Even with the largest social networks, to me, it’s the little things that count.

Although I’m usually knee-deep in the latest toys of social media, I like LinkedIn. Yes, you heard me. For all the criticism that LinkedIn receives, I find it to be one of the most stable social sites, consistently growing, and abound with reliable information. But, back to the little things, the ones which really make Linkedin special to me.

Just yesterday I noticed an email update they had sent my way, offering an abbreviated insight into my networks recent activities. Something I just noticed (thanks to these Linkedin Updates!) is the ability to now “send congratulations” – a good idea and excellent addition to the site.

Now, every site has things about a contact’s birthday, offering the options of sending them a quick gift or dropping them a message, but here LinkedIn capitalizes on its strengths by focusing on something entirely relevant to its network, letting you click through to a message congratulating your connection on their new position. It’s the kind of thing that stops you in your workflow tracks and makes you take action.

LinkedIn is finally getting with the program socially as well. They have recently integrated with Twitter and opened their app platform to their developer network. Expect good things from LinkedIn for 2010.

What are the little things in social media that you’ve noticed that have stuck out for you? Tell us in the comments.

Facebook just started adding an option for your brand pages to choose your audience visibility on wall postings:

Fan page country and language choice

While this may seem like not that big a deal, think of the possibilities. Users targeting multiple countries and languages can now have multi-purpose brand pages that can reach all, rather than making smaller, localized one-off versions of the brand page.

It will be interesting to see what direction Facebook goes with this functionality – imagine what you could do if it was brought to a city/state/region/mile radius level. Would this challenge the Facebook Ad network too much? We shall see.

Just yesterday I published a post that bluntly criticizes the many shortcomings of StumbleUpon. A few hours ago I got the first reaction by StumbleUpon staff. No, they didn’t ask me how they can help me, a self proclaimed StumbleUpon engineer send me a death threat.

Death threats on StumbleUpon have been pretty common over the years but now we know why they never tackled the issue, they send out death threats themselves.

Also this person, who uses only a pseudonym “benadamx”, and who obviously never has heard of me before, calls me a “spammer” and “SEO scammer”.

Here is what he wrote [sic!]:

.. dead to spammers and SEO scammers, anyway.

Viva StumbleUpon!

Now this is what I call customer service! They never replied when I complained about death threats unless I suggested to write an article about it for Mashable. Now we know why.

Related posts:

1. StumbleUpon Adds SEO Category
2. StumbleUpon Traffic Stopped
3. The Most Important Thing on StumbleUpon: Do Not Pose as, Be a Legit User

We’ve all seen it. What once worked in social media six months ago doesn’t work now. Why, for instance, does a large following on Twitter no longer indicate influence? Or why is blogging no longer as impressive as it was in 2003? Both these examples follow a predictable economic formula:

As “x” social behaviour multiplies, its social value approaches zero.

Let me break that down for you. The more you do the same thing, people’s appreciation of it lessens. The more you do the same song and dance, don’t be surprised if your audience dwindles. This should be obvious, but it’s not.

LiveJournal: An Example

Most of us think of LiveJournal as the walking corpse of the social media world, but it wasn’t always so. It was one of the first platforms to combine blogging with social networking. More fascinatingly, people who had a LiveJournal felt it gave them status: in order to have one, you had to be invited.

Then it happened. Danga Interactive, LiveJournal’s parent company, removed the invite requirement. Soon everyone who wanted one could have one. This was the beginning of the end.

The problem was everyone wrote about the same things: breakfast, cute kittens, and favourite movies. LiveJournal succeeded in the task of being a journal, but as the novelty of public journalling wore off, so did its perceived value. Soon, users left LiveJournal for the unique feature set of MySpace — and we all know what happened to MySpace.

State of the Social Media Union

Most popular social media tools have their time in the sun then go through a slow rigor mortis. Usenet was once the reason people paid for Internet. Chatrooms were how people dated online. MySpace was a “place for friends”. What happened?

Everyone was doing it, and everyone was behaving the same way. Usenet became so burnt out over flame wars, the term “troll” was coined and “Godwin’s Law” became a law. The acronym “ASL” became such an overused greeting in chatrooms, their very purpose became sexual gratification. As for MySpace, “making friends” became the basis of many a Catch a Predator episode.

We are seeing the same pattern of behavior happen on Twitter, Digg, and Facebook — and if people keep doing the same things, those social networks will soon have less social value than they currently have now.

How Can We Add Value?

The social media slide into rigor mortis is not inevitable. The only way to reverse the lessening of social value is to give your audience value. That is to say, behave in a different way from everyone else. If a platform is flexible enough for innovative forms of communication, and if communities are courageous enough to move beyond their own cliches, social media can thrive.

Want to remain relevant in social media? Behave differently.

Best Holiday Movie EVER

‘Tis the season to be selling. So many sites make a large percentage of their income during these last 6 weeks of the year. For some, it’s even make-or-break–especially with the year we’ve had. For those of you who spend your day running a business instead of PPC accounts, here is a brief rundown of what you can expect to see in your PPC accounts when you do have time to check them:

More competition: This is probably the most obvious, but you need to consider what more competition means.

• Higher costs per click
• Lower click-through rates
• Budgets that dry up before you realize it

This year I have seen a huge drop in click prices almost across the board. I suspect that people that not only did they get smarter with what keywords they were bidding on, but that they lowered their monthly budgets to build up their year-end war chest. If this is correct, then it means you can expect much fiercer competition at levels that seem outright ridiculous. Click costs can rise 2-3x within days, and if you don’t respond in kind your traffic will disappear as your ads are relegated to page 3 of results. But don’t forget to raise daily budgets, otherwise your money will be spent much faster due to the more expensive clicks eating up that money.

Keep an eye on daily budgets and Impression Share: In Google you can run an account report and view impression share as a selectable metric. Right now I want you to login into your account and run this report broken down by months for the entire year. Look at your average impression share. Review this information daily during your busy season to make sure this number doesn’t drop off . If you see it declining, consider raising your daily budgets.

TIP: If your campaign settings are set to accelerated spend, meaning Google will serve your ads as often as possible until your budget is depleted, then you can run an hourly impression report to see what time of day your ads typically go offline. By doing some simple math you can determine how underfunded your accounts are to achieve an 80-90% impression share (you’ll never achieve 100%). If you can afford to increase your budgets to to achieve the higher impression rate and get more traffic, then you should see a spike in your conversions (assuming your conversion rate stays constant)

Watch out for competitors bidding on your Trademarked terms: Competitors will try to steal your branded traffic. Some will bid on your name, and others will even include your name in their ads. If you have a registered trademark, and you see a competitor using your name or the keyword insert function on your TM as a bidded term, you can file a complaint to Google and they will shut down the ad. In Yahoo you can have competitors banned from advertising on that term all together. In both cases you will need your trademark registration number for the engines to even talk to you about this complaint.

Lower Conversion Rates, Followed by Higher Conversion Rates: If you’re a retailer, this will drive you mad for the first week or two of the holiday season. Consumers will spend a lot of time shopping across various sites getting gift ideas and looking for the best deals. This means that conversion rates typically drop. However, two weeks into the season you’ll start seeing the conversion rate jump. Once this happens be ready to boost your campaign budgets to capture as much of that traffic as you can.

Huge Traffic Spikes from Shopping Engines: If you’re not on Google Base, Shopzilla, Nextag, Become.com, and many of the other shopping sites yet, open accounts now. Google base is free, and if you ask nicely you may get your Google Base and AdWords account linked, so some product images will show up in your ads. It’s a limited beta that may be closed, but if you can get in the click-through rates will be phenomenal.

Lastly, keep an eye on the content network. If you are running any ads on any of the engine’s networks, stay focused on the conversion rate. Kill it as soon as the conversion rates drop (which it usually does, but not always) and transfer that money to search.

Next week I’ll discuss how to get the most out of the shopping engines. Here’s a hint: You rarely want to promote your best product.

In what may be the first of its kind in the social media world, the little used and subscribed Football (/r/football) subreddit of Reddit.com was overthrown by the Soccer (/r/soccer) subreddit. Though things seem to have died down, yesterday’s events can only be described as a social media coup.

The argument over “Football” and “Fútbol” will go on for eternity, but I never expected it lead to this. The thuggish Redditors (we’re teasing of course) from the disgruntled Soccer subreddit began their barrage yesterday evening, submitting every link relevant to their sport they could find while simultaneously down-voting any stories relevant to Handegg. With only 143 members frequenting the Football subreddit and Soccer’s laying claim to more than 1,500, it was a quick rout. I mean, honestly, we Americans shouldn’t expect the fans of the world’s most popular sport to rename Fútbol in order maintain its distinction from our own Football. As a commenter on Reddit mentioned, perhaps we should just learn to pronounce their sport with the accent and the affronted /r/soccer subscribers should get in touch with user carlosmiguelp, the lone and inactive moderator of the Futbol subreddit.

Speaking of moderators, this never would have happened if the moderator for the Football subreddit had been around to man his post. He’s another inactive user. This brings up a serious issue: Should Reddit ultimately have some power over its user-created subreddits? An ability to pass on moderator duties in instances like these? We’ll do some investigating as there are certainly plenty of subreddits with defunct moderators, open to some form of gaming or manipulation, not just the Football subreddit. Reddit should take some moderation measures and start governing the few mishaps like these. It would give dead subreddits like Football a chance to thrive while also protecting them from manipulation and containing content unintended for inclusion by their absentee creators.

Dead End is a Creative Commons image by Benny Lin

StumbleUpon is dead. Read my story first and then the 12 reasons.

It was long ago, probably a year or more, that I have stopped recommending StumbleUpon for business users or “getting traffic”, at least when using means actively participating on the site and using the toolbar. It doesn’t work that way if it ever has.

Unlike on Twitter neither self submission nor friends’ votes count on SU so it’s even better not to join or to engage with others on the site in order not to render your and their votes worthless.

StumbleUpon only sends stumblers your way when a random complete stranger having no connection to you whatsoever votes for you.

This is how the system works.

Now I’m a man of habit. I just get used to things. Also I like sharing so I still used StumbleUpon privately for discovering and sharing things. I liked the idea of being able to share environmental, artistic or self improvement finds with a lot of subscribers (I have over 800 of them) plus automatically with the followers of my followers. At least this is the way StumbleUpon was meant to work. It doesn’t.

After the new design has been introduced SU started to display how many views your stumbles get. I noticed that most of my discoveries get only one view, yes, that’s a “1″. That made me kind of sad as I discover stuff quite often and I wanted to make it known and support the respective activists, artists or bloggers. Instead I basically sabotaged their sites as they never got any visitors from SU after I discovered them.

At first I assumed that I did something wrong, like writing not enough reviews or not including images or discovering the wrong content or topics. I changed everything in trial and error and even tried some highly popular stuff from elsewhere, to no avail. Most of my submissions get just 1 view.

Why should I waste my time submitting stuff to a site that does not send any of the stuff to my followers at the same time penalizing webmasters for being submitted to it?

Then I suspected a penalty on my profile due to being a writer for a SEO blog as the topic SEO is still considered “evil” on StumbleUpon even after the introduction of an SEO category earlier this year. Everybody writing about SEO is a suspected spammer according to this misguided opinion. Also I have been very vocal in the fight against the omnipresent content theft on StumbleUpon. SU is full of stolen images, indeed stolen images tend to be the most popular discoveries on SU. Maybe the many content thieves I thumbed down and gave a bad review flagged me or something?

So I kept checking other people’s profiles and looking at how many views their discoveries get. I was surprised to find out that most people who have many views on their discoveries rarely discover anything. The more you discover the less visitors your discoveries get it seems. Plus the number of stumbles or friends has no positive impact on the power to reach people. I have 17k stumbles and 800+ subscribers but nobody ever sees my dsicoveries. It’s the other way around, the more friends you got the less other non-related strangers are there to push your discovery. In some niches there aren’t many at all so subscribing to most of them means Stumble suicide.

1. Most discoveries get buried by the system and won’t get seen anybody beside yourself – “1 View” phenomenon
2. In a bizarre logic the more friends you have the less traffic your discoveries get, only votes by strangers count
3. Content theft abounds and gets most popular while the sites of the original artists or photographers get no credit or traffic
4. Business usage is officially banned in the TOS, as a business owner you are only allowed to advertise not
5. Sites you like the most get the least traction as submitting the same source more than once gets your vote devalued
6. You actually hurt people by discovering their sites or blogs as they can’t get any traffic in most cases
7. For inspiration there are far better sites like image bookmarking services FFFOUND! and Dropular
8. For business use and to spread the message Twitter is by far the better choice for sharing Tumblr is far better than SU
9. Old, completely outdated posts often get pushed by the SU system while new ones get ignored, hoaxes from 2003 for example
10. You can’t block the infamous StumbleUpon trolls via htaccess anymore as everybody uses the same home URL now
11. You can’t browser stumbles by categories anymore, I used to browse the architecture stumbles but now I can’t even find them
12. The SU categories are broken. A wrong categorization means in most cases the death of a submission though

This is not a post to whine about StumbleUpon treating me bad or something. It’s just a post that warns you not to follow my advice from 2007 and early 2008 when I hailed SU as the new messiah of the Web.

In 2009 Twitter has become both the most important social sites and source of traffic, StumbleUpon is a dinosaur.

SU hates busiess users and has an algorithm that effectively stifles both sharing and socializing. StumbleUpon is dead and I personally switched to Twitter for business usage more than a year ago while I switched last week to Tumblr for

• inspiration
• community
• social discovery
• and sharing.

I won’t make the same mistake again using Tumblr for business so that my account there will remain completely private.

Now you might say: I still get traffic from SU by the thousands. Me too, but it doesn’t have anything to do with me. Just last week I got 1k visitors to a post with just 2 thumbs up by complete strangers. On the other hand most of my friends waste their time and votes when they vote for me on SU.

This post is not a pull a Calacanis type of linkbait. Who am I baiting, Stumblers? LOL. It’s just a warning to my readers and followers. Also I ask you to follow me elsewhere:

1. Twitter
2. FriendFeed
3. Delicious
4. LinkedIn
5. Browzmi

You still want the social browsing experience with me? Use Browzmi! It has been largely deserted but it still gets your more views than the “1″ from SU. Btw. I could have come up with more than 12 reasons to abandon StumbleUpon but I don’t want waste any more time with it.

Read my other posts on the broken categories on StumbleUpon which still haven’t been fixed, content theft and other SU annoyances. Also make sure you know how to use Twitter instead.

Does SU still work you for business or private use? In case you aren’t in the most awesomely amazing creative content theft business tell me how you do use it.

Many other former fellow stumblers and other long time users tend to agree with me:

• Has StumbleUpon Jumped the Shark?
• StumbleUpon Can Kiss My Ass
• StumbleUpon Sucks
• i hate stumbleupon right now
• StumbleUpon – The Art of Alienating Users

Last but not least: I apologize all the green activists, bloggers, artist and designers for discovering their stuff and basically banning these pages on SU. Mea culpa! StumbleUpon is dead. In short: I’m simply sick and tired of all tha content theft crap and discovering stuff nobody ever sees.

