A College Student’s Idea of a ‘Well-Branded’ Digital Image.

For my samples I chose to look at Colleen Wainwright's "Communicatrix", Chris Pirillo's site, Kelly Rigotti's "Almost Frugal", Bob Baker's "The Buzz Factor"  and on Linked in, I looked at Thomas Clifford and Jason Alba.

I think the key element to all of these sites is that the owners did a great job of ensuring that we, the viewers, knew what the point of the site is.

These websites and blogs are fairly simple, well laid out, and make it easy to find the information that is needed. A potential employer could easily find out who these people are and what they do that makes them special without a lot of extra work. A great example is Colleen Wainwright's "About" page. She has it laid out like an FAQ where she poses questions and then answers them - often in a humorous way, but always thoughtful and interesting way. This made me want to continue reading and would make it more likely that I would want to pursue this person in business.

On Linkedin, which is essentially a social resume site, the focus lies on a few things: having a complete resume with a lot of relevant experience and insight on those experiences, and good connections. The connections seem to be very important on Linkedin. If, for example, you have your employer, boss, and other industry people as your endorsements it is probably more likely that an employer would want to contact you. Ultimately Linkin sites seem to be much more straight forward than blogs or personal sites. They are focused almost solely on the work you have done and what would make you a good candidate for a job.

Other things I noticed are a strong focus on social media, having a strong and friendly photo of yourself, and focusing on your strengths and interests.

Five Criteria for a well-branded digital presence in college:

1. Clarity - be up front about who you are, what you are interested in, and what your motivations are. This doesn't mean talk about your friends
2. Professionalism - be professional! This doesn't mean you can't have fun or but funny, just make sure that the vulgarity is gone, the photos of you drinking with your buddies aren't visible, and (depending on the goals you have) your political and religious views are not a focus.
3. The future - talk about your long-term goals and what inspires you, both on a daily level and to meet those goals.
4. Resume - let people know what you have already done so they can see your accomplishments. As a college student your grades, clubs, and other non-academic achievements could be important.
5. Visibility - Make sure that your site can be seen and accessed by people! And make sure that if you do you have a personal facebook or journal page that it can NOT be seen by those who shouldn't see it.

My own digital presence is fairly lacking. I have had a lot of visible accounts in the past, but I have tried very hard to lock them down. I have either made most of them completely private or "friends-only" so that my friends and family are the only ones able to view my posts and photos. I also have a number of other blogs that are not connected to my name in any way. The one thing I do have open is my Linkedin profile. I have been meaning to expand that, but have no had much to add to it for a while. I think I will definitely add more information as well as add more contacts. In the future I will create a personal site for my resume and as a way to have sort of a digital business card I can send to people.

Usability Study

Craigslist
http://www.craigslist.org

Communication and Message:
What is the purpose?
To allow people to buy/sell things, find/post jobs, and communicate in community oriented forums.

Intended Audience:
It does not seem to have an intended audience. It seems to be aimed towards anyone (likely adults) who has something to say, buy, sell, or who is looking for a job or employee.

Content:
Is the content organized in an intuitive manner?
Yes, the website is very simple and laid out with almost all content/links on the main page itself. Very little digging is required to get to where you want to go.

Usability & Interface:
The website is very consistent throughout. The three main page styles are the directory page, the pages listing posts under each section, and the posts themselves. All are very consistent in style and presentation and make it easy to get back to where you were before. There are no graphics which makes load time very quick and less confusing. There are also options at the bottom of the main page to choose different styles for mobile, tablet, and regular formatting.

Navigation:
Very consistent throughout the site. It is extremely easy to tell which items are links and which are not due to the color scheme selected. The site is basically a directory of links.

Overall Success:
I don't have any real suggestions for the site. It is extremely basic and effective which is likely one of the reasons it is so successful. Ease of navigation and use are key parts of the site.

Video Review

For this post I will be reviewing 3 Youtube videos and 2 Vimeo videos and comparing/contrasting them based on their quality as well as pointing out the trends I see in the overall content of the sites.

Vimeo - 

Video 1 - "Made on Earth" by Enrique Pacheco

An extremely beautifully shot piece showing many different landscapes, both natural and man made. The shots are time lapsed and sped up and most have a gradual pan over the site. This combination of effects allows sunsets and sunrises to change the natural lighting and reflection in each landscape and is a really wonderful effect. The music is extremely powerful and works great with the imagery. It feels like a highly polished professional production.

Video 2 - "Ordos" by Charles Lanceplaine

A skate video shot in a city in China which is nearly uninhabited, but large and almost new, this video is extremely well done. The shots are well chosen, the angles are great, and the music works well with the piece. The location alone shows that the production is not just that of some random skate kids, but a group of talented people who either have connections or know what they are doing. Very interesting and fun.

Youtube -

Video 1 - "Skweezy and my son Pnut" by ChAinHanGlOw69 aka Skweezy Jibbs

In this video our host, Skweezy Jibbs, rants about a bunch of nothingness and then introduces us to his "son" Pnut. Who is a monkey. A fairly pointless video but I have seen some videos by Skweezy Jibbs in the past and they have been pretty funny, unfortunately this one wasn't. Overall the video and editing quality is pretty low. I think this is part of the appeal though, as it is supposed to be the web show of the character Skweezy Jibbs, and he does it out of his apartment. Other than a few cuts and credits there is little done. The lighting and music have little to no positive impact on the overall product.

Video 2- "Hey It's Pomplamoose - Theme Song" by PomplamooseMusic

A very high quality theme song recorded for the Pomplamoose live webcast. Pomplamoose, for those who are not familiar, is a musical duo who record the creation of their songs and upload them as music videos. The videos show clips of each individual sound being recorded, including the vocal layers. Their music is really quite unique and the videos show a great deal of creative editing techniques to create something that is extremely fun and interesting. The audio quality is high as well.

Video 3- "Deep Dish Fastfood Pizza - Epic Meal Time" by EpicMealTime

Epic Meal Time is a short that has been on youtube for a few years now. Each week or so the Epic Meal Time crew assembles to create some sort of culinary monstrosity. The goal of this is to pack as many calories as possible and include as much meat (usually bacon) as they can into the food. This week was a fast food pizza. The quality of the video is fairly good and it seems that whoever is working the camera knows what they are doing. They combine indoor and outdoor shots, shots during the creation of the food, and a final scene where they eat it. The music helps impact the overall piece by making it seem that much more "epic".

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Ultimately, it seems that Vimeo caters to a crowd that is significantly different than Youtube. Vimeo's content is generally very high quality - often seeming extremely professional. These videos likely had budgets and crews working on them. Youtube seems to be largely for a crowd that is doing it themselves. People who makes videos in their homes or with friends. While many videos on Youtube are high quality and well made, they still lack that "professional" polish. While Vimeo content seems like something you would see in an indie movie theater, Youtube content is largely content you may see on Comedy Central or MTV.

Podcast Project

For this podcast, Mike Hershberger and I talked about the various elements of VOIP services, specifically Skype, and how they are used.