So we have this thing in our lives called Facebook and it seems to have struck a chord with many people from all walks of life, all of the world. For all it’s unseemly parts, you do get control of the service so that you receive mostly only things you want in your main feed. That’s good — this makes it like email in that it’s “permission marketing”.

That means when you “like” something, you are giving permission to the organization to continue the conversation with you. So that concept right there is why Google’s panties are in a bunch over Facebook. The Google Ad Network is based off of “interruption marketing”, which is less effective because of obvious reasons. Learn more about permission marking over at Wikipedia.

Here are my tips:

• Post engaging content — Sounds simple but this can be very difficult in practice. Think about your own Facebook experiences from “liking” a business and ask yourself what you found helpful and what was not. That would be a good starting point.
• Post pics and videos — The Facebook news feed of your followers is competitive, so pics and videos will stand out against other content.
• Install Facebook website plug-ins — Facebook offers a variety of tools that bring their service features to your website. Use those tools to leverage the massive installed user base of Facebook to start participating right on your website.
• Write well — Remember that whatever content you do publish is in competition with other Facebook content. Write in an appropriate manner for your business of course but also try to be concise, straight forward and easy to understand. Writing is very difficult for some people, so I think it is a plus to be creative but it is not a requirement.
• Post on weekend and holidays — Simply put, people are on Facebook every single day. Post when your competition is not working on the weekend.

In the ExpressionEngine content management system (CMS), you create custom fields to be used in your custom control panel. Those custom fields have useful meta data which you can unlock by using Variable Tag Pairs.

Typically, the custom fields are used in the template as variables. When used as a pair, you can get useful info out of the variable. For example; file size, file upload path, original upload date or just the file name itself. The possibilities are endless! Learn more by checking out the user guide:

Variable Tag Pairs »

One of the best selling self-help books ever written has a rather evil sounding name. Which is funny, because the author (Dale Carnegie) wrote one of the sweetest books I’ve ever read.

As one of my personal development goals of this year, I’m trying to form better relationships around myself and the people I come across in my work environment and outside. So I naturally picked up How To Win Friends And Influence People among a bevy of titles.

It was written in the 1930s and is utterly charming. The book is not sleazy or scandalous in any way and only comes across that way initially because the title name has become dated. If published today as a new book, I believe it could be something like “How to Make Friends and be a Leader”.

Regardless, it is a quality book with grandfatherly tips on how to get along with people. I believe the advice to be valuable and worth interpreting by the reader for best results. The two things I will try to do better that Dale Carnegie suggests is to smile as much as I can and to listen to others to the best of my ability.

Amazon » / Wikipedia »

Today is the birthday of American writer and poet, Jack Kerouac. He was best known for contributing to the Beat movement of writing in the 1950s. His work is very admirable because it is often based on his real life experiences. This is a great way to understand and learn things and then be able to advance that experience professionally.

Designers and developers can learn a thing or two from this technique. The most practical example I can give is my own experience with web design. When I was running TYPESETT as a real publishing endeavor in 2009, I inadvertently learned more about the intricacies of how the Web works in a very intimate way. There’s really nothing like learning from working on projects you are personally invested in.

Learn more about Jack Kerouac »

Nicholas Zakas was at Yahoo headquarters in Sunnyvale today giving a presentation on the topic of progressive enhancement. His basic argument is that if you design and develop your web project to maintain a base level of acceptable quality, it allows you to progressively advance the features for those equipped.

He uses the metaphor of television to make his point. Over the airwaves, television signals come to your home no matter what device you have available. That might be a black and white kitchen portable, a CRT set in your bedroom and a modern LCD in your living room. You’ll get your over the air TV and be able to view it in an acceptable quality on all three device. We often make the mistake of thinking websites must appear identically on all web browsers when it really isn’t necessary.

Progressive Enhancement 2.0 by Nicholas Zakas via SlideShare »