So we won a few awards from eduStyle.

Now, I like awards but sometimes they are all flash and no ear-ringing, crater-leaving BOOM!

I would like to say that both of these sites that won actually have craters as well.

They win in usability and what they were intended to do. Pull in the audience and get them to experience a story here at Notre Dame.

Crazy traffic at the Notre Dame Gameday site. So much that we are revamping it to make it even better (coming soon) and it will become more of a central hub for everything on a Notre Dame Football Weekend and not just a cool calendar system. Read More

Writing comes first.

Every project, every time, it always comes down to the content.

It’s very weird to me that no one questions the content in a print project – it’s required. The content helps drive the design and needs to be finalized (or as close as it can get) before we begin designing the piece.

But when it comes to the web, people tell me they can get it done later.

They say, “Let’s design it out and then add the content.” And silly me, I let them.

Let’s design the homepage with fake latin – here’s a free latin generator if you want one. Then let’s get upset when the real content screws up the design on the homepage.

Let’s design out a few sub pages – what we think we might need. But then when we add the content and it doesn’t look right, let’s blame the designers and developers for not understanding how it was going to look.

Seriously, I don’t think I can take this anymore.

Here’s a few solutions. Read More

South Bend Rock Star Social Media People

First off, I had a blast at Social Media Day that was thrown by Pinnacle of Indiana.  Michelle Hillaert rocks and you should follow her.  So does LaSalle Grill for letting us take over the Club LaSalle.  Very classy place.  BTW, if you go in and you give them the code word, “Irish”.  They will give you half price appetizers for the entire month of July.  Pretty sweet.

And if you head over to Pinnacle of Indiana or call them at 74.235.8100 and say “Irish” they will give you an hour’s worth of IT consulting or social media consulting.  That’s pretty sweet as well.

I would also like to thank everyone on the panel:

• Steve Smith (rock star) @orderedlist Don’t BS Steve on SM, he’s built his business on his reputation and it’s the same rep online.

• Kem Meyer @kemmeyer – Kem’s less clutter is great.  “All things are social.”  Because we are social people.  Love that!

• Elizabeth Cecconi @ViewFromSBN – I’ll be checking in on Foursquare and Gowalla at the South Bend airport just so Elizabeth will reach out to me.  Make sure you do as well.

• Tim O’Connor @oaknd1- Can’t say enough good things about Oak.  Super talented designer that I happen to be lucky enough to be friends with and get to work with here at AgencyND.  BTW, he wishes he could have said more at the panel.  Oak always wishes he could have said more.

• Edward Koczan -@edwardlife I love knowing cops and Ed is certainly a good one to know.  He’s helped me out more than he knows.  And I don’t think he understands how much more he’s going to know that I know he’s behind the blog and twitter profiles of the South Bend Police.

• Dave Woodson @davewoodson – Dave is a money maker.  He lives and breathes this stuff.  You should follow him because he’s a networker.  He can connect you with thousands.

I learned from them than I did at many panels I’ve attended on social media.  They were an eclectic bunch but all smart and very social people.

As I mentioned in my talk, it’s hard to get up and talk in front of a bunch of social media people.  They know what they are doing so what can they learn from me.  Probably not much but I tried to hit on a topic that I run into all the time, selling social media as a legitimate form of marketing.  It’s worth my time and their ROI on me to do it.

So how do you sell social media?

First, don’t try and force or say something silly like everyone else is doing it.  That may work but if things don’t start jumping right away or you don’t have 586,958 friends in the first week, they may change their tune. Read More

So I have a couple of things today.

One is Mashable’s Social Media Day in Michiana:  I’m going to be part of the group presenting and there will be a panel of Social Media experts to ask questions too.  It’s also free and it’s after work at the awesome LaSalle Grill.  Definitely worth checking out.

Here’s what’s gonna happen.

Location:
Club LaSalle (3^rd Floor LaSalle Grill, @LaSalle_Grill)
115 W. Colfax Ave
South Bend, IN

Date:
Wednesday, June 30, 2010

Time/Schedule (5:30pm-8:00pm):
5:30 Mingling/Networking
6:10 Introduction
6:15 Guest Speaker – Don Schindler
6:45 Networking
7:00 Social Media Panel Discussion
7:30 Networking

Cost:
Event is free.  Appetizers will be provided.  A cash bar is available.

