BeardyGeek.com

I read the other day how Yahoo was going to start supporting semantic web standards.

The semantic web is something that is often associated with Web 3.0 (if that’s what you want to call it!), and will allow greater data exchange, better and more targeted search, and generally open things up for a super mash-up. Take a look at Wikipedia’s definition of Web 3.0 for more info.

One of the formats that Yahoo will initially support is hAtom, which is a microformat especially for blog entries.

So, I thought I’d take a look at it and try and implement it in the BeardyGeek blog.

First Steps

To add an hAtom feed to your blog, all you need to do is add some class names to what are probably existing divs or spans in your blog template.

For example, if you have a div around your entire content that looks like this:

<div class=”content”>

you just need to add an extra class tag called hfeed:

<div class=”content hfeed”>

To have more than one class, just separate them with a space.

There are 3 more main tags that you need.

• hentry - the outer tag for each blog post
• entry-title - the tag for the post title
• entry-content - the tag for your post content

And that’s it. Easy as pie!

How I changed my Wordpress Theme

Ok, here’s what I changed in my theme.

Header page - At or near the bottom is a div tag - <div class=”content”> - I changed that to <div class=”content hfeed”>.

Single Post - I added the hentry tag to <div class=”post”> so it now read <div class=”post hentry”>. I then added entry-title to the <h2 class=”post-title”> so it read <h2 class=”post-title entry-title”>. And I also add entry-content to <div class=”postentry”> so it read <div class=”postentry entry-content”>.

Main index template - pretty much the same as the single post page, as the tags are all the same.

Testing

To test the feed, I downloaded Greasemonkey plugin for Firefox. I then downloaded the RSS Panel X script for Greasemonkey, which allows you to view a page’s feeds in a small JavaScript window. This is ideal for testing in this case as it supports hAtom.

Once you have these installed and running (tip: install the plugin first, then the script installs automatically), just load up your blog page. If all went according to plan, you should see your hAtom feed along with your RSS feed.

In fact, you can test it out here, as I have my hAtom feed up and running!

Good luck, let me know how you get on.

How I got Traffic by Complaining on Twitter

Copyblogger’s new Job Board - More Monetization for your Blog

Virtual Learning Environments - the Future of Internet Marketing?

Hi Guys,

Whilst doing some market research today, I came across 43things.com.

Now I have seen this site many times before, although I am not an active user.

But today it hit me what a great research and possibly marketing tool this is.

It’s often said that to make money online, all you have to do is:

1. Find out what people want and
2. Sell it to them.

Well on 43things, people tell you what they want to do. And you can see how many other people want to do the same things.

Plus you can comment and put links in your comments.

Not sure if anyone else has used 43things in such a way before, but I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Reporter vs Expert - Why Most Bloggers Are Stuck Reporting

My Twitter Tales

The Art of Seduction Marketing

Innovation is defined as ‘the act of introducing something new‘. In this article I want to give you some ideas on how you could be more innovative everyday.

Some people are said to have ‘Eureka’ moments, when something just clicks in their head and they have a brilliant new idea. But this idea is usually the fruit of a seed planted in your mind, at some point in the past. It didn’t just pop in there, it’s been growing as you’ve been feeding it over time.

And using the tips below, you will be able to be more innovative more regularly.

1. Fail

I hate to start the list on a negative note, but this is one of the most important points. Be prepared to fail. Because if you are trying to innovate, you will fail more than you will succeed. The trick here is to do it quickly. Know when you’ve failed, accept it, and move on. If you spend a year flogging a dead horse, you have wasted the opportunity to try many other more successful ideas during that time.

2. Learn

This actually comes in 2 forms. Firstly, learn from you failures. You’ve probably heard that a million times, but you’d be amazed at how many people ignore this. It’s important to analyze where you went wrong, and improve the next time.

Secondly, learn new stuff. Learn about what interests you, about what fires you up. Learn for learning’s sake. Because you never know when some piece of information is going to pop out at you, enabling you to make a connection that no-one else has made. Read the rest of this entry »

Virtual Learning Environments - the Future of Internet Marketing?

The Art of Seduction Marketing

Hi Guys,

Copyblogger has just announced it’s new job board.

