HTML 5 and New Media

The new web publishing standard is HTML 5. It allows you to create web pages with multimedia without the use of plugins. It also adds many markup tags that describe the structure of a page.

New elements in HTML 5 include descriptive elements such as nav, header, footer, section, figure, etc. The meaning of the tags are self explanatory. Nav means navigation, head means the page head, footer is the page's footer, figure is a picture. You should place them on the page in the position where they usually belong on a web page: header on top, footer on the bottom, figures in the middle of the page, and navigation should be somewhere prominent on the page.

Multimedia tags new to HTML5 include audio and video. You can add audio and video clips on the page by directly referencing them in your webpage. Plugins are not required for playback. They should be in MPEG4 format and have no DRM.

Simplifications include from HTML5 include specification of the character set via the meta element and the text/javascript type is no longer needed for script tags. JavaScript is the default.

HTML5 is compatible with the latest versions of Firefox, Chrome, and Internet Explorer.

HTML5 has many advantages over previous versions of HTML. The description of the page is now separate from the formatting. New multimedia elements are added to make embedding and playback easier.

Importance of Transparency in Social Media

Here is a blog post about the virtue of transparency in marketing:

http://www.sproutcontent.com/blog/bid/105136/Transparency-is-the-Key-to-Good-Content-Marketing

It says that being honest about your product is the best way to market your product because there is nothing to cover up and the audience will happily trust our product. It has examples from Lays, Organic Valley and Patagonia.

Transparency is important to social media because there are so much information that it is hard to find trustworthy sources, especially in social media sites where a lot of people post fake information about themselves. Having transparency allows people to inspect the sources for authenticity. This is important for building trust. For example if a reviewer posts reviews about a product, there is no way to verify if the review is sincere. However, if the company selling the product posts about a product and it hosts tours and allows people to trust their product, then it is being transparent and there is a way to to verify their product. They post the information on social media and people will know the information.

Telling people answers truthfully earns the trust of customers and people will be more likely to buy your product and services because of it. Advertisers and mrketers should be transparent about their products and services so that they can evaluate their products with the most information possible. If your product is good, then there is nothing to hide. If you have something you think you need to hide, then you need to work on your 4P's of marketing. You should make a better product or set a better price. You can spin your product in a better so that people will be attracted to it, but there it is likely to be wrong for you to not be trasparent in your promotional activities online.

So, it is time to be transparent if you are not. It is time to be truthful and reveal the most about the things you are trying to promote online. 

Recommendations on How to Leverage Blogging

Blogging is a very useful tool to distribute information online. They do not have to be long or complicated. Unlike offline media like newspapers and magazines, you can put videos and audio online. You can have links and have comments under your posts. It is very easy to customize the themes to suit your business or organization.

It can enhance a brand by dispelling useful information to the public. It establishes your brand's credibility and authority. This then builds trust of your offerings and this in turn drive sales. A blog also help with SEO if you update it frequently. The comments pane in the bottom of a blog entry can serve a virtual community for your company.

On the web, there are a lot of blogs online, and most of them don't have much readers or audience. However, a lot of people don't take the time to make a proper blog, so they are at a disadvantage from the start. It is very easy to make an attractive blog with interesting content that can make your blog stand out from the rest. I have multiple recommendations for making a good blog. Ypou should link to as many sites as possible so that other people will link back to you in return. Linking to oither sites drives up your blog's search engine ranking and so more people will click on it and read it. You should put a lot of pictures and videos on the blog so that you attract people to read your entries. Words are too hard to read for people on the internet since they are already overloaded with information online. Almost no one has pateince to read text online unless it is really interesting. Short videos and photos are much better because they tell a thousands words.

You should allow people to comment on your so that you create a buzz on your blog. Buzz marketing is one form of marketing online. It makes people remember your blog. If someone responds to your blog, that means that they are engaged. The proportion of people who respond will be a small percentage of your readers, but they are the ones that you should target when you are promoting something on your blog because they are the ones that are the most willing to act on whatever you mentioned in your blog promotion.

You should link to your blog on other social media platforms. This will allow people who don't know about your blog to read your blog. You should also make a RSS feed of your blog so that people who subscribed to your blog will automatically get updates when your blog changes.

Microblogs are also blogs. Twitter should also be part of your promotional campaign. It is a site which a lot of people use so you can target your audience there.

Analytics are handy for you if you blog. Demographic and psychographic information that you get from sites like Klout, socialmention or HootSuite should be considered when you are monitoring your blog. If you find that you are not getting the target audience or you are having low viewership, you can act on it.

If you have a website, you should put your blog in your website so that people can read your website and your blog without leaving the site. This allows you to expand your promotion to your site. You can have an order button on your blog and your website if you are a retailer, for example. This is a great conveience for your readers.

There are a lot to get viewership and make your blog viewer friendly. These are the recommendations I would make for any marketer who blogs since these are the easiest things to do and they are very basic things which many get wrong.

How not to do SEO

You should never:

• link build - you should let inbound links be organically created by outside users
• stuff your site with keywords - keywords should 2 to 6 percent of your page
• have too much low quality content - write stuff that people will read
• leave out alt attribute for images - search engines will read them even if many people will ignore them
• leave out meta attributes - search engines will scan for them
• skip creating a sitemap - you should submit it to Google Webmaster Tools so your site will get scanned
• not optimizing your website for speed - loading speed affects visitors' experience on your site and Google will penalize slow sites in its search results.

Don't overlook these things when you are building or updating your site.

SEO Tips Part 5

always have mobile option available

keywords should appear in earlier parts of the page

pages should have correct grammar and spelling

get inbound links to the pages (best if they are from well known reputable sites)

get good PageRank by producing up to date, relevant content

Top Ten Useful Websites

Here are 10 useful websites.  They are tools available on the Web that you may have missed. They can make your everyday life more productive.

1. IFTTT  (https://ifttt.com/) - This is a tools which allows people to provide automation instructions to do what you want to do. For example, you can make it post of Twitter whenever you check in on FourSquare. IFTTT stands for If This Then That. So, the general form of the instructions are if some condition is met then it will do some action. 
2. Text2MindMap (www.text2mindmap.com/)- Text2MindMap allows you to organize information from anywhere in a mind map.
3. EdCanvas (www.edcanvas.com/) - EdCanvas allows you to organize information from anywhere in a mind map.
4. KeepVid (keepvid.com/)- This lets you save videos from various video sites by downloading them to your computer.
5. TubeChop (www.tubechop.com/) -TubeChop lets you cut YouTube videos into pieces.
6. GoAnimate (http://goanimate.com/) - GoAnimate is a website that allows you to create videos.
7. TodaysMeet (http://todaysmeet.com/)- TodaysMeet is a tool that lets you create a chat room online and exchange information.
8. Slideshare (www.slideshare.net/)- SlideShare is a website that allows you to share documents and PowerPoint presentations online.
9. Voki (www.voki.com/)- This is a language learning website which lets you do exercises so that you can understand and practice using a foreign language.
10. Prezi (http://prezi.com/)- Prezi is a website that displays your uploaded presentation online.

There are many more useful tools online, but these are the ones that I find the most useful. 

SEO Tips Part 4

use common words for permalinks

limit number of outbound links

use bullets and numbered lists

minimize site downtime

make sure the site has a good reputation