Web 2.0

Blogs are becoming more and more popular. In many quarters it now seems that having a blog is more normal than not having a blog. Blogs are a place where you can rant and rave about things that have effects on your daily life, keep a diary, or talk about your favorite hobby. Now many Web businesses are starting blogs to keep in contact with customers and give customers the heads up on new products and services being considered.

The blog has become a marketing tool. Internet promotion is no longer simply a matter of having a website and advertising its existence on every popular website and in every popular newsletter. Now you can promote your business products and services with blogs.

People who spend a lot of time using the Web have likely read many blog posts whether they realize it or not. Most of the younger generation either has blogs or spends a great deal of time reading friends’ blogs. The young adults of today spend a great deal of time reading blogs such as those put out by their favorite authors or blogs that have product reviews.

One of the most interesting recent developments is that people of all ages have started using blogs as a source for the latest news. Blogs provide up to the minute eye-witness accounts of major events within minutes of their occurrence. On the other hand, blogs don’t have to be approved by any fact-checkers or editors before they are posted. So the reliability of blogs as a news source is questionable.

The main idea is that blog reading is becoming a more and more normal activity, undertaken by average people. For a Web marketer, the prospect of having a blog means more Web traffic if the blog has many readers.

There are a lot of things you can do to improve your blog’s traffic. You can advertise it as a pay-per-click search listing in search engines. You can also swap links with other blogs and websites. But, it is even more important that you provide interesting content in your blog that will keep your blog’s readership levels high.

The Importance of Blog Template Design - Most people know the information I’ve already given you. What most people don’t realize is how much the blog template design plays a roll in the success of a blog. Even whether or not people find your content amusing can be heavily impacted by the surrounding environment your blog provides to your content. Most blog software and blog hosts offer a basic set of templates that you can use to make sure your blog is organized. If you don’t do your own blog template design, you should at least customize one of these blog templates.

Blog Template Customization - Advertisements It may not seem like advertisements are a feature that enhances a blog, but the truth is that pertinent advertisements serve a purpose to those who are interested in your topic. Google AdSense is one of the top advertisement services currently being integrated into blog templates. However, it is also an excellent source of revenue for your blog.

Audio Content While not directly a piece of the template, seamlessly embedding audio into your blogs can make them much more interesting for site visitors. You can also include quick links to audio in your blog template navigation bar.

Banner Customization You should create your own banner for your blog, not use the placeholder banners provided with the basic blot templates. Make it relevant to your blog topic and suitable for your business image.

Favicon for Personalization Use a favicon to further brand your blog. This will give people a personalized feel for your site in their bookmarks and next to the blog address. It should be consistent with your blog and business image.

Page Features Take the time to customize your blog template skins. Make sure the layouts and backgrounds are consistent with the rest of your Web business site. You don’t want a generic blog design to hamper your branding.

Photos for Personalization You ought to not just include photos in your blog entries, but also place them wherever they will supplement your company image in the template. Use borders around your photos to give them a framed look.

RSS Feeds Make sure you enable the RSS feeds option on your blog template setup. Those with newsreaders or using Web RSS feed services will see the headlines and content of your blogs. They can click on headline links to read more from your blog site. This is one of the best ways to get exposure and a constant stream of dedicated readers to your blog.

About the Author
Everybody can blog but not every blogger makes money! If you are serious about wanting to make money blogging , then make sure you pick up the essential guide at http://www.blogforprofits.info and find out how you can get set up your blog correctly and start blogging for profits from the very first day.

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HTML formatted email can look just like a web page. We’re talking everything from layout, graphics, active links, colorful fonts, interactive form, charts you name it. Combined, this allows the customer to interact with the brand and its identity in a way that no other medium can offer. Needless to say Outlook Express, Netscape Communicator, Hotmail, AOL, Yahoo and most popular email clients support HTML also.

Used properly graphics and visual imagery in ads can also be more effective. How? One way is through the use of related technologies such as Cascading Style Sheets that can better assist you in structuring such concepts as grouping.

Containment is the technique of tying related elements together with in a box. The box can either be visible (with a border or background color of some sort,) or it can be invisible which involves putting your material in close proximity and keeping a moat of while space around the group. Content is then laid out in a way that’s more visually appealing, and much easier to scan and navigate, than plain text email.

Such practices are invaluable when trying to get your most important points across, which isn’t always an easy task especially in terms of email. Grouping is also one of the main tools used by the brain to simplify a complex situation.

Creating an HTML email is simple, there are many advanced mailing list management script such as add2it mailman phplist that make it easier to write send and manage your HTML messages to your list of subscribers. Phplist in particular (which is what I use and recommend all my clients to use) is great for newsletters, publicity lists, notifications, and many other uses.

