Category Archives: Tutorials

Tutorials

Geek to Live: How to deal with Internet Meanies

There’s something about the feeling of anonymity on the Internet that can turn otherwise reasonable, pleasant people into complete blockheads. Given an open, free, global network to communicate, people use it to rant, rave, flame and complain. We’ve all done it.

But when YOU are the target of an insulting post or sharply-worded email, quite frankly, it can really suck. Today I’ve got some strategies for dealing with Internet Meanies: those faceless virtual bullies who take pleasure in shooting other people down from the safety of their keyboards.

via Geek to Live: How to deal with Internet Meanies.

featured, Tools, Tutorials

Dashboard building – best practices

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Some of our clients currently asks us for Dashboard solutions for Monitoring purposes. Here is a bunch of good practices for building such tools.

What is it :
A web page build by the agency with a selection of RSS feeds to help the client to get a view on what is said about him, the challengers, inside the main media targets on the web.

Benefits for the client :
Bring an immediate view on relevant information directly impacting the business of the client

Recommended tools :
I recommend the use of welcome page such as Netvibes.
dash
Easier to understand for beginners, uses tabs, with a clean and slick ajax interface

Other tools available :


Which RSS feeds to include :

  • I first recommend to use rss feeds from search engine to track what is said about a specific client / challenger
  • Search from Google News – you can choose to display the news limited to a language / country. Be sure to display the news ranked by date (not relevancy). An RSS feed is dynamically created on such page.
  • Search from Google blog search – works exactly like Google News – as an alternative, Twingly is definitely a good solution to look at, especially if you have issues with spam on blogs (splogs).
  • Search from Twitter : you can track keywords on Twitter based on the language. But since many people uses english on Twitter, it is often more relevant to filter the Twitter search based on the geography. Define for example the center of a country (For example, the center of France would be around Clermont-Ferrand – you’ll just have to indicate the distance to the FR boundaries – around 600 km).

Keywords :
As always, it’s all about the keywords and their relevancy.

  • If you’ll choose a keyword too wide, the number of irrelevant results will lead to too much data. If it’s too narrow, not enough
  • Using operator (for instance “security” AND “Technology” OR “IT”) might help to narrow down the number of results and lead to better insights.
  • Again, the use of inverted commas ” ” is definitely the top trick to use for such searches.

Additionnal resources

Any other feedback or experience to share is more than welcome 🙂

[EDITED] Some Text 100 references

Following Jeremy’s request, some additionnal references :

featured, How To, Social networking, Tutorials

Facebook page creations – some learnings

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I’ve been working on the Facebook page of one of the UK office client. They already have a strong social media presence (through their twitter account) but would like to create a real community. And Facebook page are helpful for that 🙂 I’d like to share a few learning from about the creation of a Facebook page.

The reasons

First of all, if you still ask yourself why a facebook page and the difference with a facebook group : http://mashable.com/2009/05/27/facebook-page-vs-group/

And if you ask why it’s great for a client to have a facebook page :

– SEO – the facebook page rapidely sits at the top of the Google results

– Community – you gather people with all their info under your mouse

– Statistics – you’ve got amazing statistics about your followers from the page. But really amazing (cities, tastes, connections, preferences, etc, etc)

– Plus it’s free …

Page creation

If you’re reluctant to create a Facebook page with your own facebook profile, you can create a client facebook profile. Careful : you’ll have to dig in the profile privacy settings to withdraw the profile from the facebook search, otherwise it might create confusion with the facebook page.

Facebook pages always have the same structure : A wall, an info tab, an image profile, boxes tab and notes. The first step : put an image on the page, a name, and some basic background info

Bring some content inside

You can publish images, synchronize the notes with any rss feed (a blog RSS feed is perfect :), write additional notes, share videos, launch conversations and invite people to be part of your new page.

Personnalization

All facebook page are very lookalike … yet there is some personnalization possibilites. My favourites ones :

1/ create a personnalized page (with some basic HTML)

2/ change the homepage of the facebook page

3/ add more information on the facebook page (add rss boxes with your twitter feeds, friendfeed feed, etc, etc)

4/ add more info to the basic standard facebook page info

And for those who know how to deal with flash : embed a flash animation.

The tools to help you : http://mashable.com/2009/05/13/facebook-brand-apps/

Publicize the page

Talk about your page, add it to your social media profile, indicate it on your client website, and ask to embed a fanbox facebook page.

More info about the fanbox facebook page : http://wiki.developers.facebook.com/index.php/Fan_Box

Create a community

Creating and communicating about the page was the technical part. Now is the community management part – dedicate resource to invite people to become fans, and give them reasons to become fans.

Deliver exclusive news, allow them to discuss with VIP spokespeople, create challenges, contests, etc …

Tool to help you create a facebook contest : http://www.wildfireapp.com/

To conclude, some useful advices how to run a great facebook page : http://mashable.com/2009/03/30/successful-facebook-fan-page/

http://www.allfacebook.com/2009/03/facebook-page-strategy/

http://searchengineland.com/how-to-quickly-customize-your-facebook-page-to-attract-more-fans-29216

Anyone has experience to share ?

featured, Tools, Training Courses, Tutorials, video

Tutorial – Top 7 screencasting tips

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“A screencast is a digital recording of computer screen output, also known as a video screen capture, often containing audio narration.” (Source : wikipedia)

… And it’s incredibly useful to share information,tutorials and to make trainings. I assume some of you already did screencasts, but just in case here are the few tips I can share. All you need is a computer, a microphone, a few additionnal softwares and a plan of what you’d like to say.

Software (all of them are free tools).

I personnaly recommend and use Camstudio : http://camstudio.org/

Camstudio is a pretty old software with a crappy interface, but it’s free and it just works. It also record your voice during the presentation.

Other software you might like to check out : http://www.jingproject.com/

Top 7 screencasting Tips and tricks

  • Prepare what you’ll say. Make a plan with catchy titles, as for a traditionnal presentation.
  • Double check the software, the internet connection.
  • Avoid noisy background, make a sound test.
  • Make short sequences that follow the plan
  • Anticipate the transitions in your plan
  • Make a final recap when finishing your video to highlight the important things to remind.
  • Do not lose time to restart a sequence – it’s about sharing knowledge, not imitating famous movie director.

Final editing

If you need to make transitions with titles, Windows Movie Maker will be absolutely perfect for that (OK, it’s not great, but it works, and it’s free on our machines ^_^). Just drag and drop your sequences and make sur to insert titles. And then upload (Idex, Opex, the web …), share and publicize your video !

Should you have done screencast in the past, feel free to share your best practices and recommendations !

screencast

Tutorials

Same car, different engine

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Just a rapid word to let you know that the blog engine (wordpress) has been updated to wordpress 2.7 which is faster and more secure. The admin area has also been changed quite a lot. If you feel a bit lost, I recommend you this introduction video about the new feature and interface of wordpress 2.7.

By the way, I also invite you to catch an eye on the great wordpress.tv website recently launched gathering tons of tutorial video about wordpress (I especially recommend you the publishing and admin sections)

You might experience little issues with the upgrade – do not hesitate to notify us and we’ll fix that as soon as possible.

And as always, should you have any question, comment, concern or thought, feel free to share 🙂