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The Digital Marketing Podcast
Halloween Special: 5 Tenuously Spooky Digital Marketing Tools
00:20:22
In this episode recorded while Ciaran and Daniel were touring the highlands of Scotland Ciaran has picked out some tenuously spookily named digital marketing tools we think are great. Nothing particularly scary happens in this episode, but Ciaran was...
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- [00:00]
A
Welcome to the Digital Marketing Podcast brought to you by targetinternet.com hello and welcome back to the Digital Marketing Podcast.
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B
My name is Kieran Rogers and I'm Daniel Rolls.
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A
And today. Daniel.
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B
Yeah, we're not doing that.
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A
No, it's, it's the Halloween special.
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B
Yeah, I know.
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A
Can we make it spooky?
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B
Yeah.
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A
No, no, no. Okay. All right, well, look, we've got, we've gotten some, some of the most tenuous links to Halloween I think you're ever going to hear, but we've got some great tools which have a slightly spooky angle.
- [00:44]
B
I was quite impressed. I mean, Kieran emailed this over to me and he's done quite well, I have to say.
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A
Do you know, this has taken me, I've been planning this all year. It's taking me that long. And actually, do you know, trying to find things with like spooky context to them, I've discovered new things I would never have found before just purely on like Googling spooky names.
- [01:04]
B
I should probably set the scene because it is a fairly horrific scene we find ourselves in, but it's from good circumstances. So we are currently very lucky and we. For the Highlands and Islands Enterprise, which is an organization for, for Scotland, north of Scotland and the islands around Scotland, we're doing a tour, a two week tour and we are traveling around the Highlands of Scotland talking about digital marketing. So it's very exciting and you'll see more stuff online. All about it. So anyway, that's the background we've flown up. We're driving between places. We drove through one of the national parks yesterday. Took a bit of a detour thanks to the sat nav. Yeah, it was fine because we didn't break down. Had it we broken down, you probably never would have heard from us. We went through the wilds. Yeah, pretty exciting. So anyway, we're now sitting in a hotel car park in a Skoda in a cheap hire car.
- [01:54]
A
Yeah. Do you know what? You're all sat here with us virtually. So, you know, welcome, welcome to the.
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B
One little trip recording in cars. Because cars are acoustically dampened, you don't get echo and it works pretty well. And actually you probably hopefully hear from the recording quality. It works nicely. So Skoda studio. Yeah. So we're not, we're not in the normal high quality studio setup. The room. We're sitting in a car in a Premier inn. There are other hotel brands available. Car park. So we are living the dream at the moment. But actually it's very much made up for the fact that we are surrounded by very beautiful mountains.
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A
We are in the heart of Fort William. It is beautiful, if not wet, but very beautiful. Exactly.
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B
So let's. Let's get back to our Halloweeny theme. So what's your first Halloween?
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A
That first Halloween thing? Research tool is called Ghostery.
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B
That's pretty on point.
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A
It is pretty on point. So go to www.ghostery. that's G O H-S-T-E-R-Y.com.
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B
That'S not S G H O S.
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A
Did I say that wrong?
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B
Can't spell ghost.
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A
Look, don't let that mar the tool. It's a good tool. It's a browser extension that enables you to analyze all of the marketing tech and tag. On what? Well, certainly on your own website, but also on any of the websites that you visit. And actually this is quite spooky and scary when you start to delve into it.
- [03:13]
B
Yeah. So when you take a look, I mean, you'll be aware that you've probably got Google Analytics and you might have some other tracking, but if you're using something like WordPress, what you'll probably find is you've got a number of different plugins and actually they are probably doing a lot more JavaScript tracking than you realize in a lot of cases. So not only is it going to show you the plugins that are running and what they're doing, but. But it's also going to go through and show you how long they're taking to run. And what's quite interesting is that it's surprising how much some of them are slowing down. So we went through our own website and there are some surprises in there a little bit. So we're going to check those, I would suggest, with GDPR across Europe anyway. So the General Data Protection Regulations coming up in May of 2018, it's very much worth auditing what you're doing. And actually, are you 100% clear on what all the different plugins are actually doing and tracking in the cookies they're setting? So I think just from an audit point of view, it's definitely worth going through and doing that, but also looking at ones that may be slowing you down.
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A
You do get this kind of tag soup that over years creeps up and there could be all sorts of tags in there that are tucked away, maybe in the page code or perhaps tucked away in some tag manager system that you might not even be fully aware of. So it's great to get a view of this. We've just been passed by a Steam Train.
- [04:27]
B
I think it's quite exciting that it's a spooky episode and a very spooky looking Steam Train has just gone past us. Exactly. So that's quite surreal. We weren't expecting that. Anyway.
