WHY THESE ADS?

Wikipedia wishes to solicit  ”small gift” donations to raise money, and more importantly, avoid the imposition that often accompanies “big gift” donors. My solution is simple, Wikipedia needs to add a Flattr button.

ADD A FLATTR BUTTON

Instead of running these ads, which Gen Y laughs at, they should take a different approach. They shoud speak to Gen Y in their langauge.

They should add a Flattr button to the top right of their posts. It takes up much less space than an advertisement, is less intrusive, and people will be intrigued by it. Flattr isn’t a well known service (although it should be).

I imagine that the click through rate on a Flattr button would be much higher than the advertisements that Wikipedia is currently running. This is because the Flattr button is mysterious and unfamiliar. People want to know what this new social button is. They will click on it, set up an account, and then need a place to test it out.

There is your donation right there.

CONCLUSION

If Wikipedia is looking for small gift donations Flattr is the perfect partner. They should put a Flattr button on each page, help launch a new micro-payment platform, and in the process possibly raise some money without the annoyance of running ads.

Wikipedia could even keep the Flattr button up indefinitely. It is a less aggressive way of saying, “Hey, I like to provide you with this content, but could you help by contributing a little bit every so often.”

Edit Note:  Also, by utilizing a button with a counter it identifies that others have given, thus influencing others to give. This is something that the current ads fail to achieve.

STEP ONE – ADD THE JAVASCRIPT

The first thing you need to do when adding a Flattr button to your self-hosted WordPress site is add this little snippet of code to your footer.

<script type="text/javascript">
/* <![CDATA[ */
    (function() {
        var s = document.createElement('script'), t = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0];

        s.type = 'text/javascript';
        s.async = true;
        s.src = 'http://api.flattr.com/js/0.6/load.js?mode=auto';

        t.parentNode.insertBefore(s, t);
    })();
/* ]]> */
</script>

STEP TWO – UNDERSTAND THE BUTTON CODE

After you have added the above code to your footer to enable the javascript you can add the code that will output the button.

For the most part this code looks like regular html but it also has some random parameters in the middle. Here is what the code looks like before you populate the parameters.

<a class="FlattrButton" style="display:none;"
    title=""
    rev="flattr;uid:USER-ID;category:MEDIA-CATEGORY;tags:TAGS;"
    href="PAGE-URL"

    A DESCRIPTION OF THE CONTENT

</a>

STEP THREE – ADDING THE PARAMETERS

As you can see, we need to populate certain areas with the appropriate information. To do this we can use the built in WordPress template tags to output the various parameters needed. The tags I used are as follows.

• TITLE –>  php the_title(); ?>
• URL –>  php the_permalink(); ?>
• DESCRIPTION –>  php the_excerpt(); ?>
• TAGS –>  php
  $posttags = get_the_tags();
  if ($posttags) {
  foreach($posttags as $tag) {
  echo $tag->name . ‘,  ’;
  }
  }
  ?>

<a class="FlattrButton" style="display:none;"
	    title="<?php the_title(); ?>"
	    rev="flattr;uid:USER-ID;category:text;tags:<?php
		$posttags = get_the_tags();
		if ($posttags) {
		foreach($posttags as $tag) {
		echo $tag->name . ', &nbsp;';
		    }
		}
		?>;"
	    href="<?php the_permalink(); ?>"

    <?php the_excerpt(); ?>
	</a>

I’m sure everyone has friends that fit into each of these categories. I think from a social media marketing perspective this slideshow can really help marketers get to the essence of how their content is being shared, and thus help them cater their content to make it more shareable among the types of people they are targeting.

The Depth and breadth of Yoast’s commitment to this plugin is remarkable, and he continues to give it away for free. Others have gone so far as to blatantly plagiarize his code in an attempt to commercialize it because they know they can’t come up with a better alternative. My reasoning here. 

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