Internet Entrepreneur Austen Jones - Takes the Road Less Traveled

Contact Information:

Austen Jones
St. Edwards University
Organizational Communication major
Austen@evolvedideas.net
Blog: evolvedideas.blogspot.com
Website: evolvedideas.net

The Beginning:

I started off my college career as an aviation student at a small regional college in Oklahoma. After Obtaining my privates pilots license, I realized that the airline industry was not for me. The constant urge to develop my own company has plagued my thoughts since my first job.

Once I finalized my decision to transfer into St. Edwards as an entrepreneur major, I quickly realized my passion for the internet. This passion was centered around the idea of starting a company that specialized in social media. I immediately knew that this was my calling and ultimately my "ticket" to a life beyond the realms of any normal career. Only problem was that my major was outdated, and failed to offer any insight into social media.

At this point I decided to change my major once more, to Organizational Communication. The study of how organizations function. The idea behind my decision was that this major would allow me to explore the different approaches to creating a dexterous organization with the ability to evolve alongside the ever changing terrain of the internet. At this point the idea of creating a website capable of meshing the concepts of influential social media with a collaborative approach to teaching people how to utilize different online advertising/marketing services in order to create numerous sources of residual income.

The Solution:

Evolved Ideas is the website that will hopefully make it possible. Hopefully in the future Evolvedideas.net will all for its users to learn how to make money on the internet through the sites collaborative approach to creating content, in order to document the methods of utilizing these different opportunities.

Evolved Ideas will also offer full website development fr Drupal CMS and Sugar CRM. Along with out development services we will offer Social Media Marketing consultation and content writing services. Last but certainly not least, Evolved Ideas will provide SEO and SEM solutions including Site/page analysis, Keyword research, link building strategies, and general consultations.

Academic Accomplishments

St. Edwards University
Graduation August 2008
Bachelors of Organizational Communication
School of Humanities

South Eastern Oklahoma State University
Obtained Private Pilots License
Completed Commercial Ground school

Professional Experience

Internship - Austin Software Architects
Summer 2008
Worked mostly as a Software Tester and IT professional

Internship - Famecast.com
Summer 2008
Contracted out to Famecast.com from Austin Software Architects to basically function as their offices only IT professional. I was basically put in charge of all support requests at the office.

Project Portfolio

Currently I am working on several different projects that all fall within the realm of social media and organization communication. Below you will find a list of projects that I have created.

Social Media Class - St. Edwards

EvolvedIdeas.blogspot.com - This is my first "free" blog, it was created for this class. The primary topic is the concept of social media and its influence over the public.

My first Podcast. Topic: Social Media, Whats that?
Listen to "We Like to Poddy.m4a"

Viral Video - Submitted to the Youtube.com Hungerbytes World Food Organization contest:

Professional Sites Developed for Clients:

PrimaryProfits.com is operated by the Joomla! CMS, this site was developed with the goal of informing its users about a powerful real estate investing school.





DFKinvestments.com is a re-make of primaryprofits.com, These two guys are business partners who both wanted similar sites with a different template, and slightly altered content.






Resortinformationins.com is another Joomla! CMS site for a Concierge publication company. They specialize in creating some of the most elegant books in the industry. Their books are exclusively invite only and they offer information on some the the finest establishments in the North American and Caribbean regions.

Current Projects:

Obergproperties.com has been "Selling, Leasing, And Managing Lake Travis" properties since the early 1980's. We automated their property listing, created communication portals for people to contact all the different agents. Currently we are finishing the template, and final customizations to some of the splash pages.



EvolvedIdeas.net is my personal project and we have already talked about the purpose of this site.







Jaqujones.com is a site that I am building for my sister so that she can build her fashion design portfolio, and show off her artistic talent.






