If you are a long-time Wordpress developer who understands all the ins and outs of theme development then this post isn’t for you.
OK, now we’ve got that out of the way, for those of you left, let’s try and decipher where the real value lies in theme frameworks. Help comes in the shape of a Wordpress Meetup earlier this week in San Francisco. We had the chance to hear a number of case studies from internet marketers, developers and blog owners – each with a different perspective on the utility of theme frameworks.
Alejo Grigera is a product expert at Google but also runs Mr Bluesummers: a blog covering 3D modeling. He talks us through Arjuna, which he terms a ‘robust theme’. What does he mean by that? Let’s step back and look at what a standard theme is.
Standard themes
The basics of Wordpress themes means you can take the default Wordpress blog theme that comes out of the box:
and turn it into something like this:
Themes give you the power to enforce your own look and feel around your sweet musings.
Robust themes
But what if you want to take this a step further if you have different types of posts (eg. video vs. articles) or different sidebar elements? Well, certain themes out there have a number of options allowing you tweak certain elements. Arjuna is one of these. It allowed Alejo to turn the standard Arjuna theme:
into this:
Notice the changed header (including translation flags) and different elements running down the right hand side. All possible due to options within Arjuna. He also has the flexibility to change the layout based on the type of post (eg. 2 column versus 3 column) – all from within the Wordpress admin console.
Theme Frameworks
If you’re still following, let’s start delving into theme frameworks proper. Jeremy Reither from R3R consulting showed us what he has achieved with Thematic on his side project My Family Law. Here customization goes a step further with different sections of the sites having completely different layouts.
Such as the library page:
And the article view:
Again, there’s a way you can code this with PHP but theme frameworks make this level of personalization possible from within the admin console. This is important for My Family Law as there are multiple authors – more skilled in the ways of law rather than development. Each author can have their own blog and some flexibility over how their posts appear, yet still adhere to the overarching ‘framework’.
Thematic also supports a number of widgets from Google Ads to Twitter, and by combining with a plugin like Widget Logic, you can fine tune which sidebar elements you want to display on which pages. Powerful stuff.
Child Themes
A big advantage of theme frameworks prior to Wordpress 3.0 was the ability to add child themes: that is related themes that share common elements but can be substantially different. Since Wordpress 3.0 came out, this functionality is included in the core, however depending on your implementation, you might still want to use the frameworks to handle children.
What exactly is a child theme? Chancey Mathews from GigaOm summed this up perfectly (he uses the Carrington theme framework). Look at these sites…
GigaOm:
The Apple Blog:
Earth2Tech:
All have the same structure and share common elements (including that signature thick black underline), but there are obvious differences. However they all share the same core display code. This makes it easier to maintain and easier to control updates across all the sites. I can say this from experience having spent hours adding extra navigation to a series of five blogs which were essentially identical save for minimal elements like headers and sidebar links. A framework could have saved me hours.
Anatomy of a framework
Jeremy Reither showed this image explaining where the framework code sits in the Wordpress template.
(click on the image for more detail)
The framework effectively wraps its code around the existing Wordpress code, extending the functionality. The architecture of each framework does differ so it is worth investigating which one makes sense for you.
I’ve just started work on a redesign of this site using the Thematic framework and so far have been surprised with the ease with which you can built out a fully-functioning site. One word of caution: most frameworks rely heavily on the power and flexibility of CSS (especially in terms of child theme implementation) so brush up on your CSS skills if you are looking to modify an existing theme.
So if you are looking to create a stylized blog/CMS with Wordpress, look further into the world of frameworks. If you have have experiences to share around theme framework implementation, please comment!
Those SES guys in conjunction with Hubspot just hosted an excellent presentation by Karen Wikre, Google’s Senior Manager of Corporate Communications. Karen has been at Google for over 7 years and in that time has played a prominent part in bringing blogs into the center of Google’s communication strategy.
Why the empasis on blogs?
As Karen points out, blogs allow you to reach customers, those who know nothing about you, critics and the press all through a single post. In some ways blogs can be thought of as surrogates for newsletters, where you don’t have to wait to collect 16 articles before publishing. She also points out that posts serve well as your statement on an issue that can exist for years. She draws on the Googlebomb example, where the original post served them well years later when the issue arose again. There is a downside to this approach: especially if you are in an industry/organization where the viewpoint can shift over time. A blog post has a serious shelf life so be prepared to stand by what you say for months, if not years.
Blogs also allow you to put out information that you wouldn’t consider for a press release. Think about the back story into how a product came to life. You can also go further and integrate customer stories, video footage and geeky stuff about what’s going on under the hood. There can be an audience for all of this, but the traditional press release really doesn’t offer the breadth.
