Now, the boy can do words, pictures and what users like but, to be frank, couldn’t code his way out of a paper bag. In fact, getting him to make a cup of tea involves a map, a torch and painstaking discussions on the essential nature of the word “kettle”.

It does sound a bit of a risk entrusting the care of our corporate site to somebody challenged by the technical problems of turning on a light switch. But we had a secret weapon: WordPress.

WordPress is the free, open source, Web 2.0 content management system. It is so simple to use that if you can handle Microsoft Word documents (or not in the case of Stewart) then you can make WordPress work for you.

As well as offering simpicity it can also be as complex as you need. And this is where the rest of us weighed in with our technical expertise. This site uses a heavily customised version of the Atahualpa theme. To make it as sophisticated as we wanted it to be we’ve given it a cocktail of plugins that we have found to be particularly effective – though some  needed a tweak or two.  These range from SEO to mobile versions to video display and beyond.

As for how the new site looks, it’s less Stalinist than the previous version but remains true to web guru Clay Shriky’s dictum: “behaviour first, design second”.

In 2008, one particular word came to prominence that people flung around with great seriousness and clearly no idea what the damn thing meant.

That word is “widget”.

First and foremost, in this context, widgets have nothing to do with beer cans, though the internet would be a better place if they did.

Nor, despite all appearances, is “widget” a word you throw in there when you don’t really know what a thing is.

So, what is a widget exactly? Well, Wikipedia describes it “a portable chunk of code that can be installed and executed within any separate HTML-based web page by an end user without requiring additional compilation”. This explanation leads us to the question: what is a widget exactly?

It’s a box.

Now, the guardians of the arcane knowledge of the interwebs won’t like us putting like that but it’s true.

It’s a box (or rectangle or whatever) for putting content in. Or a game. Or another bit of software. Think of it as a  window on another bit of the web.

That box can appear on your Facebook page (along with all that “pirate” nonsense) or on your blog or webpage. It’s a simple way of easily adding something extra to your online presence without having to write any code.

It can also be a way of getting your content onto somebody else’s website or Facebook page. If you build a widget to display your content or message – and if that widget is useful or interesting – then people will recommend and spread it for you.

With the rise of social networking, people are increasingly getting their content this way, rather than through the more traditional routes. If you have an online message then you need widgets to get that message to certain demographics.

It is important for content providers (and that includes advertising and marketing) to be aware that, because of things like widgets, content lives on its own.

Thanks to widgets, your content can be spread far and wide without anyone needing to visit your site.

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The Pampers website is a great application of the principle of content marketing – by providing content that is of real value, Pampers has created an engaging web presence for its customers. There is no hard sell of the pamper range on the site. Product placements are subtly targeted within highly relevant and useful information depending on the options (e.g. baby, toddler) selected.

Called the Pampers village (from the concept that it takes a village to make a child) the website provides articles, videos and newsletter to provide valuable information to help parents such as

• nutrition and health advice for mothers
• feeding and development for new babies
• bedtime and potty training for toddlers

There are web 2.0 elements such as forums, blogs and commenting to create the sense of the village with people sharing experience, rating articles and staying connected. In addition there are a range of practical tools available such as

• a pregnancy widget that can be downloaded onto your PC
• a baby name finder
• an Out and About Guide for those child friendly restaurants and cafes

What we like about this site is that is built around a simple concept of building a long term relationship with the customer through content.

Pampers know that the lifetime of one of their customers is from the time when they become pregnant to when their child is potty trained. The site cleverly provides content that is relevant as each stage of their child’s development allowing Pampers to build their relationship over time

You can read another analysis of the website on David Meerman Scott blog.

Hotfoot from ScotWeb2 – a get-together of those with an interest in the public sector and the internet. Organised by Alex Stobart, a recovering civil servant, 

The highlights, apart from my workshop on making the most of content, were talks by James Munro of PatientOpinon and Simon Dickson of Puffbox.

