Most relevant news, techniques and tools for authors looking to promote their books inexpensively off and online. We refer to and utilize many of the Guerrilla Marketing techniques and have created some of our own geared specifically to book promotion and marketing. Our website is the ground where we put into practice our marketing efforts. Membership is FREE.
Which search engines to target?
Websites Made For Affiliate Programs - Better Than Contextual Advertisement?
White Paper Success with Michael Stelzner
Some experts just know how to deliver a quality seminar. Michael Stelzner gets a standing ovation for his live event in San Diego yesterday. He really knows white papers, and hardly stopped for air. He delivered non-stop, valuable information interspersed with exercises and still had plenty of time for audience questions.
I have to admit I don't always like going to live seminars, especially the ones with loud rock music and excessive group activities. I'm there to learn, not to chit-chat...and I love rock, just not in a seminar setting. Michael used classical music. And the food was delicious too.
Many of the participants were writers and eager to learn. And for good reason. Some are charged with writing their company's white papers. Others, freelancers, were eager to become proficient because white paper writers earn high fees.
A white paper can cost from $1000 to $6000, depending on the experience of the writer...(a good reason to gain experience, I'd say.) I'm working on our 2nd white paper now and can hardly wait to "bill" Denise $6000! (Well, since it's our 2nd one...)
During the event, we wrote an outline for a white paper of our own. I did one for Customized Newsletter Services, and just need to fill in the important parts. Here's Michael's suggested outline for
a business benefits-oriented white paper:
Introduction: what is the problem and the general solution in the first few paragraphs
Market Drivers: what is driving the market toward our solution
Problems: identify the top 3 to 5 issues related to the problem
Generic Solutions: Introduce the solution in a generic way (no mention of brands here)
� � => Define: clearly define the solution
� � => Benefits: Explain how it overcomes the problems listed earlier
� � => What to Look For: list top 10 considerations when looking for a solution
Specific Solution: Discuss the specific advantages of your product, service or solution
Call to Action: Provide a logical next step and include company contact information
When you think about this outline, it could also work for an advertorial, article or other persuasive copy. What do you think?
I'm a big fan of Michael Katz.�
I read his "E-Newsletter on E-Newsletters", and love his funny writing style. He is a leading expert on electronic newsletters and is head Chief Penguin of Blue Penguin Development, Inc.
Michael recently joined the Blogosphere with his blog It Sure Beats Working,� Michael Katz's sure-fire advice and steadfast encouragement for the first-time, mid-life, solo professional.
Be sure to read his post on "No Competition Out There." While you're there, subscribe to get updates by email, you'll love his stuff.
Welcome to the blogosphere, Michael. For anyone interested in relationship marketing, and writing ezines, you'll like reading Michael Katz.
Quality of Online Content is King Once Again
The launch of Google's in video ads brought some interesting facts to the fore - it's not the flushing felines and lip-syncing college kids of user-generated video that supposedly draws so any eyeballs that got the ad dollars. Marketers are more interested in paying customers than a slew of eyeballs just there to see a weird video. Go figure!
"There's a huge audience built around user-generated content but no evidence that it is a profitable business," said Peter Hoskins, who recently succeeded ManiaTV's founder, Drew Massey, as CEO.
Marketers are looking for quality content says David Verklin, Carat Americas CEO and ManiaTV board member. "YouTube has hundreds of channels of professionally produced content. Simply put, user-created content is being held to ever higher and higher standards."
Increasingly, user-generated videos have to compete for attention with professional, premium content, reports Ad Age. A music video from Avril Lavigne is beginning to approach Judson Laipply's "Evolution of Dance" as YouTube's most viewed video.
What does this mean for your PR campaigns? You do need to tap into the vast audiences that are watching video online. But you need to produce excellent quality content and it does not have to break the budget. .
In the end, it's the quality of your content that will get the result that actually affects your bottom line..
I have a sad news today. I’ve decided to take down one of the most visited pages and high ranked page from my domain. I know many of you’ve been using it and recommending it at various forums around the world, but due to the recent change in Adsense’s policy, I’ve decided to take it down permanently.
The URL is:
http://www.marketingsyndrome.com/adsensetemplates/
I’ve put up some free downloads there for future visitors.
Thanks for your support for sharing the template with your list members and blog readers. If you have no idea what I’m talking about, don’t worry about it :)
Bo
It’s here now, my new blog is ready.
Please update your RSS feed to…
http://feeds.feedburner.com/marketingsyndrome
New blog is located at:
http://www.marketingsyndrome.com/blog/
See you there!
I recently found a great marketing podcast whi is better than some of the paid seminars that I’ve listened to. Make sure to add this podcast to your bookmark! Enjoy!
I’ve decided to start a new blog on niche marketing. It will be hosted on the same domain. I didn’t want to mess-up current search engine rankings and all, but my current blog is out-dated and most of the information shared here are also outdated. I need a platform where I can easily update old content as well. WordPress 2.1 will be my choice (again) and will use better category system so that you find information more easily.
Also, I’m going to be moving the current mailing system to aweber, a long delayed decision on this. So bear with me during the transition time.
Bo
First of all, I’d like to say happy new year to you. I know I haven’t shared anything with you for a while. I hope you are still reading this blog, because I’m going to share even more niche marketing stuff with you in 2007. I was struggling with coming up with the blog content because I noticed that what my readers need is not “techniques” but rather, motivation and inspiration. I’ve tried to do both, and was kinda lost, to be honest. So, in 2007, I will make case studies and share the experience with you. I hope this will motivate you and inspire you to go after the things you desired to achieve.
Anyway, the main reason why I wasn’t able to come near the PC was that I’m in the progress of moving to a new house. To be more exact, we are moving back to one of my investment houses. We are going to sell the house we are currently living and move back to the one which has a big basement.
The reason for this move is to make a physical office for my online business company. Marketing Syndrome Inc. will have its physical office at a basement of my house :) Currently, I’m busy doing the renovation of the house and the office. It’s about 10 minutes from my current house and I’m making a trip daily to do some work. I have to hire contractors for some tasks, but I’m doing the most of the work myself. Ah! I know what you are thinking! Outsource! well, no. I’m doing it because I love doing house renovation with my wife. It’s our only hobby that we both enjoy doing :)
So, here is what I’m up to. If your goal is to earn a full-time income from niche marketing, working from home, make sure to come back to my blog. Because you will learn everything about it from this blog. I have a lot to share with you in this field and I barely scratched the surface. I haven’t share with you anything about my main affiliate campaigns that bring me the major portion of my income. You will read all about it for free in 2007.
I’m also exploring new ways to bring passive income online consistently, so I will be sharing this with you also. The software I’m currently exploring is called “Build A Niche Store“, which is believe to be a very effective tool for niche marketers. I will be testing this software thoroughly in January and February. So expect to hear more about it in the next posts.
David at his blog posted an interesting findings on YPN vs Adsense. He switched to YPN from Adsense for 10 days and shared his results with a screenshot.
Very interesting read, please check it out.
This is one of the most asked questions from niche marketers.
“Should I make a website that I’m passionate about?” or
“Should I go where the money is made?”
Personally, I’d go where the money is. If you can find a topic that you are passionate about and also where great money is being exchanged in that market, that would be wonderful. But it is not common to find one like that.
I’ve been marketing in the niche markets where I have absolutely no idea nor interest in. But I successfully pulled it and made great passive income from them. Because I was willing to sacrifice my comfort zone, I’m now able to go after what I’m passionate about. I no longer have to worry about if my new sites will be making money or not. I have sites that makes me absolutely no money. I made them just because I wanted to share my knowledge and interest with others.
So my answer to this commonly asked question is to go after the money, then you will be able to do what you are passionate about eventually.
Any other opinions welcomed. Please use the comment section.
It’s about time I give you an update about my new blog. The basic design has been done, but I’m still working on the content. I want to fill it up with great content before I show it to you.
The main difference will be that you will find step-by-step to building a money making site. You will be given the exact steps which I follow to make a profitable website, plus website templates that I use. You will find them under tutorial series. I’m sharing the stuff that you don’t find in paid stuff.
I know the screenshot is blur and too small, but I can’t disclose it yet :) Talk to you soon.
Just read from Teli’s WordPress Niche Blog that WordPress 2.1 is out for download. One of the important changes is in this version is that now it requires MySQL 4. Which means I have to upgrade my servers in order to test drive it.
What You Can Do With Amazon RSS Now?
If I keep this up, I might actually get the reputation of picking on Amazon.com as a hobby [just take a look at Is Amazon Missing the RSS Advertising Opportunity?, Why is Everyone Missing the RSS Transactional Messaging Opportunity? and Get the Most from RSS Marketing ... Take Your DM Hat Off!].
It's just one of those things. You see a company that could really go above and beyond with RSS and really use it to drive revenues, but they just don't do it.
But at least they're showing some activitiy lately ...
[in addition to removing their list of relatively useless category feeds, which used to be available here]
a) Gold Box
Gold Box is a service that provides you with personalized deals every day. It finally has an RSS feed with your daily deals.
But, unfortunatelly, the RSS feed only provides brief information about the product, instead of also giving you a direct purchase link, some of the latest product reviews and other information that could facilitate the sale. Also, there's no personalization, or so it seems. Why not give me an RSS feed with just the special deals for me, based on my previous purchases?
b) Plog
This is one of the genius Amazon ideas. Each Plog is personalized to the individual user, giving him the latest blog posts from Amazon's authors (just from the authors' whos books you've purchased), and it also comes with a targeted RSS feed, matching the Plog content you see when you're logged-in. You can also subscribe to additional blog content manually.
Also, Amazon is promising that we'll be soon able to track latest releases, changes to our orders and "much more" through our plogs, which will presumably also come be published in our targeted RSS feeds.
Amazon, please keep this up. Make us happy:)
c) The Amazon API
But let's be fair to Amazon. Even though their end-user RSS feed offering is poor, they do provide developers with the ability to create their own RSS feeds from Amazon, by integrating with their API.
Here are some examples:
RSStalker.com - provides a variety of Amazon product tracking options via RSS, such as a 10% price drop feed that lets you know when a product that RSStalker is tracking via Amazon drops 10% in price; RSS feeds from your wishlists; last 25 price changes in a selected Amazon category, and more.
Baebo - provides a persistant search RSS feed for Amazon products, based on your keywords.
More great examples floating around ...
| How Can RSS Power Your Internet Marketing and Publishing? Find out more in the most comprehensive and best guide on RSS for marketers, as acclaimed by leading RSS experts, developers, marketers and publishers. Click here and get the step-by-step guide to taking full marketing advantage of RSS. |
Mobil Avenue accuses me of 20th century marketing thinking. I'm not quite sure what he has in mind, but it seems that my Second Life posts ticked off some people.
Now, don't get me wrong, I see alot of development potential in virtual worlds, but Second Life as it is simply does not cut it.
I won't go into the details again, but the sheer lack of economy of scales shows that something is wrong when you compare the investments in Second Life and the actual virtual world penetration. Not to mention the difficult user interface.
Second Life is a good beginning, but virtual worlds have a far way to go before they deserve to be treated as seriously as some are treating them today. Yes, Second Life should certainly be treated as a marketing/communications playground, but not as a high importance marketing channel.
If you want to call this 20th century thinking, go ahead. It is. As are economies of scale, profitability, sales conversion, cost per order and other business "relics".
And as you'll notice, 20th century thinking still works, even in 2007. We've all heard stories of the demise of advertising, the death of PR, the death of e-mail, the death of postal direct mail and so on ... but they're all alive, well and kicking still today, and will remain so.
Actually, intrusive direct response TV advertising is still one of the most effective tools to generate sales. And it gives you more bang for the buck than almost any other marketing channel, including online.
Do I like this? No. I'd love to believe that the internet is the alpha and omega of marketing. But it's not. It's the key connector, but not the key driver. That's the way things are, and as markters we need to employ 20th century thinking and use what works best ... and the numbers tell us that.
But this doesn't mean we shouldn't play and test. Quite on the contrary.
OK, this conversation is getting somewhat beyond the original topic, and it's quite possible I'm not even getting what Mobil Avenue is trying to say:)
And please don't get me started on 3D virtual webstores ...
Of course, I might be wrong. And if I am, I'll be the first to change my stripes the next day. It's what marketers do. If a new thing comes up and works better than what you're doing, change. But every change first demand proof. Unless you're just testing ... because when you're testing, the rules of the game change.
| How Can RSS Power Your Internet Marketing and Publishing? Find out more in the most comprehensive and best guide on RSS for marketers, as acclaimed by leading RSS experts, developers, marketers and publishers. Click here and get the step-by-step guide to taking full marketing advantage of RSS. |
What works best in RSS marketing? How are RSS subscribers different than e-mail subscribers? RSS publishing best practices if you want to sell?
These and other practical questions are all revealed in the 2nd part of the RSS interview with Bryan Eisenberg. Without doubt, this is one of the best and most practical RSS marketing interviews we've done so far.
In part 1 of the Bryan Eisenberg RSS interview we focused on how the GrokDotCom.com is going beyond traditional RSS Radars by employing intelligent content aggregation tools, instead of relying just on contextual filtering, and what kind of results they are achieving.
In part 2 of the interview we move beyond RSS Radars to their overall RSS marketing strategy.
In this interview find out about ...
1. How RSS subscribers are different from e-mail subscribers and why?
2. How to sell products through content-rich RSS feeds?
3. Do RSS subscribers mind seeing product promotions in your feeds?
4. When to publish your latest RSS content to get the most links from other websites and most readership?
5. What's the right RSS publishing frequency for promotional content?
6. Why branding your RSS feed is important and how to do it?
Click here to listen to the MP3 file [8:33 minutes; 2 MB]
| How Can RSS Power Your Internet Marketing and Publishing? Find out more in the most comprehensive and best guide on RSS for marketers, as acclaimed by leading RSS experts, developers, marketers and publishers. Click here and get the step-by-step guide to taking full marketing advantage of RSS. |
Only a few more weeks until the ACCM (Annual Catalog and Multi-Channel Merchant Conference) event in Boston, one of the best DM conferences of the year.
If you're in Boston or are coming to the conference, drop me a note.
I'll be speaking on RSS and other new internet marketing media, together with Scott Voight of Silverpop.
If you're at the conference, definetly reserve the Monday 3 PM slot to come hear us. The last presentation we did together with Scott in London was a huge hit, and we promise not to dissapoint:)
| How Can RSS Power Your Internet Marketing and Publishing? Find out more in the most comprehensive and best guide on RSS for marketers, as acclaimed by leading RSS experts, developers, marketers and publishers. Click here and get the step-by-step guide to taking full marketing advantage of RSS. |
While the original plan for the RSS Diary blog was leaving on hiatus until the 2007 edition of the RSS Marketing e-book is done, the FeedBurner acquisition by Google is a story just to important to pass up ... especially all the implications it might bring into the world of RSS Advertising, and RSS Marketing as a whole as well.
So, yes. FeedBurner, a leading RSS metrics and RSS advertising company was just acquired by Google. Finally confirmed after weeks of speculation. I won't go into the details of the acquisition, as you can read more about it at the FeedBurner blog and just by following the news at Google News.
Here, we'll take a look at the implications this brings to the world of RSS Marketing. Just my predictions of course:)
In my book, all marketing/communications channels should be judged using the same metrics, such as conversions, cost-per-order, cost-per-subscriber, sales etc.
Although you could already do all of this with RSS, it required some tinkering.
But, as FeedBurner gets assimilated into Google Analytics, tracking the key marketing metrics should become a breeze, giving everyone access to crucial internet optimization data.
With RSS Metrics being integrated directly into Google Analytics (which I'm sure will happen very soon), marketers might finally start actually measuring their RSS feeds.
Means better RSS Marketing, finally.
Although FeedBurner is cautions to provide any details about how their CPM pricing model might change with the integration of their ad services into Google, I'm quite certain that RSS advertising will move the way of cost-per-click.
Means less revenues for RSS feed publishers, but better ROI for you, the advertiser.
RSS Advertising will finally reach the mainstream, utilizing Google's massive advertiser database.
Prices will go up, and RSS content monetization will again start becoming the talk at industry events.
On the plus side, it also means Google will be able to attract more RSS feed publishers, meaning more RSS ad inventory for you. Your RSS advertising reach potential is about to explode, finally enabling you to reach the masses using RSS Advertising.
