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.

After writing my last post, I went offline for 2 weeks to skibble across the Atlantic, where I saw Gaudi's wild architecture in Barcelona, the aftermath of floods in Madeira, and the enormous Hassan II Mosque in Casablanca—among other things.

When I came back I returned to thousands of e-mails. My inbox was so cluttered that I'm still wondering what messages I may have missed.

Thoughts of clutter sometimes lead to thoughts of cleaning—or so I'm told. When such thoughts coincide with the chirping of birds and the sprouting of flowers, that means spring cleaning.

Spring cleaning is traditionally a time to take stock of our surroundings, get rid of the detritus and freshen up what's been getting stale over the long winter. Admittedly, this is not my area of expertise when it comes to house cleaning, but it is a task we should apply to our Web sites, particularly if you've not been caring for and feeding your site throughout the year.

Where to start: How effectively did your site achieve its goals?

Runners in the Barcelona Marathon. Did they achieve their goals? Only their times will tell.

Back when you first planned your site you (hopefully) had a purpose in mind. Today is a good day to look at your results. If your goal was to sell more widgets, how did you do? Did the site bring in traffic that converted to leads or sales? If your goal was to recruit students to your graduate program, how did that work? Did the site impact their decision?

Through a combination of Web analytics, leads from contact forms, applications, sales, etc. you should be able to measure your success and gauge how well your site contributed to that success. If you see room for improvement, you'll want to take a close look at what worked and what didn't and focus on enhancing the areas where you can make the most impact. Some of you may need to rewrite copy and offer more calls to action. Others may need to enhance SEO or improve site navigation. Different problems will require different solutions. For ideas that may help, try perusing my:

• Planning Your Web Site Tutorial
• Marketing Articles
• Writing Articles
• SEO Tips

Do your old goals still apply?

When I started this blog the goal was primarily educational. While that goal remains, my site now is also meant to attract potential clients. Whether your site is for a business, university, non-profit or your own personal use, your situation may have changed in the past year. Think about whether your own goals have changed and what you might add or change on the site so that it can continue to support both your needs and those of your site visitors.

Changes in technology

Trixi's are electrically assisted pedal cycles you can ride in Malaga, Spain. On your Web site, you don't always need to use the latest technology, you just need to use that which works best for your site visitors.

Generally speaking (very generally) the Web works pretty much the way it always has. If you view a site built in 1993 in a modern browser it will probably still work to one degree or another. But the technology has also evolved. Newer browsers are beginning to support HTML 5.0 and CSS 3. Designers are experimenting with those standards, while also trying to ensure that the sites they build degrade nicely when viewed in Internet Explorer 6.0.

Where does your site stand in terms of current technology? Does it support the browsers used by your visitors? Does your site use deprecated code? Are you still using tables for layout? Was it optimized for IE 6 in a way that it will break if viewed in IE 7 or Firefox? Are you supporting mobile devices? Should you? Have you incorporated social media features? Are you embedding audio and video in the most effective manner? We have far more options today than we did when the Web began, but that also means we have more potential for conflict. A flash-based site won't run on your new iPad and your CSS3 rounded corners won't be visible in IE6.

Your site has its own unique requirements and probably doesn't need all of the latest bells and whistles. If you don't need to support mobile just yet, or aren't designing for the iPad, then don't worry about that. The important thing is just to make sure that you are using the features and coding that work best for your target audience.

General maintenance

When you first launched your site, you and everyone else involved probably read each page countless times. But typos's and other minor errors may still lurk. Now that some time has passed proofread the site again with fresh eyes. You'll be surprised at what you might find. This is a good opportunity to catch spelling errors, or tweak some copy so it flows more smoothly. While you're reading through the pages, check your links. to make sure they still work. If a page has moved or a site has been deleted you will want to replace it with a working link. You may also decide to add links to newer or more comprehensive resources in addition to those old links.

As you explore your site, put yourself in the shoes of your target audience. Does your content still make sense? Are things missing that you didn't notice before? Looking at the site again after a long time can give you a fresh perspective and suggest ideas that you may not have thought of last time around.

Out with the old, in with the new? Not necessarily.

Market: Agadir, Morocco. This donkey may seem old-fashioned, but there is no reason to replace him with something new. As long he remains fuel efficient and can haul produce, he's still serving the needs of his owner—just as your historical content serves the needs of your site visitors.

Some people worry that having old pages on a site makes it look like they've not bothered to update it. But the age of a page doesn't matter as much as the information it contains. If your products page still lists that 20lb hand vacuum you stopped manufacturing 5 years ago, then yes, it's probably time to remove it. You don't want people trying to buy things you aren't selling. But you could also move this information to an historic products section where you include appropriate support materials, such as a .pdf of the user manual. This could be helpful to current customers.

I'm a bit of a pack rat, so I hate to get rid of anything that might be useful, but as you review your site, you too will notice that some older information still has value and is worth keeping. Here are some examples:

Factual information that doesn't change.

If your office has been in the same location for 20 years, then the page listing your address and phone number is probably still accurate. For pages like this, just give them a cursory review to see if all the information is correct and if anything is missing that might help your readers. For example, if you don't have a map, this may be a good time to add one. If you have out-of-date photos of the office, then perhaps a few fresh ones are in order. But otherwise that page may remain accurate for several years to come.

Press releases, news and articles

Press release are timely in nature, but they also provide an historical record of the news your organization has produced. These pages may contain valuable information that tells readers about your track record for innovation, the progress you've made, the endurance of your group, etc. Some organizations like to remove older news stories because they think that visitors will accidentally come across an article from 1985 and think it's current.

But there is an easy solution for that, especially if you maintain such documents using blogging software or other content management tools. Just make sure any news content contains the date it was published. Then you can keep this content in online archives that make it easy for visitors to browse while still showcasing what is new and what is not. In many cases this information is helpful not only for outside readers but also for your employees. If they're trying to find out more about how you launched product X in 1998, or who was the head of IT in 2001, this gives them a good start.

Recurring Events

If you hold an annual conference or other recurring event, consider maintaining archives of the event site for each year. While this year's site may showcase the location and speakers for the current year, the archives can tell the story of past years. Discovering who spoke before, watching videos or slides from past events, and other details can help readers decide whether or not to attend. Such archives also demonstrate that the event has a history of success, and as with news items, these archives offer information that may be useful to newer employees.

Evergreen Content

Evergreen content refers to information that is more timeless and less likely to go out-of-date. For example, my article, Voice and Tone: Writing to reflect your personality as well as your message (Part 1), still brings in search traffic 3 years after it was written, because the ideas within still apply today.

Reflections on social media networking and marketing, on the other hand, was written more recently but references social media services that no longer exist, such as Pownce. While some of the content in the article is still relevant, other parts are outdated.

Including evergreen content on your site is a good way to bring in traffic, because people will continue to search for such information for years to come. When they find your site, and discover it also offers other useful resources, they may also stick around to explore it further.

Don't break the Web when/if you delete pages

Closed roads during the Barcelona Marathon prevented our taxi from reaching our hotel. Thankfully the subway provided us with an alternative way to reach our destination. Similarly 301 redirects can help guide your visitors to theirs.

The Web, by nature, is interconnected by links. When we delete pages, we also break any links that go to those pages, thus causing confusion to visitors who follow the links and headaches for those who link to us. If a page is out-of-date and you want to delete it, see first if there is a way to make it more current.

If not, then you may want to set up a 301 redirect that will automatically take users (and robots who index the Web) to a more appropriate page. Another option is to add a disclaimer explaining that the page is an archival page with out-of-date information. This can include manual links to other pages you recommend users visit instead. Users who are guided to more appropriate materials, rather than to a 404 error page, are more likely to find what they need and continue to explore the site.

I have a blog, so my site is already up-to-date.

If you have a blog on your site, and you write with some degree of regularity, then you have a huge advantage over those who maintain more static Web sites. You've been adding fresh content all year, so it probably does include current information. But what about the other pages?

Are your entries and archives easy to browse? Perhaps what worked last year is less manageable now that you have so many more posts. What about your About page? Does it reflect your current editorial policy? Are there other pages you could add that would enhance your user experience? While frequent blogging keeps you involved with your site, a spring review let's you view the site anew and may give you ideas to make your blog even better.

The colors on our site are so 2005, we need a full redesign.

Don't panic. A site review may make small problems look bigger than they seem. The key here is to maintain perspective and look for issues that truly impact your goals and the user experience. While out-of-date product descriptions can be a problem, out-of-date colors may not be. If people aren't applying to your program, don't blame the visuals. They may need some sprucing up, when time allows, but your content and calls to action are probably the areas that need the most help. Craigslist, for example, isn't winning many design awards, but it continues to be a popular and productive site. As the site owner, you may be bored with the look and feel of your site, but that doesn't mean the same is true for users.

While you may be tempted to start over with a full site redesign, in most cases you don't need one. If your site is supporting its goals, and visitors seem happy, then just focus on small corrections, updates and improvements. If the flaws seem to be adding up to a nightmare, then you may want to do a more thorough analysis, but there's no reason to look for a catastrophe unless it really exists.

