be left behind. In fact, if you Tweet or post status updates your Klout score stagnates or reverses. That’s just wrong.

No Filters, No Credibility

That fact that someone even has a blog immediately gives them more credit in my eyes. It shows some commitment and competence – like getting a suit for an interview or certification. Anyone can setup a Twitter or Tumblr account. Great. The double-edged sword is that anyone can create content without filters. With the death of professional journalism we’ve lost our filters. That’s a shame.

Shortform Content, Twitter, and a Harmonic Future?

Can you explain your thoughts in 140 characters? Unless everyone is a Haiku master, I don’t think so. The drivel that permeates the short-form content sites makes me think society has regressed 10,000 years. Blogs enable quotes, research, photo essays, multiple videos, attribution, trackbacks, hundreds of comments, the list goes on. Sure short form is great for events and live reporting like I described in my post The New Digital Storytelling – On the Road with Twitter where I documented a night of public transportation in Houston. I think Jack Kerouac would have loved to see Twitter, but disappointed in its impermanence and superficiality. I think integrating Twitter statuses in a blog post for some event might have some kind of future… letting users experience the best of both.

News Organizations are Not Blogs

Jeremiah Owyang created a blog post titled, “End of an Era: The Golden Age of Tech Blogging is Over.” In it he describes how corporate acquisitions have stymied innovation. To me, to have “corporate” and “blogging” together is an oxymoron in itself. I believe corporations should have a place for content, but I wouldn’t compare it to “blogging.” The same with news organizations that mask as blogs. Mashable and Techcrunch are not blogs. They are news organizations that exist now – a breed of company that can survive in the new economy. Congrats to them. I’ll find interesting content to read / watch / listen to produced by individuals in real blogs.

I’ve seen as blogs get larger, oftentimes the original blogger hires less qualified writers just to feed the Google beast. This is a shame. I lose respect for bloggers that do this. If you build up trust with your audience, treat them well. If you want to see an action movie, you don’t want Sylvester Stallone’s brother instead of Sylvester Stallone… you probably want a comparable like Schwarzenegger or Bruce Willis. Blogs have hired hacks and I think people should let them know. Talent is what gets people in the door and keeps them there.

The I’m Not Dead Yet Chart

Bloggers Struggling

Bloggers are reportedly making less money this year… must be the end of blogging! Oh no! What business isn’t struggling? The S&P 500 was flat for 2011. I think people will look for new ways to tell stories in 2012 and blogging will evolve. I know I am looking for new ways of storytelling. I’m ok with change. I guess that’s why my blog is still here.

In the case of Facebook, profiles of the deceased drop out of search. The profile can be memorialized, but if you want to leave a legacy you are going to need plans to keep a website operational after death. In fact, a lot of planning will need to be done if you want to exist online after death. Just like when planning your own funeral, you need to leave someone in charge of caring for your digital life after death.

Facebook Death Policies

Facebook offers to close or memorialize the profile of a departed user upon proof of death, depending on what the user wanted, or what the family decides.

Proof of death includes a copy of the death certificate, and proof that you are the executor, or representative of the deceased estate. When a Facebook member is memorialized, only current ‘friends’ can leave condolence messages and the profile cannot be found via search.

Facebook will not allow you access to the users profile, only for memorialization.
Further details can be found here: Facebook Death Policy

Twitter Death Policies

Twitter allows a family or the executor to close the account, and they receive an archive of all the deceased’s tweets.

Twitter requirements:

• Your full name, email address, and your relationship to the deceased.
• The username of the account holder.
• A copy or link to a published obituary.

Further information: Twitter deceased user policy.

LinkedIn Death Policies

LinkedIn allows you to close a users account by filling out their verification of death form.  However, this form requires an email address registered to the deceased member’s account. Without this important piece of information, they will not be able to address your request.

Further information and link to online form: “Verification of Death.”

Death policies of email providers

Years of messages are left on email servers. They should not go abandoned. In fact, some of my favorite reads include Jack Kerouac: Selected Letters Volume 1 and Jack Kerouac: Selected Letters Volume 2 edited by my University of Connecticut Professor Ann Charters. There’s something dreamy about reading someone’s interactions and correspondence with others. Especially when it was written long ago.

Gmail: Gmail will allow a family member an archive of all your email with the following information:

• Family member or executor’s complete name
• The deceased’s mailing address
• Deceased’s email address
• A copy of the deceased drivers license or other ID
• A death certificate.

Gmail won’t delete the user’s account, but allows family to do so after access is granted. For more info: Google’s Decedents’ Accounts page

Hotmail: Hotmail will send you a disc that contains all of the deceased’s contacts, emails, etc. However, they will absolutely not give you access to the account. They will close the account if the family member requests it be closed.

They require the following:

• Family member’s email address.
• An address to send data.
• A ‘power of attorney’ or proof of executorship, and proof of relation.
• A copy of the deceased’s driver’s license or other ID.
• A copy of the death certificate.
• Full name, address and date of birth of the deceased.
• The estimated date of account conception.
• The last estimated sign in date.

For more info: Hotmail’s death policy

Yahoo: Yahoo is the strictest in its death policies.

No access will be granted, no exceptions. But, if the deceased left their login information with you – you’re in! Or they will refer you to their strict death policy:

“No Right of Survivorship and Non-Transferability. You agree that your Yahoo! Account is non-transferable and any rights to your Yahoo! ID or contents within your account terminate upon your death. Upon receipt of a copy of a death certificate, your account may be terminated and all contents therein permanently deleted.”

Thanks to William Eve and his blogazine team at Life Insurance Finder for researching the policies. Some interesting articles and infographics on digital death can be found on their blogazine.

Live Forever Online?

Can you live forever online without lifting a finger from the grave? There are some artificial intelligence tools that can make it happen.

That Can be My Next Tweet is a service which allows your Twitter profile to go on tweeting after you’re dead. It analyses the DNA of your past tweets, to create short sentences and updates which, even if they don’t make a lot of sense, still sound a lot like you.

Hunch is a program which can access your Facebook and Twitter accounts to predict how you will answer a series of questions. Currently Hunch has an accuracy rating of 83% in the US, and 75% outside of the US. With an 83% accuracy rating in 2011.

Staying in the Game – Steve Jobs Style

With more and more businesses going online the notion of a physical sign on a building like Ford Motors memorializing a person and his/her creation seems distant. After all, everything online ceases to exist when the electricity goes out. That’s why I am really intrigued by Steve Jobs and his creation of Apple University. According to the Los Angeles Times article by Jessica Guynn, Steve Jobs’ virtual DNA to be fostered in Apple University:

…an executive training program called Apple University that Jobs considered vital to the company’s future: Teaching Apple executives to think like him.

“Steve was looking to his legacy. The idea was to take what is unique about Apple and create a forum that can impart that DNA to future generations of Apple employees,” said a former Apple executive who spoke on the condition of anonymity to preserve his relationship with the company. “No other company has a university charged with probing so deeply into the roots of what makes the company so successful.”

Steve Jobs, no stranger to preparation, created the program years before his death. “People familiar with the project say Jobs personally recruited the dean of Yale’s Business School in 2008 to run it.”

So what can mere mortals do to prepare for digital death? A few things I can think of:

• Appoint a digital executor
• Pass down learnings to children
• Record videos to be released online later
• Write, write, write
• Test out the artificial intelligence tools
• Invest now to prepare for your digital afterlife – poor people are often forgotten
• Be a good person so that people will WANT to remember you and keep your thoughts and beliefs alive

Here’s a fun video with some interesting facts…

Google Analytics gives you the tools to see what’s going on, but oftentimes data needs to be arranged to come to conclusions and actions to take. Now more than ever with desktop AND mobile browsers, you need a way to sift through user experiences because usually they won’t tell you they had a bad experience – they just go somewhere else.

I created some free Google Analytics reports below that you can download to help you segment and make sense of the many user experiences. Google Analytics gives you some generic reports by default, but it doesn’t always provide clear reports for answers to questions like: “Are my users getting the same site experience?  Are mobile users bouncing more than desktop / laptop users? Are mobile users spending more time on the site?”

Desktop Browser Report

Using this report you can see how users experience your site with different browsers. With many rushed sites these days there often isn’t time to optimize experiences for all browsers. With this report, you can clearly see which browsers have higher than usual bounce rates and time on site.

Thankfully, this is not 1999 or 2005. Most browsers can reliably keep true to a design layout if the site is programmed and validated to WC3 standards. Javascript libraries like jQuery help keep interactions consistent across browsers.

Using a newer HTML5 WordPress theme and custom HTML5 code on my site, I am able to get a fairly normal variance in my bounce rates. Since most of my content is blog related and most of traffic organic search traffic, my bounce rates are a little high, but content ranks well in Google search engine results pages because my click-through rate (CTR) is good. Internet Explorer, in general, isn’t standards-compliant, so some design elements might break or look clunky resulting in a higher bounce rate.

Mobile Browser Report

When I segment site visitors by mobile browser, things look a little weirder. Bounce rates peak and trough a bit. Mobile browsers are very different from regular browsers in that the screen is a lot smaller. My site and blog are optimized for mobile, so my bounce rates aren’t in the 90s. But even so, some users seem to be having a better experience. I’d need to do more testing to find out what’s going on.

The weird thing about Google Analytics is that it groups tablets as mobile devices. To me, tablets function more like desktops because their screen resolution often meets or exceeds them. Using a standard HTML5 site, a Web site should look the same on a tablet as it does on a desktop. Mobile browsers are almost always fully HTML5 compliant.

Using either the desktop or mobile report I created you can drill down to see specific browser versions. For example, there is a huge difference between Internet Explorer 6 and Internet Explorer 8.

If everything checks out on the browser side, it’s time to look at other areas of optimization like search.

Responsive Design

Remember that Web sites should be responsive, that is to say they adjust from large 27″ iMacs to mobile browsers. The kenmorico.com is a good example of this. I find that since implementing the responsive design on my site my analytics numbers smooth out and everyone seems to have a good experience. Bounce rate, time on site, and other metrics seem to equalize.

Resources

• Free Google Analytics Report – User Experience by Desktop Browser
• Free Google Analytics Report – User Experience by Mobile Browser
• Reach Enlightenment With This Free Google Analytics Search Report
• Google Knocked Me Down – How I Fattened Content and Won
• W3C HTML Validator
• jQuery Javascript Library
• Responsive Design Overview – Smashing Magazine

The site is “live” but very much in development. I did get it working on mobile devices and it has a somewhat crude algorithm at this point. It’s a full web service, so I expect to share it and make it embedable on other sites. Stay tuned!

UPDATE 11/10/2011 – Just started a Google Adwords search campaign. We’ll see how that goes. Added philosophers and additional advice as part of the algorithm. Plan on building out some Twitter integration.

No iDisk in iCloud? No Problem. Get DropBox

I was disappointed that iCloud was dropping support for iDisk. iDisk would let you move files between computers and they would sync automatically over the air. Dropbox (www.dropbox.com) does exactly the same thing. It works flawlessly. It’s fast, free up to 2GB, and you can access your files on their Web site. It has become my iDisk replacement. If you refer friends you can get up to 8GB of storage free. My co-worker even created a Google AdWords campaign just to get the extra free storage. You can also buy more storage if you want…. good for syncing raw photos or even your whole music collection.

Sync Podcasts with Google Reader, Not iTunes

I’ve never really like iTunes’ support for podcasts. The reason is probably because Apple can’t make money off of them because most of them are free and they have no way to monetize them. So development for podcast features has taken a backseat to music syncing.

Fear not, feed friends! The same Google Reader you use for your regular RSS feed subscriptions can be used to store podcast feeds. I created a “Podcasts” folder in my Google Reader and added all the podcast feeds I had in iTunes. Now I can listen to podcasts on my computer and iPhone. Also, there’s no waiting to download. Press the play button in Google Reader and it starts playing right away. Try it out and subscribe to my podcast feed: 

Plus you get useful Google Reader features like:

• Favorite using the star icon
• Share to social media sites
• Organize podcasts into folders
• Save space on your local disk
• Automatic updates

Google Music Can Sync Your Music, or Use a Service Like Pandora

Google Music is a new service that can store your music in the cloud, but you need to install software to upload the music. With regular compressed files this is fine. With uncompressed music in your library this can take forever. Google gives you some free music as well, which I was very impressed with.

Another route to go is a free music service like Pandora. You can create your own stations and the music ad-supported, though not in an annoying way. You can even create a Dashboard Widget using Safari to have quick access to your Pandora music. They also offer a premium service that offers better quality music and no ads for only $36/year. I’m satisfied with the regular Pandora audio quality. Thank you, sponsors.

Update: I got a free 30-day Pandora One subscription by clicking on an ad. Definitely worth doing. I’m really liking Pandora One. The audio quality really is a lot better. Fewer interruptions and no ads helps a lot. Plus the music library is almost infinite. There are several ways to get Pandora in your car, so it can make for a cheaper satellite radio alternative. Check out http://www.pandora.com/#!/go/auto for auto options. This Bloomberg BusinessWeek article discusses Pandora’s auto plans in detail.

And don’t forget to pass on this post to your friends…

Resources

• What to Know Before Flying in the iCloud
• Dropbox Online Storage
• Google Reader – Store Your Podcast Feeds
• Google Music
• Pandora Music

Typical with new Apple products and services, they are often ahead of their time but leave some core features missing. After installing iOS 5 and iCloud, things were a bit confusing. Were my emails in the iCloud? Notes? Everything on my iPhone in the iCloud? Short answer is no. With only 5GB of free storage and with server technology behind what Google uses, they simply can’t store everything on the iCloud. Here are a few things to note when moving over:

iCloud creates a New me.com email address

When you create a new iCloud account it requires that you create a new @me.com email address so you can use email and notes. I use it just for notes. Did you know Hotmail, Yahoo, and Google all support push email which saves iPhone battery power and data usage?