I love Pheedo, another leading RSS Metrics and RSS Advertising company, but the FeedBurner acquisition makes me wonder what's in store for them as Google starts pushing RSS advertising to their massive database of advertisers, especially as part of an integrated online advertising service.
It's certainly not the end of other RSS Advertising companies, but they might all soon see themselves transforming from RSS ad networks to RSS media planning & buying consultants.
Which would be a shame, especially considering the advancements in RSS Advertising developed by Pheedo.
Advertiser demand seems to be growing quicker than the inventory offered by Google.
The obvious choice for Google (in addition of course to increasing ad inventory through additional reach, media expansion through the content network, and expansion to new ad channels, like RSS and banner inventories) is to offer better targeting, for a premium price.
As a marketer, I clearly want to place my ads in front of the most relevant prospects. Keyword targeting is OK, but adding behavioral on top of that introduces another filtering element to my media planning, enabling me to really pin-point the users I want to see my ads.
This may either be science fiction or Google's actual long-term masterplan. As more advertising budgets rush to the internet, available quality ad inventory will continue shrinking.
By introducing such targeting, integrating the metric and capabilities of all of their properties, Google could come as close as possible to total ad targeting, the holy grail of marketing we are all striving towards.
Things will get much more interesting ... and soon.
If I were an ad agency, I'd start developing a targeting department, focusing on targeted media buying.
| How Can RSS Power Your Internet Marketing and Publishing? Find out more in the most comprehensive and best guide on RSS for marketers, as acclaimed by leading RSS experts, developers, marketers and publishers. Click here and get the step-by-step guide to taking full marketing advantage of RSS. |
Just got word from my Japaneese publisher that Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS is scheduled to be released in Japan in print end of July.
It's great to finally go international:)
Japan is getting the short 2007 edition of the book ... and yes, the longer US 2007 edition is still being written, unfortunatelly.
I can't believe how many times I've postoped it already. Actually, I'm quite ashamed of it.
But, I do believe it will be worth the wait.
I also wanted to thank Geoff Livingston for putting Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS on his list of 25+ Great New Media Books.
Geoff, thanks for the extra motivation to help me finish the 2007 edition:)
| How Can RSS Power Your Internet Marketing and Publishing? Find out more in the most comprehensive and best guide on RSS for marketers, as acclaimed by leading RSS experts, developers, marketers and publishers. Click here and get the step-by-step guide to taking full marketing advantage of RSS. |
WebProNews has a short summary from Amanda Watlington's tips for SEO optimization of your RSS feeds:
1. Subscribe to your own feed and claim it on blog engine Technorati2. Focus your feed with a keyword theme
3. Use keywords in the title tag; keep it under 100 characters
4. Most feed readers display feeds alphabetically, title accordingly
5. Write description tags as if for a directory; keep them under 500 characters
6. Use full paths on links and unique URLs for each item
7. Provide email updates for the non-techies
8. Offer an HTML version of your feed
9. For branding, add logo and images to your feed
Now, let's add some tips from Stephan Spencer and continue with the numbering:
10. Full text, not summaries11. 20 or MORE items (not just 10)
12. Multiple feeds (by category, latest comments, comments by post)
13. Keyword-rich item [title]
14. Your brand name in the item [title]
15. Your most important keyword in the site [title] container
16. Compelling site [description]
17. Don't put tracking codes into the URLs (e.g. &source=rss)
18. An RSS feed that contains enclosures (i.e. podcasts) can get into additional RSS directories & engines
And to round this off, a summary of my own tips [part 2 here] for using RSS to drive traffic to your site:
19. Get your RSS content (proactively) syndicated on other relevant websites [just the headlines and summaries of course]20. Submit your RSS feeds to all the RSS search engines and directories
21. Use RSS to add relevant third-party content [again, just headlines and summaries] to your website to gain additional SE weight for your keywords
22. Use RSS to deliver all of your frequently updated content, not just for your latest blog posts
23. Whenever the content in your feed changes, ping the most important search engines and directories [yes, you don't need a blog for this]
Do you have more tips?
(a) Post them in the comments form below.
(b) E-mail me at info@marketingstudies.net and let's set-up an interview
| How Can RSS Power Your Internet Marketing and Publishing? Find out more in the most comprehensive and best guide on RSS for marketers, as acclaimed by leading RSS experts, developers, marketers and publishers. Click here and get the step-by-step guide to taking full marketing advantage of RSS. |
Part of the upcoming 2007 edition of the RSS Marketing e-book are also the interviews we are doing with various internet marketing experts and RSS practitioners. In the following days and hopefully not too many weeks, we'll be posting those interviews here.
I'm sure most of you have heard of Bryan Eisenberg before. Bryan is the leading worldwide authority on internet marketing optimization and website persuasion architecture. He was also one of the few marketers that got on the RSS Marketing bandwagon early on.
Recently, Bryan started exploring RSS Radars as a tool to increase the traffic to their optimization portal GrokDotCom.com, increase visitor loyalty, position the website as the key news source for internet optimization ... and naturally facilitate online sales of their books and consulting services. Take a look here.
But while most RSS Radars are based on contextually filtering content from selected third-party RSS feeds, the GrokDotCom.com RSS Radars go far beyond anything else we have seen on the market so far.
Instead of relying only on contextual content filtering to select the most relevant third-party content, they are employing a number of additional filters, such as the amount of linkage the story is receiving, source relevance and credibility, and so on ... and they're calling it a discovery engine.
All of these answers, and more, available in the audio interview.
Click here to listen to the MP3 file [14 minutes; 3 MB]
| How Can RSS Power Your Internet Marketing and Publishing? Find out more in the most comprehensive and best guide on RSS for marketers, as acclaimed by leading RSS experts, developers, marketers and publishers. Click here and get the step-by-step guide to taking full marketing advantage of RSS. |
Written by Mangesh
There are several reasons I loved working on the Saints and Sinners Issue. It’s the only magazine I’ve ever seen with Madonna and Gandhi elbowing for cover space, it’s the first issue we ever got the fantastic authors John Green and Michael Stusser to write for, and it had this piece by Chris Smith. It’s just 23 quick notes on 23 important album covers, but it’s one of my favorites. Enjoy!
Long before MTV, performers expressed the visual dimension of their art through their album covers. Every music fan has his/her favorites, but several covers stand out for their brilliance, their impact and their ability to make as much of a statement as the music they represent. Every art form has its giants, and album cover art is no exception. The work of the designers featured here spans over 40 years of music.
THE SIXTIES: Before the 1960s, most albums featured portraits of musicians, instruments or musicians playing instruments. But the 1960’s spirit of exploration and experimentation found its way into music and, consequently, onto album covers.
1967 The Beatles, Sgt.Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band
The Beatles’ album covers act as a kind of scrapbook for their mythmaking career: a serious With the Beatles, a hippie-esque Rubber Soul, a stripped down The White Album, and a funeral procession on Abbey Road. Each is a testament to the band’s creativity and insight into their culture. Yet no single album cover defines its era and its artists more than 1967’s Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.
As with any good cult artifact, stories built around the album: Was Paul McCartney dead? (No.) Are the figures cardboard cutouts? (Yes.) Are those pot plants? (No.) The album was also legendarily difficult to execute-securing the faces of the band’s heroes and influences, from Alistair Crowley to guru Maharishi Mahesh Yogi-was a logistical nightmare. Finding photographs of everyone, blowing them up to specifications and tinting them with color all turned out to be well worth the effort, however. The album became the single most recognizable (and, according to many, the greatest) album cover of all time.
1965 Herb Alpert & The Tijuana Brass, Whipped Cream & Other Delights
This concept album pushed the 1960s envelope all the way to the fridge. Every song on the album is named for some kind of food, something the cover model seems to be enjoying in a more than metaphorical way. This was Herb Albert’s most successful album, but whether the songs or cover sold the album has yet to be determined.
1969 Grateful Dead, Aoxomoxoa
It’s an iconic example of psychedelic art by one of the giants of the genre, graphic artist and California surfer, Rick Griffin. The band met Griffin backstage after a concert and fell in love with his style. In fact, they were so sure of his talent that they gave him total artistic freedom for the cover. Griffin also designed the first masthead for Rolling Stone.
1967 The Doors, Strange Days
With this album, The Doors touched on the decade’s surrealism with a Fellini-esque circus, but still escaped the psychedelia that typified its generation. The cover’s zoo of characters were a mix of professionals, amateurs and friends. The juggler is the photographer’s assistant. The trumpet player in the background was a cab driver who agreed to pose for $5 right before the image was shot.
1969 Blind Faith, Blind Faith
By the end of the decade, idealism had given way to cynicism, yet this album offered a strange vision of hope. A maiden in the nude, holding a silver spaceship matted onto a pastoral setting, forms a metaphorical union of innocence and achievement, life and knowledge, uncharacteristic of the decade that spawned it.
THE SEVENTIES: The stylistic fragmentation of the 1960s continued in the 1970s. Bands like Pink Floyd, Yes and Led Zeppelin claimed music-and their respective album covers-were definitely a trip.
1971 The Rolling Stones, Sticky Fingers
Rock n’ roll is sometimes used as a euphemism for sex, so it’s no wonder that the crotch has been the centerpiece of countless album covers. Yet, The Rolling Stones’ Sticky Fingers is the most famous and innovative example.
Sticky Fingers stands out as the best album cover of the decade. The cover features an Andy Warhol photograph of a well-endowed young man (contrary to legend, it was not Mick Jagger). A working zipper on the man’s pants could be opened to reveal another shot of the model, this time in his skivvies. The zipper left its mark on the album cover genre. Unfortunately, it also left its mark on the record itself (right in the middle of “Sister Morphine”).
1973 Pink Floyd, Dark Side of the Moon
The classic simplicity of the prism on Dark Side is partly derived from a textbook illustration designed to show how light passes through a prism to form a spectrum. In a science book, however, a prism spectrum has seven colors. The album cover only has six; they got rid of indigo simply because it looked too much like purple.
1977 Sex Pistols, Never Mind the Bollocks Here’s the Sex Pistols
Nothing sums up the punk ethos better than this album. Like the record itself, the cover resembles a ransom note (actually designed with cut-up newspaper bits), boldly proclaiming the Pistols had stolen the music industry’s thunder … and didn’t plan on giving it back. The album was first refused in record shops because of the word “bollocks,” and the issue was later taken up in court.
1979 Supertramp, Breakfast in America
This album reflects the English band’s move to the United States and the cynicism that went along with it. A view of the Manhattan skyline, uncannily recreated with salt shakers, creamers, coffee mugs, egg cartons, napkin dispensers and silverware, stands behind a friendly waitress named Libby who offers you a tall glass of OJ-all through your airplane window. Good morning, indeed.
1979 The Clash, London Calling
Punk thrust a rusted safety pin into the nostril of the bloated music industry with this one. London Calling juxtaposed the concept of a 1956 Elvis album with a blurry image of Paul Simonon smashing his bass. Incidentally, during the shoot, he smashed his watch in the process. That’s the price you pay for ripping on Elvis.
THE EIGHTIES: The 1980s offered an interesting contrast: Musically, the decade was both an extension of the excesses of the 1970s and a reaction to it. So what was the product of this conflict? The ability to stir up some controversy.
1988 Jane’s Addiction, Nothing’s Shocking
This album was shocking in every way. A pair of Siamese twins joined at the hip and shoulder (actually plaster sculptures built by lead singer Perry Ferrell himself) sit naked on a love seat, their heads on fire.
According to Ferrell, it’s harder to get big flames burning on plaster twins than one might think. Nine national record chains refused to stock the album.
1980 Gamma, Gamma 2
This cover perfectly illustrates the fear that 1980’s punk rock brought into the otherwise serene suburbs of America. Originally, the pair of feet in the bottom right corner of the cover were only those of a woman, but Electra Records felt the image might seem inflammatory to certain female customers. At the last minute, a pair of male feet were added to the cover.
1988 Prince, Lovesexy
While heavy metal and punk were making waves in music during the 1980s, Prince pushed the envelope in a different direction. Celebrating both sexual freedom and ambiguity, Prince combined a feminine pose with overt phallic imagery. Believe it or not, the shot was spontaneous: the photographer Jean-Baptiste Mondino suggested Prince go nude just before the session.
1983 Def Leppard, Pyromania
This album made Tipper Gore’s “filthy fifteen” list when she crusaded against “porn-rock” in the mid-1980s. By organizing the Parents’ Music Resource Center, she encouraged the Recording Industry Association of America to adopt an explicit content labeling policy to protect minors.
THE NINETIES AND BEYOND: By the 1990s the CD had replaced the old vinyls of yesterday. While the classic square shape was back, the smaller size meant designers didn’t have as much space with which to work. Time will tell what images from the 1990s will stake their claim as classics. Some are immediate standouts.
1991 Metallica, Metallica
The rock band reflects their stripped-down sound with this none-more-black cover, known to fans simply as “the black album.” The album marked the band’s transition from heavy metal to mainstream.
1990 Pixies, Bossanova
The Pixies took their listeners to another world with Bossanova, mixing the old with the new and the new with the kitsch and retro. Pixies’ vocalist Frank Black claims he saw a UFO as a child and was always infatuated with outer space. In fact, the band’s founding members decided to form the band while on a trip to New Zealand to see Halley’s Comet.
1996 Beck, Odelay
One of the decade’s strangest covers comes, fittingly, from one of its strangest artists. Beck’s album shows a Komondor, (a Hungarian sheepdog with a dreadlock-like coat), leaping over a hurdle. It’s almost impossible to tell it’s a dog, but it’s even harder to forget.
1997 Prodigy, Fat of the Land
The rise of electronica brought acts like Prodigy to the fore, which featured a crab with brandished claws, symbolic of their aggressive beats and attitudes. The image was chosen at the last minute as an illustration of the album title: a crab coming out of the sea to enjoy the bounty of the land.
AND SOME COVER ARTISTS YOU SHOULD MEET:
Andy Warhol: 1967 The Velvet Underground, The Velvet Underground and Nico
Despite what it insinuates on the cover, the album’s title is not Andy Warhol. Rather, the then-unknown The Velvet Underground used their well-known album artist’of Warhol’s name created a persistent myth about The Velvets. Everybody thought Andy Warhol was the lead guitarist.”
Reid Miles: 1962 Freddie Hubbard, Hub-Tones
Reid Miles produced almost 500 graphically striking covers for Blue Note Records jazz acts like Freddie Hubbard. Apparently, Blue Note often didn’t have the budget to print full-color album covers, so Miles was confined to using two colors. With his creativity and resourcefulness though, you’d never know.
Neon Park XIII: 1970 The Mothers of Invention, Weasels Ripped My Flesh
A painter, whose name is as colorful as his work, Park produced quirky paintings for Little Feat and the Beach Boys, and the infamous Weasels Ripped My Flesh for Frank Zappa’s band, The Mothers of Invention. This one was based on an ad for an electric shaver from a 1950s Life magazine.
Roger Dean: 1973 Yes, Tales From Topographic Oceans
Influenced by John Michell’s The View Over Atlantis-which argues the entire earth is connected via a single prehistoric ancient culture-and by P. Yogananda’s Autobiography of a Yogi, Dean imagined otherworldly dreamscapes for prog-rock groups like Yes and Asia. In 1970, Dean also designed the first logo for a new record label, Virgin.
Hipgnosis (A British design pair led by Storm Thorgerson): 1975 Pink Floyd, Wish You Were Here
Hipgnosis produced widespread cover art, including Led Zepellin’s Houses of the Holy and over 20 Pink Floyd covers. In Wish You Were Here, the burning man shaking hands actually is on fire. At the photo shoot, the stunt man wore an asbestos suit and a wig, then doused himself with gasoline and lit a match.
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From “Nevemind” to “Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots” to “On the Corner”, we definitely left a lot off the list. Be sure to tell us which ones we should have included in the comments below.
Labels: book marketing, book promotion, publishing, self-publishing, selling books, selling your book
An Online Editing Job in Canada
Just picked this up in my morning email:
Editor / Curator
Closing Date: August 10, 2007
Contract: Two to three days per week
Location: Canada (virtual office)
rabble.ca, Canada's leading alternative online news and analysis Web site, seeks a dynamic editorial curator to direct day-to-day operations, edit the site's features section and integrate multi-media and social media functions into the website on a daily basis.