Summary:
Austen Jones, Me, is nearing the end of my college career. From here, I plan to build on these ideas, and my develop my services as an internet entrepreneur. I have learned a lot in my studies of Social Media and plan to implement many of the concepts if the development of a Social Media campaign. If anyone is interested in learning about making money by contributing to the internet you can find me at Evolvedideas.net.

Social Media and Organizational PR...

A good topic to address is how Social Media can be used by organizations to create organic search engine results, open lines of communication with their consumers, and ultimately build up their online presence therefore increasing their level of influence.

Organizations need to realize that their company is going to be talked about vie social media no matter what. So the idea of losing control over ones online PR campaign is simply a waste of time. The best idea in this case it to educate the people who are unaware of the influence that social media can have, and then jump in head first being careful not to step on anyone else toes or trip yourself up.

The other awesome thing that Social Media allows an organization to do is communicate with any consumer that stumbles up on a site having a conversation about a particular subject that concerns both parties. For instance Dell Hell allowed consumers to voice their opinions and stories in a neutral environment, Dell in turn realized that they could not directly control the neutral space. Therefore the only way for Dell to douse out the flames was to take responsibility and open up the lines of communication with the bloggers at Dell Hell.

Save the Internet ... Net Neutrality?

If you check out savetheinternet.org the idea of net neutrality is explained in much deeper detail. In order to offer an easy explanation i will briefly overview the mission of this site.

Save The Internet is a non-profit organization that is dedicated to keeping the massive communications companies from squandering the rights of its consumers. As we speak Comcast, TimeWarner, AOL, the Bell companies, and many others are fighting to take away the rights of the average internet user. Plans to charge a premium for "priority" traffic have been formulated, but have not yet been implemented.

The basic facts reside in the architecture and design of the internet. Originally designed as a method of networking between networks the internet evolved from one network into what it is today. This entire time, the traffic has been treated on a first first serve basis. All computer traffic is handled equally, by order of requests. TimeWarner and Comcast, for example have unveiled plans to offer a "priority" lane to the internet. They have offered to build a majority of the network that would needed to create another "priority" internet. Of course these companies have then requested the right to charge more fr this service, and ultimately give these higher paying internet users priority over the average user, in the end squashing the little guy.... yet again.

SaveTheInternet.org is fighting for a bill to be passed requiring that all traffic basically be treated equally. This concept is referred to as "Net Neutrality" in the context of official bills, proposals, and documents. This concept of Net Neutrality is essential to the fair playing of the internet. Without Net Neutrality, the people who cannot afford the "upgrade" internet will fall behind once again.

HungerBytes Viral Video

I felt like the only angle to take with this assignment was to compare the costs of curing world hunger with the costs of our unpopular Operation Iraqi Freedom. I found out that with the amount of money we are "expected to spend" was 1.2 trillion dollars until there is any major change.

With 1.2 trillion dollars we could practically cure world famine, setup daycares for every 4 years old, and basically fix everyones health care in the world. I then did some research on how much money our government spends on the obesity epidemic. In 2004 the government had 75 billion dollars in obesity related expenditures, and only 5.7% of the U.S. population was considered obese. So that meant that 15- 17 million americans are responsible for basically wasting 75 billion dollars. Sooo... after I did just a little poking around I figured that I could make a pretty good video to accompany my message.

We, the educated, technologically proficient, developed world, need to take responsibility and fix this ridiculous problem... 800 million people in Africa are on the verge of starvation and go to bed hungry every night. After I found this Statistic I compared that to the amount of money America spends in (one year trying to Cure the Obesity Epidemic) + (Operation Iraqi Freedom) = 675 billion dollars, This is Enough money to buy food for those 800 million slowly starving people for almost 2 years (96 weeks)... Ridiculous I say ...


Sorry for not having the video ready in class. I think that I have made up for my tardy posting.

Here is the Video that I created by compiling clippings from other youtube videos.

Identifying Priorities

Blogger lifestyles and Blogger motives ...

Preferred Lifestyle!

