The Webmaster's Journal, August 7, 2012

7/31/2019 The Webmaster's Journal, August 7, 2012

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The Webmasters Journal


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Jon Morgan

Project Hover


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Jon Morgan:


All rights reserved.

2012 The Webmasters Journal Copyright by .


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Contents

1 Solving the problem of tracking content 1

2 The four elements of Online Content 3

3 3.Let your four elements become the content 5

4 4.How I combined my elements 7

5 5.Establish a Content Flow 9

6 6.Identify the Social Media Networks that you will be using for your

content 11

7 7.Understand Your Audiences Social Media Needs 13

8 8.Configuring FogBugz for Asset Management 15

9 9.Help Write the next Chapter! 17

9.1 Keep the Conversation Alive . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17

9.1.1 Respond to Discussion Questions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17

9.2 Write Parallel Chapters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18

9.3 Write the Next Chapter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18

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Chapter 1

Solving the problem of tracking

content

The more that it seemed like I would be using a lot of different tools, formats, and

venues to publish my content, the more it appeared that I would need a really efficient

way to track my work. This meant that every revision, every posting, and every

comment would need to be kept on record somehow in a way that was very versatile.

Ive fallen in love with a lot of different project and ticket management systems in the

past: Fogbugz, VersionOne, Teambox, Pivotaltracker, and Lighthouse, to name a few.

I tried all of these, as well as other kinds of services like Tender, but only a few could

cut it.

One thing that helped to focus my testing of these systems was the understanding that

I was dealing in asset management, not content management. It is common for people

to think that if you post links to an article to Facebook, Twitter, Google+, etc., thatyou are creating content. My thinking has been that you always want to identify your

core piece of content. Anything else that you do is only marketing, distribution, etc.

All of your activities need to point to a single destination. This makes it easier to track

traffic to the core piece of content.

My methods will also help when you are dealing with revisions. The challenge here

is that with some services as soon as you make a change to the body or the headline

of an article or webpage, you have to make an update to possibly a fifty different

sites. One record for an asset should contain every reference to the piece of content

that youve created on the Internet, so that later it is easy to go back and make the

necessary changes.

So, which service became my preferred platform for asset management?I chose Fogbugz. Here is why:

Customizable. The plugin which allows you to create custom fields allowed

me to add anything that I needed for data that you normally wouldnt be able to

capture in a ticket management system.

Flexible. Fogbugz lets you sort by almost any value, and then export to Excel.

This is a very important feature.

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2 Webmasters Journal

Tickets can be made public accessible. This was another plugin that I installed.

It allows me to reveal tickets using their public URLs.

Startups and educational institutions are able to create a Fogbugz account for

free, as long as they only need to give access to two users. If you have the budgetto purchase a subscription to Fogbugz, I would even recommend it because it is a

really solid tool.

View as: | Webpage | Doc | Follow | Discussion |
http://webmastersjournal.pressbooks.com/chapter/solving-the-problem-of-tracking-content/https://docs.google.com/document/d/1hGLS8eyo8bL1JSYcLFHLCp-p3BddS84vxYN0wl2RnnU/edithttp://storify.com/32bpwr3/solving-the-problem-of-tracking-contenthttps://p2pu.org/en/groups/the-webmasters-journal/content/solving-the-problem-of-tracking-content/https://p2pu.org/en/groups/the-webmasters-journal/content/solving-the-problem-of-tracking-content/http://storify.com/32bpwr3/solving-the-problem-of-tracking-contenthttps://docs.google.com/document/d/1hGLS8eyo8bL1JSYcLFHLCp-p3BddS84vxYN0wl2RnnU/edithttp://webmastersjournal.pressbooks.com/chapter/solving-the-problem-of-tracking-content/


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Chapter 2

The four elements of Online

Content

It was a few years ago when I was playing around with Googles commenting feature

in their Google Docs service. I began to realize that after you posted a comment in

a document, you could grab a link for that comment, and share that link with your

audience. This mean that you could reference not only your document, but a specific

comment in your document. Or, maybe the list of comments so that your reader would

post a comment of their own.

Then, it occurred to me that it was nearly possible to create interaction within

Google documents which was very similar to a wiki. After you wrote your document

you could publish it as a webpage (Wiki page), make it editable (publish it as an

editable page for anonymous users), and make it possible for readers to annotate your

document.After I figured some of this out, there were three elements that became the foundation

for anything that I did from then one:

Published webpage

Document which you could annotate

Comment stream

Activity Stream

Ive also noticed that these three elements are often found in different services

around the web. For example, on Scribd.com you can view a published document and

then post comments in response. On the Kindle, the annotations that you insert into a

book you are reading can be shared with others, and there are other document viewingservices which embed a comment stream along side the content while you are reading

it.

