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PDF Ebook Resources to get you started in Social Media

I almost entitled this article as “Don’t Let Your Business Lose Out in the Social Media Land Grab”.

You will already have read on this blog how important social media is and will be to the corporate world, but you might still have some reservations. That is fair enough, and to be honest, I still have reservations about some of it.

But really, if you do nothing else with social media for your business, at least make sure you secure your business names, brands, and as important, your own name.

Just like in the domain name world, in most cases only one person can hold these uniquely named accounts. You might not think of a Twitter account as being prime real estate today, but in fact business is already being done there, people are already passing off their own lunatic rantings as those of major brands and celebrities, and you can count on it only getting even more crazy in future.

So, grab your names. Go now.

Back so soon? OK, now what next?

The key to making the most of social media for your business is to work out which parts and tactics work for you, and which do not. That means getting your hands dirty and trying things out. I have had terrific return on investment from blogging, Twitter, and to a lesser extent, LinkedIn, but have found MySpace less than stellar and I am still finding my way with FaceBook. You will not know if these services will work for you unless you take a look.

If you want to look at Social Media for business, check out “What is Social Media” by iCrossing, which is a bit old but still explains the basics: http://www.icrossing.co.uk/fileadmin/uploads/eBooks/What_is_social_media_Nov_2007.pdf (PDF)

As a professional you will need to be on LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com

Seeing as I already mentioned Twitter, and Twitter is one of those services where only one account can hold a particular name, you really need to get started with that service today: Twitter

Mari Smith is the Queen of FaceBook, and she has a free FaceBook tips report telling you how to get started, how to avoid common mistakes, and how you might use it for business. Get it by adding your email address, right here: http://marismith.com/facebooktips/

Finally, for individuals in this challenging career environment, I have to point to Chris Brogan’s report on how to use social media to find work :http://www.chrisbrogan.com/free-ebook-using-the-social-web-to-find-work/

Hopefully these free resources will give you an idea of the potential social media holds for your business, but the key point is grab those accounts and get started!

This was a guest post by Chris Garrett. Chris writes for several blogs and companies including Cogniview, the leading provider of PDF conversion software, as well as his own blog Chris Garrett on New Media where you can get two free ebooks just for subscribing.

Mobile web experience: could do better

People are increasingly using the internet on mobile devices and companies need to provide an equal user experience for visitors accessing their online information in different ways.

However, a recent Gomez/dotMobi report says that mobile web performance is getting worse (in the airline, banking and search industries at least): there’s an increasing gap between ‘traditional’ and mobile websites, with the former getting faster and the latter getting slower.

Are two websites better than one?

Many organisations (such as Vodafone) are producing two websites: a ‘traditional’ one for PCs and another version for mobile browsers. This is generating a lot of discussion in the industry (including among accessibility professionals) regarding the need for – and wisdom of – separate websites.

The arguments are wide ranging, from making the same content available to everyone (without forcing people with different browsers to use a different version of a website) to providing a good user experience across all devices.

It also raises issues of doubling maintenance efforts (and therefore costs) as well as ensuring content is consistent and up to date across both sites.

Mobile performance criteria

The Gomez/dotMobi study looked at the mobile web experiences provided by leading companies in the three sectors, across major wireless networks. It measured:

  • availability – making sure customers get the information they need, when they need it
  • response time – how quickly visitors can access content and perform tasks
  • consistency – consistent user experiences, no matter where they are
  • discoverability – how easily customers can find a mobile site from various URLs
  • readiness – making sure the mobile website renders as intended on popular devices

American Airlines, Bank of America and Amazon ranked highest among the selected companies in their respective sectors (Google wasn’t included because its mobile web application “did not meet the technical requirements for benchmark participation”).

What are the roots of the problem?

Gomez says that despite consumers’ high expectations for mobile web experiences, quality experiences continue to be a challenge for many businesses. The company says that this should be a concern for both brand managers and technical teams.

