Coding In The Darkness

BT Better World Campaign Exhibition Bag

Today I happened to be scanning my Google Analytics account and noticed a big drop off for the BT Better World site.

Forgetting that i was still subscribed to the tracking data i decided to remove it when i realised that it had no fews on Tuesday, knowing that couldn’t be possible my fears had become reality, the URL btbetterworld.com had been redirected to the main BT CSR site.

Now of course many of the tools still exist on the BTPLC site and they are really, really useful for teaching young people vital and valuable communication skills, but after working on the previous site I was very sad to see it virtually die in the eyes of the web.

It always felt odd that the site was created off the BT main site and perhaps should of been built onto it in the first place although corporates have very strict rules when it comes to what sits on their webspace.

With much of my early web work hosted on the site and the hours I put into the web pages both my own and using the templates system, the newsletters from early HTML to the fancy Adobe designed masterpieces and even the beloved TalkDog mini site it’s a shame to see all that work now gone.

Even more so the special html pages i coded to make all of the Flash animations run in full screen on all browser types and sizes, they really should of kept that code.

It gave me a reason to look back and remember the good, fun times I spent on what i value as a major part in shaping the current person I am today, from what I learned and from the great people I met and worked with. Although I don’t miss waking up at 5AM to catch the first train to an exhibition up North!

So goodbye btbetterworld.com you’ll always have a found place in my heart.

It’s easy to get complacent in life, you make a minor achievement and rather than push on with other goals that you want to accomplish you get happy with where you are and become lazy about chasing those goals.

After some general searching around the web at other sites, people, blogs i decided that i never really achieved what i had set out to do with my own site and blog, which was to create a site that would give me a personal area on the web to own, play with and enjoy using and hopefully people would enjoy reading, viewing or whatever.

All my big plans to learn this, create that sort of hit the back burner, so…. Here is my 2010 ToDo list.
I have until the 23:59 – 31st of December 2010 to complete the following below.

1. Redesign site
2. Redesign Blog – My own template
3. Learn basic PHP
4. Learn objective C and create an iPhone app
5. Add 2-3 sites to my portfolio

That’s it, if i can complete all of those tasks this year I will be very happy.

This decade will be the decade that i step up and become a complete finisher rather than a ideas man / team worker, kudos if you know where knows terms come from.

Lets hope I don’t make an idiot out of my self by Jan 1st 2011!

Its been over a month since my last post, incredible really, i have had much to say but so little time.

Ben's trips to the Job center didn't last long!

I will post an update my Social Media Experiment this week, although i can’t say i expect a massive improvement as i haven’t been dedicating much time to it. Thanks to the recent leaving then rejoining BT / Dialogics and finally leaving again i found myself without work, for 1 day!

So my current role if you haven’t checked my LinkedIn Profile is with a very new online retailer called shop.co.uk, they are a UK only online retailer and they / we are looking to join the likes of Play.com and Amazon in the online retailer environment. So my current role is “Online Marketing Executive” which basically means i optimise content pages, promote pages, help devise PPC campaigns, generate inbound links, create good content and lots more techniques i haven’t started yet (All white hat SEO techniques of course!)

i have also been spreading the word via the old fashioned word of mouth with my friends as Shop.co.uk sell many items very cheaply including two of the products i have been working on Sim Free Mobile Phone Handsets & Discount Perfumes, Discount Colognes / Aftershaves & Discount Beauty Products.

My role is with Shop.co.uk

I’m hoping i gain some great SEO experience form this role, it’s very fast paced and a definitely different environment from my last role. Lets hope it turns into something really great.
Oh i also wrote an online buying guide for mobile phones, it may be worth a look maybe you know someone who could use it? Either way here it is Mobile Phone Buying Guide.

Over the last two months i have also been doing some freelance work for friends and I’ll add links here as well as my online portfolio as soon as it all finished. One is for a friend who is a recent Dance graduate who is starting her own Dance class business called Rhythms, if you live near Southend i suggest you take a look.
The other piece of work is for my ex managers husband Anthony Bailey who is a Cambridge & Chelsea based Counsellor. He needed some SEO advice and we done some basic SEO techniques to help him get higher ranked in Google which proved quite successful. For his four main targeted keywords he now has 4 top 100 results including a #1 and a number #3. You can view Anthony’s site here Chelsea & Cambridge Counsellor.

Well that’s it for my brief update, i had more interesting stuff to talk about like the decline of MySpace & Bebo, where i think Twitter, Facebook & social networking is going in general with the mobile arena, plus other bits and bobs but another time perhaps?

Stay Classy

Ben Scowen

I found this blog whilst googling the other day and thought it was just such good advice i had to pass on.

