Over the last couple of weeks, it seems as if the Goog has been doing a bit of reconciliation on the old analytics front, in particular the ability to track traffic driven back to your website from links contained within a feed published from that site using Feedburner…

The first thing I’d noticed as being different was the appearance Google Analytics tracking codes on Feedburner powered posts that I was reading in Google Reader – opening such a post in a new window seems to display it with a set full blown set of GA tracking attributes. So for example, opening a post from the Feedburnered OUsful.Info feed results in a URI like this:

http://ouseful.wordpress.com/2009/11/18/under-the-radar/?
utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed
&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+ouseful+%28OUseful+Info%29&utm_content=Google+Reader

…and I’m pretty sure I didn’t put those tracking codes in there explicitly…

In “Campaign” Tracking With Google Analytics, I started sketching out how it might be possible to use Google Analytics campaign tracking codes to to track the spread of referrer links to documents or document fragments hosted on WriteToReply or JISCPress, so let’s see how the Feedburner annoations are structured:

• utm_source=feedburner (that is, the originator of the feed);
• utm_medium=feed (that is, the means by which the content was transported/syndicated);
• utm_campaign=Feed: ouseful (OUseful Info) (that is, the name of the Feedburner feed (I think: the feed URL is http://feedburner.com/ouseful), followed by the feed title (OUseful Info);
• utm_content=Google Reader (that is, the place where I viewed the link).

Compare this with the suggestion I made for annotating WriteToReply links:

• utm_source=twitter.com (that is, the place a link was ‘launched’);
• utm_medium=question (that is, the type of slug content used to qualify the link);
• utm_campaign=jiscri (that is, the consultation document linked to, e.g. for the link <em.http://writetoreply.org/jiscri/2009/03/11/rapid-innovation-projects/);
• utm_content=slug3 (that is, a unique ID to identify the text used to qualify the syndicated link).

So how can you get Googalytics tracking codes on your Feedburner feeds? Details are still sketchy, (e.g. see the original announcement on the Goole Analytics blog here: An Integration With Feedburner, and the Google AdSense for Feeds blog here: “Afternoon, Frank.” “Hey howdy, George.”) but this Google FAQ post on How do I set up my FeedBurner feed to report feed clicks in Google Analytics?:

If you use Google Analytics to track web site visitors, you can see feed clicks originating from your FeedBurner feed by activating an option on the Analyze tab.

When someone clicks one of your feed items and ends up back on your web site, Google Analytics will track that activity and include it in the “Traffic Sources” section.

The post also tells you where you can set up the tracking details – from the Configure Stats menu option. And selecting that, I can now see why my feed links are annotated as they are:

(I’m not sure how the $distributionEndpoint is treated for none Google properties?)

The Google AdSense for Feeds post suggests that:

By default, these analytics will show up in the “All Traffic Sources” and “Campaigns” views in Google Analytics. You can filter the results just to only the traffic that comes from Google FeedBurner by filtering on “feedburner” on the All Traffic Sources page or “Feed:” on the campaigns view. You can also use these sources in the Advanced Segments views.

which suggests that for sites like JISCPress/WriteToReply that use Google Analytics on the main site and Feedburner for the public/promoted feeds, the Feedburner integration will automatically annotate feed links with tracking codes that can be tracked from the site’s Google Analytics dashboard.

Creating your WordPress feed (WordPress.com)
Print

1. Enter your blog’s web address in the “Ready to Burn?” form found on FeedBurner’s homepage and at the bottom of the pages in the Blog and Podcast sections. If you plan to publish a podcast with your WordPress feed, check the “I am a podcaster” box. Click Next ».

The Identify Feed Source page should appear.

2. On “Welcome”, make sure the title and FeedBurner address (URI) of your new feed are values you prefer.

The Create or Sign In To Your FeedBurner Account page should appear.

3. Also on this page, create a FeedBurner account by picking a username and password and supplying your email address.

When you’ve supplied all the required information on this page, click Activate Feed ». A Congrats page should appear.

4. Read all of the information on this page, then click Next » to continue with the setup process.

5. If you selected “I am a podcaster” on the homepage, configuration options for our SmartCast™ service will appear. Here you can supply categories and other informataion for iTunes, append a copyright message and submit your podcast to Yahoo! Search.
When you are finished, click Next ». Configuration options for FeedBurner stats services should appear.

6. On the stats configuration page, select the level of feed stats detail you want. If you select TotalStats PRO, you will be asked for a credit card in the next step

Click Next » to finish the setup process and enter our feed management interface.

You’re now ready to make your FeedBurner feed available on your WordPress site!

Curiositat: utilitzeu lector de feeds? quin?

Hey all,

Just a quick note to let you know that I am deactivating Feedburner for new sign ups.

WordPress have recently developed a new HTML based subscripton tool, which I think is far superior, and so I’d love for all new sign-ups to go through this list, as I think that it better showcases my content and allows my subscribers to get more out of my feed. After all, you guys are the fantastic people who read all of my posts (hopefully!!), and so you deserve the best!

