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The best practices for designing, developing and deploying next-generation web, mobile and enterprise solutions were on display recently at Adobe Max in Los Angeles, CA. Among those attending was Eric Cross, Senior Interactive Developer at Lawrence & Schiller.
What were the biggest surprises? The biggest takeaways? And how can a conference like Max help L&S clients? Eric shares his thoughts in this episode of The Extra Minute.
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It’s always exciting to win an award, but when it comes from your peers – people with whom you compete for business - it often means more. Such is the case for the South Dakota Office of Tourism and its recent winning of the prestigious Mercury Award.
Micah Aberson, Director of Business Development at Lawrence & Schiller tells the story of the award winning Black Hills Digital Strategy in this edition of The Extra Minute.
Three days learning about new products, sneak peeks of emerging technologies and networking with over 5000 of your peers and industry experts. The annual event, held last week in Los Angeles, brings all of these elements together to give attendees an unparalleled conference experience. From the general sessions to the workshops and labs attendees are exposed to the tools that they need to get the job done.
To start the conference off on the right note Adobe released ColdFusion 9 the night before the first general session. This release contains new features and enhancements that make developing, maintaining and managing CF apps easier than ever. More on the features and benefits of ColdFusion 9, and ColdFusion in general, will be coming in a future post.
General Session #1
“Our goal is to help you and all of your clients reinvent their businesses in this digital age. To be more effective, more profitable and more agile.” Shantanu Narayen, President and CEO – Adobe Systems Inc.
The kickoff session was about using all of the available tools to create a uniform experience across multiple platforms and mediums. Development is no longer just about making sure your application works on a PC and a MAC, but that it looks and functions the same on all web enabled devices (web browsers, desktops, smart phones, web enabled TVs)
Flash 10.1 which will start rolling out on computers, netbooks and mobile devices in early 2010 will eliminate the need to build different versions for multiple devices and allow developers to build and maintain one codebase. The notable exception is the iPhone (and iTouch) which will support pre-compiled flash apps, but not web based flash through the built in Safari browser.
With Adobe’s pending acquisition of Omniture, it will become easier than ever to allow developers to gain access to analytics for rich internet applications.
The first session was closed out with a exclusive sneak peak of the upcoming film Avatar introduced by producer Jon Landau. He explained how they used Adobe products to solve real life production issues and throughout the entire production process. 3D technology has definitely come a long way!
General Session #2
The second general session focused on real life applications built using Adobe technologies.
FedEx has developed a real-time tracking application with Flex and LiveCycle Data Services that allows them to monitor the location and status of their delivery vehicles. It can also track trending and send alerts when it detects problems with equipment or delivery delays. History is also stored and can be used to replay the route for review.
The crowd was shown a demonstration about a truck with a failing refrigeration unit and a package that needed to remain between a certain temperature range. When a sensor started showing a rise in temperature over a relatively short period of time staff was alerted and immediately began to look for a service location on the current route. The truck was re-routed and the delivery times were updated to display the new delivery time. Within 20 minutes the vehicle was fixed and the driver back on to the destination. Once the vehicle was within 30 minutes of the destination a delivery alert was sent to the recipient and the package was delivered on time. In this case, the application helped FedEx prevent delivery of a spoiled product and the liability of replacing the item as well as meeting the customers’ expectations. (http://www.youtube.com/?v=Tqn2iXsqQ44)
The U.S. Postal Service Augmented Reality demo was by far the most practical AR application that I have seen to date. The premise is o place the item you would like to ship in front of the camera and a virtual box appears around it. This allows the user to select the correct size box for shipping. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WpS3LeCiCtc)
John Mayer Augmented Reality demo – http://max.adobe.com/johnmayer/
Sneak Peeks – These live demonstrations showcase features that Adobe is working on to make their products better. Among the fan favorites were Hierarchical Undo, Content Aware filling, ROME, server side actionscript and the Flash CS5 physics engine. These features, while still in early beta, are impressive to say the least and promise to help designers and developers to spend less time working and more time on innovation.