I’d be interested to know what the study team thought were the main causes of these performance issues: bloated code, poor navigation and content that’s not fit for purpose, for example? Of course, this is common to all types of websites; not just mobile ones.

The majority of these issues could begin to be addressed by following standards and accessibility guidelines. Sites that do often perform better, make maintenance simpler and decrease related costs. In addition, effective use of CSS can also avoid the need for separate websites for different devices.

I’d be curious to know how some of the other corporate sectors perform, those that aren’t as consumer facing as the three chosen for this study. If anybody’s aware of any reports, let us know.

Further reading

Does your website deter your visitors?

Muddy BootsHow much does your website affect the decision-making of your visitors?

Yesterday I was trying to decide which of two outdoor attractions to visit with my children, to break up a long car journey, and had no information available other than that on the internet.

Naturally, I compared the websites. I know I spend much of my day online, but isn’t the internet a common first port of call these days?

The website of one was smart, appealing and well designed, with large high quality graphics and a clean layout with clear navigation. It used most of the available window, and videos loaded quickly. The design was modern, with a good use of colour, and the messages to be conveyed were clear.

The second website was much less impressive: the images were poor quality and small. The layout was long and thin, only 600px wide (vs. the 980px of the first site) and seemed cramped. The promise of an interactive tour wasn’t met, as it wouldn’t work. Navigation was confusing and there was no sitemap. The site was designed 8 years ago – and it shows.

Based on the website alone, I would have gone for the first attraction: no question. In fact, we’d already visited the first, so I decided to try the second attraction. And we had a wonderful time, emerging at the end of the day happy, wind-blown and sunburnt, and muddy beyond belief.

However, that was completely unpredictable, based on the website. I was not expecting that we would have as good a time as we did – because the website didn’t match reality.

I know the British go for understatement, and are unwilling to boast – but I wonder how many more visitors the second attraction would receive if its website were more attractive?

How attractive is your website compared to its peers? Does it have the effect you’re hoping for, or is it at risk of having the opposite effect?

CoTweet for business: Come on in, the water’s lovely

swimmers waiting

So you’re thinking about plunging into the Twitter stream – or perhaps you’re already swimming, and want a colleague or two to join in – but are wondering how you’re going to manage multiple accounts for your company?

In one of our recent newsletters, I mentioned CoTweet as a way to manage multiple company accounts. Since then I’ve been given access to their beta test, so I’ve been able to experiment with it.

Sidenote: if you’re not receiving our newsletters, why not? Sign up at the top right of this page – I promise we only send out a newsletter intermittently, and it contains snippets not available on the blog …

Back to CoTweet: this may just be going to change the way I use Twitter for Corporate Eye. This is what I’ve found in my first few days of experimentation…

Use multiple accounts, multiple users per account

one tweeter per account

I’ve set up multiple accounts within CoTweet, and I can access them all via one login. If you’ve ever tried to log in and out of different accounts with Twitter in the same browser session, you’ll know how confusing this can get – CoTweet makes this easier.

multiple tweeters per account

I’ve also set it up so that multiple people can twitter using the same account. So I now can have more than one person tweeting for @lucynixon (if I wanted).

Streams of tweets: merged and threaded

On logging in, the @replies and direct messages are immediately visible, but in one flow – no separation between @replies and direct messages. And they’re threaded, so you can see which messages were sent in response to which.

Of course the normal flow of updates is also available – and you can easily see a separate list of those messages you’ve sent.

Divert tweets to the right person

Once you’ve got your cotweeters set up with access, then they’re good to go, and individuals within your organisation can be marked as on or off duty. That way you can see who is available immediately to respond to a tweet.

You can assign any tweet to somebody else in your organisation to handle – whether this is to reply to, or simply for interest – and send it with a note from you, to explain what you think should be done. And this can be followed up with an automated email to that person (in case they are ‘off duty’, I suppose). These can then be followed up at leisure. I expect I’ll use this as a way of ‘bookmarking for later action’ for myself, as well, as I haven’t found a favourites option.