To subscribe to my blog, please click on the link in the side bar marked ‘Email Subscription’ and follow the prompts. I believe that you should be able to select the frequency that the email comes out, ranging from instantly to weekly. If you choose daily, my posts will be sent between 6am-8am GMT, and if you choose weekly, they will arrive on Saturday morning, GMT.

A sample of the new WordPress subscriber emails

The RSS feed remains unchanged and is still available for new subscribers.

If you’re currently on the original Feedburner subscription, you will still continue to receive my blog via the usual emails – I am not deactivating the service, just moving folk towards the new system. However, you may wish to consider unsubscribing from the Feedburner emails, and then re-signing up to my blog to get the new HTML based WordPress subscription emails.

Also, people who subscribe – do you have a blog or vlog of your own that I can follow? Do let me know!

If anyone has any queries or issues, do please let me know via comments

Thanks a mil guys, Gx

(PS, the only niggle with the new system is that it cannot display the thumbnail of YouTube or Vimeo clips in the email… so you just need to visit my blog (as before) by simply clicking on the title of the emailed post  to see the YouTube or Vimeo clip).

Hacia el año 2007 Google se hacía con el servicio FeedBurner, que nos permite tener diversas estadísticas del feed de determinada publicación.

Cuando los del buscador compraron FeedBurner todos esperábamos que, como suele ser costumbre, lo mejoraran considerablemente, pero no, no pasó nada de eso, Google se olvidó prácticamente del servicio (en gran parte).

Pues bien, después de mucho esperar ha llegado algo lógico y casi casi hasta deseado por muchos: FeedBurner se integra con Google Analytics. Ahora , las estadísticas que podemos ver relacionadas con nuestro feed gestionado con FeedBurner en Analytics son aún muy reducidas, solo se proporcionan números relacionados con el tráfico que nos llega desde los feeds. El conteo de suscriptores (de lo que más interesa sin ninguna duda), por el momento se queda fuera de la integración.

Sea como sea Google ya ha dicho que en próximas semanas irán añadiendo más datos y funciones. Estamos ante el primer movimiento realmente interesante (o el segundo como mucho) de Google respecto a FeedBurner, retoman el interés por el mismo, de lo cual nos alegramos en AulaGeek.

Vía| ReadWriteWeb España

• FeedBurner and Google Analytics: Together at Last
• Social Media Can Change The World Through Common Ground
• Five Best Online Backup Tools [Hive Five]
• Torrent-Website mit Browserdownloads (httpTorrents)
• Mobil – “10 Dinge, die Android besser kann als das iPhone”

dotexe.wordpress.com – Akhirnya Google mengobati kekecewaan banyak pihak terhadapnya pasca mengakuisi FeedBurner 2007 yang lalu. Pasca akuisisi itu, FeedBurner belum terintegrasi dengan baik pada Google Analytics, yang justru merupakan tombak ampuh Google. Tapi, sekarang kekecewaan itu terobati,karena Google telah mengumumkan bahwa FeedBurner telah selesai diintegrasikan dengan FeedBurner.

Seperti dikutip dotEXE di blog resmi tim pengembangan FeedBurner, oleh Steve Olechowski

“If you use either AdSense for feeds or Google FeedBurner to track item clicks and also use Google Analytics, as of today, you will automatically start to see your feed item click analytics show up in Google Analytics with some additional information added to help you understand how distributing your feed with FeedBurner leads to traffic on your site,”

Tampaknya google tidak ingin melakukan kesalahan lagi dengan membiarkan investasi yang dibelinya berakhir sia-sia hanya karena tak bersahabat dengan produk satu atapnya yang lain.

[ Via Softpedia ]

قبل فترة ليست ببعيدة وفرت ووردبريس.كوم مربع جديد الى جانب مربعات القائمة الجانبية و هو ( اشتراكات المدونة ) و نعني به القائمة البريدية فعند تفعيل هذا المربع المميز و المهم لكل مدونة سيكون لديك صندوق يمكن للزائر اضافة بريده الالكتروني _ و ستصله رسالة لتفعيل اشتراكه _ بدلا من الانتقال الى رابط اخر و بالاحرى هو الاستغناء التام عن خدمة FeedBurner او اي خدمة اخرى في عمل القائمة البريدية فهي اصبحت من الماضي ، و اذا كان لديك حساب في الووردبريس.كوم و وجدت مدونة تستحق المتابعة فيمكنك الاشتراك في القائمة البريدية  لها دون الحاجة لادخال بريدك الالكتروني ! ،  و تكمن فائدة القائمة البريدية في مدونتك بزيادة نسبة متابعيها فهنالك زوار يفضلون متابعتها من خلال الاشتراك في القائمة البريدية.

اذن كيف أفعلها في مدونتي  :

تابع الشرح مع الصور ….

اختر اولا من بين المربعات المتوفرة هذا المربع ( اشتراكات المدونة ) .

و اسحب المربع الى السايدبار الخاص بمدونتك و ضعه في مكان مناسب ليراه الزائر و ستلاحظ بانه غير معرب .

قم بالتعديلات اللازمة و ذلك بتعريبه و استبدل العبارات الانجليزية باخرى عربية دون الاخلال بالمعنى  كما هو موضح في الصورة اعلاه و بعدها احفظ التعديلات و مبروك عليك قد اصبحت لديك قائمة بريدية في مدونتك   .

