Websitetology

If you aren’t maintaining a website for your business, you aren’t really in business anymore.

With the advent of google on cell phones, it’s become absolutely critical to have a site that Google can find. Not only that, but it’s not enough to just build a website- you also need to build a community- and we’ll teach you how.

If you have a site that uses web 2.0 technology like RSS, CSS and allows for comments: and come to our seminar, you will be able to get listed on the first page of Google (without paying for ads). We can teach you how to be a webmaster in one day- without having to learn any code.

Spend a day with us and learn everything you need to know about how the web works- but the secrets of how you get to the first page of Google without paying for ads.

We’ll teach you how to maintain a website using the newest coolest Web 2.0 tools- which means nothing to buy, no code to learn and the ability to connect with customers easier than ever before.

What we preach is organic search engine optimization as opposed to paying for “Search Engine Optimization” voodoo. It’s much more cost effective and it actually works.

Your website can become a powerful business tool and easy to use if you take this seminar. Your webstats will prove it in no time.

So sign up now- we know you’ll become one of our many successful Websitetologists.

Wed Jul 8, 2009 at The Next Wave, 100 Bonner Street Dayton OH 45410 from 8:30 am to 4:30 pm.

Found this really simple, 7 step process on how to get started with Twitter. Forget following just the people you know, expand your reach, and find people who are interested in the same things you are:

1. Pick a topic the person is passionate about.

2. Go to http://search.twitter.com and run a search on the term.

3. Find an interesting tweet or post about the topic, and click through to the profile of the person who posted it. If the profile looks interesting, follow that person. Follow a few folks like this.

4. Start a conversation, reply to one of the posts as if you had started a conversation in line at the supermarket.

5. Look for someone sharing a useful website or blog post related to the topic, click through to the blog and consider subscribing to it. Maybe reply to the author via comment or back on Twitter to let them know what you thought.

6. Spend a few minutes in the conversation and see what happens. Try again the next day.

7. Repeat.

via How to Show The Value of Twitter In 2 Minutes or Less | :: a thousand cuts :: adam cohen’s blog.

The real value comes in networking at geek oriented events. A whole other conversation is going on at most conferences among those on Twitter. Find out if there is a hashtag, signified with a # instead of an @ address- and watch the conversation there. Guaranteed you’ll meet more people through twitter than by trying to make small talk at the breaks over soda.

Sometimes it’s just better to say- here is where someone got it all together- and tell you to click over and read their post.
This is one of them- the presentations on this site will help make it clear to you, enjoy:

Web 1.0 - That Geocities & Hotmail era was all about read-only content and static HTML websites. People preferred navigating the web through link directories of Yahoo! and dmoz.

Web 2.0 - This is about user-generated content and the read-write web. People are consuming as well as contributing information through blogs or sites like Flickr, YouTube, Digg, etc. The line dividing a consumer and content publisher is increasingly getting blurred in the Web 2.0 era.

Web 3.0 - This will be about semantic web (or the meaning of data), personalization (e.g. iGoogle), intelligent search and behavioral advertising among other things.

via What is Web 3.0? Semantic Web & other Web 3.0 Concepts Explained in Plain English.

At geek tech conferences, there is almost always a “backchannel” going on these days over twitter. Audiences are sharing their thoughts in 140 characters or less, in real time about the speaker using a #hashtag.

In fact, almost every sporting event, television show, mass audience, now has a mass conversation tool. But, typically- its only for people “in the know.”

Now, we have teachers utilizing the hashtag to engage a classroom- with the conversation projected on screen in the classroom:

Teachers are always trying to combat student apathy and University of Texas at Dallas History Professor, Monica Rankin, has found an interesting way to do it using Twitter in the classroom.

Rankin uses a weekly hashtag to organize comments, questions and feedback posted by students to Twitter during class. Some of the students have downloaded Tweetdeck to their computers, others post by SMS or by writing questions on a piece of paper. Rankin then projects a giant image of live Tweets in the front of the class for discussion and suggests that students refer back to the messages later when studying.

via How One Teacher Uses Twitter in the Classroom.

I’ve started using twitter to take notes when at events, coming back to a tweet stream that captured in realtime not just what I was thinking- but feedback from my followers.

Watch as social media and  social networking in realtime and in real space becomes normalized behavior in more places over time.

Every blog starts humble- well, at least most do. If you have a niche, and do a great job, well, next thing you know, you’ve got a million dollar business.

Here is what 247WallSt.com decided were the top 25 blogs- based on their financial value- take a look:

financial values on blogs.

via The Twenty Five Most Valuable Blogs - 24/7 Wall Street.

Gawker, Huffington Post and Drudge report are at the top of the heap- but don’t let that stop you. There are opportunities untapped- just find your niche and jump in.

“But, I don’t want to have a blog for a website”- we hear it all the time. The reality is, WordPress is a Content Publishing system using a database. It really doesn’t care what your site looks like, it’s just the tool to manage that content.

