I’ve been on twitter since sometime in 2008 (I assume, this is as far back as twitter is showing me).

In that time, I’ve added a ton of followers, and constantly sorting through the requests I’ve received. I don’t follow everyone. Particularly “Gurus” with thousands of following/followers. I don’t follow people who primarily use Twitterfeed so it’s just a stream of RSS posts. I don’t follow spammers (naturally) or people that do nothing except hock their site, their product(s) or their friend(s) similar products, and I especially do not follow self-claimed gurus, be it social media, seo, sem, etc.

The people I follow on twitter fall into a few categories:

• I know them personally.
• I know them professionally.
• They are an understood expert in their field(s) like:
  • Web Development (Particularly Javascript Framework Developers)
  • SEO
  • SEM
  • Analytics
  • Social Media

Particular niches I subscribe to, and I have developed a small list of experts that I’d trust what they say (and occasionally toss questions to them). I consider this list to be “obvious” experts – they’ve proven themselves professionally, or have written at length in blogs about the topic.

My Obvious SEO Experts on Twitter

1. Matt Cutts (from Google)
2. Rand Fishkin (from SEO Moz)
3. Aaron Wall (from SEOBook)
4. SearchEngineLand (from itself)
5. Jennifer Laycock (from Search Engine Guide)
6. Mark Scholl (from EnginePoint Marketing)

I’ve limited the list to six – because I feel they cover a breadth of knowledge that you could gain, mainly from their blog postings – sometimes, 140 characters isn’t enough (some times it is).

I’ll work out additional “Obvious Twitter People to follow” in the future.

Reading on SlashDot about buying a domain name from a cyber-squatter it made me think of the constant issues people/new businesses have before they’re really even on the web.

What Domain Name Defines Me, as a Person?

I Am Jack

A Doubel Edged Sword – SEO Domain, Generic Notability

The “cool” factor comes with the right domain. For example, ILoveJackDaniels.com was a cheat sheet repository for web developers (ignoring the fact that it’s changed domains since Jack Daniels doesn’t like nerds). No one in their right mind would associate “web development cheat sheets” with “I love Jack Daniels” (or ilovejackdaniels, if we want to go into semantics of how search engines see domains). What if it was simply, web-cheat-sheets.com (or webcheatsheets.com)? Certainly, we may stumble on it, and it makes sense – but it’s not notable as ILoveJackDaniels.com or something equally creative.

Balance the “Cool Factor” with “Smart Business Move”

If you feel your business depends on your domain, you’ve all ready failed. Your domain does not define you – ever. No one finds my site by researching me – they turn up searching on terms for jquery, mootools, seo, and various other topics I’ve written about. They’ve come here by clicking on my (hopefully) insightful comments on another person’s blog post. Will they remember to come back? Maybe. Maybe they’ll remember the simplicity that is ikeif.net or maybe they’ll think:

What was it? Some site with mootools, jquery, social media, seo… I’ll just throw a few terms in and see what comes up

Hey, maybe I’m not in the first page of results, but then again, until my digital life needs to be on the front page, I don’t need to be.

Shawn Morton may have beat me to the punch – both in writing about it – and a quick iframe demo of the Skittles idea.

The general point (in terms of Web Development) is that this is an insanely simple thing to accomplish – 15 minutes and Shawn had a working iframe demo.

I wanted to grab some of the effects and colors of the original, just to see if I could do it and “make it fancy” – I mean, there’s still a half-dozen effects that can be applied to it – fades, transitions, all those whizz-bang-pow stuff people love, but I had to pull myself back a test was important.

Skittles.com Initial Test

I decided to focus on Firefox 3 so I could use rounded corners in CSS (there’s a JS library for everyone else, sans Webkit, but hell, remember, this is a test. No one’s paying, so I’m not worried about IE.

It took me a couple hours, but here’s skittles.com, reproduced without flash.

I’m too tired to write more, so – here ya go.

You Flashed My Google

So Mark Scholl pulled up this nugget of a gem from an October post from Brian Ussery announcing their intent to start indexing flash.

I recall reading this in October, and quite a few people were excited about this – it means the old argument that “Flash isn’t SEO friendly” would boil down to “if you’re a good Flash developer, your stuff will get indexed because you wrote it properly.”

What’s interesting, is the article dives into the fact that the SWF/Flash files will carry their own rage rank – and as such, if you reuse the same SWF on more than one page, keyword thinning can occur (you’re using duplicate content).

So – it’s been a few months, I was curious just *what* was being pulled in by google in terms of flash content, and what was being shown. I used a simple google query that it seems most people have forgotten about.

