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Author! Author!

April 9th, 2011 @ 4:05 pm by Marnie

In my January 11, 2011 post, Web 2.0 marketing opportunities, I offered to be your tour guide for some of the major features offered by this marvelous technology. I listed six features represented by the acronym SLATES: Search, Links, Authoring, Tags, Extensions and Signals. Previous posts dealt with Signals (RSS – really simple syndication), Extensions and Tags. In this week’s post we’ll deal with the feature called Authoring,

Most of us think of an author, as someone who writes original content, and that is of course, correct. Authoring, in the Web 2.0 sense, refers to a community of authors who “contribute their content, extending, undoing and redoing each other’s work.”

So, what’s the big deal about authoring?..

Three very significant examples not usually thought of as authoring are (in no particular order):

#1.Wikipedia, which describes itself as “a free, web-based, collaborative, multilingual encyclopedia project supported by the non-profit Wikipedia Foundation. Its 17 million articles (over 3.5 million in English) have been written collaboratively by volunteers around the world, and almost all of its articles can be edited by anyone with access to the site.Wikipedia has become the largest and most popular general reference work on the Internet, ranking around seventh among all websites on (the search engine) Alexa, and having 365 million readers.”

#2. Blogs (a contraction of the words web logs), are the means through which blog owners author a post and blog readers author comments back to those original posts, As a result, blog contents build up over time and provide a community of perspectives.

#3. Microblogs are the means through which authors place messages on websites such as Twitter, which enables “its users to send and read messages called tweets. Tweets are text-based posts of up to 140 characters displayed on the user’s profile page.”

These three examples of authoring provide individual authors with the opportunity to use this major feature of Web 2.0 technology to their marketing advantage.

Please feel free to subscribe to this blog by clicking on the symbol in the upper left hand corner where it reads, “Subscribe To … (RSS orange icon) Posts”. Or simply, click the  link in the upper left hand column to become a “follower. Then you won’t miss any of my future posts regarding Web 2.0 marketing opportunities.

As always, you are invited to contribute your comments, critiques, or suggestions to improve this post and blog.

Posted in Blogging, Networks, Web 2.0 Features | No Comments »

Tag – you’re it!…

February 5th, 2011 @ 2:39 pm by Marnie

In my January 11, 2011 post, Web 2.0 marketing opportunities” I offered to be your tour guide for some of the major features offered by this marvelous technology. I listed six features represented by the acronym SLATES: Search, Links, Authoring, Tags, Extensions and Signals. For no particular reason, I began in reverse order. Previous posts dealt with Signals (RSS – really simple syndication) and Extensions. In this week’s post we’ll deal with Tags, one of the defining characteristics of Web 2.0 technology. Wikipedia has many different definitions for the word “Tag”, however this post will deal with the definition from my original post:

“Tags – Categorization of content by users adding “tags” – short, usually one-word descriptions – to facilitate searching, without dependence on pre-made categories. Collections of tags created by many users within a single system may be referred to as “folksonomies” (i.e., folk taxonomies)”

Please, what’s this mean in English?…

This means content about a certain topic in which you might be interested may be found through a search based on a relevant tag (or word). Let’s say you are looking for information regarding “marketing” and you type that word into a Google (or Yahoo or AltaVista or Bing or MSN) search box. Content stored on the Internet, which has been appropriately “tagged” by the original author,with the keyword “marketing” would be located by that search engine and returned to you in a search results report, with a list of of links to sites which match your search criteria. Typically, the search engine reports back on hundreds to millions of web pages tagged “marketing”. The search report is ranked in order of the most likely results, i.e., the top ten, to the least likely results, i.e. the 999,999th result.

I know, you’re almost afraid to ask, what’s a folksonomy?…

Again, Wikipedia to the rescue:

“A folksonomy is a system of classification derived from the practice and method of collaboratively creating and managing tags to annotate and categorize content. This practice is is also known as collaborative tagging, social classification, social indexing and social tagging.”

Maybe TMI (too much information) but at least now you know, and it was part of the original definition in my previous post.

How does a search engine actually find all this stuff?…

Like me, I’m sure you have been awed by the sheer volume of information stored on the World Wide Web, and the speed at which a search results report is delivered back to you. Tags are the answer. When authors create content, whether it be content in a blog like this one or on a web site, they can (or should) identify and connect their content with tags, or keywords, This gives the search engines a means of scanning the web at the speed of light for matches to the query the viewer has typed into their search request box. To enable you to narrow down search results to your specific interest depends, in part, on adding more tags or keywords to your search query. For example, you can type “marketing plans” to narrow down your search to better target your needs. Many individual bodies of work cannot be adequately described by a single tag, therefore authors may attach or connect as many tags as they deem necessary to single piece of content or a web page.

So, how does this benefit me from a marketing perspective?…

I’m so glad you asked. Suppose you have created a marketing blog (like this one) or designed a “knock out” web site with e-commerce capability to sell your product. And suppose you don’t attach or connect “tags” to identify your blog content or web site. Then only those web users who already know about your blog or web site, because you supplied them with your hyperlink or URL web address, will be able to find your content. If your blog or website is “tagged” with the right keywords, then search engines at least have the means to direct potential new visitors to your blog or business.

