Since the Dayton Daily News doesn’t allow open access to stories forever- here is the complete text of the story about the Blogosopher seminar. Note- this was so easy to do- it was posted on the morning it appeared. Which begs to ask: Can your web site do that?

‘Blogosopher’ sings praises of blogs as marketing tools

David Esrati says businesses can craft Web sites that will lure attention through search engines like the Web giant Google.

By Leigh Allan

Staff Writer

Believe it or not, a blog need not be minute-by-minute updates of mindless self-centered blather. Or pompous political posturing. Or miles and miles of teenage angst.

So says David Esrati of The Next Wave advertising agency of Dayton — yes, the same David Esrati who a few years back was better known as a regular candidate for city offices and a thorn in the side of the city commission.

Esrati is known more these days as the Blogosopher, host of blogosopher.com and leader of seminars on how to use small blogs to beat the big guys and make big bucks.

So far, 100 people have taken Esrati’s 3½ hour course on why blogs are the best way to attract the attention of major search engines, and how a business can use that to its advantage.

Esrati says he spent years learning how major search engines work, especially 800-pound gorilla Google. He touts simple, inexpensive ways to beat the expensive, intricate attempts of major corporations to get to the top of search results.

He says he has been so successful at his own company’s site (thenextwave.biz) that searches for rival Ohio ad agencies often lead to him.

“I’m not doing that to disrespect them,” Esrati says, “I’m just getting people to take a look.”

Kris Oser, director of strategic communications for eMarketer market researcher, says the Blogosophy strategies should work to attract search engines, and thus attention, especially the constant updating.

But she says the story for blogs is the story of using the Web for advertising in general — it’s very much niche marketing, because “people who read blogs are trying to connect with people with similar interests.”

Esrati isn’t just Blogosophizing these days. He’s also involved with a local Veteran Owned Business group (vob108.org) that helps vets seek government contracts, and he has revived his old political Web site: esrati.com.

Blogging tips

Avoid Flash: Major search engines are Flash phobic. The blogs’ simplicity is search engine-friendly.

Change is good: When updating their data banks, search engines seek out changes. Blogs are the easiest and cheapest way to continually change your site.

It’s easy: Open-source WordPress software provides a simple way to produce a business-quality blog.

Well, a few of our star blogosopher graduates got together and helped us with our new tv spot- the “Website blues”- it should be running on WRGT and WKEF starting this week. Click on the image at right to see the spot.

The guitar player is David Cousino – www.davidcousino.com and www.lakeishasabol.com and www.awilum.com also participated!

Never mind mapping the human genome, or even the PC- or the Internet- two technologies from the Internet may be the key says Kevin Kelly in a New York Times Sunday Magazine article called “Scan this book!”

The link and the tag may be two of the most important inventions of the last 50 years. They get their initial wave of power when we first code them into bits of text, but their real transformative energies fire up as ordinary users click on them in the course of everyday Web surfing, unaware that each humdrum click “votes” on a link, elevating its rank of relevance. You may think you are just browsing, casually inspecting this paragraph or that page, but in fact you are anonymously marking up the Web with bread crumbs of attention. These bits of interest are gathered and analyzed by search engines in order to strengthen the relationship between the end points of every link and the connections suggested by each tag. This is a type of intelligence common on the Web, but previously foreign to the world of books.

Not only does this explain search engine algorithms well- it makes you realize how over time- the collective intelligence of the planet will all connect.

Another interesting point Kelly makes, is that the model of mass producing “Atoms” of “bits” is going down the tubes- atoms being the paper, film or CD’s we make from our digital files for sale- all started as data- and should remain such:

As copies have been dethroned, the economic model built on them is collapsing. In a regime of superabundant free copies, copies lose value. They are no longer the basis of wealth. Now relationships, links, connection and sharing are. Value has shifted away from a copy toward the many ways to recall, annotate, personalize, edit, authenticate, display, mark, transfer and engage a work.

Blogs/sites are an excellent way to build your relationships, links and connections- and share your knowledge. The Blogosopher Seminar explains this.

Optimizing your content for search is really about optimizing your content for value:

search has a “transformative purpose,” adding new social value to what it searches. What search uncovers is not just keywords but also the inherent value of connection. While almost every artist recognizes that the value of a creation ultimately rests in the value he or she personally gets from creating it (and for a few artists that value is sufficient), it is also true that the value of any work is increased the more it is shared. The technology of search maximizes the value of a creative work by allowing a billion new connections into it, often a billion new connections that were previously inconceivable.

Kevin Kelly is the “senior maverick” at Wired magazine and author of “Out of Control: The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems and the Economic World”.

I’ve been reading “Wired” for a long time now- and find it the most valuable publication I receive. It’s the only magazine I read cover to cover- every month. I can’t recommend it to my budding blogosophers enough.