EzSEO Newsletter #288 In this issue: 1. Asking Google for Niche Content Ideas 2. 3. 4. Hi Again Its been a little over two weeks since the last newsletter. OK, today I have part 3 in the series on integrating a review plugin into WordPress. Also today, have you ever been stuck for ideas on content for your sites? Let’s get on. 1. I have never had a problem finding new ideas for writing content for my sites. However, one of my favourite methods is to ask Google to tell me the best topics to write about. Here is the video showing this system: 2. In the last couple of newsletters we started looking at how you can create a professional ratings and review website, using WordPress 3.0 (and the free template that comes with WordPress 3.0) and a copy of My Review Plugin Today I want to look at adding my first review to my Irritable Bowel Syndrome site, and configuring the plugin so that it shows the ratings and review boxes on my review pages. Note: In the video I add a fake comment for demonstration purposes. 3. 4.
Kickstartup — Successful fundraising with Kickstarter & the (re)making of Art Space Tokyo It starts with a book. Art Space Tokyo is a book best described as a guide to some of the hidden galleries and museums in the city. Editor and co-author Ashley Rawlings and I put the book together in 2008. The book is important to us because we put so much work into its production. When writing Book in the Age of the iPad,[2] I was largely thinking about Art Space Tokyo. I spent a good chunk of 2009 thinking about the convergence of digital and analog in the publishing world, and this year (2010) I began to speak publicly and publish articles on the subject. In the spring of 2010, a few stars aligned and I was able to buy back the publishing rights to Art Space Tokyo. Once I had obtained the publishing rights, the only question was: How do we fund this? I wanted to use Kickstarter the moment I heard about it back in mid-2009. Kickstarter.com is a fundraising website. Backers simply can't lose — if you can’t complete the project, they don’t pay. Silkscreening The slippers are mine. Twitter
quick plots: creative exercises for writers Make Your Content Make a Difference Advertisement Content, content, content. It’s an obvious part of any interactive experience. In fact, you’ve probably heard content is king, or queen, or some sort of royalty. Yet, content is elusive. Often, you don’t realize your content isn’t cutting it until it’s too late. Delayed projects.Broken designs.Uneven voice.Low-performing landing pages.Dead social media channels.Customer confusion and service calls. These problems and more are documented extensively,[1] so I won’t dwell on them. Beware Of False Solutions Just because someone articulates a problem well does not mean someone knows the solution. SEO (Search Engine Optimization) Snake Oil Oh, poor JC Penney. Now, besides avoiding embarrassment, I suggest that you avoid SEO snake oil because it will not bring you results. And, now, a big caveat: I don’t think all SEO is bad. Andy Budd recently discussed a closely related point of view in his recent article. Overpromised Technology What else is not a magic pill? Sounds awful, right?
IMAutomator The Smartest Strategy For Selling Your Ebook - A Product Launch Toward Content Quality By Colleen Jones Published: April 13, 2009 “With good content heuristics, we could make a case for better content without painstakingly doing an analysis of all of the content up front.” How do we know whether content is any good? This simple question does not have a simple answer. Many interactive projects address content quality only through a style guide. Recently, at IA Summit 2009, I had the opportunity to share several of these content quality checklists with some conference attendees who participated in the Content Strategy Consortium that Kristina Halvorson of Brain Traffic and Karen McGrane of Bond Art+Science [2] coordinated. Content Quality Checklists “Correcting spelling and grammar only scratches the surface. In my experience, a common misperception of the evaluation of content quality is that its scope is limited to the correction of typos and grammatical errors. Usefulness & Relevance: Does the content meet user needs, goals, and interests? A Few Caveats References
Web Content Studio — Helping Create Unique, Themed Web Content Post-Artifact Books and Publishing — by Craig Mod — Craig Mod, June 2011 "Roger Bacon held that three classes of substance were capable of magic: the herbal, the mineral, and the verbal. With their leaves of fiber, their inks of copperas and soot, and their words, books are an amalgam of the three." — Matthew Battles, Library: An Unquiet History1 What is a book, anymore, anyway? We will always debate: the quality of the paper, the pixel density of the display; the cloth used on covers, the interface for highlighting; location by page, location by paragraph. Stop there.3 Hunting surface analogs between the printed and the digital book is a dangerous honeypot. In reality, the book worth considering consists only of relationships. The future book — the digital book — is no longer an immutable brick. The book of the past reveals its individual experience uniquely. For those of us looking to shape the future of books and publishing, where do we begin? The way books are written has changed. We have an opportunity now to shape these systems. 1.