Beantin

14 Articles worth reading… (Spotted: Weeks 10-12, 2011)

For your reading pleasure this week, a collection of links (and summaries) including articles related to: Social media, UX, intranets, SEO and web analytics.

9 Articles worth reading… (Spotted: Week 39-41, 2010)

Implementing Yammer within Your Organization Using Twitter Best Practices

The featured tool in this article is Yammer, but the tactics and principles described are valid for whatever intranet collaboration tool you are rolling out. Three critical tactics according to Hanesbrands: Gain leadership support, Partner early with IT, Help employees use the platform & see value.

Should intranet links open in a new window?

James at Step Two Designs has written a blog post based on a lively discussion on the Intranet Professionals LinkedIn group. I’m in agreement with James on this one - try having opening links in the same window whenever possible (or practical). Let the user choose.

Culture, Contribute, Confidence – The Gateway to Intranet Success

Some concrete advice & ideas by Carolyn on how to initiate a shift in company culture towards a collaborative and sharing organisation - a social intranet.

Information flow overview

In the first of a series of blog posts, Kristian has sketched the intranet information flow at Västra Götaland Regional Council. Understanding how all the information inter-links and flows around helps you maintain the information quality and ensure users are obtaining the correct information when and where they need it.

How to measure the effectiveness of web content

Website owners generally don’t do anywhere near enough testing, and testing of content in particular is almost non-existent. This article describes a three-pronged approach for measuring the effectiveness of your content. It’s a pipe-dream, and not really practical for a major re-write; but the theory is good and useful for more contained content changes.

How to find bloggers relevant to your business

Taking the time to find, nurture, and reward relationships with bloggers is a key task in marketing (and SEO, branding, PR, etc). Not only is it effective, it can be really cost effective too.

Nokia upsets blogger due to marathon PR failure

Nokia’s PR company Mission shows you how not to engage the blogging community. They have subsequently apologised (in the blog comments of the original post). But still. Smells of time-pressure & poor project management at the very least.

SEO starter guide updated

Two years after releasing their first SEO Starter Guide, Google have updated it and released an updated version. A great handbook for web managers - it explains many best practices and recommendations for websites - but it’s not an ultimate guide to SEO (and doesn’t claim to be!)

Is hiding text with CSS to improve accessibility bad for SEO?

Will you get into trouble with Google if you do the right thing accessability wise? Basically, no. If you create valid code, your SERPs are safe…

For your reading pleasure… (week 6, 2010)

2010 Web Strategy Report

268 companies surveyed about their web strategy. Interesting 17 page report. Majority of organisations have a web strategy that covers the coming 12 months, which seems worryingly short-term. I suspect it’s the usual muddling of strategy with tactics.

GSMA and comScore Announce UK Launch of Mobile Media Metrics

Some metrics are revealed in the press release, including the top 10 UK mobile web destinations. Facebook, Google and mobile operator portals dominate.

The iPhone obsession

Bit of a rant, but a good one. As I pointed out in 2010: mobile web tipping point, the mobile web is more than just the iPhone. By developing iPhone specific sites and applications we are creating a walled garden that ignoring web standards and potentially creating extra costs and lost business in the future.

5 Reasons Why Google Buzz Will Fail

An amusing assessment of Google’s latest offering. How much is humour, how much is truth…

8 Ways Of Using Google Analytics Annotations In Your SEO Projects

Annotations were recently made available for everyone in GA. This post by Hessam gives a useful list of things to consider annotating.

Measuring browser viewport size with Google Analytics

I wrote about browser viewport statistics in November and how we spend far too much time measuring and focusing on screen resolution where we should be concentrating on browser viewport size.