Google and Hotmail need to be setup as Exchange servers in your email settings. Instructions for setting up Gmail with push technology can be found here. Skip iCloud for mail. Google will be far more reliable and you can use all the other Google services.

I especially like the simple filters in Gmail that let me filter junk out of my inbox and into subfolders that don’t increment the counts in my mailbox icons. Also it will stop the banner notifications so you won’t be so distracted during the day.

Notes in iCloud Don’t Sync Until You Move them to iCloud

You may be wondering where notes are in the iCloud.com Web interface. Notes are hidden under the mail section of iCloud. Notes in iCloud are nothing more than an IMAP email folder. When you move your data to iCloud any previous notes created on your Mac or iPhone are left in separate account folders than the new iCloud notes folder. You need to copy over the notes using Mac Mail to get them to the iCloud server. Not for the novice computer user. Why should they have to do this? Seems silly and confusing. Migration should be seamless.

That being said I do like how simple the notes app is on the iPhone and I like using it. Once I started using the iCloud account for notes the syncing became automatic with my Mac.

Contacts are Best Left in iCloud

I tried moving contacts on my mac to my Google account to give contacts in Google a try. It just doesn’t work as well as using contacts in iCloud. Indeed, contacts should stay in iCloud until there are better migration tools from Google.

Use Google Calendar for your Calendar

If you create a Google email address you can also configure it use the Calendar associated with the account. This is handy when you log in to Gmail and use iGoogle. Calendars are pretty universal so moving events you already created between different accounts won’t be a problem.

iCloud account for Reminders

Reminders, which are new to iOS5, are a new app. They appear in iCal on the Mac, and for Outlook they are tasks. You need an account to sync reminders. I use the iCloud account because Google doesn’t support reminders at this time. Make sure you have iCloud setup as your reminder account in iCal settings or in your PC setup.

I’d like to see tools from Google that will sync all the iCloud data with Google apps so when I use Google or iCloud everything will really “just work.”

Fill in the Missing iCloud Features – Online Backup, Podcast Sync, Music Sync

In my post Get Missing iCloud Features – Backup Drive, Podcast Sync, Music Sync I show you how to fill in the missing services. Check it out.

How are you adjusting to the new iCloud features? Comment below and don’t forget to subscribe to my blog to get updates. Thanks!

Create Your Author Link for Single Author Blogs and Traditional Web Sites

Each page of content needs tagging to establish the link to an “author” page on the domain. Google uses the Google+ profile page to verify the relationship from and to the blog or site. How do you get started?

Mad Men - Don Draper

When I think about what keeps me interested in a blog, it seems like it’s the same qualities that keep me interested in books and TV dramas. Plot and character development. Having an interest in the topic is a given, but often we listen to people who tell the best stories, and tell them with vigor and theatrics.

Be Interesting

Be interesting. Share experiences that are different from the everyday experience. I like watching the show Mad Men – a TV series about the life of a creative director in 1960s New York advertising. As the show progresses you see life through this womanizing man who leads very different lives. In fact, he is not the person he says he is, and the series shows flashbacks that give the viewer glimpses of his past. Viewers want to see how the character develops. In a sense this is what The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald does. It’s what a lot of great literary works and scripts do. How can the average person be interesting?

Have a Backstory

Once you establish quality content on a blog or Web site, people interested in your content often go to the about page. Why? They want to connect with you. As a Web analyst for several large companies, I can tell you the about page is very important for individuals and companies. We all want to connect with people we admire, people we find interesting… people like us… or people we want to be.

Create your backstory:

• How did you get interested in your blog topic? Explain personal stories… I was fishing with my grandfather when I was a boy…
• Why do you continue to explore the topic? I find it interesting because these past experiences led me to…
• What’s your experience? People want to get information from experts. If you’re not an expert, you can still create a great site by explaining that you are learning and documenting your experiences and learnings.

State Your Trajectory

Once people connect with you, they want to “follow” you. Online this is easy to do with Twitter, Facebook, and Google+. But people are selfish too. We often friend people because they can DO something for us. In a sense online we can ride the coattails of people. If we follow people we think are on an upward trajectory we are likely to write comments and engage.

Everyone wants to get in early on a rising star and “discover” someone. In literature, we route for “heroes.” We also sympathize with them when things get tough. Let people know where you’re going and why they should ride along with you.

Write the Plot for your Story

Every good character needs challenges. In blogging, it’s interesting topics and ways of exploring the topic that haven’t been done before. Like photographers say, you can take 50 pictures of the same door, but different lighting conditions can make each photo unique.

The blogs I find most interesting right now are the ones including a mix of text, audio, video, and photos. What better way to document a challenge than with video and text? You get the visuals and the meat with the benefits of search engine optimization. Video increases shares as well. With text, it’s hard to relate to a person behind the words because you get see facial expressions, body language and voice tones. This is where showmanship comes in…

Showmanship

Showmanship can come in many forms. Especially online. When exploring a topic you can demonstrate showmanship through images, video, and audio. Like birdwatching? Maybe create a video of you walking through the jungle to get to the best spot. A lot of times it’s about the journey. Seeing experiences through a character gives perspective. Perspective invites conversation.

Character Development Examples (TV and Print)

• Mad Men TV Show
• The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

Blogs that Demonstrate Character Development

• Eric Kim Street Photography Blog (Young photographer explores different shooting styles through video, photos, and text)
• Koreans Gone Bad (Street artist David Choe explores podcasting, travel, and debauchery)

You can follow Hal on Twitter or visit his Web site, www.HalWerner.com.

This is the second podcast in a series that will be released with venerable Hal. Check back next week for another episode.

You can follow Hal on Twitter or visit his Web site, www.HalWerner.com.

You can follow Hal on Twitter or visit his Web site, www.HalWerner.com.

K.Mo's Podcast Studio

In my podcasting journey I’ve found a few resources particularly helpful. Here are a few. Enjoy!

Web Sites

• Corporate Podcasting Strategies – Jeremiah Owyang
• iTunes Podcasting Specs – Apple
• Tips for Improving Your Podcast – O’Reilly
• Podcasting Legal Guide
• Podcast Producers Group on LinkedIn

Products

• Lavalier Mic for Interviews
• Samson G Track Studio Mic
• Sony Studio Headphones
• Apple Macbook Pro with GarageBand

Ken’s Podcasting Posts

• Podcast Using Other Peoples’ Content Using Creative Commons
• Use Freemium Ways to Monetize Podcasts Faster
• Make Your Podcast Audio Content Part of an Interactive Experience

With the explosion of YouTube, social media, and smart mobile devices, users often don’t have patience to read through a lot of text sometimes. They want simple answers and a real person to deliver it to them. I’m not discounting text and images, but what’s the attention span of people now that thousands of tweets are blasting out in a second? Exactly.

Increase Your Odds for Ranking on the SERPs

Your chances of ranking for a video on YouTube versus text content are significantly higher. Domain age, authority, inbound links, and other common SEO practices don’t necessarily have to apply to video for Google to rank a video highly. There are 319,000,000 results in Google for “Video SEO.” How many video only results? 31,300. Your chances of ranking are 10,191x better. I like those odds much better. Plus, if your text content includes a video you’re likely to get boost in ranking. I did with my blog posts Google Knocked Me Down – How I Fattened Content and Won and Mobile Web Apps or Native Mobile Apps? Plus, users tend to stay on your site longer because online videos are usually around 5 minutes. That’s 5 minutes they could be looking at ads, your Twitter handle, related posts, or anything you want them to see.

You can embed video from YouTube, Vimeo, and other video sharing sites. Smart video producers brand their videos with the producers name, Web address, and Twitter handle. Since YouTube embedded videos are served from Google servers, your site bandwidth isn’t affected and videos typically load in a snappy fashion.

Producing Web Video is a Lot of Work – “Steal” for SEO

Producing good Web video is time consuming. That’s why your odds of ranking are 10,191x better. It’s not easy. People are picky when it comes to online video. They have no patience for cheap-sounding audio. Not everyone can afford expensive non-linear editing software. Not everyone has the editorial skills to make a fun and informative video. If you can produce a snazzy Web video, brand it with lower third information, and blast it out to the world using third-party video hosting services, you’ll make your site and content much more appealing to a broader audience.

Since many people don’t have the tools or skills to produce their own quality Web video, I recommend “stealing” quality, relevant, videos to sex up your site. Here’s a video by Scott Willoughby from SEOmoz on Optimizing for Video Content. It’s worth a view. Note: I didn’t produce this video!

SEOmoz Whiteboard Friday – Optimizing for Video Content from Scott Willoughby on Vimeo.

This Panda 2.2 update is supposed to improve one of the original goals of the Panda algorithm – make sites with original content rank higher than the imposters and scrapers. I don’t have scraped content on my site, but it seems it doesn’t matter – I was hit anyway. After I outlined a post describing how my blog ranked higher after Google Panda, my traffic increased. Now, my traffic died down a bit… almost by half but it’s creeping back up again. Of course it’s silly to rely only on Google search traffic, and I don’t, but many businesses do. Be prepared.

Search Traffic After Google Panda 2.2 Update

Here’s a Google Webmaster Tools chart of my search volume after the Panda 2.2 update:

Hopefully this will right itself. Many webmasters note corrections after algorithm updates and their traffic returns. This has gone on for years now. Even if you’re right, you can be wrong. But it’s still an important lesson to learn.

Keep Up with your Web Stats

Contrary to many advice sites that say not to track your Web stats daily or often, you can clearly see keeping up with what’s going on with your site IS important. What if you were selling Books online and had $600/day in income? If you didn’t pay attention to your stats you would have lost $2100/ week if you didn’t figure out what was going on and how to fix it.

Save Time Checking Web Stats with Bookmark Folders and Dashboards

I’ll share a tip with you that has helped me keep up with all my Web stats: I created bookmarks to my custom Google Analytics dashboard, Feedburner Weekly Stats page, and Google Webmaster Tools dashboard and combined them into a folder in my Safari Bookmarks Bar. With one click they all open to the right place. No hunting around for right information. Custom dashboards in Google Analytics are very powerful and great time savers. Use them.

The changes I made to my site that I mentioned in Google Knocked Me Down – How I Fattened Content and Won still are working for me in the bigger picture and I continue to gain subscribers.

Update Your Content on the Go with a WordPress Mobile App

One of the best ways to increase search traffic, I’ve found, is to add and refresh existing content to make it deeper. But we aren’t always connected to a computer all the time. If you have a WordPress blog you can download a mobile app to update all your posts and even add new ones. This is handy if you’re waiting in line somewhere or have a stroke of genius when you’re walking somewhere. Check out WordPress for iOS. It works on iPad too.

Have you noticed a change in your traffic? Found anything odd or have tips? Please comment.

Resources

• Google Knocked Me Down – How I Fattened Content and Won
• Satisfy Visitor Needs with this Free Google Analytics Custom Report
• Overview of New Google Analytics Dashboard – Official Google Blog
• WordPress for iOS

Search Cred

Nearly all companies and individuals with an online presence needs to focus on search. The reasons are many – a large portion of traffic can come from search, high rankings establish site quality and trust, and Google’s new +1 button can give you a credibility jolt. If you haven’t check out the new beta version of Google Analytics v5 be sure to play around with it.

In this search report I focus on keywords. Keywords give you great insight into the flow of traffic into your site. When you write content, you have an idea of the keywords YOU THINK people are searching for. This report shows how people actually arrive at your site. I am always surprised with the keywords I find in my report. Oftentimes I change my content based on good ideas I receive from searchers.

This report starts with a view of keywords – keywords from all search engines. I don’t care what search engine they come from (at least at this point). The bounces and bounce rate fields tell me if the searchers found what they were looking for and were interested enough in other content in the site to continue reading. Most times, people find the content they want on your site and leave. That’s common. The art of making a great site means marketing content, products, or services to users, or in this case searchers. The more you tweak your content and market your other content, products, or services, the lower the bounce rates and higher the traffic.

Clicking through on the hyperlinked keywords will take you to the landing pages for the keywords. Did users reach only one page? Or do multiple pages rank for certain keywords? A trend in search right now is that users are typing in long-tail keywords – full phrases other than generic keywords. As phrases gain in popularity with the autocomplete algorithm, your site can match for the full phrase. That’s gold.

Download the Google Analytics Keyword Custom Report

To download the report, you must have Google Analytics Beta (v5) open. This version will be out of beta soon, so be aware of that. Then, click the hyperlink.

Keyword Search Report

Get all my free Google Analytics reports here.

In this video I explain why longer content works and what you can do specifically within WordPress to help with SEO and visitor retention.

What good are visitors that come to your site and bounce? Exactly. Beef up that content, skinny lovers!

Resources

• Google Knocked Me Down – How I Fattened Content and Won

Here are a few sites that I found useful on my blogging journey. I’ll be expanding this post so be sure to bookmark.

Content-building Tools

• WordPress – Visit WordPress.org to download and install the WordPress blogging software. This will enable you to build your own blog with a custom URL. It uses the same technology Facebook uses (PHP code and MySQL database). The setup is easy for people with some Webmaster experience. If you don’t feel comfortable setting it up yourself, have someone from your IT department do it for you. It’s easy to use once it works and writing blog posts and pages is about as easy as using Microsoft Word. Note: this blog uses WordPress.

