New Media | Glenn Ward

The pitfalls of social media and online recruitment methods

I am running a pilot to monitor the success of new media approaches to recruitment while recruiting for my assistant. During the research process I came across a few findings that were worth a note.

The flip side to recruiting on the Internet, despite the fact that a particular platform does not represent a true overview of a countries demographic, but what does? is the simple fact that even those using conventional practices for recruitment for vetting. It makes a lot of sense! In the past you’d get references to discover whether your candidate has a good work ethic, is not going to create problems etc but social media is quicker and provides a more rounded summary as the candidate has not chosen the referee who speaks on their behalf and in many cases are more open with there posted information. The problem lies with the discarding of candidates for reasons you have discovered via these means, it might not necessarily be the HR department doing this but the individual departments conducting the interview process who are taking an unnecessary risk on behalf of the company. Fair enough if you discover someone is a drug taker, criminal etc but what if discover the candidate is planning a pregnancy, has an alternative sexual preference etc and they are discarded. If you have decided to do your online research then be sure the reason the candidate was discarded can be back up with valid reasoning and in many cases proof of this.

Beyond SEO, getting the right traffic for your product

Also see,
Introduction to Search Engine Optimisation
Beyond SEO – The right traffic to your site
An Introduction to Google Webmaster Tools
Introduction to Google Analytics and other website analytical tools
Introduction to Pay Per Click Campaigns
PPC Pay Per Click Marketing and purchase process
Integrating online video into your digital marketing strategy

You may often wonder why you might get such a high bounce rate on your websites pages and how you can improve this. For those who religiously follow their web analytics and spend time and money on ppc accounts, understanding your organic traffic can also help improve the quality of your traffic. When I first started to look into search engine optimisation I presumed it was all about achieving perfect accessibility, perfect code and checking in an seo browser to make sure your title, meta, and content achieved 100%. I later moved into the world of ecommerce and realised that it’s all very well being optimised, but it was as important, if not more so to be achieving high positions for the right search terms and following this up with content. A real life example I thought about recently, came about when walking past a little arcade that contained a computer shop / repairer. In the window he had placed a remote controlled helicopter. I went in and asked if he had any more helicopters to which he replied, ‘no… I just put that in the window to get people through the door’. My point is that the likilyhood of someone in the market for a helicopter is unlikely to just pop in and want their computer fixed or to buy a stick of ram. So, this is where it gets even more time consuming and complicated, whilst you think about all the points made in the introduction to search engine optimisation, you must also be thinking about the copy on the page and the words you use. For this reason, it always baffles me when companies offer to come in and optimise your site, unless they completely know your product and industries, they will optimise your site but you will attract all the helicopter buyers!

So, you will develop your own technique to get the balance right, you will often have no choice on the content of your page if you are running somebody else’s site, but you must insist on the freedom to rewrite the content. Use google adwords keyword tool to assess the key words you have used and use the traffic estimator to best drive traffic. Once you have your content choose the highest traffic drivers (keywords) to build into your h1 tags, follow this up with a similar technique for the page title, then for now copy this page title into your meta description. Based on your choice of keywords for the page content, copy 5 to 10 of the most used AND most relevant to your site into the meta keywords. Don’t make the mistake of listing as many possible keywords as you can think of into the meta keywords this will have the opposite effect and google will see it as spamming. Give it a few days and check the site in domain tools to see how each individual element we have just talked about scores. Once you start tweaking things, monitoring is extremely important, record your figures and make one change at a time, if you see an improvement then implement it site wide. If you see things get worse you know what had this effect and you can change it straight back.

Intoduction to Search Engine Optimisation – SEO Learn at lunch

Using free VOIP and online chat tools to improve your companies communication

Companies often seem afraid of the word free, it seems that a paid for product and someone accountable is the popular choice, but the Internet has brought about companies that have re-invented their business model and found new ways to make their businesses profitable, which provides us with a solution that far exceeds that of a conventional business. Software is a prime example and should be used to best effect. At about the time companies banned MSN on the work computer there was a bigger lesson to be learnt from this. Employees were spending more time chatting to the friends because it was easy and a relatively private affair to do so. More importantly one of the largest companies in the world were researching how the user interacted with the platform, which led to the ability to include status updates, so others new that you were out to lunch or busy.