Google doing it's searching magic

SEO Gold – http://www.seo-gold.com

I will be viewing posts regularly as there just seems to be some good information there about Search Engine Optimisation, I’m still learning and perfecting the craft and i wish i had found this site months ago!

I think its worth checking the SEO Tutorial post first, to help get your head around the whole idea and references. Also helps to teach you the good and bad ways to do SEO, although they mention they fit into neither bracket as they test both ways in a test environment i just find it helpful that someone is presenting all the information clearly without pushing the one and only “correct way to do it”.

Also the fact that the advantages and consequences for doing SEO cleanly or doing it the risky naughty way are very interesting and hopefully the more people who have a better understanding of the subject means that we will always have search engines pointing us to the best and correct content.

Let me know if it helps you in anyway, or you could let SEO Gold know yourself!

… I’d be happy with a hundred!

I have been keeping a watch on this for the past 2 or 3 days now and i just find the whole concept very funny. (Link to story here)
The fact that a) CNN @cnnbrk has only just got ownership of the account, so technically they have only really earned the last 80,000 or so followers, b) That of all of the twitter accounts out there it has fallen upon Ashton Kutcher @aplusk to try and steal this race.
I have nothing against Ashton, i like him actually and i have chosen to follow him because his posts seem interesting enough, i just was surprised that there is only one news feed against two celebs for the first mill (Including Britney Spears @britneyspears who is third).

I suppose it confirms the fact that we are more interested in celebrity culture than news, well celeb news is news but you know what i mean.

I like the whole story as its just a nice fun story in the news for a change and whoever wins the Malaria charity’s and suffers will benefit which is great. Also the special number followers who will get games by EA is cool and should help up the numbers!

Also found this of Ashton on YouTube helping to fight the cause, all i can say is one man, nearly a million followers, what would happen if this guy ran for president, or worse if Britney Spears did!

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ma8AcfKGaEI]

Anyway if you want to follow me and help me get to 100 followers i can be found here @BenScowen, maybe I’ll do something for charity too, but you will get no games!

TTYL

When it comes to writing a good blog, content is king, in-fact when it comes to writing web content or even updating facebook and twitter if your content is boring then it wont get clicked. But where do you or i fit into all of this?

I’ve been reading  alot lately about what makes a good blogger and web writer i guess unsurprisingly it’s similar to writing a good book, you have to know your audience and present your content in an interesting way. But how exactly do you do that when there are no doubt thousands of blogs already which know your audience and know how to grab them in?

So I’ve been thinking what do i need to do to find my voice, grab my audience and most important find what to write about.

I reckon it will take me a while to figure all of that out nut for now a little link dump is in order:

http://www.socmedia101.com/ – Very cool site i found a few hours ago, i will be checking often
http://www.viralvideochart.com/ – Try not to get addicted, good tool for learning if your interested or a great way to waste 30 minutes!
http://www.gosquared.com/liquidicity/archives/category/helpsheets – Great for Web Designers – Simpellz!

Hope that craves your thirst of Ben for the day…

I suppose the title sums up this post, i talk to lots of people about Social Media, Networks on the web, and Google and SEO rankings etc, but am i right?

Basically as it stands i have:

• 175 Friends on Facebook
• 26 Followers on Twitter
• A very Old MySpace and Bebo page
• A nearly finished Web Site
• YouTube & Flickr accounts
• And this blog which needs a good shot in the arm

I admit i am selective and don’t add just anyone, i know >90% of my FB friends for instance.

So the EXPERIMENT!
How famous can i get by the end of the year?
Basically i have no idea how i am going to measure it but i want see how many “friends”, “followers”, “subscribers”, how high up the google rankings i get when i search for “Ben Scowen” (and how many are actually me).
I have to learn a lot more about good blogging, SEO, Social Media but there is no better test subject than myself.

So i will set some rules to make the test fair throughout and not cheat.

1. I will not request people to be my friend, follow etc, they must want to join me on there own accord
2. I will blog, tweet, video blog etc as often as possible but at least once a week
3. On certain sites i will become or follow someone but not ask them for a return, i want to make myself visible without forcing myself upon people.

That’s it for rules unless i get some good suggestions, i will post weekly or monthly updates on my progress with graphs etc for all you stat geeks out there.

That’s it, if you have any advice, or can find anyone else who has done similar so i can compare please let me know, but for now,

Stay Classy (Maybe i need a new non Ron-Burgundy sign off?)

Just a quick post, found this on YouTube  whilst looking for videos in how to repair external hard drives?

Anyway i thought it was really good and wanted to share, i may buy this guy’s book.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hQVTIJBZook&feature=channel]

Enjoy