Web Site / Blog Promotion Tools

• AddThis.com – AddThis makes it easy for users to bookmark and share your site on many social networking sites. You don’t need to keep up with all the social networking sites and links. They do.
• Google Insights for Search – See what users are searching for in your industry and plan your site and content accordingly. Very useful.
• Google Trends – See what users are searching for on the Web now to get an idea for hot topics. Also see regions where the searches originate.
• Technorati – This is a popular blog search site. Be sure to claim your blog to get it listed and build a profile so users can see you are legit. Make sure your blog software pings them directly to instantly know about changes to your blog.
• FeedBurner – FeedBurner reposts your Web site or Blog’s RSS feed to a new URL. The benefits are that you can gain a more accurate count of subscribers than you can with traditional Web stats programs. In addition, you can add useful links such as “email this”, “Digg This”, and others that make sharing posts easy for your subscribers. It integrates with Google AdSense, so you can post ads as well.

Social Networking Sites That Matter

• Facebook – Largest social networking site with 150+ million active users. The site is corporate / blogger friendly with tools businesses can use to monitor their profile stats. They also have an advertising program companies can use to reach users.
• StumbleUpon – Sharing site that shows news stories / blog posts / videos / images from around the Web. The site recommends sites for you and it takes you to them – kind of like channel surfing. It’s a democratic Web site. You can even post your own site link with image to get more attention. I’ve gotten some traffic this way.
• Twitter Search – Find out what people are discussing right now on micro-blogging site Twitter and search for references of your site, product, or service. Searches don’t go back far in time, however.

SEO Sites for Blog Beginners

• Google Webmaster Tools – Your site can’t succeed without Google. Period. For Google to list your site higher and regularly, you need to communicate with Google and tell it about your site. The Webmaster Tools will show you how your site ranks currently and you can optimize it so your site comes up in the searches you want. Broken and dead links will hurt your rankings. The Webmaster Tools will help you find them.
• Google Analytics – Google Analytics is the fortune teller of the Internet. It tells you where you are, the path you’re headed, and who wants to reach out to you. Used carefully, it can tell you where your visitors are coming from, popular pages, and features and easy-to-use interface. You can create extra users to share access to reports and schedule reports to be emailed to you directly. It allows you to setup stats tracking for multiple sites and microsites within your top site. Other stats programs won’t let you do that.
• Create a Sitemap – A lot of Web sites use HTML pages as sitemaps to help their visitors navigate a site. This is fine for large sites with many pages, but for smaller sites you shouldn’t need an HTML sitemap. Your navigation should be easy enough that users can find where they want to go fast. I recommend creating an XML sitemap that lists all your pages that search engines can use to find every page and describes additional detail that will help search engines index your site. Any additional information search engines have about your site the better your pages will rank.

Related

Google Knocked Me Down – How I Fattened Content and Won

When I took a look at my content, much of it was medium length (350 words). But some of it lacked polish. Polish from all sides really. My content should have been longer. It should have included more resources. It should have been easier to read with more headlines, bullets, and boldfaced text. I left superficial content about minor news on the site.

Google as Kingmaker of Content

The Google algorithm finds the best content and presents it to users. To be effective, the algorithm must think like a human editor. Sometimes it gets fooled by content owners who try to trick the algorithm. That’s when the algorithm writers tweak the algorithm to shake out the scammers and let the best content rise to the top. A lot of people online were angry that their sites, which they thought were quality, were knocked out of the rankings.

I stand by this Google “Panda” update. The algorithm thinks more like a human. Writing quality is valued. Length and production time are valued. Research is valued. Original thought and ideas are valued.  This is good for the Web. It’s the reason The New York Times is frequently quoted more than a local newspaper. But when the algorithm is out of whack, a local newspaper could outrank The New York Times. It shouldn’t be.

How to Fatten Content and Get Ranked High in Google Search Engine Reporting Pages (SERPs)

When I looked at weak areas of my content, I found a few things I could do to improve the content of my posts. Here’s what I did that helped me:

• Focused on being original –  in ideas, content, and presentation
• Added header tags to break up content (H3, H2, etc.)
• Increased content word count from around 350 words to 800-1100 words
• Added more bulleted lists
• Added more descriptive ALT tags to images
• Added ALT tags to images that had no ALT tags
• Read this post from Google about what THEY said they want from sites
• Added <strong> tags to highlight important terms in my post (bold)
• Added additional content to the post. I used my Google Analytics to help determine what users were searching for, what they weren’t finding on my pages, and came up with a plan to address problems people had
• I cross-linked some posts and came up with bulleted “related posts”
• I added more references and links where I could to substantiate my claims
• I removed superficial posts
• I updated the content I updated even more
• I added additional images
• I removed unnecessary links (hyperlinked post titles that pointed to the page users were on)
• Blocked files and pages in my robots.txt file (I had 3 resume files and an HTML resume page – only needed the HTML resume page that linked to the files)
• I removed ads from my site and improved the content-to-ad ratio
• I tried to genuinely write about problems users were having, but doing so in an entertaining and personal way that was different from other major sites
• I edited my content again – improving the writing while keeping core keywords in mind
• Thought about what would make my content shareable
• Removed the “www” from my domain name (doesn’t really add value and makes your URL harder to read in search results)
• I crossed every T and dotted every i

The Results

As you can see, I’m still in the process of SEO optimization, but the results are clear. Basically, I’ve seen a 600%+ overall increase in search impressions and clicks according to Google Webmaster tools. I suspect this will go even higher as I continue to add content to existing posts – including this one. As far as the drop off when panda started, the Google Webmaster Tools won’t let you see further than a month back, but I can tell you my site and key blog posts were at higher levels.

Killer Ads or Kill the Ads?

Ads can play a big part in SEO now. We have learned how we can gauge how many ads are too many.
Affiliate Marketer Andrew Hansen posted a canned Google response he received:

“The site must have user value other than providing ads. For example, Google provides web search, news sites provide regularly updated original content, and other services. To check that your website complies with our arbitrage policy:

1. Open the site in a new browser.

2. Expand the browser to a minimum of a 1024 x 768 pixel display.

3. Make sure you have minimal browser menus and your font is set to medium or normal.

4. Scroll to the very top of the page, as evaluation is based on what appears above the fold.

5. The site is considered compliant if the area of ads is less than or equal to the area of content.

“Please use the instructions above to evaluate your entire website and, if necessary, bring it into compliance with our arbitrage policy. If you’re not in compliance, you may receive a low landing page quality score, which can negatively affect your Quality Scores, cost-per-clicks, and ad positions.”

Let’s also not forget ads slow down a page, and Google’s inclusion of a Site Speed section in the new Google Analytics shows site speed is an increasingly important ranking.

Semantic Markup for SEO

I think people forget that HTML tags like <strong> (bold) and H3 (header) MEAN something to Google. They don’t just help layout. They tell it what is important on the page. It knows bulleted lists help users comprehend what they are reading better than straight copy sometimes. HTML5 is all about semantic markup – not just generic tags. It gives Google a clue as to what is the meaning of this content within certain tags.

Clean Sitemaps for SEO

If you use Google’s Webmaster tools, one thing to look out for is the number of links Google has indexed from your sitemap and how many are left out. You want this to be 100%. All links in your sitemap should be indexed. Remove all superficial and wasteful pages! Instead of posting more, spend your energy improving existing posts / making them longer. You will get more hits and linkbacks with strong content that WILL push you higher in the rankings.

Beyond Google

It should be noted that what’s good for Google can also be good for Bing. I’ve never ranked well on Bing. I hope that will change. From what I’ve researched, Bing takes into account content length as a significant factor. So by increasing content length, you cover both major search engines. I believe Bing to be “dumber” algorithm that relies more on external links to sites. It’s harder for the little guy to rank well that way. Google gives rank based on about 200 variables and lets the best content rise to the top on its merit. With search such a significant source of traffic – quality traffic usually, you can’t ignore optimizing your site for Google. But remember that longer content is always more shareable – so spending more time creating each post or page helps get a viral lift.

Original Content, Original Me

Google’s Matt Cutts said that the best way to do SEO on a small budget is to use a small niche to your advantage. As you get well-known in that space, you can gain rank and build out to more broad topics. Focused sites are better sites. There are plenty of small sites that turn a profit because niche marketing usually targets enthusiastic people. I’m not into diving or cupcake making, but I know people who love it. Usually niches evoke strong feelings from people – those people subscribe and buy.

Usually when you search for a small topic the search results are so bad that it’s easy to come up on top. A well marked-up site with proper meta tags will be well presented in the results page. Bing in particular presents well marked-up pages beautifully in the results pages.

Most of all I learned the importance of being original. I learned I can never compete with larger organizations head-on. And that’s fine. I know they can’t compete with me because they don’t have my original ideas. I don’t think faceless corporations care about people the way I do. I’ll let the people decide about my content. Now run and tell that, Google.

[Update 6/25/2011: There was a Panda 2.2 update just released. Read about my experience.]

Photo courtesy fortherock

Resources

Google’s Matt Cutts discusses Alt Attributes for Image SEO

• Google Panda 2.2 in the Wild: Traffic Down and Up
• WordPress SEO – Seize the Top with Beefed Up Content [VIDEO]
• Google Webmaster Central – Site Content Suggestions After Panda
• Google Algorithm Updates in 2011
• Get all my free Google Analytics reports here.

Have you tried SEO that worked for you after Panda? Please share and let the community know.

Facebook Page and the Facebook Profile

With a few simple steps I’m going to outline how it’s easy to separate Facebook “friends” into two distinct groups – your personal friends with your regular Facebook profile, and business fans and people you would like your page to be a fan of. Now, Facebook pages have the ability to like other pages. This comes in handy in four ways.

• You can get other pages to notice your page when you like them.
• You can keep updated on the news feed of other pages – and not see the feed in your personal account.
• By liking other pages you are now in the group of people with similar interests.
• You can comment on other pages as a page and get people to view your profile with your business pitch or any content you want.

I’ve heard of people using Facebook to network before with their personal profile. To me, it just doesn’t make sense. I think people live in two worlds – a business world and a personal world. In my case, my name is my brand. Since my business / professional name is the same as my real name, it causes an obvious problem on Facebook. I used to think that there were better tools to use for networking like Twitter and LinkedIn. But these new Facebook Page capabilities make networking on Facebook easy. Plus, Facebook opens your personal brand / business to almost 700 million people.

You don’t want your messages exposed to people who are not interested in receiveing them. That’s why it’s important to have a separate Facebook Page. We all know people who send business-related messages on their personal accounts. Nobody likes that! If you don’t have a Facebook Page, creating one is easy. Once you have it set up, you can take control of it with the powerful Use Facebook as Page option.

UPDATE 10/16/11: Facebook now has a Subscribe Button to enable anyone to subscribe to your public updates. This may make sense for a personal brand, as long as your friends don’t mind seeing your topic-specific posts. You can create filters in Facebook for your posts, but this is kind of a hassle. Separate pages can make more sense. In all, it’s not easy to separate business and personal in Facebook without some work.

Here’s a table the highlights some differences:

Use Facebook as Page

The new feature that changes everything is the “Use Facebook as Page” link in the Account menu at the top right of Facebook when you are logged in. Facebook Page veterans can see this link to see what’s changed. Once you are logged into your page you now take on your alter ego. Step out of your Clark Kent suit and post, like pages, comment, and see a custom news feed – just like a Facebook superuser. And of course you can use the page to syndicate your content automatically as before using RSS from a Web site or blog.

Another great use of the Use Facebook as Page option is that you can aggregate news from pages you “like” in your industry. When you see a story that catches your attention you can comment on it. It’s much easier to see relevant news stories when you’re not seeing updates of your baby cousin’s new halloween costume. Since making comments in Facebook is easy and fast, you can really get your name out there. Also, I noticed some blogs I followed got more comments from Facebook than on the actual blog site. Interesting. I think more technically-oriented people sometimes forget that regular Internet users use Facebook most of the time. It’s how they “make the rounds” in the digital space. Plus PR people NEED to be on Facebook all the time, so you need a professional presence on Facebook to get noticed and interact.

FaceBook Page Tab  and the IFrame

You’ll notice a big design difference with regular Facebook user profile and business Facebook Pages because of what’s called the tab feature of the Facebook Page. Facebook pages can have a design (if the owner chooses) that look like mini Web pages. They are even easier to create now that Facebook has migrated to what’s called the iFrame to display tab content.

iFrames are literally Web pages within Web pages, so regular Web designers can easily create pages and host them on another server outside of the Facebook domain. When users visit your page for the first time, your welcome tab can appear with your logo, fonts, videos, and any other marketing material. The sizes are small though, only 520 pixels or roughly 5 inches wide on a standard computer monitor. Facebook Pages don’t automatically come setup with the iFrame component, so you’ll need to install an iFrame app to get it to work. I’ve investigated a few iFrame apps and this one has the best reviews.

Simple pages aren’t all that you can do. Having developed Facebook Applications professionally, I can tell you there is so much you can customize to make your page fun and viral. Pages give you access to limitless creative possibilities – you just need a skilled programmer familiar with the Facebook platform. Wanna add a game to your page? No problem! Want to use their friends list or gain access to useful personal data to build your database? Yep, you can do that too.

Small Businesses Spending More on Facebook Marketing in 2011

Did you know small businesses are stepping up spending on Facebook marketing this year? According to an Inc Magazine survey, in 2011 businesses will spend more this year on Facebook than Twitter. Interesting. Twitter, blogs, and LinkedIn made the other top spots. What does this tell me? 700 million Facebook users can’t be ignored. If you’re a small business or professional you need to respect the size of Facebook and its growing importance in the business community. With the increased features for separating personal accounts and business accounts, you can be sure Facebook has more in store for businesses. The place check-ins are already evidence of that. Think you can’t know what’s happening next? Developers usually know through a page Facebook has called the Roadmap. It helps them prepare their code for services changes and major upcoming shifts. You may want to check it out as you get deeper into Facebook marketing since Facebook changes can derail your marketing if they remove features.