I recently attended a training course for an ecommerce software platform and the company had embraced free applications. Every employee on a 3 story building had Skype installed on their PC and they all had a Skype account using their work email address, resulting in that anyone could sign in from any computer (improving the ability to hotdesk for starters) but here is the scenario that got me thinking. During the session (from the training room on the bottom floor) I posed a question that the tutor could not answer, he looked at his Skype and said “frank” is away from his desk at the moment but I’ll ask home and we’ll come back to it. So, what were the real world solutions in that situation – blag an answer? A popular choice! Pick up the phone only to realize that “Frank” is not at his desk? Or physically go to the first or second floor leaving the trainee alone in the room only to find that “Frank” is currently tied up on a conference call and cannot be disturbed. In the new scenario we were able to maintain the flow of the session and when “frank” had finished having a cigy he was able to report back, the tutor was able to read the information and relay it back at a convenient time.

Sure these things have security implications but we shouldn’t be put off by the fact that the software, because of this companies have far outgrown the competition that charge for a similar service. During times of travelling budgets being cut and volumes of money being spent on video conferencing systems, there are relatively few issues to overcome to integrate into your business and how cool would it be if in later releases you could call direct to say a Polycom unit, with the simple addition of a webcam this could in theory be possible and would encourage breaking down the fear of using the high tech solutions in the workplace.

Yes, there will be bandwidth issues and a peripheral cost but I’m guessing for small companies this would not cause too many problems with modern day broadband speeds and depending on the communications set up a of larger companies you may need to increase the allocation or re-balance the bandwidth allocated to data, that’s not my area of expertise, but I have spoken to the people in the know. Admittedly, I have not calculated the ROI, but the improvement to efficiencies and potential large scale cost saving make this concept a very interesting proposition for consideration.

In particular in the context it is important to make clear your intentions of quick and easy contact with your customers. Even today there are websites out there who believe it would be more efficient to bury their contact details and even then only make an email address or contact form. Although many security fears have been broken down with shoppers and shopping online, this is one of the biggest mistakes you can make. Shoppers browsing a new store online will want to know if they can return an item and and exercise their consumer rights if something goes wrong. If you have a high bounce rate on your product landing pages and do not freely present your contact details, this is often the problem. At the same time it is important not to bombard your customer, provide them with the popular and most accesible means of communication and allow them the choice. If you have a chat assistant installed, watch your customers as they browse your site and identify those who need help before you initiate a chat. Undoubtidly for the less tech saavy, you are more likely to scare them off than encourage them to buy if they were not looking for assistants.

Just a thought!

Introduction to Adobe Photoshop – The Photoshop Workspace & Tools

Open Photoshop
Using the menu along the top of the work space go to WINDOW and untick all of the palettes except for OPTION and TOOLS

You will now open a new document. FILE > NEW > and have a look at the dialogue box. First of all give the document a name. Then select DEFAULT PHOTOSHOP SIZE from the Presets menu. Set the Colour Mode to RGB.

Photoshop_New

Place the mouse on the bottom right corner of the document. Click and drag on the small square to resize window.

Drag_Window_Corner

Now have a look at the TOOLS palette to the left of the workspace. Holding the mouse over a tool should give you a TOOL TIP. Try it for each tool to see what they do. The TOOL TIP will also give you a keyboard letter. This is a KEYBOARD SHORTCUT. Try changing the tools by using the KEYBOARD SHORTCUTS.

Photoshop_Toolbar

Click the mouse on a tool with a black triangle in the bottom corner of the square. Hold the mouse down and a context sensitive menu will appear showing you more options for the tool.

Photoshop_context_sensative_menu

Towards the bottom of the tools palette there should be a BLACK and a WHITE square. This represents the foreground and background colours, as they are currently set.

Double click the mouse on the top square. This will open a SWATCH palette. Using the mouse click in the coloured area to change the foreground colour. Experiment and see what colours you have available to you before you choose one. Then click the mouse on OK. Now you can see that the foreground colour square in the tools palette has changed colour.

Color_Picker

Now find the BRUSH TOOL and click on it. New_Brush
Notice the OPTIONS palette below the menu at the top of the workspace changes. From the OPTIONS palette you can change the brush attributes such as size, hardness and so on. Try painting in the canvas, first with one brush size then change to another. Try changing the foreground colour and the brush shape and draw an abstract design on the canvas.

