Dublicator

CSS3 & HTML5

Saturday was a busy first day at the Ycademy seminar on ‘Semiomantics XO with CSS3 and HTML5′. The new Semimantics XO2012 is a sound base for further developments on  an already top performing script. Using both CSS3 and HTML5 it is  now possible to add elements such as video and audio straight into the code without the use of external plugins which often slow the  opening process or create conflicts. The focus today is on speed, and this is greatly enhanced with the use of HTML5 especially for mobile applications.

With CCS3 its also possible to add new elements to create more visually stimulating  web designs.

CSS3 & HTML5

Sunday will be another stimulating day packed full of information and workshops on creating content and design with CSS3 and HTML5. This is just the begining of an exciting year ahead at Ycademy, and more exciting, stimulating and cleaner designs for our customers. More coming soon.

The Value of User Generated Content

In yesterday’s workshop we clearly saw the Value of User Generated Content in the context of Social Media by watching the incredible video “Battle at Kruger” – content generated by a user without cost, content uploaded to YouTube without cost and content distributed – meaning marketed – by users without cost: meanwhile one of YouTube’s most watched videos (I think over 64 million times!) with tons of comments, some awards and lots of recognition, including on the National Geographic Channel.

Was it a master piece? Yes and no. Surely not in terms of video quality; but it was an 8 minute video of a unique and absolutely thrilling experience in the Kruger National Park in South Africa, featuring a dramatic battle between buffalos, lions and crocodiles… an 8 minute video that found its way to over 64 million Internet users at no cost! That indeed was masterful!

 

To produce such a video in the traditional professional way – say for an advertising campaign – would have cost several million dollars for sure. Having lived in the wild parts of South Africa long enough, I know this was an absolute unique moment… a real lucky shot!

The fact is that this video could well have been shot by most of us… provided we had been at the right time at the right place and… and this is critical: and have a video camera in hand, meaning being prepared! being ready for just anything that would happen! That’s the point, that’s what Internet Marketers of today have to learn: being media-prepared!

Had I been prepared with my digital camera today I could have captured the most amazing pictures of a beautiful peacock walzing towards me flashing his colorful wheel! As this wasn’t the case, here are some Noordhoek Garden Photos as promised… that’s what spring is like in my garden…

Noordhoek Garden Photos

More Noordhoek Garden Photos… here is MadMax chasing through the pink heath to catch his special friend, the mongoose! This definitely is HIS territory!

Well, sorry – it’s not quite a match for “Battle at Kruger” – again, I didn’t have the camera when the real thing happened: the real chase and battle between the two… when it really got wild and nasty!

 

User Generated Content

Some more User Generated Content : the view from my kitchen showing a small dam by far not full yet… more rains needed! The heron is extremely vigilant; I had to be quick and he flew off in a second…

 

Why do I suddenly switch to something technical like “User Generated Content”?

Well, as this article and its photos – called ‘content’ – will now travel on their virtual journey through the YORGOO Publishing Network… where it is also fed into Social Networks like Facebook, this is exactly what happens to a post that’s initially produced by a user and published on the Internet! It’s something you no longer ‘own’ – it becomes viral! Others may like it, copy it, share it with friends – whatever! It’s something you as a user give away… once on the Internet it’s out of your hand. However…. as Social Networks have become such an important integral part of the Internet today, recent research shows that user generated content creates more trust in users than traditional advertising.

Social Media Marketing

In fact, using User Generated Content is a very efficient Social Media Marketing Tool and it is smartly used by the ‘big boyz’ out there who encourage users to post articles, reviews, photos and videos on their websites – be it Social Networks like Facebook, YouTube etc, Newspapers, Travel Agencies or any big company out there. In fact, these thoughts were very much triggered by the recent E-Travel Africa Summit I attended last week in Cape Town. We all agree that firstly any fresh content – that the powerful Google search engine is constantly looking for – helps them (the big boyz) to reach top rankings, and secondly they have learned to stay rather passively in the background and let people actively talking to people – as they do all day long on Social Networks – do the deal for them! As ‘friends’ listen to ‘friends’ works better than any marketer’s sales pitch, we are back to the good old ‘relationship marketing’ or ‘word of mouth’, meaning people talking to people and recommending what they like (or don’t) – only it’s all done online!

Brilliant! So we are back to the future and it’s all very viral. And of course, cool!

