1. If you’re doing it indoors, chances are the zombies will just pass right on by …
2. Zombies don’t attack gays, so if your sex preference happens to be for the same gender, then you are probably cool
3. Alternatively, if you have sex with a Zombie, odds are he or she won’t kill you – as long as the sex is good.
4. Blowing up your spare condoms and popping them will sound like gunshots and scare off your potential zombie attackers
5. If you are holed up in your bedroom for a romantic night in, with food and wine, you’ll be able to survive for longer without having to go outside and confront the zombies
6. If the output of having sex in your household has been any number of children, you can sacrifice them to save yourself
7. If the zombie outbreak is really on a movie screen – then having sex will give you a reason not to watch
8. If you get really desperate you can thrust your partner towards the zombies and make a run for it!

So what’s all this?

Been playing with a little online toy designed to help break writer’s block and help you get creative about your blog content. It’s called the Linkbait Generator and you can find it here http://linkbaitgenerator.com

Have fun playing – it’s not the most sophisticated tool on the planet, but feel free to use it to inspire some creativity – and have a laugh.

Later,

Karen

Hmmmm …

This is a question that has been on my mind lately – how to eliminate, or at least scare off, those pesky green caterpillars that like to munch on my brassicas!

I am not one to sprinkle liberally with derris dust or spray with anything that requires time to be left before the food can be safely eaten, so what to do, what to do?

Funnily enough, I was checking out a new service offered by yellow.co.nz, called How To guides, and thought I would throw in the universal gardening question.

Sure enough, I came up with a great post from a guy who coincidentally happens to be a client of ours – David Brittain from Kiwicare.

And they have a great organic option for getting rid of the little blighters, which works on a bacterial organism that the caterpillars really don’t like.

So, all I need to do is purchase some of this magical elixir, spray it on every few weeks and my kale plants should soon be bug free.

Woohoo!

By the way, if any of my readers are experts in a particular area, and keen to write their own How To guide, here is the link for submissions … http://howto.yellow.co.nz/

Great opportunity to get some links back to your own website and put some valuable content out onto the interwebs.

Till next time,

Karen

The rumbles are out there in the interwebs (as per usual) about more changes in the Google algorithm and what impact it will have on companies wanting to optimise their websites.

Well the good news is that if you are focusing on building awesome content into your website – you will still come out on top of the heap!

Never stop thinking about what you can add to your site that might be of interest and value to any readers, anywhere. Especially good if it relates to your core business of course … but the occasional article or blog post that is off track can be good too … it’s a little like when your local supermarket decides to move things around. You find it harder to see the things you normally buy, but you sometimes end up discovering completely new products you’ve never bought before.

And you eventually rediscover where they have hidden your usual shopping staples.

So where do you put fresh content on your site?

You might build a blog or add a blog to your site, skin it to match the rest of your site design.

Or add a section themed around the main content of your site; a press section perhaps; news; or expand existing pages to include more relevant information and detail that might be of interest to visitors.

Any questions? Post them below – I would love to hear from you.

Karen

Yep, that’s it … I have officially designated 2010 as the year of moving beyond the comfort zone.

What does that mean for you?

What challenges can you create for yourself that will take your life, your job, your business – and your website, to a new level.

What are the things that technology has enabled in the last 12 months that might entice you to look differently at what you are doing – and make some changes as a result?

Check out this interview with Mashable’s Pete Cashmore on CNN, and his post about the 10 top trends he forecasts for 2010.

Are you going to be riding Google Wave – or at least one of the first to actually get your head around it and start using it the way its developers conceptualised?

Are you going to take Twitter to the next level for your business?

Will you be ready to take new technologies by the horns and really make them work for you?

Or will you be sitting back waiting for everyone else to take the lead before you make a move.

Stretching ourselves, taking some risks, moving outside the comfort zone of business as usual is key to innovation, growth and progress, particularly when so many have battened down the hatches to weather the recession.

As we have seen in the past, the best companies have emerged out of tough economic times leaner and more creative, more productive than before, to really take the world by storm.