Separate Accounts for Facebook Business and Facebook Personal Accounts

People often wonder if you can have two fully separate Facebook accounts – the quick answer is no. Facebook Pages must be connected to a Facebook personal account. That account becomes an “administrator” of the page. You can also appoint others to administer your Facebook Page – useful for large companies or busy business people. You can also walk away from your Facebook Page and let others manage it completely. You can create as many pages as you want with your personal account.

Don’t bother trying to create a personal account with a business name. There’s a Facebook algorithm that checks names. It the name doesn’t look like a real name it won’t let you create the profile.

What about Google+?

Google+ is a new social media service from Google. The great thing about it right now is that you can keep personal and business separated from the start with their “circles” feature. Any posts you create can be set to private – shared with groups you create, or using pre-built groups Google provides. Or, for maximum exposure, they can be set to public. I like using Google services since I feel they give me an edge in SEO. Google will be rolling out brand pages for businesses soon, so if you have a brand that is separate from yourself you’ll want to wait for that feature.

Do You “Like” Me?

If you have found this helpful be sure to “Like” Ken Morico on Facebook or add me to a circle on Google+. I’ll be posting more articles on Facebook strategies and learnings as I go, so please subscribe to my blog to stay notified.

Related Posts:

• More Users, More Money, More Facebook
• Doing it for the Money and Fame: Dropping Web Comments

The stock install writes an .htaccess file like this (assuming a “blog” subfolder):

# BEGIN WordPress

RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /blog/
RewriteRule ^index\.php$ - [L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /blog/index.php [L]


# END WordPress

{REQUEST_FILENAME}

The {REQUEST_FILENAME} seemed to blow up when it saw /index.php/ with the trailing slash and erred with the “No input file specified.” message. I determined that I needed to write a redirect rule BEFORE the {REQUEST_FILENAME} code took effect. Basically I needed the server to read the incoming url and see if it had the trailing slash after the index.php. If it did, redirect the url to a normal WordPress url on my existing site. The 301 tells Web servers that the redirect is permanent and all PageRank should be applied to the new location. 301 status messages also pass along the referrer – important for your web stats.

RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /blog/
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^.*/index.php/.* [NC]
RewriteRule ^index\.php/(.*)$ http://kenmorico.com/blog/$1 [R=301,L]

.htaccess files can really jack up your site, so be sure to make a backup before you mess with this file. Also, check out the mod_rewrite documentation on the Apache Website. To sum up, you only need this adjustment if there are links on the web pointing to the old “PATHINFO” version of your url. WordPress handles all the links within the blog just fine.

Benefits of Linux Hosting and Mod-Rewrite

One of the main benefits to migrating WordPress on Linux was being able to use the “pretty” permalinks with Apache’s mod-rewrite. With links getting longer and longer, you need mod-rewrite to shorten the links. In my experience, blog posts need the title of the post in the url for better search engine ranking. Saving 9 characters from the URL by removing “index.php” helps a lot and is much easier for people to read. Mod-rewrite rules are everywhere on the Internet (see above) and there’s always a post describing to redirect or rewrite with flair. Windows redirects are cumbersome and might require special software installations. The rewrite rules are NOT seamlessly transferable.

WordPress Hosting Differences Between Windows and Linux

When I had WordPress on the windows server at CrystalTech, I could never get email notifications from the WordPress blog. The server setup had a hard time communicating with the PHP mail function. WordPress on Linux works fine using the standard PHP mail function, like you would expect with a Linux / PHP / MySQL setup for WordPress. Truth be told, I haven’t had real problems with custom PHP code I wrote hosted on Windows servers using the PHP mail function, but communicating with Microsoft exchange using PHP can be a problem. Like most sites, you should go on one platform or the other and save headaches. You’ll also find that Linux hosting is cheaper than Windows hosting.

404 Pages

A final tip: make sure you check your Google Webmaster Tools for 404 pages. It finds broken links on sites that are not your own. Fixing 404 pages brings more traffic to your site and helps other webmasters look good when their links function.

The Art and Beats section highlights the arts scene in Venice Beach’s past, while putting map locations in context.

The reason I mention the site is to demonstrate that audio podcasts can be more than just radio-like audio feeds. They can be combined into greater interactive experiences – as well as radio-like feeds.

Podcasts live a dual life – they live in an iTunes-like feed away from the Web browser, and embedded in Web content like blogs and interactive experiences. Find a way to make your audio content work overtime.

You can see the plugin in action with HTML5 on my post / podcast about the freemium model and promo codes.

Here is a video from Blubrry explaining how to set up the plugin:

Podcasting is a lot of fun. If you are interested in podcasting, join my LinkedIn group, Podcast Producers.

Related

• How I Created a Podcast Studio for Less Than $150

Jack Kerouac

The Original On the Road

People who know me know I’m a big Jack Kerouac fan. I’ve read several of his novels and loved the idea of improvisational storytelling. In the 1940s, it was quite a new method of storytelling. Kerouac popularized it, but the idea came from letters written on-the-go by his friend Neal Cassidy. It was these letters that got me interested in Kerouac and the style of writing. Armed with an iPhone and Twitter, I had the tools to bring Kerouac’s true vision of improvisational storytelling to life – in real time.

Where Kerouac and his motley crew of writers and adventurers only used words, Twitter empowers people today to use words, photos, audio, and even video in real time. And so, my evening started with just that – words and photos.

Dispatches

I dashed out Tweets from my Twitter account @KenMorico. Since the iPhone has a built-in microphone, it makes an excellent digital voice recorder, and I was able to capture the city sounds from our bus stop along with our unedited, off-the-cuff commentary. Have a listen:

As the night progressed, I took more photos and wrote more Tweets. The iPhone 4 makes a great travel camera… I was able to take photos without drawing too much attention to myself, and at 5 megapixels the photos came out fairly crisp. Using FourSquare, I was able to check in to places and let people know exactly where I was… creating history in effect.

The Bus Routes

The bus was a fun time. I though the bus stop closest to where I lived would be what I needed. Hal explained different. Buses have certain routes, so even though one is closer, it may not take you exactly where you think it might go. Hal used the wonderful Google Maps with embedded bus routes to find our way. The Houston METRO Bus Schedules were horrible and confusing. METRO should really hire a company like Ken Morico to redesign their site. Anyways, the people on the bus were interesting. Old, one mentally handicapped, a few pimps, and some fairly normal people. You really notice your surroundings on the bus. With the slow speed of the bus, you see things that you would never notice on familiar routes driving in a fast car.

A man’s night on the town, we visited eateries and bars on a beautiful Friday night in springtime Houston. Downtown has a lot of unique bars and restaurants, like historic La Carafe, Flying Saucer, and Frank’s Pizza.

Twitterists

Kerouac may be dead, and the improvisational style forgotten by many, but I see a new generation of inspired “writers.” Maybe I’ll just call them Twitterists. Yeah, I just made that up. Improv is back!

Fun “On the Road” Internet Series

• Thumbs Up! Internet series that showcases Artist David Choe and sidekick Harry Kim hitchhiking across the country. Fun, creative, and in-tune with the reality of the ups and downs of road life.

Healthcare and tech are the top industries now. According to job site indeed.com, HTML5 is the number one job trend right now.  Just look at this graph. Of course, I saw this trend coming in early 2010 and made KenMorico.com fully HTML5. I anticipated the meteoric rise in job postings and skill demand and prepped myself. It seems to be paying off.

You can see job trends and hiring conditions on this wonderful government site, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, part of the United States Department of Labor. There’s an important monthly jobs report the tells you the number of jobs created or lost along with other data. You can see useful industry-specific job trends in the private space on Indeed.com/jobtrends.

Recent years have been quite soft in demand due to the recession and “jobless recovery” in the earlier part of the 2000s. After the dotcom bust and 9/11, tech was hit hard. The maturing of the industry and boost from social media and mobile have re-energized the space, along with a now slow, but moving jobs recovery.

I remember when my career was just getting started in 1999/2000. I was receiving over 20 positions a day in my inbox. Many positions in no way was I qualified for. But recruiters needed bodies. I feel like this will happen again.

I often think what would have happened if I had taken a job in New York I heard about through a recruiter in 2000. At the time I was living in Connecticut near New York. The job was at the World Trade Center. The World Trade Center was a massive space. 50,000 people worked there. I moved to Los Angeles in early 2001. Sometimes you need to follow your gut when it comes to jobs. This time my gut tells me things are getting better and good times are back.

As you’ll see in my video on street photography, I recorded my audio separately from the video in the opening scene. I used the SmartTalk Headphone Adapter, Control, and Microphone for iPhoneas a lavaliere microphone, made a clap noise with my hands (low-rent, I know!) and made sure the camera captured me clapping my hands. It’s important to have a visual so you know where to sync the audio and video.

I suggest trying this method with your iPhone. Be sure to use the built-in Voice Memos app, click the record button, and lock the phone so you don’t accidentally stop the recording. Have any audio tips you would like to share? Comment below.

When I read the bio sections for both, I was amazed how on target both Chevy and Nissan were with their product positioning. The Nissan LEAF’s Twitter bio reads “The Nissan LEAF is a 100% electric, zero emissions vehicle.” Contrast that with Chevy’s Volt Twitter Bio – “Official page for the Chevrolet Volt electric vehicle with extended range – the only EV you can drive electrically wherever you want, whenever you want.” Clearly in one sentence the marketing teams got it right. If you care about emissions, Nissan LEAF is the car for you. If you care about driving more than 100 miles before filling up, the Chevy Volt is for you. I think this demonstrates how on target companies need to be in the age of social media. People are busy. There is a LOT of competition for peoples’ time. Social media forces you to think small. It FORCES distillation. I recommend companies do this for all their social media pages for their products. Think about the competition and highlight the differences. Do it in 140 characters or less. Make it retweet worthy.

Your Twitter Bio is Important

Companies aren’t the only ones that need to differentiate themselves and their products. YOU are a brand. You need to highlight differences and speak to your audience. For example, my Twitter bio reads “Web guru, scribe (kenmorico.com) Distinguished Twitter bum.” So in a short sentence you can figure out what I’m about. I’m a Web guy, I write, I’ve told you where you can find more, and hopefully demonstrated that I have some personality. On Twitter, personality counts. It’s hard to be funny in only 140 characters per tweet, so you’ve got to be good and offer some kind of value. Are you a value adding person? Check out the Twitter bios of influential people on Klout. Klout ranks Twitter users using an algorithm. You can see who is REALLY influential and who’s a faker. Twitter is susceptible to computerized robots, so always check out people on Klout.

So which Twitter account wins the most respect? At this time, NissanLeaf has a Klout score of  35 with an amplification rating  of 12. The amplification rating is the likelihood that content will be acted upon. The ChevyVolt has a Klout score of 32 with an amplification rating of 11. The NissanLeaf account has more followers and  is listed more times. Both Twitter accounts seem actively engaged with the Twitter community. I would have to give the edge to the NissanLeaf account, but really its a tight race. From a marketing perspective, the idea of a fully electric car without a gastank seems to be more unique and newsworthy. But really the winners here are the community because both Nissan and GM see the value in talking to their consumers. Both companies are focused and focused companies don’t go bankrupt. They build respect equity and loyal followers.

I’ve posted my resume online now for 11 years. Recruiters have found my resume using Boolean searches and regular searches. If you’re not Web savvy like I am, it’s unlikely you’ll appear in a regular search, but a Boolean search is more likely. So how can someone find your resume online using the right techniques?

Boolean Operators

AND – Finds resumes or pages that contain all terms. resume AND (HTML AND Facebook)

OR – Finds resumes or pages that contain one or the other terms. resume AND (HTML OR Facebook)

[NOT / - ] – Google describes NOT search with a minus sign prepended to a search word. Finds resumes or pages that contain a term but filters out a particular keyword. For example, resume AND project manager  -senior would filter out resumes that contain project managers that are not senior level.

NEAR – Finds resumes or pages that contain both terms in close proximity to each other. resume AND (skills NEAR HTML)

( ) Parentheses – Allows you to group terms together to create a complex search query. Also makes it easier to read your own queries. resume AND (project manager AND microsoft) AND (consultant AND freelance)

* Wildcard – Allows you to replace a whole word. resume Adobe * experience would find resumes with adobe software experience like Adobe Photoshop or Adobe Illustrator or any of the other Adobe software packages.

Not all search engines support these operators, but these are some of the basics that most do. See the help pages your particular search engine. Google is a very intelligent search engine. Here is link to their search help page.

You can easily see how powerful and exact these queries can be. When you are searching millions of resumes, these techniques become invaluable. Remember, managers want to hire perfect candidates, not good enough candidates.

So what does this mean for job seekers looking to get found? Have the right keywords in your resume. Have your location in your resume – city, state, phone area code. On the flip side, if you get too many queries on your resume like I do, think about removing some keywords that don’t apply.

PDF resumes should only be used for presentation purposes. Recruiters like to mark up resumes in Microsoft Word, so a PDF resume shouldn’t be your sole resume for the fact that it’s difficult to edit and you need special software to do it. Several free programs allow you to create PDF documents without buying the expensive Adobe Acrobat software. You can export PDFs from OpenOffice and Google Docs for free.

