I think that this has happened because of a disregard of the hard work involved in running an internet marketing campaign or online business.

So many people speak to me about this amazing business idea that involves developing a small website and then sitting back and watching the money roll in.

Unfortunately the internet does not work like that. I wish it did, but it doesn’t! It takes hard work, dedication, persistence and and innovative mindset to stay ahead of the pack. At time its even important to maintain a healthy skepticism for the internet and its possibilities. Just to keep us on our toes!!

Third Place: AddThis WordPress Plugin

The Addthis plugin makes it easy to add social networking links at the top and bottom of your blog posts and pages. If you don’t mind doing a little extra work it is possible to use the Addthis platform to make customised sharing links.

Second Place: Simple Facebook Connect

This plugin takes a bit of setting up on your first time but is well worth investing the time in. The plugin has a wide variety of options but is modular in its assembly. This means that you can choose the modules you need and then delete the modules you don’t – saving page load time and server space.

First Place: TweetMeme Retweet Button

TweetMeme wins outright because it has the simplest installation and it’s easy to use, direct call to action makes it very successful in getting your content retweeted.

www.youversion.com

This time its a website called youversion.com. A simple but effective, and good looking, online bible reader that houses numerous versions of the bible in various languages. I found youversion while I was looking for a good iPhone Bible application. The application Holy Bible proved to be very popular and offered me everything I was looking for in a Bible application.

Contributing to the growth of others
What intrigued me was the ‘contributions’ section of the application. This caused me to do some online research and I found the web version of the iPhone application. The contributions section to youversion is what makes the concept so unique. Users of the bible reader are able to make contributions to the website content. This is a great way to share what God is saying to you about His word. It is also nice to read different points of views on a particular passage of scripture.

It works a bit like twitter where you can follow contributers that you like and others can follow you. For example you can click here to see my profile on youversion and then follow me to stay up to date with any new contributions I may add.

The contributions are added in the form of text, links, images and videos. It looks like they are adding podcast and webcam support in the near future.

I like the idea of being able to share information on the bible like this. It provides a strong platform to promote christian websites and material that is online.

Theological Strength?
Here’s where the debate could go on forever. If anyone can contribute information, how can we be assured of the contents theological foundation and scriptural consistency? The answer is we can’t!

A website like this is about sharing thoughts and ideas and needs to be seen as ‘just that’. A creative and fluid environment of thoughts and ideas that surround God’s word at any given time. A concept like youversion has its value in the testimony and thoughts of others and not in an academic grounding. Although content can be flagged as inappropriate by users it still does not provide enough accreditation that a persons views are completely theologically correct. A website like this should be seen as an incubator as christians work out their faith with each other by sharing their thoughts and opinions. It could never replace the need and value of commentaries, theological study notes and the counsel of wise men and women.

I now use the website to share devotional material from my website www.onthingsabove.co.za and I will certianly use it to promote my podcast when it opens up the podcast support. You see, if God tells you something you should tell everyone you can so that they can benefit from what God told you and showed you. That way we all grow more in God. That is the ultimate aim… is it not?

Well Done YOUVERSION!!

The internet has always been a place where two very different mindsets exists. These mindsets have been at war with each other since the beginning of website development and this has purely been because they do not understand each other.

Difference in opinion

Marketing/Advertising and Web Development are seemingly two opposing internet thought patterns. Marketing/Advertising is always concerned with the look and feel of a website. They are very concerned about the end user and how the website builds the brand of the company it represents. Web Developers have the tough job of making all of this happen online. They are continually looking to create bigger and better websites with more and more functionality. This functionality allows more to happen on the internet but is not neccessarily easy-to-use or even understood by the end user.

Getting the best of both worlds

I saw a need to provide a platform for both the web developer and the advertising agency to jointly create websites that have all the neccessary systems, search engine compatibility to enhance the user experience online. Essentially there needed to be a mediator between the two partners. Someone who was willing to sit and educate each party on the importance of each players role in the internet marketing world. Someone whose primary aim was to marry these two mindsets to create the best possible finla product.

I saw a gap to blend the two mindsets completely, after months of research and conversations with advertising agencies, marketing people and web developers I presented a new product and service to my MD. Ths service would complete the Sesalos service offering on the internet, as Sesalos already has a strong software development department.

Virtuoso is born

The concept for Virtuoso was then approved and I teamed up with ex-Ogilvy Account Executive and Copywriter Caroline Hastings-brown to complete the final touches on the Internet Marketing Product.

The final outcome is a research product and consultation service. Essentially Virtuoso does extensive research on a website and internet target market. Every aspect of the internet marketing objective is scrutinised and the potential target markets are identified. Much of the time is spent developing a comprehensive list of keywords that the website needs high rankings for in search engines. The copy of the website is also analysed where we try to assess where the copy is leading the consumer. Ultimately we are looking to see what the website is currently asking the consumer to do.

Once the research product has been completed and presented to the client a comprehensive strategy is presented to the client outline the actions neccessary to achieve their internet marketing objectives. New web development opportunities are explored, social networking and PR opportunities are presented and a full digital PR campaign is created. The Virtuoso team have since started offering training to clients on how to run their own Adwords advertising campaigns.

I am not going to give away all the trade secrets here because that just wouldn’t be fair to Sesalos. I will say though, that since it inception in November 2008 we have secured the account for a great small business Tourism Portfolio ‘City of Choice’ and  Grindrod Limited.

This is a product I am very proud to be a part of. It has grown into a very valuable asset to any internet marketing campaign and to Sesalos.

The best part is… I believe in it!!

A few months ago I was asked to design a News Display System for a Content Managements Website System called the Unisite Business Suite. The company I currently work for, Sesalos, asked me to design the system to be a news system that connects into social networking and  display in the most user friendly manner.

The system was aptly named News 2.0 and can be seen on this website. I am quite proud of the system because it was the first system that I had designed for web development.

The first aspect to get right was the RSS Feed so that the News system used a technology that would extend into the future of the internet world. Once the RSS technology was sorted out we were able to integrate News 2.0 into other global RSS technology such as Feedburner (recently bought out by Google).

The next aspect is to make the news on the News system easy to distribute by the public viewing the news. With simple ‘calls to action’ to print this article, email to a friend, share on facebook, delicious, muti, stumbleupon, digg, reddit and newsvine.

The social networking is important but the trend to use social networks to communicate and share news in South Africa is still emerging. Due to this emergence the social networks are necessary to give the system longevity. However should we only rely on social networks to distribute news in SA we would not experience a high distribution of the news by the public. Using ‘calls to action’ that are easy to use and easily understood by the public, is the only way to encourage users to complete the actions.

To encourage the interaction of the users with the website owners I added a comments section that emails the authors of the posts whenever there is a comment on an article they have written. I then encourage the authors of the posts to answer to comments in order to show that the user comments are valued.

Finally we added a Video addition that display relevant video’s to the article. The videos need to be loaded to You Tube. This You Tube link adds extra SEO benefits for the article and provides a stronger user experience.

The News 2.0 system has been a success as it taps into current and future internet marketing elements, and provides an interactive and interesting user experience that is current and visually appealing. There are other technologies that were added that aid the design aspects and selection of the most popular articles, but this article is getting too long now!