Building an online presence with Drupal and social media. Quick tips and self-assessment. For more tips and a free consultation, email reva@templateserve.com.
2. What you will learn:
Drupal, what’s in Core, top modules to extend.
How to assess your digital fitness.
How to optimize on-site social media content.
6. Drupal Core Content Types
Article
Basic page
Blog entry
Forum
Poll
Book page
Structure > Content types > Add content type
7. Content Construction Kit
The Content Construction Kit allows
you to add custom fields to nodes
using a web browser.
FileField
Date
Embedded Media Field
ImageField
9. Other useful modules
WYSIWYG – Abstraction layer to integrate an editor
Views – Control presentation of data
Content Access – Sets role-based permissions to content
Token – Placeholders, like %site-name or [user]
Automatic Nodetitles – Generates nodetitles automatically
Pathauto – Generates path automatically
10. Drupal Tips
Plan your site
Backup your site and db
Use “green” contributed modules
Avoid hard-coding
Don’t go overboard with modules
Learn PHP, but until then, leave it alone
Never hack Drupal core
11.
12. Social media benefits
Free testing ground to discover content that best
resonate among specific demographics within a
community.
Connect with your customers. Discover new
opportunities.
Build your brand and reputation. Establish thought
leadership.
13. Assess Yourself - Crawler
Limited investment in social
channels and earned media.
Unclear where audience is most
likely to engage or types of
content could you use to engage
them.
Education
14. Assess Yourself - Walker
Steady investment in at least one
social platform, but no integrated
approach to paid and earned.
You’re not entirely in tune with what
it all means. Your partners, or
activities are not aligned.
Plan
15. Assess Yourself - Runner
Integrated, consistent and
actively measuring
performance.
Strategically allocating time
and money across
channels.
Measurement
16. Assess Yourself - Marathoner
Seamless integration across
channels; coordinated, aligned,
measured, budgeted.
Experimenting with new social
media platforms.
Experiment
19. 4 Facebook Tips
Use Timeline to share your rich history, and Put fans at
the center of your brand’s narrative.
Place your fans’ passion points front and center. Promote
user-generated content.
Showcase a multidimensional or dynamic side of your
brand. But be careful and double check.
Pin a new post every 7 days and star important
photographic posts.
20. 4 Google+ Tips
Create a page and optimize it like you would the home
page of your website.
Add people related to your business in your circles.
Post regularly on topics related to your business or area
of expertise.
+1 content that is relevant to your industry, remember
it’s now Search + Your World.
21. 4 Tumblr Tips
Optimize your Tumblr pages using basic SEO best
practices.
Install the Tumblr bookmarklet into your browser.
Analyze articles, add your own point of view and your
own links. Don't plagiarize.
Integrate Tumblr with Twitter and your Facebook
brand page.
22. Tumblr SEO Tip #1
Beef up the <title> tag and add description tag.
Add the Post Summary to the Title, as its more likely to
gain you search spots than the title alone.
<title>{block:PostSummary}{PostSummary} -
{/block:PostSummary}{Title}</title><meta
name=”description” content=”{MetaDescription}”
/>
23. Tumblr SEO Tip #2
Use your tags as keywords.
Basic SEO 101, add meta keywords, but we’ll leverage
off of Tumblr to dynamically add them.
<meta name=”keywords”
content=”{block:Permalink}{block:Posts}{block:Tags
}{Tag},
{/block:Tags}{/block:Posts}{/block:Permalink}” />
24. Tumblr SEO Tip #3
Upload your sitemap.xml in Google
Webmaster tools.
Add Google Analytics to track
progress.
25.
26. Social Media Optimization
When users share links across social networks such as
Facebook, share previews are generated in activity streams.
The information show in the preview is constructed based on
your page title, description and share preview tag.
If no image is defined, the first on-page image is displayed
and the user is presented with all the images on the page to
scroll through and choose from.
27. Share Preview Tag
By defining the
share preview tag
you can control the
image that
represents you or
your brand in social
streams.
<link rel="image_src"
href="http://www.domain.com/share.png" />
Open Graph meta tags
28. Open Graph Protocol
New set of metatags that combined with social plug-ins such as
the Like Button enable integration into Facebook's social graph
Use a shorter, cleaner title for Facebook that places the brand
name at the front of the tag (contrary to SEO on-site best
practices for TITLE tags).
<title>My SEO Title With Keywords and Stuff – My Brand</title>
<meta property="og:title" content="My Brand on Facebook" />
<meta property="og:description" content="Description" />
<meta property="og:image" content="http://brand.com/share.png"
/>
Open Graph meta tags
29. Our Services
Website and Software development
Search and social media optimization
Instructional design and LMS development
Template creation PSD to HTML/CSS & JS
Editor's Notes
Most CMS's are like a toy boat or toy truck - specific assumptions have been made about their use, assumptions it would be hard for you to override. Frameworks, on the other hand, provide you with raw materials. Drupal is like a Lego kit. Skilled developers have already made the building blocks - in the form of contributed modules - that you need to create a site that suits your needs, whether that is a news site, an online store, a social network, blog, wiki, or something else altogether.
If you want to go deeper with Drupal, you should understand how information flows between the system's layers. There are five main layers to consider: Data, Modules, Blocks & Menus, User Permissions and Template. At its most basic, a node is a set of related information. When you create a new blog post, you are not only defining its body text, but also its title, content, author link, creation date, taxonomy (tags), etc. Some of these elements will be shown by the theme layer when the node is displayed. Others are meta-data that control when the node will show up at all - such as taxonomy or publishing status. Since each item of content is stored as a node, and contains the same basic information, each can be handled in a standard way by both Drupal core and contributed modules. Drupal is Collaborative at the core; designed to delegate content creation.
You can create these content types out the box. They generally consist of a title and description. The presentation is what makes them differentiated. You can add to and alter these content types or create your own.
Open Graph meta tags is a Drupal module you can use to configure these settings from your admin, without having to go into your site code!
If Open Graph title and description tags are not specified, standard TITLE and META description tags are still used as a fallback. However, since SEO TITLE tags are usually longer and place the brand name at the end, possibly out of display range, it is beneficial to use a separate share preview or Open Graph title tag for a cleaner, more brand-focused presentation on social networks.