Are you going to be one of those? Or will you be one of those who fall by the wayside because you were too scared to put your toe in the water.

I wish you courage, creativity, commercial nous and great success in 2010 – roll on the new decade!

Happy New Year everyone.

Karen

I would also like to make the point that if one of the reasons your site is not being regularly updated is because you have to get your web company to do it for you, or your staff find it difficult to use the CMS behind your site – then it is time for a change.

Get training for your staff

or

Have your site shifted to a user friendly CMS (Joomla is one good option to check out).

Don’t let the construction of your site stop you from keeping it fresh.

Ten more reasons to update your website content.

Some reasons to add to the existing list.

1. A good website should be dynamic. And that means plenty of new stuff, and plenty of interaction – make this a place readers WANT to return to.
2. Your site content, perhaps especially your home page, should always look fresh and relevant. Dated material is obvious to readers very quickly.
3. Good intentions are not enough! Starting off adding new material (with dates on it, like press releases or newsletters) is only a good idea if you keep it going. Seeing a site with the most recent release or newsletter dating back to the previous year, or even earlier is NOT a good look.
4. Your products and services are constantly changing, and your site needs to reflect that. Even when you are super busy, make sure it is someone’s role in the company to be updating what’s new on your site.
5. Relevant social media “conversations”. Fresh, interesting content on your site gives you something to talk about in the world of Facebook (business and fan pages), Twitter, LinkedIn and anywhere else you and your audiences like to hang out and share.
6. Keep your business on its toes. If you don’t have new and interesting things to share with the world via your website – why not? Have you stopped growing, researching, developing, responding, innovating? Is your business in a rut – or does it just look that way?
7. The world around you is changing – fast, even if you’re not. Make sure you regularly check the language on your site to make sure it is still relevant to your audiences. Perhaps your audience has changed, but the jargon or terminology on your site hasn’t. Running a regular check for your key audiences is a great way to help ensure you stay in touch.
8. Communication is a constantly evolving process. And that’s what your website is – a primary communication tool. Don’t forget that.
9. Refresh your window display. If you were a retailer, how often would you change your window display? Once a week, once a month, every season? Change your site frontage just as often. Show the passers-by that this shop window is loved and attended to.
10. Reflect your marketing activities. If you are actively marketing online, make sure your site is perfectly tuned to your marketing campaigns. Create special landing pages for your adwords to get the flow going with potential customers who are interested enough to click through to your site – reward their interest by taking the time to give them what they are looking for. Don’t assume that what is already on the page is enough.

Would love your own comments about why you think a site should – or should not, be updated.

Till next time

Karen

Yes, once again I am talking about doing what it takes to make your site stand out and connect with your target audiences. And even better, create the kind of content that is different enough and edgy enough to make readers send their friends and colleagues to read it for themselves – or email/share your site links.

All too often we get scared when it comes to doing something cool with our site content. The pressure to be polite, politically correct, grammatically correct, and really, kinda boring … is very strong.

But …

If your target audience is not corporate, if being PC doesn’t serve you, and if people really appreciate a genuine, authentic voice on your site, then why not do it?

We talked to a client today who has a product that is very “retro” … which is one way of saying it hasn’t changed or been upgraded in decades. And the customers really like it that way. So the new owners have no intention of changing its essence, and our job is to represent that authentically through their new website.

Fun job!!

So I would encourage you – if that is the position you are in, not to get hooked up on making everything so vanilla and inoffensive that no-one really wants to read your content (cos why would they?)