As an aside, I’m you’re probably aware that Google owns the Blogger platform so it makes sense for them to adopt this tool for company communications.
Just how many official blogs does Google have?
Karen mentions that currently Google has more than 150 product-related blogs (with over 10 million unique visitors a month). supplement that with around 80 Twitter accounts reaching 2.3 million followers and you get some idea for the scope of this effort and the payback in terms of visibility. There are Facebook pages for the consumer products, however these are a newer addition.
What should you consider when starting a blog?
I think Karen gives as good a criteria checklist as I’ve seen:
Do you have a lot of regular announcements?
Are you in a busy area with a lot of activity?
Do you have a lot of customers (eg. Gmail)?
Do you have a strong community of developers (maybe around an API)?
Karen also points out the notable exceptions where blogs can make sense. If you have an area where less frequent detailed stories may exist, this can still make sense for a blog. For instance a research department, or security team. In this case the content does not appear very often, but when it does, it tends to be deep. An external example of this is Clay Shirky. His posts are infrequent, but read like book chapters.
What are key parts of the content strategy?
While Karen points out her team tends to take a light touch approach and isn’t in the business of editing posts, she does give some content pointers that are used in training:
A good title is very important: especially as more people consume information on mobile devices and through channels other than directly visiting your web site
Use a consistent style (eg. around capitalization)
A post should have one designated author, even if it has been worked on by a team
If the message is global, think about translating the content
For product announcements, specify the availability
Offer the most useful links
Clearly mark any updates you make and don’t alter either the title or the timestamp
Closely related is the voice with which you write. Google relies on an informal tone (one person talking to another, rather than a company broadcast). The language should be clear and direct, peppered with examples and understandable real-world examples. If humor is used, make sure it is appropriate.
When should a blog be terminated?
Occasionally, it may not make sense to continue with a blog. It could be that the blog is not being updated, there is a new related blog that is more relevant, visitors have stopped coming or a project has been terminated. In these cases the blog should be shut down: a final post should be written as explanation, the blog removed from the public directory, but importantly, the blog should not be deleted. The posts should still be available on the web.
Do Google have official bloggers?
Whilst there are some in the organization who blog frequently (such as Matt Cutts), Google does not have official bloggers. Blogging is a part of the job description of some employees and others may be asked to create a blog post (a product engineer that comes up with a new gadget). Google prefers to go to the source of the story and have that person tell it, rather than have official blogger/journalist types.
Karen provided a great insight into how one of the world’s most successful companies makes blogging a cornerstone to its communications strategy.
News evolves. We’ve gone from print to radio, TV and wait for it… the internet. The humble press release has had to evolve too. As an in-depth piece in Econsultancy points out about the emergence of TV:
Companies sprang up to service this need and PR people had to learn a new skill – video news.
So why is the Internet and the social media news release any different? It’s not a case of killing the press release. It’s just presenting your news in the format that gets the best results.
After all, from the position of a hard-pressed journalist, the easier a story is to construct, the greater the chance that it will make it to publication. As I’ve said earlier, the blog format works well as the canvas on which you can paint your story.
The entrance or portal into your news stories is equally important. On a quick scan of all the usual suspects in the tech field, I’d agree with Econsultancy that Cisco have done a neat job with their news room:
Journalists are spoilt with links to both the blog post AND press release on major stories. Both formats have heavy doses of videos and photos. The homepage has links to all the major networks: Flickr, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube et al. RSS feeds abound. As do embed scripts so you can pick up the content yourself. You can even personalize the experience so you only see the news most relevant to you (ideal for any company with a wide portfolio).
One thing strikes me about this Cisco example: what they have come up with looks suspiciously like a reputable publication’s online outlet. For instance, here is the current homepage of the BBC (a traditional UK TV/Radio outlet):
Similarities include the heavy treatment of a featured news story, powerful use of images, prominent display of video content.
So is this just an evolution in the humble press release?
One key difference with online news is that people are consuming news from beyond the traditional news outlets. So beyond attracting the press industry (I include bloggers/analysts here) with a rich newsroom, companies have a greater chance of going that step further and getting their message out directly to their target audience, bypassing journalists completely.
Still not convinced there is value in creating social media-rich online newsrooms?
It appears there is a whole discipline around how journalists use links in posts: link journalism. This is a thorny subject as it involves passing authority onto a third party over who you may have no control.
