Curators at the Cleveland Museum of Art took care to select the right pieces, placement and accompanying art when re-doing the museum's Armor Court.

The process of content curation is pretty simple. Basically one reads a variety of blogs, articles and sites on a given topic, then picks out the best ones to share, just as an editor might choose the most appropriate stories for an anthology of fiction, or a museum curator might choose the right combination of paintings for an exhibit.

In the early days of blogging, the process of choosing and sharing links to various noteworthy sites, was one of the most popular ways to blog. People have been curating content for ages, but the phrase "content curation" (in the context of social media) really only began to gain traction in 2009* and has been growing in popularity ever since.

Why curate content?

Some people choose to curate content because it takes less time than writing your own posts, but as you know we shouldn't be building our strategies around "shortcuts." Instead we should tailor any content marketing strategy to our end goals. Ideally you should be using content curation (if appropriate) to augment the self-created content you are using to communicate with your audience. I find content curation compelling because:

I learn in the process.

In order to build useful Web sites, and develop effective social media and marketing strategies, I have to keep up with changes in the field and continue to learn new things each day. I keep up with trends and information by reading blogs, listening to podcasts and conversing with peers on Twitter, LinkedIn and other social media channels. While doing this I also discover links that may be of interest to my own followers.

I can be a more effective resource on a topic if I share more than my own thoughts.

No matter how much time I might spend doing research, I will never have all the answers you may need about Web development, social media, marketing, etc. But if I pick through the noise—to find the best items to share on these topics—then I may become a useful go-to resource on these subjects. This helps my followers find relevant information more easily, and it supports my brand—by positioning me as someone knowledgeable enough to pick out what is useful.

Ways to find content worth sharing

As mentioned above I consume a lot of information in order to keep learning—and I find items to share as a part of that process. Setting up a system to find information on a given topic usually begins with a bit of preliminary research. This could involve setting up keyword searches on specific terms, subscribing to leading blogs, identifying pertinent podcasts, etc. Once you've done that you can then focus on monitoring the resources you've selected. Below are some of the ways I find content.

Blogs, E-zines, Aggregators

"Cats Who Code" offers good how-to tips. Here I may find articles to share with peers on Twitter or to save on Delicious for future reference.

I'm currently subscribed to hundreds of blogs and other online resources in Google Reader. There are so many that it is impossible to read all of the posts, but if I organize them by topics, such as social media or Web/tech, I can skim the headlines to find the posts that pique my interest. As I read through the posts I'll also note which posts seem most likely to resonate with my followers so that I can share those links in the appropriate places.

I subscribe to the obvious leaders in my industry such as A List Apart and Mashable, but I also try to subscribe to smaller niche oriented blogs and those that may only have a passing relation to my field. For example, I'm neither a video producer nor a film-maker, but I often find cool things on Motionographer that I can share on Twitter. Reading about design in other fields also helps me gain new perspectives when thinking about the Web, so blogs such as Lovely Package and Drawn! are also on the reading list.

Once I've identified a few blogs as being leaders in a particular niche these usually lead me to other blogs (that they may mention,) so in time the list just keeps growing.

Search Feeds

News readers aren't just for blogs. If I know I want to monitor a particular topic I can run searches in Google News search, Yahoo News Search, Twitter search, Google Blog search, etc. and subscribe to the resulting feeds. Similarly I can set up search columns in Tweetdeck on phrases like "Web design" or "CSS" to see what people are saying about those topics."

Podcasts

Listening to podcasts like CreativeXpert is a great way to gain knowledge and discover new bloggers worth following.

Podcasts are a great way to learn on the go and discover new blogs to read, articles of note, etc. After subscribing to podcasts in iTunes I can copy them to my iPod so that I can listen to them at any time, without being tied to my computer.

Many of the podcasts I listen to are an hour long and may feature multiple speakers. This allows them to dig deeper into specific topics than one could in a single blog post. Thus when I listen to This Week in Tech I may glean the latest insights on the Facebook privacy issue of the month. On Boagworld I might learn about a new wireframing tool or discover new methods for usability testing. These podcasts may also lead me to particular articles worth sharing, or after listening to a guest speaker I may decide I should also follow his/her blog.

Crowd Sourcing/Bookmarking/Social Media Recommendations

Sites such as Digg, StumbleUpon, and Delicious can be great places to find content that other people have liked or found useful in some way. While you can follow specific people on these sites, you can also browse by topics such as tech news or view commonly shared tags such as contentcuration.

People I'm following in social media channels

I've met a lot of great minds on Twitter (and other services.) The people I follow range from designers, developers and marketers to scientists and a sea captain. Many of these Tweeps are also curating content for their niche so I often discover new blogs or posts through the links they share in their Tweets, on Facebook, Buzz, etc. Some of my favorite blogs are those I've discovered via friends on social media.

Ways to share curated content

On my Facebook page I typically write a descriptive blurb about the link being shared. These are geared towards a mixed audience of clients, potential clients and peers.

There are a variety of ways to share the content you find. Some bloggers write link posts in which they share the top links they've found this week. Others might write a short paragraph about a post they've read, then link to the article. One can also share links via social media.

When perusing blogs, I'll share some posts via Google Reader Share. These feed directly to my Facebook and LinkedIn profile pages as well as my What I've Been Reading in the Blogosphere page. I also post links with short descriptive comments on Twitter and share one link per day on my Facebook page along with a paragraph of commentary.

With rare exceptions I do not cross-post the same links to each space. The links I share on Twitter are different than the ones I share on my Facebook page. I do this so that I can choose links specifically for each target audience and to avoid redundancy for those who follow me in multiple places.

Digg, StumbleUpon, Delicious and numerous other sites are also great places to share content links, with or without your personal commentary.

Just say no to plagiarism: do not republish articles without permission

While there are many ways to share content there are also ways you should not share it. When I was looking for more links to include with this article I found, Why Content Curation is BS, in which BlogBloke rightfully rants that content curation should not be used as an excuse for plagiarism. His post served as a good reminder that we should take care when we share.

There are bloggers who will copy the content they find to their own blog. Sometimes they give attribution to the source, other times they don't. Either way you should never copy someone else's content (or even paraphrase it) without getting their permission to do so. Doing so is a violation of their copyright. Most of you already know this, but it's an issue that is often confusing to new bloggers, so I thought it was worth mentioning.

In most cases it is perfectly acceptable to include one or more quotes from an article as part of your commentary, just as you might include quotes in a research paper, but don't quote a post in its entirety. A good way to share curated content on a blog is to start by explaining what the post is about, and why you feel it is worth sharing, then adding your own opinion about the subject along with a link to the original article. MetaSpring does a nice job of this in their monthly Blog Carnival posts. (They also contact the authors to ask permission and give them information about the upcoming posts, though their usage would be perfectly acceptable even if they didn't ask.)

If you are unsure about what is, and is not, acceptable, I've included links to copyright resources in A writer’s obligations: ethics, law and pragmatism, Part 1: Law. You can also learn more from Plagiarism Today which publishes both a blog and a podcast.

How are you curating content?

What other methods have you used to find content? Where and how are you sharing it? Are you posting article links to the news tab in your LinkedIn discussion groups? Are you sharing links via Tumblr or Posterous? Do you include curated links in your e-mail newsletter? Please share your experiences or suggestions in the comments below.