Related posts:

1. StumbleUpon: 21 Questions to Ask Yourself Before Submitting
2. 12 Reasons Why Browzmi is the Best of StumbleUpon, Twitter & Mixx Combined +++
3. How (Not) to Pitch Me on StumbleUpon

Social media gives us the ability to practice in public more than ever before. Is this a good thing or a bad thing?

If you’ve ever read The Cult of the Amateur by Andrew Keen (I just finished reading it), you get a pretty clear read on what he thinks of most user-generated content: very little. His concerns range from the welfare of professional content creators (who are losing out to massive quantities of amateur content) to the disintegration of Western civilization by narcissistic neophytes who post amateur videos and pictures on Facebook, YouTube and MySpace whilst reducing their (and our?) collective IQs. If you buy his arguments, there are some pretty serious problems that Web 2.0 and social media have to be held accountable for.

But the rise of the amateur isn’t one of them. Amateurs have always been around. They’re just more visible now.

There’s no doubt that modern Web technologies have made it monumentally easier to create content in a fraction of the time that it used to take to create audio programs, short movies, or magazine articles. There’s definitely a plethora of user-generated content (the term often used to described all of the comments, articles, videos, posts, etc. made available on ostensibly free websites) on the Web and yes, some of it stinks. Some of it is excellent and there’s probably a big pile of stuff in the middle that’s mediocre at best. 

A lot of crap was made prior to Web 2.0 as well. Tons and tons of it. There may have been less amateur content in years past than there is now because the enabling technologies that make it a snap to publish photos, videos, blogs, and podcasts didn’t exist or weren’t affordable a decade ago. But it was certainly around.

Amateur video. Homemade comedy cassettes. Fanzines. APAzines. Community theatre. Community-access TV. College radio. Open mike nights at comedy clubs.

There have always been places for the unpaid creator to practice their avocation. There have always been people who slave over these hobbies because, well, they’re fun things to do. Funny thing: many of them went on to become bona fide professionals, earning a living using the skills that they developed during their hobbies. The production of dreck is an accepted side-effect of practicing and honing your skills as you try to become better.

The only major change is that people can now practice in public on a much larger scale than the previous generation could ever have done. They do stuff for free because they love to and because they see it as a means to an end, the next step on a long, daring journey to mastery.

Alternatives to mainstream media have always existed but social media, Web 2.0, and high speed Internet have made it easier than before to publish. 

I don’t deny that social media has allowed some content to come to light that might have been better buried in a locked drawer somewhere out of reach. But I don’t think that giving the amateur a chance to air his or her work in public is, at heart, a bad thing. I think it’s a great opportunity for people who have dreamed of a chance to reach a larger audience. It may make for a noisier world and it may force professionals to turn things up a notch to compete, but the enabling technologies are here to stay. The genie’s out of the bottle; might as well enjoy the ride.

Image by rhurtubia

While practicing in public, Mark Dykeman writes at Broadcasting Brain and other fine blogs. You can find him on Twitter when he least expects it.

As a known Social Media enthusiast, I’m privy to a ton of information. I stand on the sidelines of various Social Media realms and watch as drama unfolds. I find that it’s usually the best thing to do when two opposing forces in Social Media go head to head. It’s not that I’m disloyal, don’t get me wrong, but rather that I prefer to not get involved. “Jay not get involved? Since when is Jay a pacifist? I thought Jay was a Marine!” Well, yeah, I choose which battles to fight, especially when it comes to elite Diggers throwing down on each other.

I refuse to name names, that wouldn’t be classy of me. I am, however, going to give a run down on how the battle has been fought; it’s actually been quite interesting.

It all started with Google. Yeah, you heard right, Google. Google has been posting Sesame Street / Google Logos all week to celebrate Sesame Street’s 40th anniversary. As anyone who is an internet junkie knows, Google tends to do this sort of thing to celebrate milestones or holidays.

One Digger, with a good ratio I might add, had been placing these images on his site, and submitting the new image each day to Digg from his site. Another Digger saw it but had also submitted the image directly from Google. The first Digger (Digger A) cried Dupe! In doing so he went after the other Digger (Digger B) and reported the image to Digg. Well, things got real nasty.

Name calling ensued in a chat and before you know it Digger A got Digger B banned. A fine line was crossed in the whole ordeal. Digger A was posting the images on his site, some people calling him out for “Blogspam,” but he considered the images a place holder as Google would change them everyday. Digger B, being an old school Digger, had linked to the original source. Digger A did not care, he was mad over the whole dupe ordeal. Things escalated sverely after that.

With the banning of Digger B, being an old school Digger, things did not look well for the upstart. I even shot a friendly warning to Digger A. “Hey man, he is old school, watch your step, his loyalties run deep.” I guess my warning fell on deaf ears. The name calling and threats continued. Digger A then lashed out at other people in the chat who were making lighthearted jokes about the situation. With a line in the sand already drawn, my advice would have been not to upset everyone else.

Elsewhere, other old-school Diggers heard of Digger B’s banning at the hands of Digger A. Things do not look well for Digger A. Yesterday his account was banned from Digg, his site is under DDOS attack, a satire blog has been erected to forever mock him and a lot of people in the Social Media Community are upset with him.

You guys still with me on the whole A/B thing?

Many mistakes were made during this dis-agreement.

1. If you do have an issue with someone’s submission, especially a dupe, approach the individual who duped you. If the individual will not take down his submission, make a friendly game out of. (Okay, first one to the FP wins, loser buys a beer at next meet up.)

2. Social Media or Social News Sites are just that, Social! Play well with others. Do not soil your name and give yourself a bad reputation.

3. Keep your friends close and your enemies closer. Sound familiar? It should. Same rules apply to any war if you expect to win. If you do have a rival, find out his mistakes and exploit them if need be, but it must be done in a way that keeps you squeaky clean. Name calling and bashing only makes you look bad.

4. KNOW YOUR ENEMY! Good Intel is always key to winning any war. Know who is loyal to them and their amount of influence. Crossing one person could mean crossing more people than you realize.You must also know the level of your rivals technical skill — there are a lot of good hackers out there. Do your homework!

5. Be prepared to defend yourself and your brand. A good defense is also a great offense.

6. Never, Never, Ever, write a check your butt can’t cash. If you have to resort to threats, make sure you can carry them out. Empty threats make you lose credibility.

Hopefully you should never have to deploy any of these tactics. Just like real life, most small conflicts can be settled using a good attitude, and a little respect.

Then again, The Internet is serious business.

Some of you may have noticed a new Twitter Retweet logo marking your friends’ RT’s. Since users, the originators of the term, have been utilizing “RT” (followed by the author’s @name) almost as long as Twitter’s been around, and applications such as Tweetdeck and Seesmic implemented the feature long ago, what took Twitter so long in adding such a simple and necessary feature? This is something I would have expected to be released prior to Twitter Lists.

Let’s just assume they wanted to take their time, ensuring they didn’t leave anything out. From our initial impression, it looks as if they didn’t. The Twitter developers were sure to include a retweet counter and smartly prevented users from editing the original tweet. I’m sure you’re all eagerly awaiting your opportunity to give it try.

Update: looks like Twitter has pulled Retweets for now.

In the grand scheme of things I am but a babe when it comes to social media. A rookie. A noob, if you will, though to spare my fragile feelings I’d just as soon you didn’t, really. Nope, no expert opinions here folks, just me stumbling along, trying to learn what I can. Like some great person of yore once said, “I’m just a worm crawling through the dirt of life.”(Actually that was me, I used it as a tag line on one of the many social media outlets I’ve tried, and may perhaps still use, I’m not really sure, but feel free to use it for your own purposes if you like.) But this is a good thing actually. In Zen Buddhism there is a concept known as beginner’s mind, and it means, basically, that the mind of someone who is new to something (a beginner), is free of the rigidity and ‘old-hat’ mentality of the expert who has seen and knows much. They are open to new things and new ways, and the ever-changing sea of social media is inherently new. Isn’t it?

The metaphor of the sea is particularly fitting because not only is social media, and with it the Internet, constantly changing and growing, it also implies a flow. A constant flow of information: emails, images, blurbs, and yes… tweets. We often find ourselves buried beneath a relentless tide of information. Will it ever stop, or do we even want it to really? More importantly, how do you handle it all?

If you’re anything like me, the Internet has reduced your attention span to that of a gnat; there’s just so much to look at. Sometimes I feel like a cat in a room full of laser pointers. No, really! Even when I sit down at the keyboard with a plan, fully intent of looking up one thing – just one thing! — if I’m not careful, I end up clicking 57 links, only snapping out of the trance once done digesting the Evolution of Toilets (via lovetoknow.com).

This isn’t a new idea though, is it? The Internet has been driving us mad with choice from day one. But now we have social media thrown into the mix; Twitter, Facebook, and MySpace just some of the names which come to mind. Naming all of them would be another post altogether (actually that would be another venture-funded web project and a lifetime of work—venture capitalists, feel free to email me, we’ll talk). It’s a wonder we get any work done today at all.

It can be done, and trust me, there are greater minds than this one working on it. David Allen, bestselling author of Getting Things Done, advises that one must be judicious in choosing who and what we interact with online, and even he acknowledges that it’s a slippery slope.

The most obvious issue about social media: Is this a useful way to spend your time, or is it a sinkhole of attractive distraction? It could very easily be one of those one minute, and the other the next! It all depends on why you’re doing it, and this must be evaluated moment to moment. It’s an important distinction to make for yourself, because focus is probably your greatest asset that you can control. You must be judicious about where you place it and what you let grab it, thus reducing your effectiveness.

credit: AFP

I’d like to thank you all for your patience through the times that this site has been quiet. Many of the original authors have gone on and are quite busy, but I didn’t see why that had to be the end of our community.

After about 2 years of reflection, we’ve seen where our strengths and weaknesses were, and wanted to give you a list of what the new Collective Thoughts will be about:

1 - Updates. Things slowed to the point where we were updating only monthly. Look for many more frequent posts in our new organization.

2 - Focus. While the post focus is still going to be revolving around social media, what’s meant by focus is the authors and their perspectives. I feel that we had the SEO / Social contingent, but this time around, we have a more rounded model across the realm of social - including more that are new to the game, PR types and the like.

3 - Bells and Whistles. We’ll be making some changes and tweaks to the overall UI as well as adding in some of the latest new fangled fun gadgets.

4 - Authors. In the past, we have not had guest posts. We’re changing things up a bit adding more regular and guest authors, though at this point it is by invite only. If you’re interested in contributing, contact us.

Looking forward to coming back into the fold with you!

Twitter added lists to its Web interface. Twitter clients like Seesmic already follow suit by adding Twitter lists support.

Everybody uses lists as if they were the best thing since slice bread.

The SEO community is as always on the forefront of early adopting. Twitter lists is SEO 2.0 at it’s best. Let’s dive in the Twitter list game. This is my concise Twitter lists for SEO How to:

• Make lists public. This may seem obvious but just to remind you: private lists won’t get seen by others or indexed by Google
• Don’t add just everybody to a list, be choosy. I won’t follow a list that makes me add 200 or more new followers. I rather subscribe to a list of 40 “best of” Twitter users
• Use keywords or rather keyphrases e.g “x seo” instead of just “seo” as list names. Lists can show up in search results, check of this result for arizona seo twitter, the Twitter list by Matt Siltala comes up first
• Add yourself to your own lists, this way people who subscribe to your list can subscribe to you as well
• List others to get listed yourself. I often check who puts me on their Twitter lists and list the people who do on the corresponding list of mine Twitter lists are
• Tweet your lists and blog your lists. Twitter lists are not just internal Twitter features, they have real URLs you can refer to. You should do that.
• ask others whether they want to be added to your list. For instance I seek more people for my SEO 2.0 list and for my SEO companies list.

That said Twitter lists are still a very new feature or medium. we will see in a few minutes whether they really add value to in this case I’m optimistic.

I’m often wary of feature creep etc but Twitter lists appear as the most natural and logical extension to Twitter you could imagine so I doubt you can go wrong with adopting them.

Related posts:

1. 7 Must Read End of Year Lists for Internet Power Users
2. Top 7 Top SEO Myths Lists [Meta-List] ;-)
3. Who to Follow on Twitter?

I remember when Plurk first came out. At first glance its user interface was different but once you got to spending some time on the site, it was pretty cool. As luck would have it, Plurk also came around when Twitter was having some of its worst downtime in history. Take that, and some nifty enhanced features (conversations on one page, ability to share images and video, dancing bananas and it seemed as though Plurk really could have taken over the microblogging space.

But it didn’t.

Why? I would offer that Plurk ultimately didn’t listen to its community. Perhaps the dealbreaker for me and others was the fact about not making karma optional. The nature of many on the social web is to be competitive, and Plurk gave us a forum for this. The more active you are, the more karma you received. However, if there was a period of time that you were inactive (say, you had a holiday, a weekend, religious reasons, etc) you would actually lose karma. A number of people brought this up, but Plurk stood firm, saying that if you didn’t want to see karma on your profile, you could just hide it out with a different page design. That’s a band-aid to the problem.

I was thinking about keeping quiet over this situation, that is, until I received an email from Plurk last week talking about the Plurk activity I’ve missed for the week. After seeing this, I chatted with Teeg, a friend of mine and still staunch supporter of Plurk. She said that she didn’t get the email! This is a community fail on the part of Plurk to target the Plurkers that are not participating, rather than the ones that are.

So Plurk, I didn’t want to say it, but you’re doing it wrong:

Image: Rockstar by N1NJ4.

As a regular SEO 2.0 blog reader you probably know who Glen Allsopp is. I have linked his blog postings quite often in the past and he even blogsitted SEO 2.0 once a year ago while I was absent.

For all those who still don’t know him: Shame on you! Glen Allsopp is an SEO rockstar due to his meteoric rise and rapid career and a personal development guru as the publisher of a popular blog on that topic.

Glen Allsopp has been doing at the age of 18 and 19 what most people still dream of. Moving to another country, working as a crucial specialist for the biggest companies in the world and traveling the world since.

His search and social media marketing blog ViperChill and PluginID, his personal development journal are widely known. He’s respected in both niches, search marketing and self improvement.

Glen revived his ViperChill brand recently so I decided to interview him about his career secrets and his current endeavors.

Tad of SEO 2.0: You’re one of the youngest SEO rockstars it seems. Tell us about how you made it happen and what your current projects are.

Glen: Well, first of all I started at a very young age. At 16 I was connecting with industry leaders such as Lee Odden and Aaron Wall and interviewing them for my blog on the subject. I literally spent hours every single day devouring information from one of the top forums at the time, Webworkshop, and then testing things out for myself.

I started having some great results early on for some competitive keywords and I’ve pretty much spent most of my time in the SEO / Social Media fields for the last four years.