Brush_toolbar

Special_Effect_Brushes When you drop down the BRUSH menu from the options palette you will notice a small black triangle to the right of the palette. Click on this triangle and you will drop down a menu of further choices. Try some SPECIAL EFFECTS brushes. What happens when you change the OPACITY of the brush from the options palette? Now you will select part of the image. Find the RECTANGULAR MARQUEE TOOL form the tools palette.

Marguee_Tool

Click the mouse over the canvas and holding it down drag out a rectangle. This should appear as a dashed line around the area you have selected.

Move_tool
Changing the tool to the MOVE TOOL click on the area you originally selected and drag the selection to one side. Try this a few times.

Undo_Step_Backward Now use the UNDO command by going to the EDIT menu at the top of the workspace and dropping down to STEP BACKWARDS until the picture returns to how it was before you started using the select tool. Change the MARQUEE TOOL to an ELIPTICAL MARQUEE and make another selection. Use the CMD+C keyboard shortcut to copy the selection. Now use CMD+V to paste the selection. Changing the tool to the MOVE TOOL click on the area you originally selected and drag the pasted selection to one side.

Layers_Panel Now go to the WINDOW menu at the top of the workspace and drop down the menu to LAYERS and make sure this item has a tick by it. Have a look at this palette. It is a very important palette that you will learn to use a lot. To understand LAYERS think of each layer as a sheet of glass laid over each other. At the moment you should have two sheets of glass, or layers in the LAYERS PALETTE. The bottom layer is named BACKGROUND and the top layer is called LAYER1.

Use ALT+CMD+Z keyboard shortcut to step backwards. The top layer will disappear. When you cut and paste from an object Photoshop will automatically paste the selection to a new layer, this is what you have just deleted. Now use the SHFT+CMD+Z to step forwards. The LAYER reappears. Put the mouse over layer 1, click and drag it down to the dustbin at the bottom of the layers palette. This is another way of DELETING LAYERS.

Create_New_Layer In a similar way you can create a NEW LAYER by clicking the mouse on the symbol of a turning page to the left of the dustbin in the layers palette.

Make sure the new LAYER 1 is selected. Now draw in the canvas as before. Click the mouse on the EYE symbol on the left of the Layer 1. This turns the layer off.

Opacity

Now try using the OPACITY control in the layers palette. This changes the opacity of the layer you have selected. There are many other ways of changing the ways in which layers can be blended together. See if you can find some of them.

Select_Layer Create another layer as before and now paint in this one. Using the mouse drag the new top layer so it swaps places with Layer 1. In this way you can change the order of layers.

Close this document by using the CMD+W keyboard shortcut.

Basic Video Editing Technique- Premiere Pro, Final Cut, iMovie, Movie Maker etc

Time for some basic editing technique and I’ll try to make as much of this as possible applicable to all editing software where possible so you can go away and practice. In order to produce a professional standard of video output there are certain guidelines you should adhere to. Programs like iMovie make editing easy but are confusing with offerings such as page peal transitions and sepia effects etc, which are often completely unnecessary. No matter how tempting it is you should keep your editing simple, so here’s a brief guide that can be applied to many editing platforms. I work using Adobe Premiere Pro and Final Cut Pro so apologies in advance to other users.

Capture and Import

First thing you need to be confident about is getting your footage onto your computer. Often the assumption will be made by the client that the footage will be available for viewing minutes after the shoot when in reality this is possibly one of the timeliest processes. With changing formats this process differs but for those still using tape you will need to find your capture window. On Premiere Pro this is under File > Capture.

premiere_pro_capture

In final cut pro it is found under File > Log and Capture.

final_cut_log_and_capture

On consumer products such as iMovie choose imovie_import_from_camera File > Import from Camera. If you are plugged in using a FireWire cable you should now be able to operate your camera or deck from you desktop. If you have not logged your footage and have a handy list of time codes you will have to manually grab the footage. To do this que up the section of the video you desire, press play and then record. Your clip will appear in your projects library with the rest of your media. Be sure to name your clips well to locate them in the future and if you have a bunch of clips that belong together, create a New Bin by right clicking in the library and name accordingly. If you have HDD camera you should first have the drivers and codecs installed on your machine, in theory you should be able to plug in your hardware and then drag and drop the files across into you projects folder. Once or if your file are on your local machine you can click File > Import to import your files or in most programs drag and drop them to your library.

