Google Alerts Has Been Updated

Many content marketers rely on Google Alerts as a way of getting ideas for content, seeing what your competitors are doing online and for those vain enough – seeing what others are publishing online about you.

Google has recently “beautified” their Alert service – there’s no telling just yet whether they’ve changed anything behind the scenes.

 

The Old Google Alerts

Old Google Alerts

Old Google Alerts

Above is a picture of what Google Alerts used to look like – functional, but not the simplistic approach Google is taking.

 

The New Google Alerts

The first thing you’ll see when you check out Google Alerts is the friendly and more stylised design, however the big changes come with Google’s suggestions.

The suggestions are based off who you’ve added in your circles in Google+, again this emphasises the importance Google is placing on G+. The better you utilise Google+ the better the suggestions Google will offer.

Google have also added a “Me On The Web” section – something we recommend all of our clients to do. It is always intriguing to see what others are posting about you online (if anything).

*Remember if you’re using a unique (individual) Google account to add your company or your client’s companies – Google isn’t quite clever enough to auto-suggest them at this stage.

New Google Alerts

New Google Alerts

What Does My Website Look Like On A Mobile Device?

If you’re responsible for a website, you’ll know the importance of how it looks on mobile devices. While exact percentages of website visitors using mobile devices can be determined, this number can vary greatly month to month.

You might look at your website analytics and see you have only a few visitors viewing your site on a mobile device and decide that optimising your site for mobile devices is not worth the effort. But when one does view your website, what are they greeted with?

Remember, your website is often your first impression.

Remember, mobile devices being used for web browsing is rapidly growing

As there are many devices available, all with different screen sizes, how are you meant to test your website on all of them without purchasing a variety of devices or relying on friends and co-workers owning them?

How Can I See What My Site Looks Like On A Range Of Devices?

mobilemeFortunately there’s a simple solution. It’s called MobileTest.me. MobileTest Me acts as a browser based mobile emulator. It basically allows you to see how your website looks on a range of devices from your computer.

  1. Go to http://mobiletest.me/ and select a device you’d like to test with
  2. Enter the URL of the website you’d like to test
  3. Hit “Go”

To view the site from another device or to change the screen orientation simply use the “Options” and “Devices” tabs in the top left of the screen.

What Can I Do If I Don’t Like What I See?

wptouchIf your site isn’t responsive or doesn’t look as nice you you’d hoped there are a number of options available.

Obviously, the easiest solution is to get someone to fix it – however that can get expensive and time consuming.

If you’re on a popular platform such as WordPress you can always purchase a new theme which is responsive. The issue with this solution is that it can often be surprisingly time consuming and there is the potential for a large delay while you copy the content across to make it look consistent with the new theme.

A good short term solution is installing a free plugin such as WPTouch. WPTouch makes a mobile version of your site and only appears when viewed on a mobile device. Best of all, it is available free and only takes a minute to install (though you may want to spend time customising the colours to match your site and the icons for each menu item).

Writing team

How to manage a writing team

I’d like to keep track of projects, editing, and version control as simply as possible. I see a zillion tools and possibilities, just want something simple and reliable.

Writing team

Writing team [image credit dunlapschools.edublogs.org]

Focus on having one place for your editorial work schedule. We use teamwork.com for our project planning – but other solutions include Trello and Basecamp. Set in place working processes that force users back to the project management app for all their work. E.G. we use Teamwork as the agenda for our update meetings – it is immediately obvious if someone isn’t using it or it isn’t up to date with their status. Name and Shame works as a motivator.

Secondly, the editorial calendar (which can be a spreadsheet of monthly activities) sets out what needs to be done in advance so you can plan.

Thirdly use cloud services so there’s only one version of any document you are writing. We use Google Docs and from the fall you’ll also be able to do the same on Apple with their Yosemite update. One document, multiple users.

Fourthly, if you want to be picky – as I am, have a file naming convention on your documents. We use date followed by client name and detail of the document. Note using a YYMMDD date format means all documents sort into reverse date order easily (the US date format does not work).

How is that for starters? Get in touch if you want a 20 minute update on what you’ve chosen and I can try to spot any issues or working practices you may need to reinforce.