Texture design

Posted by Oatmeal

I don't normally cross-post blog entries, but I figured this one was appropriate for the Designmoz crowd.┬? About two weeks ago I made a couple funny sketches of what social media websites would look like if they were all sitting around together.

Social Media Websites in Illustrated Form

If you haven't already seen it I highly recommend checking it out.┬? Most of the office was in hysterics when they saw my depiction of Digg.

I drew these mostly because I was killing time before my vacation to Maui; I didn't expect such a huge reaction.┬? The Digg crowd was surprisingly positive, some of the comments could even be described as glowing (weird, I know.┬? I guess to appeal to diggers you have to insult them first).┬? One of the co-founders of Reddit even emailed me and asked if he could use my sketch as the Reddit logo for a day, which I of course agreed to.┬? I'm a huge fan of Reddit; I've found the quality of content and community on reddit to be far superior to Digg.┬? Having my drawing up there as well as having them send me a Reddit shirt was very, very awesome

Posted by randfish

On Friday evening, I hopped a flight from Seattle to Copenhagen, then Copenhagen to Munich, arriving Saturday around 5:00pm. Munich's a gorgeous city, and one of Germany's friendliest, a fact I've proven to myself by stopping most of the town's population to randomly ask for directions (impressive, since I've only been here 48 hours so far). From Mittlererings to┬?Autobahns to a Mercedes with no acceleration whatsoever, Munich has been like one giant driving test - luckily, I appear to be passing.

This morning featured my first solo-panel SES presentation; I covered Blogging, Social Media Marketing & Linkbait (warning: the PPT file is 500K).

Although Germans are notorious for┬?being less┬?participatory during Q+As than their British and American counterparts, the session was filled with questions (we even ran over time a bit to accomodate). The session's moderator, Tim Cole, did a terrific job of keeping things rolling and ensuring that the session wasn't too myopic (an issue when a single presenter speaks for 1:15). Many thanks, Tim!

Most surprising to me was how accepting the German Design audience was to the ideas of linkbait - I was expecting more frustration with the English-language centric focus of most of the primary linkbait portals, but several examples from audience members (who've already been adopting and engaging in linkbait)┬?made it clear that┬?sites like Digg & Netscape┬?can be used, even for German content┬?(thanks, Marcus).

After the session, Mystery Guest (who accompanied me for the first time to an SES show) and I visited downtown Munich - wandering downtown's Marienplatz. We did a bit of window shopping, but were most entranced by the farmer's market, where fresh truffles are the featured item this week:

Although Germans are notorious for┬?being less┬?participatory during Q+As than their British and American counterparts, the session was filled with questions (we even ran over time a bit to accomodate). The session's moderator, Tim Cole, did a terrific job of keeping things rolling and ensuring that the session wasn't too myopic (an issue when a single presenter speaks for 1:15). Many thanks, Tim!

Most surprising to me was how accepting the German Design audience was to the ideas of linkbait - I was expecting more frustration with the English-language centric focus of most of the primary linkbait portals, but several examples from audience members (who've already been adopting and engaging in linkbait)┬?made it clear that┬?sites like Digg & Netscape┬?can be used, even for German content┬?(thanks, Marcus).

After the session, Mystery Guest (who accompanied me for the first time to an SES show) and I visited downtown Munich - wandering downtown's Marienplatz. We did a bit of window shopping, but were most entranced by the farmer's market, where fresh truffles are the featured item this week:

I've never seen a farmer's market with greater organization. Each item is stunningly laid out in its own basket, with clearly marked names & prices. It's a far cry from Seattle's often scatter-brained Pike Place Market. We got pretty hungry viewing all those beautiful, expensive mushrooms and decided to satiate our appetite with a bit of the delicacy at a nearby restaurant:

I've never seen a farmer's market with greater organization. Each item is stunningly laid out in its own basket, with clearly marked names & prices. It's a far cry from Seattle's often scatter-brained Pike Place Market. We got pretty hungry viewing all those beautiful, expensive mushrooms and decided to satiate our appetite with a bit of the delicacy at a nearby restaurant:

┬?After lunch, we visited the Glockenspiel, but just barely missed the display.

┬?After lunch, we visited the Glockenspiel, but just barely missed the display.

Jetlag and insomnia finally caught up with us, though, and it was back to the hotel room for a nap. Last night's 4 hours simply couldn't keep me going all day. Tomorrow at 1pm it's back to Seattle, and back to your usually scheduled blogging. Thanks to everyone at SES Munich - it's been a terrific, if short, trip.

