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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
aect 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 content
Obligation 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 trafic 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 stu.

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 and Upcoming,
Eventful
- 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