The conference provided valuable information about all of Adobe’s products. While I tailored my sessions to focus mainly to Cold Fusion, most of them also detailed how the different products work together seamlessly to provide the best solution for the end user.
Additional information and links to the general and individual sessions can be found at http://max.adobe.com
Given the rainy temperament of Mother Nature lately, it’s only fitting that Lawrence & Schiller is now sharing its website umbrella with our friends at L&S TeleServices. Our offices may be across town, but our philosophies are the same—go 5280 for our clients every day. The new section is modeled after our travel industry segment and highlights L&S’s expertise in call center services.
Learn more about the customer care for which L&S TeleServices famous.
check out this article from eMarketer:
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TV, Internet, mobile: up, up, up
Americans are consuming more video content across their three screens—television, Internet and mobile—according to The Nielsen Company.
The research firm’s “A2/M2 Three Screen Report—2nd Quarter 2009” indicates the screen to gain the most US video viewers was mobile, with a 70% year-over-year increase. Traditional television viewing climbed by 0.9% between Q2 2008 and Q2 2009, while online video viewing was up significantly in June (due to changes in methodology, online figures should be used for directional purposes only). Timeshifted TV viewing was on the rise as well, with 32.2% more viewers in Q2 2009 than the prior year.
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Viewing on all screens is up year-over-year, with the largest gains in internet usage, followed by timeshifted TV, video on the internet, and mobile usage. The article goes on to say “Consumers also reported watching more than 141 monthly hours of traditional TV, and 7 hours and 16 minutes of timeshifted TV per month.” Consumer internet usage dropped from 26:29 to 26:15 from 2008 to 2009. Currently, 25% of all homes have a DVR.
For season premiere week?! I AM!!! The official start of the 09-10 TV is about to commence, so set those DVRs (or VCRs if you must), dust off your remote and get ready for a busy fall! I’m just giddy…
New shows are bolded. For more information about each show, follow the network link.
ABC
Dancing With the Stars: Monday, Sept. 21, 8 p.m. ET
Castle: Monday, Sept. 21, 10 p.m. ET
The Forgotten: Tuesday, Sept. 22, 10 p.m. ET
Dancing With the Stars Results Show: Wednesday, Sept. 23, 8 p.m. ET (special day and time)
Modern Family: Wednesday, Sept. 23, 9 p.m. ET
Cougar Town: Wednesday, Sept. 23, 9:30 p.m. ET
Eastwick: Wednesday, Sept. 23, 10 p.m. ET
FlashFoward: Thursday, Sept. 24, 8 p.m. ET
Grey’s Anatomy: Thursday, Sept. 24, 9 p.m. ET
Extreme Makeover: Home Edition: Sunday, Sept. 27, 7 p.m. ET (two hours)
Desperate Housewives: Sunday, Sept. 27, 9 p.m. ET
Brothers & Sisters: Sunday, Sept. 27, 10 p.m. ET
Shark Tank: Tuesday, Sept. 29, 8 p.m. ET (summer run began on Sunday, Aug. 9)
Hank: Wednesday, Sept. 30, 8 p.m. ET
The Middle: Wednesday, Sept. 30, 8:30 p.m. ET