There are slightly different means for “tagging” blog content and “web pages” but the end result is the same. So the title I have given this post, “Tag, you’re it!” was not dumb as you might have originally thought. The whole point of marketing through the Internet, is to become the IT everyone goes to.

Please feel free to subscribe to this blog by clicking on the symbol in the upper left hand corner where it reads, “Subscribe To … (RSS orange icon) Posts”. Or simply, click the Google Friend Connect link in the upper left hand column to become a “follower. Then you won’t miss any of my future posts regarding Web 2.0 marketing opportunities.

As always, you are invited to contribute your comments, critiques, or suggestions to improve this post and blog.

Posted in Web 2.0 Features | No Comments »

RSS – Really Simple Syndication…really?

January 18th, 2011 @ 4:43 am by Marnie

In my previous post, Web 2.0 marketing opportunities, I offered to be your tour guide for some of the major features offered by this marvelous technology. I listed six features represented by the acronym SLATES: Search, Links, Authoring, Tags, Extensions and Signals. Let’s start in reverse order with Signals – The use of syndication technology such as RSS to notify users of content changes.” RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. When I first heard the term I liked the sound of “really simple” but the syndication part? Not so much!…

Remember “Dear Abby”?…

As a freelance writer for the print media, I understand “old school” syndication. Consider “Dear Abby”, written by Abigail Van Buren, whose common sense advice column was syndicated in numerous, perhaps hundreds of newspapers across North America, becoming a household name. Abby wrote only one column, but she received compensation from many newspapers. A pretty good gig, if you ask me. Abby’s column, founded in 1959, is a still a good gig, carried on today by her daughter.

Back to the future…

Once upon a time, newspapers were delivered by subscription to your front door by your neighbourhood newspaper boy/girl. Today, Wikipedia tells us:

“An RSS document (which is called a “feed”, “web feed”, or “channel”) includes full or summarized text, plus metadata (I’ll cover this in a future blog post on Tags) such as publishing dates and authorship. Web feeds benefit publishers (bloggers) by letting them syndicate content automatically. They benefit readers (followers) who want to subscribe to timely updates from favored websites or to aggregate feeds from many sites into one place. RSS feeds can be read using (free) software called an “RSS reader”, “feed reader”, or “aggregator”, which can be web-based, desktop-based, or mobile-device-based.

You got all that, right? What it really means is that RSS delivers, by subscription, blog posts into your email reader, in real time.

But, what’s in this for me?…

Just like newspapers, blogs can include advertising targeted to their readership. This is where the Web 2.0 marketing opportunities come in. You were beginning to wonder about that, weren’t you? As the Chief Marketing Officer of your business, you can profit from these advertising opportunities in several ways:

1) You can make an arrangement with an existing blogger, one who has a substantial following, to purchase advertising space on his/her site. As the blogger distributes his/her valued content, your advertising messages tag along on your behalf. Kinda like “old school” newspapers did!

2) You can start your own blog, build a substantial following, and include your own marketing messages in each of your blog posts. However, you need to be subtle about this, as blogs are not well received when used as electronic substitutes for direct mailers – blogs are expected to provide useful information to readers.

3) If you have your own blog, you can sell advertising space on your site to another (usually complimentary) business. Google AdSense is a free program that empowers online publishers to earn revenue by displaying relevant ads on a wide variety of online content, including: site search results, websites, and mobile web pages. AdSense provides targeted text and image ads on your blog. Google automatically chooses which ads to show, based on your blog content, and takes care of any ad updates on your behalf. You earn money each time one of your site visitors view or click on these ads.

4) If you have your own blog, and a substantial following, you can join Google’s Affiliate Network. With this program, you choose which advertiser’s links, images and/or ad copy appear on your blog or website. However, you are required to do the updating of text and ads, perhaps on a daily basis. Affiliate marketers receive a commission or percentage of the sale of items purchased by means of a “click through link” activated by visitors to your site. For example, your blog post contains a review of a recently published book which has a click through link to Amazon.com back to that book. At that point, if your site visitors buy that book  you will receive a commission or percentage of sales. Neat, huh? (It is recommended that your blog contains a disclosure of your Affiliate marketing relationship, as opposed to letting your blog followers assume you are an independent book reviewer. It’s just the right thing to do!)

Don’t be intimidated by Web 2.0. It’s providing new and better marketing opportunities for those brave souls not hung up on “The good old days”. The good old days were never this good!

image of RSS Feed Icon

This is the symbol which indicates you can subscribe to an RSS feed. Please feel free to subscribe to this blog by clicking on the symbol in the upper left hand corner where it reads, “Subscribe To … (RSS orange icon) Posts”. Then you won’t miss any of my future posts regarding Web 2.0 marketing opportunities.

 

As always, you are invited to comment/contribute your thoughts and ideas to improve this blog post.

Posted in Blogging, Networks, Web 2.0 Features | No Comments »

 

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