It’s A Date!

“Do you know where you’re going to….?”
Do you like the things that life is showing you? Well, maybe you need to update your calendar! Whether you’re a Mom and Pop establishment, a local school, artist or just the Über-Blogger of the Internet, an events calendar can allow you to keep people posted on what you are doing as well as allow people to make a note of some special event just by the mere wayward glance of a site’s sidebar.

WYSIWYG
Really, what more do you want from a calendar? Why have your readers or clients hunt for information? It shouldn’t be a scenario out of “Where’s Waldo: The Movie!” Just an archive of current and upcoming milestones that you and your followers can use to keep tabs.

So what calendar will best suit your needs? Something that serves as little more than a brief reminder of what day, week or year it happens to be? Now, WordPress offers Widgets that you can drag and drop to have some active calendar of sorts, but of course, it you want to modify and announce events with some flair, then you should try to incorporate a simple but effective events calendar. The editorial calendar plugin for example enables WordPress administrators and editors to manage the dates for multiple posts at once. This is a calendar created by Kieran O’Shea. Simple and straight forward, it’s my calendar of choice for WordPress. Easy to use, easy to update, easy to install!

Features include:

• Monthly view of events
• Mouse-over details for each event
• Events can have a timestamp (optional)
• Events can display their author (optional)
• Events can span more than one day
• Multiple events per day possible
• Events can repeat on a weekly, monthly or yearly basis
• Repeats can occur indefinitely or a limited number of times
• Easy to use events manager in admin dashboard
• Sidebar function/Widget to show today’s events
• Sidebar function/Widget to show upcoming events
• Lists of today’s events can be displayed in posts or pages
• Lists of upcoming events can be displayed in posts or pages
• Comprehensive options panel for admin
• Modifiable CSS using the options panel
• Optional drop down boxes to quickly change month and year
• User groups other than admin can be permitted to manage events
• Events can be placed into categories
• A calendar of events for just one of more categories can be displayed
• Categories system can be switched on or off
• Pop up JavaScript calendars help the choosing of dates
• Events can be links pointing to a location of your choice
• Full internationalization is possible
• Compatible with WordPress MU

Seems like a lot, doesn’t it? Of course, it’s not necessary to use all the features, but it allows for a mix and match depending on your needs. If you run a charter school for example that will have multiple administrators, then each admin will find what’s best suited for his or her event postings. If each administrator has his or her own calendar, well the sky is the limit, but of course that would probably result in multiple unique calendar pages, and it’s enough to keep track of one list of events from multiple posters.

As part of an ongoing assignment in cooperation with several colleagues, we were asked to incorporate a Google calendar into the website of Art Space Charter School in Asheville, NC. Actually, I’m not as big a fan of the Google plugin, but I suppose I need to play with it more. You’ll have to establish a Gmail account to gain access to a Google calendar, so follow this link for more info. I will say that it is VERY user friendly. Yep! What you see is what you get! I’ve started using mine recently and have already included some upcoming events.

Localendar (pretty clever name, huh?) is a WYSIWYG event calendar plugin that is open source and allows for multiple admins, though it seems a little less sophisticated. Plus, the free version ( yes, there is a fee for the upgrade) will bring up banner ads to your site.

Here’s a sample calendar created with Localendar.

 
Now, though they seem pretty straight forward overall when used as widgets,  events calendars can be an issue when customizing templates. The WordPress plugins are easier to deal with than the seemingly benign Google Calendar, but that takes some tweaking on your part!

Look, it can be a matter of taste, but as much as I like my hard copy calendar with old photos of James Dean hanging in the spare bedroom, a virtual calendar is far more utilitarian if your intent is to remind friends, clients, students and the various ilk of what’s happening. The extra benefit of allowing multiple admins is a fantastic way of organizing events on a grander scale.

Plus, it saves from having everyone scribbling notes all over James Dean.

Oh, and if you thought I was joking….

Templates! We got templates!

The Knights Template
Templates. We all love ‘em. So versatile! So user-friendly. They come in all shapes and flavors! Designers love them; lay people adore them; moms cherish them; Dwarves mine them for their sparkle; kids just can’t get enough of them! Why, when I was a kid and my parents asked if I wanted ponies and clowns for my 6th birthday, I responded, “No, I’ll forego the ponies and clowns. If I can have templates for my birthday, I would be the happiest 6 year old ever!”