I can assign messages to any one of my ‘channels’ and to an individual within that channel – so that, for instance, if I were in the auto industry, and had one Twitter account for Vans and another for Trucks, I could assign Tweets to Suzie in Vans, or to Brian in Trucks – or assign one to the Vans Sales team, and another to the Vans Support team. And if I get it wrong, I can re-assign it.

There is a list of what tweets have been assigned to me, as a work-flow management device, but it would be useful to be able to see a list of messages I’ve assigned to someone else, so I could track response.

Worried your readers may be confused about who is tweeting? CoTweet lets you set up handles for each user (such as ~Lucy or ^LN), and these will be automatically appended to your tweets if you want.

(Yes, you can remove people from your account if you need to).

Message management

All the usual functions are available: I can send a direct message to each individual tweeter that comes up, or @reply them, retweet their message or email that tweet to someone for action – if I didn’t want to just assign the tweet to them inside CoTweet. Perhaps they’re not Twittering for my company but still have an interest in what’s being said?

CoTweet lets me schedule tweets to go out later. Yes, I know this is available as functionality elsewhere – but if I can get it all in one place, why look outside? A full-service system is what you need if you’re under pressure.

Plus – and importantly if you have multiple staff using the same account – scheduling tweets means that you can see if someone has already scheduled a tweet on the topic you’re thinking to mention. That way, people who follow your account don’t get three tweets in a row making a special offer!

When you’ve read and actioned a message, you can archive it so that you have a record, and to clean up the stream of tweets. I’m not sure whether they have plans for an internal search – I can see that if you handled thousands of messages, and needed to find one from a couple of months ago, it might be nice to be able to search your archive.

And I can see a list of messages I sent, rather than have them bundled with incoming direct messages, as Tweetdeck does it. I can see what my co-authors sent too, identified by sender. (Control freak? Me? I just think that might be useful…)

Interestingly, I can choose to cross-tweet, if I wanted: as the owner of multiple accounts, I can choose to send out the same tweet on each of them.

Keeping track of Twitter activity and customer management

cotweet-300

Suppose I wanted to keep track of my keywords and brand mentions …

The search function is great – I can do multiple searches (e.g. for governance, csr, and IR) and each set of results comes up in a separate stream on the same page. I’m not sure what the maximum number of searches would be – I tried 6, and had to sideways-scroll after 4 – but each separate search can be refreshed to get the latest tweets on each topic, and I can easily subscribe to an RSS feed for each of those searches.

However, it doesn’t retain the searches you set up if you logout, unlike Tweetdeck, which reloads the search panes. And it would be nice if the search panes auto-refreshed.

I can find more information about interesting people who come up in those searches, or even for any given user: their profile and their updates and – if relevant – the conversations I’ve had with them on Twitter; and, potentially even more usefully, I can add notes to myself (or, presumably, to others) about that person and the conversation we had. I can see that being very useful for a business.

Any bad points?

CoTweet is still in beta, so there are bound to be things to be ironed out and a few missing elements. I’ve made some suggestions above, but there are a few additional points:

  • each page is quite slow to load
  • the number of followers/following is out of date, and isn’t refreshed by logging out and in again
  • I’d like a desktop application that would run in Windows; there is one, I understand, for Mac

So – not yet perfect, but a really well thought through setup for business twittering. I like it.

Expert interview: David Hamill, Good Usability

questions-answers

Many corporate websites are managed by a person or team for whom the website is not their only responsibility. They rely on expertise from third party suppliers for designing, building and maintaining their website.

Companies with dedicated in-house online teams also sometimes lack a particular skill at a given time. Even with the combination of in-house support and an external agency, calling in an expert can provide many benefits.

But who are these experts, what do they do and how can they help? In the first of an occasional series, we speak to David Hamill of Good Usability. He’s an independent usability expert who’s worked on a number of high-profile websites and intranets, for companies such as RBS and the Share Centre.

