Wordpress SEO Expert

Improve your Google ranking with Peter Mahoney, 20+ years SEO & Wordpress experience

Online communities and ritual

by

Online communities and ritual Wordpress SEO ExpertA wonderful line from the Wikipedia article about Online communities.

An online community is a virtual community that exists online and whose members enable its existence through taking part in membership ritual.

I love the idea of describing our online interactions as ritual. After all, ritual permeates all of what we do. I even brush my teeth in a certain way that has become ritualistic. (Start on the lower left, scrubbing around the bottom before moving to the top).

Ritual can, at it’s most basic, be defined as:

5. a. A detailed method of procedure faithfully or regularly followed

That for me is it’s most basic meaning. I love ritual as an experience, something that can be shared, and transformative.

And that is the highest ideal of any online community, to help individuals change through participation in a shared group experience. The online medium of course is very different to a religious or secular ceremony, but it’s differences afford people the option to engage in a different way, to play out other parts of themselves, which is turn allows for a completely different transformation.

That’s my thought of the day. It’s amazing the train of thoughts a simple Wikipedia search can inspire.

Anyway, I’ve brushed my teeth, now on to work.

via Online community – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

I just bought 30,000 Twitter followers

by

I’m breaking my own rules, so you don’t have to.

I maintain, and always have, that quality is the key component to any online community. A community of 200 people, with regular contributions from 90% of them, is a far better experience for your users, members, and clients, than 20,000 with .09% engagement.

Strong communities build strong reliances for your brand. I tell everyone this. I regularly check my online tribe to ensure it’s filled with real, engaged people.

Having said that, I just purchased 30,000 Twitter followers. I’m saying it openly, because it’s all a big test. An experiment of epic quantity.

Here’s the logic—there are all sorts of places selling bot followers for Twitter (“bot” means these aren’t real people, they only bolster your follower numbers) and just as many blog posts from people saying they’re a waste of time.

But of the two dozen bloggers I responded to, not one of them has done it themselves. I can’t get my hands on enough unbiased, experiential evidence to say for sure that they’re a waste of time.

I expect they are, I’ve always said so, but I want to be able to say it with the confidence that comes from having made the mistake first hand.

The only possible positive I can conceive of, is that there are users who might see your tweet retreated by an actual Twitter user, click your profile, and then feel assured that you’re worth following because thousands of other people already do—even though they really don’t. It’s a trick of building confidence in yourself by, basically, pretending lots of people already do see you as an opinion leader.

It’s dishonest, sure. And I still don’t think it’s any match for organic community growth. But I’ve done it now, and I’m telling you about it so it’s not quite as dishonest.

Naturally I’ll let you know how it goes. On the off-chance it does pay off, well, I’ll tweet you all about it. All 30,001 of you.

Interacting with nerds, #1

by

Firstly I suppose I am a nerd myself. I’m slightly more than geeky when it comes to tech, and I’ve been wearing these huge glasses way before hipsters first picked them up.

However, there are a few things about me that separate me out from the nerd crowd. And one of the biggies is…I can communicate, with you, in a way you’ll understand. In fact a few of my clients about a decade ago took to calling me “The geek who can speak”. At the time I wasn’t sure if I should be flattered or flummoxed. I’m still unsure.

Anyway, quite famously, when you seek advice from a nerd they’re likely to respond “Have you tried turning it on and off again”, and for good reason—it usually works.

I had an interaction with a support helpdesk this morning; one of their WordPress themes was playing up and I submitted a support ticket, knowing that it would take them at least 24 hours to get to it, so I was hoping for a helpful reply.

“Have you upgraded to the latest version?” was all I got back. Fullstop. It’s the software equivalent of hitting the power button twice, because it is, to most developers mind’s, the most likely thing to fix the problem.

The other thing it has in common with making use of the on/off switch, is it’s the path of least resistance. Now, personally I take offence when asked by anyone, in any situation, “Have you done the least thing you possible could without having done nothing?” and this situation is no different.

Anyway, I’m sharing this to give some practical advice. When writing to support lines about online products, use this easy to follow formula:

To whom it may concern,

I have updated my software to the latest version as available from your website, but am still finding that {insert rest of issue here}.

I replied to the less-than-welcome response I got of course, just a few minutes ago. And now I’m going to wait the inevitable 24 hours for the follow-up.

I just hope for everyone’s sake that they don’t come back asking me to restart the web server. I’ve had these giant glasses a long time, and I’m not afraid to use them.

Piracy, drones and dreaming.

by

As controversial as they may be, I have to hand it to The Pirate Bay, they certainly keep themselves at the forefront of technology.

Our data flows around in thousands of clouds, in deeply encrypted forms, ready to be used when necessary. Earth bound nodes that transform the data are as deeply encrypted and reboot into a deadlock if not used for 8 hours.

All attempts to attack The Pirate Bay from now on is an attack on everything and nothing. The site that you’re at will still be here, for as long as we want it to. Only in a higher form of being. A reality to us. A ghost to those who wish to harm us.

via The Pirate Bay – The galaxy’s most resilient bittorrent site.

It used to be said that the pornography industry drove innovation, but I would say for the past few years it’s been the file sharers.

The Pirate bay have looked into hosting their sites on a series of flying drones, that operate over international waters. It sounds incredible (in the, “that must be made up, it’s too incredible” sense of the word), but it’s quite achievable. In fact, they wouldn’t even be the first to do it.

I’ve longed imagined a distributed form of web server, which is a step beyond even what they’re doing here–where the web server software doesn’t even live on one computer, but is shared around the world.

On the one hand that seems inconceivable to most people right now. And while what they’re doing may be questionable at best, I choose to keep thinking the undo-able can be done, I think with the flying drones, and the metaphors for deity.

If we stop dreaming, we stop creating.

Let’s make stuff instead.

Prices are quoted exclusive of VAT unless expressly stated.

RSS

Peter Mahoney, WordPress SEO expert blog