Custom Google Search – FileType

search: filetype:swf site:ikeif.net

It’s that easy. Run this with some search terms and see if your site’s flash is being indexed like you hoped it would.

Of course, I felt like playing around and seeing what’s happening in the wide world of flash…

How’s my Flash being indexed?

I ran a couple searches against some sites to see how they were being indexed:

Query: filetype:swf site:nationwide.com – What’s interesting is their flash is being indexed (I’m assuming) properly. The descriptions make sense, until you hit number 8 that says “PLAY AGAIN. PLAY AGAIN. 0%”

Query: filetype:swf loading – I did this out of curiousity – much like how it’s been stated that “click here” is the worst possible wording for a link – over three million results for swf’s that say “loading!” Semi-interesting: The number one link is a flash USA Map Test.

Query: filetype:swf site:remhq.com and filetype:swf site:kanyeuniversecity.com – I figured I would have to do a couple band sites, as bands and labels were usually the number one commiters of flash atrocities. These two were high ranking when I searched for “band sites flash” (simple, yet effective). Kanye? Three links. REM? Four pages, all with some pretty good descriptions.

Query: filetype:swf site:roushhonda.com – As I recently moaned about the fact that so many car sites rely too heavilly on flash (mainly because I couldn’t hit their sites on my iPhone). All those listings in flash, none of it being indexed. I settled on Rousch from a search for “used cars columbus“.

We’ve come a long way, baby.

So – we see some areas of needed improvement. SEO for Flash is something that I feel needs to be addressed more often (by designers and developers!) and it’s something our SEO people need to keep in mind and discuss (I’m looking at you, Mark Scholl and Jennifer Laycock!). As this is slowly moving from the “I wish flash was indexed” to “Oh shit, it’s indexed, but not how I want it!” the discussions need to ramp up and we need to start thinking about it.

Find anything interesting in your own google queries? Let us know!

No doubt some people feel “basic” coding is beneath them. They feel they should be focusing on Java, JavaScript, UI Design, UX, etc. etc. Coding that PSD to valid, cross browser XHTML? Complete with CSS styling? Dealing with whatever browsers you want to support?

Funk that, especially when we have dozens of businesses fighting to do this for us (for cheap!).

Prolific competition and cheap? How can I lose!

Yes, much like that extended warranty you bought, how could you lose? Very easily!

Generally speaking, it seems you get what you pay for. But sometimes you have to realize that doing research is the best ROI. In the age of the internet, one man shops quickly get bought out by the competition, so that we can go very quickly from “my friend runs this” to “he sold it for more than it’s worth, and now it’s a shit service.” It happens, as I had dug up old reviews and contacted people – which I suggest you do. Never rely on sites and written reviews (they could be paid reviews and not disclosed, and some people will rant and rave after one use, and quickly change their mind after two uses!).

In 2006 they were hot shit! So they still are…right?

No my friend, they are not. Like I said, any time you see a review for a service, research it. Their are prolific sites that offer up reviews but I’ve noticed a lot of them allow ballot stuffing (it seems all you need is an email address to post, and those are quite easy to get). So you can see they have some heavy negative reviews followed by dozens of similar “OMG, these guys saved me, they rock so hard!”

First thing you need to realize, you are outsourcing, and more than likely this work is going overseas – and generally outsourcing is a mixed bag of issues. From the services I checked out, they claimed to be “based” in the United States, but I noticed some of their class names held Russian words, another I noticed some Norwegian – and it’s most important that as I worked with some of these companies, I “figured out” how best to work with them – regardless of who they were.

The Secret to Working with Third Party PSD to XHTML Services

It’s simple, really:

• Do not rely on their order forms to tell them everything.
• Do not make assumptions on what they will/won’t do.

You combat this by:

• Giving them requirements if it’s not on the order form!
• If they offer money back guarantees and you aren’t happy – USE THEM.

Tell them exactly what you expect – if you think certain areas should have 10 pixels of padding around them (maybe *you* think it’s common sense) but they may not!

You may have selected CSS sprites – but do you want it done a certain way? Did you want certain headings to be clickable? TELL THEM.

I guess this ultimately falls down to communication skills as it often does – overcommunication is better than too little, and it’ll save you headaches in the long run!

How to Deliver your PSDs

No doubt, sometimes you may be working under deadlines so you may spread your work out into batches – this is a dangerous approach if you think “oh we can tweak certain fundamental aspects of our designs as we send them.” Bad, bad, bad.

If you are planning batch approach, communicate this before hand so your potential partner services understands, and make sure the basics of your templates are SOLID before you send them out!