Right now I’m writing for two blogs, PluginID and ViperChill and I’ve also invested thousands of dollars in a soon-to-be-launched games website. It is not your ordinary site though and I’m going to try and launch it through nothing but viral videos. If it doesn’t work out, at least I’ll have tried something new and had a lot of fun in the process.

T: You resurrected your old ViperChill blog and online brand after a year. How come? Why did you pause it in the first place?

G: I had been planning to do this for a while as, despite being well known in the personal development niche now, most of the blogs in my feed reader are about marketing. I also feel like I “know” many people in the industry so it’s nice to be back. It has always been my real passion and now I have enough time to relive it again.

I paused the site because I didn’t just want to be the marketer who just wrote about marketing. I didn’t really have many side projects going on so spent the last year turning that around and building PluginID and a number of affiliate websites. There is another reason I have brought the website back but I can’t reveal that until January for legal reasons. I promise everything will make a lot more sense around then.

T: You’ve worked for Fortune 500 brands and for yourself and last but not least you seem not to work at all at times, which of those scenarios is your favorite and why?

G: There is no way I would go back to working with clients again if I can help it. Although I loved my job in South Africa, there are just far too many challenges to implement social media into big companies that it starts to eat away at your desire to help them. I have no problems getting overly excited about my own projects though and they’re definitely what gets me out of bed in the morning.

It may seem like I don’t do much work at times, but the next day you’ll see me with two 3,000 word blog posts published or a 120 page eBook that I’m giving away for free. When I’m not interacting or hanging out with friends I’m working hard. Very hard. Based on my income now, I have no doubt I’ll spend the next few years travelling the world and working on my three main projects, two blogs and a games site.

T: By now your personal development blog is quite successful to say the least. Was it easier to start in a new niche? Did your “old” SEO network assist you with that as well or did you have to start socializing from zero?

G: No, it’s a lot more difficult starting out in a new niche. However, one benefit is that people in the personal development niche are far more likely to link to you and accept guest posts than any other industry. At least, that’s what I’ve found to be the case. On top of that, there are also many ideas I took from the marketing niche (with credit) such as a list of the top blogs and I did the personal development face-off which was similar to the bloggers face-off by Daniel Scocco.

Nope, not one of you guys helped me ;). Actually, Al Carlton of selfmademinds.com has been a great help and is an awesome guy. Apart from that though, I started socialising completely from scratch but with a bit of work, it wasn’t too hard to establish myself in the niche.

T: In case you would be able to give only one piece of advice to the SEO 2.0 readers, which one would it be?

G: I’m going to share a tip that is boring, common, and something everyone has probably heard before. But I’m happy to say it again because people still fail to follow it: Be consistent. It took me a whole 7 months of hard work just to reach 500 subscribers on PluginID. Two months later I had reached 1,000. 3 months after that and I was at the 4,000 mark.

When you’re trying to build an audience or anything online, the first hurdle is without a doubt the tallest.

If you can just keep going and push through that, your efforts will not go unrewarded.

T: Do you practice SEO 2.0 or how do you call it what you actually do?

G: If your definition is that SEO is now much more about being social rather than robotic (directory submissions, social bookmarking links etc.) then yes, without a doubt.

There are over 12,000 backlinks to PluginID now and not one has been paid for or automated.

Every link I’ve managed to build has come from nothing but:

• Writing excellent content
• Engaging in my niche
• Repeating what works

I watched a great video recently by Trevor “Toecracker” Crook in which he said that when people ask you what you do, answer in a positive statement about how you help others. So, what I actually do is help people be who they want to be and make a living from it. My aims with PluginID and ViperChill have slightly different messages, but they come from the same core.

Related posts:

1. 10 New Must Read SEO, Online Marketing and Web Development Blogs
2. What Easter Can Teach Us About Web 2.0, Social Media and Blogging
3. The Right Blog at the Right Time – 1 Year SEO 2.0

As Facebook comes in to become one of the largest population groups in the world, it still finds its own flaws. Thanks to what can easily be assumed to be the influence of other social media sites, such as Twitter and Digg, the folks at Facebook have added yet another new feature.

Facebook Share allows a member to post a link/video/image to their wall that they find interesting or useful. Beyond spreading the content around to a broader audience, Facebook Share keeps track of the exact number of times a link has been “shared.” Depending upon the amount of friends that are active on Facebook that the sharer has, the more likely that your content is to be seen by a good amount of people.

Chris Hughes, writing for the Facebook blog, romanticizes the concept of sharing links with your friends. He mentions the ‘old-school’ methods of sending urls to those on your friends lists and even via e-mail… but only for the sake of sharing something really cool that your friend’s coworker just has to see. While it is nice to have an outlook on the digital age as being one of purely good, not-for-profit, motives, let’s be realistic here: The goal is to bring as much traffic as possible to whatever it is you have your hand in – and that’s a good thing.

Mark Kinsey, a Facebook product manager, reiterates in a more recent post that “the Share button enables you to take content from across the Web and share it with your friends on Facebook, where it can be re-shared over and over so the best and most interesting items get noticed by the people you care about.” But will the results really be so substantial for only moderately trafficked sites? Time, along with Analytics, will reveal the true number difference the Facebook Share widget makes; but from inquiring into the traffic as it stands now, most websites are not seeing a significant jump in numbers.

Website administrators and blog owners that wish to add Facebook Share can easily do so by heading to Facebook’s Share widget area. There you’ll be able to optimize the widget to best fit your site. Choose between a nice looking button widget, or just a link. If you choose the button option, there is also the ability to have a counter alongside it, which will display the most recent count of the amount of times that the link has been shared. What is great is that this widget is available to everyone for use, and will make your interface just that much more user-friendly.

So, is this the solution to reaching an unprecedented number of unique views? Likely not, but it will help get the message out there in a more organic fashion… which, ironically enough, is great for almost all social media marketers. Don’t forget to check out all of the other Facebook features and widgets that can help out your blog – or at least make your social life online just a little easier.

Executed by mistake is a Creative Commons image by the moog.

Sometimes it takes years of blogging to notice your most obvious mistakes. I’ve been blogging for several years privately, then a few professionally and still do on several business blogs. By now I have made most mistakes you can make as a blogger I guess. I’m not the only one though.

Most bloggers make the same mistakes either by neglect or due to the limitations of the medium and software itself.

In many cases you have to make the decision to change your ways to stop making the most common mistakes. Here are 10 blogging mistakes most bloggers make and you probably do as well.

Embedding videos from YouTube etc.
Most bloggers embed YouTube videos on their blogs. Vimeo is also popular. There are plenty of other services as well. Some even embed Hulu videos. YouTube videos often get removed aka deleted or censored. Even a teenager managed once to take down several videos on fake copyright charges. Vimeo is less restrictive but people also remove videos on their own sometimes. Hulu videos can’t be watched outside of the US. So for all of these reasons you have an empty screen on your blog. Many posts don’t contain anything beside a video so such a post is dead, even more dead than a dead link. I know because I learned the hard way.

Tweeting instead of blogging
Some people obsess about Twitter. In a way I do as well and sometimes I tweet away my ideas or the sheer time I’d spend on blogging otherwise. Consider each idea you have for blogging before you tweet it. Everything tweeted is lost after a few minutes. Whatever you blog is yours and lives on for ages unless you use a third party service like Blogger or Wordpress.com perhaps.

Submitting your own blog post on social media other than Twitter
Many bloggers still tend to submit their own postings to social sites like Digg, Reddit or StumbleUpon. It doesn’t work that way. Most of these sites either limit that or downright ban self submission in many cases, especially for business blogs. Don’t do that. Make other people discover your content. Socialize on social media but don’t self promote to get some traffic.

Using 125*125 display ads
Banner ads are dead but everybody uses them on blogs these days. Some WordPress themes even come with predefined banner ads areas. They look ugly, nobody clicks them and your bog appears spammy when it’s plastered with blinking ads. Use text ads instead (I’d recommend Yahoo) and affiliate ads but only very good ones matching your content.

Blogging too often or not often enough
In recent months SEO 2.0 has turned too silent for a good blog. Over the years I’ve noticed that 3 to 5 posts per week are best for a blog. 2 weekly posts are the minimum and more than 5 in a week lead to overload. Many blogs these days blog less often and look more like static websites this way. You lose attention, people start to forget about you when you blog rarely. Several posts a day in contrast lead to an information overload nobody can digest. This way you get more and more casual traffic from search and social media but you overburden your loyal readers. Your loyal readers are the backbone of your blog though. Don’t annoy them.

Automating content creation
Many services offer ways of syndicating content. You can post content to your blog automatically this way you posted on Twitter, Delicious or elsewhere. This scares away your loyal readers as well. I did just recently when testing the Twitter tools integration on SEO 2.0 I disabled now the weekly twitter digest as it’s low quality cross posting. You can add Twitter or Delicious in the sidebar instead so that it doesn’t pollute your RSS feed.

Creating “blog spam” postings
The “blog spam” kind of blog post seemingly will never die. They contain only a link to the source and short description of it . Basically it’s just wasted time. Your blog turns to an obstacle between the reader and the real source. If you don’t have any value to add don’t blog it at all. at least add your opinion beyond “this is great” or collect a few links.

Not socializing enough
Blogs aren’t islands. They only strive as part of the blogosphere. Bloggers who don’t socialize enough with other bloggers and social media users can’t get popular in the first place or they turn to one way communication in case they already are well known. In both cases the overall quality of the blog deteriorates. Never forget your blogging and social media peers. Link out, vote and contact them on a regular basis.

Not updating old content
Most blogs have a huge archive of blog posts which get plenty of visitors from search who bounce after noticing that the post is outdated and the links broken. Make sure to revisit your old postings, update and fix them. You may even republish them once the update is substantial enough. Also write for longevity in the first place. Nobody cares for yesterdays news tomorrow.

Not focusing on best postings
Usability expert Jakob Nielsen has written about it years ago. One of the most common issues with blogs is that they don’t show the most popular postings on top. Plus like mentioned above many popular postings are outdated. I’ve been testing many “popular posts” plugins for WordPress. I haven’t found the perfect one yet. I’ll tell you once I do. Some people recommend the Socialrank widget, formerly known as AideRSS. I might add it in future.

Do you make these blogging mistakes as well? Do you miss some common mistakes by bloggers in this list? Tell me about it. I made all those mistakes above myself and noticed afterwards so it’s easy to recognize them on other blogs.

Related posts:

1. Does Blogging for Money Work or Not? 6 Noob Mistakes
2. The Only 7 WordPress Plugins Business Bloggers Need
3. Blog Suicide: Top 7 Title & Meta Tag Mistakes that Kill Your Blog

While visiting Austin, Texas, I came across this ingenious sign being utilized by a homeless man. Judging by the fact he had set this sign down and was instead using a second sign he’d fashioned, the one pictured here may just have been too snarky for the passersby.

The Twitter Translation Community project is up and running! Now, thanks to your fellow Tweeple, you will soon be able to have Twitter in French, German, Italian, and Spanish, which are in addition to the currently implemented Japanese and English. The announcement for this project was made earlier this month on the Twitter blog.

Since this is a community deal, Twitter needs you to chip in and do your part. If you can fluently read and write in a second (or third or fourth) language, Twitter Wants You! It looks like the FIGS are taken, but there are definitely more tongues in the world than what they’re working on. To get involved for your language, let Twitter know you’re interested by filling out this language request/translator signup form. It’ll go into the project manager’s Google Doc of all the Tweeps signed up and they’ll let you know when they’re ready for you to join the game.

What are the benefits for the translators, you ask? The Glory! As an official Twitter translator, you will receive a fabulous badge of recognition on your public Twitter page and a level ranking. The rank you earn is based upon the amount of translations completed. The more challenges (translations) completed, the higher you will go – so soon, you, too, can pwn all of the Twitter world as a level 10! Each of the languages have a “Leading Translators” page, which displays the highest rank Twitter Translators for them.

Wait… hold the presses! What is this? Twitter says you can get ranked up to a Level 10, but we’re now seeing a bonus Level 11. Could this possibly be a pop culture reference to Spinal Tap’s Level 11? (see video below)

Thanks, Twitter, for this cool addition. Just don’t forget to add my languages!

The New Community Rules is one of the latest social media books out there, written by Tamar Weinberg. Tamar and I are friends and enjoy debating the finer points of social media. While we don’t always agree she has outdone herself in this book.

New and experienced marketers alike are sure to gain some bits of new knowledge, and this book can be used as a reference manual in approaching new social networks for the first time.

One of my major criticisms of most social media marketers is that even when they are not just full of hot air, they tend to be one-trick ponies. Meaning that they may be good at Digg or one specific aspect, but be either amateur at or outright oblivious to different alternatives that are born every day.

Most people lack a cohesive strategy when it comes to social media marketing. Social media is not a silver bullet and requires the proper planning as would any successful marketing strategy. I think that this book will be helpful to readers, as it comes from a “been there, done that” perspective while not talking down to you. Tamar does a great job here keeping you grounded, if not outright taking you to school on sites you didn’t even know existed. Not just fancy talkin’ either

Tamar goes to great lengths to provide real life case studies performed by her and other respected members of these communities. In real life, she is also an approchable person, and it’s good to see her book come off the same way. So don’t take my word for it, pick one up today! (cue the Reading Rainbow music

Related posts:

• The New Community Rules: Marketing on the Social Web by Tamar Weinberg (sylwiapresley.wordpress.com)
• The Authoritative Book On Social Media Finally Published (socialmediatoday.com)
• The Importance of Networking on the Internet (techipedia.com)

Need for Speed is a Creative Commons image by Amnemona.

Over the years I’ve tried numerous ways of speeding up Firefox. Most posts on that topic make you change some hidden preferences and such. I say: That’s bullshit! I’ve never experienced much of an betterment.

There are few reasons why your Firefox is sooo damn slow and you have to tackle these issues.

I use Firefox ever since it has been called Phoenix in the 0. versions. Back then the most important reasons to switch to FF were it’s light weight architecture and low load plus fast loading both of the software as well as the pages. Nowadays FF is more of a moloch. It takes up huge resources and can make your whole system slow. It freezes and crashes often etc. Back then 20k RAM taken up by a browser was much. By now FF uses sometimes 300k and more.

Nonetheless it’s still an indispensable tool and I won’t switch to a Google spyware called Chrome or an Apple bug called Safari. I use Opera only privately, it lacks important features for business use. Don’t even consider thinking about Internet Exploder as a browser. Yesterday I once again cleaned up my Firefox as it has been almost unusable already. Now it runs smoothly again.

So forget all the bullshit about messing with hidden preferences, this is simple advice here not only for geeks on how to speed up Firefox:

Remove those useless crap extensions!
The sheer number of extensions or add ons slows your Firefox. I know, I use up to 50 of them in peak times. Remove all of those that you don’t use daily or at least a few times a week. If you still have more than 20 then remove all those who don’t make money for you or in other words those you don’t need for work. Some add ons are even broken and cause memory leaks. Monitor the memory use on your Windows Taskmanager (n case you use Linux you probably know how to monitor it ;-)
Each extension is almost like standalone software. It uses lots of resources.