Okay, I may have exaggerated; I don’t really know any moms. But the great thing about templates is that so many free pre-existing templates are available on the Internet, ready to be downloaded and utilized. Even better is that many web templates are available for the most widely used Content Management Systems (CMS)! My CMS of choice by the way is WordPress. Yes, Blogger is very easy to use, but nowhere as versatile; add that many professional organizations use WordPress as well as Drupal and Joomla. So why not cash in, so to speak?

WordPress has the added benefit of having had so many templates designed specifically to be used with it. Seriously, THOUSANDS of free WordPress templates are available for anyone to use as is, or as a-template!-to be reworked to fit one’s preferences. The key of course is to filter through them to find the Holy Grail of templates!

For example:

• Free WordPress Themes
• More free WordPress themes

Other templates do exist for Joomla and Blogger:

• Joomla24
• Joomla Hosting
• Free Blogger templates
• Blogger templates for photographers

I rather like Blogger, but really, it’s WordPress that the kids love!

Why buy the cow?
Sure, you can create your own page from scratch, but why go through the pains when it’s so much easier to borrow from the sweat and toil of others (does that sound right…?). Really, it is much simpler to start from a foundation only because it can inspire the creative process rather than being bogged down from too much technical overload from the onset. Once you have a good framework, you can adjust things accordingly and still be artsy!

And speaking of art, I and my cohorts in crime are currently working on a new web page design for a charter school called Art Space. The new site is based on a preexisting WordPress template. Here’s an example reworked by the brilliant Allen Smith:
 

My choice for a template was more right-brained even for an art school:

 
This is my alternative choice:
 

But what do I know? I hang out with dwarves and hobbits and not enough moms….

“Dude, where’s my website?!”

“If you bid it, they will come.”
We no longer want our MTV (and who does?-No music, just “cribs”). Today, people want as much online exposure as God and mammon will allow! Some bemoan some false sense of exclusion: “I see all these sites online, so obviously it’s the result of SEO (Search Engine Optimization). I want a piece of that action!”

God may wield the power to grant you a top ranking in a browser search, but it is money that makes the World Wide Web go ’round! And the mythological SEO we’ve heard tales about in our youth may have some basis in fact (think Beowulf, King Arthur or due process of law); but truth be known, what people are really seeking without realizing it is Search Engine Visibility or SEV!

Often referred to as SEO, Optimized Search is a technical process in which webmasters make adjustments to their sites in an effort to rank well organically on high-value keywords (e.g. Toyota becomes a top result for “bad brakes”). While some PR professionals participate in developing such programs, other individuals handle most search initiatives. Paid Search campaigns are managed by marketers who control search ad budgets. For Optimized Search programs, it’s typically technologists who are in charge.

The objective of SEO is to get your website ranked in the natural or “organic” section of search engine results. Because you have to earn your way there, being listed in natural search engine results is a sign of credibility. People trust natural search results, but unless your site is near the top of the search results, customers are unlikely to see your website.

Search Engine Visibility, or Search Engine Marketing (SEM) is a set of marketing methods to promote a website in search engine results pages.

The three main methods are:

• Search engine optimization, or improving rankings for relevant keywords in search results by adjusting the website structure and content.
• Search engine advertising or paying the search engine company for a guaranteed high ranking or an ad displayed aside the results.
• Paid inclusion, or paying the search engine company for a guarantee that the website is included in the search. SEM is the practice of buying paid search listings, different from SEO which seeks to obtain better free search listings. This is known as Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising. When you enter a keyword at a search engine like Google, you get back two types of results: paid search ads or “sponsored listings” and natural or “organic” results. PPC works together with Search Engine Optimization to give you immediate visibility in the sponsored listings, while you are building your natural search results. Companies even bid for clicks and keywords to maintain top ranking.

EIEIO
So that’s the technical stuff. What about the more visceral approach people take when looking for you on the web? “Hmm, sounds like this-maybe it’s spelled this way….” Someone could type in a word looking for chickens and come up with 16,900,000 results on Google (trust me, I tested it out!) Competitive rather than generic keywords and meta-tags are more likely to increase your visibility and ranking on a search engine.

What do I mean by that? Okay, let’s say Old McDonald had a farm. Mr. McDonald wants to advertise his farm. How do we achieve visibility? Well, for one thing, McDonald is not that uncommon a name. Think Mayor McCheese! Better yet, think Ronnie himself!