ادارة القائمة البريدية :

كنت اظن للوهلة الاولى بان صاحب المدونة هو الذي يستطيع ادارة القائمة البريدية و المشتركين فيها و لكن بعد التدقيق و التمحيص و التجربة وجدت بانه لا يمكنه التحكم بالقائمة البريدية  لمدونته و المشتركين فيها، لكن يستطيع كل مشترك في القائمة البريدية من التحكم باشتراكه  فالذي ليس لديه حساب في الووردبريس.كوم قلنا ستصله رسالة لتفعيل اشتراكه وذلك بالضغط على (Click me to confirm this subscription )  حيث  سينتقل الى صفحة جديدة ليتحكم  باشتراكه كما هو موضح بالصور ادناه :

ان لوحة تحكم الاشتراكات تمكن المشترك في القائمة البريدية من انهاء اشتراكه في مدونة معينة وتحدد وقت ارسال التدوينات الى بريده وغيرها من الخيارات التي توفرها .

اما الذي لديه حساب في الووردبريس.كوم فيستطيع التحكم باشتراكتاته بمجرد الضغط على ( اشتراكات ) في لوحة التحكم الخاصة به كما هو موضح في الصورة ادناه .

و انا باعتقادي ان  خدمة Feedburner ستتفوق في هذا الجانب  لكون انك تستطيع التحكم في المشتركين في قائمتك  البريدية اما هذه الخدمة التي توفرها ووردبريس .كوم  فلا توفر مثل هذه الخاصية .

وختاما :

ان جميع حقوق الشرح محفوظة لمدونة كنعان و اي نقل دون ذكر المصدر انما هو تعد على حقوق الملكية  انظر صفحة سياسة النشر ، و يمكنك  متابعة المدونة من خلال الاشتراك في القائمة البريدية او من خلال الاشتراك في الخلاصة RSS .

After years of waiting, FeedBurner users can finally see their stats in Google Analytics. Google acquired FeedBurner in 2007. Since then, there has been a lot of grumbling about how Google handled the transition and the lack of innovation in FeedBurner since the acquisition. The integration with Google Analytics is still hidden and incomplete – right now you can only see feed item click data – but Google promises to slowly add more data in the coming weeks.

Subscriber count – the one statistic that many bloggers are most interested in – is not part of this current integration. Right now, you can only see data about the traffic that your feeds brought to your site.

How to See these Stats

Getting to this data isn’t easy, though. First of all, you have to use AdSense for feed or FeedBurner to track this data. Then, in Google Analytics, you have to go to Traffic Sources and click on All Traffic Sources. After this, you still have to filter your traffic by entering ‘feedburner’ in the search box at the bottom of the page. In the Campaigns view you can also filter stats by ‘feedburner.’

In today’s announcement, Google explains how to customize the way FeedBurner tags clicks it sends to Google Analytics. Google plans to create more endpoints for FeedBurner data in the near future.

More to Come

FeedBurner users will be happy to hear that Google plans to release more features in FeedBurner that will take advantage of this new functionality in the coming weeks. FeedBurner had been lying dormant for quite a while. Today’s announcement hopefully signals the end of this stage in FeedBurner’s development.

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/feedburner_and_google_analytics_together_at_last.php?

The explosion of the web may have caught out newspapers and a lot of journalists, but early adopters have been able to thrive in an environment where one man’s threat is another’s opportunity.

Certainly the web has caused a lot of problems for media and journalists, but the tools to adapt to this changing market have been provided for us.

What’s more, the vast majority of the most important ones for bloggers, journalists, editors and even PRs and marketers are freely available, easy to use and – perhaps most importantly – free.

Some of these tools are suited to building traffic, some for measuring traffic, some for sharing or collecting information and others to add value to traditional content.

Some will suit you, others will not. A couple may even be irrelevant and I will make no claims for what they will do for your traffic, brand, revenues or social life.

But these are all tools that I use, in some cases vital tools, and if you accept the metaphor of modern journalist as media Swiss Army Knife you need to constantly develop your skills and make use of the largely free tools you have at your disposal.

There are, literally, thousands of them out there and it can be confusing as to which may be of help and which – in all likelihood – will not.

These are the tools and applications I find most useful and I’ve tried to keep the apps, and descriptions of them, fairly basic. There may be some obvious ones I miss out, which just means I haven’t got round to making use of them or I don’t consider them worth flagging up for starters.

There seems to be a lot of suspicion surrounding social media and Web 2.0 apps. All I have to say to that is this: They are tools. How, and whether, you use them is up to you.

The only criteria are that they’re predominantly free and they are basic, widely-available online tools or apps.

Anyway, without further ado here’s the selection. Dive in.

Twitter and related

Twitter is, to my mind, so important now for online media types that it’s got a category of its own.

Twitter

The Web 2.0 Telegraph is the most fitting description I’ve seen of Twitter. Twitter is simply the platform of choice for important communicators interacting with one another: promoting links, sharing information, asking for help or shooting the breeze.

If you’ve built up good contacts in relevant fields on Twitter it’s the most important tool you will use.

