Good usability and web design advice from Neil Patel, who points out eight key things to pay serious attention to when optimizing your page content and layout, based on what eye-tracking data reports show.

I can only confirm, that based on my own experience as a web publisher, these eight points are indeed all very important and often underestimated. 

In particular I'd like to highlight three: 

1) Info chunks are best

2) You need a lot of white space

3) Use pictures of people

Read the full article to get better insight and understanding on why these factors are important and why it is useful to do something about them.

Rightful. Useful advice. 7/10

Full article: http://www.quicksprout.com/2014/04/16/8-powerful-takeaways-from-eye-tracking-studies/ 

Reading time: 5' mins.

While SEO experts keep saying that "search engine optimization" is not dead, it's only changing, I am quite happy to see that more and more of the SEO techniques that have been promoted as the "smart" way to make anyone web site more visible, are finally crumbling down one by one.

In this excellent article, Neil Patel, identifies five of them, that carry more big risks than benefits for anyone web publisher still adopting them. These are:

1) Guest Blogging (spammy kind)

2) Incoming Links with Optimized Anchor Text

3) Low quality inbound links

4) Using lots of relevant keywords inside your content

5) Relying more on building inbound links than on creating high-value content

Excellent recommendations for anyone publishing online. It's time for those who have quality ideas and content to regain their due value and visibility, stolen for so long by those who, without either one, invested fanatically in content marketing and search engine optimizing without ever creating real value. 

Useful. Informative. 8/10

Full article: http://www.quicksprout.com/2014/03/28/5-seo-techniques-you-should-stop-using-immediately/

Fliplingo is a new web app which allows you to translate, either automatically, or with the help of a professional human translator, your tweets into one or more languages.

You simply hook up your Twitter account(s) and then can create a "flip", or a preset that will take care of translating all of your upcoming tweets into your specified language either by manual human translation or automatically.

You can test the service and the human translation by using the free credits that are available in your account as you open it (30 human credits and 300 machine credits. This equals to about 2 tweets that can be human translated and 20 machine-translated ones).

For $29/mo you can 300 words human translated (about 30 tweets) and unlimited machine translated tweets over a max of three different Twitter accounts.

My comment: Excellent tool for content marketers needing to reach out to international audiences on Twitter. Easy, cost-effective.

Pricing info: https://www.fliplingo.com/pricing 

More info: https://www.fliplingo.com/ 

Languages supported: https://www.fliplingo.com/languages 

Invitation request: https://www.fliplingo.com/invitation 

If you are looking for concrete examples of how you can significantly improve user adoption of your new online service, you better check out this new mini-site dedicated to illustrate in detail how popular online services turn the sign-up and getting started process into a success.

For each service reviewed you can flip through an illustrated slideshow that highlights each and every detail that makes a difference in the signup process.

Free to use.

Very useful. Simple to understand. 9/10

Check it out now: http://www.useronboard.com/ 

http://www.useronboard.com/onboarding-teardowns/ 

UserOnboard is the work of Samuel Hulick.

If you re looking for great articles, resources and guides about content strategy and its characteristics, you have found what you were looking for.

Jontahon Colman, has curated an excellent catalogue of the best resources on content strategy resources available online. 

From books, to magazines, journals, blogs, articles, forums and events, this annotated list has plenty of valuable resources and it is definitely a valuable reference asset to save for anyone interested in deepening his knowledge about content strategy.

Free to use.

Check it out: http://www.jonathoncolman.org/2013/02/04/content-strategy-resources/ 

Trendwatching.com, a web magazine devoted to analyze, research and report about upcoming consumer trends, has released the Consumer Trend Canvas (inspired by Alex Osterwalder's).

The free CTC has been designed for anyone interested in looking deeper into the innovation and business opportunities available by looking into the specific traits of new consumer trends.

The Consumer Trend Canvas per se is nothing else but a printable PDF framework that contains instructions, tips and examples as well as a full-page structured canvas that help you analyze any possible consumer trend.

"An easy-to-follow framework that will help you not only unpack and understand any consumer trend, but also help you apply it to launch successful consumer-facing innovations of your own."

