The Blog Studio

Han Solo had Chewbacca. Batman had Robin. The Lone Ranger had Tonto. Every amazing hero always has a sidekick to watch their back, help them get things done and smooth things over in the journey. The social media world is no different. There are the dominant social networks we all use like Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and YouTube. Then, lurking somewhere deep in the pixelated shadows are a group of other less known apps, programs and networks who don’t get as much of the glory.

Getting to the know the social sidekicks is the difference between just using social media and being a pro. Using them as companions to the big social networks will make a huge difference in your output, and the quality of the work you produce. These lesser known names are what you can use to make the most of power features, get less done with more and push your brand and presence up a level. They aren’t the names you see in the digital spotlight, but the heroes wouldn’t be able to do without their trusty sidekick right by there side.

Bit.ly/
Whichever way you choose to use Twitter, sharing links is likely a huge part of that. Bit.ly offers so many great features and shortcuts, that we can’t imagine using Twitter without it. Sure, Bit.ly makes your links smaller so you can have more characters to Tweet but it’s the analytics and tracking features that really make Bit.ly useful. It’s possible to find out how many people viewed a link you shared, and tailor your content to your audience depending on what’s popular. You can see the geographic location of who’s clicking, along with the referring site and the Twitter client they’ve used to open the link. It’s especially useful to check out how many people view your links on mobile devices, so you can see if it’s worth making more mobile friendly content. All the click data can be parsed and viewed in nice looking graphs broken down by date range, clicks or by link. For the smart Twitter user, all this information is gold. With some careful analysis, you can always serve up exactly what your Twitter followers want to read.

Evernote
If you are a blogger or content creator, Evernote should be your constant companion, sitting up in your browsers toolbar. A huge part of being a writer is reading, and Evernote makes sure you get the most value out of all the reading you do. Whenever you come across an article, blog or site that you find interesting, you just click the Evernote button, and it will be stored for later. It’s the way that Evernote allows you to tag and organize what you find that makes it such an unbelievable companion. After using it for a while, you’ll develop a set of personal tags and categories for subjects that interest you. You can also shoot photos of something you see out in your daily life, and drop it into Evernote to use in a post or to remind you of an experience later on. The next time you’re ready to write about that topic, just fire up Evernote, and you’ll have a huge list for inspiration. The fact that this app is available for all mobile devices, in the cloud and syncs across multiple platforms means that wherever you’re writing, you’ll have access to your reference material. No blogger or writer should be working without Evernote.

Skitch
At many points throughout your social media day, you probably interact with images. You may need to add a photo to a blog post, see something interesting you want to view later or share an image in one place or another. Skitch to the rescue! Skitch is the ultimate image sidekick app. It can grab screenshots, and whole screens as well. You can open just about any image file, re-size it, annotate it, add arrows, text and effects to it. Skitch will let you instantly upload the file, and provide a link to share it, all with a click. Anything you might need to do with an image in the social media realm, Skitch can handle. It also handles it in the most simple, efficient way possible.

Clips
Do you ever find yourself bringing a quote, a link, or bit of information from one social network to another? You see an interesting quote on Twitter that you want to share with your Faceook friends, and then upload a link you find on Google + to your blog. Grabbing, sharing and moving information is a huge part of what social media is all about. It can be a pain. Unless you’re using Clips. Clips lets you grab, cut, paste and hang on to a multitude of snippets in your clipboard all at once. You pop it open, and it displays what you have in a nice, easy to see visual grid. Then you grab what you want, and put it where you want to share it. It’s a really simple idea, but a supremely useful one.

You can tackle things alone, but any hero will tell you that a sidekick makes it all work better. These are a few of our indispensable social media sidekicks, when we’re out in the digital world playing hero. What sidekicks do you have on your desktop that you can’t live without? Let us know. We always want to expand our posse.

Flickr is one of the most useful, but underrated social media platforms on the web. It doesn’t have the headline grabbing power of multi billion dollar valuations like Twitter, and isn’t the newest kid on the block like Google +. Year after year, Flickr does it’s job - sharing photos - extremely well, so it rarely pops up in the press, or in conversations about the social web. It’s a shame. More web dwellers should realize it’s possible to put the low-key profile of this brilliant service to work for your and your business. With a small amount of careful, consistent work, Flickr can improve the SEO of your websites, expand your online profile and reputation, promote your projects and maybe even bring a few bucks in on the side through photo sales.