This forces anyone with a business online to take Social Media serious and ‘have a foot in there’. It can no longer be ignored… like it or not! It’s something we’ve been teaching at Ycademy since a while: any business needs to be visible on:

1. Google Top 10
2. Social Networks, eg. Facebook,Twitter
3. Mobile Web, eg. Smartphones, iPhones.

There’s no way around it…

Join the next Ycademy Seminar this coming weekend (23 and 24 September 2011) and learn all about Social Media Marketing!

 

Relevant Online Marketing Seminars

Relevant Online Marketing Seminars like those offered by Ycademy since 2004 are in high demand by people who want to build a successful business online or bring their offline business to the Internet.

Following my article on How to do Online Marketing on Friday, here is some feedback with my personal conclusions from the first day of this astonishingly clear, quite complex yet efficient and hands-on Ycademy Workshop that provided each Seminar participant with a relevant Email Marketing setup on their WordPress based Author Blog on Semiomantics XO.

 

The above photo was taken at the V & A Waterfront in Cape Town, South Africa – a traditional Marketing eldorado of its kind!

Relevant Online Marketing Seminars

What emerged as a key element from the first day of this relevant Online Marketing Seminar by Ycademy was that today online marketing has to be “relevant” and “contextual”. These two words have to be remembered, specifically when focusing on Email Marketing and the integration of Emailing with Newsletters and/or Autoresponders into one’s CMS, eg. Author Blog.

With our high performing Semiomantics websites and blogs this is no easy task to start with.

It needs careful thought and weighing of what is needed versus what’s not needed and a close look at what serves our purpose best: free or paid solutions? On the surface, it looks like concessions will have to be made between the mailer and our website optimization… however, that’s obviously not what we at Ycademy will settle with!

Relevant Emailing

Relevant Emailing in a smart and contextual form is what the Ycademy Brainwave came up with despite some rather frustrating research into various unsatisfactory avenues. Relevant Email Marketing in a way that’s modern, permission-based, contextual and far beyond the batch and blast approach of the old days.

With all of us thoroughly fed up with the clutter still reaching our mail boxes despite spam filters, we need to know that this is only around 20% of the spam that actually goes out – and this still seems to serve a certain market… an indicator that even that still works.

However, for the marketing professional in today’s economic climate everything turns around customer retention – and emailing is a powerful way of keeping in touch, communicating and ensuring growth through customer retention. We all learned that it is more cost-efficient to work on retaining an existing customer than winning over a new one.

Bearing this in mind, we move away from large broadcast campaigns to more targeted engagements. However, delivering that relevance requires more sophistication and here the challenge is to invest in the analysis of response and behavior data in order to assist us in directing our marketing strategies in the most beneficial ways – beneficial for us on one hand to avoid losing our time and efforts and risking spam complaints and optouts – as well as for the customer who may well be interested in receiving hot information on the red sunlasses we offer but not the green bikinis we sell in a different chapter. This needs to be realized and attended to accordingly. This is what relevance and context in terms of reaching out to our readers and customers is all about. That we give them what they want without throwing anything else at them. Graceful Service with the right Attitude in my eyes. Just as an example.

Looking at our website publications – eg. Author Blogs – it appears that the Email channel is a natural extension to distribute and monetize content – however, it needs a customized approach and it needs a soft approach to ensure that our mails get delivered and… opened… and maybe even passed on.

Therefore, our goal as publishers must always be to deliver a relevant, contextual and personalized quality experience that our readers and customers enjoy!

How do we achieve this?

 

Ycademy Seminar on Online Marketing

While day 1 of the Ycademy Seminar on Online Marketing provided the conceptual understanding, the basic setup and the tools, day 2 (today) will complete this important chapter in order to not only serve our own purpose in terms of promoting our own products and services, however, for those of us who focus on customer satisfaction when it comes to Web Design and Customer Follow-up, to offer our customers a maximum of value and safety in firstly reaching out and staying in close contact with their customers with their highly search engine optimized WP based Semiomantics CMS.

I am looking forward to a highly informative Workshop at the Ycademy Seminar today.

How to do Online Marketing

How to do Online Marketing – or Internet Marketing – is and remains at the center of anything happening on the Internet, and while the principles remain the same if compared with traditional offline marketing – as we see here on the picture taken at the V & A Waterfront in Cape Town, South Africa – different skills need to be mastered and different tools and equipments are being used: attract, convert, monetize.

