More In-Depth NFL Coverage With Twitter

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There are dozens of newsworthy tidbits occuring during every NFL game, but never enough time in a typical broadcast to fit them all in. That’s where Twitter comes in for NBC’s Sunday Night Football crew and sideline reporter Michele Tafoya. 

Check the @SNFonNBC Twitter account during games this season for Tafoya’s video reports on injuries, coaches and all other sideline happenings. These video updates are filmed with, what else, an iPhone.  

“The sideline is just a unique place to be,” Tafoya says. “It’s crazy, always changing, exciting. It’s nuts, and to bring that element to the audience is just a great way to expand the whole fan experience.”

This new use of social media could add a new dimension to sports broadcasting.  Maybe it will even spark another industry to add a new use for social media to their business.

Sam Laird has more at Mashable.  

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The Pros and Cons of jQuery

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jQuery is the biggest open-source, CSS3 compliant, cross-browser, JavaScript library available. What makes jQuery stand out is its simplicity and ability create Flash-like animations that are viewable on iOS, which doesn’t work with Flash. The popularity of jQuery is growing quickly, so we think it’s important you know the pros and cons of using it.

Pros

The biggest upside to jQuery is its simplicity. It takes only a little bit of programming knowledge to create crowd pleasing animations. It is also incredibly flexible because jQuery allows users to add plug-ins. If you don’t know how to do it in CSS, jQuery can help you.

It is also a very fast solution to your problems. While there may be “better” solutions, jQuery and its development team work to make sure you can implement jQuery quickly and effectively, which saves money. Those in the open Source software community support jQuery because it has great technical support, interacts well with other types of code, supports plug-ins and makes basic animation as easy as can be.

Open source software means quick growth and the freedom of developers to provide the best service possible without corporate red tape.

 

Cons
Open source software does have some problems however. There is no set standard amongst providers, which means if you or the developer do not have the money, time or ability to fix issues, you may never find a solution if you have a problem. Also, frequent updates mean community members are also unlikely to provide solutions.
There are also many versions of jQuery available right now and some are less compatible than others.
Also, jQuery’s lightweight interface may lead to problems in the future. Not being able to actually code can lead to many problems in implementation. Not knowing how to program means not knowing how to fix issues that arrive with jQuery and it doesn’t pick up the slack for you. While jQuery is seemingly easy and impressive, making it actually work can be much more troublesome. To make jQuery work, you have to keep up with community developments and realistically understand your skill level.

 

jQuery is  slower than CSS in many cases. Its simplicity is its curse, as it is not meant for client-side interactions. If you misuse jQuery, you get code that multiplies and multiplies until it is unmanageable, which means a few simple lines of code can quickly make maintaining your site a nightmare. The community is working to fix this issue but for now it is a very real problem.

Conclusion

While jQuery is easy, know if you can handle it before trying. It is meant to simplify tasks for skilled programmers and not to be used as a crutch for beginners. While the less experienced may be able to make jQuery work for them, they will most likely need a lot of assistance.

 

For more information on jQuery, look at Richard Larson’s article for webdesignerdepot.com.

 

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Case Studies, Social Link Bait and How to Make Viral Content

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Most people skim articles until they find something that catches them. You could use a gimmick to grab people’s attention, but the best way to get your readers to read your entire post is to create high quality content with proof to back it up. Case studies are one easy method to get into a topic while providing your readers with quality information. They are also one of the most favorable forms of content on the internet and wonderful “social link bait” or quality links.

Creating a case study should be easy if you can write high quality content. By adding reasearch and data, you can make a superb case study.

All case studies are unique. Your experience on a given topic and the amount of time you allocate for creating content make every study different. You will have to experiment, but the more time you put in will probably decide how good your content will be. You’ll need to do a lot of reasearch so that you can disect whatever the topic is well enough for your readers to understand. True quality content takes a lot of effort and time to make something the majority of a demographic will be interested in.

Case studies have a lot of benefits, including increased website traffic, brand recognition, social link bait, networking and overall site improvement.

Out of the many benefits of creating high level content, especially case studies, one of the best is the creation of social link bait. Social link bate is “any content of feature within a website designed specifically to gain attention or encourage others to link to the website.”

