#PSEWEB

As a personal user, the Facebook mobile applications have left me a little underwhelmed.

As a business user, the iPhone Facebook application is a great tool for anyone who has a Facebook Page – but doesn’t have any other properties (i.e. Twitter). Once you add Twitter, Hootsuite becomes a great tool but if Facebook is all you work with, then Facebook for iPhone gets the job done quick and easy.

The key is adding your pages to your favourites screen within the application.

Add Your Pages to Favourites

1. Open the app
2. Click the grid icon in the upper left corner
   
3. Swipe to the left to get to your Favourites page
   
4. Click the “+” plus icon in the upper right corner
5. Click Pages in the bottom right
6. Select the page you would like to add from the list
7. Done!

Updating Your Facebook Page

1. Open the app
2. Click the grid icon in the upper left corner
3. Swipe to the left to get to your Favourites page
4. Click on the page you would like to update
5. For a status update, go ahead and enter into the What’s on your mind? box
6. For a photo upload, click the camera icon to the left of the What’s on your mind? box

Huge thanks to @jjloa for this great tip at #pseweb last May!

Presenter: Terri Vaughan, Web Customer Support Specialist, Clemson University

Abstract:

Are you one of the lucky individuals who provide support for your organization’s Web content providers who have little, if any, Web experience? Does your organization think typing and word processing skills are all that are needed to be a Web content expert? Is the “Webmaster” role part of a job description’s “other duties as necessary,” If you answer yes to these questions, this presentation is for you. You can transform your Web content providers into Web content experts by teaching a few simple skills. Reveal the “magic” of the internet and how it differs from “the Web.” Show how their Word skills can help them create interesting and informative Web content. Explain writing for print and writing for Web and why it’s important to know the difference. Inspire your content providers to learn these skills and more to transform them into Web content experts and you into a Web support genius!

Notes from presentation …

Many content providers given the job without volunteering and without specific skillset (they can type).

What they want:

• Someone else to do it for them.
• Want their web files and folders to be organized like on their desktop.
• To never learn markup.
• Drag and drop.
• Word like interface

What they get:

• Unfamiliar file structure.
• Inadequate graphics tools – training.
• Unclear or hard instructions.

What they do:

• Put off content.
• Insert improperly formatted graphics.
• Create unfriendly urls.
• Upload documents instead of web pages. (Don’t make users download.)

Clemson is on cascade, good because feels like word processing. Content providers are happy. Don’t have the other skills

What do they need:

• Adequate technical experience.
• Learn web best practices.
• Easy to use img editting tools.
• Ability to adapt print to web.

What we should do:

• Select staff w the right skills.
• Develop training program.
• Require attending training.
• Provide positive reinforcement.
• Periodically check on their web and offer positive as well as support.

Training Regimen:

• Basic computer skills
• How the web works
• Web best practices
• Multimedia formatting and best practices
• Simple tips for writing for web
• Site specific hands on training w tools
• Basic html

How to teach Content Providers:

• Show them confidence
• Avoid tech speak
• Explain why skills are necessary
• Analogies that they can relate to
• Entertain and engage during and after
• Follow up w reminders, cool tricks and compliments
• If you can compare it to ms word, they will get it.
• Stress the increase in their marketability.

Content Providers Love:

• Copy paste from word
• Activate previous version of updated page
• Restore accidental deletions
• Wysiwyg
• Seeing their content live right away

Summary:

• Clemson has 460 content providers. Manual monitoring process. Run report to see what’s been touched. Go out and look at their sites – this is what my job should be.
• Clemson redesign had 4 templates – full, left, left + spotlight, right, in multiple looks.
• Decision makers don’t understand web any better than admin
• Training infinitely better when one on one
• With workflows, someone needs to be in charge.

Presenter: Brad J Ward, CEO – Blue Fuego

Abstract: I will walk through many of Google’s services and products and show attendees how they can use them to increase productivity within their workplace as well as provide a better experience for their website visitors.Sites featured include, but are not limited to, Google Docs, Maps, Alerts, Webmaster Tools, YouTube, Analytics, Forms, GTalk/GChat, Blogger and more.

Notes during presentation …

Recommended Reading: Free, Chris Anderson

First step: get a Google account that you will use for all of this …

Thought: stop and think whether other staff will ever need access – should you create a corporate Google account instead of using your personal one?

Next: set up Google Alerts – great way to get buzz about your institution.

Thought: I am almost anti-google-alerts … relying too heavily on it can cause you to miss a lot of important web content/buzz.  Remember to regularly search your brand (you’ll be shocked by how much didn’t show up in your alerts).

Brad’s Experience: Brad found out that Butler’s $13K mascot costumes had been stolen via a Google Alert.  Caught it early enough to hitch a ride with the buzz and blow tweets and youtube out of the water, even get mass media attention.

