Erik T. Ford

Shared by Erik

Very handy from the well known author/ blogger Tim Ferris-

The above video is one of my favorite presentations I’ve given in 2009, an opening keynote at the last San Francisco WordCamp, titled “How to Blog without Killing Yourself”. More than 700 people from 32 countries were in attendance, which made for a wonderful experience.

The original title was “Scalable Blogging Behaviors: How to Grow from 1 to 1,000,000 Readers” and the content did not change.

In the above presentation, including detailed screenshots, I cover…

- Why I blog

- How I blog and select best practices

- Frequency and tools — best times and days to post

- Blogging myths and how to harness data for better results

- Testing design and surprising findings that can be copied

- How I address comments and community building

- How I write and research for good social media response

- 20 minutes of audience Q&A on Twitter, branding, outsourcing, and much more

I hope you enjoy it as much as I enjoyed giving it.

Erik Blogging best practices, Blogging, SEO, traffic

In effort to share the very best, I find myself hardpressed to be able to share what I’d like to share with appropriate editorialism.  So, I’m going to post briefer posts with more focus on the essential content.

There was the Search Insider Summit in Captiva, Fla., which Gord Hotchkiss hosted a panel/ clinic on eye-tracking analysis of Web sites.  His focus was on post-click optimization.

Gord Hotchkiss

The importance does not need to be underscored:  marketers are looking for ways to show a higher return on investment for spending in SEO, PPC and other online channels.

If there was one single takeaway, it was this: enable this type of testing early in the discovery and design process of Web site and landing page development, testing multiple creative comps, architecture, and messaging on groups that represent targeted users, in addition to testing the pages with a paid search campaign.

• Paid Search: Most effective types of pages were specifically targeted landing pages
• Using Own Page Sites is common when: many brand and DR marketers use their site pages as landing pages for very large spends, even though many of these sites were developed without the search user experience and conversion process in mind. Generic approach for multipurpose use.
• Paid Landing Page: Difficult to scale from an enterprise level standpoint; additionally tough to tweak down the road.

Takeaways from the overall discussion regarding development:

• Set up a testing lab, or hire someone to do it for you.
• Get media stakeholders involved early in the development process.
• Test multiple creative comps, architecture, and messaging with your target group, for both direct navigation experience, and also effectiveness in paid search.
• Use prior performance knowledge to inform redesign or landing pages.
• Build in the ability to test and change.

You can find the article in it’s entirety over at MediaPost

Erik Click-throughs, Uncategorized, Usability, Web Development Conversion, e-commerce, enterprise, methodology, optimization, Post Click, SEO, testing