Regular care and feeding of your Web site

Web sites are like pets. You can't just stick them in a cage and ignore them. (No stuffed animals were harmed while shooting this photo.)

Ideally we'd all maintain and care for our sites on a daily, weekly or monthly basis. How often we should do this depends on the nature of our goals, our content and the scope of our sites. Alas for many of us time slips away, or we don't have sufficient staff to keep up. Others spend the little time they have just updating the necessary bits and may not have the opportunity to really review the site in terms of its overall performance.

A spring cleaning review gives us the chance to really look at how our site is doing as a whole, and to approach it from a fresh perspective. After we've gone through the process we can also get a sense of whether our normal maintenance and review schedule is on track or whether we have to make time to care for our site more frequently.

How is your site performing?

Are you able to maintain it as often as you like? Do you have tips to share with others? Do you measure your results on a regular basis? What did you learn from your last site review? Please share your ideas and questions in the comments below.

Resources for the care, feeding and maintenance of your Web site

• 5 Lists Every Web site Owner Should Keep
• Evaluating Web Sites: Criteria and Tools (This is actually a guide for student researchers, but could add perspective to our own site reviews)
• Fresh vs. Familiar: How Aggressively to Redesign (Spring cleaning doesn't usually require a full redesign.)
• Internal Site Search Analysis: Simple, Effective, Life Altering! (added insights into your users' experience on your site)
• Web site Maintenance Musts

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.)

P.S. All the photos in this entry were shot on my recent holiday. I've not posted many yet, but there are a few more in my Spain, Morocco, Portugal collection on Flickr.

View Listen Now, Talk Later on Slideshare.

Back in high school we took a senior class poll in which we voted on who was "most likely to succeed," "most likely to end up in jail" and so forth. Your school probably did the same thing. The answers were then printed in the yearbook. In our yearbook, Julia Talsma and I were listed as the responses for "talks least, says most." I don't recall who won "talks most, says least," but was glad it wasn't me.

The same idea applies to social media. "Talks most, says least" is not going to make you popular* on Twitter, Facebook or most other social spaces.

*Popularity isn't our goal, but we do want to forge connections with our audience. They are more likely to listen to us if we also listen to them.

Alas, many individuals and businesses see social media as an extra publishing channel. Our species seems drawn to fast easy solutions, and publishing an RSS feed out to Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, etc. seems easy. It is. But it's not always productive. The true value is found in two-way communication. If we start our social media efforts with listening activities, we can learn how our audience perceives us (if they do) and what they want to hear. Then, when we're ready to speak, we'll know what to say.

What we listen for varies by our goals. In a recent client training session I focused on how we could use listening for that client's specific niche. But there are some general principles that can be adapted to a wide variety of use scenarios. On January 25th I gave a presentation, Listen Now…Talk Later: Listening as the foundation of your social media strategy, to our "Local Entrepreneur & Social Media Network Meetup Group" (run by another client) in which I discussed listening in this broader context. After reading this you may find it helpful to peruse those slides as they include screenshots and other examples of what I'll discuss here.

Listening for brand, product and service monitoring.

For marketers and public relations professionals, monitoring is nothing new. They've used clipping services to monitor brand and product mentions in mainstream media, conducted focus groups and surveys among customers and target audiences, and otherwise monitored feedback and opinion for years.

Monitoring our brands and products is important for a variety of reasons. Whether you're the CEO of a Fortune 500 company or an individual freelancer, monitoring can give you insights into:

• Brand/Product/Service awareness (name recognition)
• Brand/Product/Service perception (what do people think of who you are and what you offer)
• Customer Satisfaction (how happy are current customers)
• Your Competition
• Your Industry
• Opportunities for product/service/customer service improvements
• Opportunities for sales and lead generation
• Market needs (gaps in the industry which you may be able to fill by providing a new product or service)
• Liabilities (product faults, bad press, potential communications crises...), etc.

Now that we're in an era when customers blog and share opinions via Twitter—and media outlets publish their content online—monitoring is easier than every before. Rather than paying for expensive clipping services, we can search online ourselves. If the budget allows, we can also use commercial monitoring tools that can give us far more data than we've had in the past.

In this video a somewhat unscrupulous boss finds a new opportunity to take advantage of buyers after social media listening uncovers a customer service problem related to cow making equipment.

When you listen to what mainstream media and the public have to say about you, your competition and your industry, you can then apply that knowledge to everything from your marketing strategies to product development. For example, If you manufacture machines that make plastic cows, and your listening habits tell you of a growing need for plastic pigs, you can retool your equipment to produce pig making machines and get a jump on your competition.

Or, if a user has found fault with your plastic cow making equipment, you can fix the problem for that customer and put your engineers to work to make sure that it doesn't happen again. If the customer has complained publicly, you can also publicly share how you solved the problem to your customer's satisfaction—thus resolving the issue before the customer feels compelled to share his complaint so loudly that it becomes the most watched video on YouTube.

Listening is only half the battle. You still have to make plans for what you'll do with what you learn. But if you listen, then you can plan…instead of having to react in an emergency when it may be too late.

Listening for content curation.

Just as we listen to what customers think about our products, we can also listen to learn more about their interests. If we can find out what intrigues them, then we can create content strategies designed to serve their needs as well as our own goals. Listening also helps us select the content we share on our blogs and through our social media channels. Many companies just blog about themselves. Their Facebook status updates all relate to product news, usage tips and announcements. If you're Apple this type of content could be interesting enough to draw in readers. But if you manufacture plastic cow-making equipment it probably isn't.

By listening to your target audience (plastic cow and other novelty toy manufacturers) you can find out what else they want to hear. Perhaps they've shown an interest in toy trends or the development of new polymers that can produce more resilient cows. If you keep listening you can find blog articles, news stories and Web sites that appeal to their interests and share them through your social media channels.

When you become the go-to source for the information they seek, you give them a far better reason to follow you than if you only shared information about you.

Listening to converse

Imagine this conversation on Twitter. Here a dog food manufacturer quickly offends his new follower by talking at him, instead of to him. (No dogs were injured in the making of this video.)

The easiest people to listen to are the ones with whom we already have a connection. These include the people who comment on our blogs, the people we follow on Twitter, the friends we make on Facebook, Ning, etc. If we want to make friends, share information with peers, convert followers to customers, and so forth, we can begin to forge these connections by listening to them.

On Twitter this means reading your stream one or more times per day and responding to Tweets that are relevant to your industry or interest. If you have a Facebook Fan page this means visiting your page daily to respond to comments and posts made by fans. How often you do this depends on your own situation.

To those familiar with social media this seems obvious, but for those more accustomed to traditional publishing channels, this is a new idea.

When I was working at Case Western Reserve University I created the Case News Twitter account to share our latest news and press releases. These were (and still are) automatically posted to Twitter via Twitterfeed. I then started following Tweeps who might be interested in the university and followed back those who followed the account (with the exception of spammers).

Once a day (usually during lunch) I would skim through the stream to see what people had to say. If it was something related to Case or academia I would respond. In doing so I could answer questions, wish students good luck on exams, thank alumni for donating, etc. I also added event and other postings of interest that weren't included in the automated news feed. Doing this helped me connect with followers and gave me a better sense of what they wanted to hear from Case. It also showed readers that someone was listening and would respond if they wrote to us.

Many organizations just post without listening. This works fine for services like Twitter accounts that post weather updates. But for organizations that want to use social media to build business, posting without listening and responding can send a message that you don't really care what customers think. It can also lead to a rather boring Twitter stream that customers don't find interesting enough to read. This isn't unique to Twitter. The same principles apply to Facebook, Ning, YouTube, MySpace and others.

If you follow a large number of people you won't be able to read everything. But if you check in once or more per day, read all replies and skim the rest of the updates you'll easily find opportunities to converse.

How to listen: news, social media and related searches

Tools and services such as Radian 6 and Social Mention are designed to help with monitoring, but you can also learn a lot through targeted searches. By searching on brand and product names, keywords related to your industry, competitor names and related topics you can find news stories, blog posts, social media comments, discussion boards and other online resources related to what you are monitoring. Here are a few (of many) possible sites to use for social media and related searches.

• Addict-o-matic (social media monitoring)
• Board Tracker (discussion board search)
• Delicious (social bookmarks)
• Digg (crowdsourcing)
• Google News
• Google Blog Search
• How Sociable? (brand visibility scores - more useful for comparison w/competition)
• Reddit (crowdsourcing)
• Same Point (social media search)
• Social Mention (social media monitoring)
• StumbleUpon (crowdsourcing)
• Twitter Search
• Whos Talking (social media search)
• Yahoo Advanced News Search

You'll notice that some of these are typical search sites while others may include bookmarking and other services. Which of these is best for you will depend on your goals and your industry. Generally you'll find that you can choose a select combination of tools that suits your particular situation. Subscribing to blogs in your industry is also a useful way to find out what topics are hot in your field and discover articles you may wish to share with your followers.

The link to this Simpsons Coke commercial was the most popular message found when searching Twitter for "coke" today. (The Superbowl was yesterday, so it makes sense that a Coke ad would dominate the search results.)

