Reference Designer

Today I received the following email from Liveperson in my mailbox

Hello Experts!

The LivePerson Community Team has recently completed a pilot program for bold brief descriptions. The pilot was a success and the majority of participating Experts have seen an increase in traffic. We are now in the process of developing a fully automated, self-service system for you to add a bold brief description whenever you like. Until the new system is in place, we will be opening up the program to more Experts.

The bold upgrade will cost $100 for 1 month. Additional months will not be available for purchase at this time.

If you are interested in adding a bold brief description to your profile, click here to access the Profile Upgrades area. Availability is limited.

I am not sure if you will see an increase in traffic or any real benefit, that will jusify spending $100.  But one thing is sure, you can have more benefits by joining eZdia that may bring additional traffic to your profile without adding any additional cost to you.

Moreover, your eZdia profile can keep increasing with time as you add more content to your knowledge bucket. So join eZdia today and save $100.

freelancing ezdia, freelancing

Five New terms Coined by eZdia

eZdia uses new terms in Web 2.0 which many people find it new. I thought up of compiling these new lingo.  Familiarise yourself with these terms to take advantage of ezdia tools completely.

1. Knowledge Explorer

A knowledge explorer is a person who is searching for some knowledge. It also stands for someone who is looking for some expert who can provide him the “required knowledge”.  In freelancing world, a knowledge explorer is equivalent to a “Project Poster”.

2. Expert

The term is very much obvious but still needs some explanation. An expert in eZdia is also a freelancer who can provide his freelancing services to knowledge explorer.

3. Knowledge Bucket

The Experts of eZdia come across several article, more specifically, scholarly  articles they read on a daily basis. They can add these articles on their knowledge bucket. They do so, by adding the url of the article after clicking “Add to my Knowledge Bucket”. The “Knowledge” then becomes available to users when then they search with related terms.

Knowledge Bucket

4. Content Association

How do you know that an eZdia expert has expertise in a required field ? eZdia provides the answer efficiently using the concept of “Content Association”. A content association is similar to “bookmarking”.

The content association helps knowledge explorer find the right expert. From the expert point of view, it means that they are more searcheable for the expertise they possess.

5. Extended Resume

eZdia also coins the concept of extended resume. So how do you eztend your resume and what is its use ? Your normal resume is good if someone wishes to hire you on a full time basis. However, your traditional resume is not good enough for freelancing work. Any one willing to get his small work done has a narrow range of requirement. For example, if someone wishes to hire a regular expression expert in JAVA, a simple “Java” keyword is not sufficient to describe the expertise of of an expert.  On the other hand including the details of the “Regular Expression” expertise may not fit in the traditional resume.

eZdia has a novel concept of “extending” the resume. It uses the concept of knowledge bucket, content association and the connection to show the extended resume of and capability of an expert. This helps knowledge explorer in identifying the right expert or the right freelancer for his work.

Uncategorized ezdia, networking, seo

I am reading with passion a Businessweek article by Marianne Paskowski and found it appealing to me and I thought up of writing about it.

After hearing many people Marianne finally decided to make a profile at LinkedIN. She “contacted about a dozen of my LinkedIn connections, mostly from the TV industry and many of them reeling from recent layoffs at their companies, asking why they’re on LinkedIn and if they get any value out of their experience.”

“By and large, they told me, they do not.” Marianne adds in her article. To link or not to link is a quandry.

And that is the question I have in my mind. LinkedIn may not be useful in landing you a job directly from your contacts. But there is another platform that may suite you – eZdia. eZdia too, might not land you a full time job. But it can help you secure some trusted connection. You can get a freelancing work, that can sail you through the temporary periods of unemployment. If you are a person like me who has a get a lot of work done, you may like to check eZdia and find experts that are suitable to the work that you need to get done.

Will eZdia help you ? I am not sure. I am as unsure about it as Marianne Paskowski is about LinkedIn. The only answer is to go and join eZdia create a profile. eZdia is tailored more for securing freelancing jobs. You may have a better chance that LinkedIn.

