Twitter is now firmly established as a household name among websites, hey, even my mum knows what it is.

But what’s interesting about Twitter is that as its popularity grows, the percentage of users visiting the twitter.com site is declining.

More and more users – especially those with smartphones, but increasingly desktop users too – are accessing Twitter’s capabilities through third party extensions such as Tweetdeck, Seesmic, and twitteriffic.

The third party developer community has thrived, and the apps produced  have played a huge part in the success of twitter, building in far more functionality than its creators could ever have imagined.  Apps and third party technology enabling users to better categorise tweets, search for them, add pictures, shorten links, locate themselves on a map, monitor their popularity, and much more.

So why did Twitter put a cat amongst the pigeons earlier this month by buying one of the most popular iPhone apps, and create its own for BlackBerry?  Is this the end of the third party app? Should we all bemoan the beginning of the end of the third party developer?

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Whether operating in online or off line environments, whether using twitter or direct mail, every company should be regularly auditing its marketing and communications to ensure they’re performing and delivering the messages they’re intended to.
Below is a whistle-stop tour of my favoured 10 actions to review an organisation's marketing activity:

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Last week I spent 4 days at the Search Engine Strategies Conference at London's Design Centre.

If ever there was evidence needed that the world of online marketing is both still a young and quickly evolving industry, and equally that its various disciplines - SEO, PPC, social media, affiliates, etc. have a key role to play on modern business strategy, then this event provided it. In spades.
 
Audiences were significantly up on the 2009 event, helped, no doubt by some very big names from across the US delivering keynote presentations.

These included

Avinash Kaushik, highly respected analytics guru and "Google Evangelist"

Rand Fishkin, highly influential SEO expert and co-founder of SEOMOZ

Bryan Eisenberg, website usability expert

Not to mention representatives from all three of the main political parties' online teams, plus SAP, Microsoft, Yahoo, and many more.

Rather than a full report of the event, I've pulled together my top 10 takeaways from the event with an explanation of why I think these are important, as well as links to additional content where possible:

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A recent conversation with a member of a client’s staff, who was struggling to get his point across to another member of his team, reminded me of a quote an ex-boss used to say to me before client meetings:

“If they’re not listening, you’re not saying it right”.

And whether taken in the context of personal relationships, business negotiations / presentations or commercial marketing messages, the quote rings true:  We’ve all been in a situation where we’ve tried to explain our position until we’re blue in the face, only for it to leave our audience looking blank, confused, or at worst, upset and it’s easy to point the finger of blame at our listener. Maybe they’re a bit thick, stubborn, or not up to speed with modern thinking?  
Maybe, but think about it: people are rarely go out of their way to be difficult: it’s human nature to want to understand what others are saying, and get on with each other, so isn’t it just possible that the fault lies elsewhere?

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It seems that you can’t pick up a newspaper, turn on the TV or attend a conference without someone mentioning Twitter.  More and more individuals and businesses are flocking to use the social network for all sorts of uses, but should you be following suit?

In my view, businesses should approach Twitter in much the same way they would any other communications channel.

Twitter is seductive for a number of reasons – it’s free, it’s user base is growing exponentially, and it’ll bring your product to the attention to a whole new group of sexy young things you’ve been unable to access before.

But before you let your newly enthusiastic marketing exec loose, it’s worth taking a step back to consider a few points:

Tags: Web 2.0 | Marketing | Twitter | Social Networking

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SEO is a buzzword everyone is using at the moment. Getting your sites referenced well in Google and other search engines provides a significant, long-term sustainable competitive advantage over your competitors.

But good, basic SEO techniques can be do more than just bring the right customers to your site:  Done right, it also lends itself well to improving accessibility and usability. - what search engines like, generally, users do to – and this is particularly relevant to those users with visual disabilities:

Tags: usability | accessibility | SEO

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I'm fairly new to website design and development and this, and my other site, www.TravelTipsParis.com, are all part of the learning process.

Despite making pretty good progress on my understanding of XHTML, CSS and the like, I was soon reminded of my "learner" status by a hacker attack on my other site last weekend. 

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I’m an avid reader of .net magazine and generally find it a valuable source of inspiration as well as technical and practical information.  But an article in the February 2009 irked me slightly.  In “Branding with Brains”, David Hamill, a Freelance Usability Consultant underlined the need for usability over brand guidelines.

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