James’s described how his site offered patient feedback on NHS services. He demonstrated that inviting the public into the conversation, even with negative comments, led to positive outcomes. He also demonstrated PatientOpinon’s automated tagging system for comment, which was one of my “wow” moments of the year.  

Simon Dickson caused everyone’s ears to wring with his revelation that the Foreign and Commonwealth Office website cost £19.2m, with the CMS alone costing £1.47m.  Staggered by this he set up a business that builds websites using WordPress, which costs zilch.

This event was a great start to the coming debate over how public sector websites embrace the future.

Here is very interesting seminar on Social Media by Mike Wesch of Kansas State University who produced the popular video ‘web 2.0 – what is and how to use it’ – you can watch this video in our favourites at w00tonomyTV.

Using YouTube as a case study it looks at why social media had become such a phenomenom in the world by appealing to humans need for individualism and community. Interestingly the audience demographics for YouTube for over 35 are 25%, the same as 12 -17 year olds; the largest group is 18 -24 year olds at 50%.

It is an academic video so you may not wish to watch it all the way through but the first 20 minutes is a very entertaining introduction to Social Media with examples of the viral effects of videos in Youtube – look out for the dance with the prisoners from the Phillippines.

Also for those of you who want to really understand ‘what social networks mean’ without the technical jargon he provides a very clear way to explain it all

• YouTube is user generated content
• Digg is user generated filtering
• del.icio.us is user generated organisation
• Technorati is user generated commentary

Hope you enjoy it!

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Tim Berners-Lee says in an interview with Paul Miller that the Semantic Web – a crucial part of the Web 3.0 vision – is open for business.

“Wow,” I hear you say. “Web 3.0. The Semantic Web. Great … Err, what the **** does that actually mean?”

Well, the sainted Sir TBL puts it this way:

Web 2.0 is a stovepipe system. It’s a set of stovepipes where each site has got its data and it’s not sharing it. What people are sometimes calling a Web 3.0 vision [is] where you’ve got lots of different data out there on the Web and you’ve got lots of different applications, but they’re independent. A given application can use different data. An application can run on a desktop or in my browser, it’s my agent. It can access all the data, which I can use and everything’s much more seamless and much more powerful because you get this integration. The same application has access to data from all over the place.

Now in my view all data is content. What we are looking at is a future where you will be able to access all data (or content) from any device or any application anywhere. But that does not mean that the Facebook Vampires application will stalk you to the toilet or “private personal enhancement medication” emails will start tumbling out of your iPod. One of the key characteristics of what’s known as Web 2.0 has been the organising of data (content) to enhance relevance. As technology allows the universal sharing of data this trend towards completely targeted relevance will become even more pronounced.

It’s good to know that TBL believes William Gibson’s oft-quoted dictum: “The future is already here, it’s just unevenly distributed.”

A radical new online agency has been launched with a view to helping Scotland overcome its “digital deficit”.

Stewart Kirkpatrick Editor, Content Marketing Director of w00tonomy and award-winning editor of scotsman.com from 2000 to 2007, said: “We believe that Scotland’s online ecosystem is five years behind London and ten years behind where it could be. There are many very talented web and marketing professionals in our private and public sectors but for one reason and another that pool of talent has not led to the digital landscape that Scotland deserves.”

Kirkpatrick and his colleagues, two of Scotland’s leading online thinkers, Graham Jones and Tony Purcell, believe that Scotland needs a national discussion on how to rectify this situation. They believe that their content marketing agency offers a unique service and is well placed to lead the debate. Kirkpatrick said: “Scotland’s invention gave the world television, tarmac and penicillin. We have traditionally punched above our weight – and still do in the games market – but as a nation we have yet to get to grips with the opportunities of digital.”

“Imagine a world where every citizen could access every piece of information they needed wherever they were, whoever it was from in a way that was relevant, engaging and – most of all – interesting to that individual. Imagine too that they were then able to enter into a dialogue with the organisation that provided the information so that they felt involved and engaged with the service provided. Every message would be tailored to them, every point of contact would make them feel part of a community and every transaction would involve something far more meaningful than the simple exchange of cash.