When we speak with our clients, we find that most of them are just vaguely aware of Flickr, or occasionally use it as a place to dump photos. Since Flickr is a dark horse, we’ll start with the very basics here, to get you started using Flickr and seeing results.  To get going we’ll delve into 3 ways you can use Flickr to improve the online influence of your business, your brand and yourself. This is just the start, as there are so many ways to make the most out of Flickr, so you can expect us to dig deeper into this topic with additional blog posts.

Uploading with Apps
Getting your photos online is the lynchpin of any Flickr based campaign. The key to using Flickr well, is having loads of photos in your Flickr stream. The more photos you provide, the better chance there is that someone will find them. After a quick inspection, you’ll notice that they don’t make it easy for you to get your images online. This is the case in the main Flickr web interface. However, by using one of the brilliant Flickr uploading tools, you can submit huge numbers of photos with a minimum of effort. More importantly, you can provide the correct metadata, like keywords and descriptions, that are essential for Flickr success. The key is to use the uploading apps to make certain that all the photos you upload have titles that contain a descriptive keyword, tags that describe the photos and what they might be used for, the right type of licensing and their location on a map. Using an uploading app lets you add all this data quickly, in one shot. Having correct, thorough information attached to your photos is the most important thing to make Flickr work for you.

Flickr for SEO
Flickr is a solid tool for improving SEO, while generating traffic and links. Image searches are popular in all search engines. People need photos to illustrate blog posts, news articles, for graphics in documents and an infinite number of other uses. Filling this niche, by providing people with these photos is an excellent strategy for gaining traction on the web. When creating the descriptions for your pictures, take the time to be extra thorough. Describe what’s in the photo. Also describe where the photo was taken, provide the date, add the dominant colors and list any words, like ad copy, that appear. Put yourself in the shoes of a person looking for an image to use on a project. What keywords would you search for?  These descriptive words will bring traffic right to you. In order to capitalize on this traffic, make sure you add your name and website to the description in every photo. The people who find your images will see your website listed there and pay a visit. It’s a way to get your url in front of thousands of new visitors.

Use the Analytics Tool
Flickr has outstanding analytic tools built right into the main interface. For some reason, Flickr makes this information difficult to find.
Clicking the squiggly line (highlighted by the red arrow in this illustration) will take you to the “hidden” analytics page. You can also view this by going to You > Your Stats.

You’ll be shown overall statistics such as how many people have clicked on your photos, when they were viewed and which individual photos are most popular. The most useful section of the Flickr analytic report is the “Referrers” section. Here you can see how people found your images, right down to the individual web pages and search terms they’ve used. Examining the search terms will give you more ideas on how to better tag your photos so more people will find them, by adding these search terms to the tags when you add new images. Since you can see the places where your work is appearing on the web, you can drop by those pages and leave a comment. Let the people who’ve used your work know that you’re flattered they picked your photo, and leave your URL to help get the word out. It’s a method of expanding your circle of online contacts without being a spammer.

Flickr is a very solid, underrated social media service. The fact that it’s somewhat under utilized is a boom for anyone who chooses to take advantage of it, because the competition for eyeballs here is less fierce. This is our first installment of ways that you can use Flickr, so stay tuned here for more ideas coming up soon. In the meantime, send us a link to your Flickr streams so we can see what you have going on. 

It’s an aggravating situation we’ve all been in. You sign up for a new service, and the next thing you know you’re Blackberry is blinking, Growl is popping up in the corner of your screen non-stop and your inbox is full. All of these intrusions are communications from the service you’ve just joined. You’re getting an email notification every time that service does anything, no matter how minor. This illustrates what is one of the most pervasive and common UX failures today: having email notifications turned on by default.

When you create a login for most anything these days whether it’s a blog commenting system, a forum or a web app you can be certain that all of the email notifications will be set to “Yes” by default. Receive an email when someone comments? Yes. Receive an email when there’s a new post? Yes. Receive an email when there’s a full moon and Aries is in Virgo ascending? You got it.

From a user interface point of a view, as a user, this is a massive failure. The fact that it has become the norm is even worse. It’s a problem because it shows that the designers aren’t putting the user first, or concerning themselves with the experience the user has using their service. They are concerned with clicks, hits, numbers and traction. Why do designers have the notifications all turned on? To keep you thinking about and engaging with their product. In their eyes, the more times a day they can put their product on your screen the better. This line of thought goes, the more you see the product, the more you’ll use it, the more you’ll click and the bigger and better their numbers will appear. The designers feel that whenever they have a chance to break into your screen, they should take it. They couldn’t be more wrong.