Technorati Tags

ses munich, munchen, linkbait, search conferences

Jetlag and insomnia finally caught up with us, though, and it was back to the hotel room for a nap. Last night's 4 hours simply couldn't keep me going all day. Tomorrow at 1pm it's back to Seattle, and back to your usually scheduled blogging. Thanks to everyone at SES Munich - it's been a terrific, if short, trip.

Technorati Tags

ses munich, munchen, linkbait, search conferences

On my daily journey through some top webmaster resources I stumbled upon an article feature over at WebProNews on net neutrality. It's odd that I didn't think to cover this in a previous post as I did touch on it on Webmaster Radio last week. The issue at hand was the neutrality of the Internet which, while the Republicans held Congress the fate of the democracy of the Internet and the way it functions was being threatened. Republican Senator Ted Stevens lead the charge though, as WebPro author Jason Miller so delicately reminded us, he has no real understanding of the way the Internet function referring to it as,"a series of tubes." And as Jon Stewart would point out, "that's OK, he's only the one in charge of regulating it." (See the video below if you're up for a chuckle)

The issue at hand is the placing of control over the Internet and how all those 1's and 0's are handled into the hands of the major telco's such as AT&T. What this would effectively do is allow them to charge for preferential treatment to those who could pay for it giving enormous advantages to major corporations and reducing those who can't afford to pay the extra to settle for slower access to their websites from visitors. Hosting companies should fear this as should small companies that couldn't afford to pay the extra fees (and we all know how "fair" telco's are when they hold monopolies right?)

There is still a chance that the bill could be pushed through in the time it takes for the Democrats to takeover in the Congress and Senate however this may be difficult as any opposing Republicans (and there were some) are more likely to vote with their conscience rather than tow the party line.

While I try keep away from politics in the blog (though I love it as a hobby) I'm truly grateful that the Internet just might maintain its democratic structure. We might not always like what we find there but when we do, it's almost worth the 300 spam emails we had to weed through to find it

The article by Jason Miller on the issue is definitely worth a read and can be found here. You can also find a number of interesting information on the subject through Design News here. And now, enjoy the video.

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Well it's Friday. A glorious day indeed for those who get weekends off. For those who get to enjoy the next couple days of R&R and for those of us who don't and just might need something to melt our brains with for a few minutes we provide this Friday's post, a look at a man who can move mountains.

OK, so maybe not mountains but he is moving rocks the size of those at Stonehenge with nothing more than himself, gravity and some great ingenuity. His tools? Well you'll have to watch for yourself but it's nothing that didn't exist back then.

<

Posted by JaneCopland

We post about Digg quite often (and here we go again), but I've been watching certain Digg phenomenon for a while, and one stands out from the rest as the most ironic and most amusing. My favourite Digg irony is the hatred the (a-HEM) Diggorati have for Design, coupled with the fact that they fall for linkbait All. The. Time.

Every so often, one of our employees will roll into the office and announce, "I'm going to get on Digg today." Said employee will sit down, write something and then nervously monitor the server as predicted Digg occurs. I can only remember one instance in which this tactic has failed. The post does not always come from Designmoz; in fact, it's often posted elsewhere. Sometimes, some Diggers will catch on to the fact that the submission came from someone affiliated with Design and the comments will get nasty, but still the diggs keep going up.

As pathetic as "dead-things-at-bottom-of-lake" jokes are, they reflect the sentiment of many Diggers who think Design is atrocious. I have this mental picture of the most obnoxious Diggers sitting around, scratching their chests through their off-white vests and thinking (in their own, Diggy dialect), "I'll never digg anything posted by an Design. I only digg organic content."

And yet. The Diggs keep going up. Below is the number of Diggs for the post that generated the above comment thread. Four-hundred and eighty one is hardly a great number, but it (obviously) hit the homepage and wasn't buried.

As pathetic as "dead-things-at-bottom-of-lake" jokes are, they reflect the sentiment of many Diggers who think Design is atrocious. I have this mental picture of the most obnoxious Diggers sitting around, scratching their chests through their off-white vests and thinking (in their own, Diggy dialect), "I'll never digg anything posted by an Design. I only digg organic content."

And yet. The Diggs keep going up. Below is the number of Diggs for the post that generated the above comment thread. Four-hundred and eighty one is hardly a great number, but it (obviously) hit the homepage and wasn't buried.

