T. Cordon's Blog

7 Articles That Got My Attention This Week:

tcordon — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 00:57:18 +0000

I’ve really slacked off with my blog. So much my New Years resolution!

Now it’s back to business…. Here are 7 articles I found interesting in the web world this week.

Accessibility:

12 Tips for a More Accessible Website
http://designshack.co.uk/articles/accessibility/12-tips-for-a-more-accessible-website

Social Media:

11 Essential Social Media Resources You May Have Missed
http://mashable.com/2010/03/20/social-media-resources-recap/

Guide to Using Social Networking to Promote Your Services
http://vandelaydesign.com/blog/marketing/social-networking/

Social Media and Super Bowl Ads

tcordon — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 04:20:51 +0000

Social Media was a total no-show in the Super Bowl ads this year. I didn’t expect any of the SM players to have ads, but I did expect some of the major advertisers to promote their Facebook Fan pages or encourage us to follow their spokesperson on Twitter or something, but we got nothing.

Does this mean Social Media is not as hot as we all think, is Social Media fading? I don’t think either of those are the case. I think in these economics times, we saw companies not willing to put their advertising dollars in the fate of another company (or invest in building something of their own). Social Media is changing rapidly and who can guarantee that Facebook and Twitter will still be hot in 6 months? Remember how big MySpace was just a few months ago and now it’s a “Teenage Wasteland”.

As for the Ad’s themselves, I loved the Google ad! It was smart, it evoked emotion and all it did was search the Internet. No bells, no whistles. No other ads really did it for me. I laughed at a few of the Doritos ads, I was annoyed at the GoDaddy spots and confused by the Emerald Nuts/Pop Secret commercial. The spot that might be the biggest loser of the night was Flo TV’s “Where Were You” ad. From the Tweets that were flying by just shortly after the spot aired, they used scenes from 9/11 to promote their product and that didn’t sit well with a lot people. It seems like that is a no brainer…don’t use a tragedy to pad your wallet, but I guess Flo TV, didn’t get that memo.

All in all tonight was disappointing for this Social Media enthusiast. Maybe next year someone will come up with an awesome ad that has an innovative social media aspect to it. I do want to give a shout-out to Pepsi for not advertising tonight and putting that money into their crowd sourcing Refresh Everything project (http://www.refresheverything.com/). I love this idea, the commercial and the web site. I love how they boosted their company image by lifting up others! Great job Pepsi!

4 Indicators of a Good Blog Post (for Me)

tcordon — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 20:15:56 +0000

1000′s of new blog posts show up in my RSS feed on a daily basis, I probably click on about 10% of them and only a fraction of those that I open actually get read. Now that I’m venturing into the blogosphere, it got me thinking… what draws my attention to read the content of a blog post? This is what I came up with.

1. Topic

Is it Fresh? & Is it relevant? I get annoyed when I’m following a RSS feed on a tech blog and the blogger submits a post about something funny their kid did or something else way off-topic. This didn’t bother me until recently, but now that I’m following 100’s of RSS feeds I don’t have the time to devote to non-relevant posts.

Advice for new bloggers – Your subscribers are just as busy as you are. Keep your posts true to the topic promised (at least 90% of the time!).

2. Title

Does it grab my attention? Do I have a general idea of what the article will be about? Have I seen this article before? Title is everything!

Advice for new bloggers:
- A Great Title: 10 free tools to improve your Facebook Fan Page – Fast
- An Ok Title: Free resources to spice of your Fan Page
- A not so good title: Social Media Marketing Resources – Being general may attract a larger audience, but only in numbers and not in quality readers.

3. Length and Layout

Length isn’t an issue if the topic is interesting and the layout is scannable. “Top 10″ lists or the “Best 100″ of something are what grab me but if the layout is not scannable, no matter what the topic, I’ll close it immediately.

Advice for new bloggers: Most people are scanning your content, not reading every word. Bullet points and white space are 2 easy ways to make your post scannable.

Example: Not so good:

The Top 10 Reasons to Do Anything:

Reason number one is listed in this sentence and is related to reason number two and number three, and since they’re related I’ve decided to keep them in the same paragraph.