The fourth element, activity stream, is actually far more common. Again on Scribd, it

is possible to share an event each time that you view a new document. Other services

allow you to post your activity on third parties like Facebook or Twitter.

If you want your readers to engage with your content, you will want to make it

possible for them to view, comment, and follow an activity feed of some kind.

View as: | Web Book | Doc | Follow | Discussion |

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http://webmastersjournal.pressbooks.com/chapter/the-four-elements-of-online-content/https://docs.google.com/document/d/18oaQt6FdfwfpyZN6N3Axx0Mt1GT6Phvq_SLtBIq3BTs/edithttp://storify.com/32bpwr3/2-the-four-elements-of-online-contenthttps://p2pu.org/en/groups/the-webmasters-journal/content/the-four-elements-of-online-content/https://p2pu.org/en/groups/the-webmasters-journal/content/the-four-elements-of-online-content/http://storify.com/32bpwr3/2-the-four-elements-of-online-contenthttps://docs.google.com/document/d/18oaQt6FdfwfpyZN6N3Axx0Mt1GT6Phvq_SLtBIq3BTs/edithttp://webmastersjournal.pressbooks.com/chapter/the-four-elements-of-online-content/


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Chapter 3

3.Let your four elements become

the content

Once youve figured out how you are going to make viewing, commenting, and

activity reporting primary functions for your content, you need to look at these three

pieces as one whole. Any time you market a piece of content, you should make sure

that your audience will have access to all three of these functions.

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Chapter 4

4.How I combined my elements

Everything I write starts out in Google Documents. It is really easier for me to simply

let my audience read my content in the same platform where I handle creation and

editing, but this isnt always practical. But, I do count the Google Document version

of my content as the view part of the four elements.

Initially, I also referenced the Google Webpage version of the same document as a

part of the view functionso, I had two links for viewing. This was because Google

Docs dont always show up properly on social media sites like Facebook and Twitter,

so I needed an alternative. But, Ive since begun referencing content that has been

entered into a ebook publishing service. Ill talk more about why later on.

Whenever I launch a new document, I will click on comments, and then enter a

comment which says Post your comment. Then, I grab the URL for this comment

and use it to create a link called discussion. This was the easiest way to direct users

somewhere that they could respond to the document.

On the subject of discussions, I am aware that there are a lot of different places

where a reader would be able to post a comment or write a response. For example,

on Facebook, or in Twitter. This just makes it even more important that you keep

a record of every place where your piece of content is referenced. However, you

do want to establish one primary way in which readers might respond. I chose the

comments/annotations in Google Docs because it is already included in the document,

where I enter my edits and updates.

Finally, there is the question of the Activity Feed. I have done the most experimenting

with this aspect of the elements of online content. I dont have very many solid

answers, but I have seen some success with using Storify, but as a fall back I have

also had success with referencing the tickets I create in FogBugz.

View as: | Webpage | Doc | Activity Feed| Discussion |

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Chapter 5

5.Establish a Content Flow

You need to establish a document flow for your content, and draw divider lines when

publication changes to content distribution or marketing.

Your document flow helps to answer questions about your contents evolution.

Where is it starting, and where will it end up? For example, it is common for

bloggers to simply blog every day, without really discovering their contents potential.

The exceptions are the bloggers who have been able to compile their work into

publications like ebooks, or in the case of at least one Twitter user a book and a

TV series.

When you think about your flow, you cant think of your content as only existing

in one place such as your blog or your webpage. If you aspire to one day turn your

blog into a book, then start planning for it now and work out how you are going to

transition from a blog to a book.

Ive developed a system which allows me to quickly distribute the content I write, but

then route it into a service that I can then use to produce ebooks or monthly ezines.

After Ive written an article in Google Docs, I will paste the content into a blog post

at http://thestack.posterous.com. There is a line at the bottom of each post

which references the three main ways in which readers can interact with the content.

This is important because I feed the RSS for this blog into curation services such as

paper.li and Google Currents.

I created a blog called The Stack after I used the app for the Conan OBrien

show. I began to think about how late night talk shows are usually made up of

their reoccurring segments: the monologue, skits, interviews, movie clips, audience

participation, etc. When you watch the show live, on TV, these segments are shown to

us in a specific sequence. But, when you use an iOS app to access the same materials,

you can view them on demand in any order that you choose.

