The instantaneous nature of the web has so far proven itself vital in disasters around the world, if at least for raising awareness and rapid communication. I hope we all remember the earthquakes in Chile and Haiti and the recent flooding in Pakistan!

In particular, it was very encouraging to see the authorities, big media and other groups get involved online as well. We’ve already blogged about how the Queensland Police Service used Twitter & Facebook, but The Courier Mail, ABC News and Brisbane Times were also active, to name a few, as well as government bodies (like BCC) and politicians and groups like Volunteering Qld.

It’s so important for these groups to be involved to help dispel the inevitable misinformation and rumours! It also means they can disseminate their important messages as quickly as possible, and in the place where everyone is watching.

Personally, one of the biggest effects I saw from social media in the last few days was on the lives of animals during the flood crisis. It seemed to me that Twitter and Facebook played a massive role in highlighting the plight of animals, disseminating tips to help them, and organising their rescue, whether they were racing horses, livestock or pets at a shelter.

I can only hope that the web will also provide the opportunity to keep the ongoing effects of the floods on everyone’s minds, so that this doesn’t become another disaster so easily forgotten.

How did you use the web or social media during the Queensland floods?

If you’ve ever done a website project with us, you’ll know all about wireframes! They’re the black & white skeletons of a website that show where all the content and features will go before we delve into colours and images. They help us make decisions about functionality and positioning without getting caught up in how dark that gradient is or whether red is the right colour for this button.

We also use them to finalise how much copy is required, what areas of a page are featured, how many images we’ll need and whether they should be landscape or portrait, for starters! This can be very helpful for our clients to start organising content and photography without having to wait for a final design.

Let’s see ‘em!

To see some examples, check out “Wireframe Showcase“, which has the interesting task of comparing completed websites with their wireframes.

It’s really interesting to see the similarities and differences between wireframes and resultant designs, and also to see how different people create wireframes. Some are full of detail, others are simple; some use clean lines and text, others go for a ‘hand drawn’ aesthetic.

How do you make them?

There’s a lot more to making a good wireframe than having the right tool – user interface design knowledge, a thorough understanding of the project requirements and lots of experience helps, too! Having said that, the tools can be fun, so let’s talk about them…

Wireframe Showcase is supported by a popular wireframing tool, Balsamiq, but the examples (like real life) seem to use a variety of tools. Wireframing doesn’t have to be (and shouldn’t, at the beginning) a pretty, technical endeavour. Sketches are the best way to start and some people don’t need anything else.

For those who like pretty mock up tool, there are lots to choose from! We’ve tried Axure, FlairBuilder and Mockingbird. I know other popular ones also include Balsamiq, Hot Gloo, Omnigraffle and MockFlow.

What’s your favourite wireframing tool you think we should try out?

How Businesses Are Unleashing Their Employees’ Social Media Potential – Mashable
This article shows how some companies are harnessing their employees’ increasing technical knowledge to innovate.

6 new scientific findings about Facebook users – The Week
So heavy Facebook users are likely narcissists and 34% of users check Facebook in the morning before they even go to the bathroom? Checking Facebook often gets you lower tertiary grades? Users over-estimate how much their friends care about or agree with their status updates? None of this is surprising but at least it’s all scientifically studied! Maybe you should post these stats on Facebook – it might just make you happier, too.

7 Ways Mobile Apps are Enriching Historical Tourism – Mashable
Augmented reality is where technology is used to enhance (or “augment”) the physical environment around you to add new layers of information, visuals or experience. Think of something as complicated as a gaming headset that projects holograms of other gamers onto the street in front of you. Or as simple as Foursquare’s public location comments (I personally think this actually is augmented reality at its most basic and most useful).

…or think a simple iPhone app that gives you detailed information about the historical landmark in front of you. That directs you to subtle areas of significance in famous,  150-year-old murder cases. That guides you on a tour of London’s medical developments over the years or answers your pressing questions about bizarre statues at the Library of Congress.

Take a look at these seven apps used at American and English tourism centres – how could we use this technology in Australia? In Brisbane?

Will personalisation become a dirty word? - Claire Cooper, Bullseye (via Digital Ministry)
Nowadays, marketers know more about you than ever before: what you’ve bought previously, where you live, what you’re interested in. Claire Cooper raises some pretty important points in her article about the line between handy personalisation (of products, websites, emails etc.) and forced, assumed segmentation.

Providing personalised suggestions, offers or information is great – we all know how well Amazon does it – but we need to make sure our customers are given the option to break out of their segment and find other things they might be interested in, too. Claire might have bought that spa treatment coupon once but it doesn’t mean she’s only ever interested in spa treatments!

Elmo gets personal with Sesame Street fans

He’s not wearing a towel or catching silver fish, but Elmo is following in Old Spice guy’s golden footsteps and answering viewer questions through YouTube. It’s good to hear he doesn’t leave Sesame Street without a grownup!

Why I liked it

Throughout the book, it’s easy to understand how the information relates to your own company and how you could implement it yourself. Plus, it’s filled with graphs, lists and diagrams, which I love!