Responsibilities include assigning, editing and posting stories, working with other editorial staff, planning
editorial calendar, image research, supervising editorial interns and volunteers, and some writing.
Candidates should have strong organizational skills, extensive editing experience, a demonstrated ability to
meet deadlines, a collaborative approach to teamwork, familiarity with Web editing, a creative approach to
working with limited financial resources, a knowledge of progressive politics and world affairs, combined with experience in progressive activism and a keen interest in the potential of Web 2.0 tools. At least three years experience in journalism or publishing, mainstream or alternative is required.
The editor works in a virtual office environment and can be based anywhere in Canada.
Please send cover letter, resume, references and a short writing sample outlining your vision for rabble.ca (one page max) by August 10th to rabble publisher Kim Elliott, jobs@rabble.ca. In the spirit of the virtual office, only electronic applications will be accepted. The subject line should read: rabble editor application.
Closing date for application: August 10, 2007
Start Date: early September 2007
Competitive remuneration rates
Please note: only candidates selected for an interview will be contacted.
rabble.ca is an employment equity employer.
Kim Elliott, Publisher
jobs@rabble.ca
Jade Walker recently posted some interesting thoughts in the Online Writing List, and she's kindly allowed me to quote them here:
I recently attended a conference for copy editors in Miami and whenever conversation turned to the Web, the editors in attendance often fell into two categories:1) They hate the Web because they believe its mere existence is going to result in profit/job losses.
2) They fear the Web because they don't understand where copy editors fit in.I have no doubt there are other editorial folks at newspapers and magazines across the country that feel the same way. This is so easy to fix! All it takes is a little time and training. Those of us who've been working in new media for many years need to show the print folks what the Web has to offer, particularly the advantages of publishing news in different formats, reading/writing blogs, using RSS feeds, etc.
I also believe newspapers and magazines should make a concerted effort to update their online portals. So many sites are clunky, hard to navigate or simply replicate the print product via online templates. What can these companies do to fix this problem?
• Look at the competition and see what works and what doesn't.
• Experiment with design but avoid repeating others' mistakes.
• Hire copy editors, or assign current editors, to give blog entries and articles a once-over before posting on the Web.
• Allow comments, albeit moderated ones, on stories.
• Create a forum just to find sources for stories.
• Include e-mail addresses for reporters on each entry/article, or a link to a profile page.
• Provide "e-mail this entry" links as well as permanent links for readers/bloggers who wish to discuss stories and share them with friends/family.
• Offer one-click options to the recommendation sites (digg, technorati, netscape, etc.), or follow USA Today's lead and allow readers to rate the stories themselves based on usefulness or entertainment value.
Jade ended her post with "Any thoughts?" And I echo her question.
I'll add one thought from my own online-writing experience: The editor of The Tyee finds comments a chronic headache. Too many are illiterate, incoherent, abusive, and plain libellous. He requires registration before people can post comments, and this has helped a lot. I find the comments on my own Tyee articles generally pretty civil. But some topics can bring out the barking loonies.
The first I heard about The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, Naomi Klein's new book, was in this morning's Globe and Mail, which gives her the front and back pages of the Focus section: a fetching photo on the whole front page, and a very positive profile by John Allemang on the back.
The irony isn't lost on anyone. The foremost young critic of "disaster capitalism" is a superb marketer. Her new website is a knockout too. It even offers the promise of a video by Alfonso (Children of Men) Cuarón, promoting the book, starting September 9.
My main objection to the site is in the text, which runs in overlong paragraphs. Even Klein's most loyal followers may find it hard going.
Here's an excerpt from the home page, but re-paragraphed to make the text more accessible:
In THE SHOCK DOCTRINE, Naomi Klein explodes the myth that the global free market triumphed democratically.
Exposing the thinking, the money trail and the puppet strings behind the world-changing crises and wars of the last four decades, The Shock Doctrine is the gripping story of how America’s “free market” policies have come to dominate the world-- through the exploitation of disaster-shocked people and countries.
At the most chaotic juncture in Iraq’s civil war, a new law is unveiled that would allow Shell and BP to claim the country’s vast oil reserves…. Immediately following September 11, the Bush Administration quietly out-sources the running of the “War on Terror” to Halliburton and Blackwater…. After a tsunami wipes out the coasts of Southeast Asia, the pristine beaches are auctioned off to tourist resorts.... New Orleans’s residents, scattered from Hurricane Katrina, discover that their public housing, hospitals and schools will never be reopened….
These events are examples of “the shock doctrine”: using the public’s disorientation following massive collective shocks – wars, terrorist attacks, or natural disasters -- to achieve control by imposing economic shock therapy.
Sometimes, when the first two shocks don’t succeed in wiping out resistance, a third shock is employed: the electrode in the prison cell or the Taser gun on the streets.
I would also consider turning the third paragraph into a bulleted list, for the same reason I've broken up the paragraphs: To increase the number of shocks or jolts the reader experiences.
The beginnings and ends of sentences and paragraphs are the hot spots where readers pay most attention and respond most strongly. In online text, end-of-sentence jolts lose impact in the middle of a paragraph. So short sentences, short paragraphs, boldface subheads, and bulleted lists work most effectively for most online readers.
Yes, some of us are more comfortable reading long, complex texts on paper. For those readers, the website should offer downloadable or printer-friendly versions.
I'll follow the development of this site with great interest.
Michael Weiss at Slate has an entertaining item: Don't drink the balloon juice: Good, bad, and ugly things to name your blog.
He discusses mostly American political blogs, but it's actually a pretty serious question: What's the best thing to name your site? As a compulsive multiple blogger, I have to answer the question more often than I care to admit.
Most of my sites have fairly flat-footed self-descriptive titles, like this one and Writing Fiction. When I started blogging avian flu, H5N1 was also pretty self-descriptive, but set slightly apart from other blogs that played variations on "bird flu," "avian influenza," and so on.
Without realizing what I was doing, I picked names that people tend to Google. Type "writing fiction" into Google Advanced search and my site comes up first out of a million hits. "Writing for the Web" is #7 out of 634,000. And "h5n1" is #5 out of 7,870,000 hits.
In a course blog, where only my students are likely to visit, I may use a flat-footed name or a cute one—in a course on storytelling for media, the blog is Raconteur. But I'm just as comfortable with a course blog named for the room the class meets in, like Cedar 224.
For a blog that I co-author with a teacher in China, the name is English Corner, a reference most Chinese students will understand because every campus and town has an "English corner" where students gather to practice their English on one another—and any native English speakers who wander by.
Now I'm getting interested in climate change, and recently started Homage to Arrhenius, an allusion to the Swedish scientist who first developed the theory about CO² as a greenhouse gas, back in the 1890s. This may be a little too cute.
And for another blog, created as a journal for the second edition of one of my books, I've chosen the flat-footed name Pioneers...since the book is titled Go Do Some Great Thing: The Black Pioneers of British Columbia.
I'd be curious to know how bloggers visiting here chose the names for their sites. And can you point to any blogs that are either very well named, or horribly misnamed?
I've been happily writing for The Tyee for several years. It's a lively online magazine with a focus on British Columbia but with plenty of attention to the rest of the world. The Tyee is now trying a little viral marketing to attract more readers: Tyee: Join Us! I'd be interested to hear your reactions to this approach.
The Tyee has also published a survey of Independent Media: Vibrant and Growing.
By the way, I've just published a piece on avian flu in The Tyee.
I'd love to hear about other good online magazines, especially in Europe, Asia, and Latin America—in any language.
Mobile Edge Comes Through
I got an extra Christmas present in December from the makers of my laptop bag: Mobile Edge. Lewis Lustman, director of marketing for Mobile Edge, left a comment on an earlier post of mine and then followed up with an email to me.
I picked the Mobile Edge Chocolate Suede Tote because I wanted a laptop bag that looked like it belonged to a woman, and that didn’t involve black canvas or vinyl. It was a tough search, especially since my laptop—at 17”—was too large for many of the more fashionable bags. When I found a Mobile Edge bag at Fry’s, though, I discovered that I could fit my laptop into the bag, as long as I didn’t put it into the actual slot created for it. Since the bag was quite padded anyway, I’ve been merrily using it and putting file folders in the laptop slot since.
Recently, though, Lewis told me, Mobile Edge had started making an insert just for laptops like mine (huge) and he wanted to send me one. Naturally, I accepted.
Now, one of the things I really liked about the Mobile Edge tote I chose was that the interior piece that holds the laptop is just an insert; it can actually be removed completely from the bag (and get this, when you remove it, you don’t loose any interior pockets or features!). This means you could buy a couple of inserts and say, use the same bag for more than one laptop.
When my new insert arrived, I pulled out the old 15” insert, popped in the 17” and the laptop fits perfectly. I have had a chance to use the bag since putting in the new insert, and things do fit a bit better when you can put the laptop into the right place, so it actually feels like I have more space, not less.
I’m still a huge fan of this bag, which is well-made and durable, and I can now recommend it unreservedly for carriers of 17” laptops as well.
My one remaining complaint is that bag + laptop + peripherals + book + ... well, it’s all a little heavy. That’s more of a physics problem, though. I’ll let you know if Mobile Edge cracks the code on breaking that whole two bodies of mass attracting each other thing.
Thanks, Lewis!
Blogging is still hot, and I’m still hot on blogging, but I’m pretty much tapped out when it comes to blogging about blogging. From this point on, I may update this blog periodically, but—officially—I’m retiring it.
Don’t get me wrong! My book, Buzz Marketing with Blogs for Dummies, is still a great resource for blogging! I put a lot of time, energy and experience into that book, and I’m so pleased by how well it has remained current and useful. (I shouldn’t have done such a good job, since Wiley might have asked me to write a new edition if it hadn’t held up so well!) It’s not retiring! This is merely a reflection of my desire to make more blogs, and talk about them a little less.
Thanks for being such great readers. For now, hasta la vista, baby!
Chris Abraham of ”Because the Medium is the Message” messaged me this week to let me know about the Blogger’s Choice Awards and Postiecon, two thing I thought you should also know about.
The Blogger’s Choice Awards, Chris says, are “like a Webbys for blogs.” Nominate yourself or a blog like you, and voting will determine the winner. There are way more categories than I can duplicate here, so this is just a quick taste: Best Geek Blog, Best Podcast, Best Pop Culture Blog and Worst Blog of All Time. Why not head over and nominate yourself?
PostieCon is in Orlando, Florida, at the beginning of June. According to the copy on the site:
We are here to educate bloggers on how to build traffic and readership, and use your notoriety and unique brand to create value and monetize your voice. It’s not all about money and fame, our conference is designed to help you become a better blogger.
The schedule and speaker list already look good, and have a strong focus on blogging for money or business. A quick sampling of sessions include: Connecting with Advertisers, Turning Visits into Cash, and Vlogging Rockstar Style. Plus, there will be refreshments!
The Pew Internet & American Life Project reports that, when it comes right down to it, “Web 2.0” ain’t all that. Succinctly put, the very ways in which Web 2.0 is typically defined—user collaboration and contribution, photo sharing, etc.—aren’t really anything new to the Web, which has always partly been about user-generated content. (Read more about the report.)
From MediaPost: “It doesn’t really matter that this bright line has been so elusive, or that some savvy marketers simply use the label to distance themselves from the failures of Web 1.0 companies,” states the report.
What does Web 2.0 mean to you?
Looking for a fun widget to add to your site? I like the new site called “Twitter.”
On Twitter, you quickly share just a little one liner about what you’re currently up to.� Then it notifies your close friends about what you’re up to.� It’s a nice way to feel connected to someone without feeling like you’re intruding.
Susie has added a Twitter badge to this blog, but your twitter status also gets sent via AIM or GTalk, or can be see on twitter itself.
It’s quick to sign up and fun.� Let me know if you join!
This is one of the strangest things I've run across on the Web in a while.
Written by John Pozadzides
I scoured the Internet tubes for an entire day just to assemble this collection of fantastic billboards. They are from all over the place, and it wasn’t until after I assembled them that I realized I didn’t keep track of where most originated (if anyone knew in the first place). So sorry about that.
Anyway, for Thursday the 13th here is a crop of 13 freshly prepared humorous, cool and witty billboards. (Hmmm… Humorous. Cool. Witty. Remind you of anyone?) So, enjoy the fruits of my cheap Greek-American labor. Oh, and Warning: This article is Not kid safe!
Damn this was an expensive billboard. But I guess it’s worth it if people stop to pose for photos by it.
Ouch. This billboard comes with biting satire at no extra charge.
I don’t know if this is real, but it is hilarious!
Would you like a side of irony with that order?
I don’t want to be the guy that had to install this billboard.
Strippers vs. Church - Photo by ktbugs23
Paul Stamatiou caught this defaced Starbucks billboard. (Paul, you weren’t documenting your own handiwork were you? 
)
I didn’t know that sex precluded one from becoming an engineer. But that explains a lot…
Well, they aren’t pulling any punches with this one are they?
I’ve got to say, this is a completely lame billboard to start with.
Pure Genius.
Must have been the same ad team as the knives above. Simply genius.
Notice, this ad is for the Special Forces. Do you see where the brochures are located?
Edit 9/13: Here are a couple more sent over by Johny…
Hi all, two exciting pieces of news have made me put the blog back in action today. First, I’m working on a new book: Blogging for Dummies, 2nd Edition.
The first edition was written by Brad Hill, but the publisher—Wiley—wanted to revise the book this year and Brad wasn’t able to fit it into his schedule. So Wiley asked me if I would take the book on, and I’m working away at a revision. Revising a book like this is challenging. Wiley doesn’t really put any of the Dummies books out of print, so I wanted to write a book that would be different enough from the first edition that Brad and I weren’t in competition. Ideally, someone who buys the first book would also benefit from the second. But also, blogging sure has changed a lot! So there’s loads more stuff to try to fit in. I’ll post the proposed table of contents when its a little more firm. At this point, the book should be out in March 2007, and in the meantime you can definitely finds lots of great blogging information in the first edition: Blogging for Dummies.
The other exciting news is that my fellow blog designers and I have put together a panel proposal for SXSW Interactive for 2008: Blog Tool Death Match! We’re really excited to get out there and try to evangelize for our favorite programs, but we do need your help. There are more than 680 panels proposed for SXSW, but only about 120 spots. You can vote for us in the SXSW Panel Picker to help us get there, though. Go to http://panelpicker.sxsw.com, register to vote, and once you’re in, do a search for “death match” and you’ll get our panel to come up. Give us a 5—we’d really appreciate it and we’ll do our darndest to give you a great great panel. Here’s what we proposed to the organizers:
Every blog project starts with the same question: Which blog platform is the right one to use? Answering this question correctly can make or break the final product. Get the nitty-gritty on each platform from experts who will defend their software choice against all challengers. Will it come to blows?
THREE TAKEAWAYS: Our three panelists will argue vehemently about the strongest features and flaws of each platform. Expect tosee sites demonstrated that highlight the best of each blog software choice, and bring your own questions and criticisms to get tips and workarounds.
PANELISTS:
Thanks!
On Saturday I gave a presentation at Northern Voice (a Vancouver-based blogging conference) about blogging software and how it can and should be used for building Web sites are more than just a blog, or perhaps look nothing like a blog.
The session was podcasted here, and I’ve pasted in my talk outline below. The site we built during the session is here: http://bloggingworkshop.com/. Enjoy!
Not Just for Blogs
I think blogging is revolutionary. I think this because it is capable of building community and relationships, of informing, of entertaining… but when it comes right down to it, the thing that I think is so mind-blowing about blogging is the software. That, and the price of that software.
I started making Web sites in 1994. At that point, and for a long, long time, the vast majority of Web sites were built by making HTML files, potentially hundreds and hundreds of HTML files.� My first job was with the L.A. Times Web site, and when we wanted to change the design in any way - from the wording of something in the navigation to the color of the links - you did it on a file by file basis. Every single page had to be opened, changed, saved, and then put onto the Web server again. Needless to say we didn’t do a lot of little changes.
As the Web evolved, so did the software solutions. If you were a big Web site company with a lot of money, you hired people to build you something better: a database-driven Web site. With a databased site you could build pages as they were needed. At the L.A. Times that meant that when someone clicked on a link for a news story, the database found that story, pulled it out, and plunked it into a template. The ground-breaking thing for the worker bees was that there weren’t individual files sitting around anymore: if you wanted to make a change to the site design you made it to the template and the next time someone looked at a story, boom, they got the new template. It made things easier for the developers and that in turn made things easier for the site’s visitors, because the developers could then spend time on other stuff, like content. It made other good stuff possible, too, like search, like archives, like content sorting by category.
