10 Social Media Marketing Questions Answered
I recently spoke at the Creative Freelancer Conference in Denver (part of the How Design Conference) and led a "Lunch and Learn" table discussion. I asked the attendees to write down their burning questions about social media marketing. As I suspected, most of the folks - who were predominantly graphic designers and web designers, with a photographer and traditional marketer in the mix - were at the very early stages of thinking about social media tools for marketing themselves to potential clients.
Below are the questions I received and the (paraphrased) answers I gave.
SEO Services can divert two kinds of traffic to your website - On-page and off-page
Social media is a blanket term to describe websites and web tools which allow for user communication and interaction.
Google Font Directory
The Google Font Directory lets you browse all the fonts available via the Google Font API. All fonts in the directory are available for use on your website under an open source license and are served by Google servers.
After Effects + Particle Illusion Star Trail
After Effects + Particle Illusion Star Trail
Which URL is Right?
by Kevin Yank
Following Andrews's look at good hyperlink text last issue, Steve wrote in to ask about the other side of the hyperlink equation: URLs.
25 Ways To Improve Your Site Today
Yes, the title may look like this post should be on an amateur blog and that it will be full of references to clip art and animated gifs, but this is serious. I've compiled a list of what I think are 25 ways to improve your website in as little time as possible. All can be done in a matter of minutes.
How to Extend Your Wireless Network's Range
Wi-Fi networking range is like money, candy, and free time. You can never have too much of it. Getting more range out of your wireless networking gear can be a challenge, but it isn't impossible. Here are some pointers on how to extended your Wi-Fi range, hopefully letting you cover your entire house or office.
Designing for the Web
In the last two articles we looked at the basic tenets of the design practice,
Build for the Future: Bend, Don’t Break
If you’ve been building Web sites or applications for any period of time,
Preparing for Widescreen
How to build dynamic-width pages now
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Which URL is Right?
by Kevin Yank
Following Andrews's look at good hyperlink text last issue, Steve wrote in to ask about the other side of the hyperlink equation: URLs.
Steve writes,
How about starting a crusade to standardize URLs?
http://www.example.com
http://www.example.com/
http://www.example.com/index
http://www.example.com/index.html
http://example.com
http://example.com/
http://example.com/index
http://example.com/index.html
WHICH ONE IS CORRECT??
Steve
Good question, Steve! First of all, these pairs are equivalent:
* http://www.example.com
* http://www.example.com/
* http://example.com
* http://example.com/
The trailing '/' is implied if there is no path specified, so you can use either form freely. In the same way, the port number (80) is implied in most URLs, but you could quite correctly spell it out:
* http://www.example.com:80
* http://www.example.com:80/
* http://example.com:80
* http://example.com:80/
Best practice is to leave off the port number when it is 80, of course. As for whether to leave off the path when it is '/', that's a matter of personal preference. Some will argue that leaving off the '/' saves a byte on an Internet crowded with bytes. Others will argue that including the '/' makes it clear to readers that you're referring to the home page of the site in question, as opposed to the site as a whole.
Next we have the question of whether to include a 'www.' at the start of the hostname. This is a rather controversial subject that we covered at length in Tech Times #184. In short, including the 'www.' is a nod to Web tradition, whereas leaving it off is bowing to current Web fashion.
Strictly speaking, neither is correct. Pick whichever suits you best. The important thing is to make sure that the other form automatically redirects to the form you have chosen. If your server answers to both forms without redirection, search engines will see your site as two separate sites (one with the 'www.' and one without), each of which will have a lower search engine ranking than if your site had a single, authoritative hostname.
You can find instructions to set up your web server to redirect to your preferred hostname at the no-www advocacy site. From its name you can tell which URL style it prefers!
As for the URL of the home page (/, /index, or /index.html), again that is largely a matter of personal style, and again the key is to choose one and make sure that the others either redirect to your preferred form, or display a 404 error page. This ensures that search engines don't mistake them for multiple copies of the same page at different addresses.
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