Uncategorized ezdia, linkedIn

Trust, Freelancing, eZdia

I hate joining new websites. I absolutely do not like creating a new username and a new password. My time is important. I did not have a username or a password with LinkedIn or facebook years after they become popular. Because my time is important. And unless I see a value I do not join a website. And I ask you not to create a log in unless you are sure it will return some benefit to me. Somthing that will be useful to me in long term and I will continue to use it.

And one networking site that suites to my intellectual, professional and business perspective is eZdia . Why ? Any business starts with trust. And mutual interaction is based upon the mutual understanding and mutual trust. And how can you even start thinking whether to trust someone at all ?

eZdia provides some answer to this question. You CAN begin to trust someone on eZdia. Why ? How ? eZdia has specialized tool to encourage trustworthiness. It starts with the public profile of the person. You can veiw a person’s profile similar to what is available at LinkedIn. And then you have other tools. At eZdia, you can check the “Knowledge Bucket” of the person. The knowledge bucket will reflect the person’s personality. I have written elsewhere about the novel concept of Knowledge Bucket somewhere else. Beyond knowledge bucket, you can seek help from the expert. Most persons are ready to help you. And the help extended from the expert forms the basis of the trust. eZdia provides several ways to seek communications, including messaging and chat. Do use these tools to build up trust.

And when you build up a trust you rate a person. This rating system works in a similar fashion that sellers and buyers at ebay work. You can check a person’s rating even before you start communicating with him.

eZdia is not a social networking site. eZdia is more of a Professional networking site.  Think of eZdia as a place where you can build  network which revolves around your professional life. eZdia is great for a person like me who wants to get works done from freelancers.

And if you are a freelancer, start building trust at eZdia. Start showing your knowledge by helping others. And when there is a trust, the freelancing works flow to you.

Enough said about trust and eZdia. Head over to eZdia , build a profile and invite few people to join it. Make your profile look professional. Add something in your knowledge bucket. Communicate with your friends and give and take recommendations. Believe me, eZdia will give back to you for many years to come.

Uncategorized ezdia, linkedIn, marketing, seo

Have you ever wondered why a linkedIN page comes on google page when we search for a name. For an example when I search for Deepak Goyal, I get a LinkedIn page on the top of google. Let us take a look at how LinkedIn optimizes the page for Search Engine Friendliness.

Title

Look at the title (top left of the picture below) of LinkedIN page of Vikas Shukla. It could have been “LinkedIN – Vikas  Shukla”, or simply “LinkedIN”.

What is the use of placing “Vikas Shukla” at the title ? Well google gives some degree of emphasis on the keyword that appear on the title of a page. LinkedIN now wishes to optimize this page for the keyword – which is person’s name. So it does not write “LinkedIN” at title – it writes “Vikas Shukla”.

The URL

Now take a look at the url of this page.

The URL could have been http://www.linkedin.com/pub/1100456/7/b08/365 in place of http://www.linkedin.com/pub/vikas-shukla/7/b08/365. The programmers would have liked it. It would have been quick and easy. Why the hell these guys making the life of programmer difficult ? The answer is google loves it. If you want to have a page on the top of google for a given keyword, that that keyword must be a part of the url.

Name Repetition -

Count the number of times “Vikas Shukla” appears on this page. Ask you 6 year old son how many times your name appear on your linkedIn profile page. I may be wrong. But I counted  it and it appears 11 time. Why ? By repeateadly repeating the name, they make this a Keyword. So,  when anyone searches with that name, this page comes to top.

Metawords

Now right click on the LinkedIN profile page and click on “view source”. Look for

meta name="description" content="View VIKAS SHUKLA's professional profile on LinkedIn.
 LinkedIn is the world's largest business network, helping professionals like
VIKAS SHUKLA discover inside connections to recommended job candidates,
 industry experts, and business partners."

Do you notice that the bloody “Vikas Shukla” keeps appearing everywhere. This time I will not answer.

Conclusion

It is important that we place emphasis on the architecture and design of the website early in the design stage. Involve a SEO expert to get his expert views. Tulsana provides expert SEO services to its clients. You may like to contact Tulsana for any of your SEO needs.

By the way this profile and this picture is not mine.