Phplist also has a built in WYSIWYG HTML editor that allows you to create and view your HTML message even before you send it out, though I prefer using an actual HTML editor like Dreamweaver to create my emails; kind of defeating the purpose you might say yet, I just think phplist is best suited to manage the actual message delivery system itself.

The Multiple List Management feature, for example, is great for if you need to have more than one list (as it lets you assign lists to List Managers, who can manage their users and lists,) likewise the Message Queue ensures that every subscriber gets the email message, and that no subscribers receive two copies of the same message, even if they’re subscribed to more than one list!

Similarly Dreamweaver is better suited to handle HTML as it provides a number of easy ways to display your images and control your text with style sheets in HTML.

Regardless of what HTML editor you choose here’s are few things to remember.

1 - Always use absolute URLS for your graphics (ie http://foamers.net/newsletter/pics/issue2.gif )

2 - Do not save your images as attachments (nobody in their right mind will ever open some strange attachment,) but store them on your web server so that they may display properly in the email.

3 - Send it to yourself before sending it to your subscriber list. And if possible send it to a buddy who has a different email program than you, to be sure most of your subscribers can read it on their computers.

4 - Once your satisfied with your newsletter, save it as a template. Then you can just open the template whenever you want to send html mail and most of the work will be done for you.

5 - If you still feel uncomfortable around HTML I highly recommend that you go on a multimedia or web design course just to get a feel for the fundamentals – and to pick the brains of other Internet entrepreneurs, which is always useful. One way to learn from us right here is simply to subscribe to this feed. And should you wish to have me customize your HTML email template newsletter (at just $180 a pop,) jump over to the contact form and tell me what you think.

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Secondly we talked about the decentralized web and making sure your content gets the visibility it deserves through RSS (Really Simple Syndication) which lets you tap into a wealth of opportunity by offering your readers the ability to subscribe to your feed and receive regularly updated content automatically.

In addition I said your site had to be search engine and users friendly. Search engine and users friendly is as much a step back as a step forward; it means returning to the earliest ethics of the web while adhering to a few basic principles.

For example, the navigation should be easily decipherable establishing an easy to follow hierarchical layout. Meaning that there has to be a specific order of precedence among each individual element. Consequently that same order must be constant following that same pattern through every page.

Also we talked about what in my opinion, is the most important aspects of Web 2.0 and that is interactivity and collaboration. Why? Because nobody likes to be on the receiving end of a one-way conversation, good communication is a two way street. Similarly whether you are an internet entrepreneur selling a product, a small business owner providing a service or just a publisher of information you want to be sure to get your point across.

The best way to get your point across is by getting to know your audience. How? By providing some interaction or means of communication in other words, open a dialog. Consequently this type of feedback is invaluable in determining not so much what you want to say but rather, what your audience wants to hear. And hence enabling you to better market your brand and make the right decisions concerning your business.

Now that we’ve talked about some of the fundamental features of Web 2.0 let’s talk a little bit about how you can create or implement your very own web 2.0 ready site. One way to add all of the Web 2.0 elements I just mentioned instantly is to use a blogging platform to run your site.

Generally speaking, a blog is just a website usually maintained by an individual, with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or whatever the case may be. Moreover if you have been surfing the Internet for any length of time, then chances are you’ve read many blog posts whether you realize it or not. Even if you don’t think of your site as a blog, or maybe you just don’t feel your brand constitutes the bases for a blog or doesn’t fall under that heading; think of it as a Content Management System.

My personal favorite blogging platform or blogging software is WordPress. WordPress is both free and priceless all at the same time and you can download the latest version of WordPress (Version 2.5.1) right here http://wordpress.org/download/

Basically WordPress is what my site is run off of, likewise it is what I recommend my customers to use whenever they want a website that is search engine friendly, easy to use, interactive and relatively simple to customize.

The reason why is WordPress has a very easy to use administrative back-end that allows you update your site regularly; you just login and its almost like sending an email or using Microsoft Word you just hit publish and whoomp there it is! As apposed to having to learn some programming language or worse having to hire a web master again, and again even for the smallest modification.

Typically, WordPress is organized in reverse chronological order - that is, the newest, freshest content is presented first. Similarly all the content is linked and fitly joined together with a unique web address so that people can bookmark or link to any page and so the search engine can easily index each individual page.

In addition WordPress is instantly interactive because at the bottom of every post there is a comment box where people can talk to you and you can reply back to them and that opens up that line of communication or medium that as I’ve already mentioned it’s so important for getting that feedback.

Besides that, every time you add a post WordPress automatically notifies all of major directories (see Technorati, Bloglines, or any other feed-based aggregator) or at least most of them, likewise WordPress also automatically notifies anybody that is coming to you via their preferred feed aggregator.

