Ownership: Each unit of content (page, data stream, product range …) needs to have a designated content owner. This owner has to be responsible for maintaining his/her content at all times. If a content owner leaves the company, a new one needs to be appointed.

Procedure: Some procedures can be hardwired into the CMS, like content review cycles and broken link notification. Others need to be put into your calendar and maintained manually, like an annual competitor benchmark or goal revisions. We all need procedures to ensure that content is managed properly.

• How will your web page address key user scenarios?
• How will your Facebook-page reward your likers with valuable content?
• What’s the benefit to the user of following you on Twitter?

If you don’t have answers to these questions, you don’t have a content strategy.

However, if you do have answers, these will form the core of your digital marketing.

A persuasive path is a single link or a series of links leading from where you first capture the user’s interest to where you’ll close the sale.

Examples of persuasive paths are:

• Facebook update about new product –> Product page in web shop
• Twitter update about a blog entry on shoe fashion –> Blog entry –> Product page selling the shoes in question.
• Web site front page –> Information about services –> Lead generation form page

Always make sure you’re creating persuasive paths for your users, and you’ll always make sales online.

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If you want to know more, the original white paper on persuasion architecture is still available online. Just remember that today, persuasion architecture is applicable across channels and not just on the individual web site.

The most effective time to tweet seem to be around eight o’clock in the morning, as many Twitter followers use their smart phones to browse tweets when going to work.

Because Facebook has more of a business-to-consumer profile, the argument could be made that six to eight o’clock in the evening is an effective time to post.

If you feed your blog or web site to Twitter or Facebook, you can use the timing feature in your CMS (content management software) or blog platform to publish at the right time for syndication to social media.

“The Social Media Scientist”, Dan Zarrella, has done a lot of interesting studies on timing if you want further reading on this subject.

The easiest way to import an RSS-feed into a Facebook fan page is to do it by typing “RSS” into your Facebook search box. This will bring up a number of applications – my favorite is RSS Graffity:

You then choose which fan page you want to add it to and grant the necessary permissions.

Then it’s just a matter of adding the URL of your blog/web page RSS feed.

If you have a WordPress blog, your RSS-URL will usually be /feed after your URL. Other CMS’s support /RSS or similar. If you can’t find your feed, contact your Content Management System (CMS) provider.

Actually, it’s the other way around. You need to start broadcasting in order to get an audience.

So make your updates good, relevant and valuable to the reader, even before you have any readers. Because any potential liker/follower will almost certainly check out your previous production before deciding to like/follow.

By demonstrating that you actually provide quality content, your number of likers and followers will increase all the quicker.

If you just need to produce a wireframe quickly, there’s no better tool than Mockingbird. Use Chrome to access this website, and you can sketch right in the browser, and there’s a wide range of standard elements like input boxes and text fields to simply drag-and-drop into place.

If you just use it and print out your wireframes, it’s free to use. However, if you want to save projects, you have to sign up. (Prices start at $9/month).   Go Mockingbird!

We recommend following these rules:

A-scenarios: Completion of these should be available to the user right on the front page. For an example, see AddThis where the A-scenario is getting the AddThis code. A-scenarios should also be available through global menu items.

B-scenarios: Completion of these should be available through menu items, global and/or local.

C-scenarios: Completion of these may be available through menus, although this is not strictly required. If related to core business, completion of C-scenarios may also be made available through designated marketing fields, typically placed in the right hand column.

Here’s an example of a simple wire frame using this categorization:

User scenarios can be categorized into three categories:

A-scenarios – the main tasks (usually about 1-3) that about 80 % of the users are looking to complete. Example: For an online bookstore, A-scenarions would be 1) buying a particular book, 2) finding a good book on a particular subject or 3) finding an interesting book to buy.

B-scenarions – the tasks that the remaining 20 % of users are looking to complete, for instance finding your head office address, joining your affiliate programme or returning a book.

C-scenarios - the tasks that the user is not herself actively seeking out, but you as the site owner would like her to complete. These include looking at promotional items or being made aware that you’re moving offices.

Categorizing scenarios according to this will help you prioritize design elements.

1. Define the most important user scenarios for your website. (Scenarios are the reasons the user visits the web site, ie to find the price of a specific product or find your head quarter street address.)
2. Find a test user who doesn’t know your website too well. Describe the tasks (scenarios) to him, and watch him trying to complete them.
3. Observe without helping the user. Pay particular attention to whatever misunderstandings and problems he encounters.
4. Afterwards, fix your web site accordingly.