 

Affiliate Marketing at Ycademy Seminar

Affiliate Marketing is an excellent concept within Online Marketing and remains a good source of income to this day. Basically, people do Affiliate Marketing all day long by recommending products they like to people they know and receiving a commission on each sale. So it’s pretty easy to understand as a concept.

At the upcoming Ycademy Seminar August 2011 we will go back to Online Marketing and pursue the vast topic over the next months. Our objective will be to work in a way that we minimize our efforts, focusing on one link. That’s always the main issue… one cannot promote two links. This one link could theoretically be one’s Author Blog. It’s a personal decision to be taken, however, one could promote everything from or out of the Author Blog. All other websites are satellites in support of my main CMS.

Online Marketing

There are a few things that we need for doing Online Marketing. If we sell our own product, we need our own Product website. Alternatively, if we sell someone else’s products,  then we have affiliate links, possibly feed streams etc, however, the principle remains the same: Lead Generation, Follow-up, Conversion. As always, Lead generation depends on Traffic – and Traffic comes from Google, Facebook or people we talk to.

It has been the same since ever!

What we need is people looking at our offers, then figuring out what percentage will buy and then see what effort we need to put out to get enough people that result in enough conversion that we make a profit, ideally a living online.

Lead Generation

Lead generation is based on Traffic. To generate a so-called ‘lead’, we collect people we can talk to. From there the money is in the follow-up… as taught over years at my Ycademy Workshops on “Online Communication”.

You can go to Social Networks, eg. Facebook and find people there who might be interested in your offer. More efficiently would be to have them on a Mailing List.

Mailing List means Newsletter, means Email promotion, means Email Marketing.

Email Marketing

Email Marketing has always worked pretty well; otherwise there wouldn’t be that much spam in our mail boxes every day – unfortunately one ahs to say!

Autoresponders work very well as well… but what definitely works is Newsletters.

Newsletters

If you have people signing up with your Newsletter – giving your basically permission to send them your weekly or monthly summary of your articles on your Author Blog wrapped up as a Newsletter (obviously of the items they are interested in and nothing else), or that you have a Newsletter concept where you publish a particular Newsletter on a particular date, maybe even both online and offline, you need to have the Knowhow and the Equipment to do so.

Mailing your Newsletter is the most difficult thing to host, resulting in the fact that there is a stiff price tag attached to it. However, if you work in a smart way and try not to exaggerate, then you can with some relatively interesting means have a nice, sound lead generation follow-up system connected to your CMS.

The risk with Mailing Lists and Newsletters is: most people don’t know (or care) about spam etc… they get all excited and within two or three months they are blacklisted with their email account, meaning their IP address – and this means they get off the horizon of Google. This is the eternal problem one faces… Besides, what worked years ago is no longer possible today.

Looking at hosting costs on Webber means real money and one better knows what we do.

Ideally, we get interested people on our own mailing list and coordinate the mailing and newsletter with our Blog. It means trying to get a maximum of output with a minimum of input; it means that we have to streamline our business in such a way that whatever we do is extremely efficient.

If you post on the Author Blog in a specific category… from where it goes through the publishing network, it has to be thought-through. Having yet a different website does not make sense as we need our traffic on our own site, not the merchant’s site.

Lead generation means that we need Landing pages and Lead capture pages. As demonstrated with our Photo Blogs we have seen that we can setup any page we want on a WordPress based Semiomantics XO. Say just a header and a footer and nothing inbetween: there ‘inbetween’ where there is ‘nothing’ we can type in any html code and put in any lead capture content we want. Therefore we can create as many lead capture pages as we want even outside the WordPress content and the WordPress loop.

Then we will add software to the blog that allows us to do Mailings, where we can setup Mailing Lists per category to address individual interests of our readers and customers. Someone opting in for photography is not interested in any home business stuff – as an example – and vice versa. The focus must always be on respecting our readers’ and customers’ interests.

We can send people on our Mailing List a weekly summary of what is new on our blog, or a monthly one… or even a daily one. That depends on each individual. But the idea is always about getting people to give us double-optins to receive our news, free give-aways or whatever we wish to promote to them – and with their permission. It’s back to the real form of Marketing with Advertising pages or Lead capture pages – and all on WordPress.

This we will setup at the Ycademy Seminar August 2011. Don’t miss it!