Social media has become ingrained in the lives of millions.  This has lead many away from Google and SEO over the past ten years. This is why link building is essential. “People will start caring less about links in future years because social popularity will become the new link popularity.” (Point Blank)  Google and Bing have even started including social media information in their searches. It also seems logical that Google will put in place a “social rank” system to compliment the “page rank” system many are unhappy with. With these changes, more professionals have seen the divide between research and data-driven results.

Social link bait is similar to regular link bait except it is shared by more websites. Social media is the most common platform for our demographics to share link bait.

To create social link bait, remember that it must be “socially sharable.” You can use sites like ThingLink for image optimization. It even includes a way to include links in your images.

Articles are simple and classic, but content can be made other ways. Why not try out a case study and try to make some social link bait? Money isn’t needed to make viral content and trying these methods might be a great start.

Gregory Smith writes for Search Engine Journal.

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How To Make The Best Design The First Time

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No designer wants to spend hours and hours doing unnecessary revisions and redesigns. You especially don’t want your client to throw out an idea at first glance. We know making the “best” design for your client’s specific needs on the first try is almost impossible but that doesn’t mean your first designs can’t have the potential to become the best design. With these few simple steps, you can make sure your designs have potential from the beginning and, hopefully, provide better designs for your client.

  1. Know Your Brand: Designers often ignore this step. It’s easy to think, when starting out as a designer, that the brand you’re working for doesn’t matter on the first try. They will just give you tons of revisions either way, right? Wrong. Knowing the business and the brand you’re creating for gives you a better understanding of what they need. Once you know what they need, you can give them what they want. Knowing a brand means knowing who they want to attract. By doing the research, you can help solve the client’s problems.
  2. Know the Industry: There are a few reasons you want to know what is happening in a client’s industry. To begin with, design is incredibly trendy and what is “in” right now varies by industry. You want to make sure your client sticks out in a positive and logical way. Don’t try to blend in but don’t let your design be the equivalent of a Hawaiian shirt at a formal event. Secondly, while knowing what is popular with your client’s industry is important, it is also essential to know what is attractive to their customers. Your design should focus as much on their needs as it does the client’s.  Researching the industry lets you know what people in that industry want and reveals what needs to be improved.
  3. Be Creative: When faced with creating something new, we all look for inspiration. Designers usually go online and look at other designs anywhere from blogs to showcases. After finding something that inspires us, many accidentally end up copying the original source. Using inspiration does not mean changing small features of another design to make an almost identical but subtly different design. It means being creative with what inspired you. You can borrow some things but you want your inspiration to push you to try something new. Good creativity and good design lead to innovation.
  4. Details, Details, Details: Rushing to get a design finished can lead to silly mistakes that are absolutely avoidable. While focusing on the layout is important, the details are just as essential. You don’t want to have a beautiful design with a misspelled banner or a typo in a sidebar. Some clients will brush off little mistakes like these, as they are easy to fix, but many will be less forgiving. If these mistakes are easy to fix after you’ve shown the design, they should have been fixed before you showed it.
  5. Explain Your Design: We, as designers, love to understand what we create and why we did it. The problem is, we’re often bad at communicating this to others. Sending an explanation of your design when you submit it allows you to answer most of the client’s questions before they can ask them. It shows intent and purpose behind the design. While a confusing design with no explanation will almost certainly be refused before you can defend it, allowing the client to understand it from the outset will help them see potential in the design, and offer their own opinions,

Every design will need revisions but there is no reason to fear them. However, if you make the best design you can for your client’s needs on the first submission, you will likely find they are more willing to work with what you created. Communicating with clients and trying to give them what they want, rather than what you like, will make your clients happy and could open up more room for creative freedom later.

 

For more ideas on how to improve your designs, go to Kendra Gains’ article at webdesignerdepot.com

 

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Google Granted Facial Recognition Patent

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On September 5th, the U.S. Patent and Trademark awarded Google a patent that allows one or more users to sign in to a computer using facial recognition. This patent, called “Login to a computing device based on facial recognition”, uses a computer’s camera to determinte the identity of users by facial recognition. The patent also details how information will be gathered to confirm the identity of a user.