In particular, DiJulius makes it very clear how customer service needs to come from the top down (through processes, standards and training) and how it depends on everyone in your company, in all departments.

My favourite bits (what I learnt):

Great customer service starts with an outstanding internal company culture. [Pg 113]

“Customer satisfaction” is the wrong metric by which to measure your customer service results. Customers who experience no problems might be satisfied, but only highly satisfied—wowed, impressed or happily surprised—customers are more loyal and spend more money. [Pg 277]

Employees can only provide the level of customer service that they’ve experienced themselves. Apart from sending new hires off to stay at the Versace for a night, you can develop processes, measurement tools and staff training to show them how, rather than just saying “smile at the customers!” or “why can’t you give better service?”. [Pg 28]

Try giving employees more inspiring job titles to connect them to their customers. Would you rather be a hotel receptionist or an Escape Ambassador? An account manager or a Trusted Advisor? [Pg 103]

Wow your clients or customers through Secret Service… remember their last coffee order, wish them a happy birthday or ask how the football game was on the weekend (that they’d casually mentioned they were going to a number of weeks ago!). Keep notes and make them say “How’d they know that?”! [Pg 151]

What would have improved it?

There are a lot of suggestions in this book and it would have been nice to have a better summary of what I need to do now, soon and over the long term. I’d have also appreciated “action items” pulled out from all the fascinating examples, so I could see what was just inspiring and what was something to I could do.

I can’t wait to start trying these ideas out at Bluewire Media and, if you currently work with us (or might in the future), I’m sure you’re interested in seeing what we come up with, too!

*********************

If you want to discover the secret to implementing world-class customer service in your own company, check out the book at Amazon: What’s the Secret? To providing a world-class customer experience.

4 Reasons Your Website Sucks – Hubspot
How to make your website not suck: make sure people can find you (search engine optimisation is a start), focus on your client/user (talk about them, not your company), have clear navigation and calls to action (more important than “wow factor” or bleeding-edge design), don’t automatically play sound or video (people will leave before finding the “off” button).

Writing a company blog people will actually read – Bad Language
So you have a company blog… are posts written regularly? Is writing posts on your to-do list? Do you know what you can write about in advance? Do you write how-tos, expert interviews or opinion pieces as well as company/industry news? If you said “no” to any of these, this article has some great tips on how to get your blog working for you!

And more…

Facebook Marketing: A Comprehensive Guide for Beginners – KISSmetrics Marketing Blog
If you have no idea about Facebook but think it might be useful for your business, this is a great beginners’ guide. It covers the different types of profiles you can have, Facebook ads and how to best use your Facebook presence once you have it, from setting up landing pages to running competitions.

5 Important New Trends in Location – Mashable
Coming up next! Celebrity involvement ups the hype, more apps use location as context for their main purpose, automatic background checkins, private location sharing, making statements and supporting causes.

5 Trends Shaping the Future of Social Good – Mashable
Charities and other organisations are using social media to get volunteers, fundraise and increase awareness. See how in this article!

Google goes back a few decades to showcase the future:

The lyrics to Bob Dylan’s Subterranean Homesick Blues get searched.

• Mashable’s live notes from Google’s launch presentation
• Reload Media’s response to what Google Instant means for SEO
• Mashable talks about the different results for single letters (eg. “w” brings up weather results before you keep typing)

My initial thoughts are that it will be a toss up between speed and visual disturbance from the constantly shifting results. It will be very interesting (and exciting) to see how useful it is once it’s fully rolled out!

Designing Great Presentations

You can see the presentation slides for the Google Instant launch in Mashable’s article. Pretty visual and simple, aren’t they? Design Shack has put together 10 tips so you can make beautiful slides, too! They’re effective and useful suggestions, and should be helpful for designers and non-designers alike.

10 Tips for Designing Presentations That Don’t Suck
Part One & Part Two – Design Shack

More!

5 Indie Films that Couldn’t be Made Without Social Media – Mashable
An animated Indian legend, to Lord Of The Rings, to Batman – independent films thrive on the sort of networks social media afford, to generate funding and to get views. Check out these trailers and see if you wouldn’t want these films in cinemas!

11 True Stories Behind Tech’s Top Names – Mashable
Ever wondered what a “twitter” is or why there are four squares? Well, here are the stories behind the big names, from Android to Yahoo.

What’s the story behind “Bluewire Media”, you ask? Well, maybe that’s a blog post for another day!

If Google Maps were real…

What if you wanted information on an address and it appeared in a huge info bubble in the sky? Or you had to dodge giant yellow Street View men on your way to work? Take a look at this artist’s impression of that world!

Jason Fried is from 37 Signals, the company behind the suite of products Bluewire now uses to manage projects (Basecamp) and contacts (Highrise).

Taking a look at the kind of companies that also use these products, I think he knows something about marketing… This video discusses the merits of “marketing by sharing”: getting the word out about your product, service or business by teaching and sharing information.