I suggest having your templates done first (so you can reuse the code and maybe not need to have every PSD sent out to be done) and make sure your sidebar and navigation areas are solid (and this is where you describe how large the click areas are). Once these areas are solid, I’d make sure all future PSDs follow these pixel perfect hand-offs to insure an easy transition with the future PSDs sent off, and it’ll also save you a lot of pain.

Have you used any services like this? Got any tips or tricks? Let us know!

It seems today everyone has a blog, and war over what software is better. Everyone and their brother’s mother has an opinion and which is best, but that’s another post altogether (for the record, I’ve used LiveJournal and currently utilize WordPress, and love it). Right now, I want to briefly discuss e-commerce shopping cart software.

My most recent experience has been SquirrelCart.

Squirrelcart PHP Shopping Cart software is a fully customizable, robust php shopping cart, designed with the advanced developer and web novice in mind.

That’s a mouth full.

Now, I’d like to point out that I wasn’t using the latest and greatest. Nor was I using untouched code, so I can’t fully comment on the software or the quality of its code – but I can comment on the quality of the prior developer, and the usefulness of subversion content repositories for any business.

When I entered the game for Client X, it was a lot of little tweaks here and there. It was fixing up code and optimization. Simple tasks, until I started looking at the code (and by all means I can’t take the credit, I work with some bad-ass developers that I get to bounce ideas off of).

The Good:

They commented the hell out of the code! TONS of comments. Personalization’s well labeled. Identifiers all over the place. 

The Bad:

Only bad thing about the comments – he listed the changes made to files, but they were meaningless. “Changed C for Y to do Z” is useless if I can’t see what was changed or for what. That’s where a good SVN comes in. A lot of bad code. Bad math. Functions being called and executed that did nothing or returned nothing of value. Recursion. A TON of edits to account for bugs. A lot of ‘hacks’ that were seemingly done because the previous developer didn’t know why he needed them.

The Ugly:

A ton of the hacks put in place were fixed in subsequent upgrades of SquirrelCart – security considerations, optimizations, compatibilities – except now I was no longer working with solid software. I was working with second-hand code, customized and tweaked, so an upgrade could totally break the site.

The Bonus:

SquirrelCart’s support and staff are bad-ass. I still think it’s a one-man shop – but the documentation is well-done and every e-mail and question was quickly answered (accurately & politely). That makes it a winner, and I’ve considered sending some business their way

Magento – E-Commerce Platform for Growth

…and it’s open source!

Magento E-commerce Software was mentioned to me by Toby one day. As I haven’t developed on it (yet) I can’t call it any real pros and cons as I did with working on second-hand code above.

The Good:

Open source! Excellent blog with useful tidbits. Constantly trying to keep its community “in the know” and it shows. Their code seems to be structured where it’s easier to add on to the package, instead of editing core files- something I encountered in other projects. Extend your platform, don’t override it, that way you can upgrade with ease!

The Bad:

Open source scares people. People feel like if it’s open, it’s more vulnerable (because hackers can get to the core code, they can more easily exploit it – which is true of bad code – from what I’ve seen so far, Magento is lacking in the “been hacked” area). They also feel like if they get it for free it’s just not as powerful as paid software.

The Bonus:

Open source! They’re on Twitter! And you all know how much people whine and complain on there – so it’s a good sign they’re monitoring word on their stuff (and when you’ve got an open-source project that relies on people paying you for support rather than your software, word is everything!)

All in all, I’m hoping to create a site utilizing Magento – but as usual, side projects often get thrown aside for school work and paid work, so a future of an affair with Magento may be a ways off for now :-/

Chris Coyier – whose blog I’ve read for some time – wrote a little script for those developers out there that want to quit supporting IE6. Naturally, it’s built on jQuery (the javascirpt for designers).

Death to IE6!

It’s kind of funny, because earlier this week I read from Elliot Jay Stock’s blog that August 27th was the seventh anniversary of the launch of IE6.

A few sites have all ready indicated they’re goign to stop IE6 support -Apple’s MobileMe (according to an email on June 9th, 2008), 37singals (as of August 15th, 2008), and facebook recommends you upgrade (or try a different browser – as of November 26th, 2007). Now – it’s funny, because back in the day, sites used to have that stipulation of “best viewed on” or…

Dude, you need to upgrade.

So we’re telling people to start upgrading to IE7, because they’ve been lagging. We did it before, but it was deemed “in bad taste.” We shouldn’t tell people what to browse with. Yet we don’t support earlier versions, so…

Yet we deemed it good taste to tell people to upgrade flash – “because hey, everyone else is doing it.” So the flip-side is flash is a plug-in, and Internet Explorer 6 is a monstrosity. But guess what? You can code a little link to bypass flash detection so users can still see the flash, with the warning that it may not be “up to snuff” without

Nostradamus predicted IE’s doom.