• See: Twitter
• See also: Robin on Twitter

Twitpic

One picture is worth a thousand words, or 140 characters. Show Twitter followers what’s got your attention by connecting up your phone to Twitpic.

You can set up Twitpic so it directly and instantly feeds to Twitter, even old mobiles can do it.

• See: Twitpic
• See also: Robin on Twitpic

Twitterfeed

If you have multiple blogs and multiple Twitter personas you need to make sure the correct blogs are feeding to the correct Twitters. Doing it manually can be pain in the backside, so automating a feed to post to Twitter is worth investigating.

There’s some debate as to whether automated posting goes against the grain a bit on Twitter. As with anything, moderation and common sense are key.

If you’re using Twitterfeed you don’t want more than a couple of automated posts a day. A deluge of links will get you unfollowed. And Twitterfeed is no substitute for proper engagement on Twitter.

• See: Twitterfeed
• See also: Twitterfeed on Twitter

Hootsuite

If you manage multiple accounts it’s simpler to manage them from the same place, rather than logging in and out and juggling usernames and passwords.

I initially used Tweetdeck but it’s awkward and buggy. Hootsuite is easier to use as it’s on a webpage; simpler; customisable; and has useful add-ons like stats, URL shortening and scheduled posting.

• See: Hootsuite

Bit.ly

Essentially anointed by Twitter as the link-shortener of choice, Bit.ly is probably the best too. It will take your long link and make it into a 20-char link that won’t eat up your 140 chars in a tweet.

A simple interface and some basic metric-tracking and sharing tools are the cherries on the cake.

• See: Bit.ly

Twitterholic

Looking a bit rough around the edges now but this is the tool I used to build a following on Twitter by finding people in similar places or with similar interests to me.

It’s always easier finding people who will reciprocate if you have something in common, an area where a lot of people trying to build a group of followers fall down.

• See: Twitterholic
• See also: Journalists on Twitterholic

Social bookmarking sites

Using social bookmarking sites simply to try and drive traffic can be fruitless and potentially damaging. All have unique communities and all are different, even if they don’t initially appear to be.

If you’re representing a brand you may want to think twice before submitting ill-fitting links to Digg, Reddit and Fark. If you’re not going to engage or observe how things work, don’t bother.

Also be aware that chasing traffic, as an end in itself, can be somewhat self-defeating. Choose your bookmarking carefully.

Digg

Using Digg to its maximum potential – in terms of traffic – takes time, effort and patience. As with Twitter, it’s about building a community and using that community to promote your links.

I think Digg has a fairly narrow band of opportunities for editors or journalists. Funny, techy or sporty stuff seems to do best as Digg users tend to use it to share distracting, fun stuff.

The obscene amounts of traffic The Onion and Cracked get from Digg seems to bear this out.

Occasionally I happen to write something I think will do well on Digg, and I make sure I write a header and description that will appeal to Diggers.

A well-placed story on Digg will send you hefty amounts of traffic, and it’s good for in-bound links too. Also bear in mind the reason it’s there – it’s fun.

• See: Digg

Delicious

Of very little use for generating traffic in the way Digg and Reddit are, Delicious has probably grown into the most pure social bookmarking application.

It’s beautifully simple and, because it’s searchable, is a great repository for valuable information.

It tends to be used by people working in media, PR, programming and marketing so it’s a gold mine of peer-approved guides and information in these areas.

• See: Delicious

Reddit

Not a million miles away from Digg, Reddit has an arguably broader focus and is easier to get into for newcomers.

Reddit’s community is not to be messed with however. Get a link submission wrong and you’ll know about it.

• See: Reddit

Fark

Digg on speed, or maybe acid. Fark consists of ‘not news’ chosen by a community and as such a very difficult tool to wield with any success.

In fairness Fark is not a tool at all, but can be used as such. Many international media have successfully harnessed Fark as a tool to drive vast amounts of traffic.

A story on the front page will deliver tens of thousands of hits over a very short space of time, which often leads to servers being ‘farked’ – brought down by the deluge of traffic.

A very good understanding of the community is required, and there’s a good opportunity to sharpen up your headline-writing skills. Only the very best stories and write-ups are greenlit, but the resulting traffic can be huge.

• See: Fark

RSS, alerts and readers

Tracking the websites that are important to you, and sharing your own content with readers is an important element of the online Swiss Army Knife.

Netvibes

I say Netvibes because it’s the one I use and I think it’s smart, but any reader or personalised home page will do – they’re essentially much of a muchness.

If you’re in media or PR you need to keep up with events on a daily basis. That means browsing potentially hundreds of feeds a day.

Grabbing an RSS feed and displaying it in your reader alongside 50 others is a lot easier than going to those individual sites.

Add-ons like widgets, increased sharing abilities and clever use of APIs from other apps like Facebook and Twitter means you can potentially browse, and interact with, all the relevant bits of the web from one page.

Most have a public setting too. As a result I have a public homepage on Netvibes that displays all my various online real estate around the web.

• See: Netvibes
• See also Robin’s public page on Netvibes

Tabbloid

Takes your feeds and displays them in a newspaper format. A bit clunky, and there are a few similar tools out there, but handy if you get square eyes looking at a normal reader.

Can also be used as a promotional tool to round up your output on a regular basis.