Ryan Thornburg offers a cheat sheet on curating links to his journalism students. Items covered include verifying the accuracy of any links you refer to, in addition to making sure links are as relevant and specific as possible. Links can give background, technical information, audio, video, the list goes on. This makes them a significant tool in online journalism.
One thing Ryan doesn’t touch on is the importance of the link to search engines. Google helped make search an integral part of the web experience for most of us. Their secret sauce to finding the ideal results to list involved looking at the link structure between pages (often termed pageRank). Pages that have more links flowing in are considered authorities. These pages confer some of that authority down to other sites when they link to them.
This particularly favors large encyclopedic sites. And that seems to work for us. What better source to find information on Neanderthal Man than Wikipedia? (Yes, Wikipedia is the number one link in Google). University sites and news sites also fare well under this system. So if a news site passes a link on to another site, it helps the destination site gain prominence in search (nothing to be scoffed at: I’ve seen traffic increase ten-fold for long periods of time – all due to high rankings in search thanks to a single link from a high authority site.)
In most cases this is all good. The problem comes when you are writing about something on the web in a negative light and want to link to that page to highlight your point. In the world of search, your link is taken as a positive referral – so a damning report in a reputable news source can work wonders for your search engine optimization (SEO).
To get around this (and help combat the growing problem of comment spam), the search engines got together in 2005 and created the ‘no-follow’ attribute. Add this to your link and the search engines would take it that you want to make a link for explanatory sake but you do not want to pass on that all-important link juice to the destination.
Funny thing is, it is still rarely used in the media. Case in point: take the recent gripe from the UK’s Telegraph that the Wikileaks showed political bias in distributing key information on the war in Afghanistan to to the left-leaning press (including its competitor, The Guardian):
See the link on the first instance of ‘Wikileaks’? It’s a straight link not including the ‘no-follow’ attribute.
So while Will Heaven, the Deputy Blogs Editor is lambasting Wikileaks, he’s also providing the site with a valuable link that will help it grow in prominence. I’m somehow not convinced this is the desired effect of his vitriol.
I’d call on journalists to make better use of the no-follow tag. New journalists coming through the ranks should be made aware. ‘Think before you link’ should be an integral part of link journalism education. The link is a powerful tool and should be handled with wisely and responsibly to maintain the integrity of the web.
Funny thing about working for an uber-company is that sometimes you learn about the cool stuff being produced through external sources. Such was the case this week when the excellent FIR podcast made an obscure mention to IBM’s augmented reality (AR) app for Wimbledon.
Tantalized, I had to look further. And this is what I discovered:
Nice, huh?
It’s like using your smart phone as a pair of those goggles sci fi writers used to dream about: superimposing the location of important places (or deadly villains) as you look around. How does it work? The app ties together the live feed from your webcam with your GPS (so the phone knows where you are) and your internal compass (to sense in which direction you are pointing). Add to that a map with all the important places at Wimbledon plotted on it (courts, cafes, info booths, toilets), and you have one very cool app. Disclaimer: this is the explanation of a vaguely technical marketer, no Einstein progeny.
OK, words and pictures will only go so far. See this app in technicolor action through the wonders of YouTube:
BTW, I should point out that this year wasn’t the first time this app was featured at Wimbledon. However, the growth in smart phone usage has made it more widespread and meant it has received more coverage.
What have others being saying about it? Chris Rawlinson points out that Ogilvy worked together with IBM to develop this technology. AugmentedPlanet give more technical background, explaining how the app was developed using the Wikitude browser. Eurodroid found the app surprisingly useful, and not just a piece of mobile marketing fluff. Tennis Video Channel point out that you can even point your phone in the direction of a court and watch live footage (for instance, if you are queuing to get in).
What are the wider implications of a tool like this? I’d suggest it’s overkill for your average company picnic (although could be reassuring to tag your boss and know where they are at all times to avoid any embarrassments), however if you are involved in planning large events, there could be some real value here.
For instance, if you can tie this up with an event management tool, attendees can bookmark their sessions and use an AR application to navigate to the next session. You could also point attendees to places of interest, such as book signings or special events. To cover housekeeping, it makes sense to add toilet facilities, cafes, etc.
Any other applications or case studies around augmented reality you’d like to share? Let me know!
Not too surprising given there’s no press release process in the Google world. Both GigaOm and The Register seem comfortable linking to the blog: both sites have arguably blurred the line between blog and news outlet, and I’d contend a blog has a certain that goes beyond a flat press release (which I’ve written about previously).
