I have been working on a proposal for a company that wants to launch Web 2.0 marketing initiatives in 2010. It is as much an overview of Web 2.0 social media platforms as much as it is a marketing proposal. What's weird is that I decided to do it as a website - I'd provide a link, but it is, after all, a service that is being brought to market, so proprietary issues abound. But I think the opening video I embedded in the site is a safe bet - here, take a look:
I tried to bring a point home in this proposal, that Web 2.0 is not a Kevin Costner Field of Dreams endeavor, where you build it and they just come. Companies have to engage in dialogue with the people they are trying to reach and offer them something that makes them feel rewarded by the interaction.
I inserted evidence of the effects of Web 2.0 marketing, both in terms of its upside as well as how it can work against a firm. The first video below is one I used to show a different kind of marketing, one that makes the target audience feel as though they are understood. The second one is a reminder that someone can always use Web 2.0 marketing tactics against your firm.
I am actually surprised how much video wound up in the proposal, perhaps six or seven, if you count the screencasts where I put my voice over PowerPoint presentations. But the images and voices together strike an emotional chord that is hard to match otherwise.
I completed the proposal on Google Sites (again) and experienced HTML coding irregularities (again!). But in the end, it wasn't quite as painful as my last project on Google Sites.
I am still wondering what my client will ultimately think of the ideas I presented . . . perhaps they'll send their opinion my way in a multimedia format . . .?
So what do think about connecting with you audience? Post a comment with examples of effective connecting. Be sure to include a URL.
Friday, December 11, 2009
Thursday, December 10, 2009
Collaboration - What Worked, What Didn't
I have been working on an interesting proposal project, which is due out soon. It's a proposal for Web 2.0 marketing services, and I am presenting it on a website. I have developed it online, partly with the help of a colleague. We are part of a larger group engaged in a common endeavor, and it's been interesting to see how the various forms of communication have been useful - or not.
Most of the communications were asynchronous, and most were text-based. One synchronous application we tried was online chat sessions. While it was interesting to see people's comments come up, it was hard to keep track of who said what to whom, and after an hour, I felt l could've said it all in 15 minutes on a conference call. Those sessions were not very productive, but it did start a collaboration between one colleague and I that lasted the entire project.
The need to get our respective website projects rolling drove two of us to start collaborating. That relationship started on email following the chat sessions. I think I started it. That led to asynchronous thoughts passing between us, with some attachments to boot. Email served a useful but utilitarian purpose, and was best for attaching files. But it was still slow, as each of us was online perhaps once or twice per day.
Emails became limiting when it came to sharing URLs. "Now where was that email about Twitter metrics?" Surf around the Inbox for a few minutes, perhaps I'd find it, perhaps not. To avoid the pain of sorting through the email, we turned to delicious to pass bookmarks back and forth. That application worked as desired, no more, no less. Finding bookmarks was easy this way, which was important for reference info for our project.
We also used our respective websites to collaborate, sort of. We would each develop our site and direct the other to it for a look-see and feedback. A picture may be work many words, and the reassurance that I was on the right track was valuable, but it wasn't necessarily productive. That doesn't mean it wasn't worthwhile, it just didn't produce anything.
At one point, several of us were trying out a different technology, Writeboard, in order to collaborate on an unrelated matter. In that venue, a third person mentioned that they were interested in podcasting for their project. I like podcasting and thought I could be helpful, so I made a 30-second pitch using Audacity that essentially said, "If you write the script, I'll do the podcast." My idea got a warm reception, but I never did receive a script, so the podcast never materialized.
Time management pressures governed all this work, and it seemed (and still seems) like I took on more than I bargained for. Desperate times called for desperate measures - I picked up the phone. Wow, that's when things started happening. Just hearing someone's voice on the other end who seemed to be scratching their head as hard as I made me feel better, and with each of us having computers in front of us while we talked, we were able to provide responsive information to each other in real-time. While we couldn't interact on the screen, it was collaboration none the less. In the end, we provided each with references that we used in building our projects, and bartered services in trade. I did the layout for branded documents, while my colleague provided a logo.
So my proposal is almost done but for the proofreading, due partly from a moderate productivity boost from our efforts. We used different technologies for different purposes, but in the end, I found I enjoyed the human touch - hearing another persons voice - the best.
Red Phone Booth:
Most of the communications were asynchronous, and most were text-based. One synchronous application we tried was online chat sessions. While it was interesting to see people's comments come up, it was hard to keep track of who said what to whom, and after an hour, I felt l could've said it all in 15 minutes on a conference call. Those sessions were not very productive, but it did start a collaboration between one colleague and I that lasted the entire project.The need to get our respective website projects rolling drove two of us to start collaborating. That relationship started on email following the chat sessions. I think I started it. That led to asynchronous thoughts passing between us, with some attachments to boot. Email served a useful but utilitarian purpose, and was best for attaching files. But it was still slow, as each of us was online perhaps once or twice per day.