• See: Tabbloid
• See also Tabbloid sample

Feedburner

Allows you to track and edit your RSS feeds, share links and embed ads in your feed. No earth-shattering, but provides far more control over RSS feeds.

• See: Feedburner

Google Docs

Put e-documents online, quickly, easily and – er – freely.

• See: Google Docs

Google Alerts

Track a developing story, stay abreast of any news concerning particular companies or trends or steal a march over others on breaking news relating to your chosen keywords.

• See: Google Alerts

Twitterfeed

Again. See above for details

Multimedia

There are a hundred ways to tell a story these days. Use images, videos and music to bring yours to life.

Youtube

There are half a dozen good apps out there that will allow you to upload and share videos, but for simplicity’s sake I’ve gone with Youtube.

Youtube as a platform is only really as good as your videos, but as a tool it’s probably more versatile than you’d think.

Most obviously it provides some fantastic, free, embeddable multimedia content. If you can’t do something with that you’re probably in the wrong job.

Insight actually provides some useful metrics – the one measuring the attention span of watchers per video for one – while playlists, audio beds and annotations allow for some personalisation.

Add a customisable channel page and Youtube becomes a valuable tool in branding and hosting.

Live Stream and Vimeo may be more obvious, and going forward will come into their own, but for ‘quick and dirty’ Youtube is good enough for most.

• See: Youtube
• See also MotorTorque on Youtube

Flickr

Please be aware of what Flickr is not – a free image bank. If you’re going to use Flickr to source images you need to have a thorough understanding of Creative Commons licences, and some form of contact with individual authors.

Also, Flickr is not a link-building tool. Any links are nofollowed and business accounts are frowned on.

With that in mind Flickr can be invaluable for finding good quality images to accompany articles and is also a pleasantly simple image storage and presentation tool.

Image sets can be presented as embedded slide-shows, which can be a great visual dimension to a story alongside a static image.

Flickr can also be used to create links within photographer communities and can be used to promote photographic work.

Again, its largely self-policed by one of the more righteous online communities, so ensure you know what you’re doing.

• See: Flickr
• See also Robin on Flickr

Pixlr

Essentially an online Photoshop but cheaper (free actually), faster and simpler. Great tool that’s good enough for most photo manipulation.

• See: Pixlr

MPEG Streamclip

Good tool for video file conversion and some very basic editing features. Plays virtually anything. Can also be very good at capturing online videos if that’s your thing.

• See: MPEG Streamclip

Spotify

Weren’t expecting that one were you? But any new free app should be considered for the possibilities it provides.

A few brands have flirted with playlists, and I’ve done a couple of articles involving playlists to accompany articles.

There may not be a huge amount more scope than that, but Spotify is a free resource that offers free access to millions of tracks. Who saw that coming a couple of years ago?

• See: Spotify
• See also Crucial Three article on Liverpool Culture Blog

Morgue File

A good free image-bank site. The value of a good image to accompany an article can make all the difference. If you have access to a free image bank you’ve really no excuse. Remember to add a credit and check licenses though.

• See: Morgue File

Stock Xchng

Another great free image bank, with a premium level.

• See: Stock Xchng

Mash-up and added value apps

Add value to your content with embeddable mash-ups and media that complement your content.

Dipity

Great for building timelines for events that can be embedded. Connect up RSS feeds to feed a topic or add manually.

The added value it can bring to a running story is not to be underestimated – it’s shiny and it’s useful, especially if you’re using your own content to build timelines.

• See: Dipity
• See: Dipity US car industry timeline

Google Maps

Google Maps should be subtitled ‘not just maps’. Any amount of mash-ups can be created with the API, but it’s just as easy to create interactive co-operative maps using the site itself. Also works well with Google Earth.

As with Dipity, you can add value to content and tell another dimension to a story. A no-brainer for travel reports and write-ups.

• See: Google Maps
• See: Half Map Half Biscuit

Cover It Live

The ability to cover an event live on a self-hosted platform can be invaluable. Cover It Live allows administrators to host guests, guide discussions and moderate reader comments.

While Twitter may be a more obvious platform for micro-blogging, Cover It Live can be embedded into a web page, customised and managed in terms of who can contribute. Images and video can also be embedded in the stream.

Again, it can add another dimension to traditional coverage and bring live events to life.

• See: Cover It Live

Xtra Normal

A tool that allows you to convert to text spoken by an animated character may be gimmicky, but it can be fun.

Any blogger worth their salt should be able to think of something at least funny to do with it.

If Xtra Normal had been around 20 years ago we could have had animated reports of Gerry Adams speaking to the UK via an animated avatar.

• See: Xtra Normal
• See: Worried about acid erosion? on AdTurds

PollDaddy

Encourage user feedback and drive user-generated content with a poll – it can provide valuable insight or be used to drive original content itself.

Easy to configure and embed, you can stick it in the middle of an article one day and write a follow-up the next day based on the results.

• See: PollDaddy
• See also: Widget on WordPress

Metrics, web editing and SEO

If you’re running a blog or website you want to be able to track its performance over a number of metrics. A basic understanding of SEO will benefit any journalist too.

Google Analytics

Or any decent analytics package that allows you to track, compare and dig down into various metrics.