Content Curation Resources

The links I regularly share here at the bottom of my posts are another example of content curation. I include these to provide additional reading material on the topic. These links were found via Google Reader, Google Search and Delicious.

• Content Is No Longer King: Curation Is King
• Content Marketing: Definitions of Curation & Context
• Curation nation
• The Content Strategist as Digital Curator
• The Seven Needs of Real-Time Curators
• Why Feedback and Filters are Necessary in Social Media

* A Google search on "content curation" turns up only 282 mentions of the phrase in 2007, 568 in 2008, 17,400 in 2009 and 55,000 so far this year.

P.S. As I was going through Google Reader today I realized I'd left out a great example of content curation. Arts & Letters Daily is a service of The Chronicle of Higher Education. It compiles a great collection of intellectual fodder, adding 3 short blurbs with links to full articles each day. It also includes a list of the source publications it uses in the left sidebar. Added June 30, 2010.

Fan me on Facebook—Follow me on Twitter

We all know these blog posts don't get written as frequently as I'd like. But that doesn't mean you need to go weeks without hearing me babble. Over on http://www.facebook.com/heidicool, I'm using content curation to share one link per day. At one tip per week day it won't clog your Facebook stream, but hopefully you'll find something useful.

And for more links (and ramblings that may not always be related to the Web) I usually Tweet and reTweet a few (or several) times per day at @hacool.

The first post. It's hard to believe I used to write such short entries. (Some of you probably wish I still did!)

Starting this blog was one of the smartest things I've done. To be honest though, it's not something I began on my own, nor did I anticipate how it would evolve over time.

To celebrate the anniversary of this blog (which actually occurs on February 28th), I thought I'd share a bit of its history and reflect on how the blog and I have adapted to changes in the Web and the interests of you, our readers.

A communications need—in search of a solution.

Five years ago Kevin Adams and I were the Web team for the marketing and communications department of Case Western Reserve University. In the second half of 2004 we'd rolled out a new site design as part of a university-wide rebranding effort. Our mission was to maintain the home page, build (and maintain) new sites within the campus Web presence and work with departments across campus to help them do the same with their own sites.

To this end we had periodic meetings with campus Web folk, and answered many an e-mail question or phone call, but this wasn't enough to keep up with the demand for support. Our campus community included hundreds of Web maintainers, of varying skill levels, who had questions ranging from how to edit HTML to how to develop content that would best support their marketing strategies. We needed a more efficient way to serve this audience.

As part of the new site roll-out we had created a Web Toolkit where we shared template files, and various reference materials, but as a static site it seemed an unwieldy place to post announcements or other bits of advice. We needed a system that would let us organize the information more effectively. Thankfully such a system had just been created.

Case launches a campus-wide blogging initiative.

I used the Case blog system to develop a variety of sites ranging from the Community Outreach site to the Case News Center. In July, 2008, I presented Blogs, The many voices of a university at EduWeb 2008 to demonstrate the ways that Case (and other schools) were making use of blogs in the classroom and beyond. You can get a sense of how Case continues to use blogs by visiting Planet Case, a site that aggregates all the most recent posts from the system.

In November 2004, Case's ITS group began alpha testing a campus-wide blogging system using the Movable Type platform. In January 2005 they opened up the system for campus-wide beta-testing, allowing any university students, staff, faculty or alumni to create their own blog(s).

Having previously experimented with blogs on Blogger, I watched the project with interest. Then one day Jeremy Smith, who runs the blog system, called me up to see if I might be able to create a new template design for one of the senior staff. Soon thereafter I had a test account set-up where I could experiment with creating this new theme.

Although I was a regular blog reader I'd not really spent much time thinking about blog construction. As I played with my designs, I found they weren't quite living up to my expectations. I was trying to visually re-style an existing blog structure, when I should have been rethinking the entire interface. Thus the results (such as this example) just didn't feel quite right.

I was learning that the blogs required a different way of thinking in regard to the user experience and navigation system. So I set those first designs aside and focused on learning more about blog structure and the code behind it.

At some point in that process I realized that the blog system was just what Kevin and I had been looking for.

The birth of the Web Development Blog

I don't recall the exact conversation but one way or another Kevin and I agreed to start blogging. Since I'd already been tinkering with the system, I took one of our campus templates and rebuilt it as a blog theme. Once that was ready I wrote our first post. You can view a copy of that post as it appears here on this blog, or the original post on the Case system.

As you will notice the post was surprisingly short. I introduced the reason for the blog, suggested users add contact information to their site footers and listed the hexadecimal colors for the Case Web templates.

Over the next few months Kevin and I continued in that vein, offering basic how-to tips such as setting up password authentication or redirecting pages and posting announcements, book reviews or links to interesting blog posts. As we added more content, the blog began to serve a customer service role. While campus Web maintainers continued to call us, they could now also go to the blog to find answers to many of their more common questions.

Broader mission and the birth of longer posts

When meeting with campus clients to talk about their new Web sites, I often started the conversation by asking about their goals and target audience, much as I do today with current clients. Alas with over 300,000 pages in the Case realm, and just me and Kevin to advise, we weren't able to sit down and have these conversations with everyone. As I was working with the department of pharmacology on their new site it occurred to me that I could write about the Web planning process and post it on the blog. This way users could walk through it themselves if Kevin or I weren't able to meet with them.

On July 1, 2005, I posted So you want to build a Web site, the first chapter of what turned out to be my Planning Your Web site Tutorial. Over the next few months I kept adding chapters while Kevin kept posting smaller articles on various tips and tricks. Kevin spends much of his spare time playing the trumpet in polka bands, while I'm often compelled to write, so it came as no surprise when I turned out to be the more verbose contributor to the blog.

As time went by I found that sharing the Web site tutorial with clients, before we met in person, helped to save us time in the planning process and ensure that we were all on the same page. I also found that people outside of Case, both in academia and beyond, were beginning to read our posts.

As people commented and asked questions we started writing on a wider range of topics. Instead of focusing strictly on issues pertaining to building sites, I also started writing about related topics such as marketing and graphics.

In 2006 we both wrote a combination of how-to articles such as those on editing images but also branched out into more general topics such as discussions on writing styles. By 2007, I'd also begun covering topics related to what we now call social media. In May of that year Kevin left to work on the corporate sector, so I continued the blog on my own.

Between building Web sites and advising clients, we'd never had much time to blog during office hours so I wrote many of these posts in the evening. Writing on my own time also allowed me the freedom to experiment a bit more with what I wrote. By this point I knew my audience extended beyond campus, so while much of my focus was on Web communications as they pertained to higher education I also wanted to include information that would be helpful to other audiences. And, instead of just writing things to help people build better Web sites, I wanted to address related issues such as promoting and marketing those sites. Topics like search engine optimization and social media were a natural addition to this content mix.

Life after Case

Last year after working at Case for almost 10 years I left the university to venture forth on my own. I knew the blog would continue to be an important communications tool, so I brought it with me to this site, while leaving the original files there for archival and reference purposes. I installed WordPress in a directory on this domain, created a theme to match the rest of my site, exported the blog entries from the old site then imported them here.

While I still sometimes find an odd link that goes back to the old site, the process worked surprisingly smoothly—considering that I was not only moving files but changing from Movable Type to WordPress. For a few weeks during the transition I cross-posted to both blogs then on February 23, 2009 I posted The Web Development Blog is moving! as the last post on the old site and began posting here full time.