 

The Importance of Seeing beyond the Photo

Nobody takes outstanding photos all the time; not even the top professional! The Importance of Seeing beyond the Photo to me lies in seeing the image before we actually take it – just like the true artist painter has an inner vision of what he wants to project onto the canvas with colors… and being an artist myself I know about the inner struggle of getting close to that picture… and how hard it actually is to capture it… if at all!

Coming back to Digital Photography – the topic of this month’s Ycademy Seminar – the fact is that very often we sort of rush into a picture – be it for lack of time or to just quickly catch that fleeting image as we pass in order to remember it… brief: we see something … something beyond the photo we actually carry home. So while the imperfect  if not lousy picture – yet enhanced by our personal experience and vision – may be one thing, we now have to translate it into something that talks, that’s dramatic, expressive or beautiful to look at for others.

That’s when Post-Editing comes into play, be it with all the brilliant tools Adobe Photoshop has to offer or, to add even more sophistication and ease, OnOne Professional Tools.

That’s where the top professional distinguishes himself: pre-editing by composing the perfect image he wants to take – either by taking the right time in any natural environment or by including the right setup for studio shots where he would need say the make-up, styling and especially the lighting of a model with or without background. After careful selection of certain photos from the whole lot – this will then be followed by post-editing, applying certain filters, masks and effects… often the photographer’s secret ‘brand’ or the studio-brand… just as we have the possibility to do with our post-editing tools. It’s all about educating the eye, having a feeling for trends and the taste of the time and then knowing how to use our camera and post-editing tools.

 

The Importance of Seeing beyond the Photo

The untouched Greek seascape presented to us at the Ycademy Seminar for personal enhancement (see below) is a perfect example to demonstrate the Importance of seeing beyond the Photo.

Here we have the photographer capturing a subtle Greek sunset casting a flat mirror onto ink-colored water with tiny silhouettes of boats at the rosy horizon and flanked bottom left and right by dark memories of land. It’s the photographer’s memory… which can be improved technically up to a certain point… and this was part of the exercise yesterday.

But then there is my instant inner vision, inner interpretation… based on my own memories of light, water and sea and especially flying fish during my windsurfing and diving times in the Philippines that let me immediately see something else… and while improving certain issues – like the horizon, higher tonal range and sharpness etc – I was completely carried away expressing what I saw in this photo… or rather beyond this photo -, giving it my personal interpretation and touch – and these post-editing tools are perfect to do so. The result was “Anchovies Dream” above! it may please others or not – but it’s filled with my own memories… and I went back in time and I was there again… and when I look at the image I see and remember it all … the schools of flying fish, the light, islands at the distant horizon, the transparency of the sea around coral reefs set against the mystery of dark night-dives… and all beyond the volcano’s eye…

Mastering the Technique of Post-Editing Tools

There’s a clear difference between ‘playing around’ with effects and Mastering the Technique of Post-Editing Tools. However, it helps to get familiar with tools and their possibilities to then apply the correct tools to bring alive the inner Vision.

Joy is important and furthers Creativity, taking away the fear of all that complex and daunting ‘technical stuff’. So start with the first approach to see and understand what each filter or mask does – taking good notes of each ‘effect’ – and then using each very sparcely but extremely targeted to help define the photo or image in the way you see, feel and know it inside… or to simply present better photos and higher quality images.

Each picture should have a soul – that’s the way it communicates, touches and … ‘talks’.

 

 

 

B-Time

B-Time is time for or with Bianca – Big Time that is!!! Especially needed after a hefty Ycademy Seminar with eyes and ears glued to the screen and something else to the chair… So the South African sun is calling and as ‘Bee’ is and has always been my nickname… my winged family is calling and I could capture some magnificent digital pictures in the afternoon light yesterday, right here in Noordhoek, South Africa ! Nothing like B-Time!

How to resize thumbnails

Jokes aside… (…and it’s not a joke even…) – I need to test how to resize thumbnails for my new mobile web conversion for Bianca Gubalke Mobile. Of course, one can edit the WPtouch Settings in the Dashboard of the website where the current default size is 92 x 92px. But it did not move despite me changing the size here. So I changed the thumbnail sizes in the Media Settings on my Blog (General/Media) as well to 180px to 135px – but no go.

However, we work in a more precise way if changing and adapting our stylesheet. The stylesheet of our Child Theme in terms of Semiomantics XO that is. And that’s what I did now… all part of normal Website Development with a view of bringing our blogs up to the latest and most modern cutting-edge of technology standard.