Analytics will do all of that and more – you can’t seriously run a large website without something at least as powerful and detailed as Google’s statistics tool.

Analytics can be used at a very basic level for tracking your traffic and website performance, or can provide intricate details into what’s going on in the deepest reaches of your site if you drill down.

Makes a great pairing with Adsense.

• See: Google Analytics

Webmaster Tools

Webmaster Tools allow you to get your hands a little more dirty with the intricacies of web design and SEO.

If there are any obvious problems with the navigation and accessibility on your site, Webmaster Tools should flag them up, along with some SEO information on backlinks and keywords than may give you a different perspective on how your users – or search engines – view your site as opposed to how you view it.

• See: Webmaster Tools

Adsense

Making money from a blog or website can be something of a double-edged sword. I don’t have Adsense on any of my personal blogs, but do use it on other sites.

Simply put Adsense offers the ability to make money from your blog or site with a few clicks.

Style your ads, decide on what keywords you want to include on your ads, settle on placements and Adsense will generate code for you. Stick the code in your blog, verify your account and watch the cash roll in.

Don’t expect vast sums unless you’re doing thousands of impressions a day, and bear in mind the downside of changing your blog to a money-making device.

• See: Adsense

Google Trends

Stuck for blog topics or want to research a trend? Google Trends is a good way to track what’s popular, although Twitter Trends can be used in much the same way.

Comparing two or three different terms can be instructive if writing about brands, TV programmes or pop bands.

Trends also pairs up well with Insight, an advances search facility currently in Beta, which allows you to drill down into search data over different periods of time or by region and country.

Both are probably of more use to marketers, but keyword searches and tracking can also be useful for giving a fresh perspective on an article, creating unique content, driving Adwords campaigns or simply finding out who is currently winning out of Doctor Who and Star Trek.

• See: Trends
• See also: Who is winning out of Doctor Who and Star Trek?

Website Grader

A good all-in-one tool that will grade your site against others in terms of traffic, search engine placements, page rank and a dozen other metrics.

Can provide a good introduction to basic SEO and an insight into what you may be doing correctly or incorrectly.

• See Website Grader

Platforms

If you’ve not made the leap you’ll need a platform on which to host your blog or site. Make sure you pick a good one.

WordPress

So far in front of other blogging platforms it’s not even funny. WordPress hosted or self-hosted is easy to figure out, has an interface so intuitive it’s almost beautiful, good support and a peerless range of plug-ins.

If you’re a journalist you need a blog. If you need a blog, use WordPress. That is all.

• See: WordPress

Tumblr

Ultra-simple blogging platform that makes the easy-to-use WordPress look like quantum mechanics.

Tumblr’s simplicity and efficiency is its greatest strength, so if you need something that works out of the box and don’t need the extra bells and whistles, look no further.

• See: Tumblr
• See also: Robin on Tumblr

Promoting yourself

Much as it pains me to say it, you need to be a brand these days, and that means at least providing people with the means to browse your skills and experience.

I use this blog to do that, but there are a couple of other tools around the web worth a look.

LinkedIn

I’m not actively searching for freelance or seeking a new job, so I’ve not got much out of LinkedIn so far.

If and when I do I’ll no doubt investigate further as this is what everyone uses. I’m not clear how much business actually gets done on LinkedIn, but for now I’ve got a page on there with the basics on.

• See: LinkedIn
• See also: Robin on LinkedIn

ReTaggr

Unsure about ReTaggr at the moment, but it does what it says on the tin – essentially an online business card.

• See: ReTaggr
• See also: Robin on ReTaggr

• Image by Noodlepie on Flickr via Creative Commons

NB. There are 38

I just want to let all my past Posterous blog RSS subscribers that I accidentally deleted the feed I had 'burnt' with FeedBurner, so you'll have to re-subscribe to my RSS feed if you wish to continue receiving any content through RSS. I'm a 'noob' when it comes to RSS feeds, and apologize. Take note that I sync many blogs/micro-blogs together using Posterous, so all of my blogs have exactly the same content on them – therefore, it is only necessary to subscribe to a single RSS feed of your choice from any single blog of mine since they are essentially all the same.

If you previously weren't a subscriber of any of my blog's RSS feeds, simply click on 'Subscribe in reader' to subscribe. If you prefer to subscribe via email, simply type your email address in the box where is asks you to type your email (the box that says 'Delivered by FeedBurner' below it), then click on 'subscribe'. My Posterous blog doesn't have an email form on it; to subscribe via email you must click on the text that says "Subscribe to HikiCulture – A Forum For Reclusive People (and Hikikomori) {Posterous blog} by Email" You'll receive blog updates everyday via email.

Enjoy.

(*NOTE* if you like my blog-posts, please share links on Twitter, FaceBook, Reddit, StumbleUpon, Mixx etc. )

Posted via email from HikiCulture – A Forum For Reclusive People (and Hikikomori)

Making of Caches ist ab sofort über folgende Feedadresse erreichbar:

http://feeds.feedburner.com/MakingOfCaches

… oder direkt im Google Reader:

Die Kommentare gibt es ebenfalls als RSS:
http://feeds.feedburner.com/MakingOfCaches/comments

Schon abonniert?