When searching it is worth noting that it is easy to get false positives. If you are "Coca Cola" then most of your results for that phrase will be appropriate—but a search on "Coke" may also bring up posts that have nothing to do with refreshing fizzy beverages. Key word terms and phrases can be equally vague. A search on recruiting may bring results ranging from employment and military recruiting to student recruitment and recruiting for cults. But if you specify something like "executive recruiting" you can get more focused results. You may need to experiment a bit to find keyword combinations that provide the results you seek. For Twitter searches you can also compare your results for plain keywords and commonly used hashtags. #recruiting, for example, is popularly used as a hashtag for recruiting related to employment.

Subscribing and sharing via RSS Readers

Many of the search tools listed above will provide you with an RSS feed for your search. Feeds allow you to subscribe to your search so you don't have to conduct fresh searches each time you want to listen.

For those unfamiliar with RSS, such feeds function like magazine subscriptions. If you subscribed to the print edition of National Geographic, then a new issue would show up in your mail box each month. When you subscribe to an RSS feed, new articles show up in your feed reading software as they become available.

Google Reader is one of the most popular feed readers. Once you sign up for a Google Reader account you can subscribe to blog posts and search feeds and organize them by topics for easy viewing. To read the articles you just check Google Reader on a regular basis as you would check your e-mail account.

Slides 22-30 in the Listen Now, Talk Later presentation include a video and screen shots that demonstrate how one uses Google Reader. Google Reader is but one of many readers available, but most work in a similar manner. NetVibes is another popular choice. Some users also use e-mail programs such as Outlook to subscribe to feeds.

To listen is to learn

Listening takes time, but with the right tools we can find manageable ways to listen. What we learn will then guide us to better serve our audience. Now it's my turn to listen to you. I've only covered the broad strokes of this topic here. If you have more tips and ideas for social media listening, please share them in the comments below.

Social Media Listening Resources

When I pick the related links to share in my blog entries, I try to choose articles that will expand on what I've written, or offer a different perspective or insight, so that you can delve deeper into the topic. While some are found through Google I also find them using the listening strategies I've discussed in this post. The following were found via blogs I subscribe to, Twitter searches, Delicious and Google searches.

• 5 Simple Twitter Listening Tips Every Marketer Should Know by ReadWriteWeb's Elyssa Pallai
• Framing Your Social Media Efforts by Chris Brogan
• Free Social Media Monitoring Tools
• Listening Literacy For Nonprofits by Beth Kanter
• The Five W's of Social Media Listening by Chuck Hemann
• The Importance of Social Media Audits by Jeremiah Owyang

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.)

Note to local northeast Ohio readers: The Lake Erie Moose Society is holding its monthly meeting tonight, February 8, 2009. If you blog, or are thinking about blogging please feel free to join us.

I shot this video riding the Health Line up Euclid Avenue. The quality is a bit dodgy and it isn't necessary to tell my story, except as an example of unnecessary use of video. Audio by Jacinda Espinosa / CC BY-NC 3.0. While I didn't discuss audio in this post, if you do a Google search, you'll find plenty of sources for royalty-free or Creative Commons licensed audio.

While it is true that long sections of text can seem more daunting on a Web page than in a book, that doesn't mean visitors don't read. Nor does it mean we have to throw out our words and replace them with video and pictures.

Instead we can pay attention to our line-lengths, break text into small chunks, use bulleted lists and add images or other media selectively, to enhance—not replace—our main message. Carefully chosen media can help us communicate, while poorly chosen imagery and video only serve to distract. Finding appropriate media can sometimes be a challenge, so today I'm going to discuss some options for finding/creating media that is suitable for your pages.

Audio-visual media isn't a substitute for meaningful content.

Internet users aren't shallow illiterates who will buy your widgets just because your video went viral. That may draw them to your site, but they'll need more to stay there, interact and apply to your law school or download your social media e-book.

Internet users come to your site with the hope that it will help them meet some goal or expectation. They're searching for information that will help them bake a cake, come up with a name for their new puppy, decide which graduate program to apply to, learn how to repair their washing machine, etc.

If we want our content to serve their needs then we need to consider what media will best communicate our message.

I have many dog pictures, but my friend, Ann's dogs, Scout and Kaya, passed away this fall, so I thought it would be appropriate to honor them here in the cute canine example.

• We can share a cake recipe with plain text. But photos and video can help us demonstrate the techniques used in the process and give sighted readers an example of how the cake should look when compete.
• A list of cool dog names with some background on their history will serve our readers needs. But our new dog owners will probably dig pictures of cute canines so it wouldn't hurt to sprinkle a few throughout our pages.
• Information about courses, faculty, current research and campus facilities will help prospects determine if our astronomy program is right for them. If we also add photos of the cosmos—taken from our observatory—and videos of our faculty and students, they can get a better feel for the department and begin to imagine what it would be like to be here.
• Washing machines aren't as complicated as nuclear submarines, but they are three dimensional mechanical devices. It may be hard to walk someone through a repair through text alone. But still photos with captions explaining each step, or video demonstrating the repair may make the directions more clear.

Found Media: stock and royalty free imagery

If you've just populated your database of dog names but only have photos of your pug, then you may be wondering where to get the rest of the puppy pictures you need to illustrate your site. If you've got a big budget then you can hire a photographer or license photos from a stock photography site.

If your budget is smaller, many stock sites also have low-cost or even free images available. You can also do Google and Flickr searches for images that can be licensed under creative commons. If you find a photo that doesn't offer such licensing, contact the photographer and ask if you can use the image. The Internet is a great resource for pictures, just make sure to follow copyright laws and never copy and use an image without the proper permission. Government sites by NASA and the U.S. Library of Congress are also a great source of royalty-free photographs. Both provide very clear terms of service.

Plan ahead. Start building up your own photography archive today.

Turning Point, by Philip Johnson on the campus of Case Western Reserve University

If you're a blogger or site owner who can take a decent picture, carry a camera and use it often. When I worked at Case Western Reserve I took photos at various special events, and I would grab the camera when I walked across campus, just to shoot random images—such as this photo of Turning Point—as I happened upon them.

As time went by I developed a rather large collection of campus shots that I could share with our designers, campus Web maintainers and others looking for pictures to use in their projects. To make these easier to find, I archived them on my Flickr account. This way when a request came in, I could just share a link and the requester could download the appropriate picture.

This also made life easier for me as I had thousands of photos to choose from when I needed images for a new Web page. For a campus etiquette dinner event page, I used a picture of a meal I'd eaten. For the transportation page I used a picture of a campus shuttle bus. For the Year of Darwin I used pictures from my vacation in the Galapagos. There were of course rare cases that required stock photography, but in most cases the photos I needed were ones I had already taken.

Building up such an archive may seem daunting, but if you start now—by taking pictures of anything that might relate to your organization or site—you will begin to build up a nice little collection. My friend Josh is currently planning a food related blog. He's now taking pictures of food, from cooking process to plate, whenever we eat together. By the time he launches the site this winter he'll have a variety of images ready for use.

Rottweilers dig video. I found this on YouTube, but my late Rottie, Shiloh used to watch T. V. and bark at the bad guys when they came on screen. I was never quite sure how he did that, he'd often bark before the plot had indicated they were bad. Perhaps it was in the actors' body language.

Embedded Video

If you are reading this then you already know that you can embed videos—from popular services like YouTube and Vimeo— on your own site. Continuing on the dog theme, I found countless files to choose from when searching for cute puppies and canines. I chose this Rottie because I rather liked that he was watching video too.

These services are great places to find videos that support your message. But again, it behooves us to be aware of copyrights. While users submit many videos that we can freely use on our own sites, some upload videos from movies and television that may be unauthorized. To be on the safe side, check the source and read the terms of service before embedding. Also note that if you are just copying and pasting the embed code from the video site, it may not validate correctly. If you want to ensure your HTML is standards compliant, try embedding your videos with .swfobject 2.0.

Build a video archive

If you have a video camera, you can also begin to build a video archive on these services just as you would build a photo archive on Flickr. Uploading videos to your own YouTube or Vimeo channel is also a good marketing idea as your channels can provide additional pathways to your site. This works most effectively if you take better videos than I do. My YouTube channel doesn't have many videos and they are mostly rather feeble things like driving through Cleveland in the snow.

If you're a serious videographer you'll want a professional quality camcorder, but for more casual shooters, there are many inexpensive options available. The Flip Camcorder is very popular among bloggers or you can use the built in video features now available in many phones and digital cameras. I shot the bus video on this page with the Canon SD1000 that I keep in my backpack when I'm not carrying my Canon EOS 40D. The video was an experiment I made in which I held the lens against the window to try to keep it steady. Alas it turned out to be somewhat more boring than I'd hoped, but I'm more of a still photographer. I expect you can do better.

When real world imagery won't do: cartoons and animation

I made this cartoon to illustrate my What I've
Been Reading in the Blogosphere page.

Sometimes we just can't find an image or video that quite serves our needs. If you want to illustrate how much trouble you have keeping up with all the blogs you follow, what do you show? Neither a screen capture of Google Reader nor a photo of a person staring at a computer quite makes the point. But a cartoon showing your thoughts just might. If you can draw, you can create your cartoon from scratch on paper or using a program such as Illustrator or Photoshop.