The lifestyle of a blogger could be compared to that of a freelance consultant/writer/advertiser. So basically, a blogger is a person who creates social media by writing about different topics. A glamorous image is that of a blogger traveling the world constantly seeking out a WiFi connection in order to add more content and contribute to their ongoing conversations, ultimately building an audience and driving traffic to their site. In turn, a bloggers audience and general traffic will hopefully create some sort of revenue that is sufficient enough to support the mystical lifestyle of a worldly blogger.

However this is not the case at all. Perhaps a person that has already established themselves in the world can take up blogging as a hobby and turn it into a profession. But, the majority of bloggers are simply looking to socialize with people of a similar ilk.

ProBlogger

On one hand we have the professional blogger. Someone who maintains a plethora of blogs about a multitude of different subjects. This blogger is someone who has fine tuned each of their sites utilizing a variety of different advertising strategies in order to maximize their profitability and traffic. Often this blogger is payed by companies to blog in their stead. Beware of this form of blogger, for they will certainly be willing to sacrifice their blogging soul for the right amount of loot.

Learning how to utilize a Social Media Mogul (problogger) is an art within itself. In order to accomplish this, one must learn to manipulate the output of this type of blogger by helping them first, and then asking for a favor in return.

Casual Social Blogger

On the other hand there is the Casual Social blogger who looks at things from a completely different perspective. This type of blogger has not maximized their advertising campaigns or traffic retention. Most of the time a casual blogger is contributing to social media for the social aspect, focusing primarily on the topic, and people, instead of the industry and statistics. A more opinionated, and fearless tone will probably accompany the postings of a casual socialite blogger.

Ethics and the Internet

In the past, new forms of media have been immediately subjected to moral debates. Radio, film and Television were all instantly scrutinized for the ethical implications. Internet ethics has only recently begun to be heavily debated because the original users of the internet, highly educated and perhaps therefor, tolerant to different ideas an inherently against government control and regulation (which usually follows ethical debates).

The internet is also different in that it has no owner, no producer, no authority. The internet belongs to the world wide world, encompassing communities and networks of people in Texas and Abu-Dabi. Inherently, it is all encompassing, featuring all nationalities and backgrounds.

One can find anything on the internet But that does that mean that the internet should be law-less? Do the laws against child-pornography, hate-crimes and abuse become immune on-line? I don't think so, but I also don't think that we have to invent new ways to approach ethical debates. Crimes committed by means on-line or otherwise should have the same penalties as all other crimes, because the internet can't be regulated, people must adhere to the same international code of ethics as defined by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (United Nations), and violations to Human Rights should be punished.

The Declaration of Human Rights

Check out Internet Ethics: Oxymoron or Orthodoxy?

How to Determine the Competance of an SEO/SEM Company.

In my post "The Evolution of Search" I talked about how the search engines have evolved their methods of crawling the web and creating their search rankings. This eventually created an entire industry dedicated to figuring out how to get to the top of a search engine for certain keywords. As most everyone may suspect their are ethical and unethical ways to operate a business. And, just like in most industries it is the honest ethical companies that everyone remembers, but their are also the firecracker companies that make a few bucks, rip a few people off, burn all their bridges, and then they quietly fizle away into the internet archives, only to be reminisced in casual conversation.

Frank Antonellis wrote "10 questions to Ask When Hiring an SEO expert" which is an intuitive article that offers a list of some some good questions to ask a SEO/SEM company on your initial consultation...

The Evolution of Search Engines

In the past several years with the incredibly fast and complete take over of Google, and the other Search giants (MSN, Yahoo, Ask.com, etc). The internet advertising industry has also exploded. Accompanying this industry boom, the idea of Search Engine Optimization and Search Engine Marketing evolved out of the practice of old school search pirate tactics.

In the past people used to be able to fool search engines by filling blank pages with key words, or creating duplicate pages with similar key words from a random generator. Once Google and the other search engine companies figured out how to compare content, detect plagairism , and search out those stuffed keywords. Now if people try to fool a Search Engine such as Google, they can be punished severely and even banned from the search engine until they pass an official review.

