Scott Bowler

Being organised in a social world

With hundreds (if not thousands) of social media sites out there it can be an uphill struggle to keep up to date with what’s going on. Organisation is the key and using the right tools can turn what seems like a mammoth task into simplicity.

Usernames and Passwords

If you’re a member of a lot of sites it’s tempting to reuse the same username and password so that you don’t have to have the memory of an elephant. This opens a bag of worms when it comes to security, but there is a simple solution:

This handy web based service has a plugin for Firefox and Internet Explorer which allows you to securely save your passwords in a central location so no matter where you go or which computer you use, you will always have access to your passwords. With automatic login functionality you’ll find managing and browsing sites a breeze.

The passwords are encrypted locally, so in the worst case scenario (i.e. LastPass getting hacked) the information the hackers gain will be useless.

Staying on top of trends and the news

RSS feeds are the lifeblood of the social media world - by subscribing to your favourite sites you can get the latest news and stay ahead of the curve. It is possible to receive RSS feeds in Outlook, but it can quickly become overwhelming if you’re subscribing to hundreds of websites. The solution?

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Google Reader is an online tool which allows you to collate and read your RSS subscriptions, but it quickly falls into the same pitfall as Outlook. Feedly solves this problem by linking into Google Reader and displaying the RSS feeds in a magazine style website - imagine having your own personalised newspaper which only has articles in which you are interested and updates as soon as new news is available; this is Feedly.

One drawback of Feedly is that you can’t filter your feeds. Personally I’m bored of hearing about the latest iPhone apps and Apple news, so I don’t want to see anything about them in my Feedly magazine. The solution is to use FeedRinse - it’s a simple tool which allows you to filter (or rinse) your RSS feed subscriptions by setting up rules about which content to allow through.

An example of a filter I have setup can be seen below:

FeedRinse will provide you with a new RSS feed which applies the rules - you then subscribe to this in Feedly. In the next release Feedly is planning to incorporate FeedRinse type functionality so this extra step will be removed.

Sharing your juicy content

Social media is all about sharing and getting involved, and it’s likely that you’ll want to share content you find on sites such as Twitter and Facebook, not to mention bookmarking websites for later. Once again, Feedly comes to the rescue - from your magazine you can share content instantly on Twitter, Facebook, via e-mail and various other websites. However, you’re not always going to be on Feedly when you want to share content, but they have that covered too.

Their Firefox plugin inserts a small tab on the right hand side of the page you’re visiting giving you quick access to the option to share the content.

FriendFeed is another way to centralise what you share - I’ll be honest, I’m still getting to grips with FriendFeed but it’s definitely an interesting website to have a look at. If you have any suggestions on how best to use FriendFeed, leave a comment!

Managing your profiles & files

Another problem with getting involved in social media is keeping all your profiles and files up to date. If you’re anything like me, you will have at least a dozen profiles over sites such as Twitter, Facebook, Flickr and Google and each one will require their own profile information. Keeping them consistent and up to date can be a challenge when time is short in the day. Enter Dropbox and our old friend LastPass:

We’ve all had the problem of needing a file but realising it’s not on the computer you’re currently using. Dropbox is a simple solution which installs a folder on your computer which gets backed up to their server. If you’re on another computer you have two options:

1. Login to the web based control panel and download the file
2. Install Dropbox onto the current computer and it will download the files from their server

Here’s the clever bit: If you make a change on any computer it will automatically synchronise it across all your other dropboxes. Keeping things such as profile pictures, default descriptions of yourself and various other bits and pieces synchronised and centralised will allow you to become more efficient no matter where you’re working

Back to LastPass - another handy feature is the ability to save form data and profiles. If you setup some default form data you can quickly insert this information into any site you register on, making creating and updating profiles a breeze.

Handy Tip: Get the Firefox plugin “FEBE” which allows you to backup your Firefox plugins, history and settings and set the backup location to Dropbox. This means that wherever you go you will be able to restore your installation of Firefox (and all those handy plugins) in minutes.

Conclusion

Social Media is always changing and keeping yourself organised will save huge amounts of time in the long run (and make you less stressed!). Be prepared for change and keep an eye out for the latest tools that will make your life easier - the web is maturing and the tools that come with it are making it easier to manage.

The solutions I’ve laid out work for me and what I do, but I’m always interested to hear how you organise yourself - so if you have any tips or suggestions, leave a comment for the world to learn from!

Scott Bowler

You can follow Scott on Twitter for other Social Media & SEO tips by going to: http://www.twitter.com/scottybowl

Drummers, Stilt Walkers, and Fire Eaters - oh my!

Another day in Liverpool, another random event! I heard the sound of drums rumbling through my flat and went onto the balcony and heard complete madness! I ran out to see what was happening (grabbing my camera on the way) and was greeted with a troop of drummers, stilt walkers, a fire eater and some people doing footie skills (I’m not sure how they fit into all this!).

It’s all happening outside the Thistle hotel, their website is pretty rubbish and doesn’t tell you why or what is happening (there were balloons with the number 35, so I’m guessing it’s their 35th birthday - or someones anyway!)

After a bit of digging I found out that the drummers are called “Batala” and they are a Samba band based in Liverpool and I want to join!

Videos below:

Medium Clip with editing (6 minutes - the editing is terrible but you should get the jist!)

Short Clip (2 minutes):

Illustrious Oranges

The great thing about living near the docks in Liverpool is that there’s always something interesting floating outside your window. Two weeks ago the QE2 edged its way down the Mersey and was sent off with a huge fireworks display. This weekend the HMS Illustrious came into port and after a bit of Googling I discovered that it was open to the public for a browse.