Maybe not – but I know this wasn’t the first IE Death March – I can’t dig up information on the last one, or the last “I don’t support IE6 banner” so I sincerely doubt this new attempt will do much.

But as “major” sites stop supporting IE6, maybe we’ll see a reduction of IE6 users as a whole faster than Microsoft was able to do with their “forced” upgrade to IE7.

So a big hub-bub ’round these parts of Columbus was Nationwide hiring Shawn Morton to do social media strategy.

(Disclaimer: I used to work at Nationwide, I still have friends there, and I’m writing this because I want to!)

Social Media for an Insurance/Finances company?

Damn straight. I loved the idea. It’s forcing a big company to become more involved with its people. It’s bringing the corporate in touch with the civilians. It means instead of commercials of cheesy actors saying how “I got a great rate from Nationwide” it’s the twittersphere all-a-twittering about “I got some great info from Nationwide.com” or maybe “check out Nationwide’s hilarious new commercial.”

But all these little things aren’t what I want to focus on.

Corporate Responsibility and Transparency

Certainly you always stumble on advertising articles talking about the new campaigns – but usually it seems that’s where it stops. Company A has started a microsite, check it out at… or Company B is giving away X if you do Y, pass it on.

But sometimes, just sometimes, the company wants people to talk about it. And as David Griner points out, sometimes companies fuck up so utterly and completely what could’ve been a good review of their product.

David writes:

Over on the J-Walk Blog, John Walkenbach seemed plenty happy to have received a free bottle of a liquor called VeeV — “the world’s first Acai spirit.” Before even trying it, John wrote about the product, ran a picture of the bottle and promised to do some “live VeeV blogging” (ie, blogging under the influence).

Home run for the VeeV marketing folks, right?

Hey VeeV, I’m available for test marketing! Send free shit my way!

How’d they screw up? How COULD you screw up? I mean, maybe they’re worried they’ll be portrayed as the drink of alcoholics if someone “live blogs” drunk.

Apparently, John blogging drunk about VeeV, but the marketing agency of VeeV – Maverick Digital – put a little comment (as Bob no less) talking about about how awesome it is in pure marketing speak – which rather pissed John off.

Right, that’s what Griner said.

Right – people hate it when you try to act like you’re some random schmo (in this case, Bob) with a genuine opinion. Which brings me back to Nationwide…

Sanjaya-ize yo’self, fool!

That’s right. Sanjaya-ize Yourself – in the spirit of Elf Yourself you can upload a shot of yourself and make yourself like Sanjaya of American Idol fame. Haven’t you heard of it yet? It’s being shown in targeted markets – smart move! They identified a certain niche and targeted them with a celebrity that appeals to them.

And my point is?

Vader Sanjaya-ized. I totally stole this from Shawn.

This simple entry on the fan board for Sanjaya:

Just wanted to let everyone know that Sanjaya will be premiering his new TV commercial for Nationwide Insurance at Branch (226 E 54th St) in Manhattan on Wednesday, August 20th at 6PM.

The event is closed to the public; however, you still may be able to catch a glimpse of Sanjaya.

If you’re outside the NYC area, you can check out the new commercial on Nationwide.com (http://nationwide.com/about-us/featured-ads.jsp) and on our YouTube channel (http://www.youtube.com/user/NWInsurance) starting on Wednesday evening.

And for those who want to try on Sanjaya’s own unique style, you can check out our Sanjaya-ize Yourself widget starting Wednesday evening as well.

http://www.sanjaya-ize.com

BTW, I am part of the team at Nationwide that is putting together the event and the Sanjaya-ize Yourself widget, so please let me know if you have any questions or comments. We look forward to hearing what you all think.

See that last part? Here, in case you missed it, I added some bold to it for you:

BTW, I am part of the team at Nationwide that is putting together the event and the Sanjaya-ize Yourself widget, so please let me know if you have any questions or comments. We look forward to hearing what you all think.

See what Shawn aka sMoRTy71 did differently? FULL DISCLOSURE OF HIS INVOLVEMENT. No bullshit, no clever white lies. He appealed to their fans, made sure they knew who he was and that he was totally pimping out his product.

That , my friends, is how you do social media right.