Starting a new business takes time, so I've not blogged as often this past year as I'd have liked, but for the most part the editorial policy for the blog has remained similar to what it was at Case. Most of my clients are in small or medium sized businesses so I'm writing a bit more with an eye to the corporate sector. I'm still interested in the higher education and non-profit worlds, so I also use examples from those sectors, and read posts from BlogHighEd to keep up with what's happening in academe.

The role of the blog

What began as a simple way to communicate with clients has turned into much more. I think it worked out because Kevin and I started blogging to serve a specific goal, we didn't blog just to blog. As a result, The Web Development Blog has served as a marketing tool, helped me to establish my personal brand and given me the opportunity to connect with bloggers, clients and others with an interest in Web related issues. And of course it gives me a place to wax forth on whatever Web related ideas I may be pondering in a given moment.

But as much as I like to write, none of this would matter if you weren't out there reading. So now, as I near the anniversary date of the blog, I'd like to thank you all for reading, commenting, reTweeting, etc.

And of course if you have any ideas on things I should cover in 2010, please feel free to share them below.

Social Media Marketing Blog

I am now also a co-author of the Social Media Marketing Blog with Wayne Smallman and Emily Cagle. There we'll be focusing on social media marketing tips such as my first post, Listen, learn and leverage your brand via LinkedIn Answers. That site is also home to Wayne's e-book, The Beginner's Guide to Social Media.

Fan me on Facebook - Follow me on Twitter

We all know these blog posts don't get written as frequently as I'd like. But that doesn't mean you need to go weeks without hearing me babble. Over on http://www.facebook.com/heidicool, I'm sharing one tip per day, usually as a short paragraph with a link to something interesting I've found in the blogosphere.

At one tip per week day it won't clog your Facebook stream, but hopefully you'll find something useful. And for more links (and ramblings that may not always be related to the Web) I usually Tweet and reTweet a few (or several) times per day at @hacool. (I also have links to more accounts on My Social Media Profiles page and am now also babbling on Buzz.)

There are a variety of ways one can measure such things, so I've chosen two methods to select the top 10 blog posts and have included all posts—not just those written in 2009. As it turns out, five entries made both lists, while 10 appeared only on one list. Three of the entries this year were also included last year in, 2 Top 5 Lists = 1 Top Ten List: My most read Web Development Blog entries from 2008.

Happy New Year from snow covered Cleveland!

Top 10 most popular posts according to the WordPress Popularity Contest plug-in

I discovered this plug-in earlier last year after reading Ari Herzog's post, Enhance Your WordPress Blog with 23 Plugins. Ari also used this methodology for his recent post, Top 9 Blog Posts Written Here in 2009—which just happens to include his post, Guest Interview with Heidi Cool: How a University Experiments with Social Media. So thank you Ari for a year's worth of great idea sharing!

The Popularity Contest Plug-in measures the popularity of posts based on a combination of factors including: Permalink Views, Home Views, Archive Views, Category Views, Tag Views, Feed Views, Comments, Pingbacks, Trackbacks and trackbacks.

Users can adjust how much weight is given to each factor. I just used the default values. Since comments are acquired over time and some of my posts are evergreen content (material that isn't time sensitive) this ranking may not be truly reflective of 2009 readership. The posts on this list include entries made as early as 2005, so some of the comments were also made before 2009.

1. An Introduction to Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
2. Making sense of semantic HTML: an introduction for clients and new Web designers
3. Enhance your reputation & increase traffic by joining discussions on other blogs
4. Goal-driven social media strategies & tactics: how are you interacting with your target audience?
5. So you want to build a Web site
6. Twitter chats: if you can’t meet in real space, meet in real time.
7. 8 things to consider when redesigning your Web site—let’s start with WHY?
8. Is Flash evil? No, but Flash-based sites can be a marketing nightmare.
9. A writer’s obligations: ethics, law and pragmatism, Part 1: Law
10. Raising your Web site rankings

Top 10 most popular posts according to Google Analytics page views

This list is probably more reflective of 2009 traffic because it is based solely on pages views from last year. Naturally there are other factors one could consider, but for this list I thought I'd keep it simple.

1. An Introduction to Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
2. 8 things to consider when redesigning your Web site—let’s start with WHY?
3. Twitter chats: if you can’t meet in real space, meet in real time.
4. Your Flash site won’t seem so cool if visitors can’t use it.
5. Is Flash evil? No, but Flash-based sites can be a marketing nightmare.
6. Goal-driven social media strategies & tactics: how are you interacting with your target audience?
7. Converting Word documents to HTML
8. Blogging as the backbone of a social media strategy
9. 5 Tips to ensure your readers can read your HTML e-mail messages
10. Embedding YouTube Videos the Standards Compliant Way—SFWobject 2.0

While creating top 10 lists provides a fast way to churn out a new blog entry, the process also gives us insights into reader preferences. As bloggers we can use this knowledge to plan future articles that will also resonate with our readers. The "how-to" articles such as "converting word documents" and "embedding YouTube videos" seem to be consistently popular over time, so I should probably take this as a clue to write more in this genre.

If you want to dig deeper into your results, you can also compare your popular entries with your social media activities—to see if they were promoted more often than others. For example, So you want to build a Web site is the first entry in my Planning Your Web Site Tutorial. I frequently share this link in the Q&A section of LinkedIn and with clients, so I know some of this traffic is a direct result of those activities.

Top Commentators for 2009

While I'm perfectly happy to write for the sake of writing, it's nice to know that you folks are out there reading, reTweeting and commenting. Some posts garner more comments than others, but it's always fun to see the conversations evolve. The following list shows the most active commentators for 2009.

1. Tom Goering
2. Ari Herzog
3. Tashfeen
4. Kyle James
5. Artful Dodger
6. Greg Bowen
7. David
8. Ron
9. Michael Stoner
10. dave
11. David
12. Ron
13. Paul Falgout
14. Mark Keating
15. Escorial
16. Seo Tampa
17. David Sher
18. Tonya

This list was compiled using the Show Top Commentators plug-in. I included more than 10 because some people made the same number of comments. While a few of the people on the list are those who may have stumbled upon the blog via search or by following a link, a good portion of these folks are friends I've made through social media such as Pownce and Twitter. The list also includes fellow contributors to BlogHighEd, some of whom I've had the pleasure of meeting in person.

These connection points offer a good example of how social networking works. We listen more closely to the people we're more connected with, thus we may comment on their blogs more often and vice versa. Our Tweets and Facebook updates also help alert our friends when we have new entries. I subscribe to several of the blogs penned by the folks on this list, but I'll often see their posts in Twitter (and click through to read them) before I see them in Google Reader. There are some excellent writers in the bunch so I encourage you to explore their sites.

I'd like to thank all of the commentators for contributing their ideas to the blog this year, but in particular I'd like to thank Tom Goering of NavyCS. Tom started commenting on the blog several years ago. We've since connected on both StumbleUpon and Twitter, but I think it's rather cool that he's kept up with the blog over time and continued to be an active commentator.

Thank you Tom and all the other readers and commentators who continue to give me reasons to blog. Happy New Year! - Heidi

heidicool.com is also on Facebook

Need more Web tips? Fan the heidicool.com Facebook page. I'm posting 1 tip/link there per day to offer ongoing advice on Web design, marketing and social media—without overwhelming your Facebook stream.

Sometimes navigating a blog can feel like wandering through a maze.

