Guess Who Owns Information Online
I’ll give you a hint: It’s not you.
The AP is making a big hubbub about fair use of its material.
The music industry is waging war against the Pirate Bay.
What the people behind these headlines fail to realize is that, on the web, information cannot be contained. It flows and propagates, spreading across the globe at the blazing speed of a billion internet connections.
Can you track a lightning bolt with the human eye? Can you catch it in your hand? No? The same goes for information. The second it’s out in the world, it’s gone in a flash.
This isn’t about right and wrong, copyrights, fair use, or anything remotely resembling legalese. Like it or not, the internet is too big for that. Fight it with law suits and legislation all you like; you can’t kill a billion-headed beast by cutting off one or two heads, especially when a million more grow back in their place. It’s futile. You’ll just make it angry.
The way to survive in the information economy of the 21st century is to create free products and services that can be monetized in other ways, to generate information that benefits you as it spreads, to embrace the free flow of information rather than try to strangle it.
Not lucrative enough, you say? People have to pay, you say? Keep embracing your outdated business models and see just how much money you’re making in 10 years. That is, if you’re even around that long. 
Quality is the New Quantity
“Omit needless words.”
- E.B. White, “The Elements of Style“
“Answer these three questions:
- What determines the difficulty of a school writing assignment?
- What kinds of books are you likely to brag about reading?
- What is the basis on which a writer should charge for his or her work?
If any of your answers involve pages or word counts, you’re stuck in the mentality that the value of a written work is based on its volume.
Now answer this question: Which are you more likely to read, a short article or a long one? Which are you more likely to value, remember, repeat, or link back to?
Focus on quantity and you’ll create swollen, fluffy content. “Happy talk,” to use a term from Steve Krug’s “Don’t Make Me Think
Focus on quality and you’ll create quick, easily-digestible content that makes visitors more likely to read, spread, and convert. Fewer words; high value density. Exactly the way your visitors want it in the age of Twitter-induced information overload.
Quality is the new quantity, ladies and gentlemen. Don’t forget it.
The Big Problem of “Little Things”
Most of us have been there. You’ve got a busy week ahead of you, full to the brim with big projects. Inevitably, though, someone asks if you can, “Do this one little thing real quick.” You take a few minutes to do so. After all, what’s the harm?
Then another “little thing” pops up. And another. Like cockroaches, they multiply and creep into your schedule where they’re not welcome. Of course, you dealt with one, so now you’re obligated to deal with them all. Before you know it, though, entire swaths of time are being devoted to the “little things.” In horror, you realize too late that the “little things” have swarmed and devoured your big projects.
This begs the question: If “little things” can topple big projects, how can we think of them as “little” at all?
The answer should be obvious. “Little things” are a myth. Like the computer guy, it’s a term we use to simplify a complex business reality. We call a task “little” to trivialize it out of our minds.
But time is a finite resource, and each “little thing” eats a small piece of it. More importantly, these pieces can add up to big chunks, days even, if you’re not careful.
The only solution is to kill every “little thing” you see. Stamp them out wherever they appear. “Fumigate” your office by performing regular kaizen sessions. Do whatever it takes to eliminate the need for “little things” or include them in proper projects.
This post is dedicated to everyone who thinks “little things” aren’t a big problem for productivity. May you learn better before the “little things” get you.
CSS Menus Made Simple
CSS is wonderful stuff. Really. If you know what you’re doing, you can twist standard, boring HTML elements into almost any display state you like, all while maintaining the sort of semantic accessibility that’s so important for things like SEO and section 508 compliance.
One of my favorite examples is turning a standard HTML list into a menu. As with all things, we begin by using HTML to define the kind of information being displayed.