“Hold the pickles….”
Obviously, if someone mentions McDonald’s, the first thing that pops into your mind are fries, clowns and the Hamburglar. So how do we distinguish McDonald the farmer from McDonald the Clown?

Okay, both serve up cows. Well, maybe Old McDonald can distinguish himself by including his lack of kangaroo herds. Or that his chickens are free range rather than McNuggets. What we now have here is a Reputational Search. The premise and promise of Reputational Search is that any company, NGO or brand can apply a search mindset to tried-and-true PR tactics and, in the process, influence the search results around certain keywords.

If Old McDonald had a website, I suppose “EIEIO” would constitute an appropriate keyword. If we factor words like “farm” or “moo-moo here”, then sure, now we have a site that easily differentiates from pages that may have common tags such as “old”, “milk” or even “McDonald”.

Now we can better narrow down searches for a specific Mr. McDonald. Still, a reputational search is just that, and it’s something that needs to be honed and nurtured by active promotion as well as participation on other sites to let people know you exist! Effective? The above sub-heading reads “Hold the pickles….” Did you think McDonald’s? Actually, that tag line is from an old Burger King ad campaign. Hankering for a Whopper?

Or maybe you have a taste for kangaroo….

Save Face….Book!
But of course, it really does come down to something far more visceral and organic that one would be lead to believe. Sure, you can rely on marketing companies and Google to do the leg work for you. Pay per click. But there are far simpler and cost effective ways to gain a little visibility. Remember licking stamps? That bitter sticky taste left in your mouth after adhering it to an envelope? Then you had to lug that envelope on down to the post office to ensure it reached its intended destination? Well, that required a little elbow grease, and in a sense, that is what you have to do to claim some of that coveted visibility: You have to get on the computer and symbolically lick its screen! If you have a blog, you understand that a persistent presence indicates that you are someone who is conscientious enough to make the effort to be interactive. Active sites get crawled more often, so any updates to your blog for example will result in an update and indexing of your latest online presence resulting in greater rankings.

Many times the best Search Engine Optimization you can do is by just building & organizing your site correctly. Most of the time you don’t need to an SEO company to do that. You can follow this simple video series and learn how to do what you need yourself.

As for cost, that is going to be a sliding scale of time vs money. The less time you are willing to invest yourself the more money it will cost to have others do the work.

You need to be just a vigilant in your marketing. That’s where a Social Search comes into play!  With Google and competitors increasingly prioritizing social content from Flickr, blogs, Facebook, MySpace,Twitter and others in result pages, it is imperative that brands build out “embassies” in all relevant networks–places where employees, clients, specific demographics and acquaintances hang to develop and nurture varying levels of networking. This will ensure optimum visibility.

So maybe Old McDonald would find it to beneficial to get a Facebook page. Heck, maybe take it to the next level and get fan pages for his cows and chickens! Why? Well, if cows had opposable thumbs they could blog about their daily events or leave comments on other sites and include a link back to their own sites via a signature in their post, thus increasing ranking!

And how about that song? You know…”EIEIO”…. If his chickens and pigs made a recording of that children’s song and posted it on MySpace for musicians, then certain keywords could be triggered if someone searched “singing pigs”! You can bet you won’t find any singing pigs sittin’ on a McMuffin! Unless of course it was a Stephen King novel….

Coda
One other thing about PPC agencies. Never confuse hits with unique visits. Agenices can claim so many hits on your site, but it could be as simple as one unique visitor that views multiple pages on that site, with each page constituting a hit.

And one other thing, yet! People look to Content Management Systems to be a saving grace for establishing a web presence with little overhead(most are open source) and readily available templates that make designing a site a snap!  This is very true, but not all CMS’s are created equal. Many are designed to do one thing well-manage content!  But many lack search engine capabilities. Blogger in my experience seems to have this issue as it tends to create its own title tags that are not that search friendly. WordPress on the other hand allows for better management of keywords and is easier to search with the stroke of a key. As with sites that have too much embedded Flash content and Javascript that could undermine searches as search engine bots can not readily interpret the scripting, a CMS that is not well formed could be a hindrance if visibility is a top priority.

But anyway, that’s just a bit of a heads up as I improve my own knowledge of this subject. Now, who wants to do a sing-a-long?!