In the post right before this one (no link, just scroll down a little bit), I mentioned Google Reader as a good way to manage your RSS feeds. This name sounds cryptic and complex, but it really isn’t. Rather then me taking a stab explaining it, I figured I’d leave it to the good folks at CommonCraft.
What do these buttons in the corner mean?
If you’re viewing this blog and are unfamiliar with Tumblr, your may be wondering what these buttons are in the top right corner of the page. One says “Follow” (in this image it says Unfollow because I’m already following this blog) and the other says “Dashboard.”
These links are part of Tumblr’s blogging platform. Tumblr has taken a unique approach to blogging by competing with the traditional notion of “subscribing” to a blog via RSS. People “subscribe” to a blog (typically using a feed reader such as Google Reader) so that they can automatically keep up with new content that is posted. It makes it a lot easier then having to constantly browse to news sites and manually check what’s new. Though the RSS feed is pretty well understood, it’s not always a great user experience. Often times, when you click on an RSS feed link on a blog you’ll see a page full of computer code that scares you to death (like this from Venture Hacks).
To avoid this fugly computer code and make the user experience better for everyone, Tumblr has built in this idea of “following” a blog. It’s very similar to “following” someone on Twitter or “liking” a Facbook page: it subscribes you to the stream of updates from that blog. To make this easy, Tumblr provides a link on every blog so that existing users can easily add the blog they are viewing to the list of those they follow. Over time, as users begin following more and more (tumblr) blogs, they end up saving lots of time by being able to view all that content in a single place as opposed to having to browse to them all individually.
This is a good example of why your social media platform needs diversity. Many organizations and employers block sites like Facebook, Youtube, Twitter and other sites synonymous with the social web. These entities seem to believe that a heavy- handed, Dean Wormer-esque, “no more fun of any kind” approach to business is a best practice. Ha! hardly… people will just find other ways to connect with friends (hint: using email and SMS).
The unfortunate reality is that some places do actively block social media websites. For marketers who rely on sites like Facebook exclusively to distribute their message, such policies effectively remove their ability to communicate with their target audience. To get around such restrictions, companies should install and operate their own social media infrastructure, such as those built and deployed by ImpactOrg. Such an approach assures that anyone who can find your company on the internet can at the very least read your blog and thus remain informed on the latest news about your company.
WhaleMeister’s current homepage
Using labels in Gmail or Google Apps is a great way to organize your inbox. If you’re like most of us, you get email that falls into a few categories: Google makes it really easy to go through your inbox in a snap and focus on the first kind of email, while avoiding the distractions caused by the second and third kind. Gmail Labels allow you to add a description to any email and make it stand out with a custom color. Filters are like rules that allow you to specify how a message should be treated when it hits your inbox. By using labels and filters to mark your email as read when it comes in and give you a visual cue as to what kind of email it is, you can save yourself a lot of time. Even better, when you use filters to mark non-urgent email as read, you avoid that email generating an alert on your mobile device. If you’ve ever experienced your BlackBerry buzzing like crazy every few minutes when you get an email, you know how frustrating this can be and disruptive to productivity. You can also create labels to help you stay on top of what you need to do. One method I use frequently is anytime I receive an email where I need to do something, but don’t plan to do it right then and there, I add the “Action Needed” label to it. Then when I have time to get some stuff done, I have an easy way to go back through the items that require me to do something without having to go back through all my email. Google wrote a good blog post about how to use labels and filters called “Gmail eats your bacn.”
WhaleMeister
WhaleMeister is a Food & Beverage Consulting company based in New Jesrsey. ImpactOrg was retained to build the company’s intial web presence including logo design, building out a Social Media Platform, Google Apps Integration and more.
Dropbox: An easy way to share files
Dropbox is one of the easiest ways to share files (especially large ones). Let’s face it, attaching files to email is kind of a pain. You have to browse for them on your machine, wait for them to upload and then send your message. It’s even more cumbersome if you’re sending more then one file or *gasp* large files that take a while to upload.
Dropbox makes this task much simpler by enabling you to have a “shared folder” on your desktop. It works just like any other folder, you simply drag files and folders into it. The difference is Dropbox automatically uploads everything in the folder to the Dropbox website and syncs it to your other computers and/or mobile phones where you have installed Dropbox.
This video explains it a little better then me:
Which blogging platform is the best?
There are several popular blogging platforms out there that all have similar feature sets. For most of my clients, the one I recommend is Tumblr, as it is by far the easiest one to learn and offers the fastest method of publishing new content.
One of the challenges for people and companies that are new to blogging is keeping up with it. They may get a bunch of inspiration one day and crank out several posts, but then forget about their blog for 3 weeks and not publish anything. This happens A LOT (and yes, I’ve suffered from it too), and it hinders a company’s ability to communicate with its audience effectively. After all, if the the company doesn’t care enough to post anything, why should users or customers care enough to look?
Tumblr combats this problem by taking the approach “if we make it so painfully simple to post stuff, then more people will keep up with their blogs.”
The company accomplishes this by breaking a blog post down into its core elements: text, photos, videos, links and other types of content. The result is that it ends up being much faster to publish something on Tumblr, then elsewhere due to the incredibly simple user interface. That simplicity makes it easier for people who are new to blogging to keep up with one and increases the likelihood that they will stick with it.
Using Basecamp for Client Management
If you aren’t using Basecamp, you really should look into it. It’s by far the simplest and most useful tool I’ve encountered for managing “to do” items, milestones, and communication for a project.
Though I’ve been using basecamp for managing my own projects for a while, I recently made the decision to begin giving clients access to it. It’s still early, so I’m learning the best way to explain how to use the tool to those who aren’t familiar with it, but for the most part, Basecamp is intuitive enough that clients “just get it.”
Basecamp makes it really easy to brand the site to fit with your company’s design and logo colors.
My work is collaborative and requires the client provide certain files, access to accounts, etc. Basecamp is especially useful for keeping track of all this stuff, and makes it a snap to find everything after the fact. The alternative is using email and as someone who has tried that approach, I’m here to tell you that it’s SO much more chaotic to do it that way. Ultimately, projects get done faster, with greater accuracy and clients are ultimately happier as a result of using Basecamp. Thanks 37 signals!
PressBoxed
One of my clients is actually… well… me. In the limited amount of free time that I have, I’m working on building a product called PressBoxed.
Below is a quick video that talks about the concept. This is a great thing to do because it allows you to spend some time articulating the concept the right way, and then syndicate that message through different channels so that people are clear on what your company does. So much of getting adoption for an early stage company is communicating clearly what it is your company or product does.
PressBoxed got the royal treatment and has all the Social Media Platform integration that I offer to clients.
Blog (blog.pressboxed.com)
Twitter (twitter.com/pressboxed)
Mailchimp Email Marketing List Integration (get on it)
