grundyhome.com

Ever since we launched blogs.nd.edu, we’ve had a slew of new signups. Many of these are new bloggers, and they’re eager to get going. But they don’t always know the tips and tricks that can help a new blog gain traction amongst the millions of other blogs in the world.

Here are my five tips for a new blogger who wants to catch on.

1. Name your blog well.

By “well” I mean informative, memorable, and search-engine-friendly. My blog name is grundyhome.com, which doesn’t mean squat to anyone else. But when I became serious about blogging, I decided a tagline was needed – “web marketing in higher ed.” Ideally, I would have started with a domain name that included some of these keywords in the URL itself.

2. Craft Good Blog Post Titles

Titles should accomplish three things:

Attract readers with an interesting title – a question (“How can you accomplish ______?”), a challenge (“Secrets of a Successful _______”), or a list (“5 Must-Do Tips for a New Blogger”).

Attract search engines by including keywords that you want associated with your blog. A blog about neuropsychology should have titles with keywords related to that field. Search engines put a lot of emphasis on the title of a page or post.

Be informative about the post content. If you wanted clicks, you could always just title your posts “the latest dirt on Lindsey Lohan!!!!1″ and some people would click through. But if your post is about peacebuilding in Africa, you’ll draw the wrong audience (and they’ll be disappointed, too).

3. Search-friendly URLs

Go to one of your blog posts and look at your URL bar at the top of the browser. If it looks like this…

http://example.com/?p=43

…then you’re missing an easy opportunity. For this post, my URL will be something like…

http://example.com/5-must-do-tips-for-a-new-blogger

…which includes any keywords that I made sure to include in my title. This is an easy thing on most blog platforms – it’s in your Settings area.

(In WordPress, it’s under Settings > Permalinks, and I always choose “Day and Name” or “Month and Name”.)

4. Keep Comments On, Comment Spam Off

Users who comment care enough to be engaged and influenced by your content. And conversations are the difference between a blog and a plain ol’ website. If you’re afraid of negative comments, you can configure them to require approval before they show up on the site. It’s not that much work, and the value is worth it.

Unfortunately, there are plenty of spammers trying to use your blog to their advantage and you’ll begin to see junk coming through your comments. Use Akismet to prevent spam – there’s a great Akismet plugin for WordPress to make it easy to use.

5. Full Content in your Feed

Most blogs offer the choice between publishing feeds with your full article content or just showing an excerpt (forcing users to click through). Many new bloggers think, “Great, people will have to click through to read the story!” The reality is far more depressing. Rather than reading your content because it’s conveniently flowing into their feed reader, they’ll read your headline and excerpt and move on. Don’t be so arrogant as to believe that users will click through.

What else should you know?

Whether or not you’re new to blogging, there’s always more to learn. Here are some resource I recommend for new bloggers:

• Getting Started with WordPress
• WordPress for Beginners
• If I had to Start My Blog Again

Years ago, when I was running my own little web business, one of my clients was a car insurance company. We designed their website, but had inherited an online quoting system written in approximately 100,000 lines of terrible Perl code.

Every few months, my client would send me updates that required me (back in my programmer days) to dive into this horrendous tangle of if-then conditionals and half-assed subroutines. In short, it was a mess. But their business depended on it.

One day, I got a call from the president of the company. He accused me of holding their website hostage because I wouldn’t let their marketing person, Becky, update the quoting system. Becky was very nice and I’m sure she was quite good at her job, but she wasn’t technical and there was no reason she should be plunged into code. I tried to explain why this was a bad idea.

“You don’t think she’s smart enough?”

I pointed out that it was a specialized skill and I’d been programming for many years – and it was hard enough for me to do it.

“You don’t think she can learn?”

I grasped at straws. Knowing that he was a car collector and had a full-time mechanic on his staff (to work on their beautiful showroom of classic vehicles), I asked him,

“Would you ask her to work on the engine of your car?”

He immediately responded with an emphatic “hell, no.” From there it was easy to connect the dots and convince him it was in his interest to keep Becky out of the code and leave it to the professionals.

The right job, the right tools, and the right person.

Since then, I’ve learned a valuable metaphor. If you need to hammer a nail, chances are you can learn how to hammer a nail. If you need to cut down a tree, you might learn how to use a chainsaw. But it’s a lot more dangerous. You can hurt yourself. It only takes a small slip-up to do a lot of damage. And it certainly takes more training. At some point, it’s better to pay someone else to do it for you.

Leading up to my two-part Usability Testing 360 webinar series, I bring you a handful of resources, articles, tools, and tips on Usability Testing.

Learn some of the terms, definitions, buzzwords, and otherwise confusing jargon related to usability with this handy usability glossary.

CollegeWebEditor has a great post about why it’s important to invite people into your usability testing process.

The entertaining and brilliant Steve Krug gives away sample testing scripts (PDF), consent forms (PDF), and even chapters of his book. Go check them out and then buy his books.

Steve’s latest book is all about DIY usability testing and it’s exactly what you needed.

