What’s Important for Your Website?

At the annual Minecraft conferences the young fans are not provided free workshops on how to play Minecraft but on “Video Creation 101″.

What will they do when they go back home?

Source: 15 Digital Marketing Trends for 2016 That Could Destroy Your Business

Last night I dreamed that I had been brought into a website redesign and new branding initiative for a large university (I know, but this is what I do for a living, so of course I’m going to have the occasional “work dream”).

The group that the university had assembled to work through the process with me was well versed in what they wanted in a web site and had no shortage of personal opinions to share and cling to (which is normally how the process starts in real life as well).

After hearing their thoughts, wishes, and concerns on everything from user interface to colors to layouts, they asked me what I had in mind. I looked at their notes and the site they wanted looked like a site that was a perfect fit for a forward looking university in 2007.

“Mobile,” I said. “80% of your traffic in the next three years will come from mobile devices with screens smaller than 5.5 inches. That’s radically different than how university (or business) websites were laid out five years ago and means that you have to rethink your opinions and wishes and start over.” (I wrote this down in my journal that I keep bedside after waking up to feed our newborn at 4 am).

I asked everyone to pull out their phones. Everyone at the table, regardless of age or “tech ability” had a smart phone of some sort (most were relatively current iPhones).

“Now, let’s design your site based on those screens. What are your favorite mobile sites? Do you have any or do you just use apps? Do you need a website? What are you trying to communicate or do with your university’s site? What’s important?”

Do the reading if you want to be treated like a professional

The reading exposes you to the state of the art. The reading helps you follow a thought-through line of reasoning and agree, or even better, challenge it. The reading takes effort.

If you haven’t done the reading, why expect to be treated as a professional?

Important thoughts from Seth Godin. Keep up with the reading, regardless of what you’re doing.

Episode 14: Thinking Out Loud 91: Homemade Root Beer – Thinking.FM

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Elisabeth is joined by UNC’s own Molly McConnell this week (Merianna is on maternity leave). They dive deep into the nature of reading, writing, and spicy beverages.

The post Thinking Out Loud 91: Homemade Root Beer appeared first on Thinking.FM.

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The Web Strikes Back

Google has actually been indexing the content of mobile applications for two years now, as a move against the search giant’s potential obsolescence as the world of computing increasingly shifted off the desktop and to take place inside native applications running on consumers’ phones. Since its launch, Google has expanded its ability to surface “deep links” (links that point to pages inside an app) from beyond a small set of early adopters on Android and now indexes applications across both major mobile platforms, iOS and Android.

Source: Google Search Now Surfaces App-Only Content, Streams Apps From The Cloud When Not Installed On Your Phone | TechCrunch

Interesting concept of “streaming apps” from Google… basically allowing people to use the functionality of native apps without having to leave the browser and / or install the actual app on their device.

Of course, not every app developer is not going to participate in this, but it does mean that Google is thinking of creative ways to keep the web (and web advertising) relevant in the app dominated present.

Quality Means More Than Quantity Even on Social Media

Sometimes we think that just putting out a consistent number of things will just create some outliers that’ll help us win. Heck, I even believed this for a long time and advised people to just focus on quantity. I don’t think that’s true anymore. Yes, we need to output things at high quantity, but we need to treat every single piece of output as the one that’ll be a breakout hit.

Source: Buffer’s Marketing Manifesto in 500 Words

Quality > Quantity despite what other social media experts might tell you.

Amazon Finally Gets 2 Factor Authentication (Please Go Turn This On For Your Account Now)

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Here’s how to enable Amazon’s Two-Step Verification, a feature that adds an extra layer of security by asking you to enter a unique security code in addition to your password on computers and devices that you haven’t designated as trusted.

Source: Amazon.com Help: Turning On Two-Step Verification

Amazon finally has 2 Step Authentication. By all means, please go turn this on (and turn on for all the services you actively use from GMail to Slack to Dropbox to Facebook to Twitter etc).

I’m a big fan of Authy as my preferred authenticator, but Google has one and you can always use your mobile device for receiving authentication texts.

But you need to do this asap for your personal and business accounts or count the days until you’re “hacked.”

Don’t Sell Out.

At some point in the past ten years, selling out lost its stigma. I come from the Kurt Cobain/“corporate rock still sucks” school where selling out was the worst thing you could ever do. We should return to that. Don’t sell out your values, don’t sell out your community, don’t sell out the long term for the short term. Do something because you believe it’s wonderful and beneficial, not to get rich. And — very important — if you plan to do something on an ongoing basis, ensure its sustainability. This means your work must support your operations and you don’t try to grow beyond that without careful planning. If you do those things you can easily maintain your independence.

Source: Resist and Thrive — Medium

As someone who runs a marketing agency but comes from the Kurt Cobain school of “not selling out” myself, I found lots to identify in this post from Kickstarter’s CEO.

We’ve lost the notion of “selling out,” or it doesn’t sting like it once did when someone accused you of such or called you a “poser.” Remember the term poser? We should bring that back.

Too often, we sell out. We lose our idealism and our independence and we trade in our soul for those things that make us a few more zeroes of digital currency.

It’s not worth it, trust me.

Be yourself, whether you’re an entrepreneur or a church or a nonprofit group.

It’s much more difficult, but it’s more rewarding (even financially).

Thoughts in the Presence of Fear

We did not anticipate anything like what has now happened. We did not foresee that all our sequence of innovations might be at once overridden by a greater one: the invention of a new kind of war that would turn our previous innovations against us, discovering and exploiting the debits and the dangers that we had ignored. We never considered the possibility that we might be trapped in the webwork of communication and transport that was supposed to make us free.

Source: Orion Magazine | Thoughts in the Presence of Fear

Wendell Berry is a modern day Amos, speaking to us in a prophetic voice that we are quick to admonish.

Although written shortly after 9/11, this essay still resonates just as the words of Amos and Hosea challenge us today.

Practice Resurrection.

Episode 13: Thinking Out Loud 90: Creating the Feels – Thinking.FM

Elisabeth and Merianna talk about the importance of including and invoking emotions in readers. They discuss what they have to overcome as writers in order to cause suffering for their characters and create whole, full characters. Of course, they also talk about dogs, leaf blowers, and Baby Harrelson imminent arrival (who arrived on November 12, 2015 after this show was recorded!).

What are Elisabeth and Merianna reading?


The post Thinking Out Loud 90: Creating the Feels appeared first on Thinking.FM.

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