That was what you did if you were a big company. If you were a little buy, or an individual, and you didn’t have the big bucks to spend, you still had masses of HTML files sitting around, and things like search were really out of your reach.
Then along comes blogging software.
What is blogging software? Well, at heart, it’s a database. You put the content in, it goes into a database. When it gets displayed, that content is dropped into a template. Sound familiar? This is why so many blog sites look the same from page to page - the home page looks just like a permalink page, except for the content of the actual blog posts. The templates are the same.
And most blogging software came with bells and whistles: search, archives, RSS feeds… it was all built in. You didn’t need any special expertise to set it up, and with a lot of blogging software you could get started in minutes. Best of all was the price. What the big companies spent hundreds of thousands on, you could get for free with Blogger. Even the blog software that did cost money was relatively inexpensive. For $200 or so, you had everything you needed.
As long as what you needed was a blog, you were set.
Well, my big message today is that if you invest some time and learning, you can make a blog software work for more than a blog. You can build any Web site using blog software, and if you do it right, no one will be the wiser.
Let’s look at some examples of what I mean. (A little caveat, I’m going to show you mostly business Web sites because those are the kinds of Web sites I’m hired to create, but the principles are the same whether you have a “brand” or not.)
Thomas Paul Fine Art
http://www.tpaulfineart.com
Rejuvenile by Christopher Noxon
http://www.rejuvenile.com
Truthdig
http://www.truthdig.com
Mani’s Bakery
http://www.manisbakery.com
Blog software can really revolutionize the maintenance issues for a web site, and make it easier to redesign (a reality we can’t ignore) as well, but that doesn’t mean every web site needs to run off of blog software. Small web sites with mostly unique page layout won’t be able to make easy use of blog software.
But any site that needs to be easy to update (perhaps by multiple people), has some standardization of presentation, and can work with a template approach.
Is it easy? Well, yes and no. Get the right blog software, and have the right know-how and it’s not a big deal. But if you aren’t willing to learn some code and invest some time… it’s hard. There are people you can hire to set up a site for you, that’s for sure.
Now, the components of blog software: usually you have:
I’m showing you pMachine’s Expression Engine, but many different kinds of blog software can be adapted for this kind of site. It’s important to choose blog software that gives you access to the templates! Wordpress.com isn’t going to do, and only the Typepad Pro level will work for you. If you can find software that can handle multiple blogs, so much the better. The reason I really love EE is that each “blog” can be customized, and because of all the extra components—mailing list, poll, photo gallery, forum module.
For this demo, I’ve chosen one of the templates that EE provides and I’m going to customize it. First, let’s deal with the Admin side and set up our publishing interface:
Next, let’s get rid of stuff in the template we don’t want.
And finally, let’s substitute a few things in the blog software code.
Voila!
Arielle Ford, Publicist biography
Split Run Testing
Mobil Avenue accuses me of 20th century marketing thinking. I'm not quite sure what he has in mind, but it seems that my Second Life posts ticked off some people.
Now, don't get me wrong, I see alot of development potential in virtual worlds, but Second Life as it is simply does not cut it.
I won't go into the details again, but the sheer lack of economy of scales shows that something is wrong when you compare the investments in Second Life and the actual virtual world penetration. Not to mention the difficult user interface.
Second Life is a good beginning, but virtual worlds have a far way to go before they deserve to be treated as seriously as some are treating them today. Yes, Second Life should certainly be treated as a marketing/communications playground, but not as a high importance marketing channel.
If you want to call this 20th century thinking, go ahead. It is. As are economies of scale, profitability, sales conversion, cost per order and other business "relics".
And as you'll notice, 20th century thinking still works, even in 2007. We've all heard stories of the demise of advertising, the death of PR, the death of e-mail, the death of postal direct mail and so on ... but they're all alive, well and kicking still today, and will remain so.
Actually, intrusive direct response TV advertising is still one of the most effective tools to generate sales. And it gives you more bang for the buck than almost any other marketing channel, including online.
Do I like this? No. I'd love to believe that the internet is the alpha and omega of marketing. But it's not. It's the key connector, but not the key driver. That's the way things are, and as markters we need to employ 20th century thinking and use what works best ... and the numbers tell us that.
But this doesn't mean we shouldn't play and test. Quite on the contrary.
OK, this conversation is getting somewhat beyond the original topic, and it's quite possible I'm not even getting what Mobil Avenue is trying to say:)
And please don't get me started on 3D virtual webstores ...
Of course, I might be wrong. And if I am, I'll be the first to change my stripes the next day. It's what marketers do. If a new thing comes up and works better than what you're doing, change. But every change first demand proof. Unless you're just testing ... because when you're testing, the rules of the game change.
| How Can RSS Power Your Internet Marketing and Publishing? Find out more in the most comprehensive and best guide on RSS for marketers, as acclaimed by leading RSS experts, developers, marketers and publishers. Click here and get the step-by-step guide to taking full marketing advantage of RSS. |
In part 3 of the RSS interview with Greg Reinacker of NewsGator find out how Enterprise RSS makes information management easier within a corporation.
Click here to listen to the interview [MP3; 13 min.]
| How Can RSS Power Your Internet Marketing and Publishing? Find out more in the most comprehensive and best guide on RSS for marketers, as acclaimed by leading RSS experts, developers, marketers and publishers. Click here and get the step-by-step guide to taking full marketing advantage of RSS. |
I have to apologise to Amazon for missing on two of their RSS content delivery options, which I previously missed.
Sorry guys, and thank you for the heads up.
1. Product Discussions
Most Amazon.com product discussions are now available also as RSS feeds. An excellent way of keeping track of the conversations surrounding your favorite products, and certainly something more websites should implement ... especially those that provide content that people are pashionate about.
The first one that comes to mind is TV.com and their community show reviews.
2. Customer Reviews by Author
Like a product reviewer? Subscribe to their Amazon.com reviews RSS feed.
| How Can RSS Power Your Internet Marketing and Publishing? Find out more in the most comprehensive and best guide on RSS for marketers, as acclaimed by leading RSS experts, developers, marketers and publishers. Click here and get the step-by-step guide to taking full marketing advantage of RSS. |
The launch of Google's in video ads brought some interesting facts to the fore - it's not the flushing felines and lip-syncing college kids of user-generated video that supposedly draws so any eyeballs that got the ad dollars. Marketers are more interested in paying customers than a slew of eyeballs just there to see a weird video. Go figure!
"There's a huge audience built around user-generated content but no evidence that it is a profitable business," said Peter Hoskins, who recently succeeded ManiaTV's founder, Drew Massey, as CEO.
Marketers are looking for quality content says David Verklin, Carat Americas CEO and ManiaTV board member. "YouTube has hundreds of channels of professionally produced content. Simply put, user-created content is being held to ever higher and higher standards."
Increasingly, user-generated videos have to compete for attention with professional, premium content, reports Ad Age. A music video from Avril Lavigne is beginning to approach Judson Laipply's "Evolution of Dance" as YouTube's most viewed video.
What does this mean for your PR campaigns? You do need to tap into the vast audiences that are watching video online. But you need to produce excellent quality content and it does not have to break the budget. .
In the end, it's the quality of your content that will get the result that actually affects your bottom line..
RSS Radars are not just a tool to help you enrich your website content and allow you to easily conduct business intelligence, but can also be used as a B2B Customer Relationship Management tool to help you maintain customer loyalty and provide your customers with some additional added value.
Just recently I received an e-mail from David Koopmans of Mokum Marketing, who gave me the idea for this post.
David's idea is simple:
This is how David sees the usefulness of such an application:
"The idea is very attractive though; in B2B we often manage a relatively small number of relationships, but they are deep and we want to make them deeper."
But, there are two problems:
This is where RSS Radars can come in, enabling you to aggregate dozens or hundreds of RSS feeds, filter them for the relevant keywords to get only the most relevant content for a specific client, and provide that client with his own customized RSS feed, using a service like MySyndicaat.com or pipes.yahoo.com.
Plus, using .htaccess you can easily password protect each feed for each individual client.
More details in the 2007 edition of the RSS e-book:)
| How Can RSS Power Your Internet Marketing and Publishing? Find out more in the most comprehensive and best guide on RSS for marketers, as acclaimed by leading RSS experts, developers, marketers and publishers. Click here and get the step-by-step guide to taking full marketing advantage of RSS. |
While the original plan for the RSS Diary blog was leaving on hiatus until the 2007 edition of the RSS Marketing e-book is done, the FeedBurner acquisition by Google is a story just to important to pass up ... especially all the implications it might bring into the world of RSS Advertising, and RSS Marketing as a whole as well.
So, yes. FeedBurner, a leading RSS metrics and RSS advertising company was just acquired by Google. Finally confirmed after weeks of speculation. I won't go into the details of the acquisition, as you can read more about it at the FeedBurner blog and just by following the news at Google News.
Here, we'll take a look at the implications this brings to the world of RSS Marketing. Just my predictions of course:)
In my book, all marketing/communications channels should be judged using the same metrics, such as conversions, cost-per-order, cost-per-subscriber, sales etc.
Although you could already do all of this with RSS, it required some tinkering.
But, as FeedBurner gets assimilated into Google Analytics, tracking the key marketing metrics should become a breeze, giving everyone access to crucial internet optimization data.
With RSS Metrics being integrated directly into Google Analytics (which I'm sure will happen very soon), marketers might finally start actually measuring their RSS feeds.
Means better RSS Marketing, finally.
Although FeedBurner is cautions to provide any details about how their CPM pricing model might change with the integration of their ad services into Google, I'm quite certain that RSS advertising will move the way of cost-per-click.
Means less revenues for RSS feed publishers, but better ROI for you, the advertiser.
RSS Advertising will finally reach the mainstream, utilizing Google's massive advertiser database.
Prices will go up, and RSS content monetization will again start becoming the talk at industry events.
On the plus side, it also means Google will be able to attract more RSS feed publishers, meaning more RSS ad inventory for you. Your RSS advertising reach potential is about to explode, finally enabling you to reach the masses using RSS Advertising.
I love Pheedo, another leading RSS Metrics and RSS Advertising company, but the FeedBurner acquisition makes me wonder what's in store for them as Google starts pushing RSS advertising to their massive database of advertisers, especially as part of an integrated online advertising service.
It's certainly not the end of other RSS Advertising companies, but they might all soon see themselves transforming from RSS ad networks to RSS media planning & buying consultants.
Which would be a shame, especially considering the advancements in RSS Advertising developed by Pheedo.
Advertiser demand seems to be growing quicker than the inventory offered by Google.
The obvious choice for Google (in addition of course to increasing ad inventory through additional reach, media expansion through the content network, and expansion to new ad channels, like RSS and banner inventories) is to offer better targeting, for a premium price.
As a marketer, I clearly want to place my ads in front of the most relevant prospects. Keyword targeting is OK, but adding behavioral on top of that introduces another filtering element to my media planning, enabling me to really pin-point the users I want to see my ads.
This may either be science fiction or Google's actual long-term masterplan. As more advertising budgets rush to the internet, available quality ad inventory will continue shrinking.
By introducing such targeting, integrating the metric and capabilities of all of their properties, Google could come as close as possible to total ad targeting, the holy grail of marketing we are all striving towards.
Things will get much more interesting ... and soon.
If I were an ad agency, I'd start developing a targeting department, focusing on targeted media buying.
| How Can RSS Power Your Internet Marketing and Publishing? Find out more in the most comprehensive and best guide on RSS for marketers, as acclaimed by leading RSS experts, developers, marketers and publishers. Click here and get the step-by-step guide to taking full marketing advantage of RSS. |
What works best in RSS marketing? How are RSS subscribers different than e-mail subscribers? RSS publishing best practices if you want to sell?
These and other practical questions are all revealed in the 2nd part of the RSS interview with Bryan Eisenberg. Without doubt, this is one of the best and most practical RSS marketing interviews we've done so far.
In part 1 of the Bryan Eisenberg RSS interview we focused on how the GrokDotCom.com is going beyond traditional RSS Radars by employing intelligent content aggregation tools, instead of relying just on contextual filtering, and what kind of results they are achieving.
In part 2 of the interview we move beyond RSS Radars to their overall RSS marketing strategy.
In this interview find out about ...
1. How RSS subscribers are different from e-mail subscribers and why?
2. How to sell products through content-rich RSS feeds?
3. Do RSS subscribers mind seeing product promotions in your feeds?
4. When to publish your latest RSS content to get the most links from other websites and most readership?
5. What's the right RSS publishing frequency for promotional content?
6. Why branding your RSS feed is important and how to do it?
Click here to listen to the MP3 file [8:33 minutes; 2 MB]
| How Can RSS Power Your Internet Marketing and Publishing? Find out more in the most comprehensive and best guide on RSS for marketers, as acclaimed by leading RSS experts, developers, marketers and publishers. Click here and get the step-by-step guide to taking full marketing advantage of RSS. |
Search Engine Optimization for Small Business Success
A reader wrote the other day to ask my opinion: What did I consider good examples of writing on the web?
Well, I confess I couldn't leap up with a dozen examples on the tip of my tongue. Examples of bad writing, however, are easy to come by. On my blog H5N1, I often excerpt text from news stories, government websites, and technical sources. All too often, I have to tinker with the text to make it readable.
For example, some scientific abstracts are solid blocks of text, 200 or 300 words long. I can't edit them, but I can re-paragraph them to make them easier to read.
News reports are often more reader-friendly, full of one-sentence paragraphs. The sentences, however, may run to 40 or more words—and it's often the first paragraph that tries to create an "abstract" of the whole story. (When I excerpt the text anyway, I usually apologize for the style.)
In other cases, the text may be concise and well-paragraphed, but appallingly displayed. Some poor souls are still stuck in 1996, proudly publishing white text sprawled across a black background clear across the screen.
Others have crisp black text on a white background. But the lines run to 15 or 20 words. Here's an example from Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox, which is OK but could be much better with shorter lines. He hasn't changed his format in years, and he should have.
Subheads Help
Subheads can break up the text still more and provide landmarks. Too many webwriters neglect this simple aid to readers.
Of course, sometimes a text is on a website only to be printed off and read on paper. In that case, it just has to be readable when printed.
You're welcome to visit H5N1 and my other blogs to see how I try to live by my own rules.
Judge the Top Blogs on Their Writing!
But here's another suggestion. Visit Technorati: Popular Blogs and see what you think of the writing on some of the top sites.
Does Engadget's shimmering prose enshrine it as #1 blog? Is Michelle Malkin (#11)a better webwriter than Guy Kawasaki(#15)?
Or are other factors at work in these high-traffic, high-impact sites? I'd love to hear your comments.
Quality of Online Content is King Once Again
The launch of Google's in video ads brought some interesting facts to the fore - it's not the flushing felines and lip-syncing college kids of user-generated video that supposedly draws so any eyeballs that got the ad dollars. Marketers are more interested in paying customers than a slew of eyeballs just there to see a weird video. Go figure!
"There's a huge audience built around user-generated content but no evidence that it is a profitable business," said Peter Hoskins, who recently succeeded ManiaTV's founder, Drew Massey, as CEO.
Marketers are looking for quality content says David Verklin, Carat Americas CEO and ManiaTV board member. "YouTube has hundreds of channels of professionally produced content. Simply put, user-created content is being held to ever higher and higher standards."
Increasingly, user-generated videos have to compete for attention with professional, premium content, reports Ad Age. A music video from Avril Lavigne is beginning to approach Judson Laipply's "Evolution of Dance" as YouTube's most viewed video.
What does this mean for your PR campaigns? You do need to tap into the vast audiences that are watching video online. But you need to produce excellent quality content and it does not have to break the budget. .
In the end, it's the quality of your content that will get the result that actually affects your bottom line..
Written by LiveSlick.com
It’s always a shame when a great program is not heard about by most people - especially when it’s free. Here are the top 10 freeware software that many people still haven’t tried, but definitely should.
10. Sharepod
If you want to get all those files off your iPod and into your computer, then this is the program for you. In a previous post (Transfer Files From Your iPod To PC For Free) Sharepod was used to show how to freely and easily transfer files from an iPod to PC.