Finally, if you haven’t seen my Ultimate Usability Testing Toolkit, that’s a good place to jump into the tools and tactics of DIY usability testing.

In February, Notre Dame’s Alumni Association did something remarkable: it launched an interactive television program entirely online.

The program is called Tender, Strong, and True: Living the Gospel Daily. It’s a panel-format show discussing a topic of faith with academics and spiritual leaders. And through UStream, the entire world can join in the discussion.

Now UStream isn’t that new, and many of its uses are pretty old school: one-way streaming video to the rest of the world. But the real power is the ability to interact with the audience and for you viewers to interact with each other.

Duke got a lot of attention last year when a professor started doing online office hours. Karine Joly from CollegeWebEditor.com asks, “Who needs television when you can actually interact with experts at this level?”

While most Americans still watch many hours of television each week, the nature of TV consumption is changing. Millennials are watching less TV and using more Internet. My own experience involves sitting with my laptop while a TV rambles on in the background. I don’t really feel like I watch that much TV, but it’s frequently on. I consider that time as “online,” though it’s often called media multitasking.

UStream melds these by offering an interactive viewing experience. And it succeeds because the experience is not contrived—it’s organic because it’s up to the audience to participate and the presenter to engage with them. Schools have been streaming lectures and conferences live for years, but only recently did that become a two-way street. And services like UStream make it easy and affordable.

Like Duke’s online office hours, this digital form of television is a way to increase the reach of an otherwise limited format. An in-person lecture may reach dozens or hundreds of people. Streaming that lecture may be able to engage thousands. And an archived program can extend to hundreds of thousands or millions. How’s that for reach?

ND is rolling out Blogs at Notre Dame, a blogging platform using WordPress MU. We’re hoping to get some of our brilliant and interesting faculty members blogging. This raises a lot of questions:

There’s been a lot of talk about blogging for admissions and student recruitment, but should faculty members blog? Will that hurt or help their chances of tenure? Can it help a school’s ranking? Is blogging respectable?

After some spirited and lively discussion, debates, and research, I’ve posted an article on our AgencyND blog about faculty blogging.

I don’t mean for these to be the answers, but I am hoping this post will continue the discussion and shift some perceptions.

Read Blogging for Academic Reputation, Rankings, and Scholarship »

The web profession is a client-driven one, even when we don’t technically have clients. We’re always teaching, educating the various stakeholders as to best practices, how to use new technologies, and why they shouldn’t waste their time on the flashy buzzword-du-jour.

If you’ve been doing this long enough, these conversations will all be familiar to you. If you’re new to this business or haven’t been in a client-facing role, you’ll do well to familiarize yourself with them.

1. Strategy Before Tactics

Are you sure you even need a new website? What do you mean you heard you needed a Facebook page? Let’s start from the beginning. Let’s start with your audience. Who are you trying to reach? What do you want them to do? If you can’t answer these basic questions, you might as well just start burning money. We’re not just pixel-pushers and code monkeys – we can help you make smarter decisions about what to do.

2. Measurement and Analytics

What gets measured gets improved. This isn’t 1995 – a hit counter isn’t going to cut it. There’s no excuse not to have at least Google Analytics (or something) tracking and providing information. What to look at? Let’s see – top content, pages with high bounce rates, referring sites, search keywords… the list goes on. Oh, and remember: reporting is not the same as analysis. So let’s figure out what we really need to measure (let’s call them KPIs) and set some goals.

3. Search Engines 101

Search engines are a major source of traffic. You can’t cheat the system. Search engines rank you based on the text on your site, the number of links pointing at your site, and the quality (or trustworthiness) of sites linking to you. It’s a little bit like dieting – there are tons of people selling shortcuts, and none of them are sustainable. You have to earn your ranking honestly, over time. Start by creating quality content that people want to read and the rest will come naturally.

4. Design Isn’t About You

I know you don’t like the [color | typography | photos | white space], but that’s ok – the site isn’t intended for you. You’re not your target audience. The design isn’t just about looking pretty (that’s a given). It’s actually about helping you achieve your goals. You remember your goals, right? We talked about them way back when we agreed on your strategy and decided what you were measuring. This design does that.

5. How to Write for the Web

Hey, great brochure. Really, it’s beautiful. But let’s cut to the chase: it’s not a website. You can’t just copy and paste that text into your website and expect it to work for you. Web visitors expect instant gratification. Don’t bury the lede. Make your copy scannable. And for goodness sakes, don’t ever put “Under Construction” on a page.

6. Web Isn’t the Same as Print

When you print something, you’re creating something permanent. You spend a lot of time editing, tweaking, proofreading, and painstakingly checking before you give the final go to the printer. Once it’s printed, it’s done – there’s no changing it. But the web isn’t a print piece. Every time a visitor hits our website is a new publication – a new chance to make a change, edit our content, and fix a typo. On the web, unlike print, you can’t let perfection get in the way of publication. The difference between 99% and 100% is a lot of investment and not a lot of return.

Like many higher ed web professionals, my team is caught in the middle.

On one hand, we have clients and want to help them get their projects done, make them happy, and accomplish their goals.