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A
Yeah. There's one thing I would say when you install the browser, there's some interesting things in there. So you can choose to block certain tech as you go along. Your browsing experience and actually that can really help keep your anonymity and also speed up your website experience as well. It's brilliant for blocking ad tech as well, which can be very annoying on some news sites. And the other thing I love about it is that if you have a look in there, you click on the little ghost icon when it's installed in your browser and you've got the option down the bottom left hand side to map the trackers. And that's where the exciting stuff happens. And this is. It actually links to a separate tool by a company called Everdom. But it gives you a very visual representation of all of your tags, what kind of page lag they're causing and what order they load in as well. So it's a brilliant visualization. You can sit down with your web developers and really bash up. How much of this do we actually need? What is this stuff actually doing? Who's it sharing information with and all of these things. Highly, highly relevant for the up and coming channel GDPR legislation.
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B
Also I'd say that we identified one of our tags is taking a lot longer than the other. So we're gonna have a little look into that. It was also quite interesting. We looked at one of our competitors website and they are using a phenomenal amount of different tracking code and setting different cookies and they're built on WordPress, as are we. But actually tag bloat is something we're kind of really acutely aware of. It's very easy when you want to do something new on your website. You just go and install a tag plugin, sorry. And that plugin will do certain things and it'll add certain code to your website. But they quite often do things unnecessarily. Like you only use this particular plugin on one page, but actually it puts the code onto every single page of the website. So actually there might be better ways of building things. And you've got to be really careful you don't keep adding more and more and more plugins because one, it will slow things down, two, it can cause you some data and privacy issues if you're not sure what they're actually doing in the data they're collecting. But generally speaking, it's just a bit of a problem in that it can slow code down. When you update your version of WordPress you're using, that can cause problems as well.
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A
Now, to help us set the scene for the next tool, the Scotch mist has descended. It's now raining quite heavily. You may be able to hear this in the background. It's also gotten quite dark as well, isn't it?
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B
And it's fogging up. But I'm not sure if that's because we're releasing lots of hot air or it's outside. Right, going to move on to the next one now, Kieran, but you may notice a slightly different background noise. That's because the car park we were in in the Skoda, the torrential Scottish beautiful rain was making so much of a noise, it was like being inside a drum. So now it's a beautiful sunny day and we're now in Inverness. The travels continue.
- [07:28]
A
This is the longest distance we've ever recorded a single episode over.
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B
Yes, we did have to drive a couple of hundred miles and again, the sat nav took us on all sorts of exciting routes. But anyway, we digress.
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A
So the lengths we go to to get good audio quality.
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B
So tell us all about the next one.
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A
Y. The next one is a bit of a stroke of genius. It's called Ghost.
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B
I'm seeing a bit of a theme here. I'm not sure this is genius. You googled one word.
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A
Well, it would look like that, wouldn't it? But actually this is one I found back in the summer and do you know what? It was the breakthrough for me because I realized, no, the Halloween episode idea, this could work. There's a theme theme starting. So Ghost, if you have a look@ghost.org it is a. It's a. It's a blogging platform and it's specifically set up for people that like to write. That's what they've designed it for. And what I love about Ghost is a couple of things. The. The interface. First of all, we should talk about WordPress actually, because that's kind of one of the. The go to obvious thing if you want to start up a blog in that it's. It's free and, and there's lots and lots of support and themes and plugins and stuff available. Ghost is, is in a similar vein, but certainly it's lots of beautiful themes and the Ghost websites look gorgeous. But the platform itself is aimed to be super, super fast and it's not bogged down with lots and lots of plugins. In some respects the flexibility of WordPress can be it's undoing because you add plugin after plugin after plugin.
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B
Yeah. Some people would argue that WordPress has become a bit bloated in a number of the developments and it definitely can be if you're installing loads of plugins. It's one of the real dangers worth. One of the things I'd say is it's perfectly possible to run very, very efficient WordPress websites. You need to know what you're doing. But if you just want to write, then Ghost looks like a great alternative potentially. So you set your own hosting up or something?