9. ConTEXT
Not only is this a great notepad replacement, it is also a great help for software developers.
8. IrfanView
Simply put, this is a simple graphic viewer. It has many essential features like email, Thumbnail/preview option, various Effects, changing color depth, and, of course, an extensive file format support.
Although still in beta, this makes blogging both easy and comfortable. It supports many blog services, including WordPress, Blogger, and TypePad, and also has a some very good plugins.
6. Foxit Reader
This is the adobe reader replacement. It is much faster than adobe reader, and much friendlier to use. Try this once, and you’ll never go back.
5. Snipping Tool
Comes installed in Windows Vista. This program lets you take screenshots of the whole screen, only a certain program, free-form, or rectangular snips. Immediately after taking the screen shot, you are given the choice of editing it and saving it into your computer. They couldn’t have made it easier. This was also covered in a previous post: Top 5 Applications That Come Installed With Windows Vista
[Edit: Some people pointed out that this isn’t necessarily freeware because you need to have Vista in order to use it. MWSnap can be used instead of it. Thanks TemporalBeing and everyone else who pointed that out.]
4. Blender
Did you ever see the amazing CGI movies Pixar makes, like Ratatouille? Well, with Blender, you can make similar computer generated graphics that will amaze everyone.
3. ImgBurn
ImgBurn is great tool to create image files from discs and burn images to discs. It even supports HD DVD and Blu-ray. There is no need to use an high cost programs for images.
2. MusikCube
This is what iTunes should be like. An easy to use, uncluttered, lightweight program, which will convert most people to it after seconds of use. The plugins that are available will make for an easy transition, like being able to grab ratings from iTunes or Windows Media Player and import them to MusikCube.
1. AutoHotkey
This is the one of the most essential programs ever - if you know how to use it. With AutoHotkey, you can write scripts that automate keystrokes, which can save you a lot of time. You can make it automate annoying internship jobs, like copying and pasting a bunch of text from one place to another, to more complex applications like Lifehacker’s Texter. The beauty of it all is that it very easy to learn and master.
Legal Hazards of Writing Online
Via today's Globe and Mail, a report on libel chill: Media stardom is pricey. Excerpt:
Many bloggers dream of getting mainstream recognition for their work, but unfortunately for some, the attention they're getting comes in the form of a lawsuit instead of media-star status.
Earlier this week, Steelback Brewery president Frank D'Angelo filed a $2-million libel suit against Ottawa-based blogger Neate Sager for making what he says are disparaging comments about him.
In another recent case, Montreal art-gallery owner Chris (Zeke) Hand has found himself on the receiving end of a lawsuit as a result of something he wrote on the blog he maintains for Zeke's Gallery.
Warren Kinsella, a prominent blogger and newspaper columnist, sued another blogger for libel last year, but settled the case after the blogger apologized for his remarks and paid Kinsella's legal costs.
Zeke, also known as Chris Hand, is being sued for libel for comments he posted on his blog in Montreal. ‘Once you start dragging things into court, I do tend to dig my heels in,’ he says.
And p2pnet, a British Columbia-based news site that writes about file-sharing, is still fighting a libel lawsuit launched by Kazaa tycoon Nikki Hemming based on comments that were posted on an article about the company.
Read the whole item.
This has been a very bad day in the United States.
The massacre at Virginia Tech has shocked the world, but it has also taught us something important: In a major disaster, the victims themselves will tell us about it.
The Virginia Tech website provided basic information within minutes. Even more to the point, news of the killings was carried by email and text messaging and blogs like Planet Blacksburg.
The mass media like CNN were using cell-phone video from students on campus. Other students have bitterly complained about the slowness of authorities to alert them, whether by email, text messaging, voicemail, or the campus public-address system.
The countries with the most advanced communications systems will be the first to tell the world about catastrophes like this one. But even Third World countries have cell phones and some kind of internet access. Increasingly, we will see car bombings in Baghdad and riots in Mogadishu, disease outbreaks in Jakarta and AIDS deaths in Zimbabwe, reported by those who are there.
Dave Beers, my editor at The Tyee, has a thoughtful article today about the famous interactivity of websites: Can We Still Talk Online?.
It won't be a surprise to webwriters that responses to their work are often ignorant, abusive, and even threatening. Dave uses The Tyee's experience, and that of other online magazines, to invite still more interaction on the subject.
Maybe this is a good time to dig out a piece I did on the subject about ten years ago: "Time for Flame Wars to Flame Out" was first published in the Vancouver weekly Georgia Straight in the summer of 1997.
An email correspondent once described my views on education as a “Socialist brainwashed, Communist-cliche’d, agit-prop spew of black lies, red herrings, straw men, Marxist-Stalinist Totalitarian, 1984, Brave New World, One World Dictatorship, mooching, felonious, treasonous, cowardly, dangerous, insensitive, [and] anti-human.”
After that he got positively hostile.
Some online veterans would shrug this off as just more proof that any idiot can get on the Net, and most already have. But as many can confirm, this kind of verbal abuse is all too common in cyberspace. The Usenet discussion groups in particular are full of sarcasm, insults, degrading language, and outright obscenity. In the mailing lists, where you have to subscribe to get access to discussions on specialized topics, even college teachers and dog lovers can blow their cool.
Why should this be? Are we just awful people? I don’t think so. But I do think the technology of the Internet has encouraged users with a particular mind-set, and they in turn have largely created an online culture that promotes abuse.
Addicted to Jolts
To do anything on a computer, you have to obey some arbitrary rules and go through certain ritual actions: click the mouse, hit return, type a precise string of keystrokes. This favors a certain kind of obsessive, ritualistic personality. The reward, for such a personality, is to go through the keyboard rituals to get a “jolt” —a psychological reward— just as a laboratory rat will push a button to get a food pellet.
The jolt may be the opening of a window on the computer monitor, or seeing your own name in someone else’s message, or reading an angry, hostile message that rejects every value you hold dear. In any case, it’s an emotional payoff for going through the ritual, and it clearly appeals to a lot of people. Like any other such reward, computer jolts can become dangerously addictive.
Most, however, prefer to limit their jolts to eavesdropping on others’ quarrels. These are the lurkers, the passive Internet users who like to watch other people get into punch-ups. When lurkers do begin posting messages, they often start with a plea for mercy; they know what they’re getting into.
More aggressive types don’t care. Once addicted, they soon need ever-stronger jolts. So they just wade in with all guns blazing, and they thrive on flame wars of mutual recrimination and insult. Flamers may look like mortal enemies, but they’re really like junkies who also deal drugs—they provide jolts for each other.
Smile When You Write That, Stranger
Still another problem is “register.” This means adapting your comments to the person and the circumstances. If a kindergarten teacher talks to you the same way she talks to your child, you’ll be resentful. If you talk too familiarly to your boss, you may soon be looking for another job. Using the wrong register is the basis of most sitcoms, but it’s not often funny online. That’s why many of us use emoticons to try to convey the register we’re trying for.
When you’re sitting at your computer, you’re totally private. But the messages you read and receive are totally public. This really complicates the register you should adopt. You feel private, as if you were sharing pillow talk with your spouse, but the whole world is watching. Your intimate message brays out over the world’s greatest public-address system, and soon you’re getting equally intimate messages that thousands of others can also read.
When I first began to study the flame problem in the early 1990s, I consoled myself that selfish, insensitive, addictively aggressive slobs would not last long. Like barbarous pioneers, they would give way to the schoolmarms and genteel pillars of society. The people who would really flourish in this new medium, I told myself, would be those who could see beyond the computer monitor to the real live person at the other end, and write their messages accordingly.
I was wrong. The slobs have poisoned most of the waterholes, creating no-go zones all over cyberspace. Worse yet, when some folks do try to set up a civilized online community, the slobs barge in and track mud on the floor. Uninterested in grown-up discussion and debate, they try to bring everyone down to their level. Giving insults, taking insults—it’s all jolts to them.
For those of us who really do want to bring civilization to the online wilderness, the options are few. Arguing with the slobs only gives them more jolts. Ignoring them sometimes goads them into even worse flames.
Better to set out clear house rules for acceptable behaviour, and then to turf out anyone who behaves badly—just as we would if someone crashed a party and started insulting our guests.
Michael Weiss at Slate has an entertaining item: Don't drink the balloon juice: Good, bad, and ugly things to name your blog.
He discusses mostly American political blogs, but it's actually a pretty serious question: What's the best thing to name your site? As a compulsive multiple blogger, I have to answer the question more often than I care to admit.
Most of my sites have fairly flat-footed self-descriptive titles, like this one and Writing Fiction. When I started blogging avian flu, H5N1 was also pretty self-descriptive, but set slightly apart from other blogs that played variations on "bird flu," "avian influenza," and so on.
Without realizing what I was doing, I picked names that people tend to Google. Type "writing fiction" into Google Advanced search and my site comes up first out of a million hits. "Writing for the Web" is #7 out of 634,000. And "h5n1" is #5 out of 7,870,000 hits.
In a course blog, where only my students are likely to visit, I may use a flat-footed name or a cute one—in a course on storytelling for media, the blog is Raconteur. But I'm just as comfortable with a course blog named for the room the class meets in, like Cedar 224.
For a blog that I co-author with a teacher in China, the name is English Corner, a reference most Chinese students will understand because every campus and town has an "English corner" where students gather to practice their English on one another—and any native English speakers who wander by.
Now I'm getting interested in climate change, and recently started Homage to Arrhenius, an allusion to the Swedish scientist who first developed the theory about CO² as a greenhouse gas, back in the 1890s. This may be a little too cute.
And for another blog, created as a journal for the second edition of one of my books, I've chosen the flat-footed name Pioneers...since the book is titled Go Do Some Great Thing: The Black Pioneers of British Columbia.
I'd be curious to know how bloggers visiting here chose the names for their sites. And can you point to any blogs that are either very well named, or horribly misnamed?
Via the New York Times: A Call for Manners in the World of Nasty Blogs. Excerpt:
Is it too late to bring civility to the Web?
The conversational free-for-all on the Internet known as the blogosphere can be a prickly and unpleasant place. Now, a few high-profile figures in high-tech are proposing a blogger code of conduct to clean up the quality of online discourse.
Last week, Tim O’Reilly, a conference promoter and book publisher who is credited with coining the term Web 2.0, began working with Jimmy Wales, creator of the communal online encyclopedia Wikipedia, to create a set of guidelines to shape online discussion and debate.
Chief among the recommendations is that bloggers consider banning anonymous comments left by visitors to their pages and be able to delete threatening or libelous comments without facing cries of censorship.
A recent outbreak of antagonism among several prominent bloggers “gives us an opportunity to change the level of expectations that people have about what’s acceptable online,” said Mr. O’Reilly, who posted the preliminary recommendations last week on his company blog (radar.oreilly.com).
Mr. Wales then put the proposed guidelines on his company’s site (blogging.wikia.com), and is now soliciting comments in the hope of creating consensus around what constitutes civil behavior online.
Mr. O’Reilly and Mr. Wales talk about creating several sets of guidelines for conduct and seals of approval represented by logos. For example, anonymous writing might be acceptable in one set; in another, it would be discouraged. Under a third set of guidelines, bloggers would pledge to get a second source for any gossip or breaking news they write about.
Bloggers could then pick a set of principles and post the corresponding badge on their page, to indicate to readers what kind of behavior and dialogue they will engage in and tolerate. The whole system would be voluntary, relying on the community to police itself. “If it’s a carefully constructed set of principles, it could carry a lot of weight even if not everyone agrees,” Mr. Wales said.
Yes, it's extremely nasty out there. I've been lucky, in my own blogging, to escape the kind of behaviour described in the Times article. But I don't know how effective a "code of conduct" would be. What's your opinion—especially if you live outside North America?
Spam has become such a nuisance that I've had to require TypeKey authentication for comments. I apologize for the inconvenience.
The NewsGator Interview: RSS for Online Media and Branded RSS Readers
In part 2 of the RSS interview with Greg Reinacker of NewsGator find out how online media can take advantage of RSS beyond publishing RSS content.
Click here to listen to the interview [MP3; 14 min.]
| How Can RSS Power Your Internet Marketing and Publishing? Find out more in the most comprehensive and best guide on RSS for marketers, as acclaimed by leading RSS experts, developers, marketers and publishers. Click here and get the step-by-step guide to taking full marketing advantage of RSS. |
I interviewed Greg Reinacker of NewsGator end of January, as part of the interview series for the 2007 edition of the RSS e-book.
NewsGator is one of the leaders in the Enterprise RSS space, a provider of top-breed RSS Readers and also a branded RSS Reader vendor.
So, you can imagine we had alot to cover.
In part 1 of the interview, find out about how Windows Vista and Internet Explorer are changing the RSS landscape ...
Click here to listen to the interview [MP3; 8 min.]
| How Can RSS Power Your Internet Marketing and Publishing? Find out more in the most comprehensive and best guide on RSS for marketers, as acclaimed by leading RSS experts, developers, marketers and publishers. Click here and get the step-by-step guide to taking full marketing advantage of RSS. |
While the original plan for the RSS Diary blog was leaving on hiatus until the 2007 edition of the RSS Marketing e-book is done, the FeedBurner acquisition by Google is a story just to important to pass up ... especially all the implications it might bring into the world of RSS Advertising, and RSS Marketing as a whole as well.
So, yes. FeedBurner, a leading RSS metrics and RSS advertising company was just acquired by Google. Finally confirmed after weeks of speculation. I won't go into the details of the acquisition, as you can read more about it at the FeedBurner blog and just by following the news at Google News.
Here, we'll take a look at the implications this brings to the world of RSS Marketing. Just my predictions of course:)
In my book, all marketing/communications channels should be judged using the same metrics, such as conversions, cost-per-order, cost-per-subscriber, sales etc.
Although you could already do all of this with RSS, it required some tinkering.
But, as FeedBurner gets assimilated into Google Analytics, tracking the key marketing metrics should become a breeze, giving everyone access to crucial internet optimization data.
With RSS Metrics being integrated directly into Google Analytics (which I'm sure will happen very soon), marketers might finally start actually measuring their RSS feeds.
Means better RSS Marketing, finally.
Although FeedBurner is cautions to provide any details about how their CPM pricing model might change with the integration of their ad services into Google, I'm quite certain that RSS advertising will move the way of cost-per-click.
Means less revenues for RSS feed publishers, but better ROI for you, the advertiser.
RSS Advertising will finally reach the mainstream, utilizing Google's massive advertiser database.
Prices will go up, and RSS content monetization will again start becoming the talk at industry events.
On the plus side, it also means Google will be able to attract more RSS feed publishers, meaning more RSS ad inventory for you. Your RSS advertising reach potential is about to explode, finally enabling you to reach the masses using RSS Advertising.
I love Pheedo, another leading RSS Metrics and RSS Advertising company, but the FeedBurner acquisition makes me wonder what's in store for them as Google starts pushing RSS advertising to their massive database of advertisers, especially as part of an integrated online advertising service.
It's certainly not the end of other RSS Advertising companies, but they might all soon see themselves transforming from RSS ad networks to RSS media planning & buying consultants.
Which would be a shame, especially considering the advancements in RSS Advertising developed by Pheedo.
Advertiser demand seems to be growing quicker than the inventory offered by Google.
The obvious choice for Google (in addition of course to increasing ad inventory through additional reach, media expansion through the content network, and expansion to new ad channels, like RSS and banner inventories) is to offer better targeting, for a premium price.
As a marketer, I clearly want to place my ads in front of the most relevant prospects. Keyword targeting is OK, but adding behavioral on top of that introduces another filtering element to my media planning, enabling me to really pin-point the users I want to see my ads.
This may either be science fiction or Google's actual long-term masterplan. As more advertising budgets rush to the internet, available quality ad inventory will continue shrinking.
By introducing such targeting, integrating the metric and capabilities of all of their properties, Google could come as close as possible to total ad targeting, the holy grail of marketing we are all striving towards.
Things will get much more interesting ... and soon.
If I were an ad agency, I'd start developing a targeting department, focusing on targeted media buying.
| How Can RSS Power Your Internet Marketing and Publishing? Find out more in the most comprehensive and best guide on RSS for marketers, as acclaimed by leading RSS experts, developers, marketers and publishers. Click here and get the step-by-step guide to taking full marketing advantage of RSS. |
Link popularity and tools for link building
David at his blog posted an interesting findings on YPN vs Adsense. He switched to YPN from Adsense for 10 days and shared his results with a screenshot.
