Aside: Working in Moderation
Work to live; don’t live to work.
- Steve Povlish
Don’t get me wrong; I value a job well done as much as the next person. In fact, I feel unfulfilled at the end of the day if I don’t do something meaningful at work. I don’t have to get everything done, but as long [...]
A Value-Based Approach to Website Strategy
If you examine a website closely enough, you can almost always identify some form of commercial interest behind it. This is often overt, as in e-commerce websites or content sites with advertising. Sometimes, however, the commercial interest is more subtle. Ward on the Web, for instance, is a professional blog devoid of [...]
How to Spot an SEO Snake Oil Salesman
If you advertize online, you’ll eventually be contacted by SEO companies. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing; as an SEO expert myself, I know how much value there is in ranking well. However, for every legitimate SEO company out there, you’ll probably hear from half a dozen SEO snake oil salesmen. These [...]
Shiver Me Timbers! jQuery Off the Starboard Bow!
Before you get confused, no, jQuery doesn’t have anything to do with pirates (at least, not that I’m aware of). In honor of International Talk Like a Pirate Day, I’ll be interspersing this post with random, distracting, inappropriate pirate jargon. Don’t blame me; blame the guys who started the meme.
I’ve never [...]
Social Media Experiment Update, Week Six
If you’ve been reading awhile, you may remember the social media experiment I started a few weeks ago. Well, after a month and a half, I figured it was about time to check on my Frankenstein monster and see how it was progressing.
So far, most of the readings are negative. It’s not lurching [...]
7 Lessons in Online Copywriting from Stephen King
Yesterday, I finished reading Stephen King’s “On Writing.” I didn’t read it with the intent to write a post about it; after all, Ward on the Web is about better websites. To be honest, I read it in preparation for NaNoWriMo (incidentally, I’ll be taking a hiatus from WotW in November for that [...]
A Crash Course in the Streisand Effect
Picture yourself standing in your kitchen. You shake the last bit of broomed-up crumbs from your dust pan into the trash. It’s taken awhile to clean up for the party, but you made it just in time. Your guests should be arriving soon to enjoy a pleasant evening in your spotless home.
As [...]
My First Impressions of Google Chrome
Chances are good you’ve already heard the news but, in case you haven’t, Google recently released its own browser, Google Chrome. Naturally, the blogosphere is absolutely buzzing with feature mashups, performance comparisons, and more than a few conspiracy theories. I’ll digress with the more noteworthy points that you are better told by the [...]
Explaining Social Media Optimization to the Uninformed
One of the major challenges of online marketing is communicating the value of new techniques such as corporate blogging, SEO, or social media optimization. Uninformed superiors are often wary of marketing tactics they don’t understand.
If you think you’re ready to ride the wild wave of social media optimization but your boss is still skeptical, [...]