Free Range Content: Unlock Your Content to Increase Your Reach

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#freerange

Iowa is a conservative heartland state, but is surprisingly progressive in many ways.

control

control = obligation

Having control over farm animals has its benefits, but it them obligates you to provide food healthcare, waste management, and more for those animals. That’s time consuming, and can affect your bottom line.

But the obligation required to care for these guys can’t be avoided if ...

we want to continue eating fried chicken. And, I sure as hell do!

The obligation problem exists wit our websites. We have to cultivate new, quality content to entice new users, and keep existing users engaged. My poor blog is sorely neglected because I have so little time to produce new content, but also because me desire to communicate has been satiated by Twitter.

Uh, dude. Maybe you should write something?

The obligation problem exists wit our websites. We have to cultivate new, quality content to entice new users, and keep existing users engaged. My poor blog is sorely neglected because I have so little time to produce new content, but also because me desire to communicate has been satiated by Twitter.

It’s easy to produce and consume content on Twitter, because it takes so little time. I seem to get me scratch to produce content itched by tweeting, which leaves me with little gumption to blog.

content = obligation

Obligation to produce contentObligation to promote

produce

Producing content is time consuming.

promote

And once you produce your content, it can be just as time consuming to promote it so your audience will discover it.

?So how do we make life easier for ourselves?

the old model

Here’s how we’ve done things in the past. The traditional model is to produce content on your site, then push it out to search engines

you are not here

Your website is not the center of the universe. THERE IS NO CENTER. Ptolmeic geo-centric model of the universe at the center of which is the Earth.

Your website is an *outpost* for your brand, but it is not the center of your brand.

there is no center

Your website is an *outpost* for your brand, but it is not the center of your brand.

content is

everywhere

But if we flip this model on its head and decided to set our content free so it is free to roam around the Web, we can free ourselves of some of the obligations inherent in content creation.

a different model

Now it’s becoming easier to solve both issues at the same time. There’s a new model we can use to manage content production and promotion. Instead of locking our content within our site and trying to pull traffic via search, we need to start thinking about content as transient and omnipresent. *Our content is everywhere*

broadcast widely

Create content in many places ...

aggregate

Then simply aggregate your content on your website. Aggregate for the dozens of social networking sites where you can share your photos, events, resume, profile, ideas, and more.

social CMS

build faster

easier content production

easier content promotion

upcoming.org

This site already had an ecommerce-specific CMS, but it had not tools for managing events. Rather than spending a lot of time retooling-the system, I used Upcoming.org as a social CMS for this one bit of content, which helps make event management easy, which reaching new customers.

This site already had an ecommerce-specific CMS, but it had not tools for managing events. Rather than spending a lot of time retooling-the system, I used Upcoming.org as a social CMS for this one bit of content, which helps make event management easy, which reaching new customers.

This site already had an ecommerce-specific CMS, but it had not tools for managing events. Rather than spending a lot of time retooling-the system, I used Upcoming.org as a social CMS for this one bit of content, which helps make event management easy, which reaching new customers.

Sussex Digital is parsing content from: * Twitter (mini feed, local tweeters)* Technorati (blogs)* Vimeo (video)* Upcoming (events)* Flickr (networks, conferences)* Chinwag Jobs (jobs)* Wired Sussex Jobs (jobs)* Delicoius (link)* Magnolia (links)

Aggregating photos from Flickr using PHP and Magpie.

Aggregating photos from Flickr using PHP and Magpie.

how?

Parse with PHP, don’t use JS so search engines can see your aggregated content.Use Magpie RSS Parser to handle the tricky stuff.

AarronWalter.com/ parse-rss

Apologies for what might seem like a shameless plug, but you’ll find a series of RSS parsing code examples in chapter 4 of my book Building Findable Websites and on the companion website - http://buildingfindablewebsites.com.

aggregate from

Eventful Upcoming

FlickrVirb

Tumbler Blogger

WordPressLinkedInTwitter

FacebookLast.fm

Job sitesYelp

Vimeo YouTube

Vidler Blip.tvBlip.fm

- Eventful and Upcoming, - Flickr- Blog: Tumbler, Blogger, WordPress- LinkedIn- Twitter- Facebook?- Last.fm- Job sites- Yelp- Vimeo, YouTube, Vidler, Blip.tv- Blip.fm

aggregate from

- Eventful and Upcoming, - Flickr- Blog: Tumbler, Blogger, WordPress- LinkedIn- Twitter- Facebook?- Last.fm- Job sites- Yelp- Vimeo, YouTube, Vidler, Blip.tv- Blip.fm

aggregate to

- Facebook - your blog posts, Flickr photos, Dopplr, FriendFeed, Twitter (Selective Twitter Status) etc.- MySpace- Twitter - tweet your bookmarks- Your mailing list - RSS to Email- EE using Magpie -http://expressionengine.com/downloads/details/magpie_rss_atom_parser/

keeping track

shallow?

Is aggregated content shallow?

Though we can greatly simplify content production and promotion by opening things up, there’s still no substitute for well crafted copy, skillfully produced photos or video. Boiling everything down to small, shallow bits of information is the equivalent of a TV dinner.

create a strategy

Blend easy to produce, aggregated content with more in depth, periodically produced content. Use tools that make publishing easy - iPhone, Delicious, Twitter, Flickr, etc.

create a strategy

Blend easy to produce, aggregated content with more in depth, periodically produced content. Use tools that make publishing easy - iPhone, Delicious, Twitter, Flickr, etc.

Whatever tactics you decide to use to get your content out there, make sure you don‘t keep it locked on one place.

Let you content roam freely into and out of your website, and you’ll have much better luck reaching your audience.

thanks

Delicious.com/tag/freerangecontent

Slideshare.net/aarron

Delicious.com/tag/freerangecontent

Slideshare.net/aarron