Very interesting read, please check it out.
I’ve decided to start a new blog on niche marketing. It will be hosted on the same domain. I didn’t want to mess-up current search engine rankings and all, but my current blog is out-dated and most of the information shared here are also outdated. I need a platform where I can easily update old content as well. WordPress 2.1 will be my choice (again) and will use better category system so that you find information more easily.
Also, I’m going to be moving the current mailing system to aweber, a long delayed decision on this. So bear with me during the transition time.
Bo
I have a sad news today. I’ve decided to take down one of the most visited pages and high ranked page from my domain. I know many of you’ve been using it and recommending it at various forums around the world, but due to the recent change in Adsense’s policy, I’ve decided to take it down permanently.
The URL is:
http://www.marketingsyndrome.com/adsensetemplates/
I’ve put up some free downloads there for future visitors.
Thanks for your support for sharing the template with your list members and blog readers. If you have no idea what I’m talking about, don’t worry about it :)
Bo
First of all, I’d like to say happy new year to you. I know I haven’t shared anything with you for a while. I hope you are still reading this blog, because I’m going to share even more niche marketing stuff with you in 2007. I was struggling with coming up with the blog content because I noticed that what my readers need is not “techniques” but rather, motivation and inspiration. I’ve tried to do both, and was kinda lost, to be honest. So, in 2007, I will make case studies and share the experience with you. I hope this will motivate you and inspire you to go after the things you desired to achieve.
Anyway, the main reason why I wasn’t able to come near the PC was that I’m in the progress of moving to a new house. To be more exact, we are moving back to one of my investment houses. We are going to sell the house we are currently living and move back to the one which has a big basement.
The reason for this move is to make a physical office for my online business company. Marketing Syndrome Inc. will have its physical office at a basement of my house :) Currently, I’m busy doing the renovation of the house and the office. It’s about 10 minutes from my current house and I’m making a trip daily to do some work. I have to hire contractors for some tasks, but I’m doing the most of the work myself. Ah! I know what you are thinking! Outsource! well, no. I’m doing it because I love doing house renovation with my wife. It’s our only hobby that we both enjoy doing :)
So, here is what I’m up to. If your goal is to earn a full-time income from niche marketing, working from home, make sure to come back to my blog. Because you will learn everything about it from this blog. I have a lot to share with you in this field and I barely scratched the surface. I haven’t share with you anything about my main affiliate campaigns that bring me the major portion of my income. You will read all about it for free in 2007.
I’m also exploring new ways to bring passive income online consistently, so I will be sharing this with you also. The software I’m currently exploring is called “Build A Niche Store“, which is believe to be a very effective tool for niche marketers. I will be testing this software thoroughly in January and February. So expect to hear more about it in the next posts.
This is one of the most asked questions from niche marketers.
“Should I make a website that I’m passionate about?” or
“Should I go where the money is made?”
Personally, I’d go where the money is. If you can find a topic that you are passionate about and also where great money is being exchanged in that market, that would be wonderful. But it is not common to find one like that.
I’ve been marketing in the niche markets where I have absolutely no idea nor interest in. But I successfully pulled it and made great passive income from them. Because I was willing to sacrifice my comfort zone, I’m now able to go after what I’m passionate about. I no longer have to worry about if my new sites will be making money or not. I have sites that makes me absolutely no money. I made them just because I wanted to share my knowledge and interest with others.
So my answer to this commonly asked question is to go after the money, then you will be able to do what you are passionate about eventually.
Any other opinions welcomed. Please use the comment section.
Blogging is Publishing
Written by webdesignerwall.com
It is proven that by using software shortcuts can boost up productivity. Here are 30 secret Photoshop shortcuts that I’ve learned from years of experience. Well, what I mean by “secret” is that these shortcuts are not documented in the menus. Keep reading and you will find how these shortcuts can speed up your productivity. I bet you don’t know all of them.
Note: this article is written in Mac Photoshop format. If you are using PC, Cmd = Ctrl and Opt = Alt.
Drag selection
With the Marquee tool, drag on the document (do not release the mouse yet), now hold down Spacebar, it will let you drag the undefined selection.
Navigate the document left or right
Hold down the Cmd key and scroll up or down allows you to navigate the document left or right. For example, hold down Cmd + scroll up will navigate to right.
Browse the font list
Put your cursor in the font list dropdown, you can browse the font list by pressing arrow Up or Down key.
Scale font size
Select the text that you want to scale the font size, press Cmd + Shift + > or < to increase / decrease font size.
Zoom with the scroll wheel
You can zoom in / out by Cmd + Opt + scroll up or down.
Drag to adjust numberic value
Mouseover the input box, hold down Cmd + drag left or right to increase / decrease. Hold down Cmd + Opt or Shift key and drag can change the value in decimal or 10 interval. This shortcut works in all dialog palettes.
Scroll to adjust numeric value
Put the cursor in the input box, scroll up or down to increase / decrease value. This shortcut works in all dialog palettes.
Arrow up / down to adjust numeric value
Put the cursor in the input box, press arrow Up or Down to increase / decrease. Hold down Shift and press arrow Up or Down will change value in 10 interval.
Zoom to 100%
Double click on the Zoom tool will zoom document to 100%.
Collapse or expand all layer groups
You can collapse or expand all root-level layer groups by holding down Cmd + click on the triangle icon. Hold down Cmd + Opt + click on the triangle icon will collapse or expand all level layer groups.
Show / hide in a row
If you need to show / hide more than one layers, instead of clicking one by one, you can click on the visibility icon and drag in a row.
Hide other layers
Hold down Opt + click on the visibility icon will hide all other layers.
Navigate layer blending mode
Shift + “-” or “+” key allows you to navigate through the blending mode dropdown.
Set specific blending mode
Opt + Shift + C, N, M, S, D… allows to set layer to specific blending mode.
For examples:
Normal = Opt + Shift + N
Screen = Opt + Shift + S
Multiply = Opt + Shift + M
Color = Opt + Shift + C
Lock layer transparency
Press forward slash (”/”) to lock layer transparency.
Load Channel selection
You probably know that Cmd + number keys (1, 2, 3) will activate the channels in sequent. Press Cmd + Opt + number keys will load the selection. For example, press Cmd + Opt + 4 will load Alpha channel 1.
Tool panels
Press Tab to toggle tool panels.
Precise cursor
Caps lock will display tool cursor in precise mode.
Navigate the tool list
You can navigate through the tool list by pressing Shift + tool shorcut. For example: B = Brush tool, if you press Shift + B again, you will switch to Pencil tool.
Increase / decrease brush size
With the Brush tool selected, you can increase / decrease the brush size by pressing [ or ] key (square bracket key). Press Shift + [ or ] will increase / decrease brush hardness.
Opacity
You can set the layer opacity by pressing the number keys (ie. 1 = 10%, 2 = 20%…). When you have the brush tool selected, pressing the number keys will adjust the brush opacity.
Duplicate layer
There are several shortcuts to duplicate layers.
1. You can hold down Cmd + Opt + drag to duplicate the active layer.
2. Cmd + Opt + arrow keys (Up, Down, Left, Right).
3. Cmd + J will duplicate the active layer in exact position.
4. Hold down Opt + drag within the Layers palette can also duplicate layers.
Copy visible and paste in a new layer
Press Cmd + Opt + Shift + E will copy the visible layers and paste in a new layer.
Change workspace background
By default Photoshop use grey for the workspace background color. You can change that by:
1. select your favorite color
2. choose the Paint Bucket tool
3. Hold down Shift + click on the working area (outside the document area)
Fill background or foreground color
Opt + Delete (Backspace) = fill the layer with foreground color.
Cmd + Delete (Backspace) = fill the layer with background color
Switch between document windows
Ctrl + Tab will switch between document windows.
Load layer transparent
Cmd + click on the layer thumbnail will load its transparency.
Scale proportionally from center
When you are using the Marquee tools or Free Transform, hold down Opt + Shift + drag will scale proportionally from the center.
Shortcut to Eyedropper
If you have the Brush tool selected, hold down Opt key will quickly activate the Eyedropper tool. Hold down Opt + Shift will activate the Color Sampler Tool.
Finally…
Finally, if you want to check or set your own custom shortcuts, press Cmd + Opt + Shift + K will bring up the Keyboard Shortcuts panel.
Do you know more Photoshop shortcuts that are not listed in this article? Please post them in the comment form. Make sure they are “secret” (not documented in the Photoshop menus).
If you liked this post, buy me a beerVisit the Book Publicity Gallery to see Documents and Photos of Successful Book Publicity Tours and Information.
The Pew Internet & American Life Project reports that, when it comes right down to it, “Web 2.0” ain’t all that. Succinctly put, the very ways in which Web 2.0 is typically defined—user collaboration and contribution, photo sharing, etc.—aren’t really anything new to the Web, which has always partly been about user-generated content. (Read more about the report.)
From MediaPost: “It doesn’t really matter that this bright line has been so elusive, or that some savvy marketers simply use the label to distance themselves from the failures of Web 1.0 companies,” states the report.
What does Web 2.0 mean to you?
This is one of the strangest things I've run across on the Web in a while.
Blogging is still hot, and I’m still hot on blogging, but I’m pretty much tapped out when it comes to blogging about blogging. From this point on, I may update this blog periodically, but—officially—I’m retiring it.
Don’t get me wrong! My book, Buzz Marketing with Blogs for Dummies, is still a great resource for blogging! I put a lot of time, energy and experience into that book, and I’m so pleased by how well it has remained current and useful. (I shouldn’t have done such a good job, since Wiley might have asked me to write a new edition if it hadn’t held up so well!) It’s not retiring! This is merely a reflection of my desire to make more blogs, and talk about them a little less.
Thanks for being such great readers. For now, hasta la vista, baby!
Looking for a fun widget to add to your site? I like the new site called “Twitter.”
On Twitter, you quickly share just a little one liner about what you’re currently up to.� Then it notifies your close friends about what you’re up to.� It’s a nice way to feel connected to someone without feeling like you’re intruding.
Susie has added a Twitter badge to this blog, but your twitter status also gets sent via AIM or GTalk, or can be see on twitter itself.
It’s quick to sign up and fun.� Let me know if you join!
I was checking information about a domain today, and noticed that GoDaddy seems to have changed their response to send people to their Web site.� No longer can I get the information I need through a simple unix command, in text format with no advertising:
[Travis-Smith-Computer:~] nep% whois spacesindoorsandout.com
Whois Server Version 2.0
Domain Name: SPACESINDOORSANDOUT.COM
Registrar: GO DADDY SOFTWARE, INC.
Whois Server: whois.godaddy.com
Referral URL: http://registrar.godaddy.com
Name Server: DNS50-2.NEXCESS.NET
Name Server: DNS50-1.NEXCESS.NET
Status: REGISTRAR-LOCK
EPP Status: clientDeleteProhibited
EPP Status: clientRenewProhibited
EPP Status: clientTransferProhibited
EPP Status: clientUpdateProhibited
Updated Date: 30-Nov-2006
Creation Date: 28-Jan-2004
Expiration Date: 28-Jan-2007
>>> Last update of whois database: Mon, 04 Dec 2006 13:43:00 EST <<<
Registrant:
Spaces Indoors & Out
Registered through: GoDaddy.com, Inc. (http://www.godaddy.com)
Domain Name: SPACESINDOORSANDOUT.COM
Domain servers in listed order:
DNS50-1.NEXCESS.NET
DNS50-2.NEXCESS.NET
For complete domain details go to:
http://who.godaddy.com/whoischeck.aspx?Domain=SPACESINDOORSANDOUT.COM
It’s only when I go to their Web site that I can get the contact information for Registrant, Administrative, Billing and Technical Contact.
While I’m sure they did this to “cut down on spam” or something like that, I find it an unacceptable tradeoff that makes it harder for me to administer domains.� And I think it might be a violation of their duties as a domain registrar.
I’m in San Francisco for the first ever Dummies Authors Conference. There are about 50 Dummies authors here, and the day is packed with discussions about marketing books, the uses of agents, and general Dummies best practices. It’s going to be an interesting day! You can check out the agenda here.
There’s been a bunch of press already, but the most exciting news of the day is that the conference is up for being featured on the Evening News with Katie Couric. In fact, you can actually vote to send Steve Hartman to the conference tomorrow by going to http://www.cbsnews.com and clicking on Assignment America. We’re up against some guy who can talk really fast and a California prison program to send female juvenile delinquents to finish school ("Can etiquette, fashion and dance really set a girl straight?"). Wouldn’t you rather get the inside scoop on the For Dummies books? Of course you would. Go vote.
And, if I haven’t convinced you already, check out the other press coverage today:
Here’s a nice quote from the SFGate.com article:
The “dummies” label could be the weirdest aspect of the whole franchise, as the authors are not really supposed to assume their readers are dumb, just uninformed. The publisher, in an official statement on the matter, calls it a “term of endearment.”
Chris Abraham of ”Because the Medium is the Message” messaged me this week to let me know about the Blogger’s Choice Awards and Postiecon, two thing I thought you should also know about.
The Blogger’s Choice Awards, Chris says, are “like a Webbys for blogs.” Nominate yourself or a blog like you, and voting will determine the winner. There are way more categories than I can duplicate here, so this is just a quick taste: Best Geek Blog, Best Podcast, Best Pop Culture Blog and Worst Blog of All Time. Why not head over and nominate yourself?
PostieCon is in Orlando, Florida, at the beginning of June. According to the copy on the site:
We are here to educate bloggers on how to build traffic and readership, and use your notoriety and unique brand to create value and monetize your voice. It’s not all about money and fame, our conference is designed to help you become a better blogger.
The schedule and speaker list already look good, and have a strong focus on blogging for money or business. A quick sampling of sessions include: Connecting with Advertisers, Turning Visits into Cash, and Vlogging Rockstar Style. Plus, there will be refreshments!
On Saturday I gave a presentation at Northern Voice (a Vancouver-based blogging conference) about blogging software and how it can and should be used for building Web sites are more than just a blog, or perhaps look nothing like a blog.
The session was podcasted here, and I’ve pasted in my talk outline below. The site we built during the session is here: http://bloggingworkshop.com/. Enjoy!
Not Just for Blogs
I think blogging is revolutionary. I think this because it is capable of building community and relationships, of informing, of entertaining… but when it comes right down to it, the thing that I think is so mind-blowing about blogging is the software. That, and the price of that software.
I started making Web sites in 1994. At that point, and for a long, long time, the vast majority of Web sites were built by making HTML files, potentially hundreds and hundreds of HTML files.� My first job was with the L.A. Times Web site, and when we wanted to change the design in any way - from the wording of something in the navigation to the color of the links - you did it on a file by file basis. Every single page had to be opened, changed, saved, and then put onto the Web server again. Needless to say we didn’t do a lot of little changes.
As the Web evolved, so did the software solutions. If you were a big Web site company with a lot of money, you hired people to build you something better: a database-driven Web site. With a databased site you could build pages as they were needed. At the L.A. Times that meant that when someone clicked on a link for a news story, the database found that story, pulled it out, and plunked it into a template. The ground-breaking thing for the worker bees was that there weren’t individual files sitting around anymore: if you wanted to make a change to the site design you made it to the template and the next time someone looked at a story, boom, they got the new template. It made things easier for the developers and that in turn made things easier for the site’s visitors, because the developers could then spend time on other stuff, like content. It made other good stuff possible, too, like search, like archives, like content sorting by category.
That was what you did if you were a big company. If you were a little buy, or an individual, and you didn’t have the big bucks to spend, you still had masses of HTML files sitting around, and things like search were really out of your reach.
Then along comes blogging software.
What is blogging software? Well, at heart, it’s a database. You put the content in, it goes into a database. When it gets displayed, that content is dropped into a template. Sound familiar? This is why so many blog sites look the same from page to page - the home page looks just like a permalink page, except for the content of the actual blog posts. The templates are the same.
And most blogging software came with bells and whistles: search, archives, RSS feeds… it was all built in. You didn’t need any special expertise to set it up, and with a lot of blogging software you could get started in minutes. Best of all was the price. What the big companies spent hundreds of thousands on, you could get for free with Blogger. Even the blog software that did cost money was relatively inexpensive. For $200 or so, you had everything you needed.