Delete those stale downloads!
Why take your whole luggage with you all time when sight seeing? Remove downloads from the downloads list by clicking “clear list”. Otherwise they load each time you start your browser.

Close those hundred tabs!
Come on, you can’t use more than one tab at once. You don’t need to keep all the others for later either. So close them down once you leave. A dozen of tabs should be the maximum. otherwise you forget anyways what’s in them.

Leave that bloated Flash page!
Some people still assume that a website is a movie. Flash animations use much more memory and CPU than any other website. Using them or running them in the background means heavy load. You don’t watch Flash animations? What about YouTube, Vimeo, LastFM or Aupeo? All of them are heavy load Flash media players. In Firefox 3.5 some of them run alternatively on HTML 5 but still they most probably cause your FF to slow down. Also many web apps run on Flash.

Restart that bastard!
Did you know that Firefox still runs the processes you already closed? Closing down a tab does not mean they don’t drain your memory. You have to restart your FF after closing those 100 tabs. Otherwise you still have the load of them.

Dump Firefox 2 and 3.5!
Do you use Firefox 2 or the early versions of FF 3.5? Firefox 2 is much slower than FF3 but FF 3.5 to 3.52 has a bug (or rather feature) that makes it incredible slow at startup. It has been in Firefox 3.53.

You see, no hidden preferences voodoo needed. Just apply some common sense to speed up your Firefox. Do you know some similar ways of speeding it up? Tell me in the comment section or on Twitter. Twitter comments beyond links get fed automatically into my comments.

Related posts:

1. Top 10 Firefox Extensions for Search, Website Optimization and SEO I Use
2. SEO Bullshit
3. 7 Reasons Why Google Chrome, the New Google Browser is a Bad Idea

How to get Indexed by Google in 2009? Just use Twitter. This is no joke. I ran a test on Twitter to find out whether Google indexes Twitter links and surprise, surprise it does.

Of course Google can’t ignore Twitter, the fastest and most common social networking site out there. The problem is Twitter doesn’t want to get its links getting indexed by Google an prevents it by adding the nofollow attribute.

Google, along with other search engines introduced nofollow allegedly to combat spam and later to scare webmasters into submission (either they add nofollow to ads or they get penalized).

Now that’s a problem. They can’t ignore their own rules, can they? Twitter uses nofollow on all links doesn’t it? No, the mobile version which gets indexed as well does not use nofollow. See my profile in the mobile version. Ironically the Google cache version of it does.

Whatever the reasons may be: Google actually indexes Twitter links.

Whether it’s a bug or feature, I don’t know. I can imagine Twitter closing this “loophole” now that “evil SEOs” like me write about it. I’d certainly like to see how Google will justify indexation of Twitter links then. We all know that Google is black hat. They show different content to users than to spiders, especially in countries like China… The Google engineers will surely find a new way of gaming Twitter. As of now webmasters, SEOs and Google shareholders can rejoice: Google officially is tapping into the wisdom of crowds displayed on Twitter.

The Twitter Indexation Test Setup

How did I find out about Google indexing Twitter links? I set up a page on my onreact.com domain solely for the purpose of testing Twitter link indexation. It contained only text. It was a dead end page: No incoming or outgoing links. With one exception: I tweeted the link once and asked my followers to ignore it. Also I favorited it on Twitter.com

I checked a few hours later, a day later, two days later and nothing happened. So I forgot about the test. Now after 3 months I rediscovered my bookmarks and took a quick look in the Google index and what did I find? The test page.

Now at first I suspected some third party Twitter tool to display my link and thus Google indexing. No, as of now there is no other instance of the text on that page than my Twitter stream and the page on onreact.com itself:

Please note that the mobile version was not in the index in spite of my mobile page being even cached by Google.

So the most likely scenario is that Google indexes Twitter links directly from Twitter. Sadly I made one mistake when setting up the test. While adding a server based analytics script to the page to see Google spidering the page I used the wrong path to the analytics tool. So we don’t know when the Google bot actually hit the page. You might want to repeat the test with a better setup to make sure the result is valid.

It seems that there is a substantial delay to indexing links via Twitter.

Maybe sneaky Google doesn’t want to get caught in the act? Remember that Twitter is a Google competitor with its real time search capabilities. I’m quite sure Google is keen on catching up here, using Twitter data directly via the API for instance.

Btw.: Neither Yahoo nor Bing have indexed the page. Thus Yahoo also can’t find any links leading to it.

Related posts:

1. 20 Ways to Get Legit Paid Links Without Getting Penalized by Google
2. Twitter Lists for SEO How to
3. Hey Marketers on Twitter: It’s not a Link List

Tweet is a Creative Commons image by Phillie Casablanca

How to Twitter? A question asked by millions of clueless but eager to learn new Twitter users. First off: It’s either “how to tweet?” or “how to use Twitter?” The rest isn’t that simple.

Twitter seems to be simple from the way it looks and the basic functionality but it’s not simple to master.

After 18 months of almost daily usage of Twitter I know by now how to do it. Of course what works for me doesn’t have to work for you. Thus I compiled a list of 101 tweets on how to use Twitter including different use cases.

You tweet differently for social networking and blogging than you do for business or marketing & SEO purposes. Many Twitter best practices are one size fits all though. Everybody should comply with them to succeed on Twitter.

I divided this list into several sections to make it easier to use it:

General how to use Twitter advice:

• basics
• advanced
• even more advanced

Twitter use cases:

• social networking
• blogging
• business
• SEO/marketing

Avoiding Twitter pitfalls:

• twittiquette/twittequette
• safety & security

Please note that every item in this list is made to work as a standalone retweetable tweet. They in most case make sense on their own and are short enough to get retweeted a few times.

Basics

1. Use an avatar
2. Customize your Twitter homepage
3. Say in your bio who you are, what you do and what you care about
4. Be concise
5. Shorten links
6. Tweet daily
7. Reply/retweet
8. Don’t only tell us what you eat
9. Add your URL to “Web”. LinkedIn is OK
10. Don’t follow 1k people if only 5 follow you

Advanced

1. Use Firefox add ons like TwitterFox & PowerTwitter
2. Subscribe to your own tweets via RSS
3. Don’t use tinyurl.com anymore. It’s unreliable. bit.ly is better
4. Use #hashtags
5. Tweet important things 4 times, for all time zones
6. Create a Twitter landing page
7. Track mentions of your keywords via Twilert etc.
8. Ask questions
9. Use Twitter on your mobile
10. Add images via TwitPic or imgur

Even more advanced

1. Use a Twitter desktop app like TweetDeck or Seesmic
2. Use an URL shortener on your own website
3. Subscribe to your best friends via RSS
4. Use a social CRM app to save your Twitter contacts
5. Create user groups with crowdstatus.com

Social Networking

1. Don’t follow everybody
2. Follow people you care about
3. Don’t follow bots and RSS mashups
4. Mix links, @replies and “what are you doing” tweets
5. Retweet your friends
6. Retweet unique sources not only main stream ones
7. Do not broadcast, Twitter is not TV or radio
8. Participate in #followfriday
9. Spread memes
10. Follow those who reply/retweet or mention you
11. Start conversations e.g.: I wonder why people…
12. Organize tweetups (real life Twitter user meetings)

Blogging

1. Don’t tweet instead of blogging
2. Ad a twitter button to your blog
3. Display your tweets in your sidebar
4. Add a “follow me” badge to your blog
5. Announce your best posts on Twitter
6. Crowdsource posts
7. Add a @twittername input to your comment form
8. Tweet it when your plane crashes
9. Blog about Twitter
10. Tweet about blogging

Business

1. Tweet as a person not only as a firm
2. Offer discounts to followers
3. Announce special offers on Twitter first
4. Give away freebies
5. Reply to disgruntled customers
6. Establish a social media policy in your company
7. Monitor brand mentions
8. Claim @usernames related to your brand & products
9. Create a twitter team
10. Use a Twitter CMS like Hootsuite

Marketing & SEO

1. Tweet StumbleUpon and Sphinn links
2. Add yourself to Twitter directories like Twellow
3. Add your Twitter @username to your website
4. Display your Twitter address on your business card
5. Employ Twitter analytics like Clicky
6. Create Google Analytics campaigns for Twitter
7. Claim your keywords as Twitter user names
8. Use many hashtags
9. Follow everybody if you can
10. Move to a dedicated server or cloud hosting to handle traffic peaks
11. Add “rt: @source” at the end of tweets using “via”
12. Use exclamations like OMG! WTF? FAIL!
13. Use numbers in headlines
14. Break news
15. Use a sexy avatar like @sexyseo
16. Address power users like @zaibatsu
17. Tell people to follow you and explain why
18. Wear a ridiculous hat
19. Use a funny username like @nakedpizza
20. Make people happy

Twittiquette/Twittequette

1. Don’t follow/unfollow the same person more than once
2. Don’t message people you don’t follow, they can’t reply
3. Don’t swear in tweets
4. Don’t autofollow based on names. Tad Chef is not a chef
5. After the 3rd @reply switch to dm, email, Skype or IM
6. Don’t expect a reply when addressing others out of the blue
7. Disclose affiliate links with [aff] or [ad]
8. Tweet only important stuff more than once
9. Don’t tweet the same thing several times in a row
10. Don’t automate tweeting completely
11. Don’t sell on Twitter unless your name is Dell outlet
12. Don’t use URL shorteners that frame content
13. Read first then retweet
14. Do not suggest your site each time someone mentions your trade

Safety & Security

1. Don’t tweet scam links, not even asking “is this a scam?” You’ll get banned
2. Never tweet email addresses. Spam bots harvest them
3. Don’t tweet travel/vacation plans. Burglars read them
4. Don’t tweet while driving
5. Refrain from complaining about your employer or clients
6. In countries like China tweet anonymously
7. Don’t use your Twitter password for Google and online banking
8. Don’t tweet where you are
9. Don’t tweet private photos of your kids
10. Tweet only things you would say on TV

You might have noticed that I don’t heed my own advice with many items referring to blogging. I were quite busy in the recent months to implement most of it. All of the blogging advice combined leads to clutter so you got to choose which options you prefer.

I hope these 101 tweets on how to use Twitter will be useful for you and your followers. Make sure to add your won or comment on those list items you don’t agree with. You might like to follow me on Twitter: @onreact_com

Also I write a weekly “Twitter Friday” column over at the SEOptimise blog you might want to check out.

In case you don’t know whether you want to use Twitter at all read the pros and cons article. This time I told you how to use Twitter but I didn’t tell you what to tweet, what to write on Twitter. I will tell you in a follow up. In short: Try to tweet something useful for others and tweet

1. 1/3 @replies
2. 1/3 retweets + links
3. 1/3 “what are you doing” tweets.

Related posts:

1. Hey Marketers on Twitter: It’s not a Link List
2. Top 7 Ways to Use Twitter for Marketing Purposes Correctly
3. 5 Keys to Twitter Headlines

What premium offer makes sense for a SEO blog or rather a SEO 2.0 one?

I recently joined Contenture, a micropayment service that basically allows you to turn a blog or site into a freemium model publication with ease. The payments are facilitated automatically by Contenture so that users just pay once and then the money gets divided between the publications they really read.

They suggest some basic modes of distinguishing the free from the premium features of a blog. It’s suggestions like:

• removing ads for paying members
• granting access to the archives for paying members only
• commenting only for paying members only

I can’t really recommend those. All of them have some big drawbacks.

In the SEO industry we have plenty of examples of successful freemium business models. SEOmoz and SEO Book are just two of them. Both of them offer a

• membership forum
• premium tools

besides the free content and tools they offer.

Now I don’t program tools myself and to be honest I do not believe in tools. I use them myself but they are worthless even in SEO if you do not have the basic knowledge and social skills to do SEO. In SEO 2.0 we deal more with humans than with software. So how do you imagine premium offers or services in a SEO 2.0 context? Any ideas? You know, I might come up one day with some and offer them so rather tell me right away what you need.

To be clear: I don’t plan to create a membership forum any time soon. My time is very limited and I don’t think this is the business model that will work for me. Still it’s a viable option for some both the users as those offering such forums.

Who already wants to support this blog and other publications might want to do so by joining Contenture.

A question for everybody: What premium features would you want to see on SEO 2.0? Don’t make me put ads all over place so I can remove them ;-) !

[Edit:] Headline changed and some parts of text as well. Plus: I will add your suggestions to the post so you get a regular “editorial link”.

Related posts:

1. Would You Pay 10$ a Month for an Enhanced SEO 2.0 Subscription?
2. SEO 2.0 Virus Spreading
3. Mixx: SEO 2.0 Group Reaches 50 Members and 7 Other Reasons to Join

I’m furious! That’s surprising as it’s difficult to annoy me these days. I turned 35 this year and I’m a web professional for 10 years now so many things don’t bother me anymore. Still there are things that get me raging. It’s the first time that a tweet managed to get me that angry though.

I monitor mentions of “SEO 2.0″ on Twitter and most of them are not really relevant or intriguing. I ignore most unless Lee Odden, one of the original industry leaders who propagated the term SEO 2.0 himself mentions the term or something similar happens.

Now yesterday I read a tweet from 3 different sources announcing a job offer, or rather a wage slavery offer for SEO 2.0 services

It said:

#blog #writing #job: SEO 2.0 Researcher/Linkbuilder to drive traffic to
www.reside
… ($3.5/hr) -

It contained two broken links. One of them truncated, the other was down yesterday. I could access it today. Let’s cite:

SEO 2.0 Researcher/Linkbuilder to drive traffic to www.residentialcleaningexperts.net

I am looking for someone to help me build a webpresence for www.residentialcleaningexperts.net specifically for the chicago, Illinois area Your duties will consist of posting ads on cl, posting premade post on blogs as well as finding relevant content on the web to post to blog, Must be very proficient in using as well as possibly making pages on the blog, This will be an ongoing position so please be dedicated and hardworking. Keywords: Web Research, Data, Entry, WordPress, SEO, linkbuilding, freelancer
Reward $4/hr

I changed the URL in order not to advertise for this website. The actual address sounds similar to the one shown above. What’s wrong with that?

There are several things wrong with this “offer”. Even for a low paid job like writing for the Web or blogging this is a really badly paid job. I assume that the “residential cleaning experts” actually earn more than that. Nobody who is able to write for the Web or to blog needs such a job no matter how desperate you are:

You can earn more money by setting up a blog and writing for yourself, especially if you sell the right affiliate products.

You can sell anything. Affiliate programs like those by Amazon or Shopping.com cover almost every product conceivable.

Besides the ludicrous amount of money offered here I take offense with the use of the term SEO 2.0 to describe low value services like that.

In SEO 2.0 you don’t build links, you get links.

Also even a SEO 1.0 “linkbuilder” paid only 4$ per hour will never be able build quality links. He’ll spam. The SEO industry is still booming despite the ongoing crisis. It’s one of the future industries that will strive for a long time, especially after struggling old media like print or TV will go bankrupt in many cases.