<ul id="menu">
<li><a href="/url1" id="menu_item_1">Menu Item #1</a></li>
<li><a href="/url2" id="menu_item_2">Menu Item #2</a></li>
<li><a href="/url3" id="menu_item_3">Menu Item #3</a></li>
<li><a href="/url4" id="menu_item_4">Menu Item #4</a></li>
<li><a href="/url5" id="menu_item_5">Menu Item #5</a></li>
</ul>
Simple, straightforward, boring, yet effective at communicating that this is an unordered list of links. Take note of the IDs I’ve included; these will be important later.
Enter CSS to make this menu beautiful. Let’s say we have an image prepared that is meant to serve as the menu. And let’s say this image is using gradients or drop-shadows or a font that isn’t safe for use on the web, all good reasons to make it an image rather than text on a background.
We begin by defining the image, text and all, as the background of our menu item list and setting its width and height to exactly match the width and height of the image. We’ll also need to break the list items out of their display state and redefine them as blocks. While we’re at it, let’s hide the text; it’ll just be getting in the way of our beautiful menu image anyway.
ul#menu {
background: url(/path-to-images/main-menu.png) top left no-repeat;
height: 31px;
width: 500px;
}
ul#menu {
list-style-type: none;
}
ul#menu li {
display: inline;
}
ul#menu li a {
display: block;
text-indent: -9999px;
}
Now, we’re going to need to move these anchors around in a minute, so we need to set their position to absolute. To make it work correctly, we’ll also need to create a positioning context by setting the containing list’s position to relative. Don’t worry; it’s not going anywhere. This is just a trick that makes the list items move absolutely in reference to the menu rather than the whole page.
ul#menu {
background: url(/path-to-image/main-menu.png) top left no-repeat;
height: 31px;
position: relative;
width: 500px;
}
ul#menu {
list-style-type: none;
}
ul#menu li {
display: inline;
}
ul#menu li a {
display: block;
position: absolute;
}
Okay, we’ve got the image in place and the anchors redefined as blocks within it. Now it’s time to position them. Remember those IDs I defined earlier? By referencing those, we can set each menu item’s unique width, height, and position.
ul#menu li a#menu_item_1 {
height: 19px;
left: 9px;
right: 6px;
width: 91px;
}
ul#menu li a#menu_item_2 {
height: 19px;
left: 107px;
right: 6px;
width: 91px;
}
ul#menu li a#menu_item_3 {
height: 19px;
left: 205px;
right: 6px;
width: 91px;
}
ul#menu li a#menu_item_4 {
height: 19px;
left: 304px;
right: 6px;
width: 91px;
}
ul#menu li a#menu_item_5 {
height: 19px;
left: 402px;
right: 6px;
width: 91px;
}
Finding these values can take a bit of work. Often times, I’ll open the image up in PhotoShop and measure them out. I may also use the Firefox Web Developer Toolbar’s Edit CSS function to place them incrementally. Just apply a static background color to each menu item block, adjust the size and position until it’s where you want it, then remove the background color and save.
Voila! Now you have a menu that is beautiful, fully accessible, and all-around… wait, what’s that? You want rollover states, too? No sweat.
You already have the entire menu defined. Now all you need are images to swap in as backgrounds when the user mouses over the menu items. Note that these should be the exact height and width of the menu items themselves, and should mesh seamlessly with the background image to keep your users none the wiser. It helps to have a modified version of the original menu that you can cut into chunks for this purpose.
Once you have your rollover images ready, just define them as background images for the active and hover states of your existing menu items, like so.
ul#menu li a#menu_item_1:active, ul#menu li a#menu_item_1:hover {
background: url(/path-to-images/menu-1-rollover.png) top left no-repeat;
}
ul#menu li a#menu_item_2:active, ul#menu li a#menu_item_2:hover {
background: url(/path-to-images/menu-2-rollover.png) top left no-repeat;
}
ul#menu li a#menu_item_3:active, ul#menu li a#menu_item_3:hover {
background: url(/path-to-images/menu-3-rollover.png) top left no-repeat;
}
ul#menu li a#menu_item_4:active, ul#menu li a#menu_item_4:hover {
background: url(/path-to-images/menu-4-rollover.png) top left no-repeat;
}
ul#menu li a#menu_item_5:active, ul#menu li a#menu_item_5:hover {
background: url(/path-to-images/menu-5-rollover.png) top left no-repeat;
}
Congratulations, your new menu is now beautiful, fully accessible, and dynamic, to boot. Not to mention, your design is also fully removed from your HTML. As a bonus for using a pure CSS solution, there’s absolutely no JavaScript to muddle up your cross-browser compatibility.