Thought: Best practice is to track down specific mentions of your brand, individual applicants commenting about their school decision.  Don’t try to do this for every social mention. Just don’t. Catch what you reasonably can, but unless you have a social army, it’s not realistic to respond to every tweet, blog post, facebook note, discussion thread. If you end up getting them all – great, but don’t hate on yourself for getting 90%.

Next: Google Search Commands

Google search command “Site:uwo.ca” will only search uwo.ca.

Example of use: School decides to change application deadline to December 1 from December 15. Use site: command to find instances of both options to track down any instances of the “old” date.  Now you know everything that needs to be updated (give or take – Google isn’t perfect).

Boolean operators (AND, OR) work on Google and Twitter and most search boxes.  Use them to create a more inclusive search query (results that include multiple versions of your school name all in one result listing, versus 5 separate result outputs).

Next: Create a Google Map

Steps:

1. maps.google.com
2. create new map
3. name & description
4. save
5. tag things – you can drop html right in there – images!.

Check out Sweet Briar College and what they’ve done.

Butler uses embedded, tagged Google Maps to show places to eat.

Next: Google Docs

Example: Uncovering Class of 2013 Facebook groups in December ‘08.  Within 2 hours, edu webbers had pulled together over 200 links to these groups – would have taken Brad forever to do alone.

Forms: You can use Google Docs to create little online surveys?

Next: google.com/webmasters/tools/

Have to embed a little bit of code onto your site to prove you own the domain.  Provides a lot of quality information on your site – top searches, crawl errors (404’s), who’s linking to your site.

Submit a sitemap – directly influence the key links listed with your school on google search results.  “This is what we want you to feature.”

Next: Google.com/talk

“Live answer solution for free on your website.” This is a way your institution could have that for free! Our MBA site wants this – note to self! Your users won’t need a google account, won’t need to sign in.

Next: Google Reader

FYI, you can run your Google Alerts through here.  Also, search.google.com results can be rss’d into here.  Chris Brogan quote: “Make Google Reader your listening station.” You could check every blog every day to see if they have new content, or you can let an RSS reader check for you, and also deliver the content to ya.

Next: Google Voice

Transcribes audio but not very well. Use it to transcribe your voicemail.

Settings > Call widgets > embed “Call me” widget. They enter their phone number, Google calls them and says “Welcome, now connecting you,” then calls you and offers accept, voicemail, listen to voicemail, transcribe. Fantastic! A nice way to set up your mobile number without giving out your actual mobile number.

Next: Google apps for education

take the cost of running your school email off your hands.

http://google.com/apps/edu

Next/First: Google Analytics

free, all sorts of data about the people coming to your site, allow you to track your campaigns, use google url building to track what kind of traffic you’re getting.

Next: YouTube – owned by Google

New YouTube channel design … 77% of ppl that come to YouTube intending to watch one video, watch several.   Every minute, 20 hours of video is uploaded.  Third most visited site in the US, behind google, facebook, etc.

.EDU channels – additional branding options.  Custom header option (see Abilene), branding on every video. Longer videos can be uploaded.

Next: Full list of all the Google offerings: http://www.google.com/options/

Also, Google Labs (check out email goggles! answer math questions before you can check your email in off hours)

How can you Google your workweek?

Googlers get 20% of work week to focus on labs-type ideas, that end up being their best products!

Google Wave – coming soon.  “Going to shake up a lot of how we communicate – as if enough of that hasn’t already happened. Definitely one to keep an eye on.”

Do you have a Max strategy?

CEO of Google – take whatever you are doing and do it at the max in terms of distribution.  Marginal cost of distribution is free, you might as well put things everywhere.  “Max strategy = Max attention.”  But it’s not always good to have 800 videos on YouTube if they aren’t good.

Think And, not Or -  Seth Godin

If you have time to put pictures on flickr and picasa, do both.  Do you really want to alienate the percentage that are on the second most popular service?

“Not everyone is going to want to interactive with you online. Some just want to pull info and send in their application.” @bradjward – good to remember this, amongst all these ideas.

We don’t know what the next big thing is.  Facebook is 5 years old, Youtube is 4, Twitter is three.  The Internet is 4 years old, it is still a virgin.  @bradjward quoting Gary Vaynerchuk.

Neat thought – only ppl looking for a car will go to vw.com.  People open to great content will go to facebook.com/vw.

Sidenote: Always annoying that major brands get magical different rules on Facebook.  We tried to register Facebook.com/Ivey and were turned down because it was too short – and yet Volkswagon has www.facebook.com/vw – harumph.

Notes from presentation …

I’m very excited about this presentation – even their ppt is pretty!

Intro:

• W&M was working from a design that was 9 years old
• Spent about 4 months pre-planning, then RFP and selected mStoner
• Partnership with mStoner was citical to project’s success

The mStoner Essence: (Redesign Strategy)

• Discovery
• Strategy Development
• Content Creation
• Design + Testing
• Technology pecifications
• Implementation + Launch
• Constant Communication

Plus signs + are the cool new ampersand &.