For example, let's pretend we're going to visit a typically organized blog about trees—to see if we can learn something new about Dutch elm disease. We go to the site and see that there is a category for elms with 32 entries. When we click on the elm category we are taken to a page with the 5 most recent posts. These cover topics such as Hairy Fruited Glaucescent Elm, the use of elm wood in coffin-making, Winged Elm and so forth, but not Dutch elm disease. So we go to the bottom of the page, click the "previous posts link" and go to a page with 5 more entries. We then repeat the process until we find the article we seek—or we give up and use the search box (if there is one).

As you can imagine all of this scrolling and clicking can make it rather hard to find things. But it doesn't have to be this way. By making a few adjustments to our template themes, we can alter categories to list headlines instead of full posts, we can create tag pages to let people browse specific topics—as they might peruse the index of a book, and so forth. Below are a few tips on things you can do to make your blog more browsable.

Blogging Platforms Vary

Different blog platforms offer different levels of flexibility when it comes to customizing your site. Most of these tips will require some experience with HTML, CSS and PHP. If you are using a hosted blogging service such as WordPress.com, Blogger or TypePad you won't be able to edit as much, but you may be able to find other themes that offer some of these features.

My blog uses a self-hosted installation of WordPress.org. In it's prior incarnation at http://blog.case.edu/webdev, it ran on Movable Type 3.121 so those are the platforms I'll reference here. (If you are using Movable Type 4, you may need to check the MT documentation. Learning Movable Type is also an excellent resource.)

Alphabetical Index

I added an alphabetical index to my blog several years back because I wanted an easy way to see a list of all my entries on one page. My archives page at that time broke entries out by month so they weren't all listed together, but I also felt that it would be easier to browse things in alpha order.

As it turns out, I visit this page almost every day. If I'm on LinkedIn or Twitter and want to share a link to a specific post—as part of my response to someone—I go to the alpha index to find the link.

Movable Type

Adding an alpha index on MT is pretty easy. When you create the new page for your index, just add the following code:

<MTEntries lastn="300" offset="0" sort_by="title" sort_order="ascend">
<ul>
<li><a href="<$MTEntryPermalink archive_type="Individual"$>"><$MTEntryTitle$></a> <span class="smalldate"> <$MTEntryDate format="%m/%d/%Y"$> - <MTEntryAuthorNickname></span></li>
</ul>
</MTEntries>

If you look at the code you'll see the options are fairly intuitive.This produces a list of entry titles with dates and authors. (In the early days I had a co-author so I felt it would be useful to identify the posts by author). I set lastn to 300 because the default setting would limit it to a smaller number of headlines. Thus I just chose a number greater than the number of articles I had at the time. Periodically I would increase this number to allow for more posts.

WordPress

WordPress is wonderful in many ways, but when I started learning WP, after years of using MT, I discovered that it can be a very different beast. I couldn't find some easy little snippet of code to pop into my template. After a bit of time spent glaring at the WordPress loop and doing Google searches I ended up using the AZIndex plugin by English Mike. This plug-in offers a variety of options such as making an index for specific categories, making an index that excludes categories, indexing pages instead of posts, etc.

Category Lists

If this were a food blog, I might assign an article on cooking rib roast to categories such as "meat" and "roasting," a sub-category of "beef" and a tag of "rib roast".

Category pages and lists are only useful if you assign your posts to the appropriate categories. Too many categories can be just as confusing to visitors as too few.

I like to think of categories as general sections—like you might see in a grocery store. You might have categories for meat, produce, dairy, etc. For specific topics within a category you might create sub-categories such as pork, vegetables and cheese. Then to be more precise you can use tags such as bacon, peapods and Brie. This seems like the ideal way to organize one's posts. My blog is not set-up the ideal way—I have too many categories and they need to be cleaned up.

Once you've assigned your post to the appropriate categories you can think about how you will present those to visitors. Many blogs will list all the categories in a side menu (on WordPress this is often done using a categories widget). A surprising number of blogs don't list them at all. Since I have too many categories, I list them on a separate categories page so they don't clutter up my sidebar.

Creating a Categories List on Movable Type

On the old blog I added the categories list using the following code. I formatted it as a definition list just in case I ended up using subcategories or descriptions.

<h3>Categories</h3>

<dl>
<MTTopLevelCategories show_empty="1">
<dt><a href="<$MTCategoryArchiveLink$>"><$MTCategoryLabel$></a> (<$MTCategoryCount$> entries)</dt>
<dd><$MTCategoryDescription$>

<MTSubCategories>
<MTSubCatIsFirst><dl></MTSubCatIsFirst>
<dt><a href="<$MTCategoryArchiveLink$>"><$MTCategoryLabel$></a> (<$MTCategoryCount$> entries)</dt>
<dd>
<$MTCategoryDescription$>
<MTSubCatsRecurse>
</dd>
<MTSubCatIsLast></dl></MTSubCatIsLast>
</MTSubCategories>
</dd>
</MTTopLevelCategories>
</dl>

Creating a Categories List on WordPress

To make the list for WordPress I created a new template file called categorylist.php in which I put the following code:

<?php
/*
Template Name: categorylist
*/
?>

<?php get_header(); ?>

<div id="midbox">
<?php get_sidebar(); ?>

<div id="maincontent">

<h2>Categories</h2>
<ul>
<?php wp_list_cats(); ?>
</ul>

</div>
</div>
<?php get_footer(); ?>

I then uploaded the file to my themes directory. Next I went to the WordPress dashboard and created a new page called Categories. I left the entry box blank and selected "categorylist" as the template to use for the page. After that I added the link to the page in my side menu by editing the sidebar.php file.

Category Archive Pages

As I mentioned in the beginning, many blogs include complete posts on their individual categories pages. These can be harder to browse, so I prefer to use lists. For example, if you visit the SEO category archive you'll see a list of blog entries on the topic along with the date they were posted and the number of comments on each. One can also set up such lists to include an excerpt for each entry to give visitors a better sense of the topic.

Creating Category Archive Pages on Movable Type

Category archives are a standard feature in Movable Type. I edited mine to use the following code:

<h3>Entries in "<$MTArchiveTitle$>"</h3>
<p class="photoleft"><img alt="feedicon16w.gif" src="http://blog.case.edu/webdev/2007/05/14/feedicon16w.gif" width="16" height="16" /></p>

<h2><a href="rss20.xml">RSS Feed</a></h2>

<MTEntries>
<$MTEntryTrackbackData$>

<MTDateHeader>
<h2><$MTEntryDate format="%x"$></h2>
</MTDateHeader>

<h5><a href="<$MTEntryPermalink$>"><$MTEntryTitle$></a></h5>
<p><$MTEntryExcerpt$></p>

</MTEntries>

In this case I used headers and paragraphs rather than a list format. Technically I should have used an <h6> instead of an <h2> for hierarchical reasons. I think <h2> just happened to be available while <h6> was already designated for something else on the site. If you visit the SEO Category page for this example you will see that the list includes the entry excerpts. I've also included an RSS feed at the top for anyone who might wish to subscribe to the feed for just this category, rather than for the whole blog.

If you have individual category feeds you can also use that content to republish them in other places. For example when I was at Case Western Reserve University, we would use the Alumni category feed from the News Center (which I built as a Movable Type Blog) to publish those headlines on the Alumni Web site. (They are no longer doing that on the new site.)