Unfortunately, I missed the boat (apparantly puns are the lowest form of humour, I disagree!) and only went to see it at 3pm on a drizzly Saturday afternoon, by which time the queue was about a mile long and I discovered that there was no way I was going to get on board - lesson learnt.. It was still interesting to see a “working” aircraft carrier, complete with planes and guns.

For those of you not in the know, the “HMS Illustrious (R06) is an Invincible-class light aircraft carrier of the Royal Navy, affectionately known as ‘Lusty’ to her crew” (thanks Wikipedia).

Today I decided to get in a bit of culture and walked across to the Walker Art Gallery and on the way bumped into the Orange Instituion Parade (well, it was more of a waddle than a parade judging by the waist lines of most of the people taking part!) Video below for posterity:

I think I’m going to start carrying my camera around with me wherever I go, as there’s always something happening in Liverpool! I’m not sure what I’ll go have a look at next weekend - It’d be interesting to go find some old bomb shelters from WWII - time to do some digging around to see if there are any still open to the public.

Update: The tour of the “Western Approaches” looks like the nearest I’m going to get, although it looks very, very boring!

Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI) for Dummies

In the world of SEO there are a number of terms which don’t make any sense when you first read them. Latent Semantic Indexing, or LSI, is one of them. You may have heard terms such as “the semantic web” or “semantic searches” and to get to the root of what LSI is it’s important to understand first what semantics actually is.

Semantics is the study of the meaning of words and sentances. Take the phrase “he was taller” - this could have many meanings depending on the context. For example, I could be talking about a male Giraffe being taller than the rest of animals in the herd (or anything else that relates to tallness and the male sex). If I was to extend this phrase a bit further and say “he was taller than me” then we would understand the context to be talking about humans.

Google’s mission statement is “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful” and this is where semantics comes into play. They have written complex algorithms to understand what a page is about by analysing the words and phrases on a web site and how their meanings (or semantics) are related. This process is known as Latent Semantic Indexing.

“But” I hear you all cry “what does this have to do with optimising my website for the search engines?”. The answer is: a lot. People have fallen into the habit of stuffing their target keywords into content using sentances and phrases which are difficult or clunky for people to read. I’m sure you’ve all read (or even written) sentances such as “Our extremely talented SEO team can help with your SEO needs to ensure that your site is SEO friendly and will beat your competition’s SEO campaign”. It doesn’t make for good reading, does it?

Fortunately, there is a solution, and thanks to the new LSI algorithms we can write content which flows much more freely and will actually boost our rankings for searches which are related to our target keywords.

The key to optimising your website for Latent Semantic Indexing is to think about words which semantically support your target keyword. If we were optimising for the term “SEO”, then semantic phrases or keywords could include:

• online marketing
• PR
• boost
• improve
• rankings

Now our poorly written phrase from before can be turned into “Our extremely talented online marketing team can help with your PR needs to ensure that your site is SEO friendly and will beat your competition’s rankings in the search engines”. We have now given our sentance significantly more context by using words and phrases which are semantically similar to our target keyword.

LSI doesn’t just apply to single sentances, paragraphs or articles. The search engine algorithms can look at an entire website to analyse its semantics so it is important to make sure that the content is semantically relevant and consistant throughout the website.

In the coming months and years you will see a shift in how the search engines deliver their results. For example, if you were to search for a phrase such as “online shopping” the search engines may semantically analyse this term and return a result for a website which contains the phrase “buy on the web”.

Semantics, it means a lot.

And heres a great little video by pixwrh1 for a quick explanation:

The Magic LSI Latent Semantic Indexing for Keyword Ranking

Technorati Tags: SEO, Latent Semantic Indexing, LSI, semantic web, semantic searches, semantics, context, Google, algorithms, optimising, search engines, target keywords, LSI algorithms, online marketing, PR

Who am I? (according to Google)

Everyone’s Googled their name to find out what comes up. Today I decided to have another look and realised there’s a lot of misinformation about me! According to Google, this is who I am and what I do:

• Went to Penryn Elementary School in California
• Am a social worker who works in HIV psychiatry at Mt. Sinai Hospital in Toronto
• Am 15 years old and play rugby for Swansea Uplands
• Caused an own goal for Bristol County F.C
• Am an elite Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu fighter

It seems I’ve lived quite an exciting life up to this point and quite honestly I don’t know how I manage to fit in time for day to day work in between fighting HIV and kicking the bejesus out of people! And to top it all off, according to Google’s image search, I’m a fish:

So – who are you?

Technorati Tags: Googled, Google, Penryn Elementary School, California, HIV psychiatry, Mt. Sinai Hospital, Toronto, Swansea Uplands, Bristol County F.C, Jiu-Jitsu, image search

Things that I learnt today

• SMX (search marketing expo) is coming to London in November and I want to go.
• SMX tickets start at £890 for anything useful so unfortunately I’ll have to be watching it unfold through the window!
• SEOMoz released a new tool, Linkscape
• American politics seems to be getting out of hand with the republicans and democratics going crazy with smear campaigns
• Rick Astley (ever been rick rolled?) is most likely going to win the Best Act Ever at the MTV awards due to people gaming the system (one Digger confesses to voting 500,000 times!)
• That fantabulous is an actual word, who would’ve thunk

Technorati Tags: SMX, search marketing expo, SEOMoz, Linkscape, politics, Rick Astley, rick rolled, MTV awards, fantabulous

A very belated entry…

Well, I’ve finally decided to bite the bullet and start my own blog! Why it’s taken me years to get on the blogging train is anybody’s guess – I suppose it’s because I didn’t have anything interesting to say (and some might say that nothing has changed!).

So watch this space - I could be the next internet meme that shoots to fame or be lost to the mists of time only to be remembered by the Way Back Machine. And my mother.