“It was easy to feel overwhelmed by the big, bad world of bloggers. Lucy demystified it all and I’m now addicted to my blog! Thanks, Lucy!” – Andrea, Boli Bling Designs, LittleDesignerBook.com

If you would like to use a blog to enhance your business but aren’t sure where to start, I will show you how to do it from the ground up.
This workshop will show you everything you need to know in order to set up a blog, maximize both SEO (search engine optimization) and branding potential, and the basics of using your blog as a marketing tool. If plugins, widgets and RSS are alien concepts to you, I will enlighten you, demystify the process and give you the confidence to take control of your web presence.

Attend the next workshop on June 27th,  to learn in a comfortable, friendly environment, and network with other budding bloggers. There are a limited number of spaces available, so it’s necessary to register below to confirm your place.

Topics to be covered:
- How a blog can help your business
- How to install and set up a blog (using the WordPress platform)
- How to use WordPress and it’s features
- How to install key plug-ins
- The do’s and don’ts of blogging
- Marketing and attracting traffic to your blog
- Becoming a ‘blogger’ – integrating blogging into your business routine
- I also provide post-workshop support to help you implement what you have learned.

The next workshop will take place:
June 27th from 1-3:30pm in West Los Angeles (full location information provided upon registration)
The fee is $45 per person.
Non-profits get a $10 discount!
Email me at:  lucy@elemental-consulting.com with questions, for more info or to claim your non-profit discount code.

Register now and secure your place. Click below to use either Google Checkout or Paypal to make your payment. When payment has been received you will be sent a confirmation email.

Or you can use Paypal

I also provide 1-on-1 services, and consulting services for existing businesses looking to maximize their web presence.

“Lucy helped us update our blog by providing our team with best practices and areas for improvement.  We’ve seen increased traffic and greater customer engagement since we implemented her suggestions.  Lucy is very friendly, and a great teacher- we appreciated her approach and expertise.” Deborah, MyCorporation

• Search engines like regularly updated content. Many business sites are informative but not updated very often so are hard to keep at the top of the rankings, without buying keywords. Blogs can and should be updated on a regular basis with fresh content.

• Bloggers typically link to each other in their ‘blogrolls’ so once you start to exchange links with others, you will start to gain new traffic  as your site is exposed to a new audience. Additionally the more inbound links you have (ie other sites linking to you) the more the search engines will like you.

• The variety of content you post on your blog will naturally expand the number of keywords and phrases that will lead people to your site. On a purely informative business site, you don’t always have the opportunity to target keywords outside your direct focus but a blog gives you more range.

2) You would like to give your business a more personal voice and develop a relationship with potential customers.

• A blog is a great way to add to and enhance your brand. It allows you to craft a more personal voice for your company, which is engaging to the reader. If a reader likes what you have to say and reads you on a regular basis they start to trust you.  You can’t build that type of dynamic relationship with a static site.

• A blog allows you to share success stories from your customers, and engage with them through comments.  Once you’ve built a decent readership a blog can be a great way to do free consumer research – test out product ideas and poll your audience.

3) You would like to establish yourself as an expert in your field.

• These days a lot of information is available for free on the internet – it’s almost expected. So you may as well join the fray and give people a taste of what you are all about and the knowledge that you have.

• A well-written, informative blog may help you to attract the attention of other high profile people in your industry that you may not otherwise have access to.
• You may also be able to pitch yourself as a guest blogger on other popular sites and blogs, further increasing your profile and credibility.

4) You would like the opportunity to network with other people and bloggers in your field or related areas. Being part of the blogging community allows you a way to network with others in a friendly fashion, without having to push a hard sell. It’s easier to make friends with people when you have something to offer (a link exchange, good content), rather than something to sell.

DON’T Blog If…..

1) You really don’t have anything to say. If you’re not inspired about your subject matter or feel that you have nothing to contribute, blogging may not be for you.

2) You think it will be a quick fix. Blogging is not an overnight quick-fix to getting more traffic. It takes a little time to start generating traffic, although once you get going you may see a snowball effect.

3) You’re not in it for the long haul. To really get the most out of having a blog, you will have to spend some time working on it, writing and promoting it. There’s no real way around that, so if you’re not prepared to carve out some time for it, you won’t be maximizing it’s presence.

Make anything in your video clickable, or add clickable media files, images, relevant icons, MP3 files, and more, creating a powerful interactive experience for your users.
Engage with advertisers and sponsors to pay for interactive links anywhere within your video. Share your interactive video across the internet, driving traffic back to your site or anywhere on the web through your clickable links.