The Timeline and Tools

Understanding the timeline and a few tools is essential for editing. Obviously the timeline is the linear holder of your chosen clips but it is important to remember that you can stack up your video and audio to create a dynamic edit. This is used for things like titling the respondent in a clip or laying down a buzz track. You can add more tracks as and when you need them by right clicking one of the tracks to the left of the timeline. This can also be done for multiple audio tracks. Dragging and dropping your clips from the media library to the timeline is simple, you can then play through the clip by hitting the play button in the right hand viewer or by hitting the space bar, notice that as your clip plays the scrubber or play head moves along the timeline. You can also grab the play head with a hold click and scroll along the timeline. For frame by frame accuracy use the left and right arrow keys on your keyboard. Whilst editing, for those who are used to the arduous wait for final cut to render your timeline it is not vital in Premiere Pro. Although playback will appear blurred, you can build an entire edit without rendering the timeline and export it without a problem.

Premiere Pro Timeline

Final Cut Pro Timeline

final_cut_timeline

Premiere Pro Tools Palette

Final Cut Pro Tools Palette

Audio Transitions

Like video transitions keep your audio transitions simple and use them to mainly improve the continuity of what you hear. You should always lay down a buzz track anyway but transitions can help smooth the audio between clips. In order to ensure you leave yourself the option to use transitions, try to direct some dead sound before and after the clip when shooting by telling your actors or respondents to count to 5 and then begin or to pause for 5 seconds after each take. (where possible) Use fades at the end of clips to reduce the glitch sound and gains at the beginning of clips, use constant audio transitions to smoothly link clips, although be aware that audio from one clip might be heard in the next and not be appropriate.

audio_transitions

Manipulating Sound

When transition fall short is when you need to affect the audio often along the timeline, this is often brought about when using a sound track. You may wish to bring up and reduce the track before and after some dialogue for example. In final cut pro this is very easy using pushpins in the audio timeline, you merely pop a pushpin where you want the change to begin and one where you want it to finish, followed by moving audio level up or down. In premiere pro however, it is a little more difficult. The best way I find is to select your clip in the timeline and then click the effects tab. Drop down the levels control and make sure your play head is at the point you want the effect to begin, add a key frame and then slide the play head to where you want the change to finish, in the same way as final cut you can now drag up or down the audio using the yellow line or the level slider. Do make sure your key frame indicator is black when you make the new change using the slider, otherwise you risk automatically adding a key frame in the wrong position.

manipulating_sound

Video Effects and Transitions

As aformentioned, using transitions should be a limited and controlled affair. As a rule if there is not a reason to do, or use something then don’t do it, you will just confuse the viewer. If it is appropriate and correctly timed a straight cut will do, if this is too hard soften it with a cross dissolve or a fade to or from black. Apply the same principle for video effects, don’t use one unless there is a specific reason for stylising your video, it will just look weird.

video_transitions

Effects Tab and Key frames

As aformentioned in the section on audio, you can effect things over time using the effects tab, the most common example of this would be the need to scale some over time or move the position within the frame. For this we would use the motion and position drop downs. In the same way as we affected the audio track place the play head at the point you wish to begin your animation and add a key frame, then place the timeline at the end point and add another key frame. Whilst the play head is at the point of the key frame your will turn black. Change your values here or effect the video in a drag and drop manner in the viewer on the right hand side. This technique is especially good for window in window video. As soon as possible try to get into the habit of changing co ordinates or percentage in the effects tab rather than manually dragging and moving the video in the preview pane. Have a notepad in front of you and record notes as you may need to replicate the size and position of another clip later on in the edit.

effects_tab_and_keyframes

Colour Correction

I shall first emphasize the important of getting colour right during the shoot, more on that in ‘Basic Filming Technique’. You can however, digitally fix your image and your controls can be found under your video effects. I won’t go into massive detail at this point but I recommend learning about brightness and contrast, saturation, curves and colour balance. Practice on images in Adobe Photoshop or Google some tutorials as you may waste hours trying to fix an image that could be corrected in seconds with a basic understanding of some image control options.

Cropping

Not a topic I originally intended to include here but as someone asked me today how to do it and with a growing trend for recording on screen tutorials, it will be handy to know to neaten up your work. Again the crop tool can be found in your video effects. Drag and drop it to your clip and manipulate the left, right up and down in the crop drop down in the effects.