I don’t call it a Content Management System anymore- because, it’s really not managing the content, you are. It helps you publish to the web what you need to publish, in the easiest way possible. We use other CMS systems like Drupal and Joomla- however, they require a steeper learning curve than WordPress- making them less likely to help you be prolific. Google prefers prolific - trust me.

We found the Thesis theme about 6 months ago. It’s a paid theme- something we typically don’t strongly recommend, however, from a developers standpoint, Thesis gives us all the tools we need to make a site do almost anything. For us, that’s worth it.

The Krispy Kreme UK site done in Thesis

For you- it means you can have a site that looks great, and doesn’t look like a “WordPress” site. The developer of Thesis-  Chris Pearson, is an active member of the WordPress community. He understands the idea of supporting his theme, and has been building a community of users. He’s on Twitter- Personified

Which brings us to the site that doesn’t look like WordPress (and there are many of them) that I thought I’d highlight today- Krispy Kreme UK. Take a look at the screen shot- or wander over to the site.

And, if you don’t want to pay for Thesis, there are some other premium type themes that are free. Read this post to see what’s out there.

This time, we’re doing something different.

We’ll give a FREE 45 minute presentation on Twitter and how it can work for business starting at 7:30am until 8:15am- then you can stay for Websitetology- the seminar that makes anyone into a Google Topping Web Master.

The key to Websites these days is understanding they aren’t like a Yellow pages ad- just paying money and putting one up isn’t going to get you business automatically. Websites have to be updated, have useful information that is customer focused and they have to be built so that you can maintain it yourself.

It’s not enough to just build a website- you also need to build a community- and we’ll teach you how.

If you have a site that uses web 2.0 technology like RSS, CSS and allows for comments: and come to our seminar, you will be able to get listed on the first page of Google (without paying for ads). We can teach you how to be a webmaster in one day- without having to learn any code.

Spend a day with us and learn everything you need to know about how the web works- but the secrets of how you get to the first page of Google without paying for ads.

We’ll teach you how to maintain a website using the newest coolest Web 2.0 tools- which means nothing to buy, no code to learn and the ability to connect with customers easier than ever before.

What we preach is organic search engine optimization as opposed to paying for “Search Engine Optimization” voodoo. It’s much more cost effective and it actually works.

Your website can become a powerful business tool and easy to use if you take this seminar. Your webstats will prove it in no time.

So sign up now- we know you’ll become one of our many successful Websitetologists.

Tuesday, 28 Apr 2009 at Nehemiah University, 750 S. Main Street Dayton OH 45402 from 8:30 am to 4:30 pm.

Free Twitter session before- starting at 7:30 am. RSVP’s requested, not required: websitetology@thenextwave.biz.

Sharing this link to 100 twitter applications and tools and a few links to Twitterers to follow:

Here, we’ll take a look at 100 tools that can help twittering teachers make the most out of this helpful microblogging tool.

via Top 100 Tools for the Twittering Teacher | Best Colleges Online.

Twitter is fast becoming one of the more useful tools in the social media toolbox. Take some time to look and explore the tools, and then go sign up for a twitter account. We’re www.twitter.com/TheNextWave

If you use a Macintosh or Linux, and run into a site that absolutely thinks you have to use Internet Explorer no matter what, this tip is for you.

First, we all know to use Firefox, the most up-to-date, modern, standards compliant, cross platform browser right?

Then we need to fool the site that is built by idiots- that think that you have to use IE (or Internet Exploder as most competent web developers call it) that you are using the inferior browser. The trick is a plugin for Firefox called a User agent switcher- the link is below.

Adds a menu and a toolbar button to switch the user agent of the browser.

via User Agent Switcher :: Firefox Change-arounds.

Install it through the automatic install, and then put the toolbar button in your toolbar by using the View>Toolbars>customize command- and then click the button before visiting an IE only site.

This will make Firefox tell the Explorer site that you are using their horrible browser- even though you aren’t. If the site uses the proprietary ActiveX technology- you’re hosed, but luckily- most don’t.

The plugin works by sending a message to the site that you are using IE- even if you aren’t. It makes Firefox pretend to be Internet Explorer just for that visit. Hope this helps.

There is no reason for any site to require a specific browser, ever. We have web standards created by the W3C to prevent this kind of nonsense. Please inform any webmaster that what they are doing is actually hurting their site and global harmony.

A big part of building a site these days is proving that you (or your company) is the expert at solving problems. So while a “blogroll” or links page is nice, why not give your viewers a customized search portal- that only indexes sites that you think are great (it’s one way to stop people from finding your competition- right?)

Here is how Google describes the custom search engine service:

Have a website or collection of sites you’d like to search over? With Custom Search Engine, you can harness the power of Google to create a search engine tailored to your needs.

Create a search engine tailored to your needs

Include one website, multiple websites, or specific webpages

Host the search box and results on your own website

Customize the colors and branding to match your existing webpages

via Google Custom Search Engine - Site search and more.

There are a lot of good sites that cover WordPress- maybe we should have one just searching the sites we think are useful- just one more thing to add to the to do list!