What is SEO & link building worth? It’s more like 40 – 400$ an hour. Just read the SEOMoz article about SEO pricing. Also Gab Goldenberg makes it very clear why 1h of his SEO consultation costs 200$. In case that’s to expensive you might try an offer like the one from Agent 89 for an SEO audit for 225$. This one is really affordable and I can imagine that it’s mostly automated. A consultant using SEO software to assess your site and get the keyword combinations. Anyways: Quality SEO pays for itself.

Building links for yourself will make you much more than 4$ an hour. Don’t even think about doing for someone else for that money. If you can build links you can set up a website for yourself and build them for your own business. Now when you are bright enough to do even basic SEO you should at least charge double digits per hour. Everything else does not make sense. I repeat: You can earn more by optimizing your own projects. When in doubt how much you should charge just charge more. No joke. The more you charge the more people value you. If you charge a too low price they will assume that your products or services are of low quality.

Try to make a name for yourself. Don’t work as a nameless underground SEO drone. The better your name the more you can charge. In case you live in the US I suggest you join the Freelancers Union to prevent getting ripped off.

OK. Enough said? No, not yet. Let’s take a look at what requirements there are to get the “SEO 2.0 job”:

1. “posting ads on cl” (Craigslist). When I started doing SEO in 2004 full time a German Craigslist clone was a good way to get links easily and rank in Google. I haven’t done it ever since. So it does make some sense, like the ancient “meta tag optimization”. It’s certainly not SEO 2.0
2. “posting premade post on blogs”? Sounds like posting the same comment “Thanks, nice post” all over the place for link building it seems. Spam, not SEO.
3. “finding relevant content on the web to post to blog”. Every content thief does that if I get it right. This is crime not SEO.
4. “proficient in using as well as possibly making pages on the blog”. Sounds like hacking blogs to create “pages” there. Otherwise it’s nonsense.
5. “dedicated and hardworking” – In case you are, skip such offers. You’ll be better off self-employed. Working hard on your own blogs will pay more.

This is more of SEO 0.2 if at all. You won’t get SEO 2.0 services for 3.5$/h not even SEO services for 4$. You get crap or spam instead.

Related posts:

1. 7 Services of SEO 2.0 Companies – Submit Your Site Now!
2. 20 Ways to Survive as a Freelancer Working on the Web
3. SEO 2.0 Reality Check: What’s True What Not?

Humans think they’re such hot stuff. Them and their opposable thumbs. I’ll have you know that us felines are really the strength behind Twitter. Don’t believe me? Apparently the San Diego News Network does:

Brians_cat and PETCO haz a conversation

That’s right folks. PETCO pays Natalie Davis, Director of E-commerce to talk to pets. We even convinced her to get her cat Leo to start getting up and running on Twitter.

We cats are better equipped than you humans for taking over the social media sphere anyway. Here’s just a few signs of our prowess:

1. The expression is LOLCats. Ever see a LOLhuman? Pssh.
2. Cats sleep 18 hours a day, so we’re better rested. Besides, humans are always too busy “working” to mess with Twitter as we cat professionals are.
3. We outrank you. @Sockington has 3/4 of a million users following him on Twitter. Ashton Kutcher and CNN are clearly fronts for the feline empire.
4. Twitter is a bird. Cats catch birds. We’ve caught you.

Image credit: Twitkitteh

This has been an informal update by Brian’s Cat - if you want more informal thoughts, follow me on Twitter.

Although I have had these thoughts about this many times before, I never placed pen to paper to convey my thoughts. I began this version of this post while sitting outside of Laidoffcamp/Freelancecamp in Miami. I was watching the afternoon monsoons about to come down on me. I was sitting alone in a garden of hedges and walkways watching the passersby. Everyone seemed to be busy buzzing by. The cool breeze just washed in from the approaching rain. I can feel the electricity in the air. The energy created by everyone that attends social gathering of large magnitude is incredible. The energy feels like the change in the air as a storm rolls in. I also have a sad disturbing feeling of what is about to happen.

photo credit miamisunpost.com

Unfortunately in the past once the excitement of the event dissipated the attendees often fall back into their daily grind and lose their zeal. The positive drive is taken away by the dream stealers and opposing elements. The mega builders in the MLM industry have spoke of this for as long as I can remember. They were always looking for a paradigm shift. Looking forward from where I am at, has technology brought this downward spiral to an end? Can the mix of an online presence keep the energy going?

Let’s look at online social networking; we have so many places to congregate. Every day I am approached by someone new with an idea or thought on how to make communication online one step easier. Although most of the concepts are spun over and over, often there is a spark of true imagination that pops into view. The main downfall of so many ideas is the lack of true open communication. It is difficult to pass the same feelings over phone, let alone a keyboard. If you lack communicative skills you may feel that your voice may never be heard. Video and webcams do help to transfer the visual imagery to a point. If there was a way to capture the intimate relation of one on one conversation like that of being in person, online long distance communications would also see a parabolic leap in growth.

I am one of the biggest supporters of both online and offline congregative tools. Conferences and Barcamps are great for connecting with your online social graph, but only occur over large periods of time. Refresh Miami and Social Media Club of South Florida hold monthly meetings that I have attended for close to a year now. (Both organizations are opening events, some may be near you.) Before that I was also very active in the local Meetups that are held here in South Florida. Now there has been a great surge in Tweetups popping up all around me. Some are even specializing these Tweetup events. Craig of Worst Pizza has taken this idea even further with starting Pizza Tweetups. These events are great sources of support for your online endeavors. They help you to cement your online bonds with the brick and mortar world that many of us are quickly leaving behind. Plus they are a great source to build your social graph with users that would ordinarily not friend you till a physical connection has been made.

I wrote this post to quite some thoughts on what needs to be addressed about online and offline social networking. Do we really need that physical connection to build our networks or is a virtual world something that we are all going to embrace in the future? Tell me, do we really need to attend offline events to grow? Are these events something that will advance the online world? Are these offline events dragging back the innovations that we need to make the next leap forward to a truly virtual world?

What is your view?

What is a #blogchat?

The idea of group learning has fascinated me since high school when I realized how much faster and better I could prepare for a test if I studied with friends.

Maybe that’s why when I happened upon the first Plurkshop last spring, I was hooked. And then when I heard Mack Collier (of The Viral Garden and the new MackCollier.com) was leading a weekly workshop on blogging, I knew I had to check it out.

Perhaps, like me, you’ve been to workshops where someone “leads” (ie has complete control of the conversation) and the only real communication that happens is when the leader asks a question and allows the participants to answer it.

When you attend a blogchat, forget that idea. Instead, picture a giant round table discussion, limited only by the number of people who are interested in the subject.

To enter, all you have to have is twitter, although it’s handy to use a chat program such as Tweetchat to make the tweets easier to read. Tweetchat will also append #blogchat to the end of every comment you send from their page, so you won’t forget to add it.

I also recommend bookmarking What The Hashtag to easily be able to read the transcript from previous blogchats and even subscribe via RSS.

Categorizing and Tagging Blog Content

Sunday’s night’s blogchat was one of my favorites of the ones I’ve attended so far. Not just because the topic is one I’ve wondered about before, but also because it seemed to have a more relaxed feeling (or perhaps I’m starting to feel more comfortable and “among friends” at them so I’m relaxing).

Sunday night was also the first chat that I really noticed splitting in several directions at times. Last year when we were having Plurkshops, that would often happen, with one person wanting more info on a subject while someone else had an entirely new question.

As a result though, I’m only going to share some of the discussion on the original subject. If you’d like to read all of the chat, you can find the transcript here.

As usual, Mack started us out by announcing the topic and who suggested it. “Tonight’s #blogchat topic is from shannonrenee, we’ll be discussing categorizing and tagging your content. Strategies and tips.”

As a blog reader, how important are tags & categories to you?

Shanan_S: Pretty darn important. If I’m a new reader chances are I came to your blog for info about something specific.

ad_web: Sometimes a quick look at categories and tags on a blog tells me what the blog is about or what is normally posted there.

Eric_Urbane: I tend to follow bloggers, not tags or categories.

hacool: I find it easier to find older entries on blogs with categories for broad topics and tags for more detailed topics.

GrantGriffiths: Consumers don’t use RSS, bloggers do and that is why categories will continue to be important.

Mandy_Vavrinak: I start with categories to browse new blog, tags for finding specific content.

GrantGriffiths: Very important when you look at the big picture. Easier for reader to find content.

GrantGriffiths: Categories are and should be used as the index to your blog. Much more important than archives for that purpose.

markalves: When reading a blog for 1st time, you get a quick sense of scope (types of categories) and depth (# per category)

What’s the difference between categories and tags?

Teeg: I haven’t quite figured out the purpose of tags, it seems a repeat of categories often.

3keyscoach: What makes best presentation so tags are useful to people?

markalves: Categories are table of contents, tags are the index.

30lines: I tend to agree with that approach. Categories= more general, tags = more specific.

Teeg: Why not use nested categories for that? I guess that’s why I get confused by having both.

hacool: I’d think of categories as broad topics: produce, meat, canned goods and tags as detailed: lettuce, bacon, chicken soup

Teeg: So tags can be things I might only use once, while categories are topics I’ll cover again and again? Okay, I can see that.

hacool: I might have unique subcategories that could pull a unique menu, but use tags across multiple categories.

MackCollier: So then we should go for fewer categories, and be liberal on tagging?

AngEngland: If you cover several food categories but wanted $5 dinners in several “Chicken, Beef” categories, use tags.

hacool: The categories are like topic funnels and tags can connect across channels.

How important are categories and tags in terms of SEO?

FreshPeel: Categories and tags definitely add to SEO. Indirect benefit to readers?

AngEngland: If tags/keyword lists don’t match content Google can penalize u.

FreshPeel: In my blog, tags are only visible in the code and used for SEO and recommending similar posts to readers.

Eric_Urbane: Our blog, NOT related to our company and our tags have now brought us to page one, number one to three on Google search

MackCollier: Which has more SEO punch on a blog, tags or categories?

FreshPeel: I’d say Google gives more value to content, but as with all things SEO, it’s not an either or.

GrantGriffiths: Content written for the human reader and not the search engines is most important for the SEO. If human likes, Google likes.

hacool: I think it depends on how one codes the tags and categories. (IE semantic markup, H1, H2, H3, p, etc.)

Eric_Urbane: So should Blog Content have keywords and phrases laced within the body of the blog post?

MackCollier: Eric, my view is when you start trying to place keywords in a blog, you dilute the content’s impact. Not worth it, IMO.

Eric_Urbane: So should categories align with keywords?

hacool: If keywords and categories align naturally I think it makes sense, but I think we must write for humans 1st bots 2nd.

How many categories and tags?

Eric_Urbane: So how many categories should each blog post have for optimal SEO?

GrantGriffiths: Use 1 category and try to limit tags or keywords to around 5 for SEO.

FreshPeel: Too many categories can make it seem like your blog has no focus.

MackCollier: So each post should only have ONE category for maximum SEO benefit?

FreshPeel: I think 8 is a good number. AT 17 categories, I need to slim mine down.

markalves: Make blog categories list fit on 1 screen

Resources

I always come away from blogchats with a new list of links to check out. Here are some that were mentioned Sunday:

Organize your categories: 5 practical tips

Tags and Categories - SEO and Usability

Five Essential Elements of Good SEO

Are Your Stumbled Pages Sticky?

Everything I Need to Know About Twitter I Learned in J School

List of Twitter Chats

In closing, let me apologize for anyone who was at Sunday’s chat that I left out. Even after all the times I’ve reread the transcript, I’m still noticing new items.

By the way, if you’re free Sunday evening, we’d love to see you there.

Teeg is a Social Media Explorer who has been exploring the social part of the web since 1996, when she first discovered chat rooms. She details her exploration of various social media sites on SU Comments and Social Media Mom.

“I think women put more emphasis, focus and time into their social media browsing than men. Men seem to be very ADHD with social media, jumping from news story to story, whereas I’ve noticed women take slow time and incorporate what they read more into their daily life and lifestyle planning.”

Loren Baker, Search Engine Journal

A great thing about social media marketing is that you literally get a first-rate, hands-on education in human anthropology. You learn what moves people. You learn what people want. You learn how to tug at heartstrings and drive emotions to their limit. You learn how different groups of people respond to different types of content. It’s simultaneously liberating and disillusioning to discover how predictable groups of people behave.

[Note: for the rest of this article, I err on the side of gross generalization. This is necessary to make a general point. There are definitely exceptions to the rules and it's your duty to identify them;-)]

One of the more interesting observations I’ve made over the years as a participant in social media is how differently males and females participate. It is easy to see a strong analogy between the playing field of social media and the playground from elementary school. On the one hand, you have the males who are driven by aggressive competition, accomplishment and the highs of “victory” (football at recess/24 hour digg voting marathon). Sure, there are some females who join in, but for the most part, the aggressive side of social media is dominated by men. Just like how dodgeball games during gym class were usually dominated by the boys. Females, on the other hand, tend towards activities that are cooperative, non-aggressive and friendship building. As I recall, during recess in elementary school, the girls would teach other things like hand-clapping rhymes or sit around in a circle making bracelets (or each others hair). Not all the girls, but most of them. I think the same holds true in social media. Women are looking for like minded people to learn from, to share with, and to build lasting friendships.

Men use social media as a means to some other end. Men want success. Men want traffic. Men want money. Men want to be the best. Men compete to be the best at social media like athletes compete to be the best at their sport. Just like there are superstars in sports, social media sites like Digg and Reddit also have clearly identifiable superstars (and their fanboys).

Now, it would be silly to say that women don’t want things like traffic, money, success, etc. But the point is just that most men are using social media for something other than the social interaction. Women seem to actually use social media as an end in itself: they use it for socializing.

So whereas men use social media to accomplish things and gain status, women seem to use it for “deeper” stuff like building genuine relationships, solidarity and discussions about life (which men might call gossip;-) In my experience, women are much less likely to hit you with a dozen social media vote requests in a single day. I have half a dozen guys bombard me everyday via AIM with non-stop vote requests without even stopping to say hi. Women, in my experience, like to drive real conversation. They actually take the time to read stories and then tell me what they thought rather than just skimming headlines and voting blindly. Women are energized by compliments and pats on the back and affirmation. In other words, women are more social with their social media because in reality, women are more fundamentally social beings.