While there is a free level of service that Veeple provides, you will have to pay for the interactive elements. Hosting is “in the cloud” so you won’t have to worry about bandwidth. I haven’t yet taken their online webinar that goes into more details of how to make the best of their service, but as I understand it, this is how it works: You create an account at Veeple.com, upload your video, then you gain access to their simple tools that allow you to add the interactive elements. Then you have your “Veeple-ized” video which you can then embed all over the web as you would any other kind of widget or video. Pricing is based on views, so if you are getting up to 5000 views of your video that will come for a flat fee of $49/month. Above 5000 views and it transitions to a cost per view, starting at $0.008 per view and scaling down in cost as you pass higher thresholds of viewing.

So if you have content which you think will be frequently watched, either because it is compelling viral content, or you have a network of fans, blogs etc that will re-post and watch your content, then it will cost you a small amount of money. But it gives you the opportunity to find a sponsor or advertiser with which to co-brand your content and charge them money for. Veeple provides extensive stats and tracking on the views of your video.

I recently had the opportunity to ask some questions of one of Veeple’s co-founders, Scott Broomfield, via email and phone.
He gave the general context of Veeple as follows:

To begin, think about Veeple in terms of breadth and depth.  The breadth is our interactivity, which enhances storytelling.  One thing is for certain, as YouTube has proven, people love to tell their story. The depth is our ability to add in relevant and non-intrusive advertising, which helps the publisher monetize their content.

Second, we are one of the few who provide a complete service 100% ‘in the cloud.’  With Veeple, you get the Video Player, the CMS, the CDN (we use Amazon), Full Analytics and Interactivity.  Nothing to download. No cookies. No add/delete programs.  And, our focus is 100% for the benefit of the web publisher.  One can serve only one master and our’s is the web publisher.

When did you launch Veeple?
We founded the company in early 2007.  We built the first alpha product by October of 2007.  We raised about $600K and built our first beta product and laboratory, where a few hundred people posted numerous videos.  We took this learning, added another $700K in our own funds and built our first commercial product. We launched the service – what we call Video as a Service or ‘VaaS’ about two weeks ago.  So far we have about 70 registrations/sign-ups.

Can Veeple-ized videos be uploaded to YouTube and other similar sites and retain their functionality? Or do they only work in the Veeple player?
The answer is yes from a technical POV, but no from a business POV as related to Youtbe.  In other words, if a site allows metadata to attach to the JPEG, then we run well.  Youtube, for commerical reasons, does not allow this.  Some other sites do, like MySpace, Facebook, Demand media, Stupidvideos, GrindTV, LP33 and others.

How realistic is it to create a video technology that doesn’t play with the leading online video destinations, especially for folks like independent musicians who are looking to expand their reach?
The content owner, and in your case the musician, controls where their content show up with Veeple.  We have comprehensive embed functionality that, if they allow it, enables any third party the ability to consume a video (including a music video). Further, we think that the content person will, by definition, continue to use Youtube due to their reach.  However, we also see the same content owner placing video on their own site and using Veeple to improve the messaging/storytelling and allow anyone to embed.  Keep in mind that when a video is embedded to a third party site, all the Veeple functionality flows with the video and can ‘trackback’ to the original web site.

Are you seeing any trends yet in your user base – Is it mostly people who have content, such as musicians or other content-owners? Or are you seeing advertisers/ad agencies using it as the next generation of banner ad?
Ouch, I would die if this became the next form of banner ad.  I hate banner ads.  We would hope that all ads inserted into a video would be done in a non-intrusive, relevant and engaging fashion.  Remember that the content owner makes the decision when, where and why an ad is placed.

Trends.  Well, most important from our point of view is that people really like what we are doing.  We have had over 40 meetings in the past 3 weeks and there has yet to be a single bad meeting. As to specifics, we do not yet have enough people to really have empirical data, but people seem to like to click on the video, if the ‘veespot’ is done well.  We have seen a CTRs of between 8% and 22%, which is very high.  We are seeing that people like to use both transparent spots (so the video still looks good) and images that look like they are part of the video.  As to adoption, our top 5 market segments so far are: How To, Entertainment, Politics (of course), Technology, and Social Media.

Do you have any examples of musicians using your technology that you can share with us – either anecdotal or sites where we can see it in action?
How about Paramore!!  That would be cool.  We are using one of their videos in our showroom.
http://veeple.com/showroom.php?video=music

Is there anything you care to share about how you see Veeple’s future shaping up? E.g. Ideas for added features in the future? The overall vision for the company?