Creating Category Archive Pages on WordPress

WordPress uses the archives.php file to control category (and other) page archives. If you wanted to modify your category archives but leave the others as they are, you could save a copy of this as category.php and edit that file. Here on this blog I simply edited archives.php to add my RSS feed and to list entry titles rather than full posts. Mostly this is just a matter of removing
<?php the_content(); ?> so that the posts won't be included.

If you visit the SEO Category page for this example you will see that the list only includes the titles, date and number of comments.

If I had instead changed <?php the_content(); ?> to <?php the_excerpt(); ?> then you would see excerpts under the titles.

Since the code is a bit long to post here, I created a page showing the code from archive.php for your reference. WordPress provides a great deal of flexibility with these files. You can learn more in the category templates section of the WP Codex.

Tags

As I mentioned earlier tags are a good way to mark posts as belonging to a very specific topic. For example if I put this post in the blogging category, it may be appropriate to tag it with WordPress, Movable Type, alpha index, categories, browsing and navigation. Then users looking for posts mentioning these topics can find them in my Tag index.

SEO plug-ins such as All-in-one-SEO can also use your tags as keywords.

Tags on Movable Type

Tags were introduced to Movable Type in version 3. On the blog system we had at Case.edu, they were used interchangeably with categories (which is why my blog is still so category heavy). So when my blog was on that system I did not have a separate tags page, though some people were using tag clouds on their blogs. Rather than showing you a piece of code I've not actually used myself, here are some links to tag related resources for Movable Type:

• Tag Cloud on PHP in Movable Type 4
• How to Make a Subject Index Using Tags

Tags on WordPress

If your blog uses a widgetized theme, there is a widget to add a tag cloud to your sidebar. My blog isn't using widgets because I'm customizing my sidebar by hand. And, as with categories, I didn't want to clutter up the menu so I put it on a separate tags page. Naturally this will become more useful after I clean up and reorganize my categories and tags, but it's good to have the page ready.

To make this page I created a new template file called taglist.php in which I included the following code:

<?php
/*
Template Name: taglist
*/
?>

<?php get_header(); ?>

<div id="midbox">
<?php get_sidebar(); ?>

<div id="maincontent">

<?php query_posts("cat=26");
$tag_list = wp_tag_cloud('format=array&orderby=name&order=ASC&smallest=1
&largest=1&unit=em&number=0');
if (!empty($tag_list)) {
echo "<h3>Web Development Blog Tags:</h3><ul>";
foreach ($tag_list as $key => $tag) {
echo "<li>$tag</li>";
}
echo "</ul></div><!-- end tags -->";
}

?>

</div>
</div>
<?php get_footer(); ?>

Since I wanted an alphabetical list of tags, rather than a cloud I set it to use orderby=name and set smallest and largest to be the same size. In a cloud one would normally make largest use a larger size. Then I formatted it to use an unordered list to present the tags.

Next I added a new page called Tags List in the WP dashboard, just as I did for the categories list, but this time I set it to use the taglist template.

Let's make our blogs more browsable for 2010

Whether building a regular Web site or a static blog, I think it helps to give users easy pathways to your content. The above suggestions are but a few of many ways you can make your blog more browsable. Other features can include breadcrumbs, next/previous links, etc. You can even create special topic pages in which you gather together a group of related posts, such as I've done with my Planning Your Web site Tutorial page.

There are also many methods for implementing such features. You might choose to do the same things using a different bit of code, or a plug-in that suits your needs.

If your blog currently uses the typical format that shows post after post after post, try exploring it from your readers perspective. Wander around and see how it feels to browse. Your content is different than mine, so as you explore you may come up with some fresh ideas that I've not thought about. Or you may have already implemented navigation features that make your blog more browsable.

How else might we improve the blog navigation experience? What problems have you encountered, on other blogs, that might be fixed by a few navigation adjustments? Please share your thoughts and ideas below.

Happy Blogging in the New Year!

Other writer's thoughts on blog navigation

• Add Google-Style Page Navigation to your Category and Search Pages
• Blog Navigation and the Ongoing Challenges that Arise
• Blog Navigation WordPress Plugins: Related, Recent, Most Popular Posts and More
• How to Blog Design Style Guide
• Weblog Usability: The Top Ten Design Mistakes

heidicool.com is also on Facebook

Need more Web tips? Fan the heidicool.com Facebook page. I'm posting 1 tip/link there per day to offer ongoing advice on Web design, marketing and social media—without overwhelming your Facebook stream.

When developing a social media strategy, we start with a measurable goal, such as selling widgets, promoting events, recruiting students, sharing knowledge, collaborating with peers, getting customer feedback, or anything else that furthers our plans. Then we identify our target audience, determine where they are spending time on line, and develop communications tactics meant to reach them—on their terms, in the spaces they use.

This latter step is important because people tend to be more comfortable conversing on their home turf. They may also find it easier to make a comment on the page they're on than to click through to someplace else. But once our audience begins to connect with us, they also need to know where they can go to get more information. Thus we need to provide some sort of home base that centralizes our messages and provides them with a destination where they can learn more about us, buy our widgets, join our project, etc.

Ideally this is a destination worth visiting, a place that gives them useful informative content—not just a sales pitch.

They found you on Facebook, but where are you sending them next?

Pittsfield Charter Township 2010 Master Plan

Your home base could come in a variety of forms. For some it's a standard Web site, for others—like Social Media Chat (#smchat) and the Cleveland Social Media Club—it's a Ning Network.

As I discussed in Goal-driven social media strategies & tactics: how are you interacting with your target audience?, my home base is this blog. My blog is only one section of my overall site, but it's the section I link to most often when Tweeting, answering questions on LinkedIn, etc., because it's the place where I can send people to get specific answers. Once visitors arrive here, they can then easily explore other portions of the site.

Whether a blog is right for you depends on your particular goal and the nature of your audience, yet blogs, by their nature, offer certain features that work very well with other social media tools. Today I'll explore some of those features by walking through a potential use scenario.

Blogging for Government Planning

Social Media Outreach Presentation Slides

This past friday I had the opportunity to meet with government (and other) planners when George Nemeth and I presented Social Media Outreach: Communicating in the Online World to Enhance Planning in the Real World at the APA Cleveland Annual Planning and Zoning Workshop.

Currently planners get a lot of their feedback from community meetings or e-mail. It's sometimes difficult to get community members to come out to an event to discuss the various options for building a new bridge, developing a new park, moving a shipping port, etc. In order to increase community involvement, planners are exploring new ways to share their plans and gather feedback.

As I was researching the ways that planners currently communicate, it occurred to me that blogs would work well for this purpose. They offer an easy way to post news, share documents and gather feedback through online comments.

In speaking with the group I learned that while most planning departments have Web sites, very few are using blogs and social media. This is also true of the general population, but in the past year we've seen Facebook and Twitter become more mainstream. If a planning department starts now, they can get their social media plans in place in order to be ready as more and more of their community members begin to use the tools.

A social media plan for the fictional town of Ohtopia, Ohio

Let's pretend that we're the Planning and Zoning Department for Ohtopia. Our town, somewhere in northeast Ohio, has seen growth as people have been moving out from the city and into our community. As such we're working on a new town plan to enhance the town center, create new public spaces and reduce traffic congestion.

Our goal is to increase community participation in our planning process and gather feedback from as many community members as possible. To accomplish this we've decided to add a blog to our Web site then share news (and drive traffic to the blog) through various social media channels. Here's how that might work.