Jason starts by explaining how he subconciously stocked his kitchen with utensils and books by companies and chefs who had taught him something in the past. In this case, through TV shows. He goes on to, firstly, reassure us that nobody’s going to put these chefs out of business by opening a world class restaurant using the recipe books they’ve published, and that the equivilent thing is highly unlikely to happen in your own industry. Then he discusses a few other examples of companies who teach you something, like a deli that runs classes on how to start your own deli!

At Bluewire Media, it’s pretty clear we care about sharing good content with you — we run this blog, for starters! We believe that the more you give out, the more you get back, by increasing:

• awareness of you and your company,
• your authority and credibility in the industry and amongst your target market,
• relationships with your target market based on mutual respect and giving, rather than sales pitch after sales pitch.

Like Jason says, why not stop right now… Write down something you know, a process, how to do something, to share it with somebody else. Now why not email it to your colleagues, send it out in your next newsletter or post it to your company Facebook page? Or just start your own blog: check out wordpress.com or get in touch with us.

4 Tips for Writing SEO-Friendly Blog Posts – OPEN Forum
These tips are both easy and effective. Keep your blog posts human-readable while also making it easier for Google to understand what you’re writing about.

Twitter Launches Official iPad App – Mashable
If you have an iPad, grab the official Twitter app now! This app uses the touchscreen capabilities in really interesting ways to make the most of what the iPad was made for: media consumption.

Lessons Learned after 5 Years of Blogging - Perishable Press
Jeff Starr’s lengthy article is a good read about his blogging experience over the past 5 years, his lessons learnt and the paths he’s decided on. Most importantly, he says to “be yourself” when blogging: be honest, real & sincere; work, learn & share; think for yourself; and, stay calm and take advantage of criticism. Be more than just a blog full of round-ups!!!

How to tell if your Company is Advanced: 10 Criteria Of Social Business Maturity – Web Strategy by Jeremiah Owyang
This article is talking about maturity in your use of social media, which isn’t initially clear! With that in mind, I particularly like these points: 1) Clear understanding of customers’ socialgraphics, 5) Thriving advocady program: customers are actively selling on your behalf, and 6) A community of customers supports each other, reducing support center calls. Are these true about your company?

The Three Key Elements of Irresistible Email Subject Lines – Copy Blogger
Brian Clark takes influence from the fundamentals of headlines to explain how to write email subject lines that get your emails opened. From tips like identifying yourself to getting through spam filters, following this article should help you write some amazing & effective subject lines!

152 Social Media Policies – Social Media Governance
Check out the social media policies used by companies like the BBC, FedEx, Kodak, Telstra and Yahoo!

Older Adults Nearly Double Social Media Presence [STATS] - Mashable

My mother is on Facebook and yours probably is too. Scary? Well, this article doesn’t really say what they’re doing on social media but they’re almost certainly checking up you!

The 55+ age group is rapidly catching up with younger users. From a business’s perspective, I’m yet to see whether this is useful or if this age group is savvy enough to use social media in the ways we require for social campaigns to work (sharing videos, tagging photos, “following” brands etc.) but it can’t be a bad thing… as long as we hide those photos from the weekend!

Getting to Grips with Content - UX Booth
Content is generally the reason your website exists, so let’s give it the same attention we give design, marketing & functionality! This article explains what a Content Strategy actually entails, from branding and style guides to search engine optimisation and information architecture.

No time? Do a quick home renovation on your content: Prune it, Put it in front of users, Give it purpose. Read the article for how to get started or talk to our copywriter.

How to Respond When Social Media Attacks Your Brand - OPEN Forum
It might be your biggest PR fear: social media gets nasty. The bad news is, you might not be aware of it; the good news is, if you know about it, you can deal with it. This article looks at three case studies of how different companies responded to social media issues and what we can learn from it. Basically, the lessons are: be honest, be timely [in responses], always monitor & have a plan.

User Experience Areas Explained
Ever asked, “What on earth does a user experience designer do??? and how is that different to just designing a website?”? This might clear it up for you!

From Noise Between Stations

7 Services to Find and Reserve Your Name Across the Web - Mashable
If you think you’ll want to get into social media at some point (perhaps after reading the article above!) but don’t want to start right now, you might consider signing up for the various accounts you’ll need before somebody takes your name. You can create social media accounts long before you start using them, with no problems. In fact, these seven services can make that happen…

The circle of tech life: How computer symbols are born & technologies die a thousand deaths

The Secret Histories of Those @#$%ing Computer Symbols - Wired Gadget Lab
Ever wonder why the Bluetooth logo looks like some ancient rune? Because it is. Discover the history of all your favourite techy symbols in this interesting article.

The Tragic Death of Practically Everything - Technologizer
Bloggers have a habit of hailing the end times of any technology ever slightly superceded by another. This article brings a few together to highlight how the internet must be an “unrelenting bloodbath” with all these deaths! Enjoy, because the platform you read it on is surely on its last legs.