Why you should always use the alt attribute

I noticed something strange this week when I was looking at my blog stats: I was getting traffic through direct referral from BuzzFeed.

How odd, I thought. What on Novice No Longer could possibly be relevant to BuzzFeed?

It wasn’t my homepage that was linked, but a specific article: Getting a busy and being social for the socially awkward.

The link was from an article titled 28 Problems Every Type-A Person Will Understand. It wasn’t until I viewed the article and got to number 18 that I realized the relevance — they weren’t linking to my article exactly, but to an image that I used in the article. They just wanted a picture of a busy calendar, which I included in my post.

I headed over to Google (using incognito) and did an image search for the words “busy calendar.” The picture from my blog that BuzzFeed used in its post was the first result.

So how did I get a picture for my blog to be the top image search result for a fairly common phrase (which ultimately resulted in a link from BuzzFeed)?

The answer is simple: alt attributes. Continue reading →

020 : Gotta keep hustling with Laura and Sara of DigitalFlash

Have you ever gone to an event and thought it was just “meh”? Maybe you signed up because of the awesome lineup of panelists, but the questions posed by the moderator were just boring and there wasn’t any opportunity to ask questions. Or maybe the food sucked and all you wanted was a drink.

Laura and Sara met at a networking event that just didn’t suit their tastes. But they didn’t let it bother them — they turned their experiences into opportunity. Both Sara and Laura knew that together, they could throw amazing events, and they did just that.

DigitalFlash grew out of a desire for the types of events that the cofounders wanted to attend, and people responded. In this podcast, the two co-founders share how their events grew and how they started creating digital experiences for larger companies. If you visited the Samsung booth at the 2014 SXSW, you were a part of their work.

These two women are the very definition of the word hustle — they even left a convention floor in Vegas to appear on this podcast! They never stop.

If you need some motivation to keep on keeping on, this is the episode for you.

Continue reading →

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 39:52 — 32.1MB) | Embed

How I built and promoted WorkBurst, my first OS X app

workburst-bts-header

My first OS X app, WorkBurst, is now available in the App Store! To celebrate, I want to share with you my entire process, from idea to app release. I did everything without writing a single line of code. The total cost? $304.

The most important lesson here is that you don’t need to learn how to code to make apps. You should learn to code if you want to know how to code. If you want to make apps, there are other, more direct paths to take.

Here’s mine. Continue reading →

Pitching journalists: 5 things your competitors aren’t doing

Pitch email writer's block

I got to see a lot of pitches when I was working full-time as a tech journalist. Every morning, my inbox would be filled with a new batch of people wanting my attention — everyone from major PR companies to sole entrepreneurs launching their first product (and I’m not the only one!).

More often than not, the pitch emails would be absolutely terrible. It wasn’t just the novices that were making mistakes — even major marketing companies would churn out terrible press releases. I often wished I could reach through the computer, grab them by the shoulders, and yell, “YOU’RE DOING IT WRONG!”

Instead, all I could do was hit the Archive button. And archive I did.

But all this incompetence is great news for you: with just a little bit of work, your pitch emails will be better than 95 percent of the competition.

If you want to drastically increase the effectiveness of your press emails, here are five things you should be doing. Continue reading →

003 : Building the ultimate roommate finder with Ajay Yadav

NNL Podcast What would you do if you came back to your apartment after a trip abroad to find out that your roommate had disappeared with the deposit, the locks had been changed, and your stuff was missing? I know my response would involve a large number of guttural screams and a healthy amount of crying.

Ajay, on the other hand, used it as inspiration to build Roomi, an app that helps people find ideal roommates. List or browse apartments, describe your lifestyle, and never get stuck with a nightmare roommate again.

After a ton of research, Ajay built Roomi from scratch — learning Objective-C in a few months using free online resources, hiring a designer, and creating a minimum viable product (MVP). He’s learned from past mistakes and really did it right this time.

If you’re still struggling to figure out your best next move, listen to this episode and follow in Ajay’s steps. You’ll come out with an awesome product.

Continue reading →

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 51:20 — 48.5MB) | Embed