15 Essential Checks Before Launching Your Website

Your website is designed, the CMS works, content has been added and the client is happy. It’s time to take the website live. Or is it? When launching a website, you can often forget a number of things in your eagerness to make it live, so it’s useful to have a checklist to look through as you make your final touches and before you announce your website to the world. This article reviews some important and necessary checks that web-sites should be checked against before the official launch — little details are often forgotten or ignored, but – if done in time – may sum up to an overall greater user experience and avoid unnecessary costs after the official site release.

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Creating Widespread Empathy

Dev Patnaik "This manifesto is dedicated to what ought be a mind-scorchingly obvious idea. An idea that every successful company ought to know and understand in their bones. An idea that the vast majority of companies nonetheless fail to get.

That idea? That empathy equals growth."

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Source: Change This

Do you Market like Led Zeppelin or The Grateful Dead?

David Meerman Scott "...Measuring success by focusing only on the number of times the mainstream media write or broadcast about you misses the point. If a blogger is spreading your ideas, that's great. If ten people email a link to your information to their networks or post about you on their Facebook page, that's amazing. You're reaching people, which was the point of seeking media attention in the first place. But most PR people only measure traditional media like magazines, newspapers, radio, and TV, and this practice doesn’t capture the value of sharing.

To create a World Wide Rave, forget about sales leads and ignore mainstream media. Instead, focus on spreading your ideas. Make your information totally free, with no registration required."

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Source: Change This

Why Big Brands Struggle With Social Media

Social media continues to grow globally in terms of adoption, usage, interest and impact in a massive way. It’s undeniably changing the way that content and information work particularly in terms of the publishing of consumer opinion. This has transformed the way that consumers relate to brands and the way that brands should operate, driving direct interaction, transparency and a more consultative approach. However, we still operate in a system defined by the old media world and consequently big brand involvement is still in the main tentative and sporadic. From my experience of trying to get big brands to embrace the social revolution, there are a number of reasons why they have yet to embrace the real opportunities that involvement can deliver: 1. Social Media is often viewed as just another marketing channel: It is of course so much more

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10 Secrets For Creating Viral Content

I’m frequently asked the question “how exactly do you create content that goes viral?” I always try and explain that while it isn’t lightning in a bottle, it isn’t something exactly formulaic either. I’ll usually start answering the question by explaining whether you’re creating blog posts, images, videos, online marketing campaigns, web apps - you name it, it’s really all about the content. But all other things being equal, there is still a ton of great content out there you’re competing with. How exactly do you get your idea to replicate in the petri dish of the web and accelerate out of control between real users? I’ve been successful at creating viral content both with posts on my own blog as well as with client projects including web applications, community building projects, new products, etc. I’ve also created plenty of stuff that didn’t go anywhere, which is all part of the process. The web is the ultimate scratchpad for communications professionals. If you’re not failing, you’re not succeeding either. There is not necessarily a science to viral, although I’ve been able to reproduce it enough times to have picked up on a few secrets. Today I’ll share just 10 things I’ve learned from personal experience creating viral content:

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