How to Evaluate an Online Marketing Service
If you’ve got a budget for website promotion, I know about a hundred companies that want your business. Be it PPC, banner ads, link placements, paid blogging, search engine optimization, or any of a dozen other industry buzz words, they all have different strategies for driving traffic. With so many choices, it can be hard to know which ones are valuable. Answer the following questions, however, and you’ll have a good idea whether a service deserves your money.
How is the price of the service determined?
There are many different cost metrics thrown around in online marketing: CPC, CPA, CPM, flat rate, etc. Ultimately, the only important metric is how much the service costs versus how much value it delivers (i.e., ROI). However, different cost metrics elicit different quality concerns. With CPA, you have to be more cautious about the quality of conversions, with CPC, the conversion rate, and with CPM, the clickthrough rate. Always be on guard that the provider might be illegitimately inflating your costs.
How likely is the traffic to convert?
The question here is whether the visitors’ demographics and intent match your site’s conversion goal. What is the age range of the visitors? What are their interests? If you’re selling something, how much disposable income do they have and where are they at in the buying cycle? This will require testing to verify, but you can often get a good idea of traffic quality by asking where that traffic is coming from before it reaches your site.
How much volume can the service drive?
It’s possible for a channel to deliver a great ROI, but only at a low volume. If a channel doesn’t produce enough traffic and/or conversions, it may not be worth the trouble to manage in the first place.
How well does the service scale?
Business needs have an tendency to change. The best online marketing services can scale in cost and volume to meet those needs. Often, scalability is the key to retaining a service over the long term.
Does the service use affiliates?
Depending on the nature of your conversions and the cost metric involved, affiliates may be useful. For example, when e-commerce transactions are required, affiliates are generally safe. However, if your conversions are, say, form submissions, fraud becomes a chief concern. In situations like this, affiliate-based services are best used cautiously or avoided all together.
Is the traffic incentivized in any way?
As with affiliates, incentivized traffic may or may not be useful depending on the nature of your conversion and the cost metric involved. Generally speaking, though, you want visitors who are interested in your offer, not visitors who just clicked through to get a flat screen TV.
Does the service offer online utilities?
Speaking from experience, nothing is more frustrating than managing a service that doesn’t offer online reporting and management utilities. Services that lack online utilities are suspect, either because they aren’t willing to give you transparency and control, or because they lack the technical savvy to create them.
Does the service include a campaign manager?
Although management and reporting utilities are the ideal, when large-scale adjustments need to be made, a dedicated human being can help reduce your management overhead. Obviously, you should prefer campaign managers that are good at achieving your goals.
How easily can the service be terminated?
When it comes to online marketing services, a contract is almost always involved. Depending on your faith in the service, you’ll want to be sure that the contract can be terminated to minimize losses if the ROI turns sour.
NumberNeal Responds to Digg Bans: Insights in Community-Based Website Strategy
Earlier this month, popular social news site Digg banned a number of its users, citing script abuse. This sparked an outcry from the Digg community, including the following video letter from power Digg Neal “NumberNeal” Rodriguez (the same Neal to whom I recently offered some SEO career advice):
I only started using Digg recently, so my opinion of the ban is nowhere near as well-qualified as Neal’s. However, I’d like to walk through several of his key points and see what can be learned about running a successful community-based website.
“Your user, period, comes first.”
Neal asserts that Digg is penalizing user scripts in order to boost its impression count and advertising revenue. This, combined with Digg’s failure to provide its users with an efficient alternative to scripts, constitutes an unacceptable conflict of interest in Neal’s mind. As he puts it, “You’re not caring for your user by banning your user.”