If you can't draw, you still have options. I started using Bitstrips last year to illustrate a presentation I was making. Since then I've made several cartoons—to use here on the blog—when I needed something more specific than a photo. If I had more time I could draw these by hand, but Bitstrips makes it easy to build cartoons quickly and to maintain consistent character styles throughout. Bitstrips is but one of many cartoon creation sites online, I've listed more below.

From text to animation via Xtranormal. If you're active in social media you might also be amused by the one I made called "Robots in Meatspace".

Similarly if you wanted to show a conversation between, let's say, a Web developer and a client who wants bells and whistles, you might not find it on YouTube. You could hire actors and shoot a video, but that might be expensive.

If you can draw and know how to use Flash you can make a nice animation, but it will take even more time than drawing your own comic strip. (I think it took me about 40 hours to create this interactive dungeon animation awhile back.)

Flash may give you more control, but new tools like XtraNormal let you write a script, and create an animation— from your text and stock characters—in a fraction of the time. It took me less than an hour to write and create this video about the Behemoth Corporation's Web project.

There are many ways to illustrate your point

If your Web site is an online catalog for your diamond jewelry collection, you're not going to grab the point and shoot camera to take the pictures. You'll hire a photographer. If you're promoting a luxury cruise line, you'll hire an agency to produce a professional video.

But whether you're a large university, small business or independent blogger, there are many times when having an image archive, or the ability to create something on the fly, will best suit your needs. There are many tools available, all it takes is a bit of creativity. Also remember, when using non-text media to augment your message, be sure to include alternative content for those with visual, hearing or related impairments. Additional media only adds value if everyone gets the message.

How are you illustrating your sites? Are there other tools you've found that help you develop images and other media to better convey your message? If so, please share them in the comments below.

Online do-it-yourself media tools

• Bitstrips
• Pixton
• Strip Creator
• ToonDoo
• XtraNormal

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Content is the core of on-site search engine optimization.

• You must provide useful information that people will seek.
• This information should incorporate words and phrases that people will actually use when searching for what you offer.
• Such words or phrases must be specific enough to distinguish your content from others.
• But…these words should also be generally used and understood by your target audience.

Word choice and SEO: striking the right balance

The above guidelines seem rather obvious, but it's often hard to find that sweet spot between a phrase like auto racing—which is so broad it will generate 32,300,000 search results—and a phrase such as "subaqueous auto racing" which generated 0 results at the time I wrote this. (Note: because I've used this phrase repeatedly, this page will probably soon become the 1 result for the term...unless some of you go out and create competing content.)

Here on the Web Development Blog, as you know, I write about topics related to Web development. In an ideal world I'd rank well for the phrase Web development but it's too common. It can also mean different things to different people. I'm a long-time blogger, but I only make a few posts per month so I can't compete with Wikipedia and other major players on such a frequently used term. But if I get more specific, I can do well. Today this blog came in 4th out of 231,000,000 results for web development blog. My old blog (which links to this one) comes in 7th, so for now at least I'm getting two good results for that phrase.

Write first for readers, then for SEO

While robots crawl the Web, they do so to help people.

I didn't get these search results by analyzing my site and stuffing the phrase "Web development blog" every place I could find. I just used the term in the most obvious places: in the section title, the primary menu, and anywhere it naturally fit in the text. If you write for humans (rather than robots) you'll naturally include many of the relevant words and phrases in your text, but you may still need to do a bit of fine-tuning to match your vocabulary to your readers.

When we're writing for the Web, we're usually writing about subjects with which we are very familiar. We may use specialized vocabulary that makes sense to us, but isn't used by our readers. This could include technical terms pertinent to the field, regional terms specific to where we live or even phrases specific to our organization.

In order to make sure that our copy is both easily understood and easily found via search, we need to take a step back and read/edit the content with our readers in mind.

Choosing reader-friendly phrases for SEO—an example from higher education

Colleges, universities and other non-profit organizations all depend on fund-raising to serve their missions. Some organizations call their fundraising departments "Advancement." Others use "Development" or "Philanthropy." Alas those outside the non-profit world, including many potential donors, don't see those terms in the same way as insiders. Someone involved in manufacturing may think of "Development" in terms of product development. A recent graduate may consider "Philanthropy" to be the realm of the rich—and not realize it also includes his/her $25 donation to the annual fund.

Schools that use simpler phrases such as "make a gift for XYZ" or "give to XYZ" make it easier for donors to find their giving pages. For example, if I Google give to Dartmouth, the first result takes me to their Why Give page which also includes a direct link to their online giving page.

Why worry about SEO when we link to Giving (or whatever) from the home page?

If I know that I want to find something on a particular site, I'll just type the address in the url, then use the navigation or on-site search to find what I seek. I'm not everyone. I know many people who will use the Google search bar even when they know a site's address. Dartmouth alumni and friends may very well Google "Give to Dartmouth" rather than going to http://www.dartmouth.edu to look for the Giving link. Thus it's helpful that Dartmouth ranks #1 on that phrase. Organizations that have large sites—common in academia, Dartmouth has more than 300,000 publicly indexed pages—rely heavily on on-site search because they offer so much information.

Taking advantage of long tail search terms

Horses have long tails, so can you.

While a phrase like give to Dartmouth is both specific and direct, we can also get good results from phrases that are more unique. Awhile back, in SEO - keywords do the darndest things I asked if you were getting traffic from unusual words or phrases you didn't expect. My friend Wayne mentioned, via Twitter, that he gets traffic on phrases we might not want to repeat. David commented that he is getting good results for "Long haired guinea pigs."

I just looked at my analytics again and am now getting results on click here, have you tried jargon and rt hacool. These actually appear in my top 10 which surprised me, but these are still logical. I've written posts advising against using click here and against business jargon, and hacool is my Twitter ID. (rt stands for reTweet which means to forward someone's message on Twitter.)

While these and more general phrases such as "Web development blog" or "blog website tutorial" appear among the top 10 phrases bringing traffic to my site, niche-specific phrases make a significant impact. The phrase quantify and visualize twitter search results produced 5 visits from people who spent an average of 16:50 minutes on the site and visited an average of 7.6 pages.

Admittedly, 5 visits isn't many. But when you also get 2 for how to start redesigning your web site, 3 for cool html blog, etc. they start to add up. People visit this site via almost 2,000 keyword combinations (many of which may be variations on a theme). The top phrases may bring hundreds of visits each, but when added together it's the little niche terms that bring in the majority of traffic. The collective success of these individually smaller elements is what is meant by the long tail.

Woohoo! My site has the #1 spot for "subaqueous auto racing"

While niche phrases produce traffic, they still need to be relevant to our content. When Google indexes this page, it may get the #1 spot for "subaqueous auto racing." But placing high in search results is only half the battle. Such results only matter if people are searching on that term AND if I provide useful information on the topic. You and I both know that this article is about word choice and SEO. So if anyone searches that phrase hoping to learn about underwater car racing, they will be sorely disappointed and leave the site. Some marketers like to brag about making the first page of search results, but if the phrase doesn't bring visitors it isn't helping.

When editing copy for SEO it's easy to get wound up worrying about what phrases you should rank for, but if you write for your readers and apply common sense, you'll start to see meaningful results.

SEO Keywords and Phrases Resources

• Fast keyword Research With Google's Wonder Wheel
• Google Adwords Keyword Tool
• Google Webmaster Tools: SEO
• How to Find and Target Long Tail Keywords for More Search Engine Traffic
• Researching Longtail Keywords with Google Adwords
• SEO Advice for Bloggers, Straight from the Horse’s Mouth

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Postscript: Google works fast!

As of 3:50 p.m. e.d.t today, September 10, 2009, this page did come in at #1 for subaqueous auto racing. Here's the screencapture of the Google results page. I have a Greasemonkey script installed on Firefox that also includes Twitter results. As a result of looking this up I'm now also finding reTweets and links I didn't yet know about.

Writing comes in many forms and styles. When eating, we find it easier to use the right utensil for the food in front of us. In the case of ice cream, most of us would prefer a spoon to a fork. When it comes to the Web, we're given a variety of opinions as to what is the correct form or style.

Web copywriting myths aren't consistent:

• Web readers have short attention spans. Give them short paragraphs with bullet points, so they don't have to read.
• Long form marketing copy sells. Write long descriptive pages emphasizing features and benefits, continuously repeating your call to action while hinting at the wonders that await.

There's a kernel of truth in each of these philosophies. But in the end, a copywriter's job is to communicate, in as many—or as few—words as it takes to convey the message to our readers. In my mind there isn't a style specific to the Web. It's not a matter of choosing the fish fork for a brochure and the snail tongs for Web copy. Instead it's a matter of tailoring your copy to your particular communications goal and your intended reading audience.

While I've written several articles about writing on this blog, this one is meant to be more of a general overview of my writing philosophy. At the end I've also included links to more detailed entries on this subject.

Sales Copy

Whether we're trying to sell handmade jewelry, promote an event, entice students to apply to our degree program or generate sales leads, we're asking our readers to make a decision. My goal in writing sales copy is to help them make that decision (to buy) more easily. A simple—jargon free—product description, coupled with a list of features and benefits lays the foundation.