I began to wonder what a talk show would look like if you started with just the

components for your audience to interact with, and then later compiled the different

segments or elements in a way that made sense.

The Stack is a place where write about all of the different subjects that I want to

write about. The posts are tagged, and Ive set up the Posterous blog so that I can

autopost each post to a specific Wordpress blog. So, the article that you are reading

now most likely started out in The Stack on Posterous, but it was also autoposted to

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my Webmaster Journal blog on Wordpress.com.

The Stack is like my web-based talk show: it is where I want readers to tune in on a

daily or a weekly basis. It is also almost guaranteed to be my most actively updated

site because it covers so many different topics at once. All I have to do is write and

post, and the content will continue to build up there.

But The Stack also serves as a bridge between the documents I write on Google Docs

and the finalized content I share in the finished ebook later. It allows me to get content

out to my audience faster than any of my other properties would make possible. The

strength of getting content out faster and farther is that you attract feedback, and the

more feedback you get the more you can improve your content before it is released in

different formats.

Most organizations probably have publications or other vehicles which are like this.

Electronic newsletters, for example, can offer you a way to highlight the most recent

or the most popular content. They are a means of distributing content quickly and

efficiently to subscribers.

All of this is important because once you figure out the evolution of your documents,

you can pick out the key milestones in your flow, and then you know where to send

most of your audience.

Once you can see the key milestones for your document, you will be able to see

moments in its evolution which shouldnt be included in the flow. They should be

tracked as a part of distribution or marketing, but not as an important part of the

document.

For example, an e-newsletter wouldnt necessarily be included in the life cycle of a

document because it is a marketing tool. When I post content in The Stack, I am not

thinking of this as a part of my documents life cycle, because it is only a means of

sharing the content. An article I write lives only in Google docs, or in the service

which I use to produce ebooks. All other properties are offshoots.


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Chapter 6

6.Identify the Social Media

Networks that you will be using for

your content

This is an important step because these are the networks that will be entered and

tracked via your install of FogBugz. It might seem like your strategy will be to

post your content everywhere that you can, and this isnt a bad idea if you are

experimenting with different tools, but eventually you will want to choose your core

networks.

When I share links to my content, I always share them via links on Twitter, Facebook,

and Google+ because these are the networks that allow me to reach the most people.

I think of them as my big three tools. Other sites, such as paper.li, scoop.it, and

Storify serve as supplemental tools.Your flow of content comes into play when you choose your social media tools,

because some tools integrate better than others. Ive enjoyed posting my content into

Posterous because it allows me to autopost on Facebook, Wordpress, and Twitter. So,

when I post in Posterous, Im actually getting my content out there on four different

services. Storify allows me to post content on a Facebook page, and there are tons of

other tools which will cross-promote your content on different platforms. It just pays

to take a look and experiment.

So, if you decide to post to Facebook and Twitter, you might want to consider using a

tool like Posterous as an intermediary tool. When you are documenting the sites you

are using, you would put all three into Fogbugz.

View as: | eBook | Doc | Activity Feed |Discuss: | Post a Comment |

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Chapter 7

7.Understand Your Audiences

Social Media Needs

Before we get into managing your content, I wanted to talk a little about your audience.

Or, more accurately, the average web user.

Once I realized that I was marketing my content to an audience which wanted to

interact with my content in different ways, I began to understand my goals a little bit

better. My focus has been on finding ways to allow users to have a choice of how they

interact with any piece of content I post.

As an example, Ive heard that the minority of Wikipedia users actually edit the

articles which are in Wikipedia.org. This means that most of the sites visitors prefer

to read the information, but not to edit it or create new articles. Thats okay, and just

speaks to the diversity of Internet users. Historically, online communities have always

have users who stay involved at different levels. You have your constant contributorsand your lurkers.

When you design your content, you will want to think about your audience and check

on whether your content is being served in a way which would allow all members of

your audience to interact in the way that feels natural to them. For example:

1. Can they view the content?

2. Can they download it?

3. Can they share a link?

4. Can they edit the contents or annotate?

5. Can they view related content or perhaps read as a series?

Wikipedia is a great example of a site which allows its audience to participate onall five of these levels.

The good news is that as you curate your content and distribute it using the different

social media sites, most of the sharing becomes natural. And, number one is a no

brainer otherwise there is no point of publishing the content in the first place. Numbers

4 and 5 are possibly the trickiest, because it is hard to balance between the two.

