advwebdesign report

[IProject:http://fredericogtcosta.wordpress

.com] Frederico Costa - @00255034 - BSc(hons) Business Information Technologies

2012/2013

IProject:http://fredericogtcosta.wordpress.com

ContentsExecutive Summary...............................................................................................................................2

Personal Analysis & Reflection..............................................................................................................2

Planning, Implementing & Documenting the Blog Structure/Content..................................................3

Moscow Analysis...................................................................................................................................3

UML.......................................................................................................................................................5

Platform Choice.....................................................................................................................................6

Widgets.................................................................................................................................................7

Posts......................................................................................................................................................8

Social Media Marketing.........................................................................................................................9

Activities Undertaken............................................................................................................................9

Creativity & Originality........................................................................................................................11

Sustainability Plan...............................................................................................................................12

References...........................................................................................................................................13

University of Salford 2012/2013 Page 1


Executive SummaryThe aim of this report is to critically analyse the blog http://fredericogtcosta.wordpress.com in order to clarify its aim and identify its main characteristics. Furthermore, a MoScoW analysis will be presented to justify priorities, actions taken and the blog’s orientation.

This report also includes Social Media Marketing analysis as part of strategies adopted in order to expand the founder’s online presence, being an important tool for its main goal – the recognition of Frederico Costa’s capabilities in terms of Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and possible awareness by part of possible employers in Frederico Costa’s services.

Personal Analysis & ReflectionThis blog is inserted in a strategy of showing potential and current capabilities in the Digital Marketing Industry. In order to achieve the required levels of experience in the sector it is expected to work 5 years in the sector. At the same time I would like to put in practice my ideas of having several co-related businesses in the IT sector from unique personnel companies to SME’s that in terms of Digital Marketing consultancy have potential to be developed into a multi-national with a pool of clients based in Eurasia, Middle East, Africa and South America. The art of SEO is included in the latter idea where the possibilities to grow and anticipate the arrival of SEO companies in emerging countries, giving the possibility of a synergy between consultancy, investment and performance optimization companies and when possible, merge them becoming a multi-national and in the future become a partner investor of future businesses possibilities.

That was the main reason why I took this degree in the UK with special interest in E-Commerce, Project Management and Corporate Strategy as well as Data Management.

For that to happen, my credibility in terms of online presence has to improve and this project is helping me, serving as a good foundation to create more and better online presence.


http://fredericogtcosta.wordpress.com/


Planning, Implementing & Documenting the Blog Structure/ContentFrederico Costa is a Business Information Technologies student based in Manchester. In order to improve his web visibility he started a blog where he could show his knowledge in what he is aiming to work on – Search Engine Optimization.

According to Harold Davis, SEO can be defined as the art, craft and science of driving web traffic to websites (Davis, H. 2006). The blog posts are SEO driven, explaining the several features to take into account when developing a website. This extends to the fundamentals of Advanced Web Design in terms of adaptability, extendibility, integration and re-usability as well as technical infrastructure, documenting approaches/changes and putting in practice implementation methods in order to achieve a decent, methodical online presence.

Moscow AnalysisBefore taking action, a MoSCoW analysis was implemented. At a preliminary stage, there are a “Must” and “Won’t” lists as both of them are critical to the project’s success.

“Must” requirements include:

A software platform that enables the founder to use images and words as well as video – a Wordpress blog was chosen in order to show the founder’s knowledge in terms of its core capabilities as well as his knowledge in his speciality;

Cross-link possibility – This attribute is essential as the blog tend to lead the user into the founder’s online CV or professional social network;

Structure Flexibility – The platform chosen had to be flexible in order to enable the founder to show creativity as well as structure knowledge;

Security – It is important not just by the fact that it has to be trustable but also because when showing competences and capabilities the founder had to make sure that all the data/posts were hard to get hacked. Wordpress is a very accurate CMS in terms of security and it is hard to break through and change its contents.

Accessibility – As its main purpose is to reach possible employers, the website/blog has to be accessible to all forms of internet access so mobile phones and tablets as well as desktops and laptops can access, visualize and interact with the website. This also applies to all types of machines that have access to the Internet, game consoles included.



(Note: “Must” points will be developed in the “Documentation” chapter of this report.)

