One good measure of authority although not accurate in the social media world is the number of twitter followers a person has. To make your Twitter time line interesting, informative and interactive you should follow the right folks. Deciding whom to follow and who not to follow is not an easy task. Doing a keyword based mass follow will result in a nice increase in your follower count due to reciprocation but it would also result in endless ramblings (mostly irrelevant and useless) on your time line. Here are some pointers which will help you in deciding who to follow.
1. The Big Names
Following the big guys has both advantages and disadvantages. For instance if you are in the tech industry it will be good to follow some popular guys like Scobleizer or Arrington (TechCrunch). You will get first hand information about the latest happenings in the industry but you should be ready to be bombarded with other tweets too. The Wefollow directory is a nice place to find new people to follow from different arenas.
2. Common Interest
One important thing to keep the updates not so boring is to follow people who have some common interests. It you are into music then following music composers, singers etc will help to spark some interesting conversations and Twitter can also be a nice medium to get new contacts.
3. The Ratio
The follower/following ratio should be at an optimal level. If a person follows 2000 people and just has 25 people following him/her back then the account will probably be used for spamming. It is better not to follow such accounts as those tweets will be of little or no value. It is always good to follow users who have a follower/following ratio less than 1 and it is also good maintain the ratio on our own account although it may be a little hard initially.
4.Local Community
Some of the best tweets which i see daily are from the people who live in my town. Connecting with people in your locality is good fun. Attending Tweetups is the best way to find new people to follow and get followed in reciprocation but some sites like local tweeps will also help you to find some interesting folks. The user search feature from Twitter Grader is much more powerful and it uses a ranking algorithm and lists the top twitterers in your locality.
5. The knowledgeable
This is one of my personal favorites. I always follow people who know something that i don’t know but i am willing to know more. Some good examples of the twitters who come in this categories are subject matter experts like designers, researchers, elite bloggers, your seniors at work, associates etc. It is always good to follow such people even if they don’t follow you back because it will not only help you learn something new but it may also broaden your skill set in an indirect way.
6. Number of Tweets
Whenever you follow some one just look at their number of tweets per day. Although it doesn’t harm to have inactive twitters in your list, it is really annoying to follow people who tweet anything and everything they do. It is good to set a personal limitation (follow people who publish less than 30 tweets per day) and this will ensure that good tweets don’t get buried amidst useless ramblings. This number depends on the time which you are willing to spend on Twitter.
7.Recommendation Tools
You can also find new Twitter friends with the help of recommendation tools like Mr.Twitter and Who Should i follow. These tools will pick users who are similar to the people whom you currently follow.Users can also suggest other users and make recommendations in Mr.Tweet
It may take only a couple of seconds to think before you click the Follow button but the good thing is that we do have the option to unfollow!
Remembering numerous passwords is really hard and having a same password across various sites is risky. It is really tedious to create accounts by filling the registration forms in various sites and the perfect solution to this comes in the form of social sign on. The single sign on solution Open ID created a lot of buzz some time back but many people are still not aware of the concept. The first hurdle is that many don’t know that they can use their existing account login credentials from popular sites (Flickr,Google,Yahoo) on Open ID enabled sites.
If you own a membership based website or a portal it is definitely worthy to enable social sign on. To clear the mist surrounding the concept of social sign on, it is nothing but providing an opportunity for the user to sign in to a website with their existing accounts on Twitter,Facebook, WordPress etc without creating an account. Enabling single sign on will improve the user registrations on the site and gathering user data also becomes really simple.
How can you enable single/social sign on?
RPX Now is a really nice service which will act as a bridge between your website and the identity providers. It provides a login interface which shows the various third party providers enabled for the website. The user can just click on any one of those and it will automatically create an account and map the corresponding login credentials.
When the user comes back to visit the site, RPX Now will remember the third party service which they used the previous time. Then, the user can sign in with a single click verification process.
Plug-ins for WordPress & Drupal
Integrating RPXNow into your website is pretty simple. All you have to do is get the API key from the website and follow the simple installation instructions. The sign in interface can be embedded in the web page or it can be displayed as a pop-up.
If you are running a site built on WordPress or Drupal your task has become much more simpler. There is a wordpress plugin and a drupal module which will help to enable social sign on in your website with ease.
The admin interface of RPX Now provides ways for customizations, account mapping, configuring the third part providers and many more features. RPX Now also provides a plus account and a pro account which gives additional features like social publishing, customizable login interface etc
Enabling social sign on will increase the interaction in the website apart from paving the way for more user registrations. Enabling it in the comments section is also a wise option as this will encourage more users to post comments. The Intense Debate commenting system has an integrated Twitter Sign in and a facebook connect.
ClickPass is a similar service which lets you sign in to websites without revealing your password. These services will definitely enhance the security and also makes the sign in process lot more convenient.
PayPal is undoubtedly one of the biggest and the most common systems used for online payments. Although there are some payment gateways from prominent players like Google and Amazon, PayPal continues to rule this space despite its high transaction fees. PayPal also lacks proper customer service and most of the tech forums will have a hate thread for PayPal with constant updates and complaints. There are also many anti paypal sites and a search for the keywords ‘Paypal Sucks’ fires up close to 200k results.
The sheer advantage of PayPal is the huge user base and also the ease of sending and receiving money. It also helps merchants to set up shopping carts,subscriptions and buy now buttons very easily. Lets look at how to get the best out of PayPal.
There are three types of accounts which can be created in PayPal.
1. Personal Account – As the name implies it is for personal usage. It has limited features and with a personal account a user can receive only 5 credit card funded payments per year.