“Thanks to the improvements in mobile phones and the evolution of the internet into a two-way discussion based on the sharing of information, all this is possible now. All we need to do is make it happen.”

About: Formed by three of Scotland’s leading online experts, w00tonomy is the first “content marketing” agency in Scotland and it represents the next evolutionary step in online marketing.

w00t: (Internet slang) Used to express joy, particularly that felt during success or victory. (From Wikipedia.) W00t was Merriam Webster’s “word of the year” in 2007.

-onomy: system of rules, laws, or knowledge about a particular field. (Also from Wikipedia.)

Why did we do this? because of the way we saw the internet moving. The first phase of the internet was really about technology, the second was about the visual element. But for now and for the future it is all about content, particularly with the launch of new mobile devices like the iphone.

Our experience has taught us that to reach target audiences clients need to build a relationship with them based on interesting and relevant content – not ads. This content must be developed over time in response to intelligence about how the audience behaves. This is at the heart our business – content marketing.

What we stand for: We believe that every client has a story to tell to every one of its customers – w00tonomy will tell that in a way that builds a long-term relationship with the online audience.

How we work: We use the changing online landscape to deliver and develop our clients’ message through high-quality creative content on next-generation platforms, and then give them bite-size intelligence about how it performs so it can be evolved.

How we are different: Traditional online marketing has focused on building a web or mobile site, uploading the client’s content and then (maybe) monitoring the traffic. The process ends there. But this approach fails to take into account how people and content behave – especially after Web 2.0. All content competes for attention with all other content – regardless of who publishes it. Our business is built on the realisation that clients now want to demonstrate real value from their online spend. Our directors boast decades of experience in editorial, strategic, technical, analytic and operational fields. We bring all components together to make your online presence effective. We will guide our clients on every stage of building a successful online strategy.

Stewart Kirkpatrick – Content Marketing Director
Stewart is Scotland’s leading content consultant, working for the Scottish Government on major projects. He was editor of scotsman.com from 2000 to 2007. In that time traffic increased ten-fold to 4 million unique users a month. The site became one of Google News’s top 30 worldwide news sources and was identified by Media Week as the sixth biggest news site in the UK. scotsman.com won the Newspaper Society’s New Media Award for Best Daily Newspaper Site in 2002, 2003 and 2006 and was shortlisted for numerous national and international journalism awards. Last year, Stewart, a member of the international committee of the Online News Association, was named as one of “the top 50 people shaping online journalism” by UK Press Gazette.

Tony Purcell – Online Strategy and Research Director
Tony is a pioneer of the Internet industry in Scotland and a serial entrepreneur. He founded Communicata in 1995, a company specialising in web application development. Along with developing web applications, the company produced promotional websites for a number of large corporates including Sony, Scottish & Newcastle, The WM Company, Newcastle United Football Club, General Accident and the SQA. In 1999 the company was listed in Oracle’s top 50 list of e-business solutions providers worldwide. In 2001 Tony founded CIVIC with Graham Jones which went on to become the leading digital agency in Scotland. CIVIC provides a wide range of web services to the public sector in Scotland and is a supplier to the Scottish Government. Tony is also a business mentor and represents the interactive industry on the Scottish Skillset industry panel.

Dr Graham Jones – Client Services & Planning Director
Graham was Managing Director of CIVIC, Scotland’s fastest growing Online Communications Agency from its inception, in August 2001 to Nov 2007. In this time the business grew from an initial £0.5m and 7 staff to £2m with a staff of 28 people. His responsibilities throughout this period were to provide the strategic vision and direction to meet the needs of a dynamic and rapidly growing marketplace. His responsibilities also included Client & project Management, contractual negotiations, managing legal risk, business development and marketing of the agency. He was successful in establishing a reputation for credibility and industry expertise with clients to the extent that CIVIC became trusted suppliers to the Scottish Government. Graham has also worked for 7 years in the software industry, 5 years at Edinburgh University as Research Associate & 4 years as a Management Accountant.