Let’s see if I could manage to change the size of the thumbnail display. . . otherwise it’s back to the drawing board with a heavy thinking cap finding ways until “it works” . . . here we go, first shot!

Malachite Sunbird at Ycademy Seminar

The first day of this month’s Ycademy Seminar brought new light and knowledge as concerns Digital Photo Management – ideally with Lightroom – as well as Digital Photo Editing and Enhancement with smart PhotoTools.

The little Malachite Sunbird here greets the 1st May 2011 with the promise of bringing  joy and a lightness of Being to your hearts.

 

Malachite Sunbird at Ycademy Seminar

Following first insights into new Photo Tools at yesterday’s Ycademy Seminar, I went into a first practice round with a photo I had recently taken of a malachite sunbird in my garden, right in front of my studio. What I had in mind was separating the background a bit from the main focus: the malachite sunbird… and obviously trying out filters and effects… things I usually did ‘by hand’ using adjustment and blending modes and lots of often time-consuming ‘handwork’ in Photoshop.

While I did not find exactly what I was looking for, I experimented my way around it and one thing is clear: I will work my way through the compehensive Guide in the Help Center as there’s such a wealth of possibilities that it’s important to see what does what in order to know what to use when we are visualizing a specific effect for a very defined purpose. I remember spending hours… if not days… finding and refining my preferences in Lightroom – especially when working on “Noordhoek Villa” – which I have created in different versions, showing only one on the Semiomantics Evolution website itself… but there are various variants :)

It’s totally thrilling to experiment with all these possibilities – although at the end of the day we will make very limited use of them in each individual image, ideally without the viewer noticing it even.

Semiomantics XO

The second day of the Ycademy Seminar April 2011 will focus on Semiomantics XO – our flagship when it comes to Website Development and high performance on search engines, especially Google Top 10.

Like Media Design, Web Design – and especially Semiomantics Web Design – is and will always remain a challenge as there’s never a standstill, never a limit – to the contrary: we always have to learn, understand, adapt and refine our knowledge and skills… just as the virtual environment itself will always move and change.

That’s exactly where Ycademy Seminars make a substantial difference in the minds and capabilities of all those who follow them with zest – and implement the lessons. There is sacrifice – but deep-down we all know what this price stands for… and I definitely stand for “Web Design with Passion”.

Here’s a great looking-forward what today’s teachings will bring!

 

 

 

Copyright © 2011 Bianca Gubalke. Visit the original article at http://biancagubalke.com/media-marketing/website-slider/.

Website Slider

Following yesterday’s fantastic Ycademy Seminar on integrating new Media Design Frameworks into our Author Blog to boost our performance in terms of Media Design and Media Marketing, here is a first Website Slider test from my memory…

Website Slider

Important when integrating a slider into a post is to set a featured image… at least on Semiomantics XO :)

Now let’s see what this gives us…

Copyright © 2011 Bianca Gubalke. Visit the original article at http://biancagubalke.com/ycademy-seminars/photo-and-slides/.

Photo and Slides

 

Copyright © 2011 Bianca Gubalke. Visit the original article at http://biancagubalke.com/ycademy-seminars/logo-design/.

Logo Design

Yesterday, I posted an article under “Icon Design” – which could just as well have been under “Logo Design” … as in fact it featured the Apple Touch Icon with the Logo I had developed for Magnetic Transport Surplus.

The reason for the exercise was to create an additional image for the new Slider based on the dimensions I would need for my own Author Blog. I have a clear vision of what I need there and in which dimension.

Interestingly, it fitted perfectly into the current Slider built into the script Semiomantics XO 3.1.

 

 

Logo Design presented on a Slider

However, as we heard in last night’s pre-seminar call, there will be a sort of accordion setup in a clearly defined format – which is always a great alternative for our customers to feature different chapters on their blogs, and I created one a while ago on MyNoordhoek.com HERE.

However, from the dimensions I see on the example provided, these are completely different again!

Size matters… and with it proportions and refined details created specifically for a certain format have to be redefined.

I therefore played with my Logo Design presented on a Slider and, while keeping to my branding elements in terms of color and fonts, we have a different image.

Interestingly, it does not display as well in the current slider built into the Semiomantics XO 3.1 script – being too wide… one can easily compare both on the slider right now. We will see later how it looks in the exciting new SliderDeck we will be working with.

 

Ycademy Seminar March 2011

Let’s see what eventually transpires at the Ycademy Seminar March 2011, starting within a few hours from now.