“Won’t” requirements include:

Cannot be limited in terms of content alterations;

Cannot be limited to certain colours or interface;

Should Have:

Widgets – Since it is a CMS the use of widgets substitute pure code. It gives more time to concentrate in the content instead of learning code and implementing it. This enables the founder to achieve excellent levels of structure and accessibility as if it was a pure coded website even thou it is a CMS especially in terms of Social Media Marketing and Dashboards Plug-ins;

Comments – The fact that the user can interact with the founder is a great add-on because it meets the user expectations if he wants to directly interact with the founder;

Multiple pages – this enables the user to navigate in the website/blog. The founder can organise its content prioritising it by relevance and meeting structure excellence expectations. As an example, the page “about” (http://fredericogtcosta.wordpress.com/) is a brief introduction of the founder and keeping it static the user is always led to read about the founder. The same applies for the “LinkedIn” (http://uk.linkedin.com/in/fredericogtcosta) section on the primary menu where the user is led to an external LinkedIn page where he can read the founder’s online CV.

Could Have:

Blog Stats – Although it does not affect the user or the founder (it can always be seen by the latter in the dashboard) it is good to show the popularity of the website;

Archive – The blog is organised by chronological order so the user wouldn’t have a problem to find a specific post. However, Archive section makes a search more accurate especially for returning visitors.


http://uk.linkedin.com/in/fredericogtcosta

http://fredericogtcosta.wordpress.com/


UML

In order to implement the “must”, “should do” and “could do” the use of widgets was essential due to its capabilities substituting code that inserts plug-ins.

Ideally, the user is led to read the “about” section, where there is a brief overview about the founder. From that, the user can see a list of posts, from the most recent to the oldest. Also an archive and “top posts” section is available, which will enable the user to freely navigate through posts. That is concentrated on the left horizontal menu. For each post, the user is enabled to share (due to a widget that enables it) through several social networks (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, or activate the Google+ button as well as “liking” any post or just comment it. Based on the Blog content, the user can gain interest and “Follow” the blog. This is particularly important for potential employers and in the long-term, to business partners. Also, this will make them trust the founder’s capabilities and knowledge, which shows it through the posts updated. Ideally, a user should read about the author, check the most recent post, gain interest, check older posts, like and share it, follow the blog, check the founder’s social media profiles, be notified about new posts, come back again in a regular basis and contact the founder for enquiries, services and job opportunities/vacancies.



To prove the sequence of the UML above, go to http://www.google.co.uk/ and type “Frederico Costa SEO” and click in any of the links related to SEO (on the 1st page) or go directly through http://www.fredericogtcosta.wordpress.com and the “system” will unconsciously make the user follow the steps. However, the user has the liberty to freely view/use the blog without a need of signing-up or reading all the posts, navigating in an easy, non-complex way.

Documenting the creation and development of this blog requires a division in terms of topics.

Platform ChoiceWordpress is an intuitive, user-friendly platform focused on usability. By creating a Wordpress blog, the founder saves time in creating a website through pure coding by the use of “Themes” and widgets. As the founder says in his “about” section, “any worldwide business centre” would be suitable for the needs so a global, credible, user-friendly platform had to be used. The image below shows the current range of viewers by country.

(Source: http://wordpress.com/#!/my-stats/?view=geoviews&summarize&numdays=-1)


http://wordpress.com/#!/my-stats/?view=geoviews&summarize&numdays=-1

http://www.fredericogtcosta.wordpress.com/

http://www.google.co.uk/


WidgetsThe use of widgets is essential. In order to increase the blog’s web visibility and interaction through an adequate structure and making fully use of social media marketing a good use of the sidebar was essential.

(Source: http://www.fredericogtcosta.wordpress.com)

The first column shows the widgets structure when customizing it. In order to do that, Wordpress allows the user to freely organise widgets from a list of widgets available. Moreover, more widgets can be downloaded. In order to do this, notions about a website’s usability is essential. A Search bar should be placed in the top left side of any website/blog so when inserted in a sidebar, it has to be on top.


http://www.fredericogtcosta.wordpress.com/


The fact that this blog’s intention is to make people to frequent it regularly made the founder create a sense of awareness very plausible and therefore the “follow blog” had to be in second placed as users sense of awareness relies on what its seen first.