The description tells them that our offering may be the right solution for their needs. The features and benefits explain how and why it can solve their problem so they can determine if it is the best solution for them. If a product or service is complex, we can then link to additional information such as fact sheets, product specifications, case studies and testimonials that demonstrate both how the product or service works, and how it has worked for others.

An educated consumer is a happy consumer. When we give our customers the facts they need to make an informed purchasing decision, we give them the tools they need to make that decision now—without hemming and hawing while wondering if our wondrous widget is right for them. Naturally your product or service must live up to expectations, but if your copy helps customers buy with confidence, you can reduce the possibility of buyer's remorse while paving the way to customer satisfaction. Satisfied customers are repeat customers. They're the one's who'll keep your business running, from now into the future.

Bill is braising shrimp.

Buy our product. Save time. Eat well.

Just because our copy is informative, doesn't mean we don't have room for creativity. "Bill is braising shrimp" is the headline I used in an ad for a law book. It was part of a series of ads promoting the time-saving features of the product line. Bill had time to cook a nice dinner for his friends because our book gave him the information he needed more quickly, so he didn't have to spend his evening in the law library.

There's a story to tell behind each of our product's features or benefits. We can use such stories to lend a snappy headline and explain, in human terms, how our offering can benefit customers in ways they will easily recognize.

Informational & Educational Copy

Clarity is as key to sharing knowledge as it is to selling products. Many organizations use knowledge sharing content in support of their sales and customer service efforts. Others may use it to provide an educational service. In either scenario, the goal is to educate readers in a way that will let them apply this knowledge to their own lives.

When writing informational copy, I try to think of myself as a teacher whose students may come from a variety of backgrounds and skill levels. If I want to teach them how to do X, or help them understand how Y works, I start with the basics. As with sales copy, there may be an opportunity to tell a story, or use an example that will resonate with readers. But to start, I'll begin with a simple premise, then walk readers through the process step-by-step. I want to provide enough details to be thorough. And I want to use language that is precise but easily understood.

I harp on language, because it can so often befuddle. If I start telling you "how to maximize your ROI using on-site SEO to leverage combinatorial search algorithms", it's going to sound like a bunch of business-speak gibberish. It will make you have to work harder to understand my meaning, while making me look like a pretentious fool who may be using buzzwords as a substitute for real knowledge and experience. If my goal is to share knowledge, then I want to package that knowledge in words and sentences that you will quickly and easily understand.

Whether you're explaining to children that the earth revolves around the sun, or teaching your customers how to install additional RAM on their computer, you want to keep it simple enough to follow, and thorough enough to be complete. If we do this properly our readers may take it for granted that our copy made sense. That's O. K. Our goal is not to impress them with the effort it took to write, our goal is to communicate. If our readers can leave our page, having grasped the knowledge we intended to share, we've done our job.

Writing to connect with readers

If you're reading this, you've probably visited many a Web site over the years. You've encountered sites that compelled you to buy a widget and tell all of your friends about your great experience. And you've visited sites that sent you away—muttering in frustration as you wondered what rabid badger was hired to write such drivel. In either case you know what works and what doesn't. If you have a story about a Web site that either succeeded or failed—in connecting with you as a reader—please feel free to share it in the comments.

Related writing articles

• Beware of your vocabulary
• Copy Writing: Long vs. Short, Does it Matter?
• Building your site: Tertiary pages—When more is more
• Marketing is matchmaking: making introductions through lead generation
• Say what you mean—don’t let jargon drive your visitors away.
• Voice and Tone: Writing to reflect your personality as well as your message (Part 1)
• Voice and Tone: Writing to reflect your personality as well as your message (Part 2)
• Web writers: What are we? Journalists? Marketers? Information Providers? Opinion makers? Scholars?
• Writing to be understood by your audience

Are you impressed by business jargon? Will you go out of your way to hire a firm whose message is conveyed in marketing doublespeak? Do you consider it a fun challenge to dissect Web copy to decipher its hidden meaning? I didn't think so.

As Internet users, we've all come across sites filled with corporate buzzwords and convoluted sentences that make us roll our eyes. But what of our own sites? Is your site clear and easy to read? Or have you tried so hard to make it meaningful that it actually ends up meaning less?

If you bewilder your readers you'll increase your bounce rate

When a visitor first lands on your site, whether they arrive at the home page or an interior page, they'll quickly skim the page to see if it has the potential to solve their problem.

They've searched out your site, or followed a link for a reason. They want to know if they should buy A or B, learn how to maximize their SEO, bake the best chocolate torte, hire your design firm, etc. If your site clearly indicates that it will provide the answers they seek, they'll stay.

If the copy is confusing, and readers can't easily skim the page, they will assume the answers aren't there. Then they'll return to their search results to find a site that makes more sense.

If your site really does provide the information they seek, then make that obvious. Don't risk making them leave before they can discover the valuable resources you offer.

Obfuscation in action: off-putting jargon merely causes confusion

Last week I stumbled upon two Web sites with confusing copy that may help to illustrate this point. The sites are for Web design firms with offices in the United Kingdom. Here are 2 paragraphs from their home pages.

Company A: We take pride in every piece of work we do, and guarantee a visually stunning design to platform your company.

Company B: X a web design company is here for a purpose to make art and design of your imagination alive and real on the web platform. After several months of hunting of the best talent and struggling for the name of their design company they finally reached a vertical which engages their vision of togetherness.

Imagining myself as a potential customer, I knew I would leave—instead of exploring the sites—for two main reasons.

1. They don't convey much in the way of actual information. These paragraphs make vague reference to design without conveying the unique features and benefits of their services. I expect firms to take pride in their work, so Company A doesn't really need to say that on the front page. Instead it might have been helpful to make a specific point about their firm that differentiates them from the competition.
2. The sentences don't make a lot of sense. What does it mean "to platform your company" or "finally reached a vertical?" Jargon also typically sets off a warning bell in my head. It makes me wonder why they are trying so hard. Are they resorting to smoke and mirrors so I won't notice some flaw in their services? They may be wonderful designers, but the word play makes me cautious. If they can't take the time to say what they mean—in a way that I'll understand—then what else won't they do?

The first example seems innocuous at first. But the phrase "platform your company" made me pause. The use of platform as a verb is unusual (perhaps it's an idiom in use outside the U.S.?) and makes me think that they don't actually take pride in their editing. They may do stellar work, but this sentence gave me a different impression. Granted we're all human and easily capable of making editorial errors (I'm sure you'll find some on my site too) but when you only have a few seconds to make a good impression, it often helps to have an editor review the copy.

This sentence was also somewhat vague. I'm guessing they mean to say that they'll produce a stunning design that visually supports your company's brand. If you sell bespoke suits they'll design a tasteful site in navy and charcoal rather than a whimsical site filled with pink fluffy bunnies. If that's the case, why not just say so? "We custom tailor our designs to suit your specific brand and image."

Such a sentence may not sound exciting, but it's descriptive and specific. It shows they will keep your current brand in mind when working on your project and not run off on some creative tangent that doesn't really serve your needs.

In the second example I'm totally lost. Perhaps they have a very creative creative team. But again, what will they do for you? Is your goal to make your imagination alive on the Web? Or do you want to recruit students to your MBA program and would be pleased if the Web site could also look cool in the process?

In trying to sound clever and compelling, these sites risk turning away prospective clients who don't have the time to figure out what was really meant.

Keep your copy simple and direct

Headscape, a well known British Web design firm, knows how to keep it simple. Their slogan is "creating attractive, usable websites." Through four simple words found in the top banner they've made it clear that they:

• build Web sites
• pay attention to visual aesthetics, and
• focus on usability to provide a good visitor experience

Within seconds a visitor is able to figure out what Headscape does. The simplicity continues in the "About section" in which they write,

"The sites we build are accessible to the widest audience, easily updated, and designed to meet your business objectives. We provide design, application development and consultancy. "

This paragraph clearly lets visitors know if Headscape has the potential to serve their needs. If the answer is no, then visitors will leave after having made an informed decision. If the answer is yes, visitors will continue to explore the site, review their portfolio samples, and fill out the contact form.

If you're writing for the Web—or anywhere—wording matters.

We can convey similar messages in many different ways, but if we really want to connect with our audience, it helps to be as clear and precise as possible. With mere seconds available to capture a readers attention we need to keep it simple. "See Spot Run" may be boring, but if your readers will grasp that more quickly than "Envision Spot energizing his quadrupedal potential" then the 1st choice is the obvious choice.

Jargon allows us to camouflage intellectual poverty
with verbal extravagance. — David Pratt

More on copywriting and word choice.

• Beware of Your Vocabulary
• MBA Jargon Watch 2.0
• Ten tips on how to avoid business jargon
• The Worth of Words
• Writing to be understood by your audience

Recently a fellow on LinkedIn asked about developing Web content for lead generation. His company produces equipment used in manufacturing. This equipment is sold through sales representatives who can work with prospective clients to choose the product best suited to their needs. Thus the goal for his Web site is to solicit qualified sales inquiries from prospective customers.

Generating leads is different than generating direct sales.