Microsoft Word is the next recommendation. Word has been around for over 15 years. It’s the format most resumes are typically stored in. Be careful with compatibility. Unlike PDF, Word is not easily transferred between computers. Within Microsoft Office products, you are mostly safe, but formatting is almost never completely preserved when migrating the file to Google Docs, OpenOffice, or resume import software. The old file extension for Word files is .doc. Most programs will read this format. Some will not read the newer .docx format. Also, you would need a newer version of Microsoft Office to create a .docx file. Always save your Word files as .doc. You want to guarantee compatibility. The last thing you want is your resume to be a “problem resume” for a recruiter. They shouldn’t have to work to view your resume.

Word files can be created from any number of programs now. Google Docs and OpenOffice can create them for free without the need to purchase Microsoft Office.

Finally, I recommend the OpenDocument format. This could be the future format of documents. It’s supported by OpenOffice, Google Docs, and Word 2007 with Service Pack 2. Most likely newer versions of Word will support it as well. The reason I like this format so much is that the files are small, and you don’t need to purchase any software to view or create them. They run on Mac, Linux, and Windows computers. OpenOffice is free, as well as Google Docs.

So when you send out your resume, make sure to send a PDF version, .doc version, and a .odt version. The recruiter should be able to view at least one of them.

If you are interested, you can check out my Web developer and digital strategist resume. It might give you some ideas on how to create a Web 2.0 resume. Also, check out my popular blog posts on using Web 2.0 to get found and resume tips for recessionary times.

Can They REALLY Support You?

You need to make sure the department you are hired in is growing. Human resource managers may need you right away because someone quit. You want to be part of a department that is growing — a company that is growing. There are a number of ways to check this, and luckily with so much information on the  Internet this is easy. First, check the general news about the company using Google News. Then, try looking up the company using ZoomInfo. ZoomInfo will give you the company revenue, number of employees, and relevant news stories, as well contact information. LinkedIn is another popular service that companies themselves often provide. Beware any information a company tells you about itself. Using these services, you should look for keywords about the particular department you are planning to work in.

ZoomInfo will even tell you competitor names. Would you be working for the lesser company? For example, if you were applying to work at General Motors, but found out Ford was a competitor and closer to a turn-around, shouldn’t you work there instead? Interestingly, if you are good at what you do competitors will reach out to you and offer you more money. Do your homework. A temporary boost in pay at a weaker company may backfire.

When you search news sites and search engines, be sure to put the company name in quotes “” with the location next to it. For example, large companies often have multiple divisions and many different companies have the same name. So if you wanted to work at DownTown Disney in Anaheim, CA, you would search “Downtown Disney” Anaheim, CA. The quotes tell the search engine to look specifically for that phrase, while the keywords Anaheim, CA can appear separately in the article or page.

Articles about scoring new business, the company pioneering new research, or winning awards are all great things. Healthy companies should have year-over-year growth in revenues and profits. Make sure there is no government regulation coming that could jeopardize company profits or jobs. For instance, if you are looking to work on an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico and environmental regulation is coming that could eliminate drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, you would be in the unemployment line.

Bigger Companies Generate More News

When you are applying to work at a small company, realize there may not be a lot of information present. Small companies may not even have a PR department. Large companies, however, generate lots of news. For instance, when the iPhone was first released, there were thousands of news articles, blog posts, and research papers written. A great place to find blog posts on publicly traded companies is Yahoo! Finance. While you are there, research the company financials. Stay away from companies with large amounts of debt. Bondholders want their money, and when they want to collect it may be your job!

What Are People Saying?

If you’ve ever used social media sites like Facebook or Twitter, you probably know some people can’t keep their opinions to themselves. While this may not be desirable for general posts, it’s fantastic for Web sleuths! Harnessing the opinions of loudmouths can give you the company zeitgeist. Twitter is a better tool for searching public opinion because people are more liberal on Twitter. The connections are more superficial and the search system is real-time and powerful. Just like other ratings on the Web, people tend to be more vocal about negative impressions than positive. So what you want to look for is the volume of relative negative opinions. On the flip side, good companies should have people mentioning positive things. For example, a co-worker of mine tweeted that he was thankful to our company for sending him on a conference. On a negative side, using LinkedIn, one of my co-workers mentioned that  he was laid off before Thanksgiving and that wasn’t how you should treat a member of the corporate family. People get laid off all the time, but the timing certainly is interesting. It made me think. It should make you think.

Have more suggestions for Web sleuth tools and methods? Feel free to comment. (Photo courtesy Digiart2001 | jason.kuffer)

Both routes have advantages and disadvantages. Mobile software applications run fast. They are compiled and use all the hardware acceleration features built into the phone. 3D games, for instance, run very fast on native apps. WebGL does offer a glimmer of hope for Web-based games, but that is years away. I also contend that software programmers are better programmers than HTML / Web front-end programmers. More experienced programmers write better code which results in faster applications. For example, there is a much higher learning curve when writing Objective C and Java code compared with HTML and Javascript. They don’t use the browser chrome (or frame) so apps can display full screen. One of the biggest advantages is the tie-in with hardware components. Programmers can access a compass, accelerometers, GPS with location information, cameras, pictures, address book, video camera to enable video chat, and more.

Chrome-less Native App

Some of my favorite native apps for the iPhone include the Digitally Imported Radio app and Dungeon Hunter 3D game can’t be created on a mobile Web app. The radio app streams audio while detecting if a user is on WiFi or 3G, and allows multitasking (streaming radio while browsing Web or e-mail). The 3D game uses complex graphics APIs not possible on the Web right now. These hardware services simply aren’t available to Web developers. That is changing, however.

The Case for HTML5 Web Apps

Multi-touch gestures and location information is available on the iPhone, and possibly for Android phones as well. Carl Sjogreen of Nextstop, a location service based that was recently acquired by Facebook, talks about why his team decided to use HTML5 instead of a native iPhone app:

Other companies are also stepping up development of HTML5-enabled mobile sites. YouTube just overhauled its mobile site and uses HTML5 video tags to power its video delivery along with a better designed user interface. Here’s what Alex Nicolaou, Engineering Manager, Google Mobile says on this Google Code Blog post

Enter HTML5. We’re very excited about the evolving HTML5 standard because it enables mobile and desktop website designers to deliver the advantages of client-side and server side development to their users simultaneously! New APIs let web applications start offline and store data on the client. The canvas API lets you draw complex user interfaces, or you can use advanced CSS tricks to get the browser to render a rich UI. In addition, the W3C Geolocation API is being adopted and implemented by browser developers, enabling entire new categories of web applications to be built. The benefits are clear: you can develop fantastic new applications, benefit from server-side analytics and iteration to deliver features that your users want, and know that offline functionality keeps things running as the user moves in and out of coverage. Your users can enjoy fast, capable web apps that they can access from any device, without the need to copy their data from place to place or worry about installing software or being online.

KenMorico.com Mobile Site

There are many reasons why I prefer a straight HTML Web app. I’ve built a mobile version of my own site, KenMorico.com, so I can tell you from experience the many benefits of using a mobile HTML5 Web app. First, the code can be integrated with the code for your main Web site or Web application. All you are doing is checking which device users are coming from and disabling site features using Javascript. I tailor features on my site for desktop, iPad, and iPhone / Android phones. My full site uses HTML5 video as part of the page background. Currently, iPhones can’t render the video without displaying it fullscreen in its built-in video player. Fine. I just don’t show the videos at all to iPhone users. I also have a slideshow I show to users on desktops / laptops. Phone users won’t be able to see it, but iPad users will because the iPad is slightly more capable than the iPhone.

Note too that to test native apps you need to BUY THE HARDWARE. There are thousands of combinations of hardware – especially Android phones. Most people I know only have one smartphone. With HTML5, you are targeting a screen resolution, not different operating systems or hardware features. Setting up a testing center for Android, iOS, Windows Phone, and Blackberry will be a nightmare.

Rapid Mobile Development with HTML5

HTML5 Web apps take far less time to develop, test, and launch. You don’t need to go through an App store to get it approved. You don’t need to learn multiple languages to develop a separate app. You don’t have to worry about wasting your time, because it’s more likely HTML5 Web apps will replace native apps versus the other way around. However, native apps allow for a lot of cool features and a consistent visual appearance. HTML5 Web apps will mostly look the same on all browsers, but there could be variances here and there. This is because there are hundreds of browsers, versus two major phone operating systems – Apple iPhone iOs and Google Android. This still is one of the major benefits of the now controversial Adobe Flash technologies. Consistent layout design across computers.

It’s Always About the Money, Right?

Michael Calore wrote a nice comparison table of native app vs Web app development considerations in this webmonkey article. He points out the way you can advertise on the platforms differ. With much higher success rates for online advertising using Apple’s new iAd advertising platform – developers may be persuaded to develop native apps only simply for the monetary factor. This LATimes blog post highlights Nissan’s experience with iAds:

Nissan, which created a multilayer interactive ad for its electric LEAF car, said customers spent an average of 90 seconds with the ad — 10 times longer than interaction times for comparable online ads. Moreover, people chose to “tap” on the Leaf iAd five times more frequently than they clicked on regular online display ads for the Leaf.

Also consider it is much easier for developers to monetize native apps because users can purchase the apps immediately.

For now, I expect many of you to surf my HTML5 mobile site while listening to music from a multi-tasking enabled native app. That’s the world now. And it works.

So why should this be a big deal now? HTML5 has been moving forward – allowing many devices to play audio from HTML pages without plugins. Mobile phones like iPhones can play audio from a Web page with one click. iPads can as well. With an HTML5 standard, it makes it worthwhile to place audio on a Web page.

HTML5 – Smart Choice for the Long Haul, Not the Short

Since Web sites take a long time to build, but stay live for years, I decided it was worth the effort to make it work. HTML5 is the future. A few challenges with my site: getting video to play onload, loop, and get manipulated via javascript commands.

Did you know that Firefox supports the HTML5 video tag, but not the loop attribute? So you can’t just make videos loop. You need to write out code to make it unload and load videos. Safari and other browsers support this. But not this so-called “advanced” browser.

What About Apple?

What about Apple products? iPhones don’t support video on page load. Only full-screen video when a user clicks on a video image. Of course, Apple says this is by design, because of bandwidth issues on the phone. With AT&T’s new stingy data plans, this is understandable. iPad supports video on load, but when I was in line for the new iPhone 4 a person loaded my site and the video displayed but wouldn’t play. I suppose it was because he was on a 3G connection.

HTML5 video isn’t all the same either. Apple and Microsoft browsers use H.264 encoded videos. Firefox uses OGG encoded videos. That means for every video you post, you need to encode two videos to make sure it reaches the widest audience.

Just when you thought iPhone targeting was simple, the new iPhone 4 has quadruple the resolution of the original iPhone. Targeting a browser by resolution gets fuzzy when a mobile display has the capabilities approaching a desktop display. Viewport meta tags get confusing and stylesheet setup complex.

In all, the new site was challenging, and I continue to tweak it for mobile displays, but worth the effort. I feel like an HTML5 hero. My nunchucks are prepped for more HTML5 projects.

[UPDATE 5/7/2011: many popular Web plugins like the JWPlayer video player and the Blubrry PodPress now support HTML5 fallbacks for browsers (or flash fallbacks if you choose). Research your web plugins and software to see if there is an update.]

Additional Reading

Mobile Web Apps or Native Mobile Apps?

Oftentimes, personal Web sites and portfolio sites are shallow. A cartoon image of someone’s face and a photo or screenshot of their work. By viewing the videos and engaging with the content you get a sense of me – as a REAL person. It’s very hard to do on the Web and I think I’ve got it nailed down.

The site is fully powered by HTML 5 and javascript. There is no Flash present. I hope to add personalized audio clips and quotes to further enhance the personal connection made over the Web. Please visit KenMorico.com and let me know your thoughts. Long live HTML 5, experimentation, and the future.

People familiar with open source software will understand the concept of Creative Commons. They are very similar. For example, if you were doing a podcast commentary on Google Buzz, and you found a Creative Commons video of a professor speaking on the subject, you could edit the raw MPEG video file and include clips in your own podcast as reference material. This will certainly make your own podcast more interesting as well as more trustworthy. You could even find images that relate to the topic to include in your podcast cover or video thumbnail. Just find content that allows for commercial use and attribute. Try searching from their homepage and see what you find for your topic.

Of course, there are many levels of license restrictions, so pay attention to the icons for anything Creative Commons. I was explaining to a co-worker about open source software I used to enhance my custom built CRM software. She asked, “Why would anyone give out software for free?” A valid question. Why would anyone blog or podcast for free? To share and get exposure. Good things go around and come back. Besides, not sharing is very 80s.

If you have other suggestions for free content sites, please leave a comment.

You can follow Hal on Twitter or visit his Web site, www.HalWerner.com.

SIIA: Software & the Price of Free Chris Anderson Presentation (Download .mp4 Video (good for iPhone))

Software and the Price of Free Chris Anderson, Editor-in-Chief, Wired Magazine http://www.siia.net The Internet has introduced a generation to the concept of free. Entire industries, from travel to telcos, are trying to figure out how to make money by giving it away. And software is no exception: Software is pure information, and the industry is experimenting with service models, pay-per-use, advertising, bundling, and dozens of other strategies. This session will look at how the economics of free are changing the way we buy and sell information technology.

Everyone has opinions, and podcasting gives you a channel to express them. In fact, I argue that you are doing the world a disservice by NOT podcasting. The reason? People need great content, great opinions, facts,  and personality. Content doesn’t reach anyone when it’s not public. You have something to say, right? You can say it better than others, right? Yeah, that’s right.

Podcasting can be a confessional for you.  Studies often show that people feel better when they speak about what’s on their mind. You are more likely to build a podcast audience when you are honest about what’s on your mind. People form a relationship with people they trust. There’s nothing more intimate than just a voice and someone’s attention.