ciao for now

Karen

1. Put your audience first – what will they be looking for on your site? What will turn them on, and keep them there to read all the good stuff and maybe even purchase your products or services … and what will scream out at them to just click right off the site.
2. Use the tools at your disposal. There are many free tools to analyse how people are interacting with your website and most of them are free. Make sure you install Google analytics at the very least, and learn how to use it. This is powerful information that too many people ignore.
3. Keep your sentences short and sweet. People will be scanning the page, so they need to get the sense of what you are saying quickly. Avoid long, complex sentences – attention will be quickly lost. 
4. Review your site content as if you had ADHD. Flick your eyes over the page. Do your main messages stand out? Are your calls to action obvious and compelling? Do you immediately understand what the page is about and what you are expected to do from here?
5. Make things clickable. People expect everything on a web page to be clickable – headings, pictures, anything that5 looks like a button, logos. So don’t disappoint. Make them clickable, link them to relevant places, AND, use alt text so when they mouse over your links, they can see what they are.
6. On that note, avoid using Flash. Sure Flash animations can look great, but they are pretty much invisible to the search bots.
7. Keep your best stuff above the fold. All the user research shows that many people will not scroll down the page. So never put your most important calls to action at the bottom, below the fold. Never.
8. Make sure you use some keywords on the page. Don’t “stuff” unnecessary keywords into the headings and text, but DO make sure there are sufficient relevant words on the page to be recognised by a search engine. You would be surprised by the number of sites that just have something like a product name and product photograph on the page – and no searchable text.
9. Make sure text is text, not an image. Don’t make the mistake of using a graphic designer who puts all the fancy fonts etc into an image – which looks great on the page, but can’t be reviewed by the search engines. You may have to sacrifice a little of the designer-ness, to help your site be found. And after all, there is no point having a fancy looking site if no-one but you ever sees it, right?
10. Get second, third and fourth opinions. Test your site for usability and to see if your messages are getting across. Don’t just ask people who will say that it is great, even if it’s not. Ask your target audience, your customers, for their opinions, and be prepared to make changes if what they say makes sense.

There you go, a great little guide to awesome web content. If you do all of those ten things, you are way ahead of about 60 – 70% of the sites currently out there. Of course there are plenty more things you can do once you get all of this right, but this list is a great place to start.

Karen

When you are creating a website you want people to come back to over and over again … and a site you want people to recommend to others, it is important that it has depth and  flavour.

The interwebs are full of vanilla sites that are little more than online brochures, they have no depth, no personality – no real reason for people to want to come back again.

Talking to a client today, I was suggesting that to really build loyal followers and increase visitors to their site, it needs to have more personality, and more insider information than something as relatively flavourless as a wikipedia page.

Sure wiki is a great resource, but how often do you refer to the same wikipedia page more than once?

No personality resides there, and you really don’t expect much in the way of fresh information to be added on a regular basis.

For your site to really draw the traffic, make sure it is fresh and flavourful, with plenty of zing to it!

(Next post, how to add some zing.)

Enjoy!

Karen

What a lot of  “google analytics watchers” don’t realise is that it usually takes time for a load of hard work in search engine marketing to pay off.

But when it does, it can really pay off big time.

And that’s always a good day.

Karen

(or Batman and Superman)

Right?

Well that seems to be the trend, as things get tougher out there for the traditional marketing media of print, television and radio, internet spending is increasing, and the expectations of what the net can deliver are getting higher.

Thing is, what we instinctively know is that while people might be cutting back on their subscriptions to magazines, pay television and newspapers, and consciously avoiding the advertisements that are the bread and butter of those media, they are spending more time online – in the world of free entertainment and connectivity that only the internet can deliver.

So how are you making the most of that for your business?

Are you ensuring that your website is delivering both content of value, and entertainment? Is it providing a chance for people to connect with your product, service and staff in a meaningful way, and with each other through your site?

What we are finding in our daily business of helping clients develop new sites, rebuild existing sites or optimise their existing sites, is that they need to understand the importance of developing two things:

1) Valuable content that is regularly updated and that people will return for, and link back to

and

2) Interactivity – the chance for your customers, readers and potential customers to talk to and see each other, to ask questions, discuss your products and services and bigger issues in your field. Provide them with a platform or a forum to connect in a meaningful way.

The challenge with both of the above is that there are no shortcuts to doing this in a meaningful and genuine way. There are no bots or algorithms that will replace the role of intelligent human beings thinking about and creating content and interfaces that other human beings will find of value.

Only you can do this.

So starting thinking about how you will add value to your internet presence and make the most of having those extra eyeballs looking for ways to be entertained and engaged.

Till next time,

Karen