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A
I did, yeah. Well, you can go to ghost.org, you can buy hosting from them a little bit like WordPress.com I guess and they'll take care of all the technical side and keep you running, keep it super optimized and super fast. That's about $20 a month. So similar cost for a start out package. I opted to go for something a little bit cheaper because I wanted to set up just something that was a bit of fun actually. So I've found some dedicated hosting. The one thing I would say you can't just host a ghost blog anywhere. You do need dedicated hosting. But I went through, there's a hosting provider we used to use when I was at the agency actually very good, called TSO and they did, they've just started providing ghost hosting and it was only £3amonth and super, super easy to set up. So I think I purchased a domain name through them and set my space up and, and I was up within about an hour which I thought was really, really good. And it was very, very straight, straightforward to do. What you learn about Ghost, which is, which is great is when you go into the interface it's super, super clean and super, super minimal. So you actually there's not all of that distraction around. So if you, if you wanted to get some writing done that's really good and you, you literally have this sort of split screen. So on the left hand side is white space that you write in and on the right hand side you get to see what that actual post is looking like.
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B
Hasn't it got some markup involved?
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A
Yeah, there is a very simple markup language. So rather than cluttering up the interface with lots of buttons for italics and word spacing and underlining, what have you, you literally just use this very simple markup language. It's all based on HTML. So if I Want to add a heading in? I would just Type in bracket H1, close off the brackets and if I want to close it off, I just put/h1 and close off the bracket. So it's, it's super simple. The, the blog that I've popped up there, I really did set it up just for a bit of fun really, so anybody can go and have a look at it. It's called Unwritten Blog, which is kind of ironic because it still remains unwritten. But there is a, there's a, there's a post there that just explains some of the basics of, of Ghost markup. So go and have a look at it. I'm going to adjust it before we put this show out so you can actually, actually see the code that they're talking about. Because actually when you view it within Ghost, it just looks like people have.
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B
Written titles in terms of interfaces. There is a project underway within WordPress, isn't there? Yes, and there's currently a plugin for WordPress that has got a new visual editor because I think the feeling is the visual editor needed a bit of updating that apparently is going to become part of the core eventually of WordPress. And one of the key things that's being said about this is when it becomes the core, you're going to have to update your WordPress to take this into account. Now it's a little way off. It's only in kind of beta testing mode at the moment. But one of the challenges of WordPress is because so many websites are built on WordPress, when an update comes out, you really need to upgrade really quickly because there are hackers out there just probing WordPress websites all the time. So one thing I'd just say is be really careful of, is if you're using WordPress, make sure you keep it up to date. And you might find when there's these major updates, you need to do a bit of rework on your website. Whereas at the moment Ghost has the advantage of not having so many people using it.
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A
But you still need to keep it up to date.
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B
Exactly, you do. And I think that's it. And I think it's something you've got to build into. It's just a reality of having a content management system. You need to keep it up to date. So moving on to your next. Is this one called Ghost Something else?
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A
It's not.
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B
Oh, okay, that's good I guess. What's the next one?
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A
So the next one, Daniel, I'm gonna not tell you what it's. What it's called. I'm gonna tell you what it does because this is Halloween all over.
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B
Okay.
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A
I am gonna show you how to bring your almost dead laptop back to life.
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B
I guess that's kind of tenuously Halloweeny. Fair enough. So what's the website?
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A
So the website's called neverwhere.com.
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B
What does it do?
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A
And what they offer is for anybody just doing this for their own home use, there's a free download and you can download and set up a us so that you can install the Chromium operating system. Which is what? Essentially it's. Chromebooks are based on this. Yeah. So but Chromium is the, the open source free. Free version. So very, very closely monitored. A Chromebook and actually if you've got a. Like an old Windows 95, 98 or 2007 in some cases Windows Laptop and actually it works on Macs as well. So very old Mac.
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B
So basically if it's really slow, it's not really up to the game anymore.
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A
You can put a much.
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B
All this and just keep it thin. Client.
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A
Yeah. A much lighter operating system. And actually there's lots that you can do with Chrome. Any of you remember the episode we did quite a while back now, but I lived on a Chromebook for three months and actually found that most of.
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B
The stuff and then gave up.
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A
I did give up because there were certain things I had to do in designing websites that wasn't easy to do. Since then actually there's a number of platforms have come out that would have enabled me to, to do that. So I, I actually think you, you, you could. I think the, the value in this is if you've got a laptop that's lying around, it does still need to work. Like if, if the hardware is knackered, this isn't going to change anything. But there may be something that's just too slow to use with the, the operating system that was supplied or indeed if it's something like Windows, an early version of Windows, it's just virtually unusable on the Internet because they're so, so insecure. Now then, opting for something like Chrome Chromium OS is a good thing. What's nice when you install it from the stick is it gives you a chance to try it out before you actually go for the full hog and instrument.
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B
You can run it from the stick.
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A
You run it from the stick. Exactly. Now, now a word, a word of caution here, right. If you choose, you'd like it and you install it will wipe your everything else off your laptop. So Be aware of that. But you can just run it from the stick and try it out if you want to. But I could definitely see a use for this because actually an extra screen in my family when they're all kind of being used is quite a useful thing.