Did your mother ever tell you to eat vegetables because it was good for you? What if you ate vegetables and it was good for other people too? In a sense, when you podcast you are helping people in some way. They want to be informed, entertained, or enlightened. Provide that to your fellow man.

As a writer, I find many parallels between podcasting and blogging. Essentially they achieve the same effect – reaching an audience using a medium. Like writers, podcasters become famous because they have something interesting to say, and it’s the way they say it or presents themselves that gains them an audience. Many podcasters are radio personalities that just transitioned to podcasting. Same rules apply. Podcasting IS a form of radio.

Did you ever want to run your own show? Yeah, it’s possible with podcasting. In fact, as I writer, I was always frustrated with copyeditors. I had a great title for an article, but they always came up with something boring, inappropriate, or simply unrelated to the article content. My articles succeeded in spite of this, and were syndicated anyway because of their content. With podcasting, you can name your episodes anything you want. You decide the intro and outro music, your guests, and topics. That’s powerful. Oh, and NO ONE CAN CANCEL YOU OR YOUR SHOW.

Speak your soul and make your podcast happen. We’re all waiting to hear from you.

Freemium means offering a basic digital porduct / service for free while offering a premium product/service for some monetary amount. Chris Anderson wrote a lauded and criticized book on the subject and the accompanying economic model called Free: The Future of a Radical Price. Asking people to pay for anything online can seem very challenging. Web surfers are used to getting things for free. Web surfers think advertising should pay for content. Most Web sites / blogs / podcasts simply don’t have a large enough audience to monetize using traditional advertising. Even if they did, it won’t solve the problem of overhead costs – just look at online newspapers. Fred Wilson, New York Venture Capitalist, disagrees somewhat in this post:

Lambasting file sharers and entrepreneurs who rightly recognize that free is the right way to build market share on the Internet might be fun and make certain people feel good. But it’s ignorance of a fundamental fact. And that fact is that free, ad supported media works best on the Internet. We have seen it again and again. I’m not going to even give examples. Once you have built that audience, you can deliver upsells via freemium models, you can monetize it via advertising and you can branch out into other services which are easier to monetize.

There is a caveat worth mentioning when it comes to podcasting and the freemium model, however. The freemium economic model based on digital distribution relies on distribution costs that amount to near zero dollars. For normal Web content like text and images, this is true. But not for popular podcasts. Podcasts need bandwidth, and bandwidth costs money. This explains YouTube’s popularity -  and its monetary losses.  So how can a small Web site / blog / podcast make money using the dichotomy of freemium?

You need to give people what they want. They want free. To put it in perspective, you need to be an online drug dealer. Give them a free sample, get them hooked, and then once they are hooked they will realize that they can’t live without your product or service. Then they will pay. This only works however, when you have something unique to offer online. In real life, you get drugs from your local drug dealer. Online, you can get drug dealers all over the world in an instant using Google. So, your product needs to unique and focused.

For example, I started SAVAGEpodcaster.com because there weren’t any good Web sites that covered the topic of podcasting and audience building strategies. With my Web and journalism background, I thought I would be well suited to fill this online void. Not only that, but podcasting is a topic people really love and are passionate about. Online, you need to fill voids with your product or service. Like Darren Rowse of Problogger mentions often, you need to build an audience. Having blogged for a few years, I can say that you can get a lot of traffic with random keywords in your blogs, but that traffic bounces once they get their “quick fix.” When you build an audience and fill a niche, users don’t bounce. Good drugs make sure of that.

Being a deep topic, upcoming posts and podcasts will feature the freemium model and how to monetize it. Check back next week for these topics:

• Monetize podcasts using freemium methods
• Monetize podcasts using iTunes

Watching Jobs’ keynote address, I felt I was looking at a ghost. His presentation was slow, he lost the connection he usually has with his audience. When describing the features of the iPad, the audience wasn’t “ooing” and “ahhing” like with other products. The reason? Apple is known for innovation. Where was the innovative beef?

Intellectual capital is what Apple stockpiles. Investors often have a hard time valuing a company like Apple, because you can’t measure the value of ideas, but you can measure factory equipment, inventory, contracts. The iPad looks and operates like a large iPod or iPhone. It doesn’t run a real computer operating system like the full Mac OS X. It doesn’t appear its web browser runs Flash Web sites. It’s an incomplete Web browser. It’s video screen doesn’t stand upright, so it won’t be good for watching movies.  It won’t fit in your pocket, so it’s not really portable. It doesn’t have a real keyboard or powerful processor, so it won’t be able to be a machine you can work on. The only problem it solves for consumers is the problem of reading online. I don’t think that’s enough. I think the product will fail without something more.

The advertising copy for the iPad even sounds liberal, if not blatantly false. “Our most advanced technology in a magical and revolutionary device at an unbelievable price. Starting at $499″ You can tell the copywriters really had to stretch it with this product. It’s kind of like selling home landline service now. Who really needs it, and people that need it probably already have it.

With a nice color screen, it will be an excellent eBook reader for sure, but it will be the most expensive eBook reader on the market. The hope for podcasters? Enough people who aren’t computer users will buy the iPad for its reading abilities, and then discover audiobooks and podcasts using the device. If, as a co-worker mentioned to me, it makes its way into vehicles as part of a media center, it will be another way to broaden the podcast audience. More devices that can play podcasts is clearly a good thing. But did the ecosystem of laptops and iPods/ iPhones need to be disturbed with the iPad? Let’s hope Steve Jobs can come back to life with better ideas.

UPDATE 1/7/2012 – I am writing this update from a borrowed iPad. A lot of things have changed. Steve Jobs is now dead. Apple is now on its 5th version of iOS. The iPad Safari browser is still buggy on iPad, but improving nicely. I am seeing more possibilities for the iPad as HTML 5 progresses and Web developers improve sites with responsive design. The battery life does seem impressive compared to my MacBook. With a retina display it might be worth a purchase.

Audio podcasts are a perfect candidate for news monetization. Unlike text, audio can be played on almost any electronic device nowadays. You can play an mp3 file on your tiny iPod when at the gym, listen to it on your laptop at a coffeeshop, listen to it in your car on your way to work, or even play it when in the shower from your desktop computer speakers. It’s just more comfortable and convenient to consume information when in audio format. Plus, audio transmits tones and emotions in voices you just can’t replicate in text. When Tom Keene interviews economists for his On the Economy podcast, you get much more of the zietgeist when you hear the economists speak in their own voices.

It’s been noted in surveys that people are more likely to pay for finance news or sports news than other content. It makes sense. Finance news directly affects peoples’ wallets, and many people are fervent about sports. So it would seem monetizing content has a lot to do with the category of the content.

So how do you get people to subscribe and pay for content? Give them a free sample. Give them a free sample and make it the best sample they ever tasted. I knew the Keene podcast was worth paying for because I listened to the free podcasts. (Bloomberg is using iamplify.com to monetize their podcasts.) People need to know or perceive value in order to pay for news.  As I mentioned in an article on Facebook Connect, the Web needs more universal logins to facilitate purchasing of content. Buying things on the Web should be fast and the checkout process needs to be streamlined. This explains the success of the Apple iTunes store. Given the chance, I think consumers wouldn’t be so tight-fisted when it came to news subscriptions if they could order them in a few seconds.

So can audio podcasts save the news industry? Probably not, but it can help add additional revenue to at least keep them in business –  and that would be good news for us all.

Note: this article was originally written on 5/8/2000. This was before podcasting, before satellite radio made it big, and before social media. His quote about using the computer (or “box” as he calls it) as just a tool and not the product is so relevant today given how easy it is for anyone to publish their own content.

Within Bill Rock Productions lies a part of broadcasting history. The racks of video and audiotapes consume walls. Pictures of Dick Clark, Don Imus, senators, and other famous personalities hang on the walls. In back, vintage audio equipment juxtaposes to digital audio equipment and a digital video editing station. This studio bridges the gap between the radio of the past and our ubiquitous digital future.

The heart and soul of this equipment is its operator, Bill Rock, an announcer and video producer 35 years in the business. Rock lives in Stratford, Conn. and runs his business from his home. You can hear Rock’s voice during interludes of NBC’s Nightly News weekends and Meet the Press, MS-NBC, CNBC, NBC Radio Shack Network, Sirius Satellite Radio, News 12 New Jersey. Rock recently narrated Discovery’s Summer of the Shark.

As a “voice” Rock works in the background of broadcasts aired every day.

Rock said that his business is a “young person’s business,” and many who enter leave by their 30s and 40s. Some go into management, and even fewer survive in the talent arena.

Rock has a truly distinctive voice. It’s deep, authoritative, and recognizable. He projects his voice to “print” (i.e. he can superimpose his voice like type over a photo) on the background sounds during promos. Many recognize his voice from radio and TV.

An audience hears Rock’s voice, but they have no idea what he looks like. When speaking with him, one gets a sense that they know him from somewhere, but because he’s never an NBC visual presence, he goes unnoticed walking around town. If he were on TV, you’d see a 6’2 dark-haired man, with round facial features, glasses, and groomed facial hair.

Starting out, he first got into the talent side of radio, and then stayed in management for a larger portion. He spent a lot of time as a program director, where his communications degree from Seton Hall University came into play. He learned a lot about business, which later gave him the background to start Bill Rock Productions.

Rock says he has an average voice, but by imitating and practicing, it has kept him in the business for 35 years. During the course of his career, Rock adopts a variety of styles to fit the format he works in. He drew part of his styles from some of his influences like Don Pardo of Saturday Night Live and Don Imus. Two of his greatest network announcing influences include Les Marshak of NBC and the late Ernie Anderson of ABC. Today, Rock borrows elements from Don LaFontaine, who announces most movie trailers and three major networks. By blending the affections of other announcers and his own, he has created a unique style that in all likelihood will also be imitated.

There is a market for a voice.

Rock is the only announcer in New York he knows of without an agent, and he prefers it that way. “I do my own negotiating and selling. Some salesmen are so good because they believe in what they are selling. I can sell myself because I believe in it [my work]. I can’t sell anything but myself.”

Rock is one of eight announcers NBC counts on, but he knows this can be a very good thing. “I’m a cog in a wheel, but in a way it’s nice because [NBC] is the largest wheel.”

Rock started his interest in radio when he was 17 at a 500-watt station (WERA – 1590 on the dial) doing Sunday morning news in Plainfield, New Jersey making $1 an hour. In college, he diversified with reading news and then becoming a station manager. “It was personal drive; wanting to expand. Not knowing it would come into play later. It made me valuable. I was a musician. I know how music works. All these interrelated hobbies turned into businesses.”

Rock worked his way up from reading the news to management. Rock was an operations manager at WELI in New Haven, but he felt unsatisfied. “I wasn’t making anything.” Rock admitted that the real reason for joining WELI was his hobby — boating. “They had a boat and I wanted to use it. That was reason enough.”

Rock’s changing roles kept him competitive. Rock moved from small, to medium, to large markets like from Albany, to Boston, to New York. He also made plenty of contacts that helped him early and later in his career. “Contacts are everything in this business. I still even have some from 35 years ago.”

Rock has seen many career changes, each of which has increased his skill set and contributed to making Bill Rock Productions work. Today, Rock is all business, but this wasn’t always the case. “When I was back in college, I wanted to have fun; I wanted to enjoy what I was doing. Like anything anybody does, if they enjoy doing it, it is self rewarding.”

Rock loves owning his own business. He sets his own hours and it gives him time to enjoy his hobbies during business hours. “I would never want to work for someone again. There’s nothing like being my own boss and creating your own world,” he said.

Starting his own business has given him a laboratory to diversify. Rock says he’s never bored. He works as a cameraman, video producer, writer, editor, announcer, on-air bit comedian, narrator, and more. Rock needs to have several skills to operate his business. Just some of them include audio mixing, lighting, editing, and more. With all the jobs Rock does, and the numerous skills he possesses, Bill Rock Productions remains “a one man show.”

Rock has won several awards for his video presentations, including Telly awards, Communicator awards, and he has even been inducted into the Seton Hall University hall of fame.

What gives Rock his distinctive edge is his talent and creativity. “It’s what I do with the [computer] box that sells me,” he said.

Rock reflected on his days in radio with fond memories. “Being on the radio is you; you’re a personality. I had more fun in radio than anything I ever did in my life.” But for now, announcing for NBC, Rock admits, “My voice is a product. I just manufacture something.”

Rock loved the spontaneity of radio and the promotions he was often involved in. The program manager at the time suggested Rock change his on-air name to Sean Grabowski, a Polish name, to appeal to the working-class population in Pittsburgh.

“We had this prize where I would come to a person’s house and cook a whole dinner for them, but I couldn’t cook so we had the promotions lady in back bringing in the food pre-cooked from her car to the kitchen as if I was making it. I thought somebody would catch me, but it went the whole night,” he said. “And these people had invited their neighbors, and they were saying, ‘Sean is cooking for us’ and I’m explaining that this is an old recipe from my grandmother. And this guy had Cuban cigars and he said, ‘Sean, I’ve been saving these for a very special occasion.’”

Another job in Boston found him bugging Watergate. “We sent a Volkswagen Bug to a cheesy motel called the Watergate in New Jersey.”

Rock now DJs the 60s Vibration Channel noon to six, Monday through Friday on the Excelsior Radio Network.

Update: Bill Rock now hosts “Elvis Goes Hollywood” on Sirius Radio as well as running his production company and keeping up with his NBC gigs.

Mac Mini Podcast Studio

So you want to reach an unlimited audience, have complete control of a broadcast, and get free promotion? Time to Podcast! Podcasts are a natural extension of blogs. They are just another medium to spout your commentary, music, and interviews. If you’re interested in podcasting, I’ll explain why now is the best time to get started.

