Mario Olckers

About Me

What I Do

I help companies or clients build and operate branded Web 2.0 communities. These online communities let customers, prospects, employees, or partners connect with each other and share content. At the core of my solution is an on-demand social media platform that combines the full range of Web 2.0 technologies—blogs, wikis, discussion groups, social networking, podcasts, RSS, tagging, photos, videos, mapping, etc.—with security, control, and content moderation. I build these features into complete communities for companies, clients use widgets to integrate Web 2.0 technologies into their own web properties. Companies and clients may utilize the services I provide to build brand loyalty, generate revenue, drive new forms of marketing, improve collaboration, encourage knowledge-sharing, and build a “corporate memory.”

Why Do I Do It

From the moment someone decides to share something with the world, there appear to be an overwhelming number of free blogging and social networking services out there.

The solutions I offer is targeted at a more professional and serious publisher; most notably small businesses and community ‘magazines’ (youth issues, music, social networking, NGO’s ) and newsletters, freelance journalists and graphic designers or programmers sharing their portfolios and personal brand online, with a personal domain name space of their choice.

From the moment they decide to register their preferred domain name with my company, I set up a custom Wordpress content management system (CMS) and optimize it for an optimal online media/marketing experience. Other options include Drupal, Joomla, Moodle or forums and wiki’s, depending on the client’s need.

At the consultation stage it is established what the client wants to say, about what, to whom. We will then identify the appropriate modality to get the message across and also which will facilitate a two-way conversation and feedback mechanism for today’s Social Networking world.

I register and host their chosen domain (subject to availability) on secure CentOS Linux servers:
Unlimited sub-domains
unlimited databases
and unlimited e-mails
make this the perfect solution for smaller magazines and community networks.

After a client’s domain has been registered, hosted, set up, configured, I offer further value added services like building and maintaining profiles on social networking/bookmarking sites (Facebook, Friendfeed, Twitter, StumbleUpon, del.icio.us, digg, MyBlogLog, YouTube, Flickr, Scribd, Slideshare et al).

Centered around their brand or product, clients enjoy the benefits of a personal tailor-made PR/marketing campaign leveraging the power of social media. By cross-linking each profile, aggregating them all in one place, and all of it linking back to the original domain, this is the perfect SEO strategy and it is targeted at specifically the network and related entities in the client’s industry.

Powerful tools including RSS feeds, widgets in the sidebar of clients’ blogs and building up link networks in their blogroll with their contacts and blog network, Google Adsense and tasteful animated banners of affiliates and advertising partners are all part of a strategy to promote/market/monetize the individual domain and it all cross-link and cross-feed into each member of a domain cluster.

Further, depending on the specific Wordpress/Drupal/Joomla/forum theme being used, custom headers, animated banner ads and strategic placement of quizzes, polls, competitions, shoutboxes etc (we provide the customized php code for widgets) can be placed on the website front page.

The era of New Media has also introduced the notion of a Social Media Press Release, with rich media incorporated into the central client asset in the form of video’s (YouTube, vimeo, blip.tv, qik, seesmic), podcasts (mp3 audio) and online presentations (Slideshare, Scribd, DocStoc, Google Docs etc) that can now all be incorporated and shared on the primary domain.

These are just some of the components of one integrated custom solution for a client’s brand or product. I also do graphic design and can design the custom animated banner ads in Adobe Photoshop CS2 (ImageReady), host it on my servers and provide the bit of code that is inserted anywhere the client has an affiliate advertising or marketing/networking/link exchange arrangement.

For a personal consultation, please use the following channels:

E-mail: mario [at] hogsback [dot] net

Mobile: + 27 83 515 4879 (International) or 083 515 4879 (local – South Africa)

GTalk/GMail chat: mario.olckers [at] gmail [dot] com

Skype: mario.olckers

Twitter: http://twitter.com/marioOlckers

LinkedIn: http://www.linked.com/in/marioolckers

Facebook: http://facebook.com/marioolckers