Lately a couple of people have chided me in a good natured way about the sheer volume of sites and social networks I update and manage. I think this is great. My goal is to own the whole web.

What they don’t realize is how much bigger my cache website ideas is that I’ve never actually acted on… To that end, here are a just a few of domains I own that I haven’t actually done anything with… If you have some ideas, let me know.

www.pointandshoot.me – I registered this with my growing love for point and shoot aesthetic in photography, film, and junk cameras.

www.pawnshopphotos.com – Fairly self explanatory, especially if you follow a few of my recent blog postings.

www.saintjohnisthenewhalifax.com – Not sure what to do with this… but in case you’re having trouble deciphering it reads Saint John is the new Halifax.

www.pervasiveweb.com – The web is everywhere and getting into more nooks and crannies of our lives by the minute. I was surprised to find this domain unregistered.

www.abelleblanc.com – Um… yeah… this is for… stuff. I used to own ivancourt.com too, but I’ve let it lapse along with a bunch of other politicians and political domains.

www.provingground.ca – This is my lab… where I test PHP code and stuff… might need to put something public facing on there though.

What is it? Bounce rate refers to the percentage of visitors who bounce away from your website after arriving without ever clicking a link to other pages on your site. It is calculate by the following formula:

What does it mean? If your bounce rate is high, visitors are not engaging with your content, not able to use your navigation, or going elsewhere to find content because it either isn’t on your page or isn’t easy to find.

What’s considered a good bounce rate? There’s no real answer to this question as there are just too many variables. Generally 20% is considered really good. Over 35% means there’s room for improvement. Anything over 50% quite often means your site has serious problems.

How do I improve bounce rate? Ah, the million dollar question. Here are few tips that can help, plus the real answer at the bottom.

Make sure your site is accessible and meets web standards. This is where hiring a professional web developer who understands everything going on behind the visitor experience and who has an appreciation for standards is key. But also, keep your audience in mind — if you’re selling widgets to a primarily male audience, make sure your site can be viewed by the 7% to 10% of men who are red-green colorblind.

1. Clear calls to action. Let visitors know where they can click, where you’d like them to click, and how to find your most popular information such as how to contact you.
2. Update your site frequently, and make sure the new content is noted on the most popular entry pages. If visitors don’t see any changes in the page they usually come to visit, it’s unlikely they’ll click through to other pages.
3. Use your other analytics to guide you. This is where understanding all of your site’s data can really help. Use the search terms people are finding you using, and the most popular information to guide your site navigation and calls to action. Another example, if you discover through your analytics that most of your visitors are using a mobile device or browser, make sure your page renders quickly on mobile devices and beware of the limitations of those browsers. For instance, the iPhone can’t display Adobe Flash graphics or animations.

The best way to improve your bounce rate, and really all web key performance indicators, is to perform the following steps:

1. Test
2. Adapt.
3. Rinse, lather, repeat.

It is only by trying different permutations of your website that you can get a handle on what works for your audience, and what sends them off to Google to search out your competitors. Try 1 call to action for a few days, make note of how many people followed through with a click, and then try something different until you get a bounce rate you can accept.

If you’d like more information on understanding or improving your website, contact me.

Jay Baer has a great round-up of tools (and a little about techniques) on his blog today titled 39 Social Media Tools I’ll use today. I use a lot of the same tools.

And something I use that isn’t mentioned…

And my new favorite tool is Tumblr and the Tumblr iPhone app. Tumblr is the easiest way to blog anything. I tried Tumblr awhile back and it was interesting, but not quite there. But now, combined with the iPhone app, it’s an incredible bit of technology.

I can open up my iPhone app anywhere, take a photo, write a few lines, and even record audio right from the phone. Then with a single click publish my new content to the blog, Twitter, and Facebook simultaneously.

I know there are other ways to accomplish that, but Tumblr is the easiest way I’ve found. I’ve been playing with the tool while operating my new silly site–Steal my Idea.

Tumblr isn’t as full featured or flexible as running your own Wordpress blog, but it’s very efficient and easy to get going.

Hugh Macleod, author of Ignore Everybody has the best keys to social media marketing I’ve ever read.

1. Figure out what your gift is, and give it to them on a regular basis. 2. Make sure it’s received as a real gift, not as an advertising message. 3. Then figure out exactly what it is that your trail of breadcrumbs leads back to.

This echos some of the points I made in my post about being successful online. Most social media experts tend to focus on the engagement part of social media, which is crucial, but tend to gloss over what that actually means or how to begin. Engaging with your audience begins with giving.

Mr. Macleod does this via his cartoon a day email list. Gary Vaynerchuk does it by giving video content about wine and business away for free. Nick Campbell does it by giving away tutorials that you can’t find anywhere else. Chase Jarvis does it by giving back via his blog, but also through real opportunities for photographers to meet and learn from him and each other. David Nightingale does it by giving away tips and techniques about how he makes his amazing photographs. BH Photo does it be providing free webinars, Radian6 does so as well.