On the other, we have the institution. Even if we’re entirely client-driven and can run like a business, we’ve got priority assignments, rush jobs, and pet projects handed down from the top. These can disrupt any other projects we might have in the shop, and sometimes it’s hard to explain to clients with their own deadlines.

What are we to do?

Be a Leader

At AgencyND, we’ve started creating professional development opportunities for others on campus. We get out there and teach, we host speakers, and we organize webinars (like Karine’s Higher Ed Experts). We also work on providing tools and resources for communicators across campus, the people who really drive communications for the different departments and offices.

The goal is to raise the general level of expertise on campus and to position ourselves as experts so that people are comfortable coming to us, trust our advice, and generate new interest in the various topics we hit on – social media, analytics, strategic communications planning, email marketing, and so on.

Provide Service

Working to establish ourselves as leaders has had two effects: clients are smarter and they like us better.

Amazingly, our efforts in leadership seem to be changing the nature of some of our projects. People ask better questions, they pursue new ideas, and best of all, they share what they’re learning. They require less “client education” and fewer arguments over best practices. Generally, they seem more satisfied and certainly more understanding of our department.

The challenge that remains is being able to actually delivering on the service, with all this new interest and increased demand. But it’s a great problem to have.

Note: I know very well that the word is spelled résumé but for whatever reason my blog won’t display the é character unless I explicitly state it with an HTML entity code . Argh.

I’ve been doing a lot of hiring lately. This time around, I took careful note of the factors I considered as I reviewed resumes, interviewed candidates, and made decisions. If you’ve read the book Blink or had to pore over dozens or hundreds of job applications, you’ll know what I mean when I say that decisions are often made very quickly and sometimes arbitrarily. But it can help to be aware of your process and biases, which is what I’ve documented here.

1. Scan resumes

Look at the overall look and feel of the r̩sum̩. You can often tell where the applicant falls on the designer to programmer spectrum. See what info they put in the headers Рusually name, address, phone, email. If they have a Hotmail email address, go no further. Generally not good: comcast.net, sbcglobal.net. Better: gmail.com, yahoo.com. Best: Your own custom domain name. Why are some email addresses better than others? They tell me whether the candidate fits into the culture. A web candidate with his or her own website and domain name is more credible than one who slapped together a MySpace page and listed a Hotmail address.

2. Resume content

Check out their most recent two or three jobs and see what they’ve done. Look for specific URLs to check out. Scan their education, but I don’t really pay much attention to this. The best have a wider array of experiences with different web technologies and kinds of projects. The current job market is tough, so I don’t put a ton of weight on this. Some great people are jobless or have been working outside the industry and I won’t count it against them. Keeping busy and being involved are good signs of a self-motivated candidate.

3. Portfolio or sample links

This is a major part of how I decide. Quick glance at the sites or pages, and the next step is to View Source and check out the code. It takes five to ten seconds to see whether it’s decent code (semantic, web standards, no tables for layout) or not (tables, software-generated, etc). Show me your best work and I will mentally rank you on a scale from 1 to 100. This is important – I’ve already decided where on that scale I need to hire. If I’m looking for someone with relatively little experience (maybe a 30) and your work suggests that you’re a rising 60, my next thought is whether I can afford you. But that’s a good problem to have.

4. Look for a trail on the web

Do they have a website? LinkedIn? Twitter? If they’re out there, they’ve left a trail. This can be tough if it’s a common name, but this industry involves a good deal of self-promotion and if you can’t be found you’re not doing a very good job. Blogging is hard work, and someone who has invested that time in their professional development is bound to continue it after being hired.

5. What have they done?

If I’m hiring a designer, I look for little signs - good padding, decent typography, etc. Not that I’m skilled at these myself, but I do recognize some good design work when I see it.

For developers, I look for contributions to open source projects and the source of any pages they’ve posted. I tend to be pretty lenient on these.

6. Ask loaded questions.

I’m not psychologist, but it’s worth paying attention to how people answer the questions you ask. For instance, I like to ask about how they would solve a problem they didn’t know the solution to. A good response involves knowing how to find the answer. Self-determination is a good thing.

7. My favorite question: Tell me a joke.

I don’t ask this in every interview, but for some jobs and some candidates it can be a very helpful test. I simply ask the candidate to tell me a joke. The response is very informative. How quickly can the candidates think on their feet? Is the joke appropriate? What’s their personality? What’s their delivery style? Do they have a sense of humor? I don’t count this against people usually, but I certainly give major props to those who can handle it. When I’ve asked this and other people are in the room, they are usually horrified that I would do this to a candidate.

Process

Hiring takes a lot of time. Reviewing resumes, scheduling interviews, conducting phone and in-person interviews, etc. are all time-consuming. I like to try and make a choice as soon as possible, paring down candidates quickly and decisively. 50 resumes might turn into five phone interviews, and that may lead to 2-3 in-person interviews. Or I may have a clear choice after conducting phone interviews, and may only proceed with one candidate.

So how do you get a job on my team? Let your work speak for itself and make sure your resume isn’t the only way I can evaluate your reputation.