Digital Projects for Summer Web Workers

Pete Prestipino — Fri, 14 Jun 2013 19:30:00 GMT

Summer has arrived, but it's not a time to relax. In fact, it should be quite the contrary when it comes to your digital efforts.

Now is the perfect time to start all the projects that you didn’t have the opportunity to begin during the rest of the year. Here are a few general Web improvement ideas that will prove valuable to your 'Net endeavors when site traffic picks up after the summer heat subsides.

IMPROVE DISCOVERABILITY

Build a Link Prospect & Influencer List: There’s no replacement for traditional website-based links as means to improve search engine traffic, but it’s not always easy to acquire them in the quantity (or quality) that your brand deserves. The one mistake that most digital brands make is not spending a sufficient amount of time finding the right potential link prospects and investing in those relationships to ensure that someday they will pay off – and big – in the form of links.

Take the summer months to identify websites that you believe would be beneficial to acquire a link from, noting how they currently link to other sites, and what you might need to do to earn one – be it contributing a guest post or just emailing the site owner. Go it alone and start by exploring LinkedIn, or check out one or two of the most popular SEO software solutions, which are equipped with features for this exact purpose.

Getting new links is the fastest path to improved discoverability, but sometimes it’s necessary to clean up the link profile your site already has. The best way to do that (at least when it comes to Google), of course, is using the link disavow tool in Webmaster Tools. A quick side note: It seems that the best strategy when optimizing your link profile with the disavow tool is to block the entire site instead of individual links on pages.

Internet professionals might also want to consider if they are being associated with the right search terms and phrases. If there’s doubt, the summer presents a perfect time to make over your keyword strategy.

Simplify Share-ability: Social media is playing an increasingly important role in discoverability on the ‘Net these days (subscribers will have access to an informative article on this topic in our August issue, so make sure you’re subscribed to Website Magazine).

Search engines have been quite open about their use of citations as ranking factors on search results. A great deal of effort (from listening and creative content development) is required to receive a citation (be it a like, a retweet or a +1) but those social affirmations don’t just happen on the networks themselves; often, they occur on the website and that presents an opportunity to help your brand increase awareness among key audiences.

Many websites, however, seem to do the absolute minimum when it comes to profiling their social sharing features – relegating these now common website elements to sidebars or worse, to footers. These less-than-ideal placements put these valuable features virtually out of sight of visitors who could potentially share and grant a social citation. Take the summer months to audit your website’s social sharing efforts, focusing on the prominence and ease-of-use of the social sharing elements.

Of course, sharing starts with you, so don’t miss Website Magazine's Big List of Personal Branding Solutions.

REDUCE SUPPORT COSTS

Add a Knowledge Base: It’s not uncommon for Web workers and Internet pros to get lost in the day-day of their digital work managing customers and, of course, all the back-and-forth digital communication that comes with it.

Customers need support – and they always will – but the savviest Internet professionals are actually turning off the business phone and shutting down their support-ticket systems in favor of offering users knowledge bases to help them help themselves in issue resolution. The approach could be a mash-up of a traditional frequently-asked question section with a weblog, and perhaps even some official tutorial videos or a forum. If Internet pros have these solutions in place, they’re more than half way there! All it takes is some forethought and planning about what issues users have, and how they will go about finding them on your digital property.

Knowledge bases are an excellent project for the summer, but if you’re not yet a believer that it’s time to give up your help desk software just yet, check out WM’s 2013 Help Desk Comparison chart.

GAIN AUTHORITY

Develop Acquisition Focused “Special” Content: Authority is a word that has been used with greater regularity over the years, but little has emerged about how search engines or social media sites actually define it, much less how you can go about acquiring it. It doesn’t need to be that complicated though. Authority is essentially a quality that indicates that you (or your brand) is an accepted, and more importantly respected, source of information. Authorities are typically extraordinary people (or companies) meaning that in order to become one, you need to be pretty special. For the most part, the way that happens today is to add value. Write a thought-provoking book/ebook or make a series of exceptional (informative or entertaining) videos. The point is that in order to be an authority, you not only have to do something bigger, but also better. Authority is another topic that Website Magazine will delve into in our upcoming September issue. (Did we mention you should subscribe to Website Magazine?)