Well, I am reluctant to discuss much because the world is very competitive and people move very fast nowadays.  That said, I can share with you 3 quick things: 1) We will be adding in MP3 capability soon (next month or so), 2) Dynamic Flash images, in addition to static images, and 3) a pencil drawing function that will allow the tracking of an object through a video (really cool). A couple of other really cool things, but I will not talk about them until we launch them. The vision thing is all about adding tremendous value to and for the web publisher.  To help them tell their stories, deliver their messages and, if they desire to do so, make money in the process.
In a follow up conversation I asked Scott if he could give some ideas as to how musicians may best use Veeple. He indicated that they will be adding MP3 capability, meaning that you could make an mp3, either a full song or ringtone, directly downloadable from the Veeple video. Since a Veeple video acts like a widget, meaning that when you update the video, it automatically and immediately updates wherever the video is posted on the web, you could use it to promote tour dates on  a real time basis. You can also link to buy tickets directly from your video and the tracking will allow you to collect stats on that – good info that you can provide a venue manager, promoter or anyone interested in booking you. You could add links to your various social profiles, homepage, retail sites directly from the video to drive traffic wherever you want. You could also use the service to include cross-promotions with sponsors etc in your videos.
Companies like MTV are looking at Veeple as a potential way to monetize their catalog of older content. They have alos been working with Vloggerheads.com who welcome Veeple-ized videos.

Veeple is in its early stages as far as penetration and adoption goes. But their service does allow for many more creative uses of video. So it’s worth looking into and keeping an eye on and seeing if you can come up with inventive ways to use it.

Chances are you’ve heard this buzz phrase being tossed around lately but perhaps you’re not exactly sure what it means. Whether you’ve heard it or not, on some level you’ve used web 2.0 sites or applications – social networking sites, blogs etc. There’s as many “definitions” of what Web 2.0 is as there are people you ask about it. But while a capsule definition may not exist, there are certain characteristics that can be agreed upon. So this is just my take on it and how it applies to musicians and other small businesses.

The Internet, Take 1

When the internet first came about, you would create a website and then have to get people to come visit it. As a user, you went to that site and read what it had to say, and that’s about it. Perhaps there was a message board where you could interact with other readers, but that was about the extent of it. If you liked the site, maybe you remembered to go back to it every once in a while.

Design concepts were all over the place trying to keep up with new developments in programming, browser capabilities etc. When fancy things like Flash came about, form took over from function and you had everyone wanting a Flash site with intro movies, bells, whistles etc, regardless of whether it was a useful experience for the end user. And oftentimes it wasn’t.

v2.0

Web 2.0 represents an evolution. You don’t have to go to a site you like any more to see what’s going on – now the site’s content can come to you – via RSS feeds, for example. If you like what you read, chances are you can easily bookmark it, re-post it, vote for it, comment on it, tell your friends about it -generally share or interact with it in some way that is meaningful to you. Not only that but content is becoming more customizable – you subscribe to RSS feeds that suit your interests no matter how diverse and can ignore anything else. You can click a “tag” on a website and view only content about that keyword. You can create a ‘startpage’ (see netvibes.com) filled with content tailored to your interests, location, personality.

This also means that content takes on a life of its own – you no longer just put something on your site and beg people to come read it. People share videos, use widgets to re-purpose and re-distribute content for a truly viral effect that is generally beyond your scope of control. While this freaks out some larger corporations/brands, you can use it to your advantage if you have a more communal mentality.

Highly niched content is becoming valuable – you can make content, or find content for very specific people/audiences, you no longer have to cater to the lowest common denominator in order to try and attract eyeballs.

Design has become more about cleanliness and simplicity – function over form -design that enhances your browsing and information-gathering experience, not obscures it.

Development-wise, it’s all about collaboration and being open; developing applications and tools that work across all platforms and networks; creating ways to allow users to do with your content as they will.

Here are some 2.0 tools and sites which you could potentially be using. We’ll touch on most of these at some point:

Blogs
Twitter
Social Bookmarking
Social Networking
Widgets
RSS
Music discovery engines
Digg
StumbleUpon

Web 2.0 opens up the possibilities of developing a real audience for yourself, branding yourself online and therefore creating revenue streams for yourself that will bring in income even when you are not actively pushing a new album release. The music economy at labels tends to be focused around the 8 weeks or so that they push a new album. If you have a release schedule with hundreds of releases each year, this might be viable, but for an indie with just a handful of releases, its not realistic to expect to be able to generate enough income from those releases right away, to support yourself. The indie strategy needs to be different and focused on developing fans that will purchase from you all year round. We’ll look at some of the tools that can help you build the foundation for a sustainable economy.

So my definition of web 2.0 hinges on 2 things:

- the web comes to you – you don’t need to go to it, and you can customize how and what comes to you – highly niched and targeted content is viable and desirable.

- the web can be shared, re-purposed, re-posted – its dynamic, viral and portable.