Now the process of Search Engine Optimzation can be compared directly to Social Media. Social Media is the creation of content accompanied by a discussion and the links that content creators use to guide their users/readers, ultimately creating a web of "relevant links" surrounding an article, video, news story, or 1st hand accounts of current events. This is the "natural" model that the Search Engine Industry has basically decided thise to be the foundation to their search formula for crawling the web and ranking sites for certain keywords and phrases.

CMS and CRM the only way to operate a website...

Content Management Systems (CMS) and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems have basically become an industry standard.


A CMS allows for developers to basically create a website that can be used for anything from a simple blog and image gallery to a robust community website. Go to , CMS Matrix in order to compare some of the different CMS's that are currently available. In my opinion. Drupal CMS, is the best choice for an umber of different reasons. Mainly because it can be used to develop simple yet professional dynamic sites with a robust content creation creation system allowing for virtually all users to contribute content to a site. Or it can be used to manage an e-commerce store.

A CRM, such as Sugar CRM, can be implemented into a variety of situations, allowing for organizations, companies, and individuals to keep track of all the inner workings of an office. Quite Simply a CRM can basically automate anything from a work order, to customer notifications, email, status updates, work flow, and customer retention, and direct advertisement campaigns

OpenID Pro's and Con's + The Effects on Social Media

Ever heard of OpenID.net ... I recently learned about this concept about 4 or 5 months ago. In fact most people already have an openid.net account and don't already know it. OUR WHOLE class actually has OpenID accounts because blogger.com is an OpenID server. If you want some more information about this check out OpenID's website.


What effects will the OpenID technology have on Social Media??

Well it is my prediction that OpenID will basically add a person ability to traverse through a variety of different social networks allowing them to reach and converse with a larger audience. I also think that this will allow people to create a real presence on the internet rather than just having a simple user name to a random site. With OpenID a user can basically create a legacy of their work, surfing, and ultimately their influence.


This is an awesome quote that verifies that OpenID will truly be able to used by anyone...

OpenID is not owned by anyone, nor should it be. Today, anyone can choose to be an OpenID user or an OpenID Provider for free without having to register or be approved by any organization. (http://openid.net)

Domain Interception has also plagued me for awhile...

Domain interception? Whats the point? Perhaps companies are not learning about how to treat their customers.

I agree with Corynne W. on her Social Media PR Class blog. I have had this page pop-up when i am even trying to just go to google.com. It is so obvious that Time Warner is just looking to make an extra couple bucks from pay per click advertisements with this "feature". the Opt-out only option is proof of their profit hungry motives.


What happened to the Google attitude. Do no harm, only try to help the customer, instead Time Warner tries to slip one past their consumers in a failed attempt to feign good intentions. Mean while their service is bugging out or acting out of place intercepting server requests that are working just fine. Shame Shame ... Tisk Tisk...

Podcasting Babies! We like to Poddy!

Hey everyone check out my social media and pr groups first podcast!. We Like to Poddy! is the first podcast that any of us have ever made so please be nice...

Here are the Show notes for the podcast in case you are running short on time and would like to skip forward in the show:

00:08 - Jenny Lo and Austen Jones podcast introduction.
00:52 - Austen Jones discussing Web 2.0 technologies and its impact on our society.
05:00 - Jenni Lo discussing Web 2.0 history and some of the misconceptions.
07:43 - Rika Burman giving some Web 2.0 examples and then talking about the "fad" of web 2.0.
10:29 - Austen Jones interviewing some St. Edwards Students about Web 2.0 technologies.


Anyways check it out at:
we_like_to_poddy.m4a
we_like_to_poddy.mp3

'SEO' + 'SEM' = Social Media Marketing

Internet Social Media and PR has basically created an entirely new method for marketing websites. Google the search giant of the internet has undoubtedly cornered the market for mainstream search. It is the "one percenters" of the internet that have basically figured out how to utilize search engines like Google in order to raise awareness and drive targeted traffic to websites.