Você faz parte das nossas redes sociais???

Não conhece todos os nossos links, mas quer saber de tudo o que acontece aqui na TVGD??

Então escolha aquele que tem mais a sua cara e entre nessa rede.

Novidades, notícias da ANDI, o que está acontecendo em produção de conteúdo no país e entrevistas exclusivas com os apresentadores da TV Geração Digital, você encontra aqui no blog.

Links interessantes, comentários rápidos, bastidores das gravações e coisas que surgem na rede, você pode dar um follow na TVGD no Twitter.

Se o que você gosta mesmo são os vídeos e vinhetas produzidos pela TV Geração Digital então você tem nosso canal no Youtube pra aproveitar.

E vídeos você pode encontrar também no Livestream. Com chat ao vivo e uma prévia do que vocês verão na TV Geração Digital em breve.

Quer ser nosso amigo??? Então você pode escolher entre o Orkut, o Facebook e o MySpace. Melhor, nem precisa escolher! Entre em todos!

No Orkut, você pode adicionar a gente aqui, aqui e aqui. Além de ter um espaço para deixar suas sugestões, links e reclamações (porque não?!) bem aqui!

Se o que você realmente gosta são as fotos, seu lugar é nosso álbum no Flickr, com os bastidores, as cenas engraçadas e tudo aquilo que você gostaria de ver num show, gravação ou simplesmente, uma reunião de trabalho.

E pra fechar a tampa: o Feed! Isso mesmo! Quer receber todas as novidades no seu email tranquilamente? Então siga o link e cadastre-se no Feedburner da TV Geração Digital!

***

A propósito, vocês estão sentindo falta das novidades???

Então segurem a curiosidade por mais alguns dias e vocês vão saber de tudo o que está acontecendo aqui na TVGD!

]]> http://collectanea.wordpress.com/2009/10/27/coletanea-b-no-seu-e-mail/ Wed, 28 Oct 2009 00:35:12 +0000 Sid http://collectanea.wordpress.com/2009/10/27/coletanea-b-no-seu-e-mail/

Muitas pessoas acessam diariamante seus e-mails. Estamos disponibilizando para você, leitor, que gostaria de ler os posts do Coletânea B. diretamente no seu e-mail.

Para que essa grande façanha ocorra basta você clicar aqui e cadastrar seu e-mail. Após o preenchimento vá ao seu e-mail e confirme o cadastro. Pronto a partir desse momento você receberá posts do Coletânea B. diretamente no seu e-mail.

Intro

Well I was actually looking around for WordPress Themes for my new website, then Ian Stewart' Launchpad gave me a great idea for making a html template for websites that is not quite ready yet.

When you’re getting ready to launch your website, most of the hosting companies and/or registars offers a parked domain, that can turn your site into an advertising campaign for them. I am also not a fan of the "Under Construction" pages.

Now you can park your domain in style!

You can download this template here. The MD5 Sum for this file is e859db95e43656b1ffc8bd909d87dec8

The fileparkeddomain.zip contains:

• A Style Sheet: style.css
• Index Page: index.html
• RSS Feed File: mysite.rss
• Readme File: readme.txt
• Images (Sub-Folder)
  • RSS graphic: rss-icon.png
  • Footer graphic: bar.gif
• Screenshot: parkeddomain.jpg

I’ve implemented it on my new Web site. Preview it here.

DomainParking Features

• Professional design and typesetting.
• Integration with Feedburner
• GPL Licensed – you can do with it what you want to.

DomainParking Editing Instructions

RSS Feed File
For more info, read the RSS 2.0 Specifications.
You can update the file with your information in any text editor. Remember to save.
Upload the file to your host.
Validate it at http://validator.w3.org/feed/.
Enter the full URL of your RSS file into the form. Click the button. If there are any errors, the validator will tell you about them. Otherwise, it will validate your file.
Subscribe at http://feedburner/google.com, follow the instruction to get your feedburner links.

The Index File
You can update the file in your favourite html editor or text editor.
Update the page's title with your own.
If you want to use a favicon, make sure to upload your icon to the host and remove <-- Favicon disabled, as well as -->.
If you want to use a logo, make sure to upload your logo imagefile to the host and remove <-- Logo disabled, as well as -->.
In <h1><span>You’ve found </span> zellism.</h1> replace zellism with your name.
In the subscribe-options division, replace the feedburner URI with yours.
Save your file and upload your file to your host.
Head over to http://validator.w3.org/ to validate your file.
Enter the URL of your HTML file into the form. Click the button. If there are any errors, the validator will tell you about them. Otherwise, it will validate your file.

Conclusion

Now you can have a professional looking parked domain theme.
If you need any more help, feel free to leave a comment on this post or contact me by e-mail.
Hope this will help you to have a professional looking site while it is "UNDER CONSTRUCTION".
Best of luck with your website!

