Five on Friday - five fabulous web tools of the week (03.07.09)

July 3rd, 2009

Hi all, here is the first five fabulous web tools of the week in July. Where has the first half of the year gone?

1. Talon is a very easy to use screen capture tool. You can add the bookmarklet to your toolbar, and when you are on a page that you need a screen grab from, just click the bookmarklet and your page is saved to either your clipboard, desktop or online.

2.Twitter Follower Another easy to use tool that helps you follow people on Twitter by keyword. Add your account details and keyword and then Twitter Follower will find and follow users that have the keyword in their description.

3. DIY Chart allows you to create interactive charts and graphs from static or dynamic data. Read more about the features and benefits here

4. CoTweet is currently in private beta so I haven’t actually tried it, but by looking at the list of clients they have using the software it looks quite impressive. In a nutshell CoTweet is a platform that helps companies reach and engage customers using Twitter.

5. Wikirage Wikirage tracks the pages in Wikipedia which are receiving the most edits over various periods of time. Useful for trending information.

More of the same next week.

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Five on Friday - five fabulous web tools of the week (12.06.09)

June 12th, 2009

It’s that time of the week again! - Here are my favourite web 2.0 tools of the week.

1.Google squared lets you square a search term, what i mean by square is present information on the search term in a grid. The searches work better if you are looking to get multiple answers. Check out the example for Roller Coaster.

2. Feed Stats brings you visualisations of a user’s FriendFeed activity. Just enter any FriendFeed user’s nickname and see their posting behavior.

3. TiltShift Generator is a very cool online app for editing images, it has some very nice effects including the ability to blur out the image - Recommended.

4. Obsurvey allows you to create surveys using the obsurvey tool. When you have created your survey, you are given a link to a webpage (a URL). You can send this link in an email to the targets that you want to answer your survey. View an example

5. Tiny chat allows you to create your own chat room and invite people through one simple link. You can also embed your chat room on your blog and in myspace. Tiny Chat can also be used to host video conferences with your participants.

More of the same next week.

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Five on Friday - five fabulous web tools of the week (05.06.09)

June 5th, 2009

Hi guys

Me again, your five on Friday sub. Your usual Five on Friday host will be back next week, but until then let’s take a look at this week’s selection.

First off, we have:

1. Photoxpress - If, like me, you use images to spice up your posts and comments, this free photo finding tool will come in very useful. It’s a quality image bank providing you with a vast and legal image library for both personal and professional use.

2. Almost.at -This tool allows you to follow people at real world events in realtime. Simply choose an event from the list provided and track the conversations and pictures. Content will be displayed in realtime but you can pause as required. Currently in beta but a very nice idea.

3. Moogo - The time when you had to shell out thousands of pounds for a website has long since passed, and yes this isn’t the only option to get a free website, but it’s easy to use, quick and offers some nice features such as web stores, blogs, photo albums and mobile pages. It’s aimed at small companies, associations and individuals, so give it a go, even if it’s just for an event or service that you are launching.

4. TypingWeb - Embarrassed about your typing speed? Still only use two fingers to bash out your documents? Come on, everyone would like to type a bit faster and this app could be the help you’ve been looking for. It’s a free online typing tutor for typists of all ages and skills.

5. AlmostMeet - This is a very useful service for collaborative group meetings, allowing everyone to talk and see each other, using peer-to-peer technology, which also enables visibility of participant’s desktops, whiteboards and file sharing. And of course, it’s free!

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Five on Friday - five fabulous web 2.0 tools and sites of the week (15-05-09)

May 15th, 2009

Here is this week’s bundle of 5 top web 2.0 tools and sites of the week.

1. Scoopler is a real-time search engine taking feeds from Twitter, Flickr, Digg, Delicious and more.  The most relevant and timely results are found at the top of the page.

2. Spezify is a very visual search engine, all the results are laid out like a mood board. I really liked the way this was set out all though the page was quite slow to scroll, it’s still in early beta.

3. OpenZine lets you create your very own free web magazine with text, pictures & video, in reality you create a blog that groups your posts with a magazine style cover. One of the best features about OpenZine is the create a cover process.

4. Flackr aggregates all the latest breaking news from a number of different sources on Twitter into a neat dashboard. If you are interested in one particular story you can click on that story and then view additional updates linked to that piece.

5. Clixpy is a usability tool that tracks how people interact with your site. Try the Clixpy demo to get an idea of how it works, this tool could be great for webmasters to optimise their website landing pages.

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How to SEO your Press Release

May 14th, 2009

Today we have a guest blogger posting on behalf of Liberate Media - his name is Ian Howie, Account Director, at 1upSearch, which was one of the first ever UK companies to become a Google Website Optimizer (GWO) Authorised Consultant, making it one of an elite group of Website Optimizer specialists.