Work Arounds – Getting imapmyrun to work on your iPhone

Although imapmyrun is buggy, I still like to use it for the social network benefits as it seamlessly notifies my map my run account, Twitter and Facebook when I hit save.

The only error I have not found a fix for is the spiking of the GPS, sometimes I get to the end of my run and the Reading will show something ridiculous like 72 miles. I think this may be down to other applications running simultaneously.

The main issues are the weak GPS signal, which if you start the app a few minutes before setting out it often fixes, although I start it off with a weak signal and it is fine.

Make sure you have your data push turned off. I think we are asking to much if you expect your poor iPhone to handle iPod, iMapmyrun and receiving your emails at the same time.

The other major bug is the saving of the run via 3G. My first run ends at the gym where I wish to save. Every time I receive an error when I try. The only way I have managed to get around this is to come out of the app and reload it, when it restarts you will see the message “you have unsaved runs” hit save and more often than not you will be successful.

An annoyance that should also be addressed if the developers read this post, is the fact that after you hit stop the pace and time continues to count. Alongside the save error issue this produces an inaccurate recording nearly every run.

Making a smooth transition from Final Cut Pro to Adobe Premiere Pro

This is the first in a series of guides on Premiere Pro. Up until now I had been an avid Final Cut Pro user and always considered Adobe Premiere Pro to not quite be a professional standard editing platform. Perhaps my judgement was unfounded as I had only limited experience using the editing software but my new job meant that this would my new primary edit suite. Armed with a Mac Pro Dual Quadcore I got stuck in and once I got started I found many pros and cons with the platform, this is what I noted down as I made the change.

First let me touch on what I consider to be the main pros and cons of the software’s. For me premiere pro biggest asset is it’s seamless integration with the other adobe products. I have cs4 and in this most of the niggles associated with bringing unrendered files such as psd’s and aep’s has been ironed out. A hefty after effects file will slow down the display of an image in the preview pane but if you can live with this the time saving benefits are worth it. The other major time saver is the ability to drag and drop differing video formats to your project, place them in the timeline and not have to convert the video to the projects native video format or even render it out before previewing. Adobe has not seemed to complete the cross program synergy though at a crucial point. As you come to export your final piece premiere passes the project adobe media (the program we used to use merely to encode our flv’s. Unfortunately exporting a video file to full quality pal DV produces poor results especially for projects with text titling and linear shapes and effects created within premiere pro (more on this in a later post). Final cut on the other hand outputs perfect quality video.

Windows and Mac – There are some differences between the windows and mac versions of Premiere Pro that you should be aware of. Firstly when capturing video the files are saved as the operating systems preferred video. Mac saves as .mov and Windows saves as .avi. If you are hoping to export your files to be used directly in a Powerpoint Presentation on a Mac then you will struggle, there is no export to WMV option as there is in the windows version and the Mpeg formats are not supported in powerpoint. I shall write a separate detailed blog on my workarounds in this area.

Quicktime – I believe it is a necessity to have Quicktime Pro installed on your computer to save frustration with Adobes video Exports. I tend to export to the highest quality possible in Premiere and then re export them for purpose using quicktime. A bit long winded but I don’t have to do this for every export, as I mentioned it often depends on the graphical content of the video.

Making the change – There are a couple of pointers that will save you some time. With regards to making cuts in the timeline, unlike FCP there is no button for toggling the linkage between video and audio off and on, instead hold down the alt key as you make the cut or drag the clip around the timeline independently from the sound. Also another major difference is the ability to edit sound in the timeline by simply adding pushpins. For those familiar with After effects they will have no issues, simply click on the effects tab next to the source tab effects_tab and drop down the volume control menu followed by the level dropdown, place your scrubber in the timeline where you wish to begin the effects on the sound and click the stopwatch icon stopwatch_button this adds a keyframe and indicates the beginning of your change. Scrub along to where you wish the loudest or quietest point to be and add another keyframe. While the small triangle is black adjust your volume you should see the volume level in the effects pane reflect your changes. This is a skill you can also apply to motion and scale changes over time, and can also be useful in getting your head around the motion graphics program After effects. Any static graphical elements to your projects I would fully recommend building in Photoshop to the exact dimensions as your project and not resizing in premiere pro. These are the main things that I had to go looking for as most other differences were pretty intuitive or even the same as in Final Cut Pro. I’m sure there’s more I haven’t discussed so just ask in the comments box below.

