CDG Interactive Blog

If you’re a writer, it probably seems like the hardest part of getting your book into the hands of readers is, well, writing the book.

These days, though, writing is just the beginning of the journey, particularly for self-published authors. After the written word becomes the printed page, even authors with the weight of a major publishing house behind them must then begin the process of marketing their books—and themselves.

Since most authors consider themselves writers, not marketers, this can get a little overwhelming. What are the options? Where should you start? (How do you get on Oprah, anyway?)

We’ve been working recently with author and health counselor Dawn M. Adams to help design, publish and market her first book, Weight! That’s Not The Issue. Here are 5 key steps we’ve taken to help promote the book and introduce Adams to her audience.

Continue reading "Writing the Book Was Just the Beginning: 5 Ways Authors Can Promote Themselves (and Sell More)" »

Decisions, decisions

Your website analytics will never be 100% accurate and that's okay. TopRank reminds us that you can still make decisions with the data you have. Plus additional information about why your analytics (or the way you talk about them) might not be working and 13 tools to help.

How to find ideas

Matt Cutts writes about how to find start-up ideas based on where there's clutter in your life. This is particularly interesting right now with the ongoing discussions about reducing clutter and even extreme minimalism (living with only 100 items) - which depends on digital replacements for physical possessions (ebooks instead of books, etc.).  I'm curious to see if this becomes a wider trend.

News of tomorrow

The Nieman Journalism Lab (of Harvard's Nieman Foundation) talks about what news organizations can do to tap the potential of younger consumers and how they can attract and keep young consumers.

Where do I go from here?

A List Apart talks about why it's unfortunate that good help is hard to find. When we're building applications, websites, etc., it's tempting to believe that we've done such a good job no one could need help. But these are our customers who may leave in frustration if they can't complete their desired task.
Why not put the extra effort into making sure they can?

Some days are better than others

JetBlue knows that and stayed true to themselves in a recent blog post when they were the story.

This is a guest post by CDG's UI Developer, Ivan Wilson.

It's back-to-school time, so here’s a pop quiz on today’s new buzz word: HTML5.

1. What is it?
2. Should I care?
3. Should I worry?

Answers: 1) see below, 2) yes, 3) not yet but soon enough

So, now that you’ve taken the quiz, may I suggest a textbook? Specifically, HTML5 for Web Designers by Jeremy Keith.

Now, I’ve known about HTML5 for a while (and some of the preliminary work around it). But when I heard about this book, I was curious how much more information could I gleam from its pages about HTML5. Judging by the title, I thought that it would be just an introductory text for web designers (not necessarily for experienced web developers).

But, I took a chance. I ordered a copy and waited. And the package arrived.

And when I first opened the box and held the book, the first thing that popped into my head was "Wow, this is a pamphlet!"

OK, not a pamphlet but a brief, concise book (under 100 pages).

However, from the very first page, it was evident that conciseness is the intent of the author. What Jeremy Keith does, with good effect, is to give the reader a brief synposis about HTML5, bypassing W3C language. (Alert: W3C documents are so precise, they could turn a cake recipe into a DVD instruction manual.)

Of course, he starts off by answering what HTML5 is and is not--not a new version, but a much-needed upgrade for building future web applications. This means it not only adds/removes features, but also adds more semantic meanings attached to the current set of tags (important for Internet devices like mobile phone or screen readers.)

For the remainder of the book, Keith highlights some important features and gives bits of advice for the newly introduced. The best thing is that he engages the reader enough to encourage further study in HTML5, which is not easy. This book could have easily become just another five pound dictionary. Of course, he remarks that there are others more experienced with this and points to some online resources. (As I am writing this, a number of new HTML5 books have popped up in the stores.)

In the end, the author does what he planned out to do – give a nice gentle push in the right direction towards HTML5.

Now, if you don’t mind. I have a list of HTML5 books to read.

Dislike

We've all said "I wish there was a dislike button" when responding to status updates on Facebook. Now you can also dislike the scams offering to add such a button to your Facebook page for you.

Make a note of it

Speaking of Facebook, creating and editing Notes just got easier. They've added some quick formatting options (like bold, bullets, etc.) and you can now tag Pages (for causes, groups,etc.) as well as your friends.

You may also like

Algorithms are funny things. Amazon shows you what other people bought when they looked at the same items you're viewing. iTunes says "people who buy this artist also buy that artist." Those are fairly straight forward. Netflix has it a little harder - why did you like a particular movie? Was it the story? The actor? The director? Or maybe even where the movie was set? Or did you even like it?

Now imagine all those complications with people. Why do you like someone? Facebook seems to have chosen to recommend friends based on a threshold of friends in common. Twitter has just rolled out a new suggestion feature to recommend people to follow to mixed reviews. For the first few days I only had recommendations of other people in the DC area who were also named Lisa (it's improved since then). Other people said it was spooky how well it had them pegged.  On the other hand, Jimmy Kimmel received recommendations to follow his ex and a rival talk show host. It's work in progress.

Step by step

The folks over at Brass Tack Thinking show us how small steps add up to big changes. It's one of those things we tell ourselves all the time, but when you see it the impact of the message is much different.

All aboard

Delta has launched Ticket Window to allow the purchase of tickets on their Facebook page without having to go to their site. And of course, you can share your travel plans with friends right in Facebook once you've book your ticket. This comes on the heels of Disney's move to allow the purchase of movie tickets right in Facebook. It seems like a good move for them - companies are capturing their audience where they already are (Facebook now has 500 million active users), and the visitors don't have to exit Facebook to complete their transactions. It will be interesting to see how consumers take to it.

When you think about customer service, what do you think about? Chances are, you’re thinking about a company’s salespeople, or its call center, or maybe even an email exchange.

Did you consider its website part of the customer service experience?

If you didn’t, you should.

I’m guilty of focusing on the call center type of interaction myself. I recently had to change travel plans at the last minute, never an easy task, and most of my interactions were with various call centers.

But the corporate website was actually my first point of customer interaction; that’s where I looked up information about my trip and found the phone number that I called.

Some work we’ve been doing for one of our hotel clients this week reinforced this point. 

Continue reading "Why Your Website’s User Interface is Customer Service, Too" »

Location, Location, Location

Apparently it's true even in social networking. CNET reports that Facebook is apparently preparing to launch their own version of FourSquare-like check-ins.

Twitter goes global

If you've noticed an increase in Tweets in other languages, there's a reason. According to comScore, the global audience has doubled in the past year, and the Latin American audience has quadrupled. Indonesia, Brazil and Venezuela are leading the way in new subscribers.

You like me, don't you?

The Poparazzi blog at the New York Times asks how much validation do we really need?

Activist tool now available as web app

The functionality of the crisis management tool Ushahidi (it means testimony in Swahili) that was created to report election related violence in Kenya, is now available to everyone through the new web application CrowdSource. Ushahidi has been used to direct rescuers to trapped earthquake victims in Haiti as well as catalogue reports of damage from the Gulf of Mexico oil spill. 

Just because it's cool

And just in time for back to school - Sharpie just announced a liquid pencil that uses liquid graphite that erases like a pencil and sets after 3 days.