The blog’s pages are fitted to screen in terms of width but because its intention is to continually show content (i.e more posts) the scroll down option is essential.

The recent posts choice comes in sequence of the UML described above as the most recent posts usually lead to an increase of awareness as tags/keywords become more consistent and the regular viewers are more aware of them.

Top posts and pages are essential in order to keep old posts on top of searches, which make the user aware of posts and influences traffic in the page “About” as the main purpose of this blog is to sell the founder as an individual.

Links widget is related to the blog roll. Since it is a “could have” is not fully developed yet. However, the intention is to create blog interaction that will lead to cross-links/cross-comments but more importantly (for advanced web design) to create user – founder relationships and constant information update.

SEO is the only category in this blog (so far) but in a near future the categories “Project Management”, “OOP” and “Economics” will be added. The idea is to show more main sectors where the founder is comfortable with and expand the type of users, increasing the blogs reach, incremented in a long-term sustainable strategy for this blog. Future categories will also be placed in the main bar for easier navigation as the page “SEO” is already set up on it.

Archive and Blog Stats are also part of the “could have” section. Blog stats show how popular the blog is, giving credibility and archives is a mere widget to increase navigation (i.e. accessibility).

META is another widget that increases probabilities of following posts, especially because of the RSS capabilities for this blog but also to be easier for Wordpress users to login.

PostsAs this Blog was created in the beginning of Semester 1 and constantly edited/updated as consequence of each week’s class the quality of the posts increased too.

It can be seen that from the first post to its last post improvements were made and consequently mistakes were found but not repeated. It can be seen that its quality passed through different phases. For instance, the first post had a video and not too much text but then Gordon Fletcher (uk.linkedin.com/pub/gordon-fletcher/10/512/a51 ) , an experienced lecturer for Salford University for Advanced Web Design – but not only- advised the students to use more text as Google is an “adept of words”. (http://fredericogtcosta.wordpress.com/2012/10/30/i-will-do-it-in-9-days/)

For that purpose the founder reblogged a post where the copyrights were assured but through academic learning it was found that outbound links were not good in terms of page ranking so it can be considered as another mistake that contributed for better following posts. The main reason why


http://fredericogtcosta.wordpress.com/2012/10/30/i-will-do-it-in-9-days/

http://uk.linkedin.com/pub/gordon-fletcher/10/512/a51/


the founder reblogged a post was to contribute to ascension in terms of web visibility in Google searches (http://fredericogtcosta.wordpress.com/2012/11/02/intro-to-organic-seo/).

Another main contribution was the use of images in the posts. As part of natural mistakes when putting into practice what was learned the previous posts it did not have images but once it was learnt that images contribute to an easier way to turn content more appealing the use of them started to be more regular (http://fredericogtcosta.wordpress.com/2012/11/05/seo-vs-penguin-and-panda/). Proving this affirmation, the number of comments has increased.

Social Media MarketingAlso in this area some changes were made. It was said before that this blog aims to bring a clear vision to the user that the founder is a professional in the sector and therefore social networks were necessary in order to do not stop potential employers from requesting the founder’s services.

For that reason, the founder’s LinkedIn account was heavily advertised through the whole blog with a separated section in the main menu connecting directly to the founder’s LinkedIn account that was previously created, enabling full access to its content (uk.linkedin.com/in/fredericogtcosta/).

The Twitter account can also be accessed, where its main purpose – micro blogging – is used to constantly update the user about news but also to promote the blog itself. In the footer it is given the possibility to follow the founder on twitter (@fredericotcosta) and also see the last 3 updates.

The use of Facebook was used for the same purpose and all the three social networks are connected so when a status is updated the others are too.

But the main reason to explain the use of Facebook is the fact that it is the largest social network in the world so the reach is immense.

Another fact is that employers look at Facebook profiles in early stages of the recruiting process as 76% of employers and recruiting consultants check a candidate’s Facebook profile during the recruitment process (Swallow, E. 2011).

Activities Undertaken Choose of Platform – As explained before, various possibilities including a construction of a website by pure code as well as other CMS frameworks such as Drupal, Winx or the use of just an online CV or Facebook page were considered but the Wordpress core capabilities enumerated before via MoScoW analysis made the founder decline such possibilities.