As I write, I have decided to break this subject down into separate blog posts and go into greater detail.
- Setting up a Project, Device and Folder system in Premiere Pro.
- Exporting Video and preparing it for Powerpoint Presentations. (Workaround)
- Issues, Observations and Top Tips for using Adobe Media Encoder.

Creating Video for Powerpoint and inserting video into Microsoft Powerpoint

This post should hopefully be useful for teachers, students and presenters.

Producing Video for PowerPoint
The two major considerations when producing video files for use in PowerPoint are which file format to export to and the dimensions of the final piece of video. File formats are continually changing and this section may need updating regularly but make these considerations. If you are presenting away from the office and need to carry with you your files on a memory stick then file size is an issue, whether you clips are 10 seconds long or 3 minutes long also has implications on file size and so to does the dimensions of the video, small 320 x 240 YouTube size videos are a lot smaller files than a video playing at 720 x 640. Of all the video formats supported by PowerPoint each have their positives and making the above considerations will enable you to choose the right one.

My current preferences: In the past, as a Mac user I favoured mpegs. The reason being they were a more generic format working across multiple platforms and operating systems. They seemed to be of a better quality than WMV exports and both seemed on par in comparison of file size. While Avi’s produced a better quality image the file size was dramatically larger and inappropriate for most purposes. I am currently exporting to WMV’s for my clients for two reasons. Since PowerPoint supports mpeg1 and mpeg2 formats I have recently addressed issues with these exports using Premiere Pro and receive an error during playback in Quicktime (Although they do seem to play on a PC) Also since I installed Flip4Mac Pro it allows me to fine tune my WMV exports and achieve very impressive quality video at exactly the file size and dimensions I require. Over time I have had less compatibility issues with with clients machines when I provide them with a WMV as apposed to an MPEG. I’m sure PowerPoint will soon support a wider range of file formats though, so watch this space.

Finally, Choosing the dimensions for your video is very important and can be decided upon by asking the following questions. What resolution and size is the display you are using? How would you like the video to sit on your slide?

If you are going to playback your presentation onscreen a small video might be hard to distinguish and so possibly a larger video would be better suited. If you were to display your presentation on an overhead projector you may still want to produce a large video but could also get away with a smaller video in this scenario.

Would you like the video to accompany other information on the slide or be the slides main attraction? I have produced a guide below to help you decide upon your dimensions.

Video dimensions on a Powerpoint slide

Note: I would recommend exporting your video at the desired size you would like the video to play in you presentation and NOT resizing it from within PowerPoint, this will cause pixelation of the image and reduce the quality of your image

Inserting the Video
Firstly place all your video files within the same folder that your PowerPoint presentation resides, unlike images PowerPoint does not embed the video in the project it merely creates a link to the video file (note that as you add the video, the .ppt does increase in memory, right click > properties to see the file size of your presentation) Create the slide that you would like to house your video then choose Insert > Movies and Sounds > Movie from File and browse to your video. You will be prompted to choose play automatically or when clicked, choose the option you are most comfortable with or best suits your presentation. Click and hold the video in order to place it correctly on the slide. Test the video is working by viewing the presentation.

An alternative method of displaying your video is to create a hyperlink from either a text or image object within your slide. This option launches your default media player and plays the video outside of your presentation. This offers greater playback functionality and is probably suited more towards a training exercise and less for a fluid corporate presentation. To insert a hyperlink, highlight your text or select your image. Again choose Insert > Hyperlink and then browse to your file.

Common Problems
Problem: Often you will receive a file and save it to a convenient location i.e. your video folder, you then insert it into your presentation. When you copy the presentation to your memory stick for the big show, your video no longer works.
Solution: Save all your presentation documents locally in a presentation folder, as the file is not physically in your presentation it will not play unless you have the video file on your memory device as well.

Problem: Your video will not play in your presentation and you view a white square onClick.
Solution: Reduce the length of you video filename and also the file path, generally over 128 characters causes this problem.

Problem: Lack of sound can be a problem in power point presentations
Solution: Be sure to use external speakers and test the sound before you present.