Emails became limiting when it came to sharing URLs. "Now where was that email about Twitter metrics?" Surf around the Inbox for a few minutes, perhaps I'd find it, perhaps not. To avoid the pain of sorting through the email, we turned to delicious to pass bookmarks back and forth. That application worked as desired, no more, no less. Finding bookmarks was easy this way, which was important for reference info for our project.
We also used our respective websites to collaborate, sort of. We would each develop our site and direct the other to it for a look-see and feedback. A picture may be work many words, and the reassurance that I was on the right track was valuable, but it wasn't necessarily productive. That doesn't mean it wasn't worthwhile, it just didn't produce anything.
At one point, several of us were trying out a different technology, Writeboard, in order to collaborate on an unrelated matter. In that venue, a third person mentioned that they were interested in podcasting for their project. I like podcasting and thought I could be helpful, so I made a 30-second pitch using Audacity that essentially said, "If you write the script, I'll do the podcast." My idea got a warm reception, but I never did receive a script, so the podcast never materialized.
So my proposal is almost done but for the proofreading, due partly from a moderate productivity boost from our efforts. We used different technologies for different purposes, but in the end, I found I enjoyed the human touch - hearing another persons voice - the best.
Red Phone Booth:
Wednesday, December 2, 2009
Form vs. Function In Blog Redesign . . . or One Man's Skirmish with Cloud Computing
Form vs. Function – It is the age old argument about which should be emphasized in a design. In marine designs, there are widely divergent possibilities, and each feature on each craft produces results that affect both the resulting form and function. Mariners have long held strong opinions. Some are more romantic, comparing the form of a fine craft to that of a beautiful woman – recall that boats and ships are referenced with feminine pronouns. Others subscribe to the ultimate utility despite what the result looks like. See the Brossard Trimaran video below for an example in the extreme.
Where do I sit on this Form vs. Function continuum? I’m a minimalist who believes the most elegant solution is the one that gets the job done without encumbrances. I once took the scenic route across the U.S. – on a bicycle. And when it comes to water, my boat isn’t any more elaborate. I paddle a 17-foot mahogany kayak I built from this design; apparently, 45 pounds of boat is all that is needed to cover 20 miles before lunch.
For those who have followed this blog, you likely know that I am a minimalist who emphasizes function when it comes to design. That philosophy is reflected in the kayak line drawing above (thanks to designer Nick Shade of Guillemot Kayaks).When I created this blog, I used the Minima Dark template on Blogger, designed by David Bowman.
I chose it then for the same reasons I chose my kayak: it was aesthetically pleasing, and it seemed like it was enough to do the job well without extra bulk. When I initially adapted the template, it looked like this:
My first set of changes to the blog created the following page, which most of you have read for some time. During the first month, the body was expanded from the default width to a wider specification to make the blog more readable. The wider version looked like this:
Since then, I've discovered an increasing fondness for my blog and most of its design, but I have to tell you, the mechanics of altering it have been a battle . . . more on that later. Pondering a redesign, I set out to change features in ways that matter, and decided to stay away from features that were superfluous. I’ll run through the design changes briefly, and then I’ll discuss what worked – and what didn’t.
The features I desired included:
BANNER
The new header was a success. The images were chosen to contrast simple and complex forms and functions, and the contrast of a line drawing with a photograph underscores the difference. The banner uses two typefaces, Bradley Hand ITC and Corbel, and was created using PowerPoint, then Inkscape, and then Jing screen capture software. The line drawing of the kayak is actually a negative I made of a proprietary source graphic, and a text gadget was added for attribution. While the header appears elementary, 13 versions were completed and uploaded before I settled on one. Posting it required fiddling with the colors, backgrounds, and various widths within the template. Compare the header at top to the old version below:
Score: Steve 1, Technology 0
TRUNCATED POSTS
One day, I decided to truncate the posts to fit more on the initial view. Searching the Blogger help files, there were instructions for using the Jump Break feature. Simple enough. I installed it on every long post. Afterwards, I found that my right-hand sidebar had dropped below the body of my blog – see below.
Researching this problem, I found it was a common dysfunction reported by others for the Google Blogger platform, but, despite more hours than I care to recall, I never found a reported solution that worked for my blog. Later attempts never resolved the issue, and, in the end, I removed the feature from all the posts. For now, the blog is limited to displaying two posts. Truncating the posts remains a “to do” item.