America’s Funniest Home Videos: Sunday, Oct. 4, 7 p.m. ET
Ugly Betty: Friday, Oct. 9, 8 p.m. ET (two hours)
Supernanny: Friday, Oct. 16, 8 p.m. ET
CBS
Survivor: Samoa: Thursday, Sept. 17, 8 p.m. ET
How I Met Your Mother: Monday, Sept. 21, 8 p.m. ET
Accidentally on Purpose: Monday, Sept. 21, 8:30 p.m. ET
Two and a Half Men: Monday, Sept. 21, 9 p.m. ET
The Big Bang Theory: Monday, Sept. 21, 9:30 p.m. ET
CSI: Miami: Monday, Sept. 21, 10 p.m. ET
NCIS: Tuesday, Sept. 22, 8 p.m. ET
NCIS: Los Angeles: Tuesday, Sept. 22, 9 p.m. ET
The Good Wife: Tuesday, Sept. 22, 10 p.m. ET
The New Adventures of Old Christine: Wednesday, Sept. 23, 8 p.m. ET
Gary Unmarried: Wednesday, Sept. 23, 8:30 p.m. ET
Criminal Minds: Wednesday, Sept. 23, 9 p.m. ET
CSI: NY: Wednesday, Sept. 23, 10 p.m. ET
CSI: Thursday, Sept. 24: Thursday, Sept. 24: 9 p.m. ET
The Mentalist: Thursday, Sept. 24: Thursday, Sept. 24: 10 p.m. ET
Ghost Whisperer: Friday, Sept. 25, 8 p.m. ET
Medium: Friday, Sept. 25, 9 p.m. ET
Numbers: Friday, Sept. 25, 10 p.m. ET
48 Hours Mystery: Saturday, Sept. 26, 10 p.m. ET
60 Minutes: Sunday, Sept. 27, 7 p.m. ET
The Amazing Race: Sunday, Sept. 27, 8 p.m. ET
Cold Case: Sunday, Sept. 27, 10 p.m. ET
Three Rivers: Sunday, Oct. 4, 9 p.m. ET
NBC
The Jay Leno Show: Monday, Sept. 14, 10 p.m. ET (series premiere, M-F)
The Biggest Loser: Tuesday, Sept. 15, 8 p.m. ET (two hours)
Saturday Night Live Weekend Thursday Update: Thursday, Sept. 17, 8 p.m. ET
Parks and Recreations: Thursday, Sept. 17, 8:30 p.m. ET
The Office: Thursday, Sept. 17, 9 p.m. ET
Community: Thursday, Sept. 17, 9:30 p.m. ET; moves to Thursday 8 p.m. six weeks later
Heroes: Monday, Sept. 21, 8 p.m. ET (new time, two hours)
Mercy: Wednesday, Sept. 23, 8 p.m. ET
Law & Order: SVU: Wednesday, Sept. 23, 9 p.m. ET (new day and time)
Law & Order: Friday, Sept. 25, 8 p.m. ET (new day and time)
Southland: Friday, Sept. 25, 9 p.m. ET (new time)
Dateline: Saturday, Sept. 26, 8 p.m. ET
Trauma: Monday, Sept. 28, 9 p.m. ET
Community: Thursday, Oct. 8, 8 p.m. ET (new time period)
30 Rock: Thursday, Oct. 15, 9:30 p.m. ET
FOX
Cops: Saturday, Sept. 12, 8 p.m. ET
America’s Most Wanted: Saturday, Sept. 12, 9 p.m. ET
So You Think You Can Dance: Wednesday, Sept. 16, 8 p.m. ET
Glee: Wednesday, Sept. 16, 9 p.m. ET
Bones: Thursday, Sept. 17, 8 p.m. ET
Fringe: Thursday, Sept. 17, 9 p.m. ET
Brothers: Friday, Sept. 18, 8 p.m. ET
‘Til Death: Friday, Sept. 18, 8:30 p.m. ET
Dollhouse: Friday, Sept. 18, 9 p.m. ET
House: Monday, Sept. 21, 8 p.m. ET (two hours)
The Simpsons: Sunday, Sept. 27, 8 p.m. ET
The Cleveland Show: Sunday, Sept. 27, 8:30 p.m. ET
Family Guy: Sunday, Sept. 27, 9 p.m. ET
American Dad: Sunday, Sept. 27, 9:30 p.m. ET
Lie To Me: Monday, Sept. 28, 9 p.m. ET
The Wanda Sykes Show: Saturday, Nov. 7, 11 p.m. ET
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Since 1999 Search Engine Strategies (SES) has been presenting one of THE best conference series on search engine marketing. Doesn’t matter if you’re a novice or an expert, interested in search engine optimization (SEO) or pay-per-click (PPC) placement, digital PR or analysis of a campaign’s ROI, SES offers a wealthy of information.