So I was reading Mashable on 4 Questions For Early Adopters… and it made me think about all those people that rushed to get an iPhone. No doubt, you may have seen the various articles depicting reasons to avoid it like the plague – you know, Apple is hipster, you’re just buying hype, Steve Jobs is a hypocrite, Apple is the new Microsoft, Apple wouldn’t let me upgrade my 1st gen iPhone that I got on opening day, etc. etc.

Early Adopters Get Screwed.

Like Bill Hicks said before me – there is no joke here whatsover. Early adopters get screwed. You buy first generation products, you get first generation screw-ups, defects, and get to PAY to do QA work!

I know people who’ve canceled their contracts to get an iPhone (paying the UNGODLY termination fee), people who upgraded just to get the iPhone, people who got the iPhone JUST BECAUSE it’s an Apple product, and people who think that running one application at a time is an awesome “feature.”

I want an iPhone.

There is nothing wrong with wanting. It’s a cool, snazzy little device. It’s overpriced, it’s bogged down to the point of getting the most use out of it requires you to hack it. They’ve got a million and one cool applications. BUT!

Always a butt. A sexy, curvacious… wait, wrong post.

I do not want something that I can’t do what I want with it after spending a few hundred dollars on it. When the iPhone becomes basically a mini-PC (Android?) that allows me to run google maps AND a little application that tells me what food/entertainment is near here – I’ll be all over it. But until then, I’ll stick with Verizon and probably getting a blackberry curve (or maybe the LG Dare? – oh wait, there isn’t an SDK to play with) – oh wait! Blackberry Thunder should be arriving!

We’ll see when I get around to getting a new phone.

Just my piece in politics. I’ve talked to him, and he’s very genuine – a rare trait I’ve ever gotten from talking to anyone involved in politics.

Robert Owens on youTube?

That is correct, friend!

I’m really digging how politicians are starting to utilize new media methods to get their message out. Most recently, we’ve heard of Ron Paul’s online money raising that really helped point out the power of the people online. Then we see Obama has emulated the online presence – and they use their staff at hand to help tailor the experience to the potential voter. The undecided voters get one message, the supported get a different set – maybe facebook reminders, tweets, IMs, etc.

Very cool – I’m looking forward to the 2012 elections just to see how much the Internet is involved – maybe they’ll have mobile voting figured out by then, or maybe even electronic voting machines secured!

So Genuine Chris has declared war on Odesk.

Say what?

That’s right – a war against the friend to freelancers. Right?

From oDesk:

oDesk enables buyers of services to hire, manage, and pay technology service providers from around the world. Buyers choose oDesk for top global talent, comprehensive management tools, and a flexible hourly payment model. Service Providers choose oDesk for challenging jobs and guaranteed payment. Every day, thousands of buyers and providers work together through oDesk — a unique company at the forefront of reinventing work.

So, it’s all gravy, right? I thought about signing up their and doing some freelancing myself – I saw a few mootools projects pop-up, and I fancy me some mootools development.

But Chris points out what another developer, Issac Kelly, had to say:

“God, it’s like dealing with people you got away from work to begin with.”

Dude. I didn’t leave Corporate Internet to be your bitch.

I know, I know. That’s not what oDesk is – right? I’ve never used it, but from the “quality” of what I’ve seen, I have mixed feelings about becoming involved. It’s really five-and-diming development – and as a developer that has had to take over tasks from the lowest-common-denominator (*cough*webconsultants*cough*) it’s easy to see that YOU GET WHAT YOU PAY FOR.

So I should pay top-dollar for premium development?

No – you should pay what you can afford.
If you can afford someone at $60/hour you should hire someone at that rate – not the guy that comes around and tries to undersell your guy with “I’ll do it for $25″ – because very often if it’s too good to be true, it probably is.

I’m not saying that maybe you’re luck – but very often those lowest bidders underbid and end up under delivering because they just meant to get you in, and then get you at the point of either:

• A) You’re stuck with them because you’ve wasted too much of your budget to start over.
• B) They’ve been paid and you end up going with the higher priced guy/company anyways, maybe with some savable work.

So what are you going to do about it, hotshot?

I’m not. I’m looking for side jobs, because, well, kid(s) are damned expensive.

But Chris says he’s got something coming:

I’ll find the work for all of you, I’ll get you paid what you’re worth, and I’ll make all of us rich in the process. I’ll be blogging about this as it takes shape, but it’s surprisingly concrete and specific in my head what I need to do, and how I’m going to do it. I am glad someone showed me what Odesk is because it’s everything that I’m not.

And he’s shown me before he’s not one to talk smack – so I’m going to be keeping an eye on this.