If you are marketing books, you can sell directly to the customer via the Web. On a site like Amazon I can look at a product description, read some reviews and make up my mind right away. If the book sounds promising and the price is right, I'll click the "add to cart" button and be on my way.

But what if my purchase represents a more significant investment?

What if I'm shopping for a $500,000 machine that goes "bing." This is not the kind of thing I'll blithely add to my online shopping cart. This is the kind of thing I'll research. Based on the (hopefully) thoroughly prepared needs of my organization I'll start my research on the Web looking for product information, recommendations, etc. The information I find on the manufacturer's Web site, via Google and Yahoo News, on Twitter, etc. will help me narrow down my list of potential vendors.

If you happen to market a machine that goes "bing" and have made my short list, then I'll become a qualified sales lead as soon as I fill out your online contact form. At this point it is up to your sales staff to match my needs to the right item in your product line. If all goes well, I'll buy the machine, it will serve my needs, and the next time I visit your site will be to share ideas, tips and tricks on your customer forum or to buy another machine.

The costs of dissatisfaction—what we want to avoid

Alas, not every story has a happy ending. But the level of unhappiness depends on the situation.

If it's spring and I'm ordering herbs from your online catalog, I have certain expectations. I want the plants to arrive healthy and ready for the garden. If the mint plant I ordered turns out to be basil, I'll be disappointed, but I'll probably just end up making pesto and e-mailing you to see about getting the mint.

If I've bought a machine that is supposed to go "bing" but instead goes "ploing," my unhappiness level goes up considerably. If the machine doesn't perform as expected it could frustrate the staff who operates it, produce inferior products that my customers don't want, increase my costs, decrease my revenues, etc. Who will I blame for my unhappiness? I'll blame you, the manufacturer who made the machine. Who will hear about my dissatisfaction? In this age of social media, it could be anyone. Obviously I'd start by seeing if my sales representative could resolve the problem. But if not, a quick grumble on Twitter, Facebook or a blog can ripple through the Internet quite rapidly.

Now everyone's unhappy including your attorney, sales department, media staff, other customers who begin questioning the quality of their machines, etc. This negative turn of events could lead to a return of the product, a lawsuit, bad press, the loss of my future business and the loss of business from other customers.

If you're a legitimate organization interested in generating repeat business, rather than making a quick sale and skipping town, this is obviously a situation you want to avoid.

Preventing unhappiness—qualifying leads on the Web

With big ticket items much of the decision making is done during the sales process, after the lead from your Web site is turned over to your sales representative. As Web marketers we can't do much about that, but what we can do is manage expectations by providing clear and accurate online material on what our products or services can or cannot do. This will help to insure that the leads we pass onto the sales team are from well-informed consumers who have an actual need for our product or service.

Our job, as lead generators, is to make introductions. Just as a matchmaker vets her clients to ensure they are potentially compatible, we want to vet our site visitors to ensure that they:

• Are in the market for a product or service we offer.
• Can afford to purchase the product or service we offer.
• Wish to make a purchase in the near future (they aren't just window shopping).

We also want to educate our potential customers so they can assess us. They will want to know that:

• Our product or service will serve their particular needs.
• We offer the most efficient and cost-effective solution to their situation.
• It won't require undue amounts of modification to do the job.
• Our customer service team will offer ongoing support to help them get the most out of their purchase.
• They can trust in our quality and expertise both now and in the future.

The material on our site should give our visitors the knowledge they need to determine if our offering has the potential to meet their needs. For example, if you are in the market for a Web site, my Web services page will show you the types of services I provide, and my portfolio and this site overall will give you examples of my work. If you want to dig deeper, this blog and my Planning Your Web Site Tutorial will tell you more about my Web philosophy. From this you can learn that I can develop a site that will serve your academic department, small/medium business, blog, etc. so that you can inquire about how I may help you develop a site suited to your goals.

I don't publish pricing, because there are too many variables involved—you can assume that I'll cost more than your nephew who taught himself HTML and less than some giant uber cool design agency. Not listing prices is common in lead generation because customers often have a budget in mind and may exclude a vendor on price alone. If our actual costs are fixed, we could publish prices to let clients make the choice immediately. But if pricing is flexible, it better serves our clients if we can work with them to find a service or product that fits their budget while still serving their end goal.

It's also important that our sites provide enough information to let customers know if we're not the right solution for them. If my services aren't right for you, it's better for you to know that from the start. If you're the Behemoth corporation and you need a new 15,000+ page site that will require a large team to input the content, write custom programming and shoot video it makes perfect sense that you'd be better served by working with a larger firm.

I'm continuously tweaking my site to better serve the above objectives—and have come up with some new ideas while writing this article—but in the end my site (and yours) must serve the needs of our visitors.

If our Web presence (which may extend beyond our own sites to include social media and news sites) can match qualified parties with the right product or service, while weeding out those who would be better served with something else, then we'll have done our jobs. Our sales team will be one step closer to making a sale that will be satisfactory to both parties.

Content development for matchmaking

This all seems obvious enough but how do we do this? How much information should we provide to entice customers to make an inquiry? If we offer too much information, such as pricing and detailed product specifications might we accidentally turn away customers who would actually be a good match?

That all depends on the product or service we're offering. Each situation is unique, but it all comes down to educating our audience. We have to let them know the core qualities of our offer so they know whether it has the potential to suit them. And we have to let them know where the wiggle room exists in situations like pricing. If there are specific areas or features in which questions may arise, we should use these as opportunities for them to make an inquiry.

College and university admissions Web sites can teach us a lot about this. While university Web sites, as a whole, tend to offer information on almost anything you would want to know about a school, the admissions sites are aimed specifically at recruitment. As we all know, a university education is very expensive. It also requires a time commitment. You'll not only pay a lot to go school, but you'll be living there for at least four years. What you experience in those four years will affect the rest of your life, so picking the right school is one of the most important purchasing decisions most of us will ever make.

Admission sites usually provide a good overview of campus life and academics, but they know we can't make an application decision based on student quotes, course listings and pretty pictures alone. They're also quite aware that they're in the matchmaking business, they want to attract students who will benefit from what they have to offer and they want to accept students who will add value to the school through their research, leadership, volunteerism, personality, etc.

To help students through the process, schools may:

• Ask students to join a mailing list so they can get updates from the university.
• Publish calendars of regional events where students can meet admissions counselors in their hometown.
• Invite students for campus open houses where they can spend a weekend on campus with a current student.
• Blog about the admissions process and what to expect.
• Showcase the availability of financial aid to show that the school is more affordable than tuition would indicate.
• Arrange for them to interview with alumni.
• Help them connect with a sports coach or professor in their field of interest.

These are all opportunities that allow the school to connect with—and help guide—the potential student, just as a sales representative might guide a prospective customer. Each place this information is shown—on the Web—creates a lead generating moment in which the student is given the opportunity to connect online or in person with someone who can answer questions and provide more in depth information.

Admissions officers are well aware of the factors a student considers when choosing a school so they focus on the core factors as areas to generate leads on their Web sites.

But similar information is available in the corporate world. If you're developing content to generate leads, talk to your sales representatives. They can show you what factors apply to your product or service. They may also be able to introduce you to current customers who can give you insights into how they made their purchasing decisions.

Happy endings: educated site visitors are more likely to buy

You may send out e-mails and brochures, but your Web site is online 24 hours a day all year long. For many customers your site is the first impression they'll have of your organization, product or service. If you give them the information they need and offer convenient points for them to make contact you'll have started them off with a good impression and you'll provide your sales/admissions/recruitment team with leads who've already expressed a sincere interest in your product or service.

This will make it easier for the sales representative to match the prospect with the best product or service for his/her needs and make the actual sale. If the sale is made and the match turns out to be well-made then our long-term benefits are greater than the one sale alone. Most of us want repeat business. If we're making heavy equipment we want to sell more of it to our current customers. If they're happy with our products and service they will buy more. If we're a university we want the relationship with our students to continue past graduation. We look to alumni to become donors, volunteers and good will ambassadors for our schools.

We can't achieve all of that with a Web site alone, but we can use our sites to lay the foundation upon which the rest of the relationship is built. If we're generating leads, we're not selling widgets. We're making introductions that could lead to long-term relationships.

What's your story?

Do you have a lead generation story you would like to share? What's worked for your site? If you have tips or best practices, please feel free to share them in the comments below.

Related Marketing Articles

• MKTG 101: Web Content Should Serve Visitor Needs
• Copy Writing: Long vs. Short, Does it Matter?
• Don’t build your Web site in a vacuum

Edu Blogger Scholarship Update

I didn't win the top prize, but I did win one of the two smaller blogging scholarships. Thank you all for you support and kudos to fellow Ohio blog, The Old College Try for the winning entry.

Monday I started redesigning a site that I'd first built in 2003. Tuesday I received today's mission from Problogger's 31 Days to Build a Better Blog project: "Write a list post." Somewhere in my brain these thoughts collided, so today I thought I'd share some of the core issues I consider when working on a redesign project.

Why do you want to redesign your Web site?

