In my advocacy of the Semantic Web, I have suggested that you start on the task of making your web site Semantic Friendly by placing your credentials front and center. It pairs up well with the Social Media movement. By RDFizing and structuring your resume, it conforms to what is going on with other entities such as LiveJournal, LinkedIn, etc.

The whole idea behind Social Media and marketing yourself and your business is the fact that you must start or develop a conversation which is that relationship between the business and the customer. Unlike other Internet tasks such as affiliate marketing, search marketing, search engine optimization, usability, email marketing, etc, which has more to do with closing a sale or completing a transaction, one would hope the prerequisite of initiating and cultivating the conversation would lead toward consummation of more transactions.

Make Your Opening now toward a healthier business by getting your credentials linked on the Semantic Web.

When I took my university courses in computer programming a classic exercise was learning to arrive to a problem solution through a trick called recursion. Example games where this technique was applied are Queens Eight Chess or the Towers of Hanio. (To understand the object of the game see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eight_queens_puzzle). Essentially you would write code that would follow through a path of moves and at each move test to see if you arrived at a solution. If that move was not a solution, your code would call back into itself repeating to the next square on the board. When it finds a solution, it backs out through the recursion and finds another path to go up. It sustains itself until it finds all the optimal answers such as the 8 positions the Queens must finally land on the board resulting in the perfect solution to the puzzle.

If you can image, this may be similar to your constant efforts to reinvent yourself in your line of business. Recursive marketing means you are trying new and innovative ideas to sustain your competitive advantage. Some paths are productive, some maybe mediocre or perhaps you are just matching the competition. So, you back up and try something different until you hit upon a solution that makes your competitor’s jaw drop to the floor.

I purchased one of the very first ever FAX computer adapter cards back in the late 80’s early 90’s, plugged my phone line in and started pumping out resumes from my Desktop for a very competitive position. Few geeks in my industry had these cards at the time let alone to think about applying for a job via this means. My phone started ringing off the hook. The resume was on top of the pile on the recruiters desk because it was first in the door, way in advance of other applicants. I had a competitive advantage and was early to the job. This was before job boards and email resume blasters. I was always trying something new and creative and I still do today.

In the real estate business or any business for that matter, your credentials are extremely important not only as customer facing information, but as well as to employers or vendors. Job boards are passe today and not very effective (my personal opinion), so now you have the specialty boards trying to charge monthly or annual fee. And as you all very well know the next thing is online social linking and networking. But, I just never get the very warm fuzzy feeling with respect to concrete results. So I keep looking for ways to reinvent myself in front of my customers.

In this age of Web 2.0 barely anyone understands what this is all about. How do I use it? How do I install it? What is it going to do for me? How does it compare or save me money against what I am shelling out already for search engine ranking? The terminology is just over powering (Semantic Web, Linked Data, RDF) and the list goes on.

Another, yet little known idea is emerging called “Expert Finding”. Now by gosh I want to be in on this because that is what I am selling. I continually hone my skills. And if you are going to fall into recursive marketing, you have to be open and forward thinking even if the techie stuff hurts your brain.

So, I am going to suggest to your forward thinking part of your brain a way to kill 2 birds with 1 stone. Both of these suggestions are complimentary and are not mutually exclusive.

1.Embark upon making your web site a Web 2.0 site with structured data.
2.Create a structured resume, a Semantic Web Friendly CV.

I will show you how I did it and how it looks. Remember, the whole purpose here it to have the Expert Finders find you first, directly and not have to look through a pile of clutter.

Go to my commercial real estate web site at http://www.propertyclubpro.com and click on the link called “John Wubbel Consultancy”. I have only 2 files on the web server called “Friend Of A Friend” or foaf.rdf and resume.rdf.

As the “John Wubbel Consultancy” page loads you will notice I am leveraging an Internet resource or tool from Zitgist. This is their Semantic Web browser or dataviewer. These RDF files are normally only used for machine to machine processing and semantic search engines. However, this wonderful resource from Zitgist gives a faceted view of foaf.rdf with a Google Map mashup, my photo and initial details. Consequentially, you gleen some knowledge about me. The Zitgist browser figured out “Linked Data”, (there is one of those strange terms), a link to my CV. View the bottom of the page and click on the resume hyperlink and the Zitgist browser analyses resume.rdf and allows you to learn more about me. Perhaps you can see how the web is the open database.

Now I am not so concerned that the format is not as pretty as my Word Processed PDF hard copy because I know that the knowledge bound in my resume as structured data will be specifically searchable on the Semantic Web by the Expert Finders.

My web site is now on the way to becoming a Web 2.0 site that is a landmark in the free space of the Internet. A Semantic Web Friendly CV is my newest recursive marketing move, an innovation to gain the edge on the competition, a respectable and subtle way for a customer to find the right person for the job and an opportunity to work on and close a sale.

John Wubbel
jwubbel@propertyclubpro.com