Month: May 2014

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Our Increasing Visual World Forces Blogs to Upgrade

The Selfie Generation is Losing the Ability to Concentrate on Content.
The Selfie Generation is Losing the Ability to Concentrate on Content.

It used to be that content was king on the Web; have a great blog or terrific content on your website and that was enough. Search engines loved it and so did customers. Now with devices galore, short reader attention spans, and readers in the Instagram and selfie generation, blogs and website have to cater to a full bodied rich media experience.

Gone are the days of blogs without images.

Gone are the days when only a few businesses did video.

Gone are the days when content all alone was enough.

Now we need…

● Images on every blog post and some have gone crazy by making the image huge it fills the entire computer screen.

● Do a Facebook update, wow, better make sure there’s a good image on the page so Facebook will grab it as a thumbnail as we all know that readers won’t even look at an update that is not visually interesting.

● Doing a Twitter update, yikes, did you add a Twitter pic link?

● Got a new product. Better whip out your smartphone and do a quick YouTube video of you demonstrating it and upload it and then link it to your website.

Although in some cases images really add nicely to content, it almost seems like the pendulum is swinging too far. Pretty soon websites will look like toddler chunky reading books with images and only a few words of content.

Although a picture may be worth 1,000 words, we still really NEED words in our online content to convey a full thoughtful and persuasive message.

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The New Facebook – Again

Hating on Facebook Again
Hating on Facebook Again

I’m sure that you’ve noticed that Facebook has changed its look again, for at least the one millionth time. For some who do not check in frequently it may seem like the same old look, but for those of us who are on Facebook several times a day the new look is not necessarily a better look.

Here’s what Facebook did specifically:

1. Changed what appears in your news feed – trying to make it more relevant to you personally. Unfortunately for me, my news feed now looks like a video bazaar.

2. Many videos are set to auto-play now; especially the brand or advertising videos. You won’t hear sound, just see action, until you click the video and then the sound comes on.

3. Bigger default images in the news feed. Most will fill the width of the news feed, making them hard to miss. Don’t like that old high school photo someone posted of you, oh well, it is going to be pretty hard for others to miss!

4. More current events and news will now appear in your news feed. Well at least that’s the story.

5. Content will reappear multiple times – Facebook wants to make sure you didn’t miss that important message or brand campaign!

As for me, I have noticed that my news feed appears junkier. It seems like I have too many videos and images in my news feed and few status updates of friends. In fact the status updates are lost in the jumble of Vine videos, GodVine videos (I am going to have to unsubscribe from them as Facebook is now letting them “blow up” my news feed.). I am actually finding it hard to find any content which is why I was on Facebook in the first place.

I have to say that I am looking really, really hard at the “newly revised” Twitter.

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Facebook Flagging Some Businesses as Spammers

Crying about your placement on Facebook.
Crying about your placement on Facebook.

Our experience as a user of Google, Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter is all about the legitimacy of the experience. Are you connecting or is the business/site owner churning out content and links flooding the network without any regard for quality?

Facebook has recently announced that it is flagging and targeting in their algorithm to show less frequently in news feeds pages that are using these tactics:

  • Frequently repeating posts/updates or content
  • Asking for likes, shares, and comments (like-baiting)
  • Links in posts pointing to link farms or AdSense Arbitrage pages

It is already hard enough for a business to get exposure in the news feed of fans without having to revert to Facebook pay per click. It looks like Facebook is now making it that much harder by filtering out sites that are actively working to grow their Facebook base.

 

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Should You Buy an Existing Domain?

Sometimes It Is All about the Money
Sometimes It Is All about the Money

I have had client’s over the past years buy existing domain names and have helped with the purchase and transfer. One of the most memorable, in the past several years, was for a client who bought a domain name for $10,000 through Go Daddy.

It today’s world, it is a scary thing to buy an existing domain name, especially as Google and Bing carry a history on domain names. It is not uncommon for a spammer to burn a domain into the ground and then not renew the name and it appears back for sale at Network Solutions or Go Daddy. So, how can you be sure that the domain name you really want and are ready to plunk down some cash for has not been abused?

In this interesting video from Matt Cutts of Google he talks specifically about the issues and problems as well as how to test before you buy a domain name. His biggest tip is that you go to Google.com and enter in site:domainname.com and if you see nothing in Google’s index know that this may be a red flag to do more digging before doing the transaction.

I encourage you to watch this interesting video at http://youtu.be/C-EdhaMDXho to get some more great tips before you make your domain name purchase.