An interesting little website has recently come to prominence using nothing more than an intelligent Twitter aggregator and a little clever thinking (not to mention some quite savvy PR).

The website has the provocative title of www.pleaserobme.com and it cleverly aggregates feeds from sites like Google Buzz and FourSquare where users are encouraged to make their precise whereabouts public. By doing this, they are effectively telling the world that their home is empty - a point that is made particularly poignant by the name of the site. The founders did not set this up to aid wannabe burglars, instead it was created to make the point that websites are holding ever more confidential and sensitive information and that this information can be used for both good and evil depending on the end-users motives.

Mashable do a really good review of the site and what it is capable of here: http://mashable.com/2010/02/17/pleaserobme/. Well worth a look. 

When creating a website, one always thinks about its page rank within search engines. How else will people find and click onto a website if it’s not near to the top of search results on page 1? Therefore a lot of time is invested into Search Engine Optimisation to allow a website to be within the first page of search results. This mainly includes the use of keywords and link strategies.

However, we have recently discovered a little known secret - that having a fully search engine optimised video on your homepage can make your site 53 times more likely of getting a Page 1 Google ranking (according to Forrester Research 2009).

This does not mean simply uploading a video onto a video hosting platform, such as Youtube, and embredding it onto your website; it means utilising a video that has been specifically optimised for the web. These videos are then submitted to video search engines, such as Google Video, Yahoo Video or Blinkx, where they can link back to your website and in turn, increase your page ranking.

There are many ways in which to optimise video for the web. Outlined below are the most important:

• Create unique and worth-watching video in order to capture an audience.
• Create your video in as many formats and qualities as possible to make it available to the widest audiences.
• The use off keywords. This includes naming your video using the keywords you wish it to be found by, as well as the webpage where it is hosted.
• Video metadata properties. The properties available will vary by file type and the authoring software you use, but the premise is the same as html file metadata. Include keywords, as well as the word ‘video’ within the titles, tags and description fields.
• Watermark or brand your video.
• Create RSS and Atom feeds for any video content on your website.

Search engines are increasingly becoming more filtered with their results: a keyword can bring back a combination of search, news, image, social networking and video results. There are less multimedia rich results than normal html search results, so you will always have a better chance of your video, and therefore your website, being picked up by search engines and allowing that elusive ‘top of page 1’ rank to be reached.

At ScoreComms we highly recommend that the use of video be considered whenever possible, especially on the homepage of a website. We work with an excellent video production company who specilaise in web-related content so get in contact if you’d like to consider adding video to your website.

For more information, Blinkx has also created a Guide to Video SEO and it proves a fascinating read. 

Great little presentation on the benefits and advantages of investing in social media and developing a good social media strategy:

...or perhaps this entry should be entitled “Google Wave Pulped”.

We’ve already posted a couple of entries on Google Wave, what it is, how it works etc… This video shows in glorious colour exactly what the system is about, how it can integrate various mediums and channels and connect everything together under one central theme.

...oh, and it’s pretty funny too.

With focus turning to the UK election next May, I just re-read an interview in the Guardian that I remember seeing back in February this year. It’s with Thomas Gensemer - Managing Partner of Blue State Digital, the team behind Obama’s successful digital engagement strategy - discusses online campaigning and gives a quick review of the Tory and Labour party websites. Most interesting points to take from the article:

1. Don’t implement new technology like Twitter just for the sake of it.
2. Put clear actions and contact details above the fold of the page.
3. Ensure that set actions are something the viewer will actually do.
4. Provide localised information - how can a potential supporter get involved on a local level and where.

Read the full article here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/feb/18/thomas-gensemer-online-election-campaign