Problem: In Power point 2007 sound can often be quiet.
Solution: The 2007 version of power point now has a volume setting on the toolbar, this defaults to medium, set this to loud if your sound is reduced.

Intoduction to Search Engine Optimisation – SEO Learn at lunch

Search engine optimisation is now far more than putting some keywords into a page and mimicking them in your meta data. Search engines have brains and combine a whole heap of site tests in order to assess where your site should appear on the search results.

Most importantly, it is vital that the content in your page is correct and reflects the pages purpose, this is not just in the text but also, the images should be named accordingly to reinforce the content and ALT Tags used to aid the visually impaired user. A good example of this would be a product on an ecommerce site. The product has a brand, possibly a model and what it is. This text will no doubt be on the page but the search engines will check the pages images to see if it matches the content and so imagery should be named accordingly.

In this example the image should be named Dakine_101_Rucksack.jpg the underscores allow the search engine to see the text as separate words and therefore understands exactly what it is. The ALT Tag should read Daking 101 rucksack.

Approach – Assessing the site

A good place to start is to access the site. I use Domain Tools to get an initial overview of how the pages are scoring and the Alexa page rank gives you an idea of your website overall placement out of all the websites in the world (more detail on the Alexa site) I then move onto the SEO Browser located on the right hand side of the whois lookup on domain tools.

By clicking on here you will get to see how a search engine views the site and what the true content looks like. In the top right hand corner you will see a percentage score for the site. By clicking on the I button on the top left of the browser you will see a break down of the score and what needs improving in order to achieve 100%

The SEO Optimisation notes on this page are broken down into the following categories; Meta, General, Keywords, Composition, Links, Images and Terms. All are very important and getting everything right will result a massive shift in search engine placement.

Note: Achieving 100% on this assessment is all well and good and is quite easy to do but the score must reflect your initial copy, content or purpose for the website. Getting this wrong will not attract your target audience and even run the risk of being seen as a spam site.

As touched upon earlier search engines are also very conscious of accessibility for disabled visitors. The Images category in the SEO Browser reflects some possible issues such as alt tags (alternative text) missing and also images not having height and width attributes assigned within the html.

At this point I would move to the W3C (Web Standards) website and use there tools to check the page for accessibility and also for correct use of html. The Markup Validation Service will identify missing code (often accessibility issues) and also errors in the code. Again two identical sites one with errors and one without would affect the websites position on the search engine.

Using Google as a benchmark is always good as search usage figures of their competitors does not even come close to that of Google, as you can see using analytical software on any website. To begin with, installing Google toolbar to your web browser will allow you to see the Google page rank of every page you visit marked out of 10. This is not only useful in accessing your own page but also that of your competitors.

For far more detail on page ranks and how they are achieved you can also use the webmaster tools in your Google account. The webmaster tools are generated when your Google sitemap is submitted and pages are indexed on the Google database. This service provides various assessments broken down into the following categories, Overview, Settings, Diagnostics, Statistics, Links, Sitemaps and Tools.

This sitemap should not be confused with a sitemap page within a website. These pages are designed to ensure there are link trails throughout your site and do help the spiders navigate your entire site but are not used to index your site on a search engine.

Sitemaps in another session!!

Note: Similar sitemap submissions are necessary for other major search engines including yahoo and msn.

So… knowing what we now know and lets say we have applied all our changes to improve naming conventions, errors, accessibility etc, how do we climb the search engines?

I like to work backwards and reinforce what we have already achieved. At this point it’s good to know and assess where your existing traffic is coming from. This can be easily identified with Google analytics or AWStats. and allows you to identify the terms that users are searching for and arriving at the site. With this information, greater density of keywords and terms can be added further in the copy and stressed back through the meta data page title etc as identified with our earlier tools. Also it is useful to quickly identify keyword and term frequency, a useful site for this is LinkVendor words appearing a number of times within a page are not always used in the Meta keywords, description and title and as a search engine does not understand subject matter these words should be considered. Finally, and this is one of my favourites SEMRush formally known as seodigger. Pop your domain name in here and it will reveal loads of search terms, where you appear on Google for each term and the traffic they generate. SEMRush are now providing the same for adwords keyword terms.

It is also good practise to look at your Google Adwords and your Google organic traffic as a cost saving exercise for your Adwords account and also to identify terms to work into your natural traffic sources but that’s a whole other project.