So there you have it, all of the characteristics of Web 2.0 I just talked about and many more are made available by using WordPress and best of all its totally free. The last thing I want to mention also is to do with customizing your WordPress template commonly know as themes.

A huge factor weighing heavily on whether or not people who visits your site will remain there for any reasonable amount of time, or whether or not they may decide to make other return visits to your site depends upon the esthetic characteristics of your design or over all look and feel of the site.

To clarify this concept further, think of this comparison. Generally speaking, a person who wears clothes that fit properly, are clean and wrinkle free is said to be a well-dressed individual. Moreover their appearance may make us feel or act more comfortable or amicable towards then some might even see this as a clear indication of someone who is apt to be more fun to hang around with. Similarly, a website that has a neat and friendly surrounding environment will be more likely to retain its visitor.

WordPress templates
A WordPress template theme is a skin (theme or template) for this popular blogging platform – if you are not already a professional web designer I suggest you invest a little money on one of these. The cool thing about WordPress templates is that a professional web designer using the latest technology designs them.

In other words, as you can see here, people who have a real passion for and really understand typography, white space, layout things like that do all of the labor; skills you could only wish to achieve after years of practice as a graphic designer and or developer.

Be that as it may, don’t be misled – Yes WordPress templates are great for your site, nonetheless also for your competitors’ sites that bought the same template you did! On that note, I entreat you to consider the benefits of having professional template customization.

Our template customization are only $380 a pop, and they’ll allow you change the templates color scheme, font style, add your own logo and if need be, we will even installing WordPress on the server for you. What is more, we will customize any theme to fit your individual business needs.

The result is a unique interactive website that works intuitively to help your customers find everything they need (read more about our template customization process).

In the upcoming months I will introduce you to WordPress plugins and show you how to install then on your blog, we’ll definitely talk about the sites new redesign, give you more tips on customizing your template and I’ll also show you ways to start monetizing your blog.

Resources:
How to Analyze, Optimize, Publicize, Monetize and Troubleshotize the Ideal Web 2.0 Site in a Nutshell.
Is Your Site Search Engine and Users Friendly?
How Can Interactivity Increase Conversions & Make You Money?
Essential Web2.0 Skills

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Many of the best examples of web 2.0 have some elements that make them, well, Web 2.0 style. Yet Web 2.0 is an oft-overlooked design style, and even more often misunderstood especially in terms of value and implementation. Making a site interactive and yet still comprehensive is not an easy thing to do.

Wikipedia describes Web 2.0 as “a second generation of web-based communities and hosted services such as social-networking sites, wikis, blogs, and folksonomies, which aim to facilitate creativity, collaboration, and sharing among users”. While this is an accurate description of the term, nothing says Web 2.0 more than central layout, big text, strong colors, round corners and an intuitive navigation.

Centralized layouts: As apposed to jamming everything in one place (e.g. left-orientated scalable layouts), Web 2.0 templates centralized layouts bring simplicity into focus by positioning the content in the center of the page. It’s not overwhelming, there’s less information to process and the right allocation of large fonts and white space presents a better more amicable experience.

Example Template No. 16962

Navigation: The ease of navigation needn’t be compromised. The Web 2.0 template style of navigation is typically horizontal, utilizes large fonts and is always clear and concise.

Example Template No. 18099

Brighter color surfaces: The old Web 1.0 always felt a little drab, part of the reason for that was the almost total lack of color. Web 2.0 templates are typically characterized by color. The colors are bright, fluorescent like, cherry colors – blue, orange, lime-green and a myriad of rich surfaces and reflections harmoniously twined with white space to deliver an open and friendly feeling.

Example Template No. 15360

Bigger fonts: Another component of Web 2.0 templates are clear large fonts. Large font can help place the eye on the things you feel should stand out. Large fonts are perfectly acceptable on the web, as long as you employed them judiciously.

Example Template No. 18117

Rounded corners: Boxes with rounded corners aren’t anything new; the only difference with Web 2.0 is that they’re now standards-compliant. The trick is Web 2.0 templates use CSS to implement the illusion of curves, instead of the old fashion method that involved slicing the top and bottom of a rounded rectangle, a table with three rows and a lot of time on your hands.

Example Template No. 18579

Web 2.0 falls right into the category of design where many people think it’s easy, yet an understanding of layout and white space and, even more, an understanding of communication, is vital. All of the elements (centralized layouts, strong colors, round corners, big text) readily attributed to Web 2.0 templates are carefully crafted by professionals who are passionate about design. On that note, we entreat you to consider the convenience and practicality of obtaining professional customizations. The result is a unique product that works intuitively to help the user (your customer) find anything on the site.

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