All of these people are providing real value to their communities for nothing, but leaving a little trail of crumbs that leads back to whatever it is they do to put food on the table for their families.

For me, it’s getting real old watching all these great companies get left behind because they’re too busy planning how to take action instead of just doing it. Every single day I’m encountering organizations that chew up days, weeks, and months talking about a strategy for their online presence.

I’m not sure how it got started, but I think it grew out of this concept that marketing is done in 30 second slots, and that great campaigns are built around a single idea that gets replicated over many different channels (posters, billboards, tv, magazines, etc.). Neither of those models make any sense on the web.

I see hours spent trying to determine the ROI on social media — if we spend $XXX,XXX what’s the return in real dollar amounts? User experience specialists hold long drawn out sessions to determine what button goes where, and may you die of lightning strikes if you make it the wrong color. What about SEO, don’t we need to make sure that our keywords are ‘optimized’? And chief among the complaints and strategizing–where do we find the resources to create content?

Starting today, all that kind of wheel spinning crap is dead to me.

It’s not that strategy isn’t important; it’s that it’s just not that complicated.

Here’s how the strategy for any organization online should go:
1) Determine who you want to connect with
2) Start talking to those people
3) Listen
4) Adapt

That’s it.

Go do.

This whole stupid article talks about how people are moving to downloading, and legal troubles, and blah blah blah.

I want to support (read BUY STUFF) from artists I can hang with–that doesn’t mean Twitter, or Facebook, or some other stupid thing. That can be a part of it, but I’m talking about artists who make music for me.

And I’m a pretty weird guy, but there are thousands of me. Not millions, thousands. Or maybe a few hundred. Enough to support some artists who get it.

Not enough to keep thousands of support staff productive.

But enough to keep artists productive.

Dear big TV networks, big book publishers, and really big anything,

We’re coming for you next.

Signed,
The internet.

This article isn’t exactly about being online, but rather about being creative.

I just finished reading an article by Alan D. Mutter calling on writers to collectively stand up and demand to be paid for work they have been doing for free or for cheap. He even provides a helpful spreadsheet full of numbers loosely based on an arbitrary rate of 4 times minimum wage in order to demonstrate what a freelance writer should be paid.

How can you possibly determine what a freelancer should be paid without any consideration for the demand of skillset of the freelancer?

Mr. Mutter makes an argument in the article that journalists, collectively, are holding themselves back from being fairly valued by working for rates that do not provide fair value or a living wage. It’s an argument I’ve seen a lot of professional photographers make over and over on the blogs and forums I’ve followed over the last few years.

There is this idea that somehow if all of the photographers (or journalists) of a particular caliber (or any caliber) get together and agree to charge a certain rate the buyers of journalism and photography will suddenly decide that those skills are more respected and more expensive.

I don’t see how that will ever work. The market sets the value of photography and writing, and the market decided long ago that free is good and 1995 magazine rates for unoriginal or uninspiring writing and photogaphy printed on poor quality paper and only available at a select number of specialty magazine stores is not gonna fly anymore.

You cannot subvert the supply and demand relationship by convincing suppliers to charge more, you’ll just invite a new supplier at the old price point.

In this case the price point being discussed is sometimes exposure.

Look, when most people come to me and asks me to work on their project for exposure, I’ll be the first guy to tell them exposure won’t buy me cheeseburgers. But that’s because I’m confident that they can’t find my skillset and experience for less than I charge. They might find someone who fits their project at a lower price point, maybe even the exposure price point, but if that works their project never required my skill level to begin with, or they are risking their project by using someone with a sub-par skill level.

That’s most people. But if a potential client who does consistently cool work that I want to do or the kind of work I might want to try but don’t have the complete skillset or experience to charge for–I’ll work for exposure, or a lower rate, or expenses. That’s the buyers risk.

I like working. I challenge myself all the time without potential for monetary award at all. I do that because it’s fun. Why wouldn’t I accept someone else’s challenge if it’s going to potentially gain me new clients, help someone else out, and/or improve my skill set while having fun? I’m not taking work away from someone else. If someone else was required or available that would provide a higher value to the project the buyer would go find someone else.

Finding that someone else could mean hiring an expensive person who can mitigate risk at a rate that limits potential profit, or it could mean hiring someone for ‘exposure’ that costs very little but comes with a high risk in relation to the skillset required to execute on a particular set of requirements.

The fact is, exposure works. New media is littered with creative people who are making and growing their careers built on giving stuff away for free. But you have to be exposing–and I’d argue not just exposing but actively hustling–something innovative and creative enough that someone somewhere sees the value in buying it.

If your skill level is such that no one wants to pay you a living wage for what you do, you gotta go do something else that you can get paid for or up your game. It’s not going to work just to tell everyone else who’ll work for cheaper to charge what you wish you were worth.

Mr. Mutter is correct when he ends his article by saying ‘Whatever you do, though, don’t sell yourself short, because journalists can’t protect society if they can’t protect their own careers.’