According to the patent filing, “A method of logging a first user in to a computing device includes receiving an image of the first user via a camera operably coupled with the computing device and determining an identity of the first user based on the received image. If the determined identity matches a predetermined identity, then, based at least on the identity of the first user matching the predetermined identity, the first user is logged in to the computing device.”

At the end of 2011, Apple submitted a very similar patent for facial recognition technology but it is unkown how Google or Apple intend to use this technology. Any chance of patent wars regarding how it is used are relying on the high profile patent litigation already occuring between technology companies, such as the recent lawsuits between Samsung and Apple.

Similar, but less advanced, technology is already present in Android 4.0+ devices like the Samsung Galaxy Nexus so it is likely the patent for facial recognition technology will be put to use in future Android phones.

 

David Angotti writes for Search Engine Journal, and can be found on Twitter at @DavidAngotti

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Microsoft Wants You To Take the Bing Challenge

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The “Pepsi Challange” of the 1970’s and early 1980’s was a classic marketing move that created tons of similar advertising campaigns. In the challenge, Pepsi went to popular areas like shopping malls and had public participate in blind taste tests, in which people seemed to prefer Pepsi over Coke.

Microsoft is now using a similar marketing campaign with Bing. The new campaign, available at BingItOn.com, allows people to blindly compare search results side-by-side on the same page. Microsoft is even claiming people so far choose Bing 2:1 over Google. Microsoft believes that Bing is a higher quality search engine and are trying to convince the public to “break the Google habit.” They are even offering prizes for those who take the challenge.

First, you enter a query or choose from a list of suggested searches, and the site presents you with two sets of unbranded results. Then, you decide which you prefer. After you’ve done this five times, the site will tell you which search engine you chose.

The site doesn’t let you have the full capabilities of either website, but focuses only on basic searching and results.

 

To see the original article:
Bing Offers Own Version Of “Pepsi Challenge” Against Google: “Bing It On”

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Stop Being Lazy: Why Social Media is Bad For Your Business

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Don’t let the headline fool you. Marketing your business over social media can be an excellent decision. However, it’s easy to put more emphasis on those ‘Like’s and ‘RT’s than actual, money-making sales. Here are five reasons why you need to include other platforms as well into your overall marketing strategy.

1.  Social Media Makes You Anti-social

While establishing your online presence, it’s easy to mistake interaction with customers on social media with conversations with customers. Regardless of how active you are in your online community, it doesn’t take the place of good, old fashioned face-to-face or phone conversations.

2. Online Trends Are Fleeting

There are those that say social media will be around forever. That may be true, but how do you know where your customers will be congregating in 10 years? Facebook and Twitter might still exist. However, ten years ago, AOL and MySpace were major players online. Here’s some free advice: don’t include them today in your marketing plans.

3. Social Media Only Works For Certain Businesses

Depending on your business, social media may not pay dividends for you. For example, generally, if you sell service to other businesses, you could actually hurt your credibility by using social media to market yourself. That time is better used making in-person connections with executives and other decision makers.

4. Lack of Effective Language

Social media is constantly updated and timeliness is key. This leaves no time for businesses to perfect their message before releasing it to the masses. Messages to your followers should value quality over quantity.

5. There Are Better Ways

In marketing, old school is usually most effective. Nothing beats in-person communication with your customers. Social media shouldn’t be viewed as a marketing revolution to forsake all other platforms for. Instead, it is an additional weapon in your arsenal, but one that should be used wisely and with restraint.

For more information, check out Alex Goldfayn’s article on Mashable.

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Make Your Small Business Big In Social Media

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One of the best dirty little secrets about social media for businesses is that you don’t need enormous resources or a large, established audience for your efforts to pay dividends.  In fact, small businesses can adapt to constantly changing trends much faster than their larger counterparts simply because of their lack of size and available manpower.

To get the most of your social media endeavors, you simply need to ask, “why?”  As in, “why would our customers connect with us on social media and why would my business want customers to connect through this format?”

Asking these questions before starting a social media campaign and using this five-step approach, allows you to capture customers’ attention and build relationships and loyalty.

1. Know the Trends

Familiarize yourself with the social medium you plan to use for your business.  Whether it’s Twitter, Facebook, Google+, or any other option on the Web, you need to know why your customer’s are there and what they are saying.