No, I don’t mean the fashion statement – I mean the company! (har har, I know, bad keif)

The thing is – they did a tour, “Plaid Nation 2008″ and trekked across state lines from Washington to Nevada,  and for little over a week, they twittered, they blogged, they filmed (they had a live van feed!). An ecstasy of social media and tech geek-ness. This is the first modern road trip I’ve heard of doing this approach, a kind of modern day Ken Kesey and The Merry Pranksters albeit perhaps minus the psychdelics. It just reeked of an awesome, modern day traveling social media party. Geeks on wheels. Nerds on boad. The kind of thing that makes me constantly ask “why haven’t I moved to the west coast yet?”

Ken Kesey and The Merry Prankster

In their venture, they managed to interview Robert Scoble (you know who he is, right?), Cathy Brooks from Seesmic and Biz Stone (of his many involvements -  Twitter, Xanga, Blogger, Odeo, and Obvious) – a little wet dream of the kind of people that brand makers and shakers would love to be involved with (or pick their brain for a moment – which Plaid did, and shared).

Is this the first event of its kind? Well, not exactly. We’ve had these kind of “live road shows” (*cough*merrypranksters*cough*) but also a lot of faux reality shows try to mimic this kind of unscripted approach to topics and interviews, but this is a pure, online approach that I really want to catch from the beginning next year (they have a countdown timer on the home page! Keep your eye on next year’s tour).

One thing I definitely dig – they have online freebies – wallpapers, buddy icons and even the 2008 theme song up for download! It’s this little cool features that most campaigns miss out on (I don’t know why, maybe because they’re simple, quick and easy?).

So do yourself a favor – grab a cup of coffee and scan through the video interviews for a slew of cool ideas and information – and keep your eye open for Plaid Nation ‘09 – maybe I’ll be lucky enough to head out to the coast and catch one of the tweetups!

Imagine this scenario – a client walks in, and they rave about something they talk an article on times online about the top ten viral ad campaigns – and they want to be on that list! They want to be a video passed from iphone to mobile to laptop – to have their campaign uploaded on youtube, vimeo and the like.

We want to be seen no matter what!

As Jennifer Laycock laid the smackdown on the Not In Columbus campaign she pointed out that when you make a campaign (and embrace social media) you still need to have a marketing strategy – they had a print campaign, a collection of youtube videos (in a self-depreciating manner), and cool shirts! (but a cool shirt concept does not make a campaign!) Advergirl also points out the obvious (well, I thought it was bleeping obvious) – we get the joke, but where’s the punch-line? Why do we have youtube videos about “not in columbus” but not following it up with “but we have Cosi, The Jazz and Ribs Festival, Sport Teams, etc. etc. etc.” Not all in one video mind you… It’s a  clever concept that just was poorly executed.

The one thing they did right – they have more than one video.

Viral means multiple outlets.

I can make a video viral – so can you. It’s a matter of creating something funny, humorous, and *most likely* racy and against the society’s norms. Just as you wouldn’t create a single ad for a campaign, you wouldn’t create one “viral” aspect for a campaign – if you notice, the political campaigns for Obama/McCain are constantly evolving and changing – like your campaign should.

Unfortunately – you need to make your viral media stick out. Poking fun helps, as does self-depreciation. But when you create your one youtube video or your one online application/widget and it fails, it merely reinforces that you can’t “will” something viral.

How does being racy help?

This video for the Volkswagon Polo featuring a sucide bomber got passed around in 2005 – causing a little stir because of its insensitivity towards Muslims – culturally, a no-no, but on the internet it created a lot of attention (on both sides of the fence – people screaming for heads, and people laughing at the “mock” campaign that wasn’t ever endorsed by VW).

The Rathergood Kittens

Rathergood is another example of something that got passed around because of its bizarreness – and it even lead to commercials – and we have simple flash videos like The Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny that got passed around (and who can forget – or did you miss – All Your Base Are Belong to Us?).

The point is – these are all small “campaigns” – cheaply done, and simple in nature. They weren’t products of million-dollar campaigns – but just something quirky dreamed up.
Which leads me to another item that went viral – Cahan & Associates created corporate reports in new formats – doy scouts guides, children books – because they felt “Annual reports need to evolve: They need to become more interesting and more entertaining. Otherwise, they won’t be able to compete for people’s attention.” (This is another topic altogether)

Racy, Quirky, Entertaining… I can do that!

A scene from The Ultimate Showdown

Now that you are willing to throw your corporate dignity out the window (and hand the reigns to someone else) – you can have a viral campaign. When you start interjecting your own ideas (and shooting down things as being “too much”) you risk losing out the focus – lots of discussion of you, your brand, your message – like Starbucks saw (alas, the link evades me) when they started letting people put quotes on their cups (and Starbucks refused to censor them).