More info: http://www.trendwatching.com/trends/consumertrendcanvas/ 

Consumer Trend Canvas: http://www.trendwatching.com/trends/pdf/2013-10%20CONSUMER%20TREND%20CANVAS.pdf 

Andrew Gouty analyzes the history of SEO, while highligthing how increasingly important it is to look less at "SEO tactics" and more at producing truly quality content.

The article cum infographic reviews the main five SEO eras, from the 1994-99 Meta era, and through the PageRank years (2000-2003), the Florida era (2004-2009), the Content Era (2010-12) and the Present Day.

A good, fact-supported overview of what really counts when it comes to content visibility on the web.

Useful. Data-rich. 8/10

Full article + infographic: http://www.raidious.com/content-marketing/the-history-of-seo-effectiveness/ 

If you are goal includes marketing and selling information products or services to the adults, entrepreneurs and business men of tomorrow, I recommend you read this short article by Scott Di Marco, who is the Library Director at the University of Mansfield.

Inspired by Stefan Pollack's book "Disrupted", Scott identifies and lists down the key critical points defining the iGeneration:

Generation X was about "us versus the man"

Generation Y was the "me" generation

iGeneration is the "us" generation - together they can change institutions and create the environment they want.

In addition he identifies these specific characterizing traits:

- They strongly rely on recommendation and referrals of friends, peers, and other consumers

- The expert or journalistic critics only matters if they agree with them

- Forget print and TV. They use mobile devices like oxygen

- They want information that's relevant and or funny.

- They look for specific, niche info. 

- Ads are ok for them as long as they are relevant and authentic. 

- They want a relationship. They do not want to be sold stuff.

Scott Di Marco  then goes to on to provide some key insightful recommendations on how to approach these people by listening and adopting a curatorial approach.

My comment: Scott Di Marco's analysis doesn't apply only to the world of libraries. The future of marketing is indeed strongly bound to understanding and respecting the values and traits of the new generations outlined above. Cultivating them can only benefit any company or organization that wants to look at long-term survival.

Insightful. Great advice. Recommended. 8/10

Full article: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/scott-dimarco/the-new-reality-is-disrup_b_3861417.html 

(Image credit: Couple sitting by Shutterstock)

Little Pork Chop is a supersimple web app which allows you to post to Twitter longer messages than the typical 140 characters, by intelligently splitting your communication into multiple, numbered tweets.

To use it, you simply go the Little Porkchop page, type in or paste your message without worrying about length, and, instantly, the app previews for you how it would split into multiple tweets. You make your adjustments and you are set to tweet. 

A couple of nice additional touches include:

1) all of the following tweets after the first one in a sequence, are sent as replies to the first, so that the whole set can be read as a single thread,

2) the option to send tweets in reverse chronological order so that they will show up in the Twitter stream in the order you wrote them. 

Very useful. Easy. Immediate. 9/10

Little Pork Chop is the work of love of Dave Winer.
 

Free to use.

Try it out now: http://little.porkchop.io/# 

More info: 

• http://scripting.com/2014/06/07/littlePorkChop042.html 
• http://scripting.com/2014/06/06/theEasiestWayToTweetAStorm.html 

Here is why storytelling is so effective and uniquely powerful.  

Bufferapp co-founder Leo Widrich has written, back in 2012, a very interesting and informative article on the topic. Here a few passages from it: 

"When we tell stories to others that have really helped us shape our thinking and way of life, we can have the same effect on them too.

The brains of the person telling a story and listening to it can synchronize, says Uri Hasson from Princeton:

"When the woman spoke English, the volunteers understood her story, and their brains synchronized. When she had activity in her insula, an emotional brain region, the listeners did too. When her frontal cortex lit up, so did theirs. 

By simply telling a story, the woman could plant ideas, thoughts and emotions into the listeners' brains."

A story, if broken down into the simplest form, is a connection of cause and effect. And that is exactly how we think. We think in narratives all day long, no matter if it is about buying groceries, whether we think about work or our spouse at home. We make up (short) stories in our heads for every action and conversation."

Truthful. Inspiring. Very useful. 8/10

Full article: http://lifehacker.com/5965703/the-science-of-storytelling-why-telling-a-story-is-the-most-powerful-way-to-activate-our-brains 

Reading time: 7':30" 

Eyequant is a new web app which allows you to test and analyze instantly and web page design, landing or product page and to visualize for you the areas on the page that readers will pay most attention to.