Ohtopia Blog

We can start the process by reviewing our goals, and assessing the needs of our target audience, to develop an overall content plan and structure for the blog. We can then establish an editorial policy to guide our writers and assign a person (or team) to write and publish the content, respond to reader feedback, and monitor social media mentions of our department and plans.

Using an opensource (free) blogging platform such as Movable Type or WordPress we can install a blog in a subdirectory of our main site, design it to match the look and feel of our main Web site, customize our menus and navigation based on our blog plan, and install Google Analytics to measure results.

Advantages of using blogging software for this project

• Team members can add content without knowing HTML, so the site can be updated in a timely manner.
• Entries are archived by date, so visitors can determine what information is most current and review how the process evolved over time. Such archives also form a historical record which may be useful for legal and other reasons.
• Events can be added to a calendar listing, so they stand out from other posts. Event postings can also link to Facebook event pages, E-vite, or other event sites one may use for attendee registration.
• Documents, forms and posts can be organized by categories and topics to make it easier for users to navigate and browse.
• WordPress and other blogging programs provide on-site search mechanisms to make it easier for visitors to seach for specific topics.
• Blogs produce RSS feeds which can be used to automatically post headlines of recent posts to other parts of the Ohtopia site.
• Community members and local media can subscribe to the blog's RSS feed via e-mail, or by using a feed reader such as Google Reader, so they are kept up-to-date with the latest news.
• Entries can be used to embed photographs, .pdf documents, videos and other materials that augment the text.
• Visitors can leave comments on pages so that their feedback can be documented, archived and viewed by others.
• Readers can share posts of interest to Delicious, StumbleUpon, Facebook, Twitter or other social media services to help spread the news. (Plug-ins such as addtoany provide buttons that make it easy for visitors to share our pages.)
• The site team can share selected posts to other social media services to reach more of their community members.
• Team members can create a commenting policy, then edit/moderate comments as appropriate for foul language or other inappropriate behavior.
• Team members can respond to comments and use them to create an online dialog.
• Blogs enhance search engine optimization (SEO) by letting us easily produce fresh content in an SEO friendly format. By publishing the blog on our own domain we can take advantage of this to gain more traffic for our overall site.

Editorial Policy

Our blog could be used to:

• Announce town planning meetings/forums open to the public.
• Publish summaries of these events including meeting minutes.
• Upload maps, and planning documents.
• Post plan recommendations with requests for community feedback via comments.
• Alert the public to changes in planning and zoning regulations.
• Distribute building, zoning and other forms used by the public.
• Publish social media press releases complete with photos, video's planning documents and other information that will give media more details about our projects.

By using a blog we'll be able to publish our information in a more timely fashion and provide a forum through which our community members can respond to our plans and converse with us about our projects. Their comments and questions will also let us know what other information we should be publishing on the site.

Expanding our reach through social media.

Our blog will serve as our communications hub, but until we tell people about it, they won't know it's there. Through a combination of traditional and social media marketing strategies we can spread the word and reach out to our community.

The main audience for our blog includes local residents, residents of neighboring communities and local media. Secondary audiences include planners from other locales and others, interested in planning, who may learn from our process. To determine what social media tools to use we'll want to research the more popular social media services, and any niche services (such as a regionally based Ning Network), to see which ones our audience uses most regularly.

If our research shows us that our audience is primarily using Facebook and Twitter, then we can focus on those two services.

Facebook

• Create a Facebook fan page.
• Position ourselves as a resource for news of local interest by posting blog entries AND other news of interest to our community—the core focus can be planning but we may gain more readers by also linking to news items related to economic development, sustainability, public art, etc.
• Share photos of completed and in-process projects.
• Make Facebook events for our public meetings.
• Ask community members for feedback.
• Link to main blog.
• Join/fan other Facebook groups and pages that already appeal to our target audience, start conversing with them there (about topics related to those pages, not just about us) to build connections so we may invite them to fan our page.

Twitter

Cayuga County Planning Department on Twitter

• Create a complete profile with photo (or city logo), brief description of the department and a link to the blog. Also consider creating a special welcome page on the blog that is geared specifically to Twitter users and link to that rather than the main blog page.
• Position ourselves as a resource for news of local interest by Tweeting blog posts AND other news of interest to our community, as we do on Facebook. As there may be an overlap between these audiences, try to avoid duplicating links shared via Facebook.
• Use Twellow.com and related sites to find local Twitter users in our target audience.
• After having made 10-20 Tweets, begin following members of our target audience including individuals and local media. Do this in small increments (25 or so) to build the list gradually. If you follow 500 at once and only have 5 followers, users may not follow back.
• Follow back those who both follow us and who seem to have an interest in what we do. (But don't follow back spammers, and those who may be following just to build numbers.)
• Visit the stream daily to respond to followers, reTweet links/posts of interest to our followers, etc.

Blogging and related social media tools work well together.

In our pretend scenario, our blog provides the bulk of our content, but we also use Facebook and Twitter to share additional news and to drive traffic to the blog. This is a fairly simple scenario—a fully developed social media plan might include other elements and details—but it does give us an example of how a planning and zoning department might use a blog as the backbone of their social media plan.

If your organization has different goals, or a different target audience, you may find that something other than a blog is more appropriate for your needs. Blogs are not a one-size-fits-all solution. But, in many cases, a carefully planned blog can provide a good foundation for your social media efforts.

To further explore the pro's and con's of using a blog as the core component of a social media strategy, I'll be a moderating a discussion of the topic on #smchat, a weekly real-time Twitter chat focused on social media. The chat will begin this Wednesday, November 18, 2009, at 1:00 p.m. e.s.t. Please feel free to join the discussion there, or share your thoughts below.

Blogging and Social Media Resources

• Copy Blogger: Copywriting Tips for Online Marketing Success
• Mashable: The Social Media Guide
• The 7 Harsh Realities of Social Media Marketing
• Bookmarks saved for the Planning and Zoning Presentation

Recommended Reading for Bloggers

Jeff Hershberger, who writes the blog, My Future Past, recently lent me Say Everything: How Blogging Began, What It's Becoming, and Why It Matters by Scott Rosenberg. I'm just about halfway through it now. If you want to learn more about the history and power of blogging, I highly recommend it.

heidicool.com is also on Facebook

Need more Web tips? Fan the heidicool.com Facebook page. I'm posting 1 tip/link there per day to offer ongoing advice on Web design, marketing and social media—without overwhelming your Facebook stream.

I wasn't there, but back in September (on my birthday of all days) members of the Cleveland Social Media Club gathered together to discuss ways to educate people on the use of social media. At that time they proposed producing an e-book on the topic "Advice that you would give someone on how to get started with social media." Later that day, Nader Ali-Hassan posted a message on the Cleveland SMC forum asking people to submit articles on the subject.

Always willing to share my two cents, I wrote an article for submission. As time went by others did the same, we formed an eBook committee, and by February we had almost 20 chapters. Soon after I joined the editorial team to help edit the chapters and get the book ready for completion. As we worked on the project, the team decided that we needed to produce something more than the usual downloadable .pdf file for the book. We also wanted a Web site where we could publish an HTML version of the book and provide a place to share other educational resources related to social media.

Cover art and layout of the .pdf version
of Welcome to Social Media was done
by Tony Ramos

Tasked with the creation of the Web site, I built Welcome to Social Media, which launches officially tonight at the Cleveland Social Media Club meeting (members of the public are welcome to attend). This new site features an online version of the Welcome to Social Media eBook, a social media blog and related resources. Over time we'll add additional materials to help educate the world about social media and related topics. If you have ideas on things we might include, please submit them via our contact form or here in my blog comments.