Launch a Referral/Partner Program: Taking the time to write the next amazing, thought-provoking work isn’t for everyone – fortunately, there are some shortcuts. If you make great products (be they information or tangible goods) and you and your customers believe in them, another way to gain authority, or at least some additional awareness, is to launch a referral or partner program to help those loyal users spread the word. Explore solutions like Ambassador, InviteBox or Refer.ly, which offer trackable refer-a-friend functionality. Other options include gamification providers (e.g. Bunchball, Badgeville, etc.) to incentivize use, or even traditional affiliate networks to start rewarding brand loyalty.

MODERNIZE DESIGN

Redesign Everything: Design is a fluid, ever-changing and essential component of your Web success. It’s a real challenge to redesign with users (and their future expectations) in mind. This means you’ll need some time to think it through to ensure you make the right decisions. Fortunately for Website Magazine readers, our Design & Development channel routinely features a roundup of interesting articles, such as the recent ‘9 Rules of Portfolio Site Creation’, that can serve as terrific inspiration for your summer design projects. For example, you might want to give your 404 pages a worthy makeover, retool your menu designs, create some modal windows or better yet, optimize what’s behind the UI.

The summer is a perfect time to reimagine your Web property, so don’t waste any more time; why not get started today? Tell other Website Magazine readers what’s on your digital summer project list by sharing a comment below!

Badgeville Launches Salesforce Toolkit

Allison Howen — Wed, 27 Mar 2013 18:25:00 GMT

If you need to find a way to get your customers or employees to better engage with your Force.com applications, look no further than Badgeville.

The popular gamification and behavior management platform has launched a toolkit for the Salesforce platform, which enables companies to build more engaging experiences for their apps built on the Force.com platform. The toolkit allows businesses to layer Badgeville’s game, reputation and social mechanics across their cloud applications in order to improve loyalty, enhance employee productivity and maximize return on investment from their Force.com apps.

In fact, Badgeville claims that companies including Docusign, Autodesk, Engine Yard and Phoenix Idea Labs have already implemented its Behavior Platform on top of their Salesforce applications, which has resulted in increased customer engagement by 50 percent or more. Additionally, Badgeville customer Marketo layered the gamification company’s engagement mechanics across its customer community, which increased its active users by more than 51 percent and user engagement by 67 percent. This means that Marketo’s customers are not only more engaged, but are also learning more about Marketo products, which can be very influential and lead to future revenue opportunities for the company.

Salesforce Gamification with Badgeville

Pete Prestipino — Thu, 04 Oct 2012 21:08:00 GMT

The Web has gone gamification crazy – and that’s a good thing. When people are motivated to compete and excel in their jobs – that’s exactly what they do (to the benefit and greater good of the enterprise).

While gamification itself is a trend covered across the Web, and of course within Website Magazine (see “Game Play: Where Science & Branding Merge” from Website Magazine’s November 2012 edition), digital workers are only now beginning down the long road of integrating game mechanics into the applications they use on a daily basis. One of the first types of those integration's of course will be into the CRM platforms – and some providers have already begun.

Last month, behavioral gamification platform Badgeville, launched on the SalesForce AppExchange. The module or application essentially brings a gamification layer to a SalesForce Cloud deployment. Users are able to earn points for behaviors including creating or responding to a lead or converting a lead to an opportunity and closing a deal - typical busienss gamification stuff. There are different achievement thresholds which can be set by an administrator, which can reward users for achieving key milestones such as converting a specific number of leads into qualified opportunities.

“We are proud to deliver a native gamification layer for the world’s most widely-used sales application, enabling companies across the globe to drive the most valuable sales behavior” said Kris Duggan, CEO, Badgeville. “Badgeville for Salesforce was designed to reinforce the right sales behaviors that lead to the right outcomes time and again and increase collaborative effort and success among sales teams.”