Hint: The answer is not "because the old site is old and boring and I'm sick of looking at it. I want something new." A lot of site owners use this line of reasoning, but we have to keep in mind that we're designing sites for our visitors, not ourselves. If you're thinking about redesigning a site, take stock of the old one.

Look at your site analytics and read your visitor feedback to gauge what is or isn't working. As Cameron Moll wrote in 2005, Good Designers Redesign, Great Designers Realign, so it is up to you determine which changes will enhance your site and which are change for the mere sake of change.

Web site goals

You've heard me wax forth about goals in my Planning Your Web Site Tutorial, so you already know that you have to set specific goals to develop content and measure results. Presumably you did that when you first built the site. But things change over time. Does your original goal still apply? Or is it time to focus on something else? For the site I'm working on now, the goal remains the same, but the scope has expanded. The site was developed to market one product. Now the company has 9 products in 3 product lines. These lines have related, but slightly different target audiences. So while the site still has a goal to sell widgets, it must now be adapted to appeal to a broader audience.

That site had, and continues to have, a clear objective. Such objectives are easy to determine for small commercial sites. For others it is more difficult. Most of us want our sites to do it all: sell more widgets, increase brand recognition, make coffee, etc. But if we try to tackle too much we'll never develop a clear vision. Instead try to focus on one primary objective. What do you want the site to accomplish this year? Is this the same objective you had originally or have situations changed in such a way that you should now focus on something else?

Let's say you're the chair of the philosophy department at University X. You have an interest in applying philosophical thinking to real-world scenarios and want to add more interdisciplinary classes—covering topics such as cognition and intellectual property. Doing so will require more faculty—and the funding to hire them. To make a case for this you must demonstrate a demand for these courses, a demand that can be shown if there is an increase in the number of students taking philosophy classes or, better yet, selecting philosophy as their major.

You have several weighty goals for the department, but if you establish student recruitment as the primary goal of your Web site, you are one step closer to achieving the rest.

Content: What information must you provide to support your goal?

Given that you already have a site, you may have existing content that will also serve your goal. That said it can be distracting to sort through what exists and what doesn't. Instead come up with a new outline based on the new goal. You can then use that to determine what old content to keep or revise, what content to create anew, and how the content should be organized.

For our philosophy site we can consider our recruitment goal by asking the following types of questions. What do students need to know about philosophy to decide if it is right for them? What are the features of the program? What benefits will it provide? What are the requirements?

Students must be given sufficient information to determine if the subject is right for them or not. Philosophy seems vague and esoteric to many, so the site should define the topic, the skill sets used in studying it and the benefits gained from its study. In our current economy, when many choose a major based on how it will help them find a job, it's also helpful to show the practical value of studying philosophy.

I majored in Philosophy because I found it intriguing. I'm the kind of nerd who liked the story problems in algebra; I see the world as a series of puzzles. The study of philosophy gave me a new approach to solving these puzzles, a framework through which I could approach problem solving from a variety of vantage points. I later discovered that this type of critical thinking applies as much to marketing and Web design as it does to hypothetical questions of ethics and meaning.

Prospective students and their parents may not yet know this. My parents supported my choice as they were already strong supporters of a classic liberal arts education. But they had friends who weren't. Vocal friends who asked things like "What are you going to do with a degree in philosophy, sit on a mountain top dispensing wisdom?

In this day and age it's not enough to show that philosophy builds critical thinking skills that can be applied to all aspects of life. People are more skeptical about spending money on a degree that doesn't seem as practical as one in business or engineering. To counter such obstacles you'll need to show exactly how the philosophical method can be applied to the real world. Examples of logical fallacies used in advertising, or ethical questions regarding file-sharing, help demonstrate how the specific reasoning skills learned in the study of philosophy can be applied in real life.

Whether your goal is to share information or sell more widgets, it's important to think about the audience. What information do they require to make the choice to do what you wish them to do? Get into their heads, consider the goal from their perspective, do market research, then apply what you've learned to developing your content.

Content formats: how can we most effectively convey this information?

These days people are anxious to add video and interactivity to their sites to show that they are keeping up with the latest technologies. But video isn't appropriate for everything. Think about the content first and let that help you determine its format. Will you be including a list of available philosophy classes and course descriptions on the site? How would you present that? Would you show a video of Professor Smith reading the course descriptions? Or would you present the information as text? I'd go with text.

How is a philosophy class different than one in math or history? Would it help students to see a class in action? Perhaps this is the time to videotape Professor Smith. If he's known for leading dynamic class discussions, ask him if he'd let you video tape a few seminars. This allows you to share his expertise and knowledge with the public while also letting prospective students see what a philosophy class is like.

Do you want to include educational resources on ethics or logic that will teach students about the field while also enticing their interest? Perhaps you could create a blog or discussion forum in which you pose questions so that readers can respond.

If you think carefully about the information you wish to share and what site visitors should do with it, you'll soon find yourself choosing content formats that are far more appropriate than some talking head yammering at a camera.

Organization/navigation

Once you've come up with a list of the content, and content formats, you will need to support your specific goal, you can organize it into an outline or site map that will guide you in organizing the content and navigational structure of the site. As before try not to look too much to your old site for guidance at first. Instead look at your outline with fresh eyes. Put yourself in the mind of your target audience, and see which content items form logical content clusters.

Then, when your new outline is complete, compare it to the old site. Is the new structure completely different? Or are there only slight variations? This will help you determine whether your revised site will need a new menu system or just some minor adjustments. Also look at your site analytics. Are there pages on the current site that are important but don't get enough traffic? Are those pages hard to find? Is the content less than compelling? Will your new outline make it easier for visitors to find and view these pages?

Whether our new site will be redesigned entirely, or modified slightly, we can learn a lot from the statistics for our old site. They can show us the pathways visitors use to get to specific pages, the amount of time people spend on pages, and which pages they are likely to use as exits from our site. If certain pathways are often used we can try to maintain them so that we don't break anything that is currently working well.

The pages our visitors spend the most time on are typically the most important. If they're not on your new site outline, you may wish to add them. Are there important pages (to you) on the old site that visitors don't spend time viewing? Do these pages support your new goal? If so consider how you can make these easier to find and improve the content so they provide more value to visitors.

Technology/code

Ideally your old site was built in W3C standards compliant HTML using semantic mark-up. If so it will make it far easier to re-use any of the old content you intend to keep. If not, here is your opportunity to clean things up. Whether you are making significant design changes or minor alterations this project will probably involve edits to every page. Given that, it's a good chance to make some changes.

Did your old site use a table-based layout? Did you use bolded paragraph elements instead of headers? If so, try recoding your site using CSS and semantic mark-up. This will both clean up your code (so you're not stuck trying to make sense of all those old nested tables) and help with search engine optimization (SEO).

Also consider how technology has changed and what new options are available through your hosting provider. For example I used to use SSI (server-side includes) to include repeating elements such as headers, menus and footers. I'm now using PHP which also makes it easier to create unique page titles based on my page headers. If your content will include new features such as videos and interactivity, research the best methods for presenting these. Perhaps a content management system or blogging software would help. For my project I'm using WordPress. This makes it easier for me to group items by category and generate RSS feeds and will allow the client to post event and product announcements.

Your needs will vary, but if you take the time now to determine what the best practices are for the features you'll require, you'll find that the site is easier to rebuild and maintain.

Graphic Design

People assume that a redesign means a change in the visual look and feel of the site. But how much you change depends on your goals. Does the current look support your corporate identity and brand? Does it work with the new goal? Does it support the navigational scheme of the new site plan? Do visitors like it? If so, a dramatic change may not be necessary, it may in fact cause confusion. If this is the case you may want to just tweak things here and there to support the new structure.

On the other hand, if you've changed your logo, the old design doesn't serve the new goals or if your site looks like it was built by someone's 10 year old nephew, then yes, change is in order. Let the new goal and your brand identity lead the way.

I take a fairly minimalist approach to design. I don't want flashy graphics and images to compete with the message. Instead I want them to augment the message. But the header image on the site I'm redesigning focuses on only one product. Now that there are more products I'm changing the header graphics and color scheme to better reflect the theme of the full product line. For example, if my site had originally been about grapes, I might have had pictures of grapes and vineyards on the site. But if the company now sells a variety of fruits, my imagery must reflect that.

There's neither time nor space here to fully discuss design theory, but as you work on your new design concepts, keep your visitors in mind. Your favorite color may be hot pink, but your site is meant for your visitors so choose color schemes and readable typography that make it easy for them.

Marketing

Build your new site with marketing in mind. Properly marked-up code, and the use of keywords in your content (especially headers) will improve SEO, thus making your site more easily found in the future. Avoid technology choices, such as using Flash for your entire site, that don't support SEO, page linking, bookmarking, cross-browser compatibility, etc.

Compare your new site plan to the old. Try to keep the old file structure intact as much as possible. If your site has been around for awhile, then others are already linking to your pages and those pages are ranked in Google and other search engines. You don't want to lose what you've already established, so if you can avoid moving old pages, that will help. If you must move or delete old pages, then use 301 redirects to guide visitors seamlessly to the new pages.

When you launch the new site, consider this an opportunity to re-connect with your visitors. If appropriate, poll your visitors before and after the redesign process to get their input. People hate change but they like to feel included. It's impossible to design a site that will appeal to everyone, but if you have access to user input, it will help you design a site best suited to your audience.

