Quickie — Barbara Saul and what she gets up to most days!

Having fun with your website holding text

Who knew? We can add interest to your holding text – either to make clients chuckle or to encourage them to provide their actual content. Choose your Ipsum wisely, though, people…

In the brilliant Genesis Slack group the chat somehow moved to the use of holding text for new websites. Instead of empty pages, and until you have your content ready, us web creation bods tend to use the Lorem Ipsum text, to give us and you an idea of how the page and website will feel.

Well it seems there are lots of alternatives – I had no idea – so I’m sharing some with you, in case you too were not aware and have use for such things…

For fellow cat people we have Cat Ipsum, then for cake lovers there is cupcake ipsum, and for geeks, well there are of course several to choose from, my favourites being DeLorean Ipsum, Doctor Ipsum and Riker Ipsum – this week, at least.

Meet The Ipsums provides a pretty thorough listing of generator sites available or of course you can google “lorem ipsum alternative generator” and see what’s available, because I’m sure more will be added all the time…

Indeed it’s not that difficult to create your own and most accept your suggestions (I offered up “curl up and sleep on freshly laundered towels” to the cat ipsum site, for instance). I’m thinking A Field of Dreams, perhaps, or Star Trek (the original series, that is), or Game of Thrones or Harry Potter or Tolkien or Heinlein or … OK, time to stop now and get back to work. 😉

Edit: Patricia Cárdenas suggested this page for creating just the right amount of holding text for your site and in the format you need – looks good, and thanks Patricia.

Do you want to be Retweeted?

Twitter – something you either get or you don’t, I find, but from an online marketing point of view, it can have its uses. I’m very much a social, if irregular, Tweep in that I forget to fire up HootSuite (which is useful for managing several accounts, I find, and used by millions of others) and then when I do remember find half an hour has passed while I’ve been following links, replying to tweets and generally tweeting before I remind myself that there is more “in the business” work to be done. Oh that I could be a social animal all day long – that would be nice…

Anyway – something that can be a tad irksome is when I go to share something that I think is useful or of interest to people only to find the Retweet would be too long, going beyond the 140 characters allowed. Now sometimes I will spend the time and edit, but if this proves tricky, perhaps losing the voice of the original tweet, or it’s just too unwieldy to edit, I give up and move on, which is a shame.

Perhaps the original Tweep just doesn’t think about that and/or needs those 140 characters themselves, which is fair enough. But sometimes, if you’d like that Tweet shared, leave some characters spare – make it easier to be Retweeted. Allowing for your Twitter name to be included in the Retweet and even for someone to comment is ideal – be succinct so your lovely followers and sharers can pass it on.

Of course this may well become irrelevant in future and if you Tweet directly from your Twitter page you’re allowed extra room to comment, but for those who use other tools, such as HootSuite, make it easy to share your wonderful content… And yes, I know HootSuite has upgraded and offers new streams that make things simpler, but this does not work for everyone, sadly – my browser freezes after a while so I revert to the old streams.

Of course if you’re not interested in having your wisdom or whatever shared the above is of no interest to you, but perhaps share this post anyway for your contacts who might enjoy some Retweet love.

One other quick thing to test out for yourself, apparently we are more inclined to share if asked in full – so “Please Retweet” rather than “Pls RT” – but if people want to share they’ll do it anyway. Be share-worthy is the thing – people will Retweet if they want to.

Another snippet – you can turn off someone’s Retweets – if they overdo it, perhaps, or you just don’t like what they share but want to keep following them. Take a look at the Twitter Retweeting FAQ page for how to do this and a few other things.

Oh, just one more thing – say thank you. This was more usual in the earlier Twitter days, to thank those who Retweet you, but these days it seems less popular and actually that may be sensible, considering the volume of Twitter traffic, but I notice those who drop me a quick “thanks” and like that they’ve noticed – I’m more inclined to share again if it’s appreciated but it’s not an expected thing.

There are quite a few Twitter playthings available for us now, with plenty of ideas to share with you so we’ll revisit this topic again soon. And if you want to know anything specific, ask away – I may not be able to help but will certainly know someone who can.

Happy Tweeting!

Are you getting in the way of your customers?

While meandering through Twitter and Facebook to see what might be worthy of sharing with my fine followers, I was keen to have a read of some Pinterest tips and hints (the wording of the title was not shouty so my hopes were high!). Sadly, before I could even find what I’d come for the larger text adverts to sign up for awesomeness bombarded me not just once, or twice but three times, before I’d moved the mouse or down arrow! Good grief. Now really, was that a good thing? Are we, as readers, a bit fed up of this now? Or am I simply being a grumpy Brit?

I know we need to remind you, fair readers, to sign up if you want to read our next wisdom-sharings, but I’d rather be more polite and have something on the side or at the end of my post, for if you’ve made it that far, you may well be keen for more.

But to try to grab me before I even read your wisdom – well I did not hang around to find out if there was any to be had. Or am I getting it wrong? Am I supposed to shout at you and poke you until you give in out of your desire to stop the nagging? Hmm.