As long as what you needed was a blog, you were set.
Well, my big message today is that if you invest some time and learning, you can make a blog software work for more than a blog. You can build any Web site using blog software, and if you do it right, no one will be the wiser.
Let’s look at some examples of what I mean. (A little caveat, I’m going to show you mostly business Web sites because those are the kinds of Web sites I’m hired to create, but the principles are the same whether you have a “brand” or not.)
Thomas Paul Fine Art
http://www.tpaulfineart.com
Rejuvenile by Christopher Noxon
http://www.rejuvenile.com
Truthdig
http://www.truthdig.com
Mani’s Bakery
http://www.manisbakery.com
Blog software can really revolutionize the maintenance issues for a web site, and make it easier to redesign (a reality we can’t ignore) as well, but that doesn’t mean every web site needs to run off of blog software. Small web sites with mostly unique page layout won’t be able to make easy use of blog software.
But any site that needs to be easy to update (perhaps by multiple people), has some standardization of presentation, and can work with a template approach.
Is it easy? Well, yes and no. Get the right blog software, and have the right know-how and it’s not a big deal. But if you aren’t willing to learn some code and invest some time… it’s hard. There are people you can hire to set up a site for you, that’s for sure.
Now, the components of blog software: usually you have:
I’m showing you pMachine’s Expression Engine, but many different kinds of blog software can be adapted for this kind of site. It’s important to choose blog software that gives you access to the templates! Wordpress.com isn’t going to do, and only the Typepad Pro level will work for you. If you can find software that can handle multiple blogs, so much the better. The reason I really love EE is that each “blog” can be customized, and because of all the extra components—mailing list, poll, photo gallery, forum module.
For this demo, I’ve chosen one of the templates that EE provides and I’m going to customize it. First, let’s deal with the Admin side and set up our publishing interface:
Next, let’s get rid of stuff in the template we don’t want.
And finally, let’s substitute a few things in the blog software code.
Voila!
Hi all, two exciting pieces of news have made me put the blog back in action today. First, I’m working on a new book: Blogging for Dummies, 2nd Edition.
The first edition was written by Brad Hill, but the publisher—Wiley—wanted to revise the book this year and Brad wasn’t able to fit it into his schedule. So Wiley asked me if I would take the book on, and I’m working away at a revision. Revising a book like this is challenging. Wiley doesn’t really put any of the Dummies books out of print, so I wanted to write a book that would be different enough from the first edition that Brad and I weren’t in competition. Ideally, someone who buys the first book would also benefit from the second. But also, blogging sure has changed a lot! So there’s loads more stuff to try to fit in. I’ll post the proposed table of contents when its a little more firm. At this point, the book should be out in March 2007, and in the meantime you can definitely finds lots of great blogging information in the first edition: Blogging for Dummies.
The other exciting news is that my fellow blog designers and I have put together a panel proposal for SXSW Interactive for 2008: Blog Tool Death Match! We’re really excited to get out there and try to evangelize for our favorite programs, but we do need your help. There are more than 680 panels proposed for SXSW, but only about 120 spots. You can vote for us in the SXSW Panel Picker to help us get there, though. Go to http://panelpicker.sxsw.com, register to vote, and once you’re in, do a search for “death match” and you’ll get our panel to come up. Give us a 5—we’d really appreciate it and we’ll do our darndest to give you a great great panel. Here’s what we proposed to the organizers:
Every blog project starts with the same question: Which blog platform is the right one to use? Answering this question correctly can make or break the final product. Get the nitty-gritty on each platform from experts who will defend their software choice against all challengers. Will it come to blows?
THREE TAKEAWAYS: Our three panelists will argue vehemently about the strongest features and flaws of each platform. Expect tosee sites demonstrated that highlight the best of each blog software choice, and bring your own questions and criticisms to get tips and workarounds.
PANELISTS:
Thanks!
I got an extra Christmas present in December from the makers of my laptop bag: Mobile Edge. Lewis Lustman, director of marketing for Mobile Edge, left a comment on an earlier post of mine and then followed up with an email to me.
I picked the Mobile Edge Chocolate Suede Tote because I wanted a laptop bag that looked like it belonged to a woman, and that didn’t involve black canvas or vinyl. It was a tough search, especially since my laptop—at 17”—was too large for many of the more fashionable bags. When I found a Mobile Edge bag at Fry’s, though, I discovered that I could fit my laptop into the bag, as long as I didn’t put it into the actual slot created for it. Since the bag was quite padded anyway, I’ve been merrily using it and putting file folders in the laptop slot since.
Recently, though, Lewis told me, Mobile Edge had started making an insert just for laptops like mine (huge) and he wanted to send me one. Naturally, I accepted.
Now, one of the things I really liked about the Mobile Edge tote I chose was that the interior piece that holds the laptop is just an insert; it can actually be removed completely from the bag (and get this, when you remove it, you don’t loose any interior pockets or features!). This means you could buy a couple of inserts and say, use the same bag for more than one laptop.
When my new insert arrived, I pulled out the old 15” insert, popped in the 17” and the laptop fits perfectly. I have had a chance to use the bag since putting in the new insert, and things do fit a bit better when you can put the laptop into the right place, so it actually feels like I have more space, not less.
I’m still a huge fan of this bag, which is well-made and durable, and I can now recommend it unreservedly for carriers of 17” laptops as well.
My one remaining complaint is that bag + laptop + peripherals + book + ... well, it’s all a little heavy. That’s more of a physics problem, though. I’ll let you know if Mobile Edge cracks the code on breaking that whole two bodies of mass attracting each other thing.
Thanks, Lewis!
Written by webdesignerwall.com
It is proven that by using software shortcuts can boost up productivity. Here are 30 secret Photoshop shortcuts that I’ve learned from years of experience. Well, what I mean by “secret” is that these shortcuts are not documented in the menus. Keep reading and you will find how these shortcuts can speed up your productivity. I bet you don’t know all of them.
Note: this article is written in Mac Photoshop format. If you are using PC, Cmd = Ctrl and Opt = Alt.
Drag selection
With the Marquee tool, drag on the document (do not release the mouse yet), now hold down Spacebar, it will let you drag the undefined selection.
Navigate the document left or right
Hold down the Cmd key and scroll up or down allows you to navigate the document left or right. For example, hold down Cmd + scroll up will navigate to right.
Browse the font list
Put your cursor in the font list dropdown, you can browse the font list by pressing arrow Up or Down key.
Scale font size
Select the text that you want to scale the font size, press Cmd + Shift + > or < to increase / decrease font size.
Zoom with the scroll wheel
You can zoom in / out by Cmd + Opt + scroll up or down.
Drag to adjust numberic value
Mouseover the input box, hold down Cmd + drag left or right to increase / decrease. Hold down Cmd + Opt or Shift key and drag can change the value in decimal or 10 interval. This shortcut works in all dialog palettes.
Scroll to adjust numeric value
Put the cursor in the input box, scroll up or down to increase / decrease value. This shortcut works in all dialog palettes.
Arrow up / down to adjust numeric value
Put the cursor in the input box, press arrow Up or Down to increase / decrease. Hold down Shift and press arrow Up or Down will change value in 10 interval.
Zoom to 100%
Double click on the Zoom tool will zoom document to 100%.
Collapse or expand all layer groups
You can collapse or expand all root-level layer groups by holding down Cmd + click on the triangle icon. Hold down Cmd + Opt + click on the triangle icon will collapse or expand all level layer groups.
Show / hide in a row
If you need to show / hide more than one layers, instead of clicking one by one, you can click on the visibility icon and drag in a row.
Hide other layers
Hold down Opt + click on the visibility icon will hide all other layers.
Navigate layer blending mode
Shift + “-” or “+” key allows you to navigate through the blending mode dropdown.
Set specific blending mode
Opt + Shift + C, N, M, S, D… allows to set layer to specific blending mode.
For examples:
Normal = Opt + Shift + N
Screen = Opt + Shift + S
Multiply = Opt + Shift + M
Color = Opt + Shift + C
Lock layer transparency
Press forward slash (”/”) to lock layer transparency.
Load Channel selection
You probably know that Cmd + number keys (1, 2, 3) will activate the channels in sequent. Press Cmd + Opt + number keys will load the selection. For example, press Cmd + Opt + 4 will load Alpha channel 1.
Tool panels
Press Tab to toggle tool panels.
Precise cursor
Caps lock will display tool cursor in precise mode.
Navigate the tool list
You can navigate through the tool list by pressing Shift + tool shorcut. For example: B = Brush tool, if you press Shift + B again, you will switch to Pencil tool.
Increase / decrease brush size
With the Brush tool selected, you can increase / decrease the brush size by pressing [ or ] key (square bracket key). Press Shift + [ or ] will increase / decrease brush hardness.
Opacity
You can set the layer opacity by pressing the number keys (ie. 1 = 10%, 2 = 20%…). When you have the brush tool selected, pressing the number keys will adjust the brush opacity.
Duplicate layer
There are several shortcuts to duplicate layers.
1. You can hold down Cmd + Opt + drag to duplicate the active layer.
2. Cmd + Opt + arrow keys (Up, Down, Left, Right).
3. Cmd + J will duplicate the active layer in exact position.
4. Hold down Opt + drag within the Layers palette can also duplicate layers.
Copy visible and paste in a new layer
Press Cmd + Opt + Shift + E will copy the visible layers and paste in a new layer.
Change workspace background
By default Photoshop use grey for the workspace background color. You can change that by:
1. select your favorite color
2. choose the Paint Bucket tool
3. Hold down Shift + click on the working area (outside the document area)
Fill background or foreground color
Opt + Delete (Backspace) = fill the layer with foreground color.
Cmd + Delete (Backspace) = fill the layer with background color
Switch between document windows
Ctrl + Tab will switch between document windows.
Load layer transparent
Cmd + click on the layer thumbnail will load its transparency.
Scale proportionally from center
When you are using the Marquee tools or Free Transform, hold down Opt + Shift + drag will scale proportionally from the center.
Shortcut to Eyedropper
If you have the Brush tool selected, hold down Opt key will quickly activate the Eyedropper tool. Hold down Opt + Shift will activate the Color Sampler Tool.
Finally…
Finally, if you want to check or set your own custom shortcuts, press Cmd + Opt + Shift + K will bring up the Keyboard Shortcuts panel.
Do you know more Photoshop shortcuts that are not listed in this article? Please post them in the comment form. Make sure they are “secret” (not documented in the Photoshop menus).
If you liked this post, buy me a beerBlogging For SEO: How To Get Maximum Search Benefit From Your Small Business Blog
How Google's Acquisition of FeedBurner Will Change RSS Marketing
While the original plan for the RSS Diary blog was leaving on hiatus until the 2007 edition of the RSS Marketing e-book is done, the FeedBurner acquisition by Google is a story just to important to pass up ... especially all the implications it might bring into the world of RSS Advertising, and RSS Marketing as a whole as well.
So, yes. FeedBurner, a leading RSS metrics and RSS advertising company was just acquired by Google. Finally confirmed after weeks of speculation. I won't go into the details of the acquisition, as you can read more about it at the FeedBurner blog and just by following the news at Google News.
Here, we'll take a look at the implications this brings to the world of RSS Marketing. Just my predictions of course:)
In my book, all marketing/communications channels should be judged using the same metrics, such as conversions, cost-per-order, cost-per-subscriber, sales etc.
Although you could already do all of this with RSS, it required some tinkering.
But, as FeedBurner gets assimilated into Google Analytics, tracking the key marketing metrics should become a breeze, giving everyone access to crucial internet optimization data.
With RSS Metrics being integrated directly into Google Analytics (which I'm sure will happen very soon), marketers might finally start actually measuring their RSS feeds.
Means better RSS Marketing, finally.
Although FeedBurner is cautions to provide any details about how their CPM pricing model might change with the integration of their ad services into Google, I'm quite certain that RSS advertising will move the way of cost-per-click.
Means less revenues for RSS feed publishers, but better ROI for you, the advertiser.
RSS Advertising will finally reach the mainstream, utilizing Google's massive advertiser database.
Prices will go up, and RSS content monetization will again start becoming the talk at industry events.
On the plus side, it also means Google will be able to attract more RSS feed publishers, meaning more RSS ad inventory for you. Your RSS advertising reach potential is about to explode, finally enabling you to reach the masses using RSS Advertising.
I love Pheedo, another leading RSS Metrics and RSS Advertising company, but the FeedBurner acquisition makes me wonder what's in store for them as Google starts pushing RSS advertising to their massive database of advertisers, especially as part of an integrated online advertising service.
It's certainly not the end of other RSS Advertising companies, but they might all soon see themselves transforming from RSS ad networks to RSS media planning & buying consultants.
Which would be a shame, especially considering the advancements in RSS Advertising developed by Pheedo.
Advertiser demand seems to be growing quicker than the inventory offered by Google.
The obvious choice for Google (in addition of course to increasing ad inventory through additional reach, media expansion through the content network, and expansion to new ad channels, like RSS and banner inventories) is to offer better targeting, for a premium price.
As a marketer, I clearly want to place my ads in front of the most relevant prospects. Keyword targeting is OK, but adding behavioral on top of that introduces another filtering element to my media planning, enabling me to really pin-point the users I want to see my ads.
This may either be science fiction or Google's actual long-term masterplan. As more advertising budgets rush to the internet, available quality ad inventory will continue shrinking.
By introducing such targeting, integrating the metric and capabilities of all of their properties, Google could come as close as possible to total ad targeting, the holy grail of marketing we are all striving towards.
Things will get much more interesting ... and soon.
If I were an ad agency, I'd start developing a targeting department, focusing on targeted media buying.
| How Can RSS Power Your Internet Marketing and Publishing? Find out more in the most comprehensive and best guide on RSS for marketers, as acclaimed by leading RSS experts, developers, marketers and publishers. Click here and get the step-by-step guide to taking full marketing advantage of RSS. |
What works best in RSS marketing? How are RSS subscribers different than e-mail subscribers? RSS publishing best practices if you want to sell?
These and other practical questions are all revealed in the 2nd part of the RSS interview with Bryan Eisenberg. Without doubt, this is one of the best and most practical RSS marketing interviews we've done so far.
In part 1 of the Bryan Eisenberg RSS interview we focused on how the GrokDotCom.com is going beyond traditional RSS Radars by employing intelligent content aggregation tools, instead of relying just on contextual filtering, and what kind of results they are achieving.
In part 2 of the interview we move beyond RSS Radars to their overall RSS marketing strategy.
In this interview find out about ...
1. How RSS subscribers are different from e-mail subscribers and why?
2. How to sell products through content-rich RSS feeds?
3. Do RSS subscribers mind seeing product promotions in your feeds?
4. When to publish your latest RSS content to get the most links from other websites and most readership?
5. What's the right RSS publishing frequency for promotional content?
6. Why branding your RSS feed is important and how to do it?
Click here to listen to the MP3 file [8:33 minutes; 2 MB]
| How Can RSS Power Your Internet Marketing and Publishing? Find out more in the most comprehensive and best guide on RSS for marketers, as acclaimed by leading RSS experts, developers, marketers and publishers. Click here and get the step-by-step guide to taking full marketing advantage of RSS. |
While RSS has certainly become well-established with most marketers, few are using it to its full advantage.
Now, while the original Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS e-book focused on explaining RSS marketing in a world where RSS was just starting out, the 2007 edition will focus on optimizing your RSS marketing and getting as much as possible from it.
The 10-step plan is one of the tools we will be introducing in the 2007 edition, once it's launched (getting there:).
Going through this plan will help you get as much as possible from RSS, on all levels. It will help you bring your RSS marketing to the same level as your e-mail marketing, and more.
But for now, here's a very quick summary of the steps from the process view point.
1. Develop your RSS marketing strategy
It all starts with a strategy that defines all the other elements of your RSS marketing plan. Developing your RSS marketing strategy consists of planning your RSS usage for each marketing function and integrating it with the rest of your marketing mix, and setting the goals for each of the marketing functions.
2. Start using RSS for business intelligence
Conducting business intelligence using RSS is the first step to improving your marketing overall. You will start by finding the right RSS Reader for you, define your business intelligence needs, find the relevant information sources, and implementing the right RSS business intelligence tools.