Read the interview from the beginning or jump to a question that interests you:

David, thank you for taking the time to speak to Corporate Eye. Many people will be aware of the term, but perhaps you can begin by giving us an overview of the concept of ‘usability’?

Hi Helen, thanks for choosing to interview me. Usability is essentially how well something works for the people it was designed for. So a usable website is one whose target users can do the things they arrived at the site to do, without assistance and with satisfaction.

People often think usability is about simplicity and ease of use. But this isn’t always the case; it’s all about what users want to do. Sometimes they want complex detail. I recently wrote an article on this very subject.


How does usability sit alongside other well-known (but little understood) terms such as ‘user experience’ and ‘accessibility’?

User experience is a bit of a trendy word for usability really. Ironically, usability professionals use a lot of internal language that their clients don’t fully understand. Then in the course of their work they tell clients to stop using internal language on their websites that their customers don’t understand.

Accessibility is a term that webby types use to describe the extent to which your website can be accessed by people of all abilities. It’s often misunderstood to just mean making your website accessible to blind people.

But there are lots of reasons why people have physical and cognitive challenges when using websites and being blind is just one of them. It’s best to think of accessibility as a sub-set of usability. It’s all about websites being fit for purpose.


Following on from that, are there any legal requirements for corporate websites regarding usability?

There isn’t a specific legal requirement but according to the Disability Discrimination Act, service providers must make ‘reasonable adjustments’ to ensure their services can be accessed by people of all abilities.


So, what exactly do you do? How do you carry out your role in an ideal world (that is, with an adequate budget and time scale)?

In an ideal world we’d be doing lots and lots of user-centred design activities. But my ideal initial approach for an existing website is to start very simple.

This is because lots of organisations throw their money away on grand pieces of user research that they aren’t quite ready for. Having carried out a small introductory study, clients are more aware of what it can and can’t tell them.

So I’d start by carrying out usability testing on their current site with a handful of the site’s target users. After we’ve done this they’ll have more than enough improvements to keep them busy and I’ll recommend the next steps.

User centred design is an iterative process, it should never end. So there are always next steps; it’s about the continuous improvement of your website.


I see; explain usability testing to us.

A usability testing study is a series of one-on-one sessions where a facilitator asks target users to carry out real world tasks using the website.

The facilitator doesn’t help them at all; instead they just watch as the participant talks through what they’re doing. It’s remarkable what you can find out about your website and your users, just by watching them using your site.


How would a corporate website benefit from the help of a usability expert? Are there any examples of organisations that have seen tangible benefits?

The benefits depend on the organisation. If you’re an e-commerce website, then the main benefit is increased sales.

Most of the people arriving at your site are leaving without buying anything. Some of them are doing so because of difficulties using the site. This could be things they don’t understand, but also just things that cause enough friction for them to become distracted by the rest of life.

The classic example used to illustrate the benefits of usability techniques is a company that increased sales by $300m by removing a button from its website. I’ve not been quite that helpful to any of my clients yet, but it’s a nice target.

For a non-transactional website, improving the user experience can reduce costs and preserve a positive opinion of the brand. A customer interaction over the phone costs an organisation on average 14 times as much as it does on the web. A face-to-face interaction costs 35 times more.

People don’t persist with websites they have trouble using. Instead they go to another site, pick up the phone or go to the organisation’s office or shop. So there’s a clear cost-saving benefit in making life easy for your site’s visitors.

What do you think of the opinion that usability conflicts with other business objectives on the website, such as branding?

Great question Helen. Brands are not just a quirky logo, a set of colours and a typeface. These are important parts of brand consistency, but they are not the brand.

The brand is how your customers feel about your product or organisation. So you see, usability never conflicts with branding because usability is a part of branding.

The experience your customers are having on your website will influence their opinion of the brand. So there are sometimes usability improvements that conflict with brand guidelines. But not the brand.


What are areas of consideration that apply to all websites? For example, content presentation, consistency, navigation issues and so on.

The list is endless. Everything on your website will influence the user experience. If it doesn’t, it’s useless and should be removed.

