What makes a website usable, how users think

Don’t Make Me Think, by Steve Krug.
This is almost always my first recommendation. It’s quick to read, it’s easily digested, and drives home the fact that even you are not a careful, thorough, and patient reader/consumer online. It’s hard to believe the author hates to write.

A wealth of insight can be found by following A List Apart and I’ve always enjoyed watching and listening to Jared Spool at User Interface Engineering.

Writing for the Web, content strategy

Yes, it’s different. We’ve probably all heard that and how content is king. Ginny Redish provides excellent example of how its different and how you can make your words work in Letting Go of the Words. It’s a great resource for any writer.

Can’t get enough? Want a little more from the strategic angle? The read Content Strategy for the Web by Kristina Halvorson. If you want only ten minutes of good advice, read her article “The Discipline of Content Strategy.”

Once it comes out, go give this one a try: Content Rules: How to Create Killer Blogs, Podcasts, Videos, Ebooks, Webinars (and More) That Engage Customers and Ignite Your Business. I’m hoping it’s easier to read than its title, but just as thorough.

Want to follow a blog instead? Then try subscribing to Gerry McGovern’s “New Thinking” newsletter and blog.

How a redesign happens, what to expect

Website redesigns always seem to take more time and a lot more work than many people expect. It’s sort of like remodeling your bathroom, living room, and kitchen at the same time. Read Web ReDesign 2.0 by Kelly Goto and Emily Cotler, or at least give it a very good scan, if you want to feel more knowledgeable and in control of the process even as you trust other professionals to do all the technical and heavy work.

All sorts of useful stuff to watch

UIE Bookclub looks promising. You can watch the first episode with Kristina Halvorson. So before, during, or after you’ve read her book, you can watch the interview and call-in show.

I’ve always found Google Webmaster Central Channel and Google Business Channel on YouTube to have quality and bite-sized videos. It’s not always just about the search engine (although you better know how to work with Google if you’re doing an online marketing); it covers a few general online marketing tactics, too.

If you’re looking for a little humor, try HubSpot’s YouTube channel. They’ve been trying a few comics on their website and some silly, but informative, videos here with the introduction of Captain Inbound.

Your additions?

These are books, blogs, and video resources that came to the top of my mind this morning. Tomorrow I might decide to add a few more. What have I missed?

3 Really Bad Internet Marketing Mistakes I Bet You’re Making, Hubspot

A great reminder of the importance of keyword research—ongoing keyword research. Ongoing keyword research that drives online marketing strategy and activity. Also reminders about the importance of writing effective calls to action (one I seem to find much easier to create for my clients than for myself) and measuring the source of your leads.

Content strategy is, in fact, the next big thing, Brain Traffic

Content strategy takes planning and, well, a strategy. I’ve worked where every content contributor had their own specific goal and nothing was reviewed against a larger plan. The result was disjointed content and confused readers. I’ve worked where the strategy was rather self-serving and personality-based, and while that was not a strategy I really believed in, our readers had a good experience and it was easy to judge when we were successful. Content has been king for a long time and now expects more from his subjects than just random offerings. He wants infrastructure to support it. He wants proof that it’s working.

11 Ways to Lose Blog Followers and Alienate Readers, Inc.

This article is for the serious blogger and the dabbler, too, if the dabbler wants to grow his or her readership. I find that blogging is the hardest thing I ask of my clients. Number 11 seems written just for them. Oh, and for me.

New site hierarchies display in search results, Official Google Blog

Breadcrumbs seem to go in and out of fashion. Now there’s another reason to use them.

4 Ways To Monitor Your Facebook Page Traffic, All Facebook

This helpful article shows how to track traffic in addition to the page insights tool provided by Facebook. It covers WebTrends, Google Analytics and Core Metrics tools.

Here are some common acronyms in the online marketing field for the letter S.

SEO

Search engine optimization

This is not about stuffing a lot of keywords into your meta tags. This is a process of researching what keywords are appropriate for your site and improving the volume of traffic to your site for those keywords. It’s also about capturing the audience you want with those targeted keywords. It’s a way of making it easier for search engines to learn about, index, categorize and rank your online content, thereby making it easier for your costumers to also learn about you. It’s a very effective digital marketing tool.

It’s best to begin the SEO work during the site design process since effective SEO is influenced by coding, navigation, accessibility, redirects, site architecture and other elements of Web design.

Search engine optimizers

These are the humans who work on search engine optimization. Some might be referred to as “white hats” or “black hats.” This has nothing to do with cowboys, Tibetan Buddhism, or Free Masonry. The good people are, of course, “white hats” and the people who are likely to get your site banned from search engines employ “black hat” SEO tactics. I like to keep my hat shiny white.

SEM

Search engine marketing

Most frequently this means  SEO you pay for.  It’s a way of promoting your site’s visibility on search engine results pages by paying for placement, by contextual advertising, through pay per click (PPC) campaigns. Sometimes this term is used to mean almost all of online marketing.

SERM

Search engine reputation management

Basically this is a way to check your online reputation. If someone searches for you by name, is it legitimate information about you that comes up? Has someone purchased or registered your name as a site or account holder on a site? Is this confusing your audience when they search? This only a very small part of online reputation management (ORM).

SERP

Search engine results page

This is the list of sites returned by a search engine for the keyword(s) entered into the search box. When you launch a new site you initially just want engines to crawl your site so you’ll appear in search results. Then you work on improving where you appear on various SERPs for your identified keywords.

SMO

Social media optimization

SMO is similar to SEO, but broader. It’s about getting traffic from more than just the search engines. It’s making sure your images and videos show up on community sites devoted to those media, for example. SMO makes it easier for your costumers to share your content with their own online communities through RSS feeds, social bookmarking buttons, “follow me” buttons, etc. It’s like viral marketing except that the focus is on electronic word-of-mouth. It’s also been called the media “you earn” since you can rarely benefit by paying for it. Your content simply has to be engaging, relevant, information, encouraging, disturbing, weird, or funny enough to be worthy of being shared via a Tweet or blog post or other online media.

It can be about much more than just building your brand or marketing your product. It can also be used to build a community our of your various audiences,  to gain market knowledge (what are people saying about you and your product?), ensuring customer satisfaction, customer relations, recruiting, engaging your employees, etc. This can be as time consuming as you want to take it, but its’ also a way to interact with your audiences much more cheaply than by going to trade shows, or holding individual meetings, and probably more enlightening.

SMM

Social media marketing
Engaging your audience and building their trust within social media spaces is what defines SMM. These could be Twitter, Facebook, Ning, various forums, LinkedIn groups, blogs, social/shared bookmarking sites, Gather, or many other possible locations online. (When you use the term, just be careful to carefully enunciate that first “m”.)

SMPR

Social media press release
The SMPR is not something to replace the traditional press release, it’s just some techniques to improve upon it. Think of a traditional press release that formatted in a way that makes it easier for new media professionals to use.  Blogs, Twitter and other social media sites are now important news channels.

I haven’t seen the acronym used for social media public relations, but I’m sure someone out there is using it this way.