Robin Temple, Director of Digital Marketing at Lawrence & Schiller attended the most recent SES conference (San Jose). In this episode of The Extra Minute, Robin discusses what’s new in search marketing now and what we can expect in the future.
The San Jose SES Conference also provided an opportunity for Lawrence & Schiller to step up to the speaker’s podium. Billie Jo Waara, Director of Account Planning and Research, spoke on “Small Voices, Big Impact: Social Media for the Little Guy.”
Congratulations to South Dakota Tourism and L&S!
The Black Hills Digital Strategy co-op won the U.S. Travel Association’s Mercury Award for most innovative digital campaign. Nicknamed “the Oscar of Tourism” on twitter, the Mercury Award is given out in 12 different categories. SD Tourism joins the ranks of North Carolina, Oregon and past winners such as Michigan, Virginia and Florida.
The 2008 Black Hills Digital Strategy campaign targeted three niches of travelers: history, adventure and RV’ers. Through PPC, banner ad, landing pages and email efforts, the Black Hills promoted vacation packages, online booking and three vacation giveaways. This effort resulted in over 40,000 new leads for the Black Hills, including nearly 14,000 entries for the vacation giveaways. Web traffic to partner websites also saw a 27% increase.The awards gala was held last night in Lake Tahoe. This is the third Mercury Award won by South Dakota.
It’s rare to find someone who isn’t utilizing social media because they just don’t know about it. At least, that’s how it is with the people I know. Typically, those who aren’t using a given social medium (like Twitter or Facebook) are doing so for one of two reasons.
The first reason is lifestyle. These people much prefer meeting in person and hanging out IRL, if you will, to “Friending” people in a virtual society. Those people look at social media and say, “meh”. They eventually join, but they never get to the point of actually uploading a display picture or writing that first “Just lookin” update.
The second reason is attitude. These people despise the medium. Perhaps they joined early on, had a poor experience, and never looked back. Perhaps they just feel that such a popular site is now too common and passé for them. These people are snobs; if they do join the service they abhor, they usually just complain about how much “it sucks”.
That said, I discovered a third reason. That reason is ignorance. These people simply did not know that such websites existed. They had no idea, prior to joining, that they could connect with friends and family from all over the world through a website. I was introduced to this third tier when I received a friend request from Facebook with a message simply asking, “Are we related?”
The best problem a website can have is too much success. Visitors flocking to your site in record numbers, orders coming in faster than you can process them, and advertising revenue is soaring. So why is this a problem?
With increased traffic comes greater resource usage and higher hosting costs. In most dynamic applications, each requested page goes through a series of actions before the content is returned to the browser. Without getting into too much detail here are the steps of a basic request.
So what can be done to make sure your site is as lean as possible?
There are at least a hundred steps to planning, designing and developing a great looking, fully functional website and none of them should be overlooked. Unfortunately , this article is only going cover some of the best practices for development, but if you have questions about your site feel free to contact us.
HTML/CSS
HTML and CSS design are the building blocks of your website, they should be well planned before coding begins. The site should be well structured and allow for simple changes. Make sure to follow web standards, use a valid doctype, XHTML valid code is preferred (lowercase tags and attributes, close tags, etc.) and don’t forget about accessibility guidelines for disabled users. These options don’t do much for page weight, but a well formatted (X)HTML document will render better and faster in the browser than an invalid one will.
CSS should be used as much as possible and should be in an external file included in the <head> tag of your HTML. This allows the browser to cache the .css file and you can reuse the rules across the entire site without having them hard-coded in every page.
