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.