My Absence = Creating a New Presence

Two months without a blog post to here has to make you wonder what's been happening.

So here's the things that have kept me away:

1. Uni and uni blog
2. Holidays.
3. Setting up BJ's blog and BJ's moodle to look like BJ's website.
4. Teeing up this years innovations project applications.

So I hope you forgive me and I hope to post something more helpful here again soon ;)

Edayz08 has finished and a baby is born.

Well, a metaphorical baby in any case.

Edayz was (as you can well expect) organised extremely well and resulted in thought provoking discussions, entertaining presentations and outstanding learning. I was lucky enough to be able to present two sessions and a poster session and a big thank you goes out to all those who participated in my presentations. The slides and links from my presos can be found here for the Twitter presentation moodle and here for the Blending Moodle in the Kitchen Presentation.

The baby that it produced is a new Ning which I have put together as a quick and dirty solution to some issues raised there.

I guess “Solution” is not necessarily the right word, probably “strategy to aid the situation” is more akin to the reality of what I hope for E-learning Project Connect. My first blog post over there is a good starting point for the reasons why I started this community so if you are reading this, then you should head on over there, read some more about the why’s and whatnots and join up!

Since it’s inception on Sunday we have accumulated 31 members, 6 forum topics with eight replies, 3 blog posts, 1 job posting and one job wanted posting. Pretty good, I’d say for a site that is less than three days old!

So come and join the community, and tell your colleagues, HR managers and bosses. Share and share alike!

How I got to Google page one: a case study of sorts.

I recently posted an update to twitter that read: ”wooooooooot the hard work paid off. day one of http://rsaonline.wordpress.com converts to ten sales!!! stoked to say the least (ceTwit)” So to explain what I did over the last couple of days to get the RSA course up, running, “out there”, on to page one of google and convert some sales here’s the how.

I started following @timbuchalka on twitter a couple of weeks ago for a couple of reasons: 1 He was listed on twitter grader as number one in twitter elite for Adelaide 2 His profile said he was a web2.0 geek. I didn’t know what SEO was then so wasn’t really interested in that stuff. That is until my colleague Dave said it was time to market the Responsible Service of Alcohol course that I had built in our Moodle a few months back.

I said to Dave straight up that I know nothing about online marketing and that we should get someone in to do it, I have a contact (@timbuchalka) who could help us out. So here is how the twitter conversation went:

@rhysatwork: are you based in Adelaide Aus? I am interested in some SEO type work done for a website here so an @reply would be appreciated

@timbuchalka: Yes I am based in Adelaide.. Do lots of SEO/WEb 2.0 work but virtually 100% booked for months at the moment with new launch.

@rhysatwork: ok fair do. Looks like I'll have to give a whirl myself unless you know someone else with some time....

@timbuchalka: check out our website http://takeoverpageone.com lots of free seo/web 2.0 stuff there... free rss plugin coming out tomorrow..

So I did. I went over to http://takeoverpageone.com signed up, downloaded, read up and had at it. I figured I could give it a go and if it didn’t work at least I would learn something in the process.

Now I won’t pretend it was a quick process, but I did learn a pile of stuff. To be honest, I am a bit impatient when it comes to reading a pile of info. The pdf that @timbuchalka and his bro have put together is lengthy but it is in plain English (all be it a bit “Northern Suburbs” ;-) just kidding guys) and they have put into 10 steps. So I didn’t read it all and then try it out, I kinda did it step by step, (sorta). Some of the steps I had a whirl at but probably weren’t as successful as I could have been if I had actually had some sort of training in web design and coding. Seeing I am self taught I am pretty happy with what I did achieve. If you are going to have a go yourself, don’t follow my steps, go to http://takeoverpageone.com, and jump through their hoops (not really just a basic email sign up) to get their pdf.

1. picked out some keywords I thought would be likely candidates for searchers to try and find RSA courses.

2. did some google searches to see what was there (i.e. who the competition were) and took some screen shots with Jing so I had something to look at and compare after.

3. created a rsaonline.wordpress.com blog.

4. Tweeted new blog

5. did some social book marking

6. updated moodle site

7. updated bjaustralia.com.au

8. created some links on some of my social networks

9. updated this blog

10. did some google searches and took some more screen shots

11. created a Squidoo lens

12. did some more social book marking

13. and did some more searches on google again and more screen shots

So that is how I got to page one, and made a good sale on day one (in the working world) of rsaonline.wordpress.com

So here are some questions yet to be answered:

I wonder if writing about it will make it better or worse?

Will this model be sustainable (i.e. will we still be there in a week, a month or a year)?

Would you consider this an organic process?

I would love to hear your comments.