My point is that Digg's hatred of Design can't compete with their liking of good, interesting or controversial content. They remind me of people who profess to hate all things French and yet can't refuse champagne. People who say they can't stand the USA but who can't get enough of American T.V. Dogs that are scared of vacuum cleaners but that can't stay away from them when you're cleaning.

I don't like the juvenile, snotty culture that Digg seems to foster. However, it makes me smile that every day I see linkbait on the homepage. Do Diggers not realise that they fall for cleverly crafted viral marketing campaigns all the time? Is my Digg account about to get banned?

Technorati Tags

digg bait, linkbait, digg

Posted by great scott!

Well folks, you asked for it, you got it: After last Friday's vidcast about cloaking was such a big hit, "Whiteboard Friday" is going to be a regular feature.┬?

This week, following in the footsteps of Rand's multiple posts about attracting the Linkerati, we're bringing you a concise video recap of why targeting Linkerati is important to your Design efforts.┬?

Technorati Tags

Design, interview, linkerati, optimization, rand fishkin, search, Design, Designmoz, social media

Posted by randfish

Brandon Hopkins, who runs a blog on search & webmastering, emailed me earlier this week to ask for my opinion on an article of his. Here's what I wrote back:

I doubt you've got a shot at Digg-bait; it's too Design focused and will get buried instantly. I'm not sure I'd even submit it as the Digg folks might give your account a bad association

How wrong I was! Brandon's article - 66 Ways to Build Links in 2007 -┬?got Dugg, didn't get buried, and sent him lots of great links and traffic. It's little more than a straight list, but it obviously took a good bit of care and attention. There's a lot of great points on there, and the relevant links off-site make the article a 5-minute skim or a 2-hour slog depending on your mood. Great work, Brandon, and congrats on the Digging - I'm very happy to be proven wrong on the bury brigade.

p.s. I think it's a bit odd to see a How to Get Dugg from people who get one or two posts to the homepage (Brandon's definitely not alone here). Though, he does offer some good advice, there, too.

p.p.s. I also liked his How to Comment to the Top post.

Technorati Tags

digg, brandon hopkins, link building

Posted by rebecca

It's been about a month and a half since our new site launch, meaning that we've received nearly 2 months' worth of YOUmoz submissions (160, to be exact, with 94 entries published). A little over half of the submissions we received got published, but how did we decide what to publish and what to nix? We thought we'd put together a list of tips and guidelines for those of you who either have submitted entries to YOUmoz or have thought about submitting:

1. We're definitely more likely to publish posts that demonstrate your expertise on a particular topic, niche, sector, etc. This doesn't mean we won't publish beginner-level posts--it's just that a well-written post that reflects the author's savviness is more likely to be published and could also end up being promoted onto the main Designmoz blog.
   
2. A lot of posts we published linked to SERPs and websites as references and examples, included screenshots, and incorporated bullet points and numbered lists. These posts reflected the extra effort the author went into researching his post, as well as his desire to share something interesting with readers.
   
3. We often receive submitted posts that are nothing more than a concise, basic Design question. These questions likely won't get published because YOUmoz is a user-generated blog, not a forum. If you have an Design question, it's better to post it at
   www.cre8asiteforums.com,
   www.highrankings.com, or other Design forums. You can, however, pose or bring up questions in your YOUmoz posts. Good questions to ask might be those that are complicated, illustrate an interesting side of Design, webdev, conversion strategy or online marketing, and are thought-provoking and encourage a discussion.
4. Submitting a spam post is just absurd. We don't blindly publish everything that's submitted--each post is reviewed and edited before it's published. It's a waste of time to write a three-sentence blurb about your site's services and drop about eighteen links, because this post will never see the light of day.
5. You don't have to stick strictly to Design topics. We have a variety of blog categories (business tactics, web design/development, etc), and you can write about anything that fits within these topics. However, try to keep your posts on-track. Cold remedies, recipes, and other posts that clearly lack relevance won't get published.
   
6. It's okay to promote yourself at the end of your post with a short blurb (a couple of sentences should suffice) on who you are and your website. We'll likely formalize the author bio portion soon.
7. We try to space out the publication of YOUmoz posts, so if there are ten or so posts sitting in the submitted queue, we'll publish a few at a time in order to give our readers some breathing room. Therefore, don't get all riled up if you submitted something a few days ago and still haven't received word as to whether or not it's been approved--we're just being strategic (and sometimes swamped with actual client work).