Social Media profile management – Since the Social networks were a main tool in order to guarantee the blog’s purpose (making my contact available, online CV and constant update to possibly get feedback from possible employers) they needed to be customized. The LinkedIn account had to be made fully accessible so the user could check the online CV. Moreover the Twitter account shows moderated Tweets as well as interests and the same applies for Facebook. For the latter posts management had to be done as it is an account that is used since early times and it was turned into a


http://uk.linkedin.com/in/fredericogtcosta/

http://fredericogtcosta.wordpress.com/2012/11/05/seo-vs-penguin-and-panda/


http://fredericogtcosta.wordpress.com/2012/11/02/intro-to-organic-seo/


very non-complex, naturally used Facebook account, where also interests, articles read and content was also moderated.

(Source: http://www.facebook.com/fgtcosta)

Theme Customization – After moderated, the attention could be turned again into the blog itself. A theme was chosen and the founder could adapt creative interests with the blog. Because football or politics is not directly co-related the recreation of the blog was turned into an old hobbie – urban graffiti. All the details were customized in order to avoid the mix of blue/yellow and red/green mixes as colour blinds would find it hard to navigate. With a fresh, urban style the blog was more personal and creativity not only in terms of structure, content but also image was implemented.

(Source: http://fredericogtcosta.wordpress.com/2012/11/05/seo-vs-penguin-and-panda/)



http://www.facebook.com/fgtcosta


Widget implementation – The widgets were carefully implemented and through this process various changes were made. Ideally the main horizontal menu would be organised like the in http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/, being considered the most popular blog by http://www.ebizmba.com.

The scroll down idea was based on http://www.businessinsider.com/, which I am a regular reader.

Posts – The posts were based on what was being learned week by week so it was decided that at least a weekly post was delivered.

W3 Mark-up Validator and CSS validator did not apply for this report because since it is a Wordpress blog these premises are not put into equation.

Multi-Devices – Several tests in different devices were taken such as mobile phones (Android software, IPhone and Blackberry) and although the display was different from the original (due to readability concerns from Wordpress) it worked in all of them as well as when accessing it from Playstation3 and Xbox.

Constant reply – All the users that liked, shared or followed the blog had a reply, increasing the user-founder relationship.

Creativity & OriginalityThe content of the posts are fully original. The use of video, images and also use of my own words makes it original, being part of a academic learned standard structure through the Emerging Technologies, Creative Emerging Technologies, Dynamic Web Development and Advanced Web Design modules following the standards of accessibility, readability and usability.

Also the use of a graffiti urban trend makes it look very creative and original. However, the theme can be used by anyone but it was customized.

For those reasons this blog can be considered distinctive in both content and appearance and I was careful making sure that it was not on any Top10 list.

Also the solution presented is very creative as it has my own strategy. Other blogs/websites might follow the same procedures but it can be assured that other students read my blog and specially LinkedIn account in order to identify possible ways of structuring them. In order to prove that most of the students had endorsed me without any insistence from myself or change of favours.


http://www.businessinsider.com/

http://www.ebizmba.com/

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/


Sustainability PlanNew categories will be implemented such as Project Management or Economy so the level of interest will increase. Also there will be at least a post per week. The fact that – when visiting the LinkedIn profile – employers can visualize constant shares about the blog will increase the level of interest as well as when checking the contact info they can identify a URL it will be an advantage for someone looking for a SEO consultant to actually see how good the founder capabilities are.

This makes the blog not essential (the CV is essential) but a strong, reliable argument in order to be successful after finishing a degree and in the future it can also bring not just a job position but also projects.



References

Davis, H. (2006). Search Engine Optimization Building Traffic and Making Money with SEO. .: O'Reilly Media, Inc. 2-3.

Swallow, E.. (2011). How Recruiters Use Social Networks to Screen Candidates. Available: http://mashable.com/2011/10/23/how-recruiters-use-social-networks-to-screen-candidates

Info graphic/. Last accessed 10th Dec 2012.

Ezima Article. (2012). Top 15 Most Popular Blogs | December 2012.Available: http://www.ebizmba.com/articles/blogs. Last accessed 12th Dec 2012.

Broad References:



uk.linkedin.com/pub/gordon-fletcher/10/512/a51




http://mashable.com/2011/10/23/how-recruiters-use-social-networks-to-screen-candidates

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