Women also tend to be more principled in their social media voting. This can be good and bad. The good is that if I send a story to a woman and ask for a thumbs up on StumbleUpon, if she actually likes the story she is more inclined to take the initiative and submit it to other social media sites she is active on (Twitter, Kirsty, etc.) The bad is that women are much, much, much more likely to secretly downvote a request if they don’t like the story (or the person who wrote it). As an example, I’ve stopped sending any “Hot Women” articles to my female social media friends because I have strong empirical evidence that the majority of them end up downvoting. This is not surprising at all and I should have figured it out much earlier given what I know about my wife;-)

Observations

So before getting to a list of some observations and a handful of insightful quotes from my social media friends, let’s draw a conclusion. I believe that the social media professional will be much more successful at his or her craft when taking gender differences seriously. The key, really, is to understand the needs of each person you interact with. Offer them something in return. But don’t assume that everyone wants the same thing. Take the time to understand what motivates each of your social media friends and go above and beyond the call of duty to interact with them so that when it comes time that you need something, they are eager to help. And remember that it’s very easy to wear out a social relationship of any kind (marriage, friendship, business) if one party is not having his or her needs met or if one person is carrying too much of the burden.

Before ending this article I’ve included a few more general observations that come from various social media friends who chose to be anonymous. We’d love for you to add your thoughts in the comments.

• Men often make accounts that look like attractive females for pragmatic purposes (to motivate more action by other social media participants)
• Women tend to use Twitter more for chatting and real conversations
• Men tend to use Twitter more for marketing
• Women are more likely to forward chain emails
• Men are more comfortable with manipulative behavior so long as it helps them acheive their goals
• Women like sites that facilitate discussions about life and offer a peek into others’ lives
• With men, social cooperation comes down to swapping favors
• With women, you have to earn social cooperation through relationship

Quotes from Social Media Users

More men are using it for networking and establishing authority/credibility. More women are using it to share their lives and to connect with other women who share the same values or similar experiences. Women are using it more for solidarity. They’re social beings, and social media has given them the amazing capability to find like-minded women instead of feeling judged and misunderstood by the women in their immediate families/geographic regions.

- Daniel Dessinger

Social media is a lot like relationships in real life - men tend to want information and to give out info if it will help them get ahead or achieve a goal. Women tend to take it a step further and are more willing to connect on a deeper level.

- Charlene Polanosky, Essential Keystrokes

Men seem to promote more, it’s more “about me,” whereas women are natural networkers and seek cooperation and participation. Don’t throw tomatoes at me, I’m just making a generalization in what I’ve obserrved.

- Brian Wallace, NowSourcing

I think women socialize more, but they both use it too boost careers and brands.

- Deb Ng, Freelance Writing Jobs

Women want to be popular or communicate, men want to make money or be considered cool.

- David Peralty, BrandingDavid.com

The biggest difference is that women are actually more naturally atuned to the whole social aspect, and tend to spend more time interacting and consuming the content, whereas men tend to be more fly by visitors and less interactive.

- Elise from Cell Phones .org

I’d say women are more drawn to social services like facebook and twitter, where communication is the feature as opposed to something like digg where there’s a competition like atmosphere.

- JD Arney

I think men want success from their participation on the social media. I think women mostly want to be social and have fun.

- HART, http://twitter.com/PetLvr

We are all used to “Sound Bites” - a short few seconds of words which are normally taken out of context to create sensational headlines. Few people realise that speech writers have for years worked on developing speeches to include a couple perfect “sound bites” for use by others.

Of course while some social media is audio based we are much more likely to rely on humble text to create a “social bite”.

What Is A Social Bite?

A social bite is a short piece of text to describe an article, post or idea which is easy to understand and easy to distribute through viral networks. A social bite must still carry the post’s message and goal but in a way that quickly impacts with users in essence:

A “social bite” is a short, concise and engaging message to gain traffic on social networks

The Perfect Social Bite

So what makes the perfect social bite, well it has two parts the hook and the line.

The hook are the words within the message - the thing to grab attention. This is doubly important as the hook will have no context once it has left the site. For example a hook is unlikely to reference the site so must be compelling, so that someone would visit the page without knowing where they were going.
The line is simply the url, sometimes this will be the page url but more likely to conserve space a url shortening service would be used. This compounds the need for a good hook as the only other potential reference to the site will be hidden.

The Twit Effect

Most social bites these days will have to pass through twitter at some point therefore a bite needs to be suitable otherwise people might change it. A normal tweet has a limited number of characters but while it may be tempting to use all 140 possible chars, this would severely limit the maximum potential of the social bite as it fails to take in retweets therefore the maximum number of characters is much more limited.

Twitter does not allow usernames longer then 20 characters and only shows usernames of 15 characters this means in practice to cope with every possible twitter name we would need to save at least 25 characters for retweets (20 for the name plus RT and two spaces one between rt and one after name and an ampersand before the name) even assuming 15 character names thats still 20 characters out of our 140.
With characters at a premium is it reasonable to expect usernames of 15 characters?

Taking a list of 1000 twitter usernames revealed the mean average length is 9 characters:

• 0-6 – 13%
• 6-9 – 58%
• 9-12 – 27%
• 12+ - 2%

taking these results its possible to assume the space needed for a retweet is 17 characters

Line Length

Assuming use of shortening service allows us to roughly determine how much room the line is going to take up. Its worth remembering users often swap out the url in favour of their own shortening service so as to gather statisitcs for themselves therefore even if your URL is shorter then the average it could be worth including a buffer.
Looking at various shortening services the average length is 18 characters including the http:// therefore the line length should be at least 18 characters plus a space making a line length total reserve of 19 characters.

Final Social Bite Anatomy

A hook within a social bite can potentially be longer than a page title, which in turn is not necessarily the same as a page headline.
It may also be important to allow for additional commentary to support the predetermined social bite, or to allow for SEO friendly URL shortening which can also boost response.
A single article can have multiple social bites that will attract different audiences.

Propagating a social bite

There are three routes to start a social bite on its move

1. Inject the hook without the line into your post article in much the same way as a sound bite works
2. Add the sound bite into the social networks yourself
3. Get someone else to do it for you

Of course you can always do all 3.

Many people reading this article may be thinking its very much twitter based but social bites have a tendency to cross social networks indeed that is the very point, and with social aggregators like Friendfeed and to a less extent Facebook something which starts on Twitter could well end up anywhere even getting to the ears of non twitter users such as myself

Do you use social bites? What other things should people think about?

Editor’s Notes (Andy)

Tim popped out to a bloggers meetup of Northern Gits Geeks, thus just adding a few additional references.

Dan Zarella recently took a scientific look at reteets over on Mashable
Louise wrote a similar article over on Twitip, but that was mainly aimed at retweeting tweets that originate on Twitter, where you know the length of your own Twitter usename.
Guy Kawasaki went into the psychological side of retweeting over on the open forum.

Many of you have heard of the 3 P’s of marketing: pills, porn, and poker. They are the bane of most people’s online existence, as we are constantly bombarded with seeing these kinds of “offers” being sent to our spam filter.

Enter Twitter.

As you know me by now, I like to look at the positive things in life. And after navigating through Twitter for some time, I’ve found that Twitter has the 3 C’s:

1 - Cats:

Sometimes a good lolcat can put you in the right mood. We can work endlessly on a killer blog post and a funny cat pic and caption will beat the post 9 times out of 10, though though Mr. Nielsen may disagree.

2 - Coffee:

I’ve put out breaking news and useful links, but tend to have more conversation when it’s around coffee time talk. @DunkinDonuts has achieved its twitter fame. Coffee Groundz, a local Houston, TX coffee shop, literally doubled their clientele through twitter by being the first company on record to accept orders through Twitter.

3 - Comedy:

Everyone needs a good laugh once in a while. Sometimes particular accounts aren’t what is funny, but rather what you find via Twitter. @Octane pointed out that he found this great piece from the Onion. The Twitter song is rather amusing as well:

Let’s add in a 4th C, just for fun!

4 - Common Sense.

As always, common sense still applies to the Twitterverse as well. Don’t have a public meltdown, feel free to post news on latest and greatest apps, and by all means, be careful what you say.

Last fall a fellow by the name of Joe Hall got in touch with a new toy he was working on in hopes of getting some insight. Seems he wanted some insight from the tool’s perspective, being a Grade A tool myself, his reasoning seemed sound. I figured that was surly the reason as my social chops are, well… less than enviable.

Either way, I’m always up fer playing with shiney new things and if someone wants to listen to my rambling, that’s an issue for their therapist.

If we know one thing my friends, as well as we do any, there are waaaay too many tools out there. Whos Talkin falls into the void of catch phrase greatness, buzz monitoring. As regular readers may remember, we looked at Google Custom Search Engines and other buzz tools for blog posting, not so long ago. Avid search geeks just have a thing for information discovery, indexing and retrieval.. so it’s natural.

What’s the buzz? Tell me what’s happening?

For all you information magnets and buzz stalkers… I say, give Whos Talkin’ a try. It looks like a pretty good tool that has a future. When asked, some of my other mates gave it a go and agreed that WT does seem to find mentions that other locales (Technorati, Google Blog Search and their ilk) weren’t finding. Add to that the handy segmentation and it’s definitely worth keeping in the tool box.

Lay of the Land

OK… give you a quick look and then you might as well head over and give it a go for yourself…. Simply start off at the clean (Googlish?) home page; put in the term you want to check on (can be anything from topics, names, places, researching blog posts). From there you are presented with the results, in a nice simple interface. For me the text is a tad large, so CTRL- sorts that for me…

Anyways…I searched the drama du jour …

What is quite handy are the titles in the side panel, these are for segmenting the results. These options include;

1. Blogs
2. News
3. Networks
4. Videos
5. Images
6. Forums
7. Tags

We can get as granular as you like depending on what you’re looking to do. I find that pretty hand as in the past I cobbled a variety of Google Custom Search Engine’s together to get the job done as I did with Search SEO Pros and Research your blog posts with buzz monitors.

The major teaser at this point of course is hitting the ‘Options’ tab where we’re told some great features are on the way such as saving searches, RSS and even an API (which had a few trail riders drooling). While it is good as is, many of the people that tried it out were asking about the upcoming additions. Thus being and SEO geek, searching out the buzz man was the next call of order…

In talking with Joe it seems apparent the early reactions have done well, “…(the) first week after launch we had a little over 20,000 unique visitors” which is not a bad start, although he followed up with near irony, saying, “…..it does slow down when the buzz wears off” – he oughta know I’d imagine.

Features and the Future

While the final plans aren’t in place, they are looking to start rolling out a pro version soon;

“I am thinking like one package that can do everything you need, and then in the future expand into more packages that folks that are more serious about monitoring might want.” Joe said, while venturing that Pro accounts could have;

1. Saved Searches,
2. RSS,
3. Email Alerts
4. Trending data.

 Beyond that, as with any good social tool they’re considering an API among other things. You’d have to think there is potential for even a white label version, but I’m wandering now.

iGoogle gadget

He’s even whipped up an iGoogle gadget, which I promptly whacked onto one of my many tabs;

What can I say? That’s just toooo much fun. As you can see I have a few buzz tracking toys on the go there. Having Who’s Talkin right in my Google Homepage was a definite bonus.

Link checking

Another bonus is that you can also use the ‘link:’ command to find websites/blogs that have linked to you in a given article - an added layer of digging that works as well… Here’s a video on that;

And there are a few more videos HERE…

WhosTalking certainly has some potential. Where it goes from here is about as easy as predicting when this damned snow will melt away upon my Canadian doorstep. I can tell you that the tool has some handy applications and the team seem committed to growing it even further – a great job for a small shop ( one simply has to root for the underdog oui?) I want to thank Joe for asking me along and for answering questions… and I wish him only the best for the future.

I shall report back when the next changes come out… until then, get yer buzz on

You may have noticed a few small social changes that we’ve instituted for 2009:

Twitter. We’ve been quiet on this front for far too long.

While it won’t be all of us running the account, expect some solid updates from @nowsourcing and @thegypsy. Why follow? Well, we have some interesting things to say and will also be sharing great links collectively.

Google Friend Connect. You might call us Collective Forgetfulness if we didn’t have the latest and greatest blog widget from our friends at Google. So we’ve added Google Friend Connect. It’s an interesting concept, and will be fun to see what people make of it beyond the simple “here are the friends that like my site.”

MyBlogLog. You might say that this is old news, but we updated the MBL widget to the more sleek, iPhone looking UI. What’s really interesting about MBL is the community/site itself beyond the widget. Personally, I’ve liked the service for a long time because it allows you to visually see who your recent visitors are - a different crack at the data vs. a more 1’s and 0’s Google Analytics approach.

What about you - what have you done to make your blog more social for 2009?

Image by gem fountain

It seems that now-a-days we can do most things online… clothes shopping, looking for Colleges, buying Holiday gifts, doing our banking… pretty much anything.

But there is something else we can do online….. something much more personal and sacred. We can even work on mending our inside pain and turmoil.

Before I get deeper into this topic I want to show why finding support groups online can make a lot of sense.

The Definition of a Support Group

Support Group - A support Group is a group of people who support each other over a problem they all share.

The Definition of an Online Community

Online Community - A group of people online who share a common interest.

Wow, both of those definitions sound very similar, don’t they?

An online community and support group are on the same type of idea. They have a common ground…. a common interest. And, the group builds from there. Because of this it makes sense that support groups would work online…. that they not only work, but they thrive.

A support group is usually a group centered around a very specific issue. This group of people usually come together to give and receive both emotional and practical support. When people come to a support group it is because they need to be with people…. to surround themselves with people that understand, have been through or are going through the same thing and can offer help, suggestions or just a shoulder to cry on. Most people aren’t looking for anything to be solved, but just to be with others in a similar situation can offer a sense of belonging and get them through the difficult time they are going through. Knowing that everyone who is part of this support group share the same problem and that they are not alone can be extremely helpful.

Social Media and online communities can be so helpful when it comes to support. I have shared issues of mine on my blog and the community has lent their support. I have on many occasions mentioned an issue I was having while communicating on Twitter and my friends their didn’t let me down.

But, what if you needed more? What if you need more specific help?

I love that my friends and colleagues want to lend their support. They want me to know that they care. But, what if i wanted to communicate with someone with my same problem…. a non-judgmental person that I can freely say what’s on my mind about our shared problem? Could that happen?

Sure, that’s where online support groups come in. Your friends and family are wonderful support, but when you need more specific help such as support on a specific topic…. support groups offer a safe environment for mutual support and encouragement. In order for a support group to work, online or in reality, you must feel safe.

What to look for in an Online Support Group / Community

• Needs to be User Friendly
• Easy Navigation - No confusion
• Clean and bright

  This Online Support Group / Community is The Virtual Wellness Community. It is a great website that provides free support,
  education and hope to people with cancer and their loved ones. It is beautiful, easy to navigate, completely user-friendly even for the casual computer users. Their Online Community has plenty of articles to educate yourself on Cancer as well as inspiration and hope. It is a great place to meet other people with Cancer as well as loved ones who are dealing with the pain of someone they love having Cancer. People coming to this community are looking for support, friendship and strength. It truly looks like a safe place to be….. exactly how a support group / community should.
  
  
  

• Clear Guidelines on how to use the support group.
• Easy to follow as well as easy to find online support group rules.

  This Online Lupus Support Group is a perfect example of how to make sure make sure the online support group guidelines are right out in the open so that there is no question as to what the rules are. This way all support group community members are following the rules and not making any members feel unwelcome or unsafe.
  