We're extremely proud and surprised to see how many submissions we've received so far, and the interaction on YOUmoz has been terrific. Keep up the great work, authors! You're really starting to build a strong, engaging community. If you're interested in authoring a YOUmoz post but haven't gotten around to it, or if you've submitted something and had it rejected, then don't give up. We still want to read what you have to offer, and I'm sure the rest of the Designmoz members do as well. Reader feedback is generally positive or constructive, so I'd recommend giving it a shot.

If you have any questions about YOUmoz submissions or about the process that I haven't addressed in this post, feel free to ask them in the comments.

Technorati Tags

youmoz, ugc, Designmoz

Posted by randfish

This week, I've authored several posts on appealing to those folks who provide natural links and those who link due to successful viral marketing campaigns (linkbait):

1. The Secret to Ranking at the Search Engines (on why appealing to link-savvy demographics is important)
2. Creating Content that Appeals to┬?a Link-Savvy Audience (on topic foci that can draw in links)
3. Making a Site Link Friendly (on how to improve a site's chances of earning inbound links)

For my next piece in this segment, I want to emphasize and explain why these tactics are universally applicable and explore some ways to entice natural links. While many marketers feel like they're left out of the linkbait game because of the content focus of their sites, I'd posit that even the most boring, unsexy sites can both appeal to linkerati and create great viral content.

Let me walk you through the process of identifying linkerati in the most link and web-unsavvy market possible. That's right... I want you to imagine yourself as the owner of a new┬?Seattle catering company, let's call you┬?Sally Skibinski's Source of Sustinence (catchy, eh?) or SSSoS.

SSSos is launching a new website to help promote their catering business. As a reader of Designmoz, you've done your keyword research (yes, I'm shamelessly linking to the paid guide) and you know that the most popular, relevant phrase that you need to rank for is (surprise, surprise) - Seattle Catering. Taking a peek at the SERPs, things don't look promising:

The competition is stiff and the first dozen links are direct competitors - you'll have a tough time getting a link out of any of them (make no mistake, people, catering is a cutthroat business in the Emerald City). But, despite their success, the top ranking sites have made one, fatal mistake -┬?they didn't read Designmoz (I've always wanted to write that).

So how do you do it? How do you build a site that crushes the competition -┬?one that ensures your utter dominance in the field of baking cakes and shlepping latkes? Simple. You build not only for your customers, but for the linkerati, too.

Step I:┬?Know Your Linkerati

Ask yourself - who are the visitors to a regional catering website most likely to provide a link?

• Restaurant & catering critics working for local media publications
• Local directory creators like Yelp, Citysearch, YellowPages, NWSource, Seattle Weekly, etc.
• Foodies with blogs
• Local message board participants at places like Craigslist, Seattle.About.com, TheStranger.com forums, etc.
• Recipe seekers who tag and share content through social media sites
• Businesses that employ your catering services in a partnership (or just on a regular basis)

Step II: Broaden Your Reach

Just because the catering industry is somewhat boring on the web doesn't mean you have to be - broaden your horizons and imagine some of the most relevant areas your content could expand.

• Recipes
• Food photography
• Food presentation how-to's
• Customer service tips
• Small business & startup tips
• Ingredient testing and comparisons
• Bulk food shopping

Step III: Brainstorm Content Ideas

With your audience in mind and an expanded sphere from which to operate, get to work creating ideas for specific content pieces that your site can support.

• AJAX-driven catering menu creator that provides pricing and photos
• Photography of the incredibly meals you can provide including recipes for how to make at home (in small quantities) and ingredient lists with sourcing (where you get each of your products)
• Directory of the best places in the city to buy food - which farmers provide the best produce during each season, where to buy in bulk, what fishmonger to deal with, which butcher, etc.
• Signature dishes presented in an America's Test Kitchen walkthrough style of how you tested and refined the recipe until it was absolutely perfect
• List of tips for sharpening the presentation of home-made dishes to look like professional quality preparation
• Videos on food prep, recipes, presentation, catering menus you've built
• Interviews with famous chefs around town about their own work

Step IV: Create a Site Architecture that Allows for Inclusion of Your Content

A standard 5-page catering site like most of those atop the current SERPs won't suffice. You'll want a blog, a section for video tutorials, special articles a directory of vendors and a recipes collection along with the usual list of services, photography and testimonials.