Hardware has never been cheaper and software has never been more intuitive. Studio-quality microphones are now just about $100. Apple has refined audio making software to the point where mere novices can produce professional-quality results via their GarageBand software. It’s even designed to create podcasts.

Here’s how I created my podcast studio:

• Samson G Track USB Microphone and Audio Interface
• 1/8 inch lineout connector
• Griffin SmartTalk Headphone Adapter with Control and Mic for iPhone

Other items I already had included Sony Studio Headphones
and a Mac with Garageband. The Samson G Track microphone gives me the studio-quality recording sound, and the Griffin SmartTalk extension enables me to use my podcast studio to make interviews possible in really high-quality. That’s because cellphones now are digital, and routing the audio through the built-in mixer of the G Track allows very little noise to enter the audio via its USB interface. Tom Keene uses this method a lot for interviewing faraway economists on his Bloomberg Radio shows. I remember being awestruck when I interviewed Bill Rock in his studio space in his home. Bill Rock is an announcer and video producer. He announced for NBC and now for Sirius XM. His studio is crammed with mixers and video/audio equipment. I just have a desk.

There are a lot of resources on the Web to help get you started with podcasting. Apple shows you how to make a podcast here. O’Reilly has an article about proper microphone usage and other tips. Of course, with all the help and easy-to-install hardware, there’s gotta be a rub. Here it is: posting a podcast is not easy. You need your own Web host, you need to edit XML files, which will be unfamiliar to many, and there is a lot of work that goes into producing a podcast. You need intro music, outro music, topics to talk about, guests (or music), editing time, and you need to promote it. Apple does help you out here though. If your podcast is interesting and good enough, they will feature your podcast on iTunes – for FREE. This is how I found a lot of great podcasts including the DJ Cruze Podcast and Adam Carolla Podcast.

Don’t forget that iPhones and other smartphones have built-in audio recorders. It’s great for podcasting on-the-go like I did here in my post on digital storytelling with Twitter.

In all, it’s a lot of work, but it’s an exciting hobby. With some time and creativity you can produce the type of show you always wanted to hear – your own.

Audio Commentary

Click the play button below to listen…

UPDATE 5/14/2011 – New podcasting plugins for WordPress blogs make it really easy to create an XML podcast feed compatible with iTunes. Check out my post Blubrry Releases New HTML5 Podcasting Plugin for WordPress.

Digital Overhead

So you might think, “Hey, I’ve got a Web site, it’s not expensive to run one of those.” To run something like Facebook you need hundreds of servers, backup servers, networking equipment, engineers, lawyers, media people, PR people, a warehouse for servers, backup generators, and the list goes on. As Mark Zuckerberg, co-founder, mentions, “the ratio of Facebook users to Facebook engineers makes it so that every engineer here is responsible for more than one million users. It’s hard to have an impact like that anywhere else.” I attribute the efficiency to the PHP language and open source databases like MySQL that Facebook utilizes.

Micro$oft

Facebook is NOT using Microsoft tools or software. However, Microsoft owns a significant portion of Facebook. In fact, owning a portion of Facebook, I believe, will be their best business decision yet. Why? Growing competition from Apple, a downturn in the economy, the threat of the upcoming Google Chrome operating system, and the growing popularity of open source software.

Web 2.0 and the Unified Login

Okay, so Facebook is running smoothly and bringing in money, what’s in store for us now and why is it important that Facebook makes money? Facebook is Web 2.0. It represents everything Web 2.0 does well. It connects people via the Web in a social way, it easily enables sharing of information, photos, videos, and ideas. Facebook pioneers new technologies like the Facebook iPhone Application, Facebook Applications, Facebook Connect, iPhoto integration, and software code to handle 300 million users and do so with speed. With Facebook staying in business, we are likely to see their vision of a unified login come to the Web – something Microsoft tried and failed at implementing. With a unified login, everything on the Web gets easier, including posting comments on this blog, shopping carts, digital IDs, and the like. The Web needs pioneers, and they need a reason to keep innovating. Finally, Web 2.0 can represent the age where the Web makes money.

[UPDATE: Facebook now has over 500 million users.]

Have you ever been to a news site and wondered what’s  the top story? You never had to guess in print editions. They always had large, bold type and a large photo. I’m glad to see this change. News must be prioritized. For years, newspaper Web sites tried to look like Web sites instead of online newspapers. For hundreds of years, printers and publishers fine-tuned fonts and colors and typfaces for maximum readibility. It seemed that when newspapers first went online all of that knowledge escaped into the digital ether.

Design Elements

There are many stand-out features of the new site. The large, classic typeface of the masthead in black gives the site a sense of authority. It’s fairly unobstructed and the technology of the Web doesn’t seem to impede the news. The date is large and easy-to-read. Something new to me – the time stamp. On the Web, time matters because news changes constantly. Photos are especially crisp and detailed. Ads are well-placed. Navigation and section headers are black and white. The footer contains quick links that are nicely organized.  I like the font buttons that allow you increase or decrease the font. That’s not a  new feature on the Web, but a lot of news sites don’t include it or they don’t place the buttons well. This LA Times blog post by editors further describes the major changes.

The new latimes.com site also features the Web 2.0 tools necessary for promotion – social boomarking / linking, send to a friend, article comments, etc. Via comments, letters to the editor are now instant. Others can comment on your comments in real time. URLs contain story titles and keywords to make them easy to index by search engines. And while these are not “new” features, it’s usually the implementation of technology that separates good products from stellar products.

Information Hierarchy

At first glance of other news sites like nytimes.com and chron.com, you seem lost. Where is the information hierarchy? In fact, the Houston Chronicle doesn’t even go by the name Houston Chronicle on their own Web site. It’s called chron.com. The masthead and fonts are different. The colors lack authority. It seems like there’s no brand. What the Houston Chronicle does get right, however, is recognizing their audience.

Lack of Audience Insight

Looking at the Los Angeles Times Web site, would you think LA County contains a 47% Hispanic population? The Houston Chronicle has articles in Spanish and English. Even a Hispanic blogger. To be fair, I haven’t read all Los Angeles Times’ online articles over the years, but looking around the site it didn’t seem apparent there are any or a portion of the articles about Hispanic culture that reflect the demographics. As a white person who works in Hispanic marketing, I can tell you companies are eager to market to Hispanics and recognize their buying power and influence on American culture. Companies know they are behind in marketing to Hispanics, and it seems time newspapers do the same. Of course, given the that Tribune Company is on its financial knees, I understand the business decisions for this choice.

The New and Familiar

With so many competitors in the online news space, I can’t see one that competes with latimes.com. The designers and editors seem to have implemented everything that makes the Web powerful as a medium while harnessing the visual and hierarchical qualities that make print editions appealing. Which leads me to write something I never thought I would: long live print.

When you create a Facebook Group, you enable family and friends to share stories, photos, and discuss the deceased person with others. With the United States being so large and people spread out in cities all over the world, it can be challenging to visit a cemetery. Like other tasks with social media, visiting a digital cemetery is very fast. Where else can you visit a cemertery 24 hours a day, seven days a week? Certainly visiting a digital cemetery isn’t scary at night.

While the permanency of Web sites can be debated, there’s no reason to assume a digital cemetery should be any less permanent than a real one. Gravestones in real cemeteries wear out and the text can become illegible. Placed flowers will wilt and die. Digital flowers and text never get blown away, discolored or vandalized. All digital cemeteries need are a Web host and a miniscule amount of storage space for photos and text.

Social media sites enable you to have so much more than a gravestone. You can present a photo of the deceased person as they looked in their prime. You can support causes the deceased person supported in life, like the Red Cross. You can post video, literally bringing the person back to life.

A co-worker of mine was recently murdered. Friends built him a Facebook Group page, and my company asked my to build a custom blog where employees could share stories. On the blog I linked to the Facebook group, and the Facebook group linked to blog I created. Friends also created a Facebook Group to help track down the murderer.

I encourage you to create a Facebook Group or similar site for passed loved ones. Harness the evergreen capabilities of the Web to honor people you care about and create a lasting impression of someone’s life.

Here’s a follow up post that explains ways to prepare for death: Digital Death – Social Media Preparation for the e-Reaper.

First, Twitter is more like a slow online chat session than a blogging platform. That’s because while the posts are instant, not everyone who will respond will be online at the same time as the person making the first post, or tweet. Ah, but many strangers are online and can respond fairly quickly. The public nature of Twitter is what I find most fascinating. Typically, online chat sessions and email are private conversations. Twitter, if you let it, will make all of your posts and status updates available to the entire world. Complete strangers can comment on what you’re eating for lunch. If they find what you’re eating for lunch is super-special, they can “follow” you. When you get followed, people basically subscribe to receive all your posts.

Twitter becomes like a Grand Central Station, you overhear conversations of thousands of people in a short amount of time. It’s this voyeuristic quality that makes Twitter interesting and have such broad appeal. Facebook, by design is a closed network. You often need to be invited to participate with friends. Twitter is public, and you can search for any topic using the service to pull up reactions for that topic. For example, I searched tweets to determine if Slumdog Millionaire was worth seeing. Many people posted that the movie was amazing. I saw it based on what people said about the movie. It was amazing.

Web 2.0 and public relations professionals love Twitter because news stories and Web sites can go viral when posted to the service if there are enough followers tracking the poster. Darren Rowse, a prominent blogger, credits Twitter with generating a lot of traffic to his site.

Want to know what celebrities are up to? You can follow Britney Spears and Al Gore on Twitter if you like.  If someone of importance tweets about a news article or video, it’s easy to see how it can generate a lot of traffic. It’s like having a podium available to you 24/7. What celebrity wouldn’t like that? Another application:  imagine a modern-day evangelist with “followers” on Twitter. Interesting.

Twitter is an open platform, so there are many applications and ways you can post tweets. You can SMS them on your phone, use one of the many iPhone applications, or use the Web. You can syndicate your tweets and post them on your Web site or blog.

Wanna find out what’s going on with me? Go ahead, I’m an open Twitterer.

CareerBuilder is the job search leader, so I’ll use it for examples.  Currently, CareerBuilder charges $469.00 for 1 job posting with a company logo. One year of enterprise-level resume searches will cost a company $9,553. Twenty jobs with logo gets you a discount – $6,800. Want a microsite to go with your postings? $2,160. If you’re a CFO and someone tells you could save $18,513 this year, would you listen?

So what’s the solution for companies looking to cut recruiting costs? Google searches. Using specific syntax in Google searches, companies can find qualified candidates. So how do you prep your resume for recruiter Web searches? Can’t you just post your Microsoft Word resume and be done? NO! Resumes need optimization tweaks just like real Web pages.

Where Are You?

I’ve noticed a steady increase in the number of searches for my resume using Google. Many times recruiters look for candidates in certain area codes or cities. Make sure your location is at the top of your resume. You don’t have to post your address, but your city / state name and phone number should be at the top. Information at the top of pages is given more relevance in search results, so put it there.

Place a bulleted profile list highlighting popular phrases it the top of your resume above jobs and job descriptions. Google will give these more weight and it will make your resume more attractive to recruiters as well since it will save them from having to read your whole resume to get a feel for your skills and experience. For example, “Certified project manager for Fortune 500 companies.”

Where Have You Been?

Based on the fact that location based searches are popular, make sure you list cities and states for past jobs. If you are willing to relocate, that will help you because your resumes will probably come up for searches of several locations. For me, my cell phone has a California area code, but I live in Texas. So I get contacted for positions in both states.

Besides states, recruiters search for companies you might have worked for before, or are already working at so as to snag you for a competitor. Help them find you. List all the company names you worked for, including subdivisions and conglomerate owners. Here’s an example of a recruiter search for me that got them to my site:

filetype:doc resume and nissan and software and michigan

So what do we make of it? This recuiter was looking for software resumes online in Microsoft Word format, with experience at Nissan and experience in Michigan. My resume came up because I did work for Nissan at one point in my career, I did work in software, and my resume has some relation to Michigan because I designed a Web site for the University of Michigan Business School. So it wasn’t an exact fit, but you see the possibilities with the right keywords and places in your resume.

What Do You Do?

Like a regular print resume, you need to put your skills and software skills on your online resume. Be specific. Recruiters are looking for very specific skills and software packages. Take this recruiter search that landed them on my resume:

(intitle:resume OR inurl:resume OR intitle:cv OR inurl:cv OR intitle:vitae OR inurl:vitae OR intitle:homepage OR inurl:homepage) “web developer” (ca OR california) (sql and EKTRON and c# and .net)

This is a very specific search. Look at what’s defined. A position, a location, and specific software skills. If you knew how to use content management systems (CMS) for updating Web pages and you put that on your resume this search  would have missed you. That’s because EKTRON is a specific type of CMS. So ideally you should put broad terms that define your skills and software as well as very narrow terms. If you were a project manager, you would have the phrase “project manger” on your resume with all types of specific project management software such as Microsoft Project, Visio, and others.

Are You on the Map of the Web?

Like I mentioned in a previous post, Quit Looking for a Job – How to Use Web 2.0 to Get Found, your resume and the Web site it’s hosted on need to have good content to give it credibility with search engines. Given two equal resumes online, the one listed higher will be the one with more credibility with Google. I posted some SEO resources to help you with this task. If a recruiter typed in keywords to find your resume, do you come up in search results? Try it. And if you don’t, tweak your resume and Web site until you do.

Use a professional networking service like LinkedIn to steer recruiters and companies to your professional profile and resume. You can post links in your LinkedIn profile, so be sure to do so and mention in your profile you have an online resume. Make sure you post a photo to help you get noticed. You are a real person, right?