The app does not require you to install any code or plugin on your site as it leverages scientific research data to evaluate, analyze and predict reader's behavior on any page without needing to use live traffic data.

Once you have submitted a web page by uploading it or by submitting its URL, Eyequant will be able to provide three different visual maps (attention map, hot spots, perception map) of your page showcasing the specific areas where reader's eyes will be drawn.

All visual maps produced by Eyequant can be easily exported to PDF, PPT and ZIP files. 

My comment: Excellent resource to gain valuabe insight into how to improve and optimize any web page. Definitely worth trying.

Free try out available (2 pages).

Try it out now: http://eyequant.com/ 

Pricing: http://eyequant.com/#!/pricing 

We often manipulate people in order to sell something to them.

According to James Altucher, investor, author and entrepreneur, this is sad, as you really don't have to approach selling in this fashion, if you want to get the maximum results.

Here's a few of the wonderful things he suggest you should really invest in, to sell drastically more:

a) Friendship. Nobody is going to buy from someone they hate. The buyer has to like you and want to be your friend. People pay for friendship.

b) Say No. If you reduce the supply of you (through “No”) then the demand for you goes up and you make more money (and have more fun).

c) Overdeliver. People want to do business with people who give them presents. Over-delivering is a present. And it makes you feel good. Give and you will receive.

d) It's not the product. Stop going to BS entrepreneur, get-rich conferences. In the long run nobody cares about your product. In the long run, it is the entire holistic view of your offering, your service, you, that you are selling. 

But there's a lot more good advice than these four points.

He suggests for example to get rid of bad customers, to sell the dream they will experience and not the product, as well as to realize that your very best customers are your existing clients.

If you, like me, don't feel good about selling, marketing and pushing products like most people do online, then you will get a fresh breath of oxygen by reading in full this excellent article.

"Be the sun and you will become abundance."

Excellent read. Highly recommended. 10/10.

Full article: http://techcrunch.com/2013/12/21/the-ultimate-cheat-sheet-for-selling-anything/ 

(8 mins. reading time)

(Image credit: Woman profile by Shutterstock)

Thanks to FanPageKarma, an excellent web app to learn and improve your social media marketing by learning directly from your competitors, has just published a worldwide catalogue of Facebook Fan Pages categorized by sector and country.

For each brand included in the catalogue you can check the existing number of fans, its growth rate and page performance, and compare these with the ones of your own Facebook page.

My comment: This is a great resource to find and collect great examples of effective social media strategies by finding the best performers by country or by specific industry sector. 

Very useful: 8/10

Full catalogue:

http://www.fanpagekarma.com/facebook-catalogue/ 

Excellent article by Ammon Johns explaining clearly what the new Google algorithm Hummingbird does and how it really affects the world of search.

Contrary to what has been written by many, Hummingbird changes deeply how Google interprets search queries, especially, long, detailed ones, not the search results directly. This is also why no-one has really seen major changes to web site traffic after Google has introduced the new algo quietly in August.

In simple words, what Google Hummingbird does, in the words of Ammon Johns is: "...making the very concept of many long-tail searches go the same way as referral data.

Google is trying to get away from exact wording to understanding the concepts.

So no matter how verbose or roundabout your search for pizza restaurant in Denver may be, the search it runs is exactly the same as “Denver Pizza Restaurant”, “Pizza Restaurant Denver”, etc."

Read the full article and the examples provided and you will get a good gist of it.

Very interesting. Useful. 8/10

Read the full article here: http://www.isoosi.com/blog/hummingbird-the-opposite-of-long-tail-search.html 

One of the most popular strategies utilized by those are new to content curation is to create "lists" of resources, articles or tools that are useful for a particular domain and tribe.

In this article by Casudi Di Diego you can find four real-world examples of how crowd-curated lists can be effectively utilized to create value and as a consequence to produce more inbound links, visibility and spontaneous sharing across social media.

Educational. Resourceful. 8/10

Full article: http://contentmarketinginstitute.com/2013/09/content-plan-include-numbered-lists/