Score: Steve 1, Technology 1
A BACKGROUND TEXTURE
On a number of occasions, I surveyed available patterns and even tried to make my own using various methods, such as this pattern that I intended to tile in the background.
Hours went into the development and selection, with the most recent favorite being this one:
More time went in to the attempted upload. In every instance, using various techniques specified by the Blogger help files or the many other sources I found on the web, I was unable to get my blogs to accept the CSS or HTML code associated with these features. Searches for fixes led to further installations of code that did not work, or were so technical, I couldn’t understand them.
Score: Steve 1, Technology 2
AN RSS FEED
This was one of the few things that worked easily. It went in as a gadget in the sidebar. Done. See right. Phew!
Score:Steve 2, Technology: 2
A LINK TO DELICIOUS
I tried to post code into the Google Java script gadget, and also tried posting code into the template of this blog. I used code from at least 4 different sources. No avail. The best I could muster was the delicious logo sans text on one of my test blogs.
Score: Steve 2, Technology: 3
A WAY TO HAVE OTHERS LINK TO MY BLOG
I think my content is worth reading, I want others to be able to share my blog. I found HTML code that could be inserted into a Google Gadget that that showed viewers how to post a link back to my blog. It worked in this blog, see right. I posted the code displayed here into one of my other test blogs. It displayed properly there, and linked right back here. Here’s a screen shot of the feature:
Score: Steve 3, Technology: 3
GOOGLE SEARCHABILITY
Initially, my blog was not found when I searched for it on Google. Eventually, I figured out that Blogger's Label feature was metadata, so then I went back through all my posts and added descriptors to the Label fields. Two days later, Google was finding my posts. I showed the results to my kids and told them I was famous. Their eyes just rolled . . .
Score: Steve 4, Technology 3
CLOSING THOUGHTS
I suspect that there is something amiss. Other Blogger users I know have not had the same level of difficulties as I. And writing this post to admit temporary defeat on several counts isn’t a source of pride. Furthermore, I have a website project on Google Sites, and I am finding that it is riddled with similar issues. Some are genuine user errors, but some are attributable to unstable templates or technical difficulties that have yet to be diagnosed. I have tried working three different blogs, created several Google accounts, and worked from two different geographic locations using different ISPs. I can’t figure out what it is. My errors? Perhaps . . .
In Cloud Computing applications like Google Blogger, posting your problem to the Help forums is often useful, because end users who’ve experienced similar issues can give you good advice. But several problems could arise here as well: (1) you may have a problem that no one else has experienced; (2) a knowledgeable user may not be around when you need one; (3) if you don’t understand your problem, you may not describe it in terms others recognize, and therefore, will get no response. What else can you do? Call Google? Nope. If these conditions apply to your situation, you may find yourself On Your Own.
Back to this blog. In the end, my redesign was more modest than intended because of my battles with technology, limiting the resulting FORM. But given my minimalist ideology, a good basic template, the use of mixed media and a strong emphasis on communicating with a clear and personal voice, the content has remained the No.1 priority for this blog. The results emphasize FUNCTION. And looking back over the posts, it turns out that I have really enjoyed this process. If you’ve enjoyed it, too, than I think this blog is accomplishing its mission, A Better Message.
Where do I sit on this Form vs. Function continuum? I’m a minimalist who believes the most elegant solution is the one that gets the job done without encumbrances. I once took the scenic route across the U.S. – on a bicycle. And when it comes to water, my boat isn’t any more elaborate. I paddle a 17-foot mahogany kayak I built from this design; apparently, 45 pounds of boat is all that is needed to cover 20 miles before lunch.
For those who have followed this blog, you likely know that I am a minimalist who emphasizes function when it comes to design. That philosophy is reflected in the kayak line drawing above (thanks to designer Nick Shade of Guillemot Kayaks).When I created this blog, I used the Minima Dark template on Blogger, designed by David Bowman.
I chose it then for the same reasons I chose my kayak: it was aesthetically pleasing, and it seemed like it was enough to do the job well without extra bulk. When I initially adapted the template, it looked like this:
My first set of changes to the blog created the following page, which most of you have read for some time. During the first month, the body was expanded from the default width to a wider specification to make the blog more readable. The wider version looked like this:
Since then, I've discovered an increasing fondness for my blog and most of its design, but I have to tell you, the mechanics of altering it have been a battle . . . more on that later. Pondering a redesign, I set out to change features in ways that matter, and decided to stay away from features that were superfluous. I’ll run through the design changes briefly, and then I’ll discuss what worked – and what didn’t.