What this did was create a lot of discussion from both sides of religious groups – atheists upset over religious quotes, and followers of religion upset over atheistic-themed/interpreted quotes on their cups (just check out the google link!). Lots of discussion – and starbuck willing to step to the side and say “it’s not our place to tell you what to believe” – instead they let their customers say what they want.

I’m afraid of what they may say!

No doubt a business is hesitant to go viral. They could end up looking like the joker from Batman: The Dark Knight’s awesomely successful campaign – there worried they could be the butt of a joke and out of control. This is where you start thinking about why you’re wanting to go viral – for sales, for discussion, or for attention.

Where’s the beef?

Where’s that elusive dollar $$$ bling-bling for your campaign? How does this pay off? I’m still looking into this one, as we see the Writer’s Guild of America went on strike (with concern for future digital media like the internet/video streaming/etc.) and South Park responded in kind – viral videos can theoreticall make you rich – and you know who’s gained the most from those videos we pass around? Star Wars kid sued. Numa Numa has a fan club. A number of e-celebs have been in music videos for Barenaked Ladies and/or Weezer.

The point here – you’re wanting discussion. I don’t think you’ll get ROI in terms of dollars and cents – at least not immediately. If it’s truly successful, you could end up with a hit film (I’m willing to admit – the viral campaigns for Cloverfield and The Dark Knight were cool – but didn’t make or break the films. Blair Witch? The campaign MADE the movie – “Dude, is this real? It’s not real. It couldn’t be real.” Five minutes later “Dude, is this real?” True story.)

The Elf Yourself is another quirky fun one – it doesn’t really relate to the brand, it was just something fun to do around the holidays (which helps drive traffic).

Viral campaigns are fun for the users – but it’s important to recognize that they can drive traffic and discussion and not necessarilly make you rich – but they can get you talked about.

I’ve got to be honest – I’ve been really hard on anyone that introduces themselves as a “Social Media Expert.” I’m a little prejudiced, because I’m very familiar with Social Media and the social networking movement – I signed up for sixdegrees.com back in the day, I sought out the old school “party-lines” thanks to a phreak I knew.

That, to me, was the beginning of social networking. BBS were the original message boards. Hackers and computer nerds pioneered these ideas of getting people together across the country (and even the world) for the pursuit of knowledge.

Today we have Social Media Experts.

What are Social Media Experts?

Why, they’re experts in social media! To me, I always related Social Media as a skillset – they are part of a bigger role – much like how we don’t have HTML experts – they are part of a bigger role. They have the knowledge of the tool sets. They have a proven track record of showing how they apply their knowledge to various business functions, which creates value.

To be an expert – you must have experience, a track record! Now take a minute and visit that link. Read through The Personal Branding Blog – and if you have twitter I suggest you add @danschawbel as well (and add me too!). You can start to see his understanding the Social Media Experts of today will not exist in the short future.

What Social Media Is

Social Media is an extension of Public Relations, communications, customer service, business development… it’s a tool to be used, to be taught. You use your expertise to assist your clients – not to milk them for eyars, but to show them how to be capable themselves. You need to be an expert so you can teach them your skill set (and if you’re truly indispensable, they know you’ve got an eye for “the next big thing” so I’m sure you can inherit a new Web 3.0 title when those start coming around).

What Social Media Isn’t

Social Media isn’t all about networking – but it is one aspect. It’s about OPENness. It’s about communication. It’s not about hording information, or acting like you hold some secret. You don’t – and the more you horde your information, try and make yourself “indispensable” by creating vague propositions hiding behind a mask of “social media.” You’ll be out of a job if you don’t start expanding your knowledge and understanding, and become a teacher.

The secret is OUT!

Social Media Experts are all ready on their way out – we know it’s a matter of time as the “skill set” propagates out – but the true value you have to add right now – appying your knowledge and experience with social toolsets and networking – proving that you have more to add than just one area of “expertise” – that will show your true colors – your mixing of your expertise in multiple aspects will outshine this “web 2.0 title” and propogate to show that you’re on top of what’s buzzing in Web 2.0 and you’ll be buzzing when Web 3.0 rolls around.

So – all you Social Media Experts – shine on and show the world your not just a buzz word!

Very often you can get into a conversation with people about what kind of web work they do. I love when people bill themselves as “Web Consultants” because they’ve played in Front Page and maybe have an ISP with an HTML page up (generated by Front Page) and a giant image of text with no alt tag.