My Take: Community-based websites live or die on their user base. There’s no debating whether Digg has the right to enforce its Terms of Use. However, it’s worth questioning whether those terms should evolve to accommodate changing user needs. At the very least, Digg should offer its users a better explanation of why such strict enforcement is in everyone’s best interests. Really, any explanation would have been better than, “…we believe that the larger Digg community is adversely impacted by people who choose to violate the TOU.” By failing to address the issue in a user-centric manner, Digg is only fueling negative user perceptions.
“Know your market.”
Neal points out that marketers and new media enthusiasts are the primary audience on Digg. By penalizing networking and self-promotion, he argues, Digg is alienating its most active promoters. He goes on to propose that Digg, “embrace marketers,” by offering users the tools and information needed to succeed on its platform. He even goes so far as to suggest that Digg pay its most active users instead of banning them.
My Take: To me, this may be an illustration of the difference between an actual audience and an intended one. Digg’s desire seems to be a broader appeal. In fact, it’s quite likely that its attractiveness to marketers is the unintended side effect of its success. Whether this is a smart move or not, it seems clear that Digg is trying to recapture its intended user base by doing exactly alienating marketers just as Neal says its doing. I do agree with Neal, though; marketers go where the traffic is. Digg would be better off in the long run by embracing them in the same healthy way that Google does.
“Digg is not the only platform out there.”
Neal presents statistics to demonstrate the effect of Digg’s actions. Unique visitors on Digg appear to be going down, while unique visitors on other social media websites appear to be going up.
My Take: As above, I doubt this is an unexpected consequence. If Digg is out to alienate marketers and make the site more attractive to casual users, they may be willing to take a calculated hit to their popularity to see it happen. Whether they’re killing the goose that laid the golden egg or patiently giving it a chance to lay again is up for debate. Only time will tell if such heavy-handed tactics add value or spell the downfall of the site.
Bridging the Digital Divide to Combat Poverty
What can a person do to elevate him or herself from poverty? What can the rest of us do to help the less fortunate and combat poverty on the local, national, and even global levels?
Everyone has a different opinion. Certainly, there are many good answers to this question, and you’ll probably hear a lot of them today. That’s because today is Blog Action Day, a day the blogosphere has singled out to discuss an important topic. This year it’s poverty. Since I’m not one to miss out on a good meme, here is my niche-appropriate take on the matter.
The one thing that separates the haves from the have-nots is most often education, not necessarily in the sense of school but in the sense of knowledge acquisition. After all, we’ve all heard of successful individuals who never so much as graduated from high school. Those with access to knowledge can develop and thrive, as individuals and as communities.
Before the modern age, knowledge was a limited resource, available only through books and teachers. Providing knowledge to the less fortunate, then, required considerable resources. That is no longer true. Compared to the significant expense of books and teachers, the cost of providing internet access is almost negligible. For developing countries, the primary expense lies in establishing the electrical and telecommunications infrastructure. Beyond that, decent computers can now be produced en masse and on the cheap.
We have the ability to give the poor access to the greatest information system the world has ever known. Imagine a world without a digital divide, where every person, regardless of their economic background or location in the world, could tap into the same global wealth of knowledge. Everyone could communicate, share, collaborate, and contribute to that knowledge equally. It would be the promise of the internet realized, knowledge leveraged for the good of all.
Granted, I’m biased in this opinion; the internet is my bread and butter. And I’m not deluded enough to think that global internet access would solve the problem of poverty on its own. Especially in developing countries, it wouldn’t be enough. Many people would have to be instructed in basic skills like reading and writing first, and access to information wouldn’t directly solve problems like hunger and healthcare.
Still, I believe it would be a great start. Knowledge is the first step to solving any problem. It’s not about elevating the poor; it’s about empowering them to elevate themselves. To paraphrase the old proverb, give a man information and he learns for a day. Teach a man to use the internet and he learns for a lifetime.