Welcome to Social Media excerpt: Setting Goals to Plan Your Social Media Strategy

As many of you know, I have a tendency to prattle on about goal setting in regards to Web development. The same as true for social media, and thus that was the theme of my chapter. Here is an excerpt:

If you don't control your online presence, someone else will.

When embarking on any new project or adventure, it helps to set some goals. What do you want to get out of the project? When it comes to social media I think we all share a primary goal, that of controlling our online presence.

Many people are hesitant to jump into the world of social media. Some are shy while others simply don't know what they'll do once they join the fray.

The advice I give to each is to consider what may happen if they don't get involved. In a day when employers Google job applicants and the charming lass you met at that party last week is searching the Web to make sure you're not a psychopath, you want to be in control of what they'll find.

The fact that you aren't posting about yourself doesn't mean others aren't. Perhaps your name and your clever ideas about composting were posted in the meeting minutes of your neighborhood gardening club. Perhaps your last promotion was mentioned in the online version of your local paper. Then again what if the first thing that comes up in a Google search is your wedding announcement…from five years ago…to the fellow you divorced when you discovered he was pawning your jewelry to invest in a pyramid scheme? Is that what you want to the world to see? Probably not. Read the article in its entirety on the Welcome to Social Media site.

A Cleveland Social Media Club team effort

Kudos to Jim England, Jeff Hershberger, George Nemeth, Stephanie Jansky, Tony Ramos and the many other authors and Cleveland Social Media club members who worked together on this project. On behalf of them all, I hope you will find Welcome to Social Media to be a useful resource for your social media explorations.

Welcome to Social Media Links

• Welcome to Social Media
• Welcome to Social Media, Volume 1, eBook (HTML)
• Welcome to Social Media, Volume 1, eBook (.pdf)
• Cleveland Social Media Club

Coming soon

Flash and usability—the controversy continues, WordPress as a CMS, and more…

After years of building Web sites, I've managed to scatter my content over a number of different servers and domains. During that time I've built a number of sites to aggregate my content. Typically these pages worked well for me. They had links to my content so that I could keep track of my projects. But they didn't really serve the needs of the public.

Now that I'm leaving Case Western Reserve University Marketing and Communications, I've finally built a site that will serve that purpose. While http://www.heidicool.com won't link to everything I've done, I'm hoping it will give you an overall sense of my Web development and marketing philosophy. Naturally, the Web Development Blog serves as the cornerstone of the project. Here I will continue to share my rambling thoughts and observations on the ever-evolving World Wide Web.

Web Development Blog History

When I started the Web Development Blog back in 2005, I thought it would be a good way to share ideas and tips with the Web community at Case Western Reserve University. It was. But the more I wrote, the more I realized that I was speaking to a much broader audience, one that included not only Web developers from academia, but also bloggers, corporate sector content managers, a surprisingly large contingent of real estate agents, students and just about anyone interested in creating and marketing online content.

As readership grew, so too did the editorial slant of the site. Instead of just posting basic tutorials on cropping images or embedding YouTube videos with swfobject.js, I started writing articles about content, marketing, SEO and social media such as:

• An Introduction to Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
• Beware of your vocabulary
• MKTG 101: Social Media Marketing is still marketing: know your audience
• Social Media: Your Interactive Information Resource
• Your home page is NOT your index; it's your store front

Here on the new site, you can expect more in the same vein. Forthcoming topics will likely cover marketing and social media and maybe something a bit geekier related to code.

If you have any questions or would like to suggest a topic for a future entry please feel free to do so in the comments or via my contact page.

If you are currently subscribed to blog entries or comments on the old site, you can update your subscriptions with these feeds:

• Web Development Blog Entries RSS
• Web Development Blog Comments RSS

Thank you for reading!

Now that the New Year has been rung in, it seems that the meme of the moment is to blog about the year in review. So I thought I'd follow suit. I looked over my blog entries to see if I'd trended towards any new themes for 2008. While I have written more on social media this year (who hasn't?) I quickly noted that my topics overall continued to range across a wide array of Web related subjects. Next I looked at my stats to see which articles were getting the most traffic and comments.

As it happens the most read article of 2008 was also the most read article of 2007. While quick trendy subjects such as Plurk: Social Media Marketing in Action brought in new readers and temporary traffic spikes, the more timeless subjects such as writing, marketing and navigation were the ones that drew in the most readers overall. So, instead of presenting you with my top 10 articles of 2008, I've decided to break them up into 2 groups, the top 5 written in 2008 and the top 5 from year's past that continue to draw readers—even with the passage of time.

Top 5 Web Development Blog Entries written in 2008

5. Testing Web sites with multiple browser versions

Suggestions on ways to test sites in multiple browsers, reasons for testing and why we still can't ignore Internet Explorer 6.0.

4. Reflections on social media networking and marketing

Overview of popular uses for social media, nature of word-of-mouth and the impact of social media on marketing goals.

3. Wayfinding within your Web site

This follow-up to Your home page is NOT your index; it's your store front provides tips on navigational aids that will help users to explore your site no matter which page they may enter through.

2. An URL by any other name would still work like an URL, part 1: subdomains

Exploring the differences between subdomains and subdirectories and their impact (or lack thereof) upon marketing.

1. Embedding YouTube Videos the Standards Compliant Way—SFWobject 2.0

Embedding YouTube Videos is one of the easiest things you can do on the Web, but if you're a stickler for standards compliant HTML, you can't just copy and paste. SFWobject 2.0 provides an easy remedy.

Top 5 Web Development Blog Entries read in 2008

5. CSS Tip: Positioning photos with floats

Positioning photos with hspace or tables is awkward and dated, but the CSS float property makes it easy for anyone to include images in their Web sites and blogs so that they float cleanly to the right or left of the text.

4. An Introduction to Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Part 1

Search Engine Optimization may seem complicated, but by following these simple SEO basics you can make a significant impact.

3. I'm not going to teach you XHTML/HTML, but you should learn it anyway

This brief introduction to HTML provides links and resources for learning HTML as well as a homework assignment users can try as a way to get started.

2. So you want to build a website

This is the first in a series of articles that make up my Planning your Web site tutorial—in which I walk readers through a process of identifying goals, understanding their audience, choosing content, outlining a site and organizing pages and navigation.

1. Voice and Tone: Writing to reflect your personality as well as your message (Part 1)

Writing is more than the stringing of words into a sentence. This article addresses the importance of using a tone suitable to both the audience and the subject matter in order to better connect with readers and clearly convey your message.

Conclusions

The Web is constantly evolving and we're all trying to keep up with the latest trends and technologies. But no matter which platform we use to publish, which strategies we apply, it always seems to come back to the basics. The most basic element of the Web is content. While video and audio continue to build in popularity, the core of our content is still composed of words. That's probably why the Voice and Tone article was read more than any other.

You, my readers, understand the importance of fundamentals over the latest fad. I think that is why—for the most part—the most popular subjects on this blog are the ones that address these basic strategies, those that can be applied now and in the future. In 2009 I expect to be writing more on social media topics such as Facebook and Twitter, but I'll also be writing more about content and general marketing principles, the foundations we build upon in all of our Web-based endeavors.