  

• Message Boards / Forums and Chats - This is a very important part of support groups. Forums and message boards are where community members can ask questions, get advice and others can offer suggestions and help. Even though the conversation is not real time, forums and message boards can be extremely beneficial. And, for many Online Communities the only conversation that can happen on the website are via message boards and forums. Chats are real time and also a great benefit. Make sure there is some kind of moderator in the chat…. sometimes sensitive and difficult conversations can get out of hand. It is helpful (and safer) to have a non-judgmental third-party moderator on hand.

  
  
  Look for a message board that have plenty of activity….. like this Eating Disorder Forum above. The more activity there is then you know it is an established forum and that the community enjoys it.

• Links to important information and Websites. Forums and discussions are wonderful. But, you also need to understand the issues you are having…. why you are having them, what are the symptoms, when will they go away, etc. Good Support Groups and Communities should have plenty of information for you at your fingertips. Or, at least point you in the right direction.
• Find a Doctor - These online support groups should also offer you the resources you need to help you find a Support Group in your area and a Doctor if need be. Online Support Groups are great, but sometimes you need a real person, real hug, real conversation…. reality.

  

These are just three examples of great Online Support Groups. But, there are so many more. And, most that I have found are doing an awesome job at combining Social Media and Community Support.

Twitter as a Support Group

Twitter has yet to add a group function to their Microblogging site. It’s coming…. at least that is what we are promised. But, as of yet…. nothing. There are an amazing amount of people on Twitter….. many with issues. This would be a great place to have groups. And, with Twitter the groups can have conversations real-time. As close to reality conversation with many people as it gets.

People use 3rd-party Twitter tools to create groups…. such as TwittGroups, GroupTweet, Hashtags (Hashtags website wasn’t working during the time of this post), TweetParty, Twitter Groups, TwittBot . Nothing that looked like it would be worthy of a support group….. except TwittGroups. Not spectacular, but it is as close as it gets as far as Support Group worthy on Twitter.

Searching for support groups on Twitter was not easy. I assume it will get much easier once Twitter finally adds group capability to the Twitter website. But, until then it is going to continue to be a struggle. I understand that these 3rd party Twitter Groups that I mentioned above have the ability to create Twitter groups, but why can’t I search the groups to find one that will match with my needs? Maybe I was doing something wrong or it wasn’t clearly visible on their sites, but I couldn’t find it. However, TwittGroups was the only place I could search the Twitter Groups easily. You can choose to either look through all their Twitter Groups , look through all the popular Twitter Groups, or do a search of Twitter Groups to see what is a good fit.

Once you find a group that you find interesting…. click on the link. You will find something that looks like this:

This is the Homeschool Twitter Group. They have a nice group going on, I must say. If you scroll down on this page you will see all the members. I’m not going to put an image of that here….. they have a lot of members. But, if you click on the link that says, "Show Members" it shows you all the members of this Homeschool Twitter Group.

Now go back to the main page again that looks like the above screen…. the main page of the Twitter Group you picked. Click on "TweetGrid"
and you will get the tweets having to do with your support group. Here is what the TweetGrid of what the homeschool support group looks like….

This is where you can see all the conversations having to do with your support group and the tweets done by the members of the support group.

Now, go back to the home Support Group page again and click on "Post Tweet" This is where you will post a tweet to the group. Doing it this way will label your tweet perfectly so that it appears in the TweetGrid.

Well, there ya go. Support groups can be a wonderful and helpful thing. I’ve used them several times to help with issues…. I totally agree with support groups. With Social Media it opens up the mediums that you can get support from… take advantage of that. It can be a wonderful thing.

Note: Please keep in mind that online support should not take the place of medical attention that you should receive from a doctor or professional.

With us today is Matt Daines, lead developer of the popular Twitter directory, Twellow. Twellow just released Twellowhood, so we thought now might be a good time to check in with him and see how things were going.

1. Give us a bit of background about yourself.

Originally from Utah, I’ve been in the IT industry for over 13 years, having worked as a programmer/designer in various family-owned businesses ranging from medical transcription to e-commerce retail and distribution. I left the family business to return to school a few years ago, and I received my Bachelors in MIS from Utah State University in 2007. Upon completion of the degree I worked briefly for a large printing company, which I did not enjoy (it took over a month to get my computer). I looked around, found iEntry, Inc., and felt the company fit nicely with my skill set. It’s been good to be back in a smaller company where everything is not red tape. For the last several months I have been working as the lead developer for Twellow, along with various other duties at iEntry.

2. Where does the name Twellow come from? What made you go forth with this idea, considering the sheer number of Twitter related sites out in the space?

The name Twellow was something Rich Ord (CEO and Founder of iEntry) and I came up with together. We were discussing the whole concept in it’s early stages, and the connection was made to the yellow pages. While I was looking at the various “tw” apps associated with Twitter, the combination of Twitter and Yellow came together, as in “yellow pages”. The first name that came up was twellowpages.com, and we were going to go with that, but as I started looking more into it I thought a shorter name would be better. Twellow.com was available, so Rich jumped on it.

We went forward with the idea since there really weren’t any useful Twitter directories at the time. Twellow has been around since May and there have been a lot of Twitter apps that have come online since then, but I feel Twellow remains the premier directory service for Twitter. And Rich’s vision for where we want to take Twellow is fairly significant.

3. How do you plan to allow developers to hook into your system?

We are looking at various ways that our system could be opened up to outside developers, and have a limited API in operation currently to allow the grabbing of the categorizations for certain users. With the recent deployment of TwellowHood we have more options for providing demographic data that could be used by others.

4. Tell us what inspired you to come up with Twellowhood.

TwellowHood was Rich’s idea. He’s always recognized the power of location-based search, and we’ve been talking since the beginning about ways to make Twellow more geo-targeted. It’s just been the last month that we’ve really focused on it and found the tools to make it happen.

5. What are the advantages of claiming your profile?

The main advantage is that users can control their own listing. Once logged in a user can adjust which categories he or she belong to, as well as change bio, name, location, and other aspects of the listing. Users can also add an extended bio which allows up to 2,000 characters, including limited HTML formatting, so it provides a good tool to enhance your existing social-media presence. Twellow also offers several “Social Links” options for logged-in users to link to their other online profiles.

6. It would be cool to see overall state rankings, not just by city.

This is something that we’ll look into. Having the “heat-map” with the shading based on users in that state/region gives a good visual idea of where the big states are, but it’s always good to have the option to see text in a list.

7. How do you think that the electoral map would have looked if it were based on twitter followers?

That’s an interesting question. Twellow searches for people who identify themselves as either conservative or liberal, Democrat or Republican give some hint as to how they might have voted in the election. We might look at applying the results of this data to the map in the future so people could see the red or blue level of their state on TwellowHood. Blue states generally tend to have higher populations, so there might be some correlation between the deeper green states on TwellowHood with blue states, and the lighter ones tending to be red. Population density would need to be taken into account, as with the very blue Northeast, but it’s an interesting question.

8. What should a user do if they want to be removed from the directory?

There have been very few people who have requested to be removed from Twellow, but we do make the option available in the profile editor. For those who are not comfortable claiming their profile in order to have it removed we also respond promptly to requests received through our contact page.

9. What about false positives? Example for judge, are you going to work to make it context based as well?

Twellow is a work in progress, and we will continue to work on making it more accurate as it evolves. We’ve been looking into methods for context-based matching and have discovered a few options that should work well for us. As they say, youth is wasted in the young, and that goes for computer programs as well. It’s only after you’ve tinkered with it for a while that you find out how you could have built it better to begin with. But in the future we will be able to implement the experience we’ve gained and make the system even better.

10. Technorati is in many ways at least a partial equivalent to Twellow, and for years has had unique logins and various methods to claim a blog - posting a link, possibly a one-time login. Other services use unique files, placing code on a page, or changes in meta data.
Twellow, run not by a couple of programming geeks, but by a professional internet media company fully aware of possible issues, decided that it was quite ok to request the username and password belonging to a twitter account every time it is accessed.

Andy for one is highly negative of any Twitter service that asks for access to his Twitter account, and it is even worse if you have to repeatedly provide it. It is a security risk and shouldn’t be encouraged.

Can you provide a legitimate reason why Twellow is so poorly coded?

We are well aware of the security issues involved with Twitter passwords. A legitimate reason for us not dealing with it up to this point is that Twitter doesn’t offer an alternative method for authenticating users. We are following Twitter’s progress on their implementation of an OAuth system to address this issue and will be working with whatever solution they provide as soon as it becomes available.

You can read the discussion regarding the OAuth issue on the Twitter API developer forum at the following addresses:

http://groups.google.com/group/twitter-development-talk/browse_thread/thread/334099aade593e49/f80f9061a661a473

http://groups.google.com/group/twitter-development-talk/browse_thread/thread/7694f3857f2059d4/354eaef5a760a41d

As you can see from the discussion this is an issue many Twitter API developers are dealing with, and our “poorly coded” method for authenticating users is only a reflection of Twitter not providing a solution for their own API. However, iEntry, Inc. is a “professional internet media company” that is well respected among it’s users and clients. If people do not trust us to use their information in a responsible manner, they are entirely free not to participate in our service.

Thanks Matt!

Hey hey and a ho ho ho to all (or any other festive feeling that may apply:0)… just a quick post to highlight the winners of the Mashable Web Awards from today. There are likely a few new sites for you to check out as I’ve found a few nuggets already. Of interest YouTube came second for video, how wierd is that? My personal fav, iGoogle, did a respectable second in the best start page category (behind parent papa Google). From dating and gossip to politics, there is plenty to keep you busy.

Congrats to all the winners from the gang here at Collective Thoughts and to you my fine reader, get festive and surf some new finds. And now the final winners (and runners up) for the Mashable Web Awards for 2008;

Mainstream & Large Scale Social Networks

Embeddable Widgets

Blog Plugins

Social News

Social Networking Applications

Social Bookmarking

Search & Social Search

Sports & Fitness

Photo Sharing

Video Sharing

Start Pages

Places & Events

Travel

Music

Social Shopping

Fashion

Celebrity & Gossip

Mobile Applications

Dating & Romance

Wiki

Politics

How-to

Environmental

Non-Profit Causes

Online Games

Niche Social Networks

And there’s the list for this year… for more see the Mashable Web Awards for 2008

We decided to skip the perfunctory “Happy 1st Birthday, Collective Thoughts” year in review and turn it on its edge. We were all talking and wondered the last time you saw a birthday post that you’d refer to later on.

Birthday post are formulaic and predictable. You can usually expect:

• contests and giveaways
• highlights of best posts
• goals for the future

With aggregation and bookmarking tools, it’s pretty easy to find out the best posts on your own. This is web 2.0, so we need to give you more. Let’s delve further into the social experiment. What’s a birthday for? Aside from celebrating your first day out in the world in your birthday suit, it’s a day for people to focus on you.

We are nothing without you, our community. You help make us great, spreading the word, retweeting, and the like. We’re also aware of the uncertainty of the financial markets these days. We’d like to use our birthday to cast some light on you, and develop community here.

We want our readers to “give” us their best posts of the last year, so we can publish them in the next post.

Readers should aim for the post they most want highlighted, the one that is aimed to show their expertise in the best possible light, possibly the one they wished had got more attention.

First let me apologize for muttering the R-word but it goes without saying, it’s currently an influencing social and economic trend. The recession indicators I’m going to talk about aren’t your typical indicators as seen through the eyes of economists like the stock price of Starbucks or lipstick sales. What I’m going to point out and touch on is obviously surmised from the current economic state of things but has yet to be specifically defined in terms of social trends right now. If we wander over to Google Zeitgeist (trends, trends for websites, insights, hot trends), Twitter Search, Addict-o-matic popular and others, we can pick up on signals that speak to how our world is functioning and reacting to a recession mentality. Through these indicators we can make decisions and predictions on how to act or even how to prepare ourselves.

Let’s take a look at some of these findings:

Trend: oDesk
Popularity: Google Trends # 1

oDesk is a site that allows you to “Hire, Manage, and Pay remote contractors as if they were in your office.” Although oDesk’s hot trend rank is more than economy based, with the current mass layoffs it’s easy assume how a site like this would become very popular during a recession. Virtual employees do not require commuting (gas and auto costs) and can operate anywhere. All while saving employers money on costs like health coverage, on utilities that a normal office would consume, and since it’s hourly based pay only, there’s no worry that employers may be paying for employee downtime which would normally be the case with salary-based pay.

Trend: Etsy art
Popularity: Google Trends # 11

Etsy is a popular craft site that allows artists to display and sell their wares. Most often you can find great deals on handmade jewelry, scarves, art, etc. Basically anything that could be handmade can be found here. With the holiday season right around the corner, I anticipate Etsy will be riding high.

Trend: waste management jobs
Popularity: Google Trends # 20

When Benjamin Franklin said “In this world nothing is certain but death and taxes” he forgot to mention trash. Waste management is a high paying yet low demand job that doesn’t require a college degree. It’s also not a municipal service that would likely fall victim to budget cuts like police and fire departments.

Article: Wal-Mart posts higher 3Q profit
Popularity: Addict-o-matic > Yahoo News

Unfortunately many American’s love Wal-Mart and I’m not going to get into why Wal-Mart is bad for the U.S. economy but I will say the common perception of Wal-Mart is that it’s the cheapest and easiest place to get just about everything. Penny pinchers think shopping here will save them money when in actuality middle-America might still have some coin if Wal-Mart never existed.

Article: Apple may launch most aggressive Black Friday sale yet
Popularity: Addic-o-matic > Digg

Retailers are going to have a hell of a time selling much of anything in Q4. Luckily the consumer comes out on top when retailers compete. Even though the holiday season is near and consumers will benefit from heavily discounted sales, it still may be very difficult for retailers to make their investors happy.

So what can we piece together from the above? Well, besides needing a drink or anti-depressant (invest in pharma now), we know that hiring through oDesk may be a good option for small to medium-sized business owners, we know that Etsy may be a smart place to get some good deals on quality holiday gifts, we know that jobless claims are up and people are looking for work in not-so-desirable places, we know that people are in the money-saving mindset, and consumers are going to get some great deals this holiday season.

Buckle-up folks, we know it’s going to be a bumpy ride…oftentimes social media will tell us just HOW bumpy the ride will be.

I was playing with some toys earlier and thought; why don’t we look a little deeper into the world of Buzz Monitoring. And I don’t mean for tracking buzz altogether either. What about utilizing it when crafting new content or blog posts? Buzz monitoring need not be a glorified vanity search endeavour when it can unlock a genie of information to bring life to your content generation efforts.

While you can certainly use a buzz monitoring program to track activity relating to ones blog or company metrics, it can be also used to track/research just about anything. You can use it to track news on markets for projects and can suggest the latest trends and/or buzz for content creation programs and general business intelligence.

Information is the currency of content

What is most certainly a great way to leverage them is when used for researching your next blog post. It is not only a good way to find nuggets of varied perspectives, but also shows you the latest discussions that are going on in a given topic area.

