Queen Bee Marketing’s Blog About Marketing, SEO, and Design.

Last night I was catching up on all of the blogs I read. I started contemplating the large amount of time I spend each day in my feed reader - at least a couple of hours. What if I spent that much time reading books? I could probably finish a half dozen to a dozen books every month. Then it occurred to me, why can’t I read a book in my feed reader? If I had a chapter of a book delivered to me via RSS every day, or every other day, I could actually finish all the books I’ve been meaning to read. I searched around a bit to find out if there was a service like this already in existence, but I couldn’t find anything.

This seems like something Amazon, or one of the larger publishers could offer fairly easily. They could set up a virtual library, allow people to subscribe to any book, and choose the frequency for the content to be delivered. People could pay by the book or there could be a monthly subscription fee. Traditional books are great for an occasional relaxing evening or weekend, but I always have my laptop with me. And just about all of my daily research and entertainment takes place on my laptop.

Maybe there’s a reason something like this doesn’t yet exist. Would it be too hard to monetize? Would enough people be interested? Some people may not like only having a small portion of a book delivered at one time because they can’t read ahead. I don’t think this would bother me. I’d probably have the opposite problem of not being able to keep up with the content.

So what do you think? Is something like this reasonable, why or why not? I think publishers could tap into a large market of young, technologically savvy people who already receive their news, entertainment, and other information via RSS.

Many corporations, of all sizes and industries, are turning to blogging as a way to interact with customers and peers. Approximately 5% of Fortune 500 companies blog, and so many more small to medium sized businesses blog as well. Most companies see the value in having conversations with the public and giving their company a personality. But some companies are still hesitant to get involved. One of the biggest fears is that they will receive bad publicity through negative comments by customers. This is definitely a possibility, but it isn’t as bad as it sounds - it may even help your blog.

Planning ahead for negative comments is the first step towards protecting your blog and keeping it professional. I recently asked Paul Boisvert of The Official Yahoo Store Blog to give his input on the topic of negative comments. He gave this advice:

Follow your own posted comment policy. In other words, work out the policy before allowing comments and walk through some various scenarios of what you would and would not allow. Better to work this out in advance than try to overly moderate your blog to stamp out any flame posts after they are in progress. Overall though having a blog means opening a dialog with your customers and the public. You cannot have a forum without allowing people to disagree.

Creating a comment policy, and sticking to it, can greatly reduce the stress of worrying about negative comments. At the same time, your policy needs to be fair to your visitors. Automatically deleting any comments that make you look bad will lead to distrust of your blog and your company. Having a blog means having a conversation, not a one-sided advertisement for your company.

When legitimate, negative concerns do arise on your blog it’s best to be upfront and address them as soon as possible. It’s okay to delete spam or off topic statements, but an actual problem someone is having with your company, product, or services should be addressed in a professional manner. You will gain much more trust from your visitors by allowing disagreements and resolving them. Other visitors will see that you care about your customers and are willing to listen.

In certain circumstances it might even be alright to stir the pot a little. Don’t be afraid to ask for feedback from your visitors. Ask what they do or don’t like about a certain product, service, aspect of the company, etc. You have a free focus group, why not use it? Listen to the good, the bad, and the ugly of what people have to say. People love to give their opinion, especially when they know it’s being heard. Address concerns and learn from the comments.

There are a couple items of interest relating to Google this week. The first is Stephen Colbert’s attempt at a Googlebomb to become the Greatest Living American. But will it work? He doesn’t have “greatest living american” anywhere on his site. However, it doesn’t appear that the Googlebomb has been diffused yet. In my most recent search he came up #9 on the front page.

In other Google related news, Google has built a StumbleUpon-like feature into their toolbar. After attempting to buy StumbleUpon, they lost out to Ebay, so they made their own. It seems to return some very relevant results. I don’t see any way to “vote” on a page like you can with Stumble, though, which is something I like about Stumble. I do like that with Google the recommended pages are far more personalized. So, while both Stumble and Google now have similar functions, they’re different enough that I’ll keep and use both.

There are so many factors to think about when it comes to optimizing a Web site for search engines: On page factors like title tags, keyword density, internal link structure, etc. and off page factors like link building, marketing, reputation management, etc. It’s easy to get caught up in that one thing that you think will make or break your optimization efforts. Three of the most common that I hear about are duplicate content issues, paid directory controversies, and keyword rich URLs. These are all good items to think about, but there’s no need to get so hung up on them.

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I’d like to take the time to introduce to you a new web technique I am working on called Faux Flash. Before I explain what faux flash is though I should probably take some time to talk about regular flash. Flash is a program that has become very popular for its ability to add animation and interactivity to web pages. If you have ever seen a beautiful animated website full of interactive features, chances are it was made with flash. Faux Flash is a way to simulate the pretty animation of a flash website without actually having to use flash.
A good example of this is….uh… hmm…

Ok there aren’t really any examples of this on the internet because no one is really doing it. Most developers would just go ahead and use flash for the pretty interactive animations. Maybe this technique will catch on at some point. I’m keeping my fingers crossed.

How do I make faux flash? Faux Flash goes retro by making use of animated GIFs (yes the same as those annoying banners and dancing hamsters). In combination with CSS rollovers these animated wonders of yesterday can create some exciting new possibilities. To see a very simple example, check my portfolio page web.ics.purdue.edu/~cschlens and roll your mouse over the buttons at the top. This is a very limited example of what faux flash is capable of but it is still a decent example. I am currently working on developing a website that implements some of the more impressive capabilities of this technique, but nothing is ready to be unleashed on the public just yet.

Some of these features include images that zoom larger when you roll your mouse over them, interactive animated menus, expanding content, and much much more. Stay tuned for all the exciting updates of my adventures in Faux Flash.

Maybe I’m a nerd, but I love typography. A few weeks ago I came across the Web site for the new Helvetica Documentary. Unfortunately, there are no showings in Indianapolis, so I’ll have to wait for it to come out on DVD. Viewings in other cities around the world have been sold out. This is a quote from the official site:

“Helvetica is a feature-length independent film about typography, graphic design and global visual culture. It looks at the proliferation of one typeface (which is celebrating its 50th birthday this year) as part of a larger conversation about the way type affects our lives. Helvetica will screen at film festivals, museums, design conferences, and cinemas worldwide, followed by the DVD release this fall.”

Happy Birthday Helvetica!