The features I desired included:
- a more personal and meaningful banner
- truncated posts
- a texture to the background
- an RSS feed
- a link to delicious
- a way to have others link to my blog
- that the blog be identified by search engines
BANNER
The new header was a success. The images were chosen to contrast simple and complex forms and functions, and the contrast of a line drawing with a photograph underscores the difference. The banner uses two typefaces, Bradley Hand ITC and Corbel, and was created using PowerPoint, then Inkscape, and then Jing screen capture software. The line drawing of the kayak is actually a negative I made of a proprietary source graphic, and a text gadget was added for attribution. While the header appears elementary, 13 versions were completed and uploaded before I settled on one. Posting it required fiddling with the colors, backgrounds, and various widths within the template. Compare the header at top to the old version below:
Score: Steve 1, Technology 0
TRUNCATED POSTS
One day, I decided to truncate the posts to fit more on the initial view. Searching the Blogger help files, there were instructions for using the Jump Break feature. Simple enough. I installed it on every long post. Afterwards, I found that my right-hand sidebar had dropped below the body of my blog – see below.
Researching this problem, I found it was a common dysfunction reported by others for the Google Blogger platform, but, despite more hours than I care to recall, I never found a reported solution that worked for my blog. Later attempts never resolved the issue, and, in the end, I removed the feature from all the posts. For now, the blog is limited to displaying two posts. Truncating the posts remains a “to do” item.
Score: Steve 1, Technology 1
A BACKGROUND TEXTURE
On a number of occasions, I surveyed available patterns and even tried to make my own using various methods, such as this pattern that I intended to tile in the background.
Hours went into the development and selection, with the most recent favorite being this one:
More time went in to the attempted upload. In every instance, using various techniques specified by the Blogger help files or the many other sources I found on the web, I was unable to get my blogs to accept the CSS or HTML code associated with these features. Searches for fixes led to further installations of code that did not work, or were so technical, I couldn’t understand them.
Score: Steve 1, Technology 2
AN RSS FEED
This was one of the few things that worked easily. It went in as a gadget in the sidebar. Done. See right. Phew!
Score:Steve 2, Technology: 2
A LINK TO DELICIOUS
I tried to post code into the Google Java script gadget, and also tried posting code into the template of this blog. I used code from at least 4 different sources. No avail. The best I could muster was the delicious logo sans text on one of my test blogs.
Score: Steve 2, Technology: 3
A WAY TO HAVE OTHERS LINK TO MY BLOG
I think my content is worth reading, I want others to be able to share my blog. I found HTML code that could be inserted into a Google Gadget that that showed viewers how to post a link back to my blog. It worked in this blog, see right. I posted the code displayed here into one of my other test blogs. It displayed properly there, and linked right back here. Here’s a screen shot of the feature:
Score: Steve 3, Technology: 3
GOOGLE SEARCHABILITY
Initially, my blog was not found when I searched for it on Google. Eventually, I figured out that Blogger's Label feature was metadata, so then I went back through all my posts and added descriptors to the Label fields. Two days later, Google was finding my posts. I showed the results to my kids and told them I was famous. Their eyes just rolled . . .
Score: Steve 4, Technology 3
CLOSING THOUGHTS
I suspect that there is something amiss. Other Blogger users I know have not had the same level of difficulties as I. And writing this post to admit temporary defeat on several counts isn’t a source of pride. Furthermore, I have a website project on Google Sites, and I am finding that it is riddled with similar issues. Some are genuine user errors, but some are attributable to unstable templates or technical difficulties that have yet to be diagnosed. I have tried working three different blogs, created several Google accounts, and worked from two different geographic locations using different ISPs. I can’t figure out what it is. My errors? Perhaps . . .
In Cloud Computing applications like Google Blogger, posting your problem to the Help forums is often useful, because end users who’ve experienced similar issues can give you good advice. But several problems could arise here as well: (1) you may have a problem that no one else has experienced; (2) a knowledgeable user may not be around when you need one; (3) if you don’t understand your problem, you may not describe it in terms others recognize, and therefore, will get no response. What else can you do? Call Google? Nope. If these conditions apply to your situation, you may find yourself On Your Own.
Back to this blog. In the end, my redesign was more modest than intended because of my battles with technology, limiting the resulting FORM. But given my minimalist ideology, a good basic template, the use of mixed media and a strong emphasis on communicating with a clear and personal voice, the content has remained the No.1 priority for this blog. The results emphasize FUNCTION. And looking back over the posts, it turns out that I have really enjoyed this process. If you’ve enjoyed it, too, than I think this blog is accomplishing its mission, A Better Message.
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