As a user, it’s certainly nice to have the choice to get notifications from the apps and systems that we use. The functionality isn’t the issue here. Users like having flexible features and lots of choices. When designers turn on every notification by default, they become spammers. Any designer with a sliver of UI knowledge will understand that very, very few users will have the need to receive an email notification whenever their product does anything. Since this is the case, and they choose to turn the notifications on by default, they are destroying the UI, eroding the trust of their users and creating a digital nuisance. They are putting their desire for success and big numbers in front of the desire to give their end users a solid product.

It’s certainly possible to go into the settings and remove the email notifications, which most users will do but users shouldn’t have to. Why not give the users what they want? If designers were putting the user first, instead of their pathological need for clicks, email notifications would be disabled when you signup. On the surface, it’s a small concern, but it really provides window into the attitude of the people who create the app. If they would rather annoy and inconvenience their userbase for a chance at a few more clicks, what does that say about how they view their users? It would lead a user to think the developers see them as rubes and numbers, who they can inconvenience and spam to make a quick buck.

This is a clear message to developers out there: treat your users right. When you code up an app, or determine the default settings for your service, please turn off the email notifications by default. Give your users some credit. We’re smart. We all have our own individual workflows and distinct ways that we use services and apps. Give is the choice to determine how the alerts from your program will fit into our way of working. We can find and turn on the alerts we need, when we need them. Do this and we’ll love you for it. We’ll enjoy using your app or service more. Most of all, we’ll know that you respect us, and respect our time. 

The do it all online music service Spotify launched in the US today. Since I first checked out Spotify courtesy of a friend from London a few months back, I’ve been keeping tabs on when it would finally make it to North America. There’s no shortage of choices if you’re looking to listen to music online. Why is Spotify so exciting? In the simplest terms , Spotify just does everything right.

Doing everything right starts with setting the service up. You’re asked to sign in, which you can do via your Twitter or Facebook account, or you can create a new username and account right on the spot. Next you’re prompted to download the Spotify app. I grabbed the OSX version. There is also a Windows version, and several different mobile versions available. The time it took me to go from creating my account to listening to my first song was just about two minutes. It was a speedy, hassle free process with no unnecessary bloat. That is signup done right.

When you fire up the Spotify app for the first time you’re thrown into a slick, grayscale interface with a massive number of choices to start playing music. You can check out ‘Top Lists’, a selection of massively long playlists that are all over the place musically. Some of it is the standard stuff you’ll here on any radio station, but I was happy to see some more obscure tracks from Thievery Corporation and Lupe Fiasco popping up right off the bat. The ‘What’s New’ tab has selection of just released albums, as well as a blog type newsfeed that has Spotify news and playlists created by various users. The ‘Feed’ section expands on this feature, and this looks like a useful way to see new features as well as discover new music that is highlighted here.

The best feature of Spotify is the search. It’s just a simple search box, similar to what appears in a million other apps,but the results are just off the chain. It’s the amount of quality music that you can find here that really separates Spotify from the other music apps out there. For instance I did a search for Jeru the Damaja, an amazing but slept on MC who made his mark in the 90’s NYC hip hop scene. I found most of his albums ready to be listened to. Similarly, I ran a query for Jawbreaker, one of the all time greatest punk bands you’ve never heard of, and got a whole mess of their tunes to listen too. Jeru and Jawbreaker aren’t completely unknown, but are far from popular. The fact that I can dig this stuff up and listen to it hassle free is the promise of the web delivered in full. There is a full equipped Library feature that allows you to combine songs you find on Spotify,along with your own tunes into one very easy to organize mass of songs. There’s no hopping around, copying songs from one spot to another. You can hear it all in one place. That’s slick.

Another feature that separates Spotify from the pack of other streaming music apps is the fact that it plays nice with your music. At some point during the installation, the music stored locally on my drive was cataloged, and is available for play under the ‘Library’ and ‘Local Files’ tabs. If I’m in the mood to listen to something I already own, I don’t have to switch apps. I just pop into the Library tab and play it. This is extremely convenient. This compatibility extends over to any music devices you might have, like your iPod and Android phone.  It eliminates the need to use iTunes for the most part, which is great, because I have a pretty cold relationship with that app due to the horrific UX, nausea inducing DRM and constant massive updates.

An app isn’t an app these days without social features, right? Thankfully, music is one area where being social and connecting with your friends is a big positive. Spotify integrates with Facebook, and once you connect the two, you’re able to see your friends that are also Spotify users, through this connection you can send songs to friends, which will pop up in their inbox. Does a track remind you a certain friend? Passing it along to them is as simple as clicking on their profile and selecting the music you want to share. In many cases, the social features of music apps feel like a tacked on throwaway, but the Facebook integration and inbox feature are well integrated here and actually useful. I can see myself sharing tunes here, where I tend to ignore the social aspects of the other music sites I’ve tried.