The W&M Essence: (Redesign Strategy)

• Transparent communication
• Campus participation
• Project management from it
• 20% technology, 80% not
• Trust in the mStoner redesign process

Phase I – Discovery:

mStoner

• mStoner gets to know the institution (deep dive on site, read current publications)
• Competitor review (“W&M doesn’t have peers!”)
• Idetify goals: who is the site for? etc
• Talk to everyone possible to see what they want, need, think re: the site

W&M

• Prepping campus participants
• The green room: cookies and drinks to engage while also shooing out the previous group

W&M chose not to sit in on stakeholder interviews with mStoner – they feel they got much more honest input because of this.

… in a lot of ways, the redesign I am working on has been at a disadvantage because pre-planning was done by a team that no longer exists.  All these great steps, if they were done, no one knows about them or has the outcomes … these prep activities are critical for the agency to learn the culture of the school and its quirks/priorities.  Especially in higher ed redesigns, which are incredibly complex and political, getting to know the ropes is one of the most important steps for an agency.

Phase II – Strategy Development

mStoner

• prioritize audiences
• formulate information architecture
• outline creative recommendations, messaging ideas
• Sort through policies and procedures
• plan to make it scale

College of W&M

• Internal vs External
• Are you in?

By this point, W&M project manager had made 63 personal visits across campus – not phone calls, not emails.  Started with stakeholders that promised to be the hardest to satisfy.

Provost was the “champion” of the project.  Champion does not need to be incredibly involved, but is critical to keep the project moving when authority or heat needs to be turned up – or decisions need to be made despite division in the community.

Phase III – Content Creation:

mStoner

• What exists? What needs to be recreated?
• Who produces it? Who reviews it?
• Settle on key messages, feature banks
• Strike the right tone

College of William & Mary

• IA and copy (who? and how?)
• Editorial review

Previous redesign had been done in a vacuum – everything about it from IA up was “off.” Did lots of internal communication: IA is not your org chart.  25 meetings about the academics section of the website! My experience: IA meetings are long, and painful, and circular but always worth it.  Stakeholders know the content and audience best, always include them even though its painful.

Reviewers: Sent entire sections of site content to volunteer reviewers (tens of faculty members). Many didn’t have time, many provided incredible feedback.  Content was reviewed by people from other sections as well as the section.

mStoner: IA should look about 75% exactly like every other college.  There are sections and labels that users are looking for.  i.e. about, admissions, news.  W&M chose to elevate research.

Phase IV – Design + Testing

mStoner

• create a spectrum of design concepts
• survey designs with target audience
• build an entire template suite
• test chosen concept with real users

W&M

• beware of monsters (combining elements from multiple designs)
• feedback not voting
• big splash is 3 not 1 (unveiling possibilities was bigger deal than the final decision)

mStoner: important to create a spectrum of design concepts.  Something that is too boring, something that is too edgy, something that is too touchy feely, something that is too cold.  This helps gravitate the community around whichever one feels right.  Online design surveys of thousands of potential students asking them how the designs they feel,what they say.  Then on campus focus groups & interviews – students, faculty, staff, anyone that wants to talk.

Stakeholders are always waiting for pictures.

W&M pulled together a group of people on campus that had professional experience with design.  W&M was very careful to make sure that people knew they were providing feedback, not voting.  Before beginning discussion, gave each participant a piece of paper with questions and had them write down feedback – once the conversation begins, they will be biased/silenced/volumized.

Design possibilities were unveiled on project blog, as well as to Facebook supporters.

Wanted to get feedback on what felt right, what felt wrong?

Audience navigation very subtle – sent out internal communication that there were special areas for each audience – to soften blow of a sudden, drastic change to current navigation.

Phase V – Tech Specifications

mStoner

• Create a short-list of CMS options
• Identify/select CMS
• Develop functional specifications based on designs
• Code HTML templates, CSS files

W&M

• Show & Tell
• Demo the two best

W&M shared CMS feature lists and design specifications with anyone that asked – found this effective.  Most people took a step back and accepted that team knew what they were doing.

Had mStoner demo two different systems to about 100 people! Wrote a script of what they wanted mStoner to show.  Important to not have the vendor run the demo.

Global Image – mStoner’s technical partner – helped with the implementation of Cascade.

Phase VI – Implementation + Launch

mStoner

• implement templates and features in CMS
• Tie-in additional systems
• Test functionality in an array of browsers
• Configure users, roles, workflows
• Conduct necessary training

W&M

• Stop communicating
• Command central

“You can’t have big red text.  And you can’t make things flash.  The price you pay for a beautiful award winning site, and functionality being added & improved every day, is that you have to give up some control.” rough quote – very well said.

W&M’s website now sits with IT and its suggested that this should have been the case long before now.  I wonder why? Where does the web sit at your institution? Media/Public Relations? IT? Web Comms as its own world? Perfect world: I would have the last option, but at best that is a future goal (for me).