Knowing what keywords the new webpage is going to be focusing on is a primary concern. Another "need to know" is, what are the keywords being targeted in the content that is linking to and from our new webpage. How to target keywords is an entire subject by itself, this will be discussed at a later date. But, for now a good rule of thumb is, use your keywords early and often. What this means is, don't crowd every sentence and line with a keyword, instead use the words "naturally" in your titles, opening sentences to paragraphs, menus/list items. So basically anywhere that you can "naturally" use a keyword, without spamming your own website, is a good place.

What does all this have to do with Social Media? Well, through the use of all the different forms of social media a person can utilize the power of others to generate links to their webpages. All of the incoming links from webpages outside of a website are tracked by the search engines. Most advanced search engines such as Google, Yahoo, MSN Ask.com, etc., track the linking structure of the internet. Now if an individual webpage is optimized for a set of target keywords, and the incoming/outgoing links to other webpages have content with similar keywords, the search engines will then give that webpage a higher ranking for those certain keywords. So you have to think about the target keyword set, and the keywords used in the incoming/outgoing links and their keywords in order to begin understanding how Search Engine Marketing works.

'SEM' vs 'SEO' ... Methods and Practices

We have briefly discussed the idea of Search Engine Optimization in class. 'SEO' is basically the practice of configuring a web site's content and design in order to target specific keywords that are being searched for by users. So, what is the difference between 'SEM' (Search Engine Marketing), and 'SEO' (Search Engine Optimization). How can Social Media PR be utilized in the process of 'SEM' and 'SEO'.

The methods that have been developed for marketing on the internet can basically be divided into 2 separate categories. As I mentioned above, 'SEO' is basically the practice of configuring a websites configuration in order to target specific keywords. 'SEM' is what some people would simply refer to as the "off page factors" of 'SEO'. I personally like to think of 'SEO' and 'SEM' as two separate process that only connected through the targeted keywords.

So if 'SEO' and 'SEM' are 2 separate practices that are only connected by keywords that a site wishes to target: What is the best way to combine these 2 practices when building a website? Well it would be impossible to explain all of the different techniques that can be used for the "on page factors" of 'SEO' and the "off page factors" of 'SEM'. There are tons of really helpful online courses, videos, and blogs that are available to the public for purchase or for free. It is important to utilize these resources in order learn all about the different 'SEO' and 'SEM' techniques. I will attempt to just skim the conceptual surface of how to mesh these two practices together in order to target specific keywords.

The concept of combining these 2 practices together begins with the creation of a website and a webpage. It is important to think about your website in terms of individual pages, instead of thinking about the entire site as a whole, one must think of the function and importance of each individual page.

Learn for free!... Knowledge based Community sites...

The amount of free knowledge that can be obtained by utilizing the podcasts that enthusiasts create is mind boggling. Not to mention the amount of material that can be found in text based form, like blogs, forums, and collaborative communities. A few good examples of Social Media sites that i have personally utilized are:

http://drupal.org
http://lullabot.com
http://theartlab.net
http://drupaldojo.com

These are the sites that I have been using over the past year and half to teach myself about website development. I have watched many videos, listened to podcasts, read a lot of blogs, and communicated with others in chat rooms and forums in order to learn different development techniques and tricks.

In order to become a "True" Citizen Marketer, one must become familiar with the software that is used to manage your content. This is why i have decided to learn about Drupal, it is one of the most powerful open source Content Management Systems making it the perfect platform for basically any type of website.

So if you to are interested in learning about the software that makes Social Media on the Internet possible then check out drupal.

Where to draw the ethical marketing line?