Step V: Build a Phenomenal Site

Hire a designer who can make your site look like something that belongs on CSSRemix, WebCreme or CSSBeauty. Implement your robust site architecture with easy-to-use navigation and clear presentation of content. Read Steve Krug's book and follow his tips religiously. Obey the rules of standard search-friendliness with clean URLs, good title tags, well written meta descriptions and properly targeted content pages.

Step VI: Launch & Promote

When you launch, you should be submitting to those design portals, writing posts about your new site on NWSource and TheStranger.com forums seeking input, connecting┬?with local food bloggers┬?(they have their own get-togethers for goodness sake), requesting that all the businesses who regularly use your services link to you on their sites and promoting your site to every fan of every bite at every meal you serve - "I'm so glad you like it - the recipe's on our website - sssos.com."

If you can do it for a subject as dry, un-techy and digg-ignorant as catering, you can do it with anything. Don't let your hangups about who the linkerati are or how linkbait works for a site like Designmoz or Drivl stop you from getting creative, getting inspired and following this path to search success.

Technorati Tags

seattle caterers, food bloggers, linkerati, how-to, webdev, Design

The competition is stiff and the first dozen links are direct competitors - you'll have a tough time getting a link out of any of them (make no mistake, people, catering is a cutthroat business in the Emerald City). But, despite their success, the top ranking sites have made one, fatal mistake -┬?they didn't read Designmoz (I've always wanted to write that).

So how do you do it? How do you build a site that crushes the competition -┬?one that ensures your utter dominance in the field of baking cakes and shlepping latkes? Simple. You build not only for your customers, but for the linkerati, too.

Step I:┬?Know Your Linkerati

Ask yourself - who are the visitors to a regional catering website most likely to provide a link?

• Restaurant & catering critics working for local media publications
• Local directory creators like Yelp, Citysearch, YellowPages, NWSource, Seattle Weekly, etc.
• Foodies with blogs
• Local message board participants at places like Craigslist, Seattle.About.com, TheStranger.com forums, etc.
• Recipe seekers who tag and share content through social media sites
• Businesses that employ your catering services in a partnership (or just on a regular basis)

Step II: Broaden Your Reach

Just because the catering industry is somewhat boring on the web doesn't mean you have to be - broaden your horizons and imagine some of the most relevant areas your content could expand.

• Recipes
• Food photography
• Food presentation how-to's
• Customer service tips
• Small business & startup tips
• Ingredient testing and comparisons
• Bulk food shopping

Step III: Brainstorm Content Ideas

With your audience in mind and an expanded sphere from which to operate, get to work creating ideas for specific content pieces that your site can support.

• AJAX-driven catering menu creator that provides pricing and photos
• Photography of the incredibly meals you can provide including recipes for how to make at home (in small quantities) and ingredient lists with sourcing (where you get each of your products)
• Directory of the best places in the city to buy food - which farmers provide the best produce during each season, where to buy in bulk, what fishmonger to deal with, which butcher, etc.
• Signature dishes presented in an America's Test Kitchen walkthrough style of how you tested and refined the recipe until it was absolutely perfect
• List of tips for sharpening the presentation of home-made dishes to look like professional quality preparation
• Videos on food prep, recipes, presentation, catering menus you've built
• Interviews with famous chefs around town about their own work

Step IV: Create a Site Architecture that Allows for Inclusion of Your Content

A standard 5-page catering site like most of those atop the current SERPs won't suffice. You'll want a blog, a section for video tutorials, special articles a directory of vendors and a recipes collection along with the usual list of services, photography and testimonials.

Step V: Build a Phenomenal Site

Hire a designer who can make your site look like something that belongs on CSSRemix, WebCreme or CSSBeauty. Implement your robust site architecture with easy-to-use navigation and clear presentation of content. Read Steve Krug's book and follow his tips religiously. Obey the rules of standard search-friendliness with clean URLs, good title tags, well written meta descriptions and properly targeted content pages.

Step VI: Launch & Promote

When you launch, you should be submitting to those design portals, writing posts about your new site on NWSource and TheStranger.com forums seeking input, connecting┬?with local food bloggers┬?(they have their own get-togethers for goodness sake), requesting that all the businesses who regularly use your services link to you on their sites and promoting your site to every fan of every bite at every meal you serve - "I'm so glad you like it - the recipe's on our website - sssos.com."