SEO Career Advice for Power Digger Neal Rodriguez
A few weeks ago, my good friend Simon Owens introduced me via email to noted Power Digger Neal Rodriguez. As it turned out, Neal was interested in a career in SEO, and I was more than happy to weigh in with the following advice.
Don’t just be an SEO specialist; be an online marketer.
SEO is a somewhat ambiguous term in the industry, but it’s being regarded more and more as a combination of skills that are independent from SEM (Search Engine Marketing). I’ve got a similar mix of skills that span both categories, and I’ve found the term “online marketer” serves me much better.
Demonstrate past successes with hard numbers.
An important thing to remember is that the focus of any online marketer should always be the bottom line… For example, you achieved page one rankings for ImperialJets.com on competitive terms. That’s all well and good, but how much additional business/revenue did that produce? Remember, we live in a world where black hat SEO companies run rampant and give the industry a bad name by focusing on rankings. It’s often not enough to prove that you’re good at SEO, but that SEO is a valuable marketing tactic. ROI (Return On Investment) should be your bread and butter.
Promote your portfolio.
Whatever your professional skills, in the web industry, it’s becoming more and more useful to have a online portfolio of some kind. It serves the dual purpose of showing off your expertise and demonstrating your ability to create and promote a website on your own. Once you’ve got one, polish it until it shines, then link to it…
Develop a solid understanding of both on- and off-site optimization.
You’re obviously interested in SEO, and your viral marketing and social networking skills are definitely impressive. However, what do you know about on-site optimization? How much do you know about things like keyword research, copywriting, visibility analysis, site architecture, XML sitemaps, link building, etc.? The best results are often achieved by those with both on-site and off-site optimization ability, so if these aren’t things you know much about, they’re skills worth shoring up to further your career potential.
Develop your expertise with web programming.
…do you have any web design or development expertise? (…) In the SEO company where I got my start in the industry, there were about eight analysts who did the heavy lifting in terms of actual optimization (as opposed to copywriters and client managers). All eight of us were also experienced web developers. Granted, many of us got our start as developers and segued into SEO later, but development skills are nonetheless very valuable to the practice.
(Update 11/7/2008: A recent poll on Search Engine Roundtable confirms that programming is second only to marketing as the degree of choice for SEO professionals.)
Broaden your skill set.
Over the years, I have found that my greatest career advances came as the result of a broad skill set. In most jobs, I pull multiple duty as a copywriter, web developer, PPC manager, blogger, and SEO specialist. If you’re serious about a career in online marketing, I’d strongly recommend developing your expertise in related skill sets. Seek out breadth and embrace opportunities to learn something new. It’s worked very well for me.
Pay attention to offline opportunities.
Strangely, during my last few job searches, I managed to land a job out of the newspaper rather than online listings, so I strongly recommend that traditional listing services play a role in your job search. Also, and I know this may sound like the student instructing the professor, but networking does wonders. I have a planned job change in the next few weeks, all thanks to a friendly connection. Given that you found me through Simon, you’re obviously already doing this, so keep up the good work.
Know the demographic of your prospective employer.
…any business can benefit from online marketing, but I find only mid- to large-size businesses have the resources and interest to have their own in-house specialist. Smaller companies have a tendency to outsource such a specialized role.
A Note about Neal Rodriguez
I haven’t known Neal very long, but my advice to prospective employers is this: Power Diggers don’t come along ever day, so don’t wait; he won’t be on the market long. The fact that he wrote a guest post for Marketing Pilgrim should give you a hint that he knows what he’s doing. If you’re interested, you can email him at notifyneal at gmail.com.
Explaining Blogs to the Uninformed
When I first mentioned the word “blog” to my wife back in 2005, she swore I’d made it up. It wasn’t until she started hearing it in mainstream media that she conceded blogs were real. (To this day, she still harbors suspicions that the whole thing might be some massive conspiracy I cooked up to fool her. Shhh, just play along… )
Much like social media optimization, it can be difficult to convey the value of blogging to the uninformed. I’ve had to convince a few technophobes clinging to old media traditional media enthusiasts in my career, and I’ve found the following points useful for getting them up-to-date.