For example <p><strong><u>this text is bold and underlined</u></strong></p> should be re-written as <p class=”bold underline”> this text is bold and underlined </p> . This way if you want to change the color of the bold text to red you can update your .css rule in one place and it will update the entire site. .bold {font-weight:bold; color:#f00;}
CSS is not just used to control text size, color and decoration, it controls the look and feel of the entire site. (margins, padding, spacing, positioning, fonts, colors, sizes, backgrounds)
NOTE: Don’t forget to validate your HTML/CSS files. Failure to do so could lead to hours of wasted time debugging issues that could be nothing more than a typo.
Javascript
Javascript can be one of the simplest things to add to a site to increase user experience, it can also easily double the size of your document in a hurry.
If you are using a Javascript library (jQuery, YUI and MooTools come to mind) don’t just include it to look cool. If you are not going to use it, don’t include it. Also, if you are only going to use 1 feature of the entire library then maybe it is not your best option. All of the great functionality of a Javascript library and its associated plugins can come with a hefty download price, but the good news is javascript files are cached by the browser and should only need to be downloaded once.
Use external Javascript files – If you are not building your script on the fly, there is no reason to put the code directly in your page. Include it in the <head> and pay attention to load order. Again, combine files whenever possible. (Yes, there is debate over loading at the top of the page versus the bottom due to parallel download issues, but that also depends on what your script does and I’m a creature of habit)
Minify your files – The minification process removes comments and whitespace from Javascript files and can reduce the size by half.
NOTE: Don’t assume that everyone has Javascript enabled. Make use of the <noscript> tag.
Images
Watch your file sizes (Save for web is your friend) – I have seen many examples of users just hitting save on a file and including it in their code without ever looking at the size. Right click on an image and click properties. If the image is over 20KB it is too large.
File type is important – jpg, gif, png are not all the same, a 30KB jpg file might be a 5KB gif or vice-versa.
Use CSS whenever possible in place of images. Strategic use of Javascript and CSS can reduce the number of images your page uses.
Don’t use width and height to resize a large image. If you would like to display an 800×600 image as 80×60 create a new image. The thumbnail will download quicker and you are less likely to have image distortion.
Video
Video can be a real catch-22, you want your users to watch it, but when they do your bandwidth usage goes through the roof. Video codecs are getting better all the time so make sure you are using the right one. Finding the right with the right settings will give you high quality video at the best bit rate possible.
The other option is to use a Content Delivery Network (CDN). They will host your video and stream it using their bandwidth for a monthly fee.
Server/Application
Minimize HTTP requests – The fewer connections you need to make to the server the faster your page will load.
Cache settings – Use Expires or Cache-Control to keep objects in the local users cache. Not only does this reduce bandwidth usage, it will increase the users perceived speed of the site because it only needs to download new or changed items.
Use http compression on the server – it will decrease your HTML, CSS and Javascript files by up to 75%
Best Practices
Do your best to combine resources. You don’t need 5 different CSS files loaded into one page. You are only slowing down the page by creating more connections to the server.
Monitor files created and uploaded by 3rd party processes – there are usually settings to control image quality and that could mean the difference between 100K images and 300K files. Believe me, on a high demand website this makes a world of difference in bandwidth usage.
Monitor your site statistics. They provide valuable information that can be vital to the success of your business.
Review your site frequently, technology changes quickly and it is quite possible that there are now better ways to accomplish something that was done months ago.
And last but not least, test your site in all major browsers. (Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome, Safari)
Tools
Here are a few tools at your disposal to help evaluate your page validity and weight.
http://validator.w3.org/ – HTML Validation
http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/ – CSS Validation
http://www.netmechanic.com – slightly outdated, but nice to see image sizes and load time
Firefox Plugins – FireBug, YSlow
Of course none of this makes any difference if your server side code and database isn’t optimized to handle the heavy traffic, but that is a post for another time.