Over here!

Tough times call for a solid resume. They call for a Web 2.0 resume posted on your own Web site or blog. Your resume doesn’t necessarily need to be tech related, it just needs Web 2.0 marketing behind it to highlight you. Show them who’s the boss.

In the past, I’ve always had luck getting freelance opportunities and jobs because of my online portfolio. But was it just luck? In 1999 a project manager for Learnlots.com contacted me about writing tutorials for AOL version 4.0. I had no idea who this person was and they were several states away. Clearly he didn’t hear about me through networking because I was in college at the time. How did he find me? A search engine. My Web site always did well at search engine ranking.  Having a higher ranking gives you authority. Authority gets you jobs.

Build Your Online House

Ever since 1999, headhunters and corporations have found my Web site. How do I stand out? How can you stand out? First thing to do is get a Web site. Your own yourname.com site. You are your brand. Differentiation makes one person get hired over another. Research other people in your field you want to emulate. What do their Web sites look like? How do they present themselves on their Web site? What makes them stand out? Remember that it’s not easy to gain trust over the Web. The Web is becoming more personal, but by design it is an impersonal technology. Having your own domain name lends a sense of trust. Anyone can setup a fake Yahoo! account. Putting your name online says you’re serious.

Post a photo. So many people online don’t post a photo in their online profiles and Web sites. I don’t get it. You can’t be “sticky” in the minds of headhunters if you’re just a name. A photo can convey a bit of your personality and make you seem real. Seeming real on the Web matters to people who make hiring decisions.

Make Your House Presentable

Once you have a Web site address, you’ll need to build content for your site. This depends on your industry, but why not first start out with a description of yourself? When I analyze Web site statistics for the sites I manage, some of the top pages are always bios of the people behind the company. People want to know who you are and what you’re about. Write a short and substantial bio about yourself. Get friends (ideally a writer friend) to review your bio and make sure it sounds professional. Next, you’ll need content on your site. Maybe this is a portfolio of art, music, Web designs, or if it’s something that isn’t visual, just go into detail about projects you worked on and post some visuals that represent your projects. You won’t believe how many Web developers I know who don’t have Web sites, much less blogs. Whatever industry you are in, you should be online.

Post Signs to Your House

Okay, you built your online house with fancy shutters and Spanish tile roof. How are people going to find it? Search Engine Optimization (SEO). I’m sure you’ve heard the term before. The reason it’s mentioned a lot is because it’s so important. You must understand that without good SEO, you’ll never be found. Google is blind, literally. Google reads text on a Web site like braille; it can’t see visuals on Web sites. So no matter how pretty your Web site looks, it will never compete against a site with excellent textual content.

SEO items in your site are like signs that point Google to your site instead of another’s. I do everything to make sure each all of my pages have all the details search engines need – descriptive titles, meta descriptions, content with keywords, and all-original content. My resume is posted in both Word and PDF formats. My resume describes what I do and the specific software I use to get my projects done. Since my site has been around for over 10 years, search engines give it some authority over sites that have been up for just a few weeks. You need to be around for a long time, too.

If you’ve ever used Google, you know that oftentimes the results on the first page of your search are very, very good. It’s almost like Google can read your mind. Headhunters know this, and when they find resumes at the top of the online search pile, they are pre-conditioned to have some trust in the site and its owner. I have an online resource page that can help you with marketing your site and connect with decision-makers.

Meet Your Neighbors

Search engines, Web site, yadda yadda yadda. What about Web 2.0? Haven’t things changed? Yes, in fact you’re in a whole new neighborhood now. Headhunters can reach you in more places now.

Build a profile on LinkedIn. Fill out every field with accurate, descriptive information. Post a photo. Post links to your new Web site. You may even have a blog. Post a link to that too. Headhunters are watching you on LinkedIn. Give them a show.

Start a blog. If you’re an authority in your field, you should have one. Headhunters will read it and place you in a different realm if they think you’re an expert and have a following.

Get on Facebook. While Facebook is primarily a social networking tool, you can get job offers and freelance projects from people in your network. Make sure you post links to your Web site and blog on Facebook. Headhunters and business owners are on Facebook too.

Spruce Up the Neighborhood

With Web 2.0, contribution and sharing are in style. Voice your opinion on forums in LinkedIn and Facebook. Write answers to questions people have that you can answer. Improve your online neighborhood. Networking is more important now than ever. People want you to reach out to them if you have something intelligent to say and can help them in some way. They will return the favor. You might have heard the term “be sticky” when it comes to job seeking. Send follow-up emails, forward links, present yourself in a memorable way. The same goes in the social media / Web 2.0 world. You need to be unique and everywhere headhunters and business owners congregate.

Own Your House

By using these tips you can control your career. And you don’t even have to be in the news or have written a book to be found.

Don’t search for jobs. Be sought-after.

(Photo courtesy tibchris)

While the print news industry has been in decline for some time, and the Los Angeles Times have already cut back staff several times in the past year, online versions of newspapers are doing much better. Readers have shifted to online versions of newspapers as the total number of users online grows. Like I mentioned in my first blog post, the Web makes it easy for consumers to get information when they want. With the multitude of media competing for our attention along with new ways to get on-demand content, time shifting has occurred.

Blogs, radio, and TV might seem to divert readers away from online editions of newspapers… but that hasn’t been the case. Why?  I theorize that part of what makes news “worthy” of our attention is location. News that is local has more relevance to us than national or international news. Many bloggers and alternative newspapers are not local. You need men on the street to gather news in many cases. Another reason for online newspaper success is authority. People for most part trust large newspapers. They have research departments. They verify facts. Blogs and some online news channels can’t afford these luxuries. I think it also says something important to readers when the Los Angeles Times prints that they themselves are in serious trouble. From a journalism standpoint, they must report this. But would a blogger or independent news source report they were doing poorly?

So even if a shift has occurred from print to online, they principles of what makes great news articles still apply. Veracity. Authority. And what about style? Yes, style. Newspapers hire professionals. Writing is their job. Storytelling is their job. Bloggers oftentimes aren’t skilled writers. Anyone can comment on articles, but it takes skill to present information in ways readers enjoy.

In the stock market trading, they say the “trend is your friend” and “don’t fight the trend.” I see parallels here. The shift to online news, that has been in process in the past decade, will continue. The layoffs are evidence that the shift continues. They say stocks bottom when all the bad news has been factored in and everyone who wants to get out of stock has moved on to other investments. At some point in the future, falling print edition subscribers will level off. I expect once that happens, we will reach another point where print editions will stop all together because there will be too few people that will want a printed newspaper.

Newspapers won’t die. They’ll reincarnate.

[UPDATE 5/7/2011: I was right! Newspapers have reincarnated. The iPad seems to have saved the industry. I didn't think the iPad would be as popular as it is when it first came out. This is great news for writers and publishers. ]

It got me wondering. What about the people visiting blogs looking for entertainment, news, or professional development? Part of the fun of reading blogs is reading discussions under the posts. Could the discussions really just be professional bloggers just killing time trying to drive traffic to their sites? If not generate much traffic, just to get their name out on the Internet to seem like some kind of expert or just get noticed?

It would seem silly if we compared blog discussions to real life, right? If someone was publicly speaking and after the speech a mob showed up to comment in the hope that they would receive some benefit of money or fame / recognition. For example, if Barack Obama just finished a speech on the benefits average Americans will get from a stimulus package and in the mob of people some teachers are discussing with their students the ramifications and some construction company owners showed up, talking loud, “Well, I think we all know XYZ Construction has the best methods and superior tools. We could best use the construction spending. Before I go, please visit visit XYZ Construction on the Web. My name is JOE CORPORATE in case you weren’t listening. You can find me on these social networking sites. You’ll also find me commenting after other speeches in other public locations because that’s how I roll.”

Like I mentioned in a previous post about authenticity in Web comments, you can’t believe everything you read on the Web, especially without real names and validated profiles. There were 141 responses in less than 24 hours to one article I read about blogging. It was a fine article, but not the kind of topic where you would get 141 people to take a few minutes out of their day to tell other people it was great too. Maybe the blogger is just fantastic at building a public forum?

Writer Pat Hacket wrote in the New York Times Bestseller, The Andy Warhol Diaries:

It was the magazine more than anything else that kept Andy from passing into sixties history … he knew that people only come to you if they think you have something to offer them. In the mid-sixties when he was cranking out his early, cheap, “underground” films at the rate practically, of one a week, it was the possibility of getting into Andy’s movies that drew people to the Factory [Andy's art studio]. By the 1970s, however, with the price of making commercially exhibitable movies becoming prohibitive, Andy had few roles to offer people and not even the certainty that the movie being discussed would ever actually get made. Interview magazine more than filled the void.

The same is true today. Offer people a chance for the public spotlight and they will come.  Warhol I’m not, but I’ve got a famous idea that there’s an art to popularizing a blog.

One of the criticisms of blog comments has been that anyone can post any comment and usually do so anonymously. While I think there are some benefits to anonymous comments and should be an option, I believe the Facebook Connect option gives blogs a chance at becoming a more serious news and entertainment source. Many people have seen Godwin’s law in effect throughout the Web. A system like Facebook Connect could help mitigate the law that states as online discussions grow longer the likelihood increases of a comparison to Hitler or Nazis. I’ve seen the law in effect in Yahoo! message boards.

Many blogging platforms have indicated they are working on developing the necessary code to implement the feature. Since there is a bit of code involved I don’t think it will happen in the next few weeks, but I would expect it in the coming months. TechCrunch has noted that 20% of their commenters are logging in via Facebook Connect.

This whole notion of a unified login system brings me back several years to Microsoft’s failed Passport account. Microsoft tried to create a unified login system with your credit card information so you could go from shopping site to shopping site and use only one login for quick access to checkout. What a great idea! It failed, however. With the widespread acceptance of Facebook and no credit card information involved (at least not yet), I see this unified login system working.

What the Web really needs is fewer logins. With so many users on the Web now it seems inevitable using the Web will get easier. One fewer steps means one less discouraged Web user in my opinion.

With more veracity in blogging comments, should you believe the phrase, “don’t believe everything you read”? With a real name and photo, I’d think about it before invoking Godwin’s law…

With so many entertainment options available now, people aren’t held captive to print newspapers as their news source. The same goes for television. How many people rush home to see the 6 o’clock news? How many people get home at 6 o’clock anymore? We can get news from so many channels now. I’m sure new channels are being invented as I write this. We’ve got Internet news sites from major newspapers, blogs, Television, streaming on demand video, radio, satellite radio, Internet radio, and of course as my old journalism professor used to say, “the dead tree edition.” Not to mention trying to pry people away from the Nintendo Wii and Playstation 3. This New York Times article discusses how the flow of traditional media has broken and how companies need to adapt in this new environment.

Part of the growth of blogs is due to the improvements in rich text editors on the Web. Traditionally, only Web developers could program the style markup necessary to make a Web page interesting. Same goes for adding graphics. Forget about video. The new breed of rich text editors from sites like WordPress.org and Yahoo! make styling text and adding images easy. You don’t need any special software to get the posts to the Web. The editors work just like Microsoft Word and other Word processors. I’ve just finished integrating a rich text editor into my employer’s Intranet site to allow our editor to post and edit articles for the external company newsletter. They used to print full-color editions every quarter. By the time the newsletter got into the hands of the clients the articles were not timely anymore. Posting a newsletter or Blog online allows fast and cheap production of content. This is great because more resources can be allocated to producing fascinating and timely content.

Blogging can be more lucrative for writers. Many people think equate the term “writer” or phrase “freelance writer” with being broke. In the recent past you be right. Professional writers working for a newspaper make around $35k. Plus they live in fear wondering if their newspaper will still be around or merged with a media conglomerate. Ah, but bloggers can make money on advertisements, merchandise, and speaking engagements. Probably the most famous blogger is Perez Hilton. His blog landed him on MTV. My friend Adam Bernard who operates a blog called “Adam’s World” made him an expert in a niche – Hip Hop journalism. He’s a full-time blogger / writer and doing very well. Of course like anything, you must be good at writing. With so much clutter on the Web, I would say you have to be unique and witty to stand out.

Web searchers are usually searching for something via Google when they arrive at a blog. That’s why niche blogging is so significant. Newspapers, while usually having a local slant, are general. They have many sections – world news, business, weather, entertainment, etc. When Web surfers Google a search phrase, it’s narrow, not broad. Like “how to make pizza dough.” Try finding that information in your local paper. Try finding it in .02 seconds. Thought so. Google’s a bit faster than your newspaper search. Once you arrive at an appropriate blog, you’ll usually find other articles about the same topic. AHHH, now a blog becomes an information resource.

I found an article about blogging that describes the general setup of a blog and how to start. While anyone can start a blog, not everyone has something to say or can say it well or with “sizzle.” Blogs can be for friends and family, however. They don’t all have to be for public viewing. In fact, blogging software allows posts you choose to be private.

Another thing that separates blogs from traditional media like newspapers is the ability to post comments. Blogs enable two-way conversations. Newspapers have letters to the editor sections. You’ll notice those section are very small, reference items several days old, and are very filtered to about two or three letters. Blogs can have unlimited comments and are rarely filtered. You get a more accurate read as to how people feel about a topic or article in a blog. The comments are usually posted immediately as well. Plus, commenter’s comments sometimes appear right under the blog post, making commenters /contributers mini-celebrities in their own way.

So with the birth of this new year comes this new blog. Now, isn’t that timely?

[UPDATE 5/7/2011: I can't believe I've been blogging for over 2 years now. Amazing. It's been a lot of fun. Best of all, it's a great feeling to know you can pass along information that helps people develop themselves professionally. ]