How to SEO your Press Release

An essential part of your PR strategy should be optimising your press release for Google.

Optimising for Google will also help you to build awareness on Yahoo and other smaller search engines.

Instead of just dropping copy in your release and hoping it will be picked up by the Search Engines, simply follow my five tips to make sure that your online press release works harder for you.

1. Optimise for your Audience not the Search Engines…

This may sound counterintuitive - but optimising a Press Release is all about writing copy that is going to appeal to your audience. Simply stuffing your Press Release full of words that are popular will stop your Press Release from making sense to both your audience and to Google.

I’d suggest using Keyword Tools (see my next point) to find the right Keywords - and then using them in your Headline and at least two or three times in the body copy and again in your About section.

2. Use Keyword Research

So, for my example, I have a Press Release about a new service from Pressitt.

You can use these free Keyword Tools from Google and Wordtracker to help you workout which keywords to put in and in which order.

Let’s have a look at the Google Keyword Tool:

You can either enter the Keywords you want to research into the top box or you can enter a URL from your website if you want to research a subject area.

The second half of the screen shows the actual Keywords being searched in Google, the competition on Google Adwords and an indication of Search Volume (how many Searches per month).

Now, rather than peppering the Press Release with all the phrases, I’m going to combine them into one:

Social Media News Release Service

Covering the Keywords:

Social Media News Release

News Release Service

By doing this, the release will optimise better since (a) it includes both phrases, and (b) it describes more of what the service actually is.

Here is the Optimised text applied to the Press Release:

Social Media News Release Service in Public Beta - From Pressitt

Xx April 2009

Social Media News Release Service - Pressitt - today launches in public beta, following a successful month of private beta testing.

….

Wendy McAuliffe, director of Liberate Media and Pressitt, says: “The private beta phase has been incredibly successful, and we’re delighted to be coming out of it after just one month of testing. The Social Media News Release Service has been a hot topic within the global PR industry for a while, and we’re pleased to see that businesses and brands of all sizes are eager to trial this up-to-date press release format. Early user feedback has been constructive and encouraging, and we’re making service updates as quickly as possible to ensure we’re continually innovating and responding to the needs of our users.”

….

About Pressitt

Pressitt is a Social Media News Release Service, provided by digital PR and social media consultancy Liberate Media and web development company Best Served Cold.

Pressitt allows you to create your own social media news release (SMNR) - also known as a social media press release (SMPR) or social media release (SMR) and publish it to an online community of journalists, the blogosphere and the general public.

…

The full release is just over 3,500 words - however we repeat the optimised terms only 7 times. The context of where you put your Keywords is very important - in the headline (which carries the most weight) and the first line. And is then repeated again within the body and the about section.

3. Use Wordle

To see how a Search Engine would see the words within your release, you can use a clever little site called: Wordle.net. You can cut and paste your copy into it. If I put in my Social Media News Release text, I get this visualisation:

Ideally, the Keywords that you want to be indexed should show up in the largest text in the Visualisation.

4. Embed links

Put links into your copy that link to the relevant parts of your website, you can also link to client/partner websites. These links will help people reading your Press Release to find out more about you and also tell the Search Engines which of your clients’ pages are related to this Press Release, e.g.:

Social Media News Release service Pressitt today launches in public beta, following a successful month of private beta testing.

Developed by digital PR and social media consultancy Liberate Media and web development firm Best Served Cold,  Pressitt has already been trailed by an impressive list of high-profile and challenger brands and organisations. These include Johnson’s online parenting community BabyCentre, the Government’s Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills, online music provider Napster, digital creative agency Collective, digital entertainment and internet solutions firm iBAHN, digital engagement agency Kerb and LED lamp producer Greengage Lighting.

5, Clear Online Path Back

Name, email address and phone number are now not only ways you can be found online you can also add links to an online version of your Release, as well as your homepage URL, Twitter address, Linked In Group and your blog.

Press contacts:

Wendy McAuliffe

Director

Liberate Media / Pressitt

Tel: 07900 886791

Email: wendy@liberatemedia.com

Online:

Web: www.pressitt.com

Twitter: http://twitter.com/Pressitt

Blog: http://pressitt.com/blog

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Pressitt-Social-Media-News-Release-SMNR/77338107702?v=wall

So here are the results: the press release is third in the Google Results ranking, after being posted on Pressitt’s sister site Liberate Media:

And ranking at number one and two on Yahoo UK:

This post was written by Ian Howie Account Director at 1upSearch

Twitter: ihowie

Web: www.1upsearch.co.uk

Linkedin: http://www.linkedin.com/in/ianhowie

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