Final Thought – All this is useless if you make a number of changes at the same time as you will not know which has worsened or improved your placement also unless you monitor your progress you have no means of knowing if it is working.

Useful Tools

Also available from my head.

Sitemaps, PPC Campaigns, Analytics, quality linking, usability,

My experience of Social Media and how I predict the linking of online spaces and applications.

My first experience of online Social Media was Myspace. After being introduced to the promotional power of the platform through a friend in the music industry I thought I’d give it a go. Although I think if I am honest the the largest breakthrough for me in keeping in touch with my friends had to be in 1998 when I got my first mobile phone and discovered text messaging (this will become apparent later), I later discovered Facebook and used this for my personal social networking mainly because it excelled in the uploading and tagging of pictures which far exceeded the capabilities of Myspace. I had no need for flicker or other image banks because as far as I was concerned Facebook did it all and I soon reduced my usage of Myspace. I was aware of twitter and until recently didn’t see a purpose for a platform that merely mimicked the Facebook status field, although I was fascinated that it could be updated from a mobile phone whilst going about your everyday business.

It all became clear when I recently upgraded to an iPhone. I already used a PDA phone that integrated well with my PC applications but was always keen to take this further, the iPhone allowed me to do this. The free internet access made a huge difference but it was as I installed apps I realised the true power.

My prediction: Quite obviously we see trends in social media and if you read the magazines they will say this one is in and that one is out, which I believe is true to some extent. My prediction is linking, not just that of your online spaces but also the linking of your devices (which is why I mentioned the forgotten mobile phone earlier) and now apps that offer massive extensions to your device. Here is an early example; I use mapmyrun to work out how far I run, which in itself has become a social network site with profile and the ability to share runs and view others, but none of my friends are on Mapmyrun!! So I installed iMapmyrun on my iPhone which automatically maps my training using the inbuilt GPS then sends my data to the site when I complete my run, upon receiving the data the website then updates my tweet on twitter and adds it to a box on Facebook, Genius! And all I needed to do was hit save, a perfect example of the linking of web 2.0 and mobile applications.

So I have Facebook, I have myspace, twitter, mapmyrun etc, but I do not have the time to maintain them all. As an experiment I have taken this one stage further. I have set up my first blog to provide the link in the chain (in fact I think this will be my first post). In theory my twitter which I can operate from my phone now updates my Facebook status and is included in a mini feed both on my Facebook page and my blog, this is also fed by the app iMapmyrun which also populates a space on my Facebook. Facebook will also offer a direct link to my Myspace profile and each blog entry now offers the option to post to Facebook and the users can post each blog post to their own profiles using “share this”, now one update from my phone will spread across my own network. I also have plans for my Youtube and Ebay accounts! But I am aware of how much I have written! This will all be monitored with Google analytics installed on the blog and sitemaps regularly submitted to all major search engines.

A little bit round the houses but here is how I think this has implications on research. I recently researched QR codes, one of the largest mobile phone functions in Japan that despite been taken onboard by some large UK companies still doesn’t seem to have caught on. As I discussed with a colleague this in itself has research implications although I think it carries a greater message. It offers a choice to the user that they do not receive when they are stopped in the street, answer a call or a knock on the door. In an age where most now fear identity theft and not all are embracing shifts in technology, I believe it to be beneficial that the user now believe it was their decision to be forthcoming with information and this is where apps, applications and social network style platforms can play a role.

My final thought and an example of how this has been achieved is Pruhealth. I found out through the Martin Money Saving Expert website forum that I could achieve free gym membership if I signed up for Pruhealth medical insurance and became a frequent user. They have designed a point scoring system whereby the more points you score the cheaper your gym membership. The clever trick is that my Pruhealth account links (reoccurring theme) to my nectar card and Pruhealth know when I buy fruit and veg (I’m sure they know when I buy chocolate bars and pork scratchings too, but I don’t get points for that). Pruhealth also follow my ebay account and know when I buy sporting goods, again I’m sure they are not just watching my healthy purchases. Most importantly and in my case, every time I swipe my card at Nuffield Health Centre formally Cannons gym and for others it might be Virgin Active or LA Fitness they know about it. This has allowed for me to achieve £4 a month health insurance and free gym membership, but most importantly this is achieved because Pruhealth are safe in the knowledge that I am a low risk customer.