What about you? If you're a blogger what will you focus on in 2009? If you're a regular (or new) reader, what would you like to see here?

Happy New Year!

P.S. Read more of my thoughts on social media and the Web on Ariwriter

Ari Herzog recently interviewed me for his blog, AriWriter: Strategies and tips on social media and online marketing. You can read the full article, Guest Interview with Heidi Cool: How a University Experiments with Social Media, online.

Sunday afternoon I skibbled off to Atlantic City to attend EduWeb 2008, a conference for Web development professionals in higher education.

The critical point of the conference—for me—came Tuesday afternoon at 5:00 when I presented Blogs: The Many Voices of a University. As some of you know, I'm more of a writer than a public speaker, so I faced the challenge with a wee bit of trepidation. Many kind people told me it went well though, so I will now share it with you. If you who were unable to attend, or if you wish to demonstrate the power of blogging to your university's administration, you may watch the video and view the slides here. I've also included the presentation abstract below.

Presentation Abstract: Blogs: The Many Voices of a University

Whether marketing to prospective students, engaging the community in campus life or reaching out to alumni, our mission requires us to distribute a wide range of information that will allow our various audiences to connect with our colleges and universities. Such information could include features of our academic programs, the impact of research, faculty scholarship, student achievements, campus activities, event announcements, etc. Through the use of campus blogs we can build on this informational foundation by letting the members of our community share their own thoughts and viewpoints with the world. By giving voice to these individuals we present an inside look into their experiences, activities and intellectual pursuits.

At Case Western Reserve University we have made blogs available to all members of the campus community including students, faculty, staff and alumni. Staff members use these blogs to share information, to teach and to provide customer service tools online. Faculty use them to share both their personal ideas and as classroom tools to engage students in online discussions. Students may blog about their overseas experiences, their athletic activities or classroom assignments while alumni may discuss their careers or political beliefs. This presentation will provide examples of the various ways individuals at Case, and other schools, are using blogs and how these individual voices come together to present a richer portrait of university life.

Blogging at Case

This presentation would not have been possible were it not for the Case Blog System provided by ITS, and the rich content created by our blogging alumni, faculty, staff and students. Thank you Lev, Jeremy and the many Case bloggers who gave me something to show off at the conference!

You can learn more about blogging at Case by visiting these resources:

• About the Case Blogs
• Blog @ Case Directory
• Blog @ Case Home Page
• Planet Case blog aggregator

Forthcoming: reflections on the conference.

While driving home tonight I began pondering this week's blog entry. As I considered various topics, my mind wandered back to the events of the day—events that included more than the usual number of e-mail and phone calls, many of which included some mention of the blog. Sitting in traffic I started thinking about how this blog has impacted the work I do here at Case Western Reserve. This in turn made me wonder how blogging impacts others.

To find out I'm starting this meme. Here are the rules:

If you blog professionally, or even semi-professionally (this would include students blogging on their field of study) and you think participating in this meme would work with your editorial agenda, please do the following:

1. Write a blog post describing how blogging has impacted your work. (If you have any data on how it has affected your audience and how it reflects on your organization feel free to include that as well.)
2. Post the link to your entry in the comments area below. (If the spam filter gives you a hard time, just paste it in as plain text or email it to me, and I'll make a list of these links at the bottom of this entry.)
3. Tag 3 or more bloggers you think should also participate.
4. Link back to this blog, so we can get more participation and keep track of who is posting entries.

And now to get things started, here's are my thoughts on the topic.

3 ways blogging has impacted my work

Blogging as customer service

When I started this blog, my intention was to use it as customer service tool that would provide how-to resources to the the various Web developers here at the university. As the content has accumulated this has worked out rather well. Regular readers know they can peruse the blog in search of answers to many frequently asked questions, and if something isn't here they can pose it to me as an entry for the future. This saves me time and makes it easy for clients to find the information they need.

It's a great place to post announcements and instructions for procedural changes, such as those we've recently experienced with the new server, and it's a place I can send callers when they need a tutorial on how to crop images, upload files, etc.

Most importantly though the blog can educate clients so that we can work together more effectively. Today, for example, I received a call from a woman who wants to update her department's site. The site is a bit old and she wants to be able to manage it herself so that she can add materials easily and focus the content on the needs of her own clients.

When she called me this afternoon she had already perused the blog. She'd read through a lot of the material and already had a good sense of how she wanted to take the site to the next level. In our short conversation we came up with some next steps for her to take and planned to meet in a few weeks after she has followed them. Although Web development is not her field, she'll be sufficiently versed in the subject so that when we meet we'll be able to work together to construct a productive plan.

The Case Blogging system provides tools and features unavailable in a static Web site.

I often hear from clients who want to include a feature in their site that would normally involve a database and some sort of complex programming that we don't provide on our server. As we examine the actual goal it is not uncommon to conclude, "I bet we could do that with a blog." Not only does the blog provide the tagging, archiving or whatever else they need, but it also makes it easier for their staff—usually unfamiliar with HTML—to enter their own content.

RSS lets the world know when new content is ready. While visitors can't easily tell when, or if, I've had added new material to our Web development site, those who subscribe to the blog know exactly when this happens. I can also use the RSS feeds to provide fresh content to other sites. For example, I pull in the headlines from the Web development blog on the Web Toolkit as well as on our Web Development page on Facebook.

Although this is the only work blog I write myself, I work with a number of sites that use the Case blogging system. At the end of 2005 I moved the Case News Center to the blog server. Where in the past we'd have to create a new page and update various index pages or menus, now we just add an entry. We still post them in HTML, but using the blog has been a great time-saver. It also offers convenience to readers. Whether they're members of the media, or alumni trying to stay in touch, they can subscribe via e-mail or RSS feed.

To teach—via blog or otherwise—is to learn

Case professor and blogger, Mano Singham, has said that the act of blogging helps him to formulate his thoughts and fine tune ideas that he may use in future projects. I find it also helps me to learn. In a field such as Web development I need to keep up-to-date on technology, social media, marketing, etc.—whether by attending conferences or teaching myself.

In this spirit I read any number of blogs and online resources, but I find I learn the most when I'm trying to explain something to you, my readers. Although I usually have a good sense of my topic when I'm writing, the desire to be thorough and accurate also requires me to do further research—to understand the topic in greater detail and to see if there have been new developments in the field.

Once these thoughts have assembled in my head, it is the act of translating them—into something that will make sense to you that—really brings it all together. If I can explain a topic clearly to others then I know that I've mastered it too.

Back in college, one of my professors used to say that the reason he could keep teaching the same subjects year after year was that he expected to learn as much from us as we would from him. I think blogging is similar. I learn from the process of writing as well as from the insightful ideas you all share in the comments. There is something very satisfying about the whole process.

Tag: you're it!

To get things started, I think the following bloggers could add some interesting insights to this topic. (It's more than 3, some of whom are super busy, but I thought I'd dream big.)

• Daniel Burka
• Andy DeSoto
• Lev Gonick
• Kyle James
• Eric Meyer
• Mano Singham
• Wayne Smallman
• Jeremy Smith

How has blogging impacted your work: meme participants

• Reading better, writing better, working better?, Andy DeSoto
• Reflecting on the Impact of Blogging on the Work of a CIO, Lev Gonick
• Technology Trends & Opinion — the Blah, Blah! Technology blog, Wayne Smallman
• The Six Month Post - Revisiting This Blog’s Purpose, Kyle James