When the site is ready, you might also send an e-mail, announcing the launch to your existing user base. Some people will praise you, some will opt-out, and some will complain. Respond to the complaints in a timely and thoughtful manner. You may have annoyed them with your changes, but you've also started a conversation with someone who cares enough about your site, product or service to voice their opinion. Keep them onboard by responding to their issues.

As with any Web development project, there are far more details to consider, but I hope these have provided you with a good starting point for your next redesign. If you focus on the goals and the needs of your site visitors you'll be well on your way.

Web Design and Development Resources

• 10 Tips to a Successful Web site Redesign
• Daniel Burka on Iterative Design (video)
• The Definitive Guide to Semantic Web Markup for Blogs
• Understanding Web Design
• Usability First: Web site design

Edu Blogger Scholarship Update

Thanks to everyone who read Learning for fun and adventure: online education comes in many flavors. Through your support I made it to the finals! If you're interested in higher education and related topics, you may want to peruse the blogs of the other finalists. You'll find some good reads there. (Which means I've got some stiff competition.)

Late last night my Twitter friend, @jewelsann announced that she'd just launched the Cantores Cleveland Web site. When I hear someone has launched a new site I typically pay it a visit to see how it turned out. There I discovered that Cantores Cleveland is a local vocal ensemble "devoted to providing an accessible, educational early music experience." Seeing that this was a music site I immediately looked for the audio to see how it was presented. Going to the "Listen" tab, I found a list of five .mp3 files including song titles, track length and file size.

And then I thought, "I wonder if they've considered podcasting." It struck me that podcasting a new song every week, month or other regular interval would be a good way to keep their fans engaged with their music. Or, because they have an educational mission, they could alternate music podcasts with discussion podcasts in which the singers tell stories and explain the history of the early music they perform.

There in the wee hours of the morning my brain had turned to thoughts of content marketing strategies. It was late, so rather than pursue these thoughts I dragged myself to bed, and awoke hours later…thinking about the ways one can use podcasts to provide rich educational content that engages listeners. And by listeners of course I mean our target audience, the people who will enroll in our educational programs, attend our events, support our cause or buy our products.

Podcasts are like product samples delivered regularly to your door.

As you know, the best way to know if you will like something is to try it before you buy it. That's why grocery stores continue to fire up their portable skillets and offer us toothpick-speared bites of low fat chicken sausage in the aisles. It's also why bands like Nine Inch Nails (NIN) give albums away online. In doing so they end up selling more, which in the case of NIN meant topping the Amazon sales charts for 2008.

There are many ways to give away product samples, both online and in the real world, but doing so via podcast gives us two advantages worth considering:

Repetition

Brand recognition is built through repeated exposure to a brand name, product or service. Years ago I had a boss who told me that it takes 16 impressions for a name to stick. (I don't know if 16 still holds true, but we'll stick with that for the point of argument.) In traditional marketing terms this means that each potential customer needs to see 16 ads, media mentions, direct mail pieces or some combination thereof. Online it could mean seeing 16 ads via Google, mentions on Digg or StumbleUpon, etc.

16 doesn't seem like much, but it can take a lot of time and money to get those first 16 exposures one needs to solidify brand recognition. And to maintain recognition one needs to ensure that such exposure continues into the future. Podcasts distributed on a regular periodic basis provide a venue for ongoing exposure.

Automatic Delivery

Some listeners will simply visit your site when they want to hear the latest news, tips, etc. But, if you get visitors to subscribe to your podcast, as I encourage you to subscribe to my blog, you can create a conduit that provides your audience with continual exposure to your brand via regular updates. Every time you produce a new podcast it will be downloaded automatically to iTunes or their podcatcher of choice, automatically reinforcing the connection you've built with the listeners most interested in your organization (a.k.a. your best customers.)

Podcasting Recipe: Inform and Entertain

As I've mentioned before goal driven content should drive technology, not vice versa. I'm not encouraging everyone to run out and start a podcast. For many of you a blog will provide the same advantages of repetition and automatic delivery.

But some of you, both in higher education and industry, have access to information and resources that would be well suited to an audio or video format. Every situation is different, so to illustrate my point here are some examples of podcasts that fill an audience need while also reinforcing branding and other marketing goals.

Boagworld

Boagworld is "the podcast for those involved in designing, developing and running Web sites." I also wrote about this in 2007 in my Boagworld podcast recommendation. As a Boagworld listener I gain new insights and ideas regarding my field of Web development. As a podcast producer, Paul Boag has built up brand name recognition and solidified his reputation as one of the leading Web designers in the world. This undoubtedly helps bring more business to his design firm, Headscape, and also leads to speaking engagements, book sales, and so forth.

Off the Shelf

Librarian Bill Claspy, of Case Western Reserve University's Kelvin Smith Library, created Off the Shelf to expose people to faculty authors from the university. In these half-hour podcasts, Claspy interviews authors about their latest books and their approach to writing so that we, the listeners, gain new insights into the topics within the books while also learning more about the writing process and the personalities behind their work. As an avid reader—who has read some of these author's works—I find it intriguing to hear the story behind the stories. As a writer, who has yet to get far on my first novel—though I can wax forth endlessly here—I also find it helpful to learn about their writing habits and what compels them to get the words from mind to computer.

Disclaimer: I discovered this podcast when I was still working at Case, have come to know some of the authors involved, and have had many e-mail discussions with Bill Claspy about the project. When I first discovered the site, I knew I'd subscribe, but I was also intrigued by the marketing possibilities.

This podcast serves many roles. On an individual basis it provides exposure to the authors, their publishers and their books. For those titles written for a mainstream audience this could garner more sales. The quality of the podcast also reflects well on the university, by showcasing the talented faculty available to students who enroll there, and by supporting the university brand through the repetition of the podcasts. It also serves students who may decide to apply to the school or enroll in an author's class based on what they've heard in the podcast. Thus, in just 30 minutes per episode, Off the Shelf, not only entertains, but also supports a multitude of listener and marketing goals.

Inside Colby: For Students, By Students

The student produced podcast, Inside Colby, offers informal discussions of campus life, programs, surveys, student projects, interviews and other topics offering insight into what life is like at Colby College. Inside Colby truly does what the name suggests, it provides a taste of the Colby experience while also exposing students to new campus opportunities.

While communicating with students is the primary mission, the podcast also serves a valuable marketing role. For prospective parents and students, Inside Colby, let's them know what to expect. It reveals the personality behind the Little Ivies reputation and the beautiful campus, showcasing everything from what students wear (casual-outdoorsy-preppy) to the wealth of activities they engage in—whether they're playing lacrosse, taking classes in the blacksmith shop or ghost hunting in the theater.

For alumni, such as yours truly, Inside Colby invokes nostalgia. As I listen to the students discuss the different personalities of the dining halls or hear an interview with a professor I had, I'm immediately transported back to Mayflower Hill, cross-country skiing in the arboretum and eating a Colby 8 (cheeseburger with fried egg) in the campus pub. While Colby's monthly newsletter, Out of the Blue keeps in me in touch with campus happenings, the student podcast puts me on campus—at least in my mind. And, as it should, it also reminds me that I should figure how much I can afford to give come June 3oth, the end of the fiscal year.

Why (or when to use) audio/video rather than text

Podcasts, as we've seen in the above examples come in many forms. The trick is having the resources and the personalities necessary to create an audio or video experience that surpasses what you could provide in text. Podcasts can offer information similar to text, but add a depth of experience that let's us feel we're part of a conversation. They can be informal discussions or instructional lectures, so long as they include content that somehow seems more fitting when heard or viewed than it would in print.

Boagworld, for example, is also a content rich Web site that would be a perfectly suitable resource unto itself. It features blog posts that cover material similar to the podcast (handy for reference) and a discussion forum. The podcast builds on this by offering an hour of entertaining commentary, tips and interviews with industry leaders that I can listen to at my convenience. While I may not have time to keep up with all my blog subscriptions, I can plug my iPod into the car and listen to the repartee between Paul Boag and Marcus Lillington so that I can keep learning while I'm away from my computer.

This portability in time and space is key. I'm an avid reader. My house is overflowing with books while my Google Reader account is hemorrhaging more blog entries than I can ever hope to keep up with. But when I'm not on my couch with a novel or my Macbook Pro, I can still ingest information by learning about the Library of Alexandria via the BBC or getting cooking tips from The Splendid Table.

If you can offer similar information, be it lectures from your academic department, or educational resources related to your products or services, you too can engage listeners—like me—with an interest in what you have to say.

A few more podcasts worth exploring

• The Moth Spellbinding Story Telling
• Messing About in Ships News and views of the maritime industry
• This Week in Tech Leo Laporte and friends discuss all things tech and usually something about Twitter
• Creative Xpert Interviews with designers
• City Club of Cleveland Forum for free speech

Help Heidi win a blog scholarship!

Read Learning for fun and adventure: online education comes in many flavors between March 18-30th, and click on the red "Edu Blogger Scholarship" image. Every click made during that time period brings me one step closer to the finals.