On closer inspection this appears to powered by JobThread. From their site, you can install either a job widget, which shows job ads based on your blog category and keywords selected at sign up.

Or you can go for the full job board, where you charge what you like for ad postings, and then split the money 50/50 with JobThread.

This is a great idea if you have a high traffic site like Copyblogger, where you have the readership to justify charging for job postings.

As for smaller sites, the widget may be more appropriate, although time will tell whether this will be a good earner.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on this one.

iPaper and Internet Marketing

How I got Traffic by Complaining on Twitter

Web 3.0 - How to Put Semantic Tags in your Blog

I have been thinking recently about Virtual Learning Environments (VLEs), as they seem to be ideal for the delivery of ‘paid for content’. In particular eCourses, which could range from Internet Marketing to Knitting!

This type of delivery is going to become huge in Internet Marketing. eBooks will still have a place out there, but with the increase in computing power, and the speed of the average net connection, rich media is the way forward for content delivery.

There are various ways this type of content could be delivered:

Blogs

Your material could be put on a blog. The advantages here are that it is a very flexible platform to publish any sort of media on, from videos and podcasts to articles and images. Plus it would be very quick to get set up.
The downside is that if you have quite a lot of content, this format doesn’t lend itself well to structured learning. How do you tell people what material you need them to look at first, without having to create an index page that links to all your content pages and blog entries?

Content Management Systems

I looked at CMS systems such as Drupal quite seriously. You can customise them quite easily, and add navigation through various administration panels. But it’s still really only 1 step away from a blog, and has some of the same disadvantages.

Open Source VLEs

Now we’re getting a bit closer. There is an open source package called Moodle, which is built specifically to admininster and deliver courses. It has modules for payment, course enrollment, blogs and forums. Various media can be embedded in it’s pages.

But I found that this might be a little too structured, depending on your needs of course. If your material is to be delivered over a fixed period of time, Moodle is probably ideal. But if your content is a little more open ended, lets say for a membership site where the content just keeps on expanding, this format might not quite offer that sort of flexibility.

Custom Built

Now I can tell you what my next project is going to be! I found a new site called the Encyclopedia of Life. It’s aim is to catalogue every species of animal on the planet. No I’m not getting into animal conservation. What I did notice is the layout of their pages. Just go and look at them now (if it’s working, they had some problems with their servers due to load). Take a look at one of the animal entries. They are just beautiful.

See how much content they managed to get on 1 page! Everything is Ajax, so there is no page reloading. There’s a tabbed media frame at the top, which can display images, video, maps, audio. Then there is a contents panel on the left, with an Ajax refreshing content pane in the middle.

Now relate that page to the delivery of course content. Wouldn’t it be great to deliver your content in an environment like that?

A Framework in Development

So, with that in mind, I am going to be developing a new framework which will concentrate on the delivery of new media on the web. So watch this space!

Reporter vs Expert - Why Most Bloggers Are Stuck Reporting

My Twitter Tales

Programming Web 2.0 Applications - It’s not Rocket Science

Hi Guys,

I just found this new site, called Qassia, which offers it’s users unlimited one way backlinks to your site.

In return you just have to provide what they call ‘Intel’, which is either short articles, or bits of information on people, companies or places.

They also say they are going to display Adsense ads using your own Google Id, but it doesn’t look like this has been implemented yet.

It looks like an interesting idea, and is still in private beta at the moment.

Follow this link to sign up.

Give it a try, what have you got to lose?

Using 43things.com as a Marketing Tool

Reporter vs Expert - Why Most Bloggers Are Stuck Reporting

The Anatomy of a Sales Filter

Hi Guys,

This video is for beginners on the scene, and it explains Social Bookmarking and how to use it to build traffic to your site.

Enjoy!

Click here to download this video

How to do an Internet Business Launch

How I got Traffic by Complaining on Twitter

Copyblogger’s new Job Board - More Monetization for your Blog

If you want to seduce a member of the opposite sex, how do you go about it? I want to look at 2 possible techniques that we can relate to marketing, and specifically Internet Marketing.

Technique 1 - The Flash Harry Technique

You tell your prospective seducee that you are the best thing since sliced bread, that you have loads of money, that you are a fantastic lover, that by just spending time with you will make them a better person, that you will never hurt them and will never let them down. You can provide a list of references from previous partners, and even have audio and video clips of them saying how wonderful you are.

