Web Teacher » SocialMedia

Komen Can Kiss My Mammagram

vdebolt — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 15:01:26 +0000

Photo by Tim Waclawski via Flickr

As anyone who pays attention to the social blogosphere and the network news knows, the Susan G. Komen Foundation decided to stop funding Planned Parenthood’s breast cancer screening and mammogram program.

I’m a woman and a liberal. It doesn’t take much more information that that for you to know that I think politicized right wing attacks on the rights of women to receive important health care is wrong. But that’s not what I want to talk about.

I want to talk about how social media–Twitter, Facebook–and motivated individuals with connections online can change the outcome of an event. The Komen Foundation mishandled this event in social media terms. The supporters of Planned Parenthood used social media to their advantage. The consequences include damange to Komen’s reputation, lots of discussion about what Planned Parenthood really does, and many donations rerouted from The Komen Foundation to Planned Parenthood.

Instead of retelling the story of how this happened, I’ll send you to Beth’s Blog, where she’s already recounted it. Go see what social media can do to help a cause, or to slam a social media clueless organization.

Useful links: Responsive bookmarklet, JAWS11, Sony Bloggie, Fluid Grid, Twitter in HS

vdebolt — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 14:45:16 +0000

There’s a tool for a simple responsive design test that works in your browser. It’s also available in a bookmarklet.

JAWS 11 and IE 9. Tests by DingoAccess.

Sony Bloggie Live. Take your video and broadcast it live via wifi. Imagine what we will see coming from tech conferences now . . .

If your fluid grid was 1000px, the math for a responsive design would be a whole lot easier. You can download the PSD file.

20 Innovative Ways High Schools are Using Twitter. Some of these ideas are very interesting.

A social media campaign gone wrong

vdebolt — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 13:38:26 +0000

Recently I was reading How to Use Social Media for Better Customer Acquisition on Mashable. Like most professional writers on the topic, the author suggested cultivating conversation to open channels of contact. Good advice, right?

Where do people get an idea like what happened to me the other day? I tweeted something about the weather in my local area. Three local businesses I don’t follow tweeted me back. Two didn’t talk about the weather or what I had shown an interest in. No, they invited me to visit their businesses. These two were hotels. Guess they thought since I lived in the area, I’d need a local hotel where I could stay. You know, in case my bedroom blew off the house in the freakish wind we were having.

The other reply was a restaurant. The comment there was relevant to weather. In other words, something that could start a conversation going.

Which of the three tweets do you thing engendered positive feelings? Which do you think were cursed as spam?

What’s happening here? Is it a clueless boss somewhere telling an underling to “get us on Twitter” without understanding what it means? Is is there someone in my area who is billing themselves as a social media expert and selling businesses advice to do what those two hotels did? If the latter is the case, I can tell these poor misguided hotel folks where to get better advice from someone who actually knows what social media is about.

Dear #NM hotels and restaurants, Sending me spam tweets just because I mention NM is not good social marketing. Love, VirginiaWed Nov 30 15:24:10 via TweetDeckVirginia DeBolt
vdebolt

Useful links: Forms, WeTopia, Moodle, 24 Ways

vdebolt — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 13:50:09 +0000

How to Make Forms more Usable with HTML5 is a good tutorial from Steven Bradley.

The new WeTopia game on Facebook is described by TechCrunch. This game is a perfect example of what Jane McGonigal and other thinkers say about using game theory to create social good.

NC State U evaluates the accessibility of Moodle 2.1.1.

If you are like me and your subscription to 24 ways has been languishing quietly in your feed reader since last December, you know that 24 Ways is back. If not, be sure to check them out and have a great December with 24 Ways.

Guest Post: Meta Descriptions

vdebolt — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 13:28:00 +0000

The keywords and phrases you use in your Meta description tag may not affect your page’s ranking in the search engines, but this tag can still come in handy in your overall SEO and social media marketing campaigns.

What Is the Meta Description Tag?

It’s a snippet of HTML code that belongs inside the section of a web page. It is usually placed after the Title tag and before the Meta keywords tag (if you use one), although the order is not important.

The proper syntax for this HTML tag is:

If you’re using a content management system (CMS), look for a field to fill out that’s called Meta Description, or possibly just “Description.”

Many years ago, the information contained in a Meta description could slightly help a page rank highly for the words that were contained within it. Today, neither Google, Bing, nor Yahoo! use it as a ranking signal.

In other words, whether you use your important keyword phrases in your Meta description tag or not, the position of your page in the search engine results will not be affected. So in terms of rankings, you could easily leave it out altogether.

But should you?

There are 3 important ways that Meta descriptions are being used today that make them an important part of your SEO and overall online marketing strategy:

They can be used as the description (or part of the description) of your page if it shows up in the search results.
They are often used as part of the descriptive information for your pages when Google shows “extended sitelinks” for your site.
They are often used as the default description in social media marketing links such as Facebook and Google+.