If being transparent is an essential element to maintaining an ethical blogging presence the next question is ... How does one maximize their revenue generating efforts, while maintaining their transparency and the quality of their content? There is no doubt that the quality of the content plays a vital role in the overall influence and importance of a website. Therefore, without good content a site simply transforms into an annoyingly repetitive late night infomercial.

So ... What does this tell us? Well... in my opinion, It means that in order to be seen through the pollution created by the internet infomercial sites, one must learn how to rise above the noise by producing original online content that serves a purpose to suspecting web surfing consumers. This is accomplished by shedding light on a particular subject that is of importance to a consumer audience.

In other words one must become a citizen marketer, a marketer with an original voice, opinionated messages, and transparent motives. A citizen marketer is someone that participates, creates, and adds original content to a topic. Therefore, each consumer that you can inform and send to your unique Affiliate ID can potentially yield a sales commission. Another way to think about this is in terms of quality content. Every piece of original content can attract potential consumers that are searching for your articles topic. And, each consumer that finds your article could possibly end up buying the product or service that you are creating the original content for.

The Essential Element of Social Media Ethics

This week in our Social Media and PR class we discussed the topic of ethical blogging. After our little debate the essential element of maintaining an ethical position as a blogger became apparent. Once the confusion settled our class generally agreed on the fact that, in order to receive compensation for ones blogging efforts, a certain level of transparency must be present.

This "level of transparency" is referring to the practice of making sure your readers understand the motives behind the author. Therefore from an ethical point of view, if an outside entity was to offer a blogger a "gift" or some other type of compensation for a positive review, the author or webmaster of the weblog should make it known to the readers that they are being compensated.

So, if you ever find yourself in a position like this remember to let your readers know that the idea of writing about a company or product came to you because you are being compensated for telling your readers about it.

The Compensated One Percenters are the Professional Citizen Marketers...

An unpaid "One Percenter" is someone that we thank everyday for the time that they spent contributing to websites such as Wikipedia. These people are among the one percent of the users that visit these sites who actually contribute to the highly sought after content. Everyone should try and add a little bit of data to the web in order to balance out all of the information that we, the users, have absorbed for free.

"One percenters" however, are not just the one rangers who contribute to the various non-profit online communities. They are also the people who maintain a social website of ther own, like blogs, forums, video blogs, and the other forms of social media on the web. Surprisingly a large number of these "One perceneters" have already began to generate an income by simply creating a blog and putting a few tasteful advertisements along side their "precious" information. I heard somewhere that 1% of the U.S. population controls nearly 90% of the money. If this is true then possibly it is the "One percenters" that control 90% of the content on the internet. In college these past few years I have been told many times that my generation will be the pioneers of the "Information Age" and that our knowledge will become one of our most coveted commodities.

Well newsflash people! We are here, in the information age, and yes there are tons of people that are simply making money online by getting paid for the information that they have contributed to their personal social medium. Name a topic and you will find a blog. And, right along side the article that the users have been searching for you will find a nicely placed advertisement for a product that is related to prevalent keywords in the article.

A large portion of these websites are simply profit seeking entrepreneurs that have meticulously created a platform for their users to interact with the other surfers. Oftentimes the profit generating methods of these companies are unseen to the untrained eye or simply overlooked by the general population of internet surfers. For example our class has decided to use blogger.com as our platform for creating our social media and PR blogs. Although It doesn't appear that blogger uses any type of advertisements or revenue generating methods, the fact is, that for every new blog that is created by a user, Google has just created another potential client for their "adsense" program. The more websites with "Adsense" means that more people will be able to click on the advertisements paid for by the Google "Adwords" advertisers. Blogger.com is part of the Google network, this is why it is so easy to ad the "adsense" page element into any blog at blogger.com.

So... spend some time contributing to wikipedia and the other free social information resources. But, when it comes down to it ask yourself one question. "Do you want to be paid for your knowledge? Or give it away?" Either way the user gets their information for free and a product suggestion, you get compensated for being a citizen marketer.