To Google’s credit, the blog post is:
More in-depth than a standard press release
Written informally
Detailed in its description of the benefits of the merger to Google and MetaWeb and customer base (webmasters/web users)
Attributed to a Director of Product Management
Open ended, with links to a video explaining what MetaWeb does (in ‘Plain English’ style)
There’s been a lot of talk about the SMR (social media release) but I’d say this approach although somewhat similar goes a step further too. SMR examples I’ve seen are essentially a press release with multimedia elements (eg. audio/video/images) listed on the sidebar. Blogs on the other hand offer a more fluid approach. Have some video? Embed it into the fabric of the post. Images likewise. Less clunky than having a specific multimedia section (although there’s no reason to keep this in addition).
So, next time you have something to say, why not get a product expert to crack open the blog editor and say something of real value – for journalists, analysts, your client base and the wider public. Think beyond the puffy press release, footnoted with a solitary link to the company website: frame a clearly explained story, and if you can, use audio and video to add color and create a compelling experience.
You may just find your message stretching further than you imagine.
Fellow IBMer Kevin Czap recently took the position of the community manager for the developerWorks Cloud Computing Central group. DeveloperWorks is IBM’s central external resource for developers and IT professionals and Kevin defined his role as follows:
The Community Managers act as an advocate for the Community. They are the eyes and ears of their respective communities, kind of like a intermediary between developerWorks and the group, listening and acting upon requirements, suggestions, feedback and ultimately making the group one that thrives, flourishes and is valued by the Community. Some examples include lining up Subject Matter Experts to blog,contribute, and connecting group members to the appropriate IBM contact when needed. Basically we’re here to help the community in any way we can.
Why do you need a community manager? As Kevin points out, he has a clear objective to make the group one “that thrives, flourishes and is valued by the Community“.
As the 2010 World Cup draws to a close, I can’t help but think of the coach/manager gesticulating wildly to get the most out of his team. I see the community manager role as somewhat similar even though the linkages between members of online communities aren’t necessarily as strong as between players on the same team (especially given that members work for many companies, some of which can even have competitive relationships). Having said this, having someone on the sidelines who can bring energy and verve to the group, marshall team members when needed and deal with any questions or conflict that arises, is a useful function.
I’ve been involved in a number of social media or community initiatives over the last few years, and by far the most successful are those which have a clearly defined community manager. To those of you that work in this space, this may be a no brainer. This role appears to be more commonly overlooked when these communities are set up by marketing departments (given that I work in marketing, I can’t help but point a finger at myself too here).
The problem comes when you sit down to plan the initiative. Quite often this starts with thinking of a platform or application. ‘We need blogs and forums’. ‘We need a Facebook page’. ‘We need RSS capabilities’. Sure, at some point you will need to consider these aspects, but as analysts like Charlene Li have been pointing out for some time, step back and think of the people involved before you get near the technology. And the people for your prospective community need a value prop, guidance and occasionally gentle persuasion if your community is to become a success. Just because you build it, this does not mean they will necessarily come.
So spend the time and think of who will manage the community. I’d suggest this not being a field marketing or demand program manager who may be 1) overworked and 2) have competing interests to overall community development (ie. swamp the community with their company’s promotional content). So, what should this person ideally be doing? Some examples of the role a community manager can play:
Establishing an editorial calendar to make sure a blog is constantly fed with relevant content
Finding an expert who can answer comm0n questions posed by newbies
Tactfully weeding out trolls and threads that could diminish the overall value of the community
Devising appropriate rewards for the most valuable members of the community (My Media Labs takes this a step further and talks about setting up a leadership team consisting of super users)
Posing questions to help shape discussion
Monitoring the community to understand where most activity occurs
This is just for starters. You should make sure you have someone who has the requisite skill set to carry out these tasks. They should be knowledgeable but not overbearing. Tactful but forceful when necessary. A good planner yet flexible. Get the feeling that this person may be as rare as a sunflower in Antartica? You’re probably right. However some parts of the organization may already be inculcating these kind of characteristics in their employees. Check out the support or customer service department. Investigate the technical sales team. Mine the depths of your R &D department. These departments give you a better chance of locating community managers. I’d suggest that the traits are more important than the experience. There is much that can be learnt on the job.
Finding the right person is invaluable for the success of your community. A recent debacle on Nestle’s Facebook fan page illustrates how bad things can get if there’s dissonance between you and your community. Shel Holtz and Neville Hobson discussed this subject at some length on their FIR podcast and Shel has this excellent follow-up on questions you should ask before setting up a Facebook fan page.
So, if you are about to setup a new community, or are wondering how you can breathe new life into an existing forum, make sure you have a community manager in place. Just as the fortunes of many a world cup squad has hinged on the influence of the manager, so can a community manager make or break an online community.
Fellow IBMer 