Vikas Shukla

seo ezdia, linkedIn, seo

Knowledge is essential part of life. And internet is inseparable from knowledge. To gain knowledge, you browse at home, you search for knowledge at work. You even use smart phone to search and store your knowledge. Not all the knowledge is worthy of keeping. In fact, most of them are garbage, fit for not being visited again. However, once in a while you come across a relevant link or a website, you would to have some kind of bucket or a storage area where you can keep the link of the url you visited. Storing the url in the bookmark of browser has the disadvantage that you loose these bookmark when you change the computer or the device. Hence there is a need of a bucket or an online bookmarking  service.

In this article I will be covering 5 online bookmarking tools.

eZdia

To state that eZdia is a social bookmarking website is an underestimate of what eZdia can or does. But online social bookmarking, called “knowledge bucket” in eZdia’a lingo is one of its most important functions. eZdia intergrates the knowledge bucket with search functions. It also associate “you”, the expert, with  your knowledge bucket. eZdia then takes it to next higher level by making your knowledge bucket available to public, so that everyone knows your areas of expertise. eZdia is a powerful tool. Use is to bookmark all the topics relevant to you. In future your knowledge bucket will reflect your personality. People will know you with your knowledge bucket. And you carry the knowledge with you.

Delicious

Owned by yahoo,  Delicious is by far the most popular social bookmarking tool out there. It is very easy to use, very popular and it also has a large number of users. Its huge community base makes it a very valuable tool.However its set of features is not very rich.

The search engine in delicious has some advanced options.  You can search within one of your tags, another user’s public bookmarks, or your Delicious network. Delicious makes it easier to take advantage of the expertise of your Delicious friends and the Delicious community. Delicipous is popular among the common users. Once reason for this is its simplicity.

Furl

Furl was launched in 2003 at around the same time many other bookmarking websites were  launched.

One good feature of Furl is that it not only saves your bookmarks, but also archives a copy of the page you bookmark.You can then  search within your archived items. This is a very powerful tool. Users have a lot of storage space which makes it possible to store a large number of items.

Furl provides recommedations. These are web pages that may interest you, based on the sites you’ve already saved.
The most powerful tool of furl is its group tool. Furl allows you to start a group or join existing group. Furl will also recommend groups to you based on your bookmarks. Furl also lets you send a daily email newsletter of links to friends and colleagues. This can be a useful feature to advertise yourself.

Mister Wong

Mister Wong is different from other bookmarking sites in that,it is multilingual. Mister Wong was developed in Germany and is Europe’s largest bookmarking service. Mister Wong is available in Gernam,English, Russian, Chinese, Spanish, and French.

Mister wong stores a thumbnail of the webpage you visited when you bookmark it. In some cases, thumbnail will be too small to derive anything meaningful. In such case, it is possible to view tha larger preview pop up by pointing the mouse to the icon next to bookmark title. This is a good tool for users who prefer to work with images in place of text. You can also use a star icon to make a bookmark your top bookmark . Mister Wong does not support groups. You can however share bookmarks through a network of friends, called  Buddies in Mister Wong lingo.

Simpy

Simpy allows you to  stores notes in addition to storing your bookmarks. It also allows you to serach your notes or your bookmarks. The notes are private to you. You can also search your own bookmarks or others. When you bookmark a link, Simpy allows you to send the bookmarked link to a friend. You need to give a simpy username an email address to do that. Simpy does supports groups.

Related Articles

New trends in freelancing
10 Freelancing websites for you
How to secure a freelancing job
The Concept of Knowledge Bucket and Content Association in eZdia
5 ways you can use ezdia
Professional Networking and Freelancing
LinkedIn Vs Facebook Vs eZdia
Inefficiencies in Freelancing platform

Author

Vikas Shukla is currently working as Senior Design Engineer at BL Healthcare. He has degree in Computer Science and Engineering from IT-BHU, Varanasi, India. Mr. Shukla has over 15 years of experience in design of microprocessor-based systems. His expertise includes signal integrity, architecture and design of remote patient monitoring systems. The views expressed are his own.

internet marketing bookmark, ezdia, freelance