Let’s look at each of these in more detail.

1. Meta Descriptions in the Search Results

People often think that whatever they put in their Meta description tag will be the default description that the search engines use under the clickable link to their site in the search results. While this is sometimes true, it’s not always the case.

Currently, if you’re searching for a site by its URL (for example www.highrankings.com) Google tends to use the first 20 to 25 words of your Meta description as the default description in the search engine result pages (SERP). However, if you have a listing at DMOZ, also known as the Open Directory Project (ODP) and are not using the “noodp” tag, they may default to that description instead. (Do a search at Google for www.amazon.com to see an example.)

Bing and Yahoo!, on the other hand, don’t always default to the Meta description tag for URL searches. Sometimes they do, and sometimes they don’t. A search for www.highrankings.com at Bing or Yahoo! shows content from my home page as the description rather than the contents of my Meta description tag.

Of course, real people aren’t typically searching for a site by URL, so what the search engines show for those types of search queries is not as important as a true keyword search. So don’t get hung up on what you see when you search for your site by its URL or if you’re doing a “site:command” search to see how they’re indexing your pages.

Instead, go to your favorite web analytics program and find the keyword phrases that are currently bringing you the most traffic. Then see what your description looks like at Google when you type in those keywords.

And surprise! What you’ll find is that your search results description will be different for every search query! You may see any combination of the following used:

Your entire Meta description tag text as the complete description (typically if it’s highly relevant and contains no more than 25 words).
A full sentence pulled from your Meta description tag, but not the entire Meta description (if it contains more than one sentence).
Text from one part of your Meta description mashed together with text from another part of it (if it’s more than 25 words long).
Some text from your Meta description mashed together with some text from the page.
Some text from your page mashed together from some other text from your page (nothing from the Meta description).

Some of the circumstances that cause Google to not use text from your Meta description may include:

The information in the Meta description tag was not specific to the page it was on.
The search query used some words that were not in the Meta description, but those words (or some of them) were used in the page content. This includes words that Google considers somewhat synonymous, such as “copy” and “copywriting” or “SEO” and “search engine optimization.”

But even the above are not hard and fast rules. Google doesn’t always use all or part of the Meta description even when the exact search phrase was contained within it – especially if the search query is also contained within the content of the page. Suffice it to say that there are no hard and fast rules for when Google will show it and when they won’t.

My recommendation is to always use keywords on any pages where you get search engine visitors (or hope to get them). Make them very specific to the page they’re on by describing what someone will find when they click through to the page from the search results, while also using variations of your targeted keywords.

Because Google will show only show around 20 to 25 words as your description, many SEOs recommend that you limit this tag to a certain number of characters. In reality, however, you’re not limited to any specific number. Your Meta description tag can be as long as you want it to be because Google will pull out the relevant parts of it and make their own snippet anyway.

For instance, if you’re optimizing a page for 3 different keyword phrases, you could write a 3-sentence Meta description tag, with each sentence focusing on a different phrase. You could probably even insert more than 3 phrases in those sentences if you’re a good wordsmith. The idea, however, is not to stuff this tag full of keywords, but to write each sentence to be a compelling marketing statement – a statement that naturally uses the keywords people might be typing into Google to find your site.

2. Meta Descriptions and Extended Sitelinks

These days, Google often uses the first few words from your Meta description tag when they create the “extended sitelinks” for your website. But this too is not set in stone and is highly keyword dependent. You’ll see different sitelinks and different descriptions showing up depending on the words a searcher used at Google.

As an example, if you do a search for “High Rankings” at Google, you’ll see my sitelinks for that search query.

At this moment, Google is showing my home page as the top result with 6 inner pages beneath:

Forum home page: Description is from DMOZ/ODP. This page has the generic Meta description that is on every page of the forum.
Link building forum home page: Description is content pulled from the page that uses the words “High Rankings” in it.
SEO articles page: First part of Meta description.
Newsletter home page: First part of Meta description.
SEO/SEM resources page: First part of Meta description.
SEO classes page: First part of Meta description.

For the most part, they’re using the first part of the Meta description as the sitelink snippet, but not always. You may have noticed that I optimized those Meta description sitelink snippets that are showing by front loading them so that the first 5-7 words or so are a short description of what the page is all about.

But here’s the rub. Do a Google search for “Jill Whalen SEO.” You should still see sitelinks, and you’ll even see some of the same ones as with the previous query, but some of the descriptions are different:

While the forum home page shows in both, this time Google has pulled text from the page rather than using the DMOZ/ODP description. This is likely because this search query had the word “SEO” in it while the other one didn’t. The SEO articles page also shows up here, and it is using the same Meta description snippet as the High Rankings query. The other sitelinks are different from before, with 3 out of 4 using the Meta description.