If you can do it for a subject as dry, un-techy and digg-ignorant as catering, you can do it with anything. Don't let your hangups about who the linkerati are or how linkbait works for a site like Designmoz or Drivl stop you from getting creative, getting inspired and following this path to search success.

Technorati Tags

seattle caterers, food bloggers, linkerati, how-to, webdev, Design

Posted by Fluxx

Per some recent suggestions, I've decided to elaborate a little more about some of the things I learned at the SXSWi panels.┬? First up: the keynote by Kathy Sierra of the Creating Passionate Users blog.┬? Of course I can't recreate Kathy's talk or her immense knowledge on the subject, but I can give the you gist of what she talked about.┬? If you'd like to listen to Kathy's speech, SXSW has a podcast or her talk available for download.┬? There is a edited video of her talk available as well.┬? And, Kathy writes a little bit of her experiences on her own blog.

Phew!┬? And now, on to the talk.

Kathy started out asking, what's that "one thing" about human interaction that makes it so meaningful?┬? And how do we convey that emotional meaning in our software?┬? Some people think it's simply the smell of other humans that makes it meaningful - but we can't put that in our software.┬? Really, nobody knows for sure.┬? But no matter what, a more human experience makes for better software and more passionate users.

When you are frustrated or confused, you make a face - usually furrowing your eyebrows and tilting your head.┬? People around you see that, and they respond.┬? They ask you questions, they help you out.┬? Problem is, software can't do that.┬? The software has no idea what the user looks like or is feeling.┬? It can't tell if the user is confused, working well, or even if they're totally lost.

Thus, our software needs a way to have the user tell us they're confused.┬? Sounds simple enough.┬? And when the users is at this confused stage, it's a very critical time.┬? If we don't pick up on the users confusion early on, we're going to loose them and their passion.┬? Nobody is passionate when they suck at your software.

When someone is interacting with your software, there are some perceived milestones people achieve.┬? First, there is the "suck threshold."┬? People here say to themselves, "Wow, I suck.┬? I'm not good I'm not bad...I just suck."┬? Secondly, there is the passion threshold.┬? Here, the user is actually getting really good at the software and is really enjoying it.┬? Quick tip: all things being equal, he who gets their users past the suck threshold the fastest wins.┬? The faster we can get people past that threshold, the more passionate they'll be about our software.

So what do we do?┬? How do we get them to stop sucking and move past the passion threshold?┬? Let them tell us.┬? They need a "WTF?" button.┬? It lets the user tell us, clear as day, when they're confused.┬? So back when the user is making that face, but now at the computer, they have a way tell us.┬? Click the "WTF?" button.

But, your usual knowledge base or FAQ system isn't going to cut it.┬? You might ask, "Isn't that what they're doing when they click FAQ?┬? Aren't they saying "WTF?"┬? Not really.┬? As Kathy says, FAQs are written for a user who is mildly in love with the application and likes the product.┬? The people who actually need and use the FAQs are usually new to the software and totally lost.┬? Help documents and FAQs are meant more for the higher level users, those who are closer to the passion threshold.

So what should happen in our software when someone presses the "WTF?" button?┬? Well, Kathy suggests to "start thinking like a human."┬? In the real world, when you're talking with someone and they look confused, you simply ask them, "what's wrong?"┬? You need to emulate that in your software.┬? Ask if the user is even in the right place?┬? Maybe they went too far in the process and actually need to be moved to a different location?┬? In your help documents, Kathy suggests using top level phrases like, "I'm lost,"┬? or, "I'm confused" after someone clicks the "WTF?" button.┬? They're real user questions real people might say, and help the software identify what's wrong.┬?

Being human is very important - especially with the writing style of your help text.┬? Make sure you talk like a person.┬? Kathy notes several studies which show tiny changes in help language - making it more conversation like, personalizing it, using the word "you" - can have huge benefits.┬? But why?┬? Well one of the theories is when your brain reads conversational text, it doesn't know the difference between reading conversation and having conversation.┬? And so your brain turns on and says, "Crap, this is a conversation, I need to pay attention!"

Kathy then gave a bunch of examples of software, and some that got it right and some that got it wrong.┬? She pointed at Excel, and it's painfully un-human help system.┬? All these examples helped to solidify the main point of the talk: rather than creating passionate users through marketing, where you can usually out spend the other guys to win, you should instead focus on out teaching your users better than the next guy.┬? That's the true key to success, and creating passionate users.

Technorati Tags

SXSW, SXSWi, South by Southwest, Kathy Sierra, Creating Passionate Users