I just received this video link via a digital community news feed. As the video discusses, and as we discussed last week with businesses of all sizes, “Is social media a fad?” and how do we measure its true value? Its great food for thought as I take a few moments to digest all of the notes and information in my literature bag from last week’s national Search Engine Strategies San Jose conference (#sessj).
Last week, Lawrence and Schiller had the opportunity to share our social media expertise with other professionals from across the country in search engine and digital marketing. Great topics, great conversations and I’m excited to share a quick summary of insights discussed during the event.
Search is about people. Not keywords. Search engine strategies to reach customers are not meant to be separate from your social media relationships. Today, and even more in the future, people are expecting results that reflect the most up-to-date and relevant content. User-intent and user-influence are key considerations when understanding and preparing for the way search engines will index sites and the deliver the results we see today and in the future.
SEO adds fire to Public Relations. As quoted in the video, “We no longer search for news, the news finds us.” Using social media tools and best practices for SEO are key to ensuring the right audiences find the relevant news we all want to share. Researching keyword trends, editorial calendars, writing the way the audiences are searching, keeping headlines short and simple are just a few ways we can ensure “news” continues rank well and has maximum reach with leading search engines and social media platforms.
Social CRM. Its here. Discussions on ways to integrate existing CRM technologies with social media conversations piqued my interest last week. We’ve begun the path of integrating the newest CRM 2.0 or social CRM tools within our existing enterprise systems – but the world is always changing and there’s more that we can do to ensure our clients have the tools they need. Businesses are always looking efficient ways to respond to customers from a variety of communication sources, and that includes the most popular social media platforms. Engaging in customer-driven conversations, and measuring those efforts, is the next stage in building effective relationships. These effective conversations lead to relevant search results, which in turns leads to more people finding you.
In short, no matter what the next stage in search strategies, social media, or any other aspect of marketing that leads today’s conference topics, its clear that the fundamental value of any communication hasn’t changed. The goal of great marketing is now, more than ever, about RELATIONSHIPS. The tools, the strategies and the places in today’s world are dynamic and evolving, but the basics of a good conversation never go away.
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What a great day at Search Engine Strategies, San Jose! It’s an honor for L&S to be here as a guest presenter. It was a full day of thought leadership, brainstorming with industry execs and now we’re off to the social events. Among the great sessions today, Clay Shirky opened up SES San Jose with an overview of his book, Here Comes Everybody. My notes from the session:
Clay discusses the major changes in media as a true revolution based on three principles:
It’s not the shiny new object’s arrival that is revolutionary; it’s when people use it without even thinking about it that results in true social changes and shifts in behavior. Tools only change society when they’re accompanied my motivation. The key to understanding why people participate in social media is to get to the bottom of their motivation? Clay discussed the differences in intrinsic and extrinsic motivations. Social media is most successful when it’s lead by people with passion. Often extrinsic motivations, such as monetary compensation, ruin the fire that fuels great long-term engagement online.
Clay provided the 3 primary reasons why people engage:
Sociology matters more than it ever has in media. Characteristics of user’s motivations are what really matters and what makes tools important. The question to ask is not “why do people take part in a particular social movement” rather it should be “why does this come as a surprise?”
The cost of the media landscape is now so low that the logic of media has changed. Content used to be filtered first and then published, because everything cost money. Now content is published and then filtered. The audience or readership decides whether to filter it or not. Producers of content don’t generally have mass audiences in mind; they are more likely to target their content and conversations to their friends and networks. No professional media network has ever had the power that intrinsic motivations can relay… intrinsic motivations result in fulfillment, which fuels passion.
Key head shift:
Thanks for the thought-provoking session, Clay! Great stuff. Read more at http://www.herecomeseverybody.org/. More to come!
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Going to the hospital can be scary business if you’re a kid. Ok… let’s be honest… it can be unnerving for parents too.
Often the fear is based on the unknown. What is it like in the hospital? What will the room look like? What can I bring and what has to stay home?