Spotify is ad supported, and there are banner ads in the main interface and occasionally an audio ad in your music stream. I barely noticed their existence, and they don’t diminish the experience at all. There’s also a premium, paid version of the app available. The paid version lets you listen to music on the move via your mobile phone or offline if you’re without an internet connection. I haven’t tried the premium version yet, so I can’t say how it works, but I’m planning to give it a shot at some point in the future when I have a need for those specific features.

Spotify is the music app that we’ve all been waiting for. It does one thing perfectly: it lets you listen to the music you want to hear with no hassles. It’s a simple concept but Spotify executes it with perfection. Well done Spotify, you’ve got a true believer in this music nerd. 

Right this second, there are 50 million blogs running on WordPress. That number seems insane, but it’s true. It gives you some perspective on what it takes, and the logistics involved, whenever WordPress comes out with a new update. Having 50 million installs go smoothly, and making 50 million users happy is no easy task. Despite all that, with the release of WordPress version 3.2 aka “Gershwin”, the development team has managed to smack another home run out of the ballpark. After a week of using the new update, I’m deeply impressed, and can recommend upgrading if you’re a WordPress user.

The first thing you’ll notice is the changes to the WP dashboard, On the surface it looks prettier. The fonts, spacing and layout have all been changed, an the improvements look fantastic. WP has never been known for its looks, especially on the backend, but it really looks great. Considering the time many of us spend with the dashboard, it’s a welcome improvement. Working in an attractive environment is a nice bonus and it’s hard to argue with solid UI.

Really, what we’re all interested in though is what’s going on behind the scenes and under the hood. It might sound very exciting, but the biggest thing to come out of Gershwin is that it includes a new theme, “2011” that 100% HTML5 compatible. It’s a good looking theme as well. There’s plenty of flexibility between with colours, columns, and layouts. It appears simple, but since it’s HTML5 compatible, and it can be switched around to your liking, it’s a huge bonus. In the past these features would have been included with a premium theme you need to pay for, but Gershwin offers them for free. It isn’t a perfect theme, but we suspect it will do what’s necessary for many bloggers and you’ll see it popping up often on blogs all over the web.

At its’ heart, WordPress is a blog, so it’s for bloggers, the people who write and post all day long giving us stuff to read and share. The new distraction free writing interface is for them. As bloggers with thousands of writing hours under our belt ourselves, we can tell you: This is awesome! What’s in the new writing interface? Nothing. That’s the point. It’s a big, blank canvas with no distractions and the bare minimum of writing tools. It has just the basics: font changes, adding links, bullet points and some basic formatting. Other than that, it’s just a wide open canvas for putting together your thoughts. The severe clutter that has always been a part of the WP writing screen is gone. You can create a new post, and get down to business with plenty of room to create. This is a basic change, but a huge one that we know will make a lot of people happy. 

Sick of IE6? So is WordPress! WP 3.2 is dropping support for this mess of a browser. Is this a new feature? Not exactly, but the more popular services that get rid of IE6, the sooner it will disappear. Which is a huge win for every dev, and webmaster, that likes to keep their sites clean and running well. Along with this change, the minimum requirements to run WP 3.2 have changed as well. PHP 5.2.4 and MySQL 5.0. are now both required to install Gershwin. This shouldn’t be an issue for 99% of people who want to upgrade. Both pieces of software have been available for more than a year, which is plenty of time to get your host server ready for this change. What’s the benefit to the end user? Speed. Requiring these upgrades should make a marked improvement in how fast pages load for people reading your work. Sometimes it takes a hugely popular piece of software, like WordPress, to force upgrades that in the end benefit everyone on the web. We definitely approve, and the number of users that will see this as a negative is miniscule.

In some ways, WordPress 3.2 can be seen as an update that is cutting away the fat. Improved basic software requirements, a streamlined writing interface and a completely re-done dashboard are all a part of this. When it comes to UI, less is often more. Which is certainly the case here. Should you upgrade to Gershwin? Absolutely. You’ll see improvements in speed and stability, a better user interface and a fantastic new writing canvas to create your ideas with.  It’s only been a week, but we’re hooked.

If you need a hand upgrading, be sure to drop us a line. You never want to upgrade without doing a complete backup. You also want to check the compatibility of your themes, plugins and widgets. We’re always happy to get you set in the right direction, so let us know how we can help.