2. Premier Account – This account provides merchant services and unlimited credit card transactions. This is well suited for freelancers who don’t have a company registered as a premier account will be under an individual’s name.
3. Business Account- Has all the features of the premier account and the account will be in the name of a registered business.
Up till now there was no charge for money sent and received through personal accounts but recently Paypal sneakily made some changes in the fee structure and it annoyed many users. The ‘gross amount’ received was displayed in the account dashboard and many people failed to notice the fact that Paypal silently swallowed some part of their money.
Here are some of the good practices for using Paypal and getting the best out of it.
1.Verify your account
The first and the foremost thing to do after opening a paypal account is to get it verified. This will remove a lot of limitations for sending/receiving and withdrawing money from the account. Verified accounts also increases the credibility factor to a great extent. Many online merchants make it a mandatory requirement if you want to pay using Paypal. It is very simple to verify your paypal account and all you need is a valid credit card. The Verification FAQ on the paypal gives a clear picture.
2. Have Two Accounts
Paypal allows all users to have two accounts legally (one personal and one premier/business). Keep all your personal transactions on the personal account and this will make things a lot easier. Whenever you are receiving a personal payment make sure you ask the sender to select the “Personal” option. This will ensure that both the parties involved in the personal transaction don’t incur any fees.
It should also be noted that receiving personal payments for business transactions in order to avoid the fees is against the terms and conditions and it might lead to account suspension.
3. Use Mass Pay
Mass Pay is one of the awesome features provided by Paypal for sending payments. This feature is really helpful for companies making bulk payments to their clients/customers (Eg: Ad networks making monthly payments to their publishers). Masspay has a $1 or 2% fee (whichever is lesser) and this will help you to save a lot. You can check out how to make a Paypal Masspay.
The Masspay feature works only with premier and business accounts.
4. Connect on twitter
Customer service is one thing where Paypal lacks a lot but it looks like things have improved a lot in the recent times. The @AskPaypal account on Twitter provides good customer service. You can also check out the other official Twitter handles of Paypal and connect with them.
Many of the top notch companies hire usability experts to make sure that the products which they build are user friendly. Usability tests will be performed and the results will be used to make the necessary modifications in the interface and the work flow. When it comes to blogs there are some simple usability tricks which will enhance the user experience. The average attention span of a reader is very less and it is hard to make an impression in those few seconds. Apart from the basic pointers like having a proper about page, contact page here are some usability pointers which you may want to implement in your weblog.
1. The F-Pattern
F-Pattern
Image: SURL
According to the results of the eyetracking study conducted by usability guru Jakob Nielsen the reading pattern on the web is more or less in a F-Pattern. The first few lines of your post should convey the essence of what you are trying to say. If you have noticed many advertisers prefer this region to place their huge banner/CPM ads. Whether to use that space for advertising or to grab the user attention is a decision which is up to you. If you have a catchy image related to the post it is also wise to post it in the top region. You can install a click tracking script like crazyegg to analyze what your readers click on.
2. Proper URL structure
The URL should say what your post is about. If you are using WordPress it is better to have domain/post-name [Eg:socialcouch.com/web-usability-for-blogs] rather than having some random number appended. The permalink structure can be easily edited from the WordPress dashboard. The domain/post-name is also search engine friendly and will help your content to get indexed easily.
3. Remove Unwanted Widgets
The web page real estate is very precious and never waste it by placing some unwanted widgets. More importantly widgets which make use of flash, silverlight etc should be avoided. This will not only make your blog look ugly but at the same time it will increase the page load time.
4. Stop Ad Blasting
It is understandable that every blogger wants to monetize his/her blog but it should not be done in a compromising way. The ad placement should not hinder the page navigation for the user. It is always better to disclose that a certain link or banner is an advertisement. It is a common practice among bloggers to make the ads look similar to the blog content so as to improve the click through rate but this should be performed in an informed manner. Auto playing video ads or ads which produce sound are a big no-no!
5. Search Engine Juice
Search engines are a huge traffic source for any website but the content should be written keeping human readers in mind rather than bots. Using unnecessary keywords inside the post with the hope of improving the search engine results should be avoided. The users will definitely get annoyed if they irrelevant text or links which pop out of no where. At the same time it is good practice to link relevant posts written in the past within the articles.
6. Easy Navigation and Accesibilty
The first time user should be able to spot the things which he is looking for easily. For example the feed subscription button should be placed in a highly visible location in the first fold. It is also advisable to present the about page, social media profiles and all other things which you feel important in the top naviagtion menu. The user should be able to easily comment on any blog post and the optimal place to put the ‘Post Commemt’ link is at the end of the post and not ater the title although having it in both places doesn’t harm. At any given point the user should be able to reach the home page with a single click. The logo or the banner should be hyperlinked to the main URL of the blog. One other good practice is to display your best articles in a prominent region.
7. Themes, Colors and Fonts
Choosing the right theme is definitely one of the key usability aspects for blogs. It is the one which will reflect and present all your content to the reader. The theme which you choose should be compatible with all web standards. The colors used should be pleasant to the eye and it should not hinder the readability of the posts. Having dark text on a light background is generally preferred and most of the users find it comfortable. If you choose the right theme you can stop worrying about the colors and the fonts as they will be built accordingly. Check My Colors is a nice website which will help you to analyze the color contrasts on your page. The theme which you choose should be compatible in the maximum number of web browsers possible.
I am trying to make Social Couch as user friendly as possible and if you ask me if i have implemented these principles, the answer is NO but i am trying to! This is definitely not a complete list and if you have any other points to improve the usability factor for blogs do post it in the comments.
