Of course, I’m going to remind you that I’m holding another fabulous Blogosopher Seminar this Saturday, Mar 11 2006 from 9am to 12:30 pm.
Come to the seminar and learn how to get to the top of Google for free, how to stop paying a web geek to update your site every time you need to make a change and how this amazing new technology can help you build your business- and relationships around the globe- all for the paltry sum of $99 ($79 for the second person from the same company- or for Next Wave clients). Sign up on-line in advance because it’ll cost you more if you just show up.

So- I’ve heard from a lot of you that you went to www.esrati.com and read some of my “big ideas” for Dayton. Instead of sending e-mails, you should try adding comments- it’s one way to build links back to your sites (which is one way to help you get to the top of Google).

This week- I thought I’d point our some things you will need to know about the future of marketing and advertising and communicating with your clients. This is just a small part of what we cover in the seminar.

1. WAP- or Wireless Application Protocol. Most web sites aren’t ready to be read on a tiny mobile screen, but if you are building your site using an active backend content management system (like WordPress) it’s easy to add WAP access. Intel and Microsoft just introduced the origamiproject– and that’s just going to be the beginning.
2. Digital paper/e-books are coming. As wireless becomes pervasive, it becomes easy to whip out a tablet that displays data. Think a thin laptop screen about the size of a paperback- with simple controls. Sony has one that will run 20 books (not hours) on one battery charge, and display text as clear as print in any lighting conditions.  Soon, people will no longer no what to do with texts that they can’t change the size of- or click on for a definition.
3. Technical support will be provided by Google. No matter what your problem, you will go to Google and type in the error code and find the answer. No more jobs to talk on the phone and walk through your computer problem- and of course- all of us will have multiple devices able to access the web (see 1 and 2 above).
4. Customers will no longer believe what you say on your site- unless all your other customers say you are telling the truth. Predicted in the Cluetrain Manifesto, this is the reality you will be facing- so making customers  happy should be number one on every ones job description.
5. Customers will be offended if you send them an e-mail like this. If they want to know what you know- they’ll expect to find it on your site- not have an e-mail sent to them. They will insist on being in control of their media- if you thought TiVo was big, wait till you see what’s next.
6. If they are under 30 they don’t look at phone books. And in 5 years- they won’t be printing them anymore- if they are, they will be a novelty to all except luddites. Kiss your big Yellow Page advertising budget bye-bye.

I update 3 blogs/sites pretty frequently- and post some interesting stuff. The Next Wave website had over 2000 unique visitors in the short month of February- and has over 860 in the first 8 days of March. That’s 2000 people my site made a sales call on without me having to put on a suit or travel to far away places.
That’s the power of blogs.
Now, does that $99 investment sound good to you?

http://lorelle.wordpress.com/2005/12/12/the-problems-with-tags-and-tagging/

One thing I haven’t gone into depth on in the seminar is tagging. The article link above will explain tags.

There is a bit of debate in the WordPress community about tags and categories right now, and to many of you it doesn’t matter.

I look at Categories as ways to organize your content- in a true relational way, so that you don’t have to put duplicate info in different places.

I look at tags as frequently searched keywords- that can be a category, or be in a category. While tags can help you increase your search results- and group you with others who are writing about the same subject- categories can help bring more readers in by collecting lots of keyword dense posts.

Tags are a lot like going to the Yellow Pages looking for plumbers- you get to the heading and all the competition are listed together. Categories are more like standing around with a bunch of friends asking which plumber to use- and them all saying use Bob. Bob can have a listing in the Yellow Pages too, but finding Bob because he has the most content in the category you are looking for on the web, ie. “drain cleaning in Dayton OH” makes Bob more likely to have your attention in a search.

There are a lot of different tagging solutions out there. I will try to write more about this soon.

Today I attended the “How to drive traffic to your website, and what to do when it gets there!” seminar at Wright State University and sponsored by the SBA and the Ohio Small Business Development Centers.
From the Dayton Daily News article, it is a “3-hour workshop presented commercially nationwide for $295” – which it turns out- isn’t true. “Dr. Jerry” said that that seminar was an all day seminar- but that he was going to speak faster for us so we would get the same info- just in a shorter period of time. If I made this claim, the Dayton Ad Club and the Better Business Bureau would be all over me.
There were almost 50 people in the room, and I did everything I could do not to say anything to correct some of the patently incorrect information that was given. My favorites were his explanations of how search works- mostly based on scores of keywords- which might have been fine 4 years ago- but is no where close to how page rank is established now. He claimed that links in weren’t important for building incoming traffic (my stats would say differently).
A woman asked about new entries to the web; “Do you get a better position when new” was totally wrong. He claimed that Google actually won’t index a new site for several days- and there is a “Sandbox effect” where a page will rise in rank over time. Google knows the web is changing daily- and that most of the time people are looking for the most recent information available. A perfect example of current topics rising to the top of search was within days of launch of the new Apple iPod nano, a kid blogged about how his broke- and Apple wouldn’t fix it. Not only was his site instantly a huge hit, it attracted so many other stories that a class action lawsuit was filed soon after and Apple changed its repair policy.
The list of things we cover in blogosopher would exceed the 21 page handout he provided- but, to briefly cover the most important things he didn’t talk about: Blogs, RSS, CSS, how to build online relationships, Open Source solutions, Static vs Active vs Live sites, web standards, accessibility standards, alt tags, how search is changing site design, mass e-mail management, how URL’s are largely irrelevant (his suggestion was to buy every URL variation, and extension including misspellings because they are cheap), how the web will change the way we do business even more so in the future. (more…)