3. Plan your overall outbound RSS content strategy
Outbound communications using RSS are the most complex part of RSS marketing, with numerous choices available to you. During this step you will define your outbound communications target audiences, define your goals for each of them, decide on your RSS feed publishing model, define your RSS feed content and define your RSS feed content sources.
4. Define your RSS marketing requirements & select your RSS marketing vendor
Defining your RSS marketing technology requirements and selecting the appropriate vendor to supply you with all the features you need to support your strategy.
5. Plan your RSS content strategy on the content-item level
Once you have prepared your overall RSS content strategy you need to plan your RSS content-item level strategy, which essentially means getting the right content in place within the feed to meet your objectives. This consists of defining your writing style, defining the content item structure and defining your calls-to-action.
6. Promote your RSS feeds internally
Simply publishing RSS feeds on your website is not enough to generate subscribers. In this section you will define your RSS feed subscription process, define the RSS feed promotion locations for your feeds, develop the subscription offer and implement the other neccessary technical items to increase your subscription growth.
7. Promote your RSS feeds externally
After setting everything correctly through your own channels, it is neccesary to promote the RSS feeds using external websites as well. This process includes optimizing your RSS feed for the search engines, submitting the feed to the search engines and performing periodic pinging.
8. Measure and optimize your RSS feeds
Measurement and optimization are the two areas that can have the most profound impact on your RSS success. This consists of defining the required metrics, establishing the technical capacities for measurement, measuring and optimizing your content strategy and measuring and optimizing your subscription generation tactics.
9. Use RSS to syndicate your content to other online media
Use RSS to get your content published on other relevant media. The neccessary steps for syndication are defining your target media, defining your RSS feed content, preparing the right syndication tools and promoting your syndication offerings.
10. Use RSS to enhance your website and brand
Enhancing your website is about adding third-party content to enrich the user experience, while enhancing your brand is about providing your own branded RSS Reader.
| How Can RSS Power Your Internet Marketing and Publishing? Find out more in the most comprehensive and best guide on RSS for marketers, as acclaimed by leading RSS experts, developers, marketers and publishers. Click here and get the step-by-step guide to taking full marketing advantage of RSS. |
In part 3 of the RSS interview with Greg Reinacker of NewsGator find out how Enterprise RSS makes information management easier within a corporation.
Click here to listen to the interview [MP3; 13 min.]
| How Can RSS Power Your Internet Marketing and Publishing? Find out more in the most comprehensive and best guide on RSS for marketers, as acclaimed by leading RSS experts, developers, marketers and publishers. Click here and get the step-by-step guide to taking full marketing advantage of RSS. |
I was checking information about a domain today, and noticed that GoDaddy seems to have changed their response to send people to their Web site.� No longer can I get the information I need through a simple unix command, in text format with no advertising:
[Travis-Smith-Computer:~] nep% whois spacesindoorsandout.com
Whois Server Version 2.0
Domain Name: SPACESINDOORSANDOUT.COM
Registrar: GO DADDY SOFTWARE, INC.
Whois Server: whois.godaddy.com
Referral URL: http://registrar.godaddy.com
Name Server: DNS50-2.NEXCESS.NET
Name Server: DNS50-1.NEXCESS.NET
Status: REGISTRAR-LOCK
EPP Status: clientDeleteProhibited
EPP Status: clientRenewProhibited
EPP Status: clientTransferProhibited
EPP Status: clientUpdateProhibited
Updated Date: 30-Nov-2006
Creation Date: 28-Jan-2004
Expiration Date: 28-Jan-2007
>>> Last update of whois database: Mon, 04 Dec 2006 13:43:00 EST <<<
Registrant:
Spaces Indoors & Out
Registered through: GoDaddy.com, Inc. (http://www.godaddy.com)
Domain Name: SPACESINDOORSANDOUT.COM
Domain servers in listed order:
DNS50-1.NEXCESS.NET
DNS50-2.NEXCESS.NET
For complete domain details go to:
http://who.godaddy.com/whoischeck.aspx?Domain=SPACESINDOORSANDOUT.COM
It’s only when I go to their Web site that I can get the contact information for Registrant, Administrative, Billing and Technical Contact.
While I’m sure they did this to “cut down on spam” or something like that, I find it an unacceptable tradeoff that makes it harder for me to administer domains.� And I think it might be a violation of their duties as a domain registrar.
Just got a notice from Amazon (thank you) that they soft-launched RSS feeds for tags.
But first, how do their tags actually work?
The good part is that Amazon now added RSS capabilities to their tags, available through most tag pages.
An excellent RSS e-commerce application from Amazon!
| How Can RSS Power Your Internet Marketing and Publishing? Find out more in the most comprehensive and best guide on RSS for marketers, as acclaimed by leading RSS experts, developers, marketers and publishers. Click here and get the step-by-step guide to taking full marketing advantage of RSS. |
RSS Radars are not just a tool to help you enrich your website content and allow you to easily conduct business intelligence, but can also be used as a B2B Customer Relationship Management tool to help you maintain customer loyalty and provide your customers with some additional added value.
Just recently I received an e-mail from David Koopmans of Mokum Marketing, who gave me the idea for this post.
David's idea is simple:
This is how David sees the usefulness of such an application:
"The idea is very attractive though; in B2B we often manage a relatively small number of relationships, but they are deep and we want to make them deeper."
But, there are two problems:
This is where RSS Radars can come in, enabling you to aggregate dozens or hundreds of RSS feeds, filter them for the relevant keywords to get only the most relevant content for a specific client, and provide that client with his own customized RSS feed, using a service like MySyndicaat.com or pipes.yahoo.com.
Plus, using .htaccess you can easily password protect each feed for each individual client.
More details in the 2007 edition of the RSS e-book:)
| How Can RSS Power Your Internet Marketing and Publishing? Find out more in the most comprehensive and best guide on RSS for marketers, as acclaimed by leading RSS experts, developers, marketers and publishers. Click here and get the step-by-step guide to taking full marketing advantage of RSS. |
Only a few more weeks until the ACCM (Annual Catalog and Multi-Channel Merchant Conference) event in Boston, one of the best DM conferences of the year.
If you're in Boston or are coming to the conference, drop me a note.
I'll be speaking on RSS and other new internet marketing media, together with Scott Voight of Silverpop.
If you're at the conference, definetly reserve the Monday 3 PM slot to come hear us. The last presentation we did together with Scott in London was a huge hit, and we promise not to dissapoint:)
| How Can RSS Power Your Internet Marketing and Publishing? Find out more in the most comprehensive and best guide on RSS for marketers, as acclaimed by leading RSS experts, developers, marketers and publishers. Click here and get the step-by-step guide to taking full marketing advantage of RSS. |
The Pew Internet & American Life Project reports that, when it comes right down to it, “Web 2.0” ain’t all that. Succinctly put, the very ways in which Web 2.0 is typically defined—user collaboration and contribution, photo sharing, etc.—aren’t really anything new to the Web, which has always partly been about user-generated content. (Read more about the report.)
From MediaPost: “It doesn’t really matter that this bright line has been so elusive, or that some savvy marketers simply use the label to distance themselves from the failures of Web 1.0 companies,” states the report.
What does Web 2.0 mean to you?
Part of the upcoming 2007 edition of the RSS Marketing e-book are also the interviews we are doing with various internet marketing experts and RSS practitioners. In the following days and hopefully not too many weeks, we'll be posting those interviews here.
I'm sure most of you have heard of Bryan Eisenberg before. Bryan is the leading worldwide authority on internet marketing optimization and website persuasion architecture. He was also one of the few marketers that got on the RSS Marketing bandwagon early on.
Recently, Bryan started exploring RSS Radars as a tool to increase the traffic to their optimization portal GrokDotCom.com, increase visitor loyalty, position the website as the key news source for internet optimization ... and naturally facilitate online sales of their books and consulting services. Take a look here.
But while most RSS Radars are based on contextually filtering content from selected third-party RSS feeds, the GrokDotCom.com RSS Radars go far beyond anything else we have seen on the market so far.
Instead of relying only on contextual content filtering to select the most relevant third-party content, they are employing a number of additional filters, such as the amount of linkage the story is receiving, source relevance and credibility, and so on ... and they're calling it a discovery engine.
All of these answers, and more, available in the audio interview.
Click here to listen to the MP3 file [14 minutes; 3 MB]
| How Can RSS Power Your Internet Marketing and Publishing? Find out more in the most comprehensive and best guide on RSS for marketers, as acclaimed by leading RSS experts, developers, marketers and publishers. Click here and get the step-by-step guide to taking full marketing advantage of RSS. |
I have to apologise to Amazon for missing on two of their RSS content delivery options, which I previously missed.
Sorry guys, and thank you for the heads up.
1. Product Discussions
Most Amazon.com product discussions are now available also as RSS feeds. An excellent way of keeping track of the conversations surrounding your favorite products, and certainly something more websites should implement ... especially those that provide content that people are pashionate about.
The first one that comes to mind is TV.com and their community show reviews.
2. Customer Reviews by Author
Like a product reviewer? Subscribe to their Amazon.com reviews RSS feed.
| How Can RSS Power Your Internet Marketing and Publishing? Find out more in the most comprehensive and best guide on RSS for marketers, as acclaimed by leading RSS experts, developers, marketers and publishers. Click here and get the step-by-step guide to taking full marketing advantage of RSS. |
On Saturday I gave a presentation at Northern Voice (a Vancouver-based blogging conference) about blogging software and how it can and should be used for building Web sites are more than just a blog, or perhaps look nothing like a blog.
The session was podcasted here, and I’ve pasted in my talk outline below. The site we built during the session is here: http://bloggingworkshop.com/. Enjoy!
Not Just for Blogs
I think blogging is revolutionary. I think this because it is capable of building community and relationships, of informing, of entertaining… but when it comes right down to it, the thing that I think is so mind-blowing about blogging is the software. That, and the price of that software.
I started making Web sites in 1994. At that point, and for a long, long time, the vast majority of Web sites were built by making HTML files, potentially hundreds and hundreds of HTML files.� My first job was with the L.A. Times Web site, and when we wanted to change the design in any way - from the wording of something in the navigation to the color of the links - you did it on a file by file basis. Every single page had to be opened, changed, saved, and then put onto the Web server again. Needless to say we didn’t do a lot of little changes.
As the Web evolved, so did the software solutions. If you were a big Web site company with a lot of money, you hired people to build you something better: a database-driven Web site. With a databased site you could build pages as they were needed. At the L.A. Times that meant that when someone clicked on a link for a news story, the database found that story, pulled it out, and plunked it into a template. The ground-breaking thing for the worker bees was that there weren’t individual files sitting around anymore: if you wanted to make a change to the site design you made it to the template and the next time someone looked at a story, boom, they got the new template. It made things easier for the developers and that in turn made things easier for the site’s visitors, because the developers could then spend time on other stuff, like content. It made other good stuff possible, too, like search, like archives, like content sorting by category.
That was what you did if you were a big company. If you were a little buy, or an individual, and you didn’t have the big bucks to spend, you still had masses of HTML files sitting around, and things like search were really out of your reach.
Then along comes blogging software.
What is blogging software? Well, at heart, it’s a database. You put the content in, it goes into a database. When it gets displayed, that content is dropped into a template. Sound familiar? This is why so many blog sites look the same from page to page - the home page looks just like a permalink page, except for the content of the actual blog posts. The templates are the same.
And most blogging software came with bells and whistles: search, archives, RSS feeds… it was all built in. You didn’t need any special expertise to set it up, and with a lot of blogging software you could get started in minutes. Best of all was the price. What the big companies spent hundreds of thousands on, you could get for free with Blogger. Even the blog software that did cost money was relatively inexpensive. For $200 or so, you had everything you needed.
As long as what you needed was a blog, you were set.
Well, my big message today is that if you invest some time and learning, you can make a blog software work for more than a blog. You can build any Web site using blog software, and if you do it right, no one will be the wiser.
Let’s look at some examples of what I mean. (A little caveat, I’m going to show you mostly business Web sites because those are the kinds of Web sites I’m hired to create, but the principles are the same whether you have a “brand” or not.)
Thomas Paul Fine Art
http://www.tpaulfineart.com
Rejuvenile by Christopher Noxon
http://www.rejuvenile.com
Truthdig
http://www.truthdig.com
Mani’s Bakery
http://www.manisbakery.com
Blog software can really revolutionize the maintenance issues for a web site, and make it easier to redesign (a reality we can’t ignore) as well, but that doesn’t mean every web site needs to run off of blog software. Small web sites with mostly unique page layout won’t be able to make easy use of blog software.
But any site that needs to be easy to update (perhaps by multiple people), has some standardization of presentation, and can work with a template approach.
Is it easy? Well, yes and no. Get the right blog software, and have the right know-how and it’s not a big deal. But if you aren’t willing to learn some code and invest some time… it’s hard. There are people you can hire to set up a site for you, that’s for sure.
Now, the components of blog software: usually you have:
I’m showing you pMachine’s Expression Engine, but many different kinds of blog software can be adapted for this kind of site. It’s important to choose blog software that gives you access to the templates! Wordpress.com isn’t going to do, and only the Typepad Pro level will work for you. If you can find software that can handle multiple blogs, so much the better. The reason I really love EE is that each “blog” can be customized, and because of all the extra components—mailing list, poll, photo gallery, forum module.
For this demo, I’ve chosen one of the templates that EE provides and I’m going to customize it. First, let’s deal with the Admin side and set up our publishing interface:
Next, let’s get rid of stuff in the template we don’t want.
And finally, let’s substitute a few things in the blog software code.
Voila!
Just got word from my Japaneese publisher that Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS is scheduled to be released in Japan in print end of July.
It's great to finally go international:)
Japan is getting the short 2007 edition of the book ... and yes, the longer US 2007 edition is still being written, unfortunatelly.
I can't believe how many times I've postoped it already. Actually, I'm quite ashamed of it.
But, I do believe it will be worth the wait.
I also wanted to thank Geoff Livingston for putting Unleash the Marketing & Publishing Power of RSS on his list of 25+ Great New Media Books.
Geoff, thanks for the extra motivation to help me finish the 2007 edition:)
| How Can RSS Power Your Internet Marketing and Publishing? Find out more in the most comprehensive and best guide on RSS for marketers, as acclaimed by leading RSS experts, developers, marketers and publishers. Click here and get the step-by-step guide to taking full marketing advantage of RSS. |
Hi all, two exciting pieces of news have made me put the blog back in action today. First, I’m working on a new book: Blogging for Dummies, 2nd Edition.
The first edition was written by Brad Hill, but the publisher—Wiley—wanted to revise the book this year and Brad wasn’t able to fit it into his schedule. So Wiley asked me if I would take the book on, and I’m working away at a revision. Revising a book like this is challenging. Wiley doesn’t really put any of the Dummies books out of print, so I wanted to write a book that would be different enough from the first edition that Brad and I weren’t in competition. Ideally, someone who buys the first book would also benefit from the second. But also, blogging sure has changed a lot! So there’s loads more stuff to try to fit in. I’ll post the proposed table of contents when its a little more firm. At this point, the book should be out in March 2007, and in the meantime you can definitely finds lots of great blogging information in the first edition: Blogging for Dummies.
The other exciting news is that my fellow blog designers and I have put together a panel proposal for SXSW Interactive for 2008: Blog Tool Death Match! We’re really excited to get out there and try to evangelize for our favorite programs, but we do need your help. There are more than 680 panels proposed for SXSW, but only about 120 spots. You can vote for us in the SXSW Panel Picker to help us get there, though. Go to http://panelpicker.sxsw.com, register to vote, and once you’re in, do a search for “death match” and you’ll get our panel to come up. Give us a 5—we’d really appreciate it and we’ll do our darndest to give you a great great panel. Here’s what we proposed to the organizers:
Every blog project starts with the same question: Which blog platform is the right one to use? Answering this question correctly can make or break the final product. Get the nitty-gritty on each platform from experts who will defend their software choice against all challengers. Will it come to blows?
THREE TAKEAWAYS: Our three panelists will argue vehemently about the strongest features and flaws of each platform. Expect tosee sites demonstrated that highlight the best of each blog software choice, and bring your own questions and criticisms to get tips and workarounds.
PANELISTS:
Thanks!
I'm the CEO/Founder of Guerrilla Marketers Cafe - Free Book Promotion Site, Where Authors and Readers Mingle. I'm passionate about helping others succeed.