This can be important as you can continue existing discussions in either a supportive or converse perspective and hopefully catch any existing momentum that already exists in the marketplace. You may even find the research into the most recent activity begins to craft your post in directions you may not have started off on in the fist place.

Some tools to play with

As it has been said by the ever fascinating Johnny Long; Google is your friend – so let’s start there.

(Johnny Long… Not related.. but entertaining)

Anyway, let’s continue on… Often freshness matters as much as quality and other times aged, respected feed sources are the call of the day. In the former, where freshness plays a roll, try a quick run though various searches on Google;

Google Blog Search; which can be set to various time frames – you can also grab a widget for your iGoogle or set up alerts for desired topics.

Google Search (regular); using time delineated results (1 week here) – a variety of Google search hacks are always handy for researching anything. But that’s another story.

Other useful blog stops include;

Now this method works on a larger scale but also tend to have a higher noise-to signal ratio than one may want when creating content. Timely content isn’t always the best content. One of the next options is to do a little Google personalization in the form of known, respected sources….

PostRank (consolidate with Aiderss) – another handy buzz monitor tool is PostRank which will scan a feed and give you a 1-10 scale of each post. This can be handy when analyzing a given post or topic type to ensure you have the best possible chance of creating a popular post of your own.

Do-it-yourself

The Google Custom Search Engine; a service that allows you to search only the sites you wish and even segment them. I like creating GCSEs centric to areas of study. In my case that would be search engines, search marketing and social media marketing. To that end I created a couple engines to study what I felt were some of the more authoritative barometers of the genre

The SEO Search Engine – which we can search ‘buzz monitor’ to get results on the topic from top SEO blogs.

The SMM Search – which contains many of the top social media marketing blogs and we’d get this for ‘buzz monitor’

What is advantageous to making a custom search engine is controlling the source material. Even if you are writing for a niche you’re not familiar with, once populating with known entities in the space it is your crystal ball to mining content ideas and opinions.

Should we be tasked with creating content for a fishing store/blog you would not only mine the client and his suppliers for leads (on influencer sites/blogs) but head off to locales such as Technorati , Alltop or MBL – to get a good cross section and identify influencers.

Add them into your custom search engine and away you go…

Regardless of how you populate them, utilizing a Google Custom Search Engine can make for a great signal to noise tool for ongoing project needs. Segmentation helps to narrow the focus where that is often needed to catch the influencers in a market segment.

Segmenting the social world

Next we want to be able to JUST search the social world for activity. Once more utilizing the GCSE we can segment the various social sites not only choosing which to include, but also segment by basic type (social media, networking, bookmarking etc…). To that end;

Social Activity Search – which enables searching of the various major social sites like so..

Twitter/FriendFeed/Plurk Search – for watching the world of micro-bloggers - our search

The main point being to load them up with sites you feel you are targeting or interested in for a given campaign. It takes very little time but gives you a tool at your control that makes getting the feel for a buzz in a given niche easy and accessible.

If you’re looking for a good list of sites to mine for data, I just happen to keep a list here which might come in handy. You can even go old school and make one to search the forums in a given niche – you’re limited by your imagination and uses for qualitative as well as quantitative data.

Also, if you want to track buzz on Twitter, use the real-time search - which we can use with topic markers (#seo for example) or use the advanced search goodies which are here - of interest is the ‘sentiment’ search which can help if you’re after a positive or negative spin on your post.

What to make of it all?

Now that you have all this information it is a matter of mining it for data.

Start by making note of;

1. Common topics; old staples that are the everyday
2. Popular topics; ones that are hot on social sites
3. Controversial Topics; those that raise the emotions
4. Timely items; news that is bandwagon friendly
5. Resource lists; topically relevant tools and resources.
6. Popular sites; top influencers often cited (show some link love)
7. Chronological anomalies (is more content published on a certain day?)

This can be a scientific excursion utilizing a spreadsheet or other application or a more informal process of making notes of the areas that stand out to you. What is more important is that you get a feel for the target audience and the market itself before even setting about the content creation itself. You may already have a topic in mind, you may not; the goal is to understand the space.

Then Target your approach; using traditional hooks;

1. The News hook
2. Resource angle
3. Freebies and give-a-ways
4. The passion poker
5. The Ego baiter

Armed with your research it should be easy to find topics, resources and influencers to match up with more traditional link bait approaches to make a compelling page/blog post. Once more we are merely looking to get the creative juices flowing through this process. Beyond buzz monitoring there are other factors such as past analytics and openly available trend data from locales such as Google Trends and Compete from which we can draw from. Utilizing buzz monitoring is merely another tool in deciding on the ultimate direction of any content creation plan.

 
Just links in the chain

There are many other considerations to be had when putting together a content creation plan – but buzz monitoring is certainly a tool with many uses. Hopefully turning to these tools for more than mere engagement metrics and benchmarks will enhance your own imagination to how these tools can be used. If you approach them as a blank canvass awaiting the first stroke, you will find much value to be had beyond traditional uses. Next time your writing or seeking inspiration why not give it a try ;0)

And because we’ve merely opened a new door into Buzz Monitoring; What else can they do? Research and Development? Business intelligence? Qualitative data?

There is more here than a mere vanity search nor fickle engagement metrics – get creative

Here are some goodies that came out of this expedition for more of your creative endeavours;

Finding were your customers are talking about you. – Vanessa Fox
13 Tools for Tracking discussions in the Blog-o-sphere - Mashable
26 Free Social Media Tracking Tools – Marketing Pilgrim
Reputation Management made easy, and Free! – Search Engine Land
Tools to monitor your brand effectively – Social Media Trader
Top 10 reasons to monitor your brand online – TopRank Blog

Other toys for tracking

Megite - social news aggregrator for uncovering the most relevant items from auto-discovered news sites and weblogs. Here’s an example using Lee Odden’s Big list of marketing blogs.

Zemanta - Any user-created text (a blog post, article or web page) is directly “read” by Zemanta; it then combs the web for the most relevant images, smart links, keywords and text, instantly serving these results. Zemanta can be deployed on all major content publishing platforms and web browsers through a simple plug-in.

Paid Services – I haven’t had the opportunity to review these, use at own risk.

Trackur
SentiMetrics
CyberAlert - NetPinions
Umbria
Buzz Logic
Nielsen Buzz Metrics
ScoutLabs

Collective Thoughts has partnered up again with Mashable for the 2008 Open Web Awards! Nominate your favorites at the bottom of the page with their cool new widget! Nominations for the 2008 Open Web Awards begin Wednesday, November 5th, 9 am PST till Sunday, November 16th 11:59 pm PST. (THIS MEANS VOTE NOW!!!)

Open Web Awards is the only multilingual international online voting competition that covers major innovations in web technology. Nominate your favorites in a ton of categories ranging from Social News to Niche interests! The first Open Web Awards achieved over 250,000 votes combined between Mashable and 50 international blog partners including Collective Thoughts!

Rules for Voting and Nominations
Mashable and PollDaddy reserves the right to analyze any of the nominations or votes before determining an official nominee or winner. Due to the nature of online submissions, the following are the rules for voting and nominations:

Nominations:
1. Any site or application can be nominated in as many categories as seen fit
2. Nominations is one Site per Category per person (validated through PollDaddy)
3. Nominees with the most submissions and/or determined by Mashable will move to the voting round

Voting:
1. Voting is one vote per Category per person (validated through PollDaddy)
2. IP tracking and e-mail confirmation will remain in place
3. E-mails will only be used in regards to alerts about the Open Web Awards
4. Winners will be determined after voting round is closed and data is verified

Winners:
1. “People’s Choice” Winners will be validated by Mashable and PollDaddy before any announcements are made
2. “Blogger’s Choice will be validated by Mashable and compiled from our Blog Partners

Presented by:

Mashable

Today I spent an hour deleting comments. The entire time it drove me nuts. Your skills at getting links to stick to a Do Follow Blog are terrible. Very few of you even have a clue!

Well today is the day you learn how to get your comments to stick to a Do Follow Blog.

Items you need for this assignment are:

• A money site you drive the traffic to
• A few profiles on social media sites
• A collection of "Do Follow" blogs
• The common sense "not" to spam a Do Follow Blog

Quality traffic is your goal, but to get there you need to study "Do Follow Psychology."

I know I am going to get a lot of heat from the anti-spam community because they never read what they complain about. This post really is not about spamming comment forms. It is how to become a valuable contributor to someone’s blog. This in turn will make it easy for all of your comments to stick and the bloggers will actively request your participation. I know the title is totally misleading. If you are truly looking to spam a Do Follow Blog, good luck, it just is not worth the time.

Something you need to know about a Do Follow Blog, the bloggers that manage them are fanatical about commenting. This is a good thing. They read every comment and if you are even close to spammy they will delete your comment without hesitation. The closest thing I can relate to a Do Follow Blogger would be the relationship an organic gardener has to their garden. Think about how much time an organic gardener puts into their garden. Would you like to be the rabbit that sneaks into their plot of green leafy goodness, or the friendly delivery guy that brings fresh steaming loads of fertilizer? The spam button can have the same effect as Mr. McGregor’s shotgun! They can kill your site by reporting you to every anti-spam forum they frequent just as easily as they can accept your comment.

I would much rather be the delivery guy that brings a fresh load of fertilizer. The question is how do you get your fertilizer into the garden? Do you think that the Gardener lets just any delivery guy into his garden? No! The Gardener will only allow someone that they trust to get past their white picket fence.

If I were a delivery guy with a wheelbarrow full of fresh steaming fertilizer, I would do everything I could to become friends with every local gardener in my area. Let’s relate that to every Do Follow Blogger in your niche. What do you think would make a niche Do Follow Blogger want to be friends with you? Maybe start with a few submissions to the popular social media sites? As time grows and the Do Follow Blogger gets to know you, add a comment to one of their posts. But before you do that, I hope you have created an about page on your money site that you want to link to. On this page add plenty of information about yourself and link out to your social media profiles.

Do Follow Blogs are not the place to use a keyword anchor text link. Trust me, if you do add one, it will be deleted before the fertilizer cools. Only a few of us keep some of the comments that have keyword anchor text links. Use your name that you use on your profiles, and link out to your about page, and only add links in the form the fields provided. Do not add links into the body of your comments. If you have written your about page well, it will link out to many of your money pages. If you have written a truly good comment and if you are one of the first to comment on that post, the Do Follow Blogger will keep your link and you will see traffic directly from that comment for a long time to come.

What is the best April Fools prank you have seen this year?

This brought me to the inspiration of how could I create an emotional linkbait that would still motivate active users of social media to create a return of emotional investment by way of social recognition.

The experiment was a success in my opinion. It helped me to get to know several readers of the Collective-Thoughts blog much better than I would have if I were to have written a white paper about the intricacies of linkbait instead of showing the over all results. It also helped me, or should I say it pulled me out of one roll many have seen me in and placed me into an entire new position in their mind. By letting my guard down and describing a moment in my life I connected with a few more readers!

I am not going to discuss the over all numbers, the unique views, or how long each reader stayed. I will say I have been very surprised at the turnout and the results I have accumulated.

To sum things up for today. If you posted a review of my last post on Collective-Thoughts, check your StumbleUpon email in the coming days as I will follow up with the reviews of your sites very soon.

Thank you again for making my day that much more interesting.

I have used PDF’s for some time to get my sites indexed across multiple search engines. Today Tim Nash has let the world know his results and they are very interesting if you are creating content sites and wish to get your content indexed.

How long before we have a new company selling reviews in their PDF directory?

So let’s not waste anymore of your time, click on over to his blog and see his results on PDF’s.

Oh and while you are there be sure to subscribe to his RSS feed.

The past few weeks I have been very quiet about what I am up to. Looks like the secret is about to be unleashed. The past couple years I have followed how social media has grown into a 800 pound gorilla. I have joined nearly every social media related site and complied what I like most about each one. Now the time has come for me to let everyone know what is on the horizon.  In the following weeks I will slowly introduce you to OurSocieties.

OurSocieties is a new social network and social news voting site that centers around the view that there are many niches that interconnect each of us.

Please be patient as we release each of our features over the following weeks as we are opening up in true beta format. But do tell me what you like and also dislike about social media as it will only help us grow. My goal is to be as transparent in the creating of OurSocieties as I can for the benefit of us all.

What I asking everyone that uses social media sites, if you were to launch your own site what would you want most?

When you have a minute, take the time to visit a new web development site at Fasiyanti

As a someone writing for SEO purposes I liked long copy over short for one simple reason. They had more text to get indexed. I could hit a much wider Long Tail with Long Copy over Short Copy.

Now as I look back at my work form the past two years, I notice that I have neglected to follow my original motives and began writing shorter and shorter copy. This has also hindered my focus from SEO and made social media more important than ever.

Even this post has very few keyword phrases, this will hinder the results of Long Tail keyword phrases from being found in the search engines. I still like keyword stuffing when ever possible, as long as it looks natural.

I should be writing more posts like this very cool post over on SEO Space, Top 100 Marketing Buzzwords for 2008. They are able to add many great keyword phrases to their post and make it fit very well.

Time to get out my login and passwords for WordTracker and Wordze…

Things are heating up over on the Collective Thoughts blog. We are hosting a Social Media Ninja contest and throwing stars are flying and a Social Media Ninja will soon be selected.

But before contest is completed, we want you to voice you opinion on who really would benefit from wining this contest. It may not be the person that is most popular. It may be the person least known of all. It is up to you to decide.

To learn more about these amazing Social Media Ninjas go to the Collective Thoughts blog and join in on the fun with a comment on who you like the most!

My take on the subject is not to post empty posts. Recently I have been working on the release of a new site, so I am breaking my silence with this post. What is your take on posting just to post?

I also would like to wish everyone a Happy New Year!

Learn more about do follow blogs and how to use blog comments to gain traffic and link authority

First, I think it’s a pleasure to write on this search engine blog.  Writing on your own wall can be fun, but it’s a nice break to write on someone else’s wall. Search engines are a popular median and should be paid attention too. However, advertising existed before search engines and people that were in advertising 10 years ago have an advantage – and can be learned from.

Image is something, a photo can psychologically influence visitors decision making. I remember a few studies of this as well, but an image won’t do much more than that. It won’t influence the person to spread the message of your company or site.

Two friends are talking and they are discussing a site they found on the web. One says to the other, what is that site? More than likely, they will just quote your description of the site. Why should they have to think more about it, then necessary? So what is that company about? Oh, it’s a place you can save on car insurance. 

Your site’s description or slogan is pretty important. People don’t really want to think about where they are at, and what the purpose of the site is. Just explain it to them simple. Know your purpose, know your message, and look good. Search engines are a source of visitors. A way people can find your home on the web. If people don’t quickly understand what the site is about, then they will forget and may not return and won’t tell their friends. Give your site a purpose and know your site’s purpose.

Author of this post is a free-lance writer that writes quietly at tiffanyinsurance.com.