However I have a special axe to grind that I know you’ll agree with, Helen. And that’s content. Organisations are happy to shell out large amounts of money on a good design and then spend little time looking at the content they are putting on the site.

My advice is not to let anyone write anything for the website until they’ve received web writing training.


What other typical problems do you see across many corporate websites?

There are common problems and considerations you need to make with every design approach. I prefer to think of a website’s usability in terms of what people are trying to do with it.

The most common problem I find is websites without any sense of priority. The majority of your website’s value is delivered by a very small amount of its content. If you take care of the user journeys to this content, you’ll massively improve the usability of your website.


Of course, we’re not just talking about external websites. How about intranets? These have a different audience and a different purpose; do the same problems apply and are there any additional considerations?

If I asked a 100 of your readers what the purpose of their intranet was, over 90 of them would probably use the word ‘communicate’ in their answer. If you see your intranet as just a communication tool, it is not fulfilling its true potential.

Intranets are business efficiency tools. Internal communications is a small but important part of this. If you want people within the company to use it as a communication tool, you need to first make it an effective business efficiency tool.

It needs to help employees to do their jobs. If it does this, you can then use it to communicate, because they will be using it all the time.

Organisations waste a lot of time and money trying to make their intranets popular and benchmarking themselves against other organisations. Benchmark against yourself not other organisations. Find out where you are in terms of usability and then improve. Use efficiency and effectiveness as a measure, not popularity.

You should start by culling rarely-used content and then create a clear set of guidelines on what gets published and what doesn’t. Otherwise it becomes the place where documents go to die.


There has recently been a lot of discussion online regarding websites for mobile platforms. Do you think that companies need to consider separate websites for use with desktop and mobile browsers?

The context of use is a very important consideration in usability, and the answer to your question depends on the context of use.

Do people even want to use your website on a mobile phone? If so, why are they using their mobile? They aren’t at home or at their desk, so what are they doing? Is it easy enough to do these tasks on a mobile phone?

When you know the answer to these questions, the answer is obvious. Just don’t guess the answer. Get evidence. Do user research.


What advice would you give to a website manager who is currently working on a website redesign or looking to hire an agency to do it for them? What questions should they be asking themselves or the agency?

My first advice is to consider not doing the redesign in the first place. How did your website get into the position that you need to redesign it? How are you going to ensure that you don’t get into that position again?

Big organisations like Amazon, Ebay and the BBC don’t do redesigns anymore. Instead they improve the usability and branding of their websites in phased releases. This is because they have been through so many redesigns that they’ve realised they are wasteful exercises.

If you’re choosing a design agency, I have a sure-fire way to whittle down your shortlist of prospective agencies. Take all of the proposals that include speculative design work and throw them in the bin.

These people have already designed your website without knowing enough about your organisation or your users to do so.

Well, that draws our questions to a close. David, thank you very much for your time and for talking to Corporate Eye.

Useful resources for finding out more

If you’d like to learn more about usability and how it could help you, David has recommended the book Don’t Make Me Think (Steve Krug, published by New Riders) as a good starting point for everyone.

You could also try the following websites:

Thrift and the corporate website

Thrift and the corporate website

Are you really making the most of your corporate material? All of it?

I was with a motion-graphics designer the other day, and he showed me some of his showreels … which included quite a bit of communications presentations, film and Flash work for major companies. You’d have heard of most of these companies, and I’ve visited their websites. Often.

Yet this fantastic work that he’d developed, that was being used for internal conferences or for trade-show backgrounds, wasn’t available on their websites.

I wonder why not?

Internal communications … I can see that there might be something that wasn’t to be communicated outside the company. But how difficult would it be to get that bit edited out?

Trade-show work … that’s already been made available to the public, hasn’t it?

It just seems like such a waste. Not only of these beautiful pieces of work, but of the money and time spent on developing them. A bit of re-use, particularly in these straitened times, can go a long way.

What visual material have you developed in the past that could be re-used on your site, either as it is, or in another form?