Then there’s also this news from PricewaterhouseCoopers’ Global Entertainment and Media Outlook: 2010-2014

Now this is some good stuff.  Here’s an excerpt…

Consumer behavior dominant driver of change

Consumer feedback and usage provides the only reliable guide to the commercial viability of products and services, and the global consumer base is being used as a test-bed for new offerings and consumption models.  PwC has identified three themes that are expected to emerge from changing consumer behavior and the industry must anticipate and pre-empt the needs and wants of consumers. 

Read More

What is HTML5 and why should I care?

Unlike my designers and developers who live and breathe this stuff all day long, my focus seems to shift to managing budgets and people.

So when they suggest something that helps me understand what it is that people are talking about all the time, I figure it might be good to pass it along.

I like this graphic because it really showed me what HTML5 was all about.  Then oaknd1 showed me apple.com/html5

BTW, you have to use Safari to look it at but it’s worth it.

I couldn’t believe what they could do with searchable text (instead of having to drop text into graphics) and the video portion.

Another reason I love social media.  I didn’t actually talk to Jim Gosz about this and ask him about html5.  He tweeted it and I followed the link.

I receive a lot of calls/emails about how the agency works within the University of Notre Dame.  I was at a conference recently and a lot of people there were interested as well.  One email in particular had a lot of great questions and I decided to try and give it some good answers.

From the email:

Who are the people that work at the Agency?
I’ve a got an awesome bunch of guys and gals that make up our team.

A web team with four developers, two designers, one information architect and an interactive director.

A print team with two designers and a print production person part time along with the print director. We’ve also got creative director who oversees creative for both areas as well as our one photographer.

For project management, we have one project manager, one account manager and one scheduler.  There’s also an office coordinator.

How does the Agency run?
Read More

Fun Things To Do With A Bald Head via k4dordy on FlickrCC

People ask me how often I shave my head.  “Every day.”

They are usually surprised.  “Well, how long have you been doing it?”

“Since 99.”  That’s 11 years of shaving my head and when I say it that way it feels like a long time.  But really it wasn’t.

I’ve got it down to a science.  Probably less than 3 minutes in the shower in the morning. But when I first started shaving my head – it took much longer.  And was much more painful.

But recently, a social media friend Eric R. gave me a new shaver to try out.  It’s called “Headblade“.  I’ve seen them before and thought about trying them out but I never wound up getting one.

Read More

There are basically two ways to get a lot of inbound links.

One, you can write really great content and then people will link to it off their websites.

Two, you can try and solicit inbound links from people that are important in your industry.

(TIP: When you take time to read a blog, leave a comment with a link back to your site.  It only takes a few seconds and the inbound link will last as long as their site does.)

First, it takes a lot of work.  You can cheat the system like a lot of Black Hat SEO guys do but it could cost you your domain and hurt the university – so don’t mess around with Black Hat techniques.

Second, I would make a spreadsheet to capture all this information.  Set it up with headers of websites, blogs, twitter, etc…

Third, hit up Google and then Bing.  I would start my search with Google, of course, and put in keyword terms that I believe my target audience would start for.  Grab the first page of websites that come up for the keyword term and start putting them in your spreadsheet – these are the people to hit up for links.

Then head over to Google Blog Search and do the same thing.

Then set up Google Alerts for the keyword terms so it will start feeding you relevant information everyday (you could also use trackle or Alterian Techrigy to do the same thing.

Then use Twazzup.com and do a search for the same keywords like that and start following people you can reach out to. Read More

People ask me all the time why I use social media things like Twitter and Facebook.  Well, to get better answers than Google provides.

I, like most people in this world, will use things that work.  If they don’t work for me, then I usually stop using them.

When I asked the question, “Does anyone have any favorites for web conferencing like webex, go-to, vyew, adobe connect, etc?” through my Tweetdeck (which feeds my Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin profiles).

Here’s what happened. Read More

Right now, your website is probably being found when you put in your search terms and the words, “notre dame”.

But it’s probably not being found if you just type in your “dept name” or any search keyword terms that you should be associated with.

Now, there are lots of things you can do to move up the search engine ranking position (by the way, you should be found on first page – preferably above the fold) but they take time – lots of time.  We are talking months not days. Read More