I try to educate people – try to explain that search engines can’t exactly read images (“that’s why we have alt tags if you really, really love that font and don’t care it’s a few hundred k for your image”). I try not to be an ass about it, but sometimes you don’t want to go into the history of why you know what you know, and that they should do what you say because it’s a best practice (“According to who?”). Sometimes explaining usability and search optimization gets lost when people try to enter a realm that they have no experience in (other then they can make people give them money to do a poor job – and they wouldn’t know it).

But what are we supposed to do?

This is something I keep trying to wrap my head around. You’re hired to do a job. No matter what you call yourself – Web Job Titles can be abused. Web Master? Does this mean you have Mastered the web? Or maybe just your own site? Web Developer? What technologies does this imply? Web Designer? Does this mean you can use photoshop, or does it mean you have a creative foundation and the critical thinking skills necessary to take design to a dynamic level? (I say this, because I see so many ‘web designers’ who very obviously are more ‘print designers’ trying to do web work).

The key to this – no matter what title you make up for yourself, or assign yourself – is rating your skill levels. You may be an Architect – but maybe your specialty is PHP, .net, maybe Flash/Flex. Maybe you’re great at implementations. Maybe Databases are your thing. If we have three guys with the same title (say, WebDevA, WebDevB, WebDevC). Three people, same titles, different skill sets. Do you think their estimates will be the same? Their quality of work?

How do we account for them?

The purpose of being a web developer is that you can be adaptable. If you say “I know X but I don’t know Y, then don’t bother me with Y because I don’t care” you need to revaluate your position. You’re not interested in being a Web Developer at all. This isn’t going to say “you have no business doing web work” – I’m saying you need to appy yourself into a specialist role – Specialist, Flash Development. Actionscript Development. .Net Applications. WebSphere. ATG. This implies that that is your main area of focus – maybe you do know some other stuff, but you won’t be expected, as an ATG Specialist to do WebSphere work.

As a Web Developer – it’s not quite Jack-of-all-trades – it’s “I know a little of all and can adapt.” It means you can learn. You can pick up. You can see relationships between technologies, languages, etc. This doesn’t mean that everyone with that title has the same “abilities” but they should strive to constantly better themselves.

Personally, I’m a developer/designer.

I love web design. I love web development. I love challenges and creative thinking. Professionally, I’m a web developer. That’s what I get paid to do, so I try to limit myself at work to that role (but make my interests in web design and web metrics/analytics known). My specialty? Front-End development. I used to do a little minor design work at my old job, and I used to do a little database work.

This means that when I’m approached with new tasks, I do my best to estimate it to my abilities, and try ot be honest if it’s out of my skill level – as I had to once before in regards to Flash work (specifically, a mess of actionscript that I had very little time to traverse and figure out – so I had to tell them ‘not going to happen.’) Now – I’m delving more into PHP, mySQL, and third-party applications.

Specialize in third-part applications?

Hell-no! I may be working in Squirrel Cart currently – well, a hacked, edited version of Squirrel Cart, so I can’t exactly comment on the quality of the software – but the point is you should understand the technologies lying underneath. SquirrelCart uses PHP and mySQL – PHP I’ve used before, mySQL – not so much, except WordPress – but mainly I’ve used other database models (but nothing extensive).

I suppose my biggest problem is making problems bigger than they are – I’ve used MS Access DataBases – and the terminology always throws me.

But SquirrelCart – this is something that when you understand PHP and MySQL – you can just get. You can correct it. Modify it. Tweak it. Customize it up and down. The longer I’ve worked with it, the stronger my PHP and mySQL skill level becomes – something that wouldn’t happen if I looked at it and said “this is a lot of stuff that I haven’t mastered” and walked away.

I asked a lot of questions – and did research. I got answers, got more questions – but worked through it, which leads me to the next point…

Web Master or Google Master?

Search Engines are too often misunderstood or misused. I don’t just mean because Google Images + porn = craziness – I mean they are a toolbox on crack. Moderation is key, but I see people rely on the answers it gives too much.

For example – I found a jQuery poof function through a Google Alert I have set up. Now, I thought “hey, that’d be cool to have in mootools.” It’s not like it’s required, but – in my honest opinion – the easiest way to learn how the javascript libraries work is to port cool effects from one to the other. Plus, I knew I needed to work on creating classes in mootools. Perfect way to do it – or I could google for “mootools poof effect” and hope someone else did the work for me.

Now – having created the effect with help from Toby Miller, my effect is at the top of the list. But what if someone did it? Well, I could either look at the two and decide which one is better, or take the two of them and mash them together to get the best of both worlds – take what I like, make it better. Learn from it.

And that’s what I think the problem is – so many feel they know all the know, and none are willing to keep learning.