Providing answers in a kid-friendly way is the goal of the Kid Zone. The Kid Zone is a colorful, animated and interactive micro-site developed by Sanford Health. It includes a guided tour of the Sanford Children’s Hospital, links to health information and now, an online coloring book.
In this episode of The Extra Minute, Natalie Eisenberg, account executive at Lawrence & Schiler, explains why the Kid Zone has been created and why Sanford believes it’s an important service to provide.
Kevin Perlic has joined L&S as a Broadcast Producer. An Ohio native, Kevin earned his degree from Cleveland State University and worked at a production company in the city for ten years. At Lawrence & Schiller, Kevin will work with several clients to edit and produce TV commercials and videos.
The agency has also added two full-time interns to the mix.
Katie Fritz joins L&S as a recent graduate from South Dakota State University. Katie graduated with a graphic design degree and will work as a Production and Graphics Intern with the agency’s client and web teams.
A previous L&S intern, Jamie Bulian will return to the agency as a Copywriting Intern. A University of South Dakota graduate, Jamie also works as a freelance writer for 605 Magazine and the Ribs, Rods, Rock & Roll event in Vermillion.
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If you live in the small communities that make up Middle America, you are used to hearing about new technology… and not having it available in your area. It’s the ultimate dangling carrot. The technology tease.
But not this time! Midcontinent Communications is bringing DOCSIS 3.0 to the heartland. In fact, West Fargo, ND is getting the high speed Internet network before Manhattan!
In this issue of The Extra Minute, hear how Midcontinent Communications is using digital public relations and social media tospread the word of this exciting technology advance.
Related Links
MidcoNews blog
Midcontinent Communications
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Is advertising art? Is art ever advertising?
These questions are much more than rhetorical. They stretch all the way from the design studio to the board room. In this episode of The Extra Minute, Dan Edmonds, Vice President of Design Services at Lawrence & Schiller, weighs in with his thoughts on the subject.
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In the heat of the moment how do people really feel about your brand? What do they feel when using your products or services? What do they say to others about you?
Answering those questions is becoming easier than ever thanks to social media monitoring. But it takes time plus the right tools and techniques to discover relevant conversations and respond appropriately.
During this episode of The Extra Minute Courtney Lotzer, Account Planning & Research Specialist at Lawrence & Schiller, shares her experience with social media monitoring and offers some advice. If you’d like to take a deeper dive into this topic, check out session 3 of the L&S webinar series – Simple Steps to Measure Your Digital Dialogue.
For all the talk about Twitter and Facebook you’d think everyone is America is tweeting and updating their status. But the reality is nearly two thirds of American adults have never created an online profile and joined a social network.
If you’re part of this silent majority, it’s time to start managing your online identity. Here are three simple steps you should take to claim your virtual territory and protect your personal brand.
Now that you have an idea of how competitive the online space is for your name you’re ready for the next step.
Stake a claim to your online territory by setting up accounts in the top digital properties.
After setting up your accounts, use them! Find people with similar interests. Listen to their conversations and join the discussion.
Just because you’ve established your online identity doesn’t mean the job is done! Now is the time to start listening for comments, feedback, anything that mentions your name.
According to Pew Internet research, nearly half of us have searched online for information about ourselves. Unfortunately only 3% do it on a regular basis! Once you’ve established your online identity you won’t be able to manage it unless you monitor on a regular basis.
See More Of The Story
Click on the play button below to watch “Claiming Your Virtual Territory“ from KELOLAND-TV.
This week, L&S welcomed a new face to the 5280 family.
Chad Riedel joins Lawrence & Schiller as a Production Artist, where he’ll work on designing print and multimedia executions for clients. Chad is a South Dakota State University graduate with a graphic design major. He has previous experience working with motion graphics and animation for Keyframe, a division of Daktronics in Brookings.
Chad is excited to get his first dose of “real agency experience” here at the state’s biggest advertising firm. A South Dakota native, he enjoys hunting and the outdoors in his spare time.