Reason four is a category all it’s own so it gets it’s own paragraph.

Reason’s five, six, seven and eight are relevant to each other so I’ll talk about all of them in the same paragraph. Maybe I should throw in a link in here, but I’ve decided that would be too difficult for me.

Nine and Ten are unique from the rest of the group, but similar enough to each other that I’ll keep them grouped together just to bore you a little more.

Example: Better

The Top 10 Reasons to Do Anything:

1) Reason Number 1

Explain why reason number 1 is a great idea and how it ended up in your top 10 list. Include links to reason #1 and maybe even a screen-shot if necessary

2) Reason Number 2

As you can see this list is going to be much longer than the first version I did, but I’m more inclined to scan this list of over 10 paragraphs than read any of the 4 paragraphs in the first version.

4. Visual Aids

A picture says 1000 words! Charts, graphs, photos, or videos can convey much more than a wordy paragraph! When I’m making a quick scan to see if I’ll read a post, an eye-catching visual will keep me interested.

Wordles are great visuals from someone’s speech, the last 100 tweets of a celebrity, or anything word based. This is the wordle of this post.

So these are the indicators I use. I’d like to hear what other indicators you use to decide if a blog post is “reading worthy”

10 Interesting Social Media Articles – 12/27/09 – 1/3/10

tcordon — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 01:05:01 +0000

I thought this week would be slow with Social Media posts, but to my surprise there were a lot of great articles to keep me busy!

General

Top 5 Social Media Articles in 2009 – Marketing studies, Facebook Fan page management, going viral and more!

Facebook

Facebook Only Strategies – Ideas for your Business Facebook Fan Page
Marketing power of Facebook – Great article to reinforce the fact you need to be utilizing Facebook to it’s fullest potential.

Blogging

4 Stages to Growing a Blog – Easy to read/follow post about growing your base, and eventually monetizing your blog.

Google Wave

Task Management in Google Wave – I’ve been struggling trying to find a way to bring Google Wave into my life, this article by Chris Brogan, renewed my interest!

Writing

10 Words You Need to Stop Misspelling - I have to admit, I’m guilty of all of these!

Small Business

80 Small Business Twitterers to Follow – Great list! Many I was already following, but there were some new gems in there.

Advertising

Ad Networks on your blog – Why not make some money from your blog?! This is a great article describing the most popular ad networks available.

Fun

Create a new avatar – Have fun creating new persona’s for yourself!
How does your twitter account stack up? – Klout is a nifty little site that analyzes your influence in the land of Twitter! I need a little work on my Twitter Account!

New Blog

tcordon — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 04:44:47 +0000

Just what the world needed, another blog about Social Media! Well hopefully this blog will be a little different.

I spend hours a day reading blog posts, news articles and tweets about social media and I love every word, but I’ve come to realize that most who would benefit from Social Media do not have the time nor the desire to research all that is out there. For Social Media beginners, it can be very overwhelming. Since I learn something new everyday from the great community I follow about social media, I’ve decided to pay that information forward in a weekly list of the most interesting articles I come across.

This blog will also include:

Book reviews
Recommendations
Examples of who is doing it well
and more!

My Goals of this blog
For the Reader:	For Me:
Provide Social Media information in a clean, condensed, and inviting way. Empower the Soc. Media Beginner.	Engage with all types of Social Media users Delve deeper into the Social Media world. Improve my writing skills

About Me:

I love the web! I’ve been a web developer for the past 11 years and I am still in awe of this media! I love the fact that everything I needed to know to get into this field 11 years ago is mostly irrelevant today. For many that would not be an appealing attribute for their career, but for me, it’s what gets me up in the morning. I honestly can’t wait to read my RSS feeds every day and see what the “Next Big Thing” is!

I am also the Aunt of two of the most beautiful children in the world, a Dog Mom, A Fibromaylgia Manager (that could be a separate blog ), a wanna be travel photographer, and an Optimist (Ok, I’m not totally there, yet, but I’m trying).