Once you understand your desired customers’ experience, you can reach them more effectively.

2. Define Your Online Brand

Before making an online profile, think about why your business is unique.  Then, develop your profile based on the desired experience of your customers when they connect with you.

Be sure not to to sell too hard, however.  Users are especially wary of sales pitches on social media.

3. Develop a Strategy

How will you know success unless you’ve first defined it?  Decide how social media will enable you to meet your goals.  Discover which format your customers’ perfer and which is the best for you.  Keep it light and fill your profile with a mix of entertaining and relevant content.

4. Build Your Community

Be an active member of your online community.  Share insights, talk with influential online users and link with others in order to interact and help existing customers and add to your audience.

5. Learn and Repeat

Over time, when you have learned more about your community’s wants and needs and monitored changing social media trends, repeat this process to stay relevant.  Be sure that your online profile is on target with your customers.

Brian Solis writes more on this topic at his blog.  You can also follow him on Twitter @briansolis.

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Why Transparency is Essential for SEO Providers

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In the SEO industry, there are more than a few people out there who are more than happy to take advantage of unknowing website owners  They are detrimental to the expertise, authority and trustworthiness of the entire industry. Numerous website owners and marketing managers have been victimized by these questionable SEO providers and the largest hurdle to overcome while working with them is gaining the client’s trust. They have put faith in a supposed “expert” before and ended up regretting it. This is why transparency is essential in providing good SEO services and building client trust.

There are four keys for SEO providers to be more transparent to help establish trust with their clients.

1) Long Term Strategy

Outline a six month to a year building link strategy when working with a new client. By creating this strategy and reviewing with the client before beginning any link building activities, a reference point is established for the client.  This also establishes accountability for the SEO provider.

2) Monthly Reports

In the past, companies like Google held website owners accountable for all of their link building service. If the site owner was taken advantage of by a not-so-fastidious SEO, there was no one to turn to. The client had put blind trust into an “expert” and assumed work was being done. Monthly link building reports show precisely where you are developing links each month. Your client doesn’t have to assume anything. Keeping track of what you have built, and what you are working on helps to provide a log that can be referenced to at any time to show how your work is helping a certain client.

3) Monthly Calls

While some clients may want to keep in contact more often than others, a scheduled monthly phone call to review that month’s activities and plans for the next month helps keep the client, as well as the provider, in sync.

4) SEO Reports

Rather than overwhelming your client with analytics, send the organic visitor data and keyword reports. These two reports show what kind of effect SEO is having on their site without boggling client’s minds with too much data. They show how well you are attracting visitors to their site and how well recommended keywords are doing. 

Nick Stamoulis, of Search Engine Journal, has more on this topic. 
Transparency is Key to Building SEO Client Trust

 

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Protect Your Privacy Against These Facebook Tricks

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We all use Facebook apps for one reason or another, but you may have granted those apps and their creators access to your personal information without even realizing it.  Thanks to a handful of redesigns, it is harder than ever to tell exactly what you’re agreeing to when you start using a new app.

1. A Single Button

Instead of giving you a choice between a button that allows access to private information and a button that does not, Facebook apps now use a single button that grants you access to the app and the app access to your information.

2. Tiny Gray Font

Let’s be honest, most of us ignore the fine print, especially when it blends into the background of the page.  Facebook apps are using that to their advantage and using that tiny gray font to tell you what permissions you are about to grant.

3. Hidden Symbol

Rather than explaining what information you are agreeing to grant an app access to, an app launch page now features a nearly indiscernible question mark that links to that information.  Most users never see it and agree to give access to information without even knowing it.

4. The Action Line

Most users find the “main action button”, usually the one that says “Play Now” and is brightly colored, and ignore anything below it.  Facebook has utilized that area under the main action button, which is often overlooked, for important information about your loss of privacy.

5. Friendly Jargon

Facebook’s App Center previously used language that made it clear you were granting access to personal information.  Now, rather than a headline of “Request for Permission” and buttons labeled “Allow” and “Don’t Allow”, there is simply a large blue button that says “Play Game”.

Avi Charkham, head of Product and Design at Lool Ventures, has more information in his article at TechCrunch.

 

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