- [15:12]
B
Yeah, I think if you've got an old computer and you want to hook it up and just have a Twitter feed or something like that in the background while you're working, things like that can be useful, brand monitoring, all that kind of stuff. I was gloating then about you giving up being on a Chromebook. I should say, though, I just bought my new Mac Pro a little while back and what we worked out, because my Mac Pro has got no USB connected. It's all USB C. The adapters, just the adapters for my Mac Pro cost more than a Chromebook.
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A
That's crazy, isn't it?
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B
So I'm not gloating quite as much. Anyway, let's move, move swiftly on. What's the next one? I know this one. This is, this is. It's not tenuous, but it's just cheesy. The next one. Is it cheesy?
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A
Is there anybody there? The, the. I want to talk to you about Medium.
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B
Wow, wow, wow, wow.
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A
Look, this is a. Medium is a publishing platform, essentially, and I, I think it's, it's brilliant. For those of you that haven't come across it, what's the best way to describe Medium? Daniel?
- [16:08]
B
I think it's just a way lots of high quality content is published. I mean, there's 60 million monthly readers now and it's not a platform I'd really looked at before we did this episode and I knew it was there and I knew lots of people going, oh, you should publish your stuff on media. I don't really see the point. It's like another Huffington Post or something like that. But the reality, she kind of is. But the reality, slightly different, is the people vote content up and down, so it makes it more or less visible. There's editorial people who are selecting great content as well. And I found really interesting content really quickly, which is not necessarily an easy thing to do elsewhere.
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A
It's a challenge with the amount of content outright. So actually having a system that kind of crowdsources the best content for you is really, really good. I found some fantastically funny writers, some fantastically thought provoking writers, and I think, you know, a lot of people are using LinkedIn now to take their blog content and share it with a wider audience and link back to the blog and There's a lot of people using medium like that as well. But actually if your stuff is really good, people will vote it up and actually you've got the potential to reach a really, really big audience.
- [17:14]
B
We'll put a link in as well that gives you some guidance of what you should be doing if you're putting your stuff in.
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A
It has a very interesting feature which really grabbed my attention called Publications. And what this does is it enables multiple writers to all submit content to a medium publication. So it kind of acts like a bit of a magazine format, but in a sort of dispersed writing environment. And I think that definitely could have some interesting use cases for our audience out there. So take a look at publications. There are some really good ones. So you're not just relying on what one particular writer has written. And it's a great way of discovering new writers as well.
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B
I think we're going to do a test with this as well. So we'll run some content through and we'll see how we get on with it and tell you what kind of results we get in terms of viewership as well. Last one.
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A
I'm losing this.
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B
I'm losing it.
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A
You're proper miserable. Come on, Daniel, it's Halloween.
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B
Halloween. What's the next tenuous one?
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A
The next one? You have to use your imagination to see how tenuous this one is. Actually it's called drag. Kind of like being dragged screaming and kicking into the woods.
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B
Wow, that is tenuous even by your standards. But anyway, tell us what drag does.
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A
So drag is a bolt on interface. So if you use Gmail, your Google mail, potentially you'll like this, I think particularly people who live in their Gmail inbox and manage lots of things through it gives you like a card system so you can organize your content into different streams.
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B
And a lot of sales people particularly that really live in Gmail and actually I can see that being really useful in terms of. Because you can treat emails like tasks and you can say they're done, they're to be done, you can prioritize them and things like that.
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A
Yeah. But you can also visually just organize things. You know, I'm a big fan of the Post IT planning system and actually this is kind of that for Gmail. Perfect. Yeah.
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B
So try it out. So that's it from the Quick Tools episode today. I promise we'll never do this again. I apologize. I'm going to monitor the subscriber numbers and if they go down substantially, we're going to do something horrible to Kieran.
- [19:16]
A
Please share this and comment on how brilliant it was in the in.
- [19:20]
B
Don't do that, because then we'll just do worse ones. So we're going to say farewell from our Skoda parked in an Inverness car park. We will update you on our Highlands tour a little bit more and we'll speak to you again on the Digital Marketing Podcast.
- [19:41]
A
Thanks for listening to another episode of the Digital Marketing Podcast, brought to you by Target Internet. If you'd like to get more information on the show, get hold of back issues of this podcast, or get details on any of the links we mentioned, please visit our website at www.targetinternet.com. if you've enjoyed the show, we would love to read your feedback. Please rate us in itunes or even better, write us a review. Or if you have any questions, please get in touch. We'd love to.