As you can see, while you do have some control over your sitelink descriptions via your Meta description tag, Google might not always use them (just as Google does with their regular search results). Your best chance of having them show is to use, close to the beginning of your description tags, the words that you know pull up sitelinks. Also, be as descriptive as possible within the first 5 to 7 words.

3. Meta Descriptions and Social Media Marketing

Ever wonder why some Facebook links have great descriptions and others don’t seem to make any sense? It’s because some site owners have taken the time to write a summary of the article and place it into their Meta description tag, and some have not. If your article has a Meta description, Facebook and Google+ will default to that when you share a link on your profile or “Page.” If there’s no Meta description, you’ll usually see the first sentence or so from the page being used as the default.

While anyone can edit the description that Facebook defaults to, most people don’t. And at this time on Google+ you can’t even edit the default description. You can either leave it as is or delete it all together. Let’s face it — most of the time the first sentence of an article is not a good description of the rest of it. It’s not supposed to be, because that’s not what a first sentence is for!

Therefore, I strongly advise you to always write a compelling 1- or 2-sentence description for all of your articles and blog content that may be shared via social media, and place it into your Meta description tag. This will give you a big jump on your competitors who haven’t figured this out yet, making your social media content much more clickable because people will know what the article is actually about before they click on it.

Overall, the Meta description tag gives you a little bit more control over what people might see before they click over to your site. The more compelling it is, the more clickthroughs you should see. If your Meta description tags can help with that, then it’s certainly worth the few minutes of time it takes to create interesting, keyword-rich tags that sum up what users will find when they arrive!

Guest Author Jill Whalen is CEO and Founder of High Rankings. This article was originally published on her site, and in the High Rankings Newsletter.

Useful links: top 25 books, edu conferences, blue beanie day, semantics, Think Up

vdebolt — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 14:23:57 +0000

The top 25 books for web developers and designers from .net is a good list to check to see if you’re keeping up with the latest. I noticed that several of the 25 are from A Book Apart. That led me to tweet this:

Is there some sort of brain implant that would directly feed every publication from A Book Apart into my brain?Sun Nov 13 17:26:02 via TweetDeckVirginia DeBolt
vdebolt

Oddly, there were people on Twitter who didn’t see the humor in that and suggested I should read the books. With my eyes. Because I don’t want you to worry about me, you should know that I am reading them. With my eyes.

Conferencepalooza suggests some good conferences for high ed folks. Check it out, there might be a great one there. You do know that SXSW is holding a special pre-conference for EDU this year, don’t you? It’s SXSWEDU.

Get out your blue beanie and join Chris in giving thanks for web standards on Nov. 30, 2011 – Blue Beanie Day. Why should we give thanks, Chris asks? Because the bums lost!

Installment 3 in a round robin of posts about semantics. This one from Paul Irish explains enough about the first two that you can follow even if you haven’t read them. (Why haven’t you read them!)

Think Up is new software that Gina Trapani announced was out of beta yesterday. It does all of what I was wishing Twitter would do plus more with Facebook and Google+. It’s installed or your server or can run from the Amazon cloud for a monthly fee. I think Think Up is going to be big.

Useful Links: Project Management, kid’s apps, students and IT

vdebolt — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 12:48:32 +0000

Manymoon vs. Basecamp. The Throwdown! at Social Media Marketing Management compares the features of Manymoon, Basecamp and TeamworkPM.

If you’re looking for educational apps for kids from K to middle school, check out Mind Leap. They recommend apps they consider educational and engaging.

Study of Undergrad Students and IT. A report from EduCause that includes an interesting infographic.

Video chat with Skype

vdebolt — Thu, 13 Oct 2011 13:16:27 +0000

Are you aware of Digitwirl? A weekly program that provides tips on interesting technology and includes some how to help for getting started with each topic. There’s an email sign up for the weekly release.

Here’s an example.

Facebook News is Making Me Weary

vdebolt — Wed, 12 Oct 2011 12:31:17 +0000

Every time Facebook does the tiniest thing it affects a gazillion people. That’s reality. So every time Facebook does the tiniest thing, it is a news event. The latest news is they released an iPad app.

I’ve had a Facebook app on my iPhone for some time, so I didn’t realize there wasn’t one available for iPad. (I know, how can I not have an iPad. . .) Why is it even needed on an iPad, where you can use a browser to view Facebook just like you would on a full-sized computer?

But that’s not the point. The point is, I’m tired of hearing about Facebook every day or two. I’m weary of constantly figuring out what to do about Facebook changes. I’m sick of talking about Facebook all the time. Facebook is like election year politics – too much with us.

Quora: Are you using it?

vdebolt — Mon, 10 Oct 2011 13:17:42 +0000

Quora announced a new iPhone app for Quora. I guess they are hoping to revive the project.

I don’t know about you, but I am completely over Quora. I never check it.

It was unbearably slow to load, navigation was not all that clear, and the system of promoting the questions and answers never really hooked me.

Did it hook you? Do you use it or are you over it like me?