A blog is a publishing platform. Much like a newspaper or magazine, a blog is a form of composition that is written, distributed, and consumed. The only real difference is the electronic medium, which drastically reduces the production overhead and allows even independent publishers to achieve a global reach.
Not all blogs are personal. One of the first objections you often hear is how blogs are nothing more than personal drivel masquerading as valuable content. This is certainly true of some blogs, but it couldn’t be further from the truth with others. Many blogs are written by well-respected experts on useful niche topics (e.g., Ward on the Web). In fact, the most popular blogs now have more readership and authority than many traditional print publications.
A blog is a conversational tool. Interactivity is what distinguishes new media from traditional media. By default, blog posts allow readers to comment and discuss the topic at hand. This can be useful for developing rapport with customers, colleagues, clients, or whomever else might be reading your blog.
Blogs are great for SEO. Done correctly, a blog adds relevant content, expands a site’s long-tail keyword profile, generates inbound links, and demonstrates that a site is regularly updated, all of which help to improve its overall search engine rankings.
Blogging isn’t as easy as it seems. While anyone can start a blog, few people have the creativity, diligence, and savvy needed to make a blog truly successful. If you don’t have what it takes (and if you’re not sure, assume you don’t), take the time to educate yourself and do it right from the start.
Float vs Position in Layout: My Gripe with Andy Clarke
In his book, Transcending CSS: The Fine Art of Web Design
That CSS should be the predominant source for layout and other style information is undeniable; I agree with Clarke wholeheartedly. Where I think he errs is his abandonment of floats for absolute positioning. While acknowledging that floats are, “almost a de facto standard method for creating column layouts using CSS,” he argues that they are too fragile. He’s right, of course; floats can unintentionally clear when they’re not supposed to because they happen to be one pixel too wide. “Whereas float-dependent layouts can easily fall apart at the slightest nudge,” Clarke asserts, “positioned layouts can support supersized images or gigantic text without failing.”
Up to the point I read that, I was convinced. However, Clarke’s example later in the book demonstrates a failing in his logic. In his “Cookr!” design, he uses a technique called Inman position clearing to place a footer beneath the primary content. For those unfamiliar with it, the important thing to note is that Inman position clearing uses JavaScript to clear the footer.
I’m not debating the effectiveness of Inman position clearing; I’ve honestly never used it. For all I know, it could be compatible in every browser on the market and widely accepted as standard by the design community at large. My gripe is that we’re trying to promote the division of content, design, and interaction. Clarke’s method separates content from design, only to go back and mix design with interaction. It’s self-defeating. A simple “clear:both” would accomplish the same task in a float-based layout. No JavaScript, just CSS, the way layout code should be.
This dependency alone makes me question the original argument. Float-based layouts are prone to falling apart when their content exceeds width limitations, while position-based layouts are not. Furthermore, float-based layouts must conform to a source order resembling the layout order, while position-based layouts have no such requirement.
It’s clearly a trade-off. If we stick to floats for layout, we must be cautious to restrict content width accordingly. This requires added diligence, but, given the proliferation of float-based layouts on the internet, I think people have readily accepted the challenge. Besides, if we have “supersized images or gigantic text” on our pages, the fact that they are breaking our design only adds insult to injury; we’re going to want to correct the problem whether the design fails gracefully or not.
Likewise, is there much harm in requiring the order of content and layout to be the same? I’d argue that, nine times out of ten, the order of layout is the most logical order anyway, so there’s rarely a need for content order to be any different. Point in fact, Clarke’s example does just that, and would have worked just fine as a float-based layout (arguably better, in fact, because it wouldn’t have to use JavaScript for layout purposes).
I’m not trying to be pretentious; I know I’m not half the designer Clarke is. However, much as I’ve learned from his book