Article Content Strategy Adaptive Production by Christopher Butler on October 5, 2012 For the better part of the last decade, we've followed the same process for virtually every website we've built. As depicted by this Gannt chart, it all looks pretty neat and tidy, doesn't it? The problem is that reality isn't neat and tidy. Far from it. Reality is messy — stretchy, bendy, overlappy, and running-out-of-timey. You get the idea. Even so, this process worked well for us for so long, that it took running into some serious problems too many times in a row to realize that the dissonance between our neat and tidy starting place and the messy reality of a normal project demanded that we change things up. So after a long run of doing things the way we've always done them, we decided to roll up our sleeves and remap our process... Read Now About
Article Get started with metadata, and be part of the semantic web. published on October 4, 2012 In order to take advantage of Web 3.0 technologies like Google's Knowledge Graph, you need to make your content semantic, and that means metadata. This is a tour of schema.org, and other metadata initiatives for the web. Also discussed is microdata and RDFa encoding standards... Read Now About
Article The Content Commitment published on October 2, 2012 Here I am going to indulge myself, and with language fit for Tarzan, Frankenstein or Tonto, get right to the bottom line about content strategy: "You, write..." Read Now About
Article How to Use Google Analytics by Christopher Butler on September 25, 2012 Have you been avoiding learning how to use Google Analytics because you assume that measurement and analysis is someone else's job? Have the words, "I'm not really a data person," or "I'm not an analyst" left your mouth recently? Well, this month, Chris Butler will share with you a simple, three-step approach to Google Analytics that has been designed to answer five specific questions you should be asking about your website... Read Now About
Article Prospect Experience Design Evolution of the Mood Board by Justin Kerr on September 21, 2012 Mood boards are a key element in the design phase of our web development process and the format for these boards has evolved over the last three years. In this post, I outline some of the key changes and the thinking behind them. Read Now About
Article Prospect Experience Design Web 3.0? Made with Metadata. published on September 21, 2012 Metadata is useful for more than just SEO, it's also an integral part of where the web is quickly going. The Semantic Web is about linking knowledge, rather than just linking web pages, and using some simple metadata, it's fairly simple to plug into these emerging technologies... Read Now About
Article Prospect Experience Design Don’t Be So Linear… Learn how to wrangle! by Christopher Butler on September 18, 2012 In Shaping Things, Bruce Sterling's manifesto for design in a post-gizmo society, the author points out that technologies "do not abolish one another in clean or comprehensive ways." If they did, the designer's job would be far easier. Instead, we must design for the spaces between the old and the new—a challenge that Sterling calls "wrangling"... Read Now About
Article Get Your Name Out There with Metadata published on August 31, 2012 Using author metadata is a simple, effective way to attribute your content on the web to yourself. The rel="author" metadata tag is easy to use, and allows Google to understand who you are when you publish, and has big implications for both your search visibility and your eventual inclusion in the Knowledge Graph... Read Now About
Article Content Strategy What Should A CMS Do? by Mark O’Brien on August 30, 2012 At Newfangled, we've been building sites exclusively on CMS platforms since 2000, so we've had an up-close view of the comings and going of the CMS market for just about as long as it's existed. In some way, content management is unrecognizable compared to what it was in 2000, in other ways, the more things change, the more they stay the same. This month, Mark O'Brien pushes to redefine CMS, from content management system to conversion management system... Read Now About
Webinar The State of Digital Marketing for Small Agencies Hosted by Mark O’Brien This webinar was the first live review of the combined Newfangled, ReCourses, and Win Without Pitching survey on "The State of Digital Marketing for Small Agencies." Join Blair Enns, David Baker, and Mark O'Brien as they team up to offer their live, honest assessments of the findings of this groundbreaking survey. Access Now About