As creatives, we need to understand what we’re worth, but what we’re worth is exactly what someone will pay.

Writers, journalists, photographers, web developers — we fail when we let someone take advantage of us by accepting compensation that doesn’t align with our skillset. However, that’s an individual failure and not a failure that can be addressed by collectively deciding to charge more. That only works with a skillset in limited supply.

And let’s face it, mediocre writing and mediocre photography and mediocre web development is really easy to do, so there will always be someone willing to do it on the cheap–maybe even free.

Recently, I’ve been giving a lot of thought about the processes we lead clients through at my place of work when they come to us for online services. We are full service agency, and we have great experience in house in relation to branding, social media, design, and web development. My own role changes every day, but in general I’m the geek–the guy you go see to make your thingamajig digital.

Most of my current blog readers, I suspect, know me as a photographer, but the truth is I just goof with this stuff for fun. Get me going, and I am downright zealous about the power of online and democratized communications to change the world–I’ve seen it in my lifetime.

I started goofing around with this stuff when I was about 13. I used to go to the computer lab at Hampton High at noon hour and use the teacher’s computer, because it was the only one that had a modem. I would connect to local bulletin board systems that people had set up and argue and discuss things with people in online forums. At the time, greater Saint John had a pretty cool scene with maybe 20 systems running and a few hundred active users.

I developed my first website in 1996. It was a monthly literary thing that published the poetry and short stories I was writing along with some other friends and people I communicated with online. It wasn’t exactly a hit, but I learned a few things and I had a few visitors. I built other sites growing up, and in 2001 I went to work full time as a web developer at Media Planet.

I’ve seen a lot of changes in the few years, and lately social media is all the buzz, but to those that have been keeping up social media is just the logical extension of what people have always wanted to do online — share and connect. Give and get.

But this isn’t about me and my growing long in the tooth. It was with those changes and experience in mind that I set down to encapsulate what were, for me, the absolutes. Like a lot of creatives, developers, and agencies, I struggle with our reactiveness–order taking–instead of giving a beginning point, because–at least in our geographic market–a whole strategy for being or marketing or engaging online seems to be sorely lacking, and I think it’s vital to being a successful company or organization or–at leat for those entering the workforce–a successful person.

I came up with these 16 things I know to be true for any client that wants help, whether it’s with Twitter or Facebook or Youtube or building a website or online advertising or whatever it might be that happens in my world–because at the end of the day it doesn’t matter what the channel is. A year from now the channel will have changed–maybe it’ll be Bummpy or Flitker or Dumpdoodler or whatever it is. I wanted to propose some ideas of what I know to be true about companies and organizations just being online.

(I claimed all those site names first!)

I’m going to give these to some other people where I work, and I’m sure on some points there will be disagreement and debate. I’m hoping that here, on this blog, there might also be some disagreement and debate. Please, if you work in this industry, I’d really dig it if you carefully considered these points and provided some feedback.

I’m open to being wrong, and I really hope there are more thoughts I haven’t put here that people can add. But I’m not open to doing things half-cocked anymore. A complete approach to an online presence is the only approach that will work. I’m tired of seeing hundreds of hours spent on developing elaborate site maps and then struggling to fill them with content, or seeing organizations spending oodles of money on a social media strategy without having any human resources willing and able to be social.

So here are my 16 theses.

1. You do not need a website. You need a web presence.

2. Your website must be the hub of your web presence.

3. A web presence consists of an eco-system of web properties on which you may assert varying levels of influence.

4. The ‘you’ we are talking about is a human. On the web, the construct of the company only serves as a way of identifying humans with like minded goals or ideals.

5. Companies and organizations do not have missions or visions, and they do not have a voice. An effective web presence facilitates the exchange of human interactions.

6. Set your humans free. The humans in your company are your company on the web. If they are not on the web, your organization cannot be effective on the web.

7. If you have nothing to say, we can’t help you.

8. If you have something to say, your web presence is always a good place to say it. That is not to suggest it is the only place or the best place, but only that it is always a good place.

9. If you decide to say something using web tools available to you, say it in a conversational tone. Anything else makes me think you’re hiding something.

10. People will only care about what you have to say if you are giving them something. You must give an opportunity to learn, connect, feel, or trade. Some combination of the four is preferable.
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11. How you say something is what you say. The visual impression of your website will forever color what you have to say.

12. The structure of your web presence should be such that it facilitates giving, but if necessary it is better to give without a structure than to create a structure without giving. Creating content is always more important than creating structure.

13. It is more useful to create a structure for existing content than to create a structure to be filled with yet-to-be-created content. Start with giving.

14. If you don’t know what to give, start with listening. People will tell you what to give if you make yourself available.

15. If you want us to help you create a successful web presence, and then walk away, your web presence will fail. If you start giving, your giving will become so successful it will require new and better ways of giving. This is the most important point.

16. The stakes are high, but the risk of not having a web presence that is giving and engaged with your market community are higher.

Your thoughts?