Further more, you tell them that there are loads of other people interested in you, and that they only have a limited time in which to become your new beau, before you move on. Oh, and if they come with you now, you will buy them drinks all night, and a pizza later.

Technique 2 - The Reluctant Millionaire

You don’t tell your seducee what car you drive, or where you live, or what you do for a living, or how good you are in bed. You might subtly dangle the key fob to your Ferrari so they can see it, and when they pop round to your pad, they’ll soon notice the long gated driveway, the 10 bedroom mansion, and the indoor pool and jaccuzi. And as for the bedroom antics, well if they’re luckly they’ll discover that one for themselves!

Results

Technique 1 still works, and probably always will. I had a friend used this one, he got a lot of refusals, but with persistence and a very thick skin, he eventually found a punter.

Technique 2 looks like a better way of doing things. The only issue here is that you really do have to have the goods, otherwise it’s just not going to work.

The Internet Marketing Connection

You can probably see how this relates to Internet Marketing. Technique 1 is our trusty long copy sales letter, making wild claims, peppered with quotes from happy customers, audio and video to spice things up. Now I’m not saying that this type of sales letter is dead, it still works very well for a lot of people. But I do think that the longer people use the internet, the more jaded they will become to this kind of marketing.

Have you ever seen the old black and white T.V adverts. It quite often involved a person holding the product, saying “This is great, I use it and look what it did for me!” Compare and contrast with ads today. Some of them still use the old style (think laundry products), but with most of them you often can’t tell what they are actually advertising until they reveal the product at the end, and even then we are sometimes still none the wiser!

The reason the ads have changed is because people no longer want to be told “we sell this, so go and buy it.” They want to be seduced by the brand. Companies have to advertise, but in such a way that it doesn’t look like selling. It shows the cool, toned, handsome guy wearing a sharp suit. It shows the beautiful model flicking her hair.

Technique 2 - a different approach

So here we have a different approach to Internet Marketing. Now, as I said above, to make this work you really do need to have the goods. If your product or service is mediocre, you may sell it once, but probably never again. This is about teasing. Mentioning without pushing. Almost brushing aside the thing you really want to sell, saying “oh we sell that, it is our premium product, but that’s probably not for you, a bit too advanced.” Now if the stuff you are showing them for free is good, they’ll fall over themselves to pay you for the great stuff.

People are more likely to buy things from other people that they trust. The only way they will trust you is if you build a relationship with them. We already know some of the best ways to do this, but then blow it when it comes to trying to close the deal. We spend ages writing blogs, sending out newsletters, building that relationship. Then we resort to technique 1 to try and land the deal. Thats probably a good way to blow all that trust out of the water, as they will see the salesman through the friendly facade.

Conclusion

In my opinion, technique 1 will probably work forever, but technique 2 will allow you to build up better relationships with customers, which will lead to a better brand, and ultimately far greater profits.

Become a seducer in your market, and show your customers what a great lover you really are!

Using 43things.com as a Marketing Tool

My Twitter Tales

Virtual Learning Environments - the Future of Internet Marketing?

Hi Guys,

I just wanted to show you this great free mind mapping software. Check out the video below and give it a try. You can download the software from www.thebrain.com

Get the Flash Player to see this player.

Click here for the quicktime version of this video

8 Ways to be More Innovative

Programming Web 2.0 Applications - It’s not Rocket Science

My Twitter Tales

Well, I got a bit carried away and started writing a wordpress plugin for iPaper before could even talk about it!

There are a couple of great things about iPaper. Firstly, it looks cool, very web 2.0. No more downloading (unless you want to of course) pdf’s when you just want to have a quick scan through the contents.

Secondly is the monetization. This is the first time we have been able to monetize our documents with Adsense. Although we don’t take all the revenue. Scribd have said that they will give a ‘generous portion’ of the revenue, but won’t disclose exactly what that is.

If iPaper really takes off, it wouldn’t surprise me if Scribd didn’t just get rid of Adsense, and start selling their own ads. Watch this space!

So if you’re into creating articles, don’t forget to upload to Scribd aswell.

Cheers

Stu

Scribd iPaper plugin for Wordpress

iPaper Plugin

My Twitter Tales