The Houston Astros used to be my favorite baseball team. I don’t mean today’s Astros, who are fine, btw, or even the solid clubs of the Jeff Bagwell/Craig Biggio era. I’m talking the Alan Ashby-Cesar Cedeño-Luis (not Albert) Pujols Astros. (Still have my vintage Astros jersey with full-body wraparound stripes and giant star.) Year after year those Astros had arguably the best pitching staff in baseball, anchored by fireballer and strikeout king Nolan Ryan. Game after game they would either shut out the other team or give up a run or two—and lost a lot more games than they should because too often the Astros’ batting order couldn’t hit its way out of a paper bag (OK, the infield).

Employers and clients, we can hit home runs for you, but only if you put us in the game. (Gag me before I cliché again, but segues are not always pretty.)

Quick reality check for we, the providers. We are in a results-oriented business, and no one who works here should expect to get paid if we don’t deliver the goods. I also have zero patience for the pricey prima donna model formerly favored by some: T&E by the ton to wine and dine clients or discuss internal strategy, then farm out the heavy lifting to juniors/interns. Plus in today’s crushing global economy, many companies are forced to cut costs to the bone just to try to survive. They see us as an expense, and the last thing they can afford right now is another expense.

Yet there comes a point when I survey the war-torn landscape and say to you, valued clients: Either you’re in business or not. If you are, the best thing you can do is create a new revenue stream and harvest more revenue from your existing customer base. Maybe you’re not sure where your market is going or how its needs are changing. Your existing competitors are expanding their offerings and you’re not sure how to keep up. A huge new competitor is hungrily eying your competitive space—and you.

Like the Astros of yesteryear, you can’t merely defend your way out of this one. To win the game you have to score, too.

Here’s the good news: We have plenty of good hitters in our dugout. So stop shrinking back in fear of today’s grim business climate and instead go on the offensive to attack the marketplace. Stake your claim. I know many markets are fading; practice revenue replacement by growing your business into new areas. We’ll start by tricking out your website as the commerce combustion engine it needs to be, rapidly upping your page rankings and putting in place a plan for ongoing organic growth. We’ll drop in an e-commerce shopping cart if that’s appropriate to your business, rich Internet apps and connectivity to all the web places you need to be. We’ll protect your brand in the digital age by locking up all relevant domains so those who set off to find you don’t find competitors instead. We’ll have a universe of web venues happily backlinking to you for maximum site rank and most importantly business value. We’ll use Google and other hosted or installed apps to optimize and monitor your site and traffic, break out formerly-stagnant content into reader-ready, FeedBurnered feeds—including some I’ll guarantee you haven’t thought of no matter how well you know your company—and launch choice new chunks of online real estate that will clarify what I mean when I say your core website is only the beginning. We’ll launch your own blogs and online newsrooms and do SEO-optimized blog entries on others. We’ll create social media news releases, use Salesforce.com to build out and execute sophisticated drip marketing campaigns, turn to others like Constant Contact when we need to blast your message to more than 1,000 prospects a day, and get you cinema-savvy with your own viral videos. We’ll advertise with Google AdWords and other opportunities that make good (ad) sense.

Client forums, virtual tradeshow presence and a myriad of other business-building online best practices await.

One of my earlier entries spoke of a company that chose to ignore social media and leave its website painfully non-optimized. Another talked about re-engineering ourselves as better practitioners of the interactive arts to change the game. A third shared strategies that have helped the interactive-averse see the light. Before I close this entry, let’s close that loop with a quick note about what we as interactive marketers need from you.

First, it would help if you don’t demand $1,000 of guaranteed instant results for every dollar you spend with us. When I hear those who write the checks talk about dabbling in interactive and pulling the plug if they don’t witness a miracle in a month or two, I want to remind them it’s more like planting a field and reaping a bountiful harvest—but not tomorrow! I also want to ask: When you bought that new phone system, did you threaten to rip it out if inbound sales call volume didn’t quadruple? Do you fire the sales force every six months if sales don’t improve? (OK, some of you do.) Do you demand X dollars in revenue for every radio spot or never advertise again? You just spent a couple of thousand dollars to outsource a telemarketing campaign and you didn’t even get a guaranteed minimum number of “completes” or leads. How’d that work out for you?

Second, appreciate that interactive is the gift that keeps on giving 24/7. The new models deployed by the denizens of the digital age mean that a lot of the infrastructure we can use to build this out for you is either low-cost or free. The main cost to you is for our expertise helping you navigate it all, cost-effectively and to maximum effect. Many of us—not all, but many—are worth it.

Finally, stop thinking of interactive as a fancy, fluttering banner at the stadium that you can’t quite read from where you’re sitting. Interactive is fast becoming the field of play. Or, to nudge it back over to our leadoff analogy: The diamond.

Batter up.

I’m stealing the idea of Triple T from TupeloGeek (check out his blog here). Every Tuesday has post something that has to do with technology, so that is what I’m going to do too. With one exception: I’m gonna do mine of Thursday.

The real reason for me making an entry today is because I need to write something so I can setup some other things to put it on, what I like to call, autopilot.

I setup a Feedburner feed and then I have Twitterfeed to check that feed every hour or so and if there is a new entry then it will automatically post it to Twitter and Facebook.

I will let you in on some of the applications that I’m using on my iPhone mostly but will also comment about other things in tech as well. On other days of the week I may come up with some info about other stuff but I’m still just feeling the water about where I want to go with this blog.

Thanks for reading and I’ll see you next time.