Number 2 is also a no brainer as long as you are posting your content in the right

places. If you are planning on publishing your content as a finished product, such as

an ebook, ezine, or collection, then this level may need to come later. But, if you want

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to allow downloading of your article as a document, then your best bet would be to

share it as either a Google document, which allows downloading of a document as a

PDF, or on a social document sharing network such as Scribd.

View as: | Webpage | Doc | Activity Feed | Discussion |
http://webmastersjournal.pressbooks.com/chapter/understand-your-audiences-social-media-needs/https://docs.google.com/document/d/1NtIg2Ur47efem-wA3E0OC8M_R5CW8qoSov20ZHEIQlo/edithttps://projecthover.fogbugz.com/default.asp?208_m8ffuldkhttps://docs.google.com/document/d/1NtIg2Ur47efem-wA3E0OC8M_R5CW8qoSov20ZHEIQlo/edit?disco=AAAAAEu5Omchttps://docs.google.com/document/d/1NtIg2Ur47efem-wA3E0OC8M_R5CW8qoSov20ZHEIQlo/edit?disco=AAAAAEu5Omchttps://projecthover.fogbugz.com/default.asp?208_m8ffuldkhttps://docs.google.com/document/d/1NtIg2Ur47efem-wA3E0OC8M_R5CW8qoSov20ZHEIQlo/edithttp://webmastersjournal.pressbooks.com/chapter/understand-your-audiences-social-media-needs/


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Chapter 8

8.Configuring FogBugz for Asset

Management

Once youve worked out your content flow and the social media networks you will be

using for distribution and curation, enter them all in as custom fields using the custom

field plugin within FogBugz.

Next, use the Project Group feature in FogBugz to create a project group for your

different web properties. As an example, if your organization has a website, you

would create a project group for it. Within the group, you will be assigning projects

that represent the main sections of your website, or the primary web products if that

is how your website is broken down.

You will want to create a new ticket for each piece of content that you create. Enter

in the contents URL, as well as the URL for different places where the same content

could be found in different formats (part of your essential content elements). As youmarket the content, you will want to enter in the URLs showing where it was posted

or can be found again.

As you collect data on your online assets, you will be able to use FogBugzs sorting

and exporting tools to output reports. I have designed sorts which show me the

contents title and all of its associated URLs. When I export this data as a table, I

am able to easily share it.

View as: | Webpage | Doc | Activity Feed | Discussion |

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Chapter 9

9.Help Write the next Chapter!

9.1 Keep the Conversation Alive

9.1.1 Respond to Discussion Questions

Respond to these questions via email ?? or the group at P2PU.

Solving the problem of tracking content

1. What are some tools that you have found worked for managing content and/or

activities on social media platforms? I know that there have been a few.

The four elements of Online Content

1. Do you think that there are other functions that readers expect when they are

viewing content?

2. Which of these elements do you think is the most important? The least

important?

Let your four elements become the content

1. What did you think about this article? In what way have existing combined

these elements of content into a whole?

Establish a Document Flow

1. What are the key parts of your content flow? List them in your comment.

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Identify the Social Media Networks that you will be using for your content

1. What are the social media networks that your business or organization most

commonly uses?

9.2 Write Parallel Chapters

What would you have done differently? Write a section that either supports or offers

an alternative to the methods included here. Send your submission here ??.

9.3 Write the Next Chapter

Where do you think this book should go next? Write the next chapter and submit it

here. ??

View as: | Webpage | Doc | Activity Feed| Discussion |
http://-/?-http://-/?-http://-/?-http://-/?-http://-/?-http://webmastersjournal.pressbooks.com/chapter/help-write-the-next-chapter/https://docs.google.com/document/d/12WBuKY4YhivsvghD0Y84huUEkB6sfKpxqDfjD9BA_0o/edithttps://projecthover.fogbugz.com/default.asp?212_hmumi2hqhttps://docs.google.com/document/d/12WBuKY4YhivsvghD0Y84huUEkB6sfKpxqDfjD9BA_0o/edit?disco=AAAAAEu5iVshttps://docs.google.com/document/d/12WBuKY4YhivsvghD0Y84huUEkB6sfKpxqDfjD9BA_0o/edit?disco=AAAAAEu5iVshttps://projecthover.fogbugz.com/default.asp?212_hmumi2hqhttps://docs.google.com/document/d/12WBuKY4YhivsvghD0Y84huUEkB6sfKpxqDfjD9BA_0o/edithttp://webmastersjournal.pressbooks.com/chapter/help-write-the-next-chapter/http://-/?-http://-/?-http://-/?-


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