social blog roll with tag: SMO

Global Food Crisis: How Bloggers, Social Media Users and SEO Experts Can Help

Free rice.In recent days I read news about the exploding global food crisis all over. It seems the whole world is starving besides us rich westerners. Even worse: Much of it is our fault, not only IMF, WTO or World Bank policies that favor the industrialized nations but even more directly: Our green cars and alternative ...]

Findability, New and Better SEO? Experts Disagree; 12 Findability Resources

Findability is a seemingly new term that has become a buzzword recently due to a book called Building Findable Websites by Aarron Walter (not to mix up with Aaron Wall, author of SEO Book). Now as a true SEO 2.0 I’m always on the lookout for new concepts and innovation. So I took a ...]

Twitter Dilemma: To Tweet or Not to Tweet? Pros, Cons, 50 Links & Tools

The birds by rickydavid. In recent weeks I faced a huge onslaught of posts about Twitter from at least 5 sources per day I read. Many people will probably assume I’m an early adopter, but I was not on Twitter, well, until now. So follow me or I will never again stumble, sphinn, mixx or link ...]

3 Phases of Flagship Blog Growth or How to Fall in Love with Blogging

Classics in Lego by Balakov. Starting and maintaining a flagship blog is not really easy. You need perseverance and the will to keep on blogging no matter what happens. You need passion. You need to fall in love with blogging! I have it, so I don’t need extra motivation or something. What I need though, like ...]

How to Blog: 7 Writing for Blogs Guidelines that Define Blogging

Many people just don’t get the differences between websites and blogs or more specifically between news and blogs. You can have a Wordpress based site posting daily the latest news and still won’t be a blog. How to blog then to really make your blog a blog? That’s easy once you acknowledge and put into practice the ...]

How to Get Content and Earn Credibility with Old News

Brisbane 1959 - image by pizzodisevo. Who wants to read yesterday’s news? This might sound like a rhetoric question but it’s not: Google users or searchers want to read old news. They actually seek out your old, even archaic content right now. What do they find? Outdated information and dead links. I just checked a blog of ...]

Semantic SEO: Your Website is a Goldmine with On-Site SEO 2.0

This post has been sponsored by Nstein* Update May 15th, 2008: New image added] Image by Kevin Rosseel You think on-page SEO is dead? It hasn’t even begun! To be clear, your website is a goldmine and you haven’t even started to dig for the gold. In my SEO 2.0 ...]

Top 7 CSS Tricks for Better SEO

Google baby by skoop. As most of us know it is often really difficult to build websites for both the user and Google. Google still needs to be assisted in finding and assessing a website’s worth to such an extent that it can break the user experience altogether. Of course there are plenty of CSS solutions ...]

CNN Adds Mixx Buttons, 5 of Them!

CNN adds Mixx buttons, 5 of them! Couldn’t resist it Screenshot taken with Firefox 1.5 Join us at our SEO 2.0 group at Mixx before it’s too late.

Red 1715

To me my paintings are motivated by emotion. They are doodles, the paint pushed around until it finds its place. They are not of a thing, they are of a mood. I expect most people not to like.

Given up the Coke habit

Giving up Coke Are you addicted to Coke or any other kind of caffeinated soda drink? I know I am. I can’t get by without my two cans of Coke a day. But I have decided to find a way to stop. If you spend all day at the computer as I do then snacking is ...]

Distraction will drive you into mediocrity

Infinite Information fatigue We operate the most complex machines around, our brain. How do you deal with the fact that there is an infinite amount of information available to us with a few mouse clicks and we only have a finite amount of time. Simply being a sponge whilst drawing in information these days will not work. The ...]

Dealing With Death

I like to think you never really deal with death, rather it deals with you. You have no control over it, only the time and manner. Dealing with the death of a loved one seems the hardest thing in the world. You don’t really understand what sadness really is or it’s depth until you have ...]

Link Dump

A list of some of the links I visited today. Great taglines of websites Cool book from a funky writer Smashing Magazine Guardian travel top ten Top diggers podcast San Jose SES recap Running a successful Stumbleupon account Social News Networking Comment Trackers Top Experiments from the Museum of hoaxes Penzance web design PPC Think Can’t teach, then manage Oh No! A “Ten Killer Link Building Posts” Post Cheap ...]

Have at least one perfect moment a day.

It happens less and less to me, probably because I am too busy doing stuff to realise the sublime nature of creation. I first read about the perfect moment in the Book swimming to Cambodia by Spaulding Gray. Having a perfect moment is when everything in the universe comes together in one magnificent moment and a pleasure ...]

Why being a glass half full person is a good thing

Are you a glass half empty kind of person? The phrase is used to describe pessimists and people who have a negative outlook on life. I have from time to time been described as a glass half empty kind of person. I like to think of myself as an optimistic, positive person. I believe that when people put ...]

Why you will never get what you want.

How much do you desire your goals? Desire is the fire in your belly that will get you where you want to go. Desire is one of the first steps to take towards any goal. But not just any desire, this desire must be powerful to move mountains, or at least YOU! Your desire must be able to modify ...]

The Ultimate guide to keeping focussed

What is it about focus that is so important? Why must we be so concerned if focus is something we lack? I know that I am more successful at a task when I focus. Concentrating like a laser beam on the task in hand increases the chances of completing the task. Probably more than ...]

Lyndon Antcliff - Interviews

Been doing a lot of interviews lately, I thought I would get them all in one place. Lyndon Antcliff interview at Distilled - regarding linkbait Lyndon Antcliff interview with Michael Gray aka Graywolf - regarding local search Lyndon Antcliff interview with Hobo SEO regarding linkbait and social media marketing Lyndon Antcliff interview with Kelvin Newman regarding social media marketing ...]

Internet Marketers of New York Charity Party: March 18, 2008

I’m still going through SXSW notes and will eventually post some great recaps of sessions and events, but I’m still in conference mode. With that said, it’s just two days away to the Internet Marketers of New York charity party in NYC (during SES NY) which is sponsored by the coolest guys on earth, Best ...]

Zicam and the Reputation Management Fiasco

Awhile ago, I used Twitter to talk about one of my favorite cold remedy vitamins, Airborne. It was then that two friends suggested Zicam to me. When stocking up on medication for the winter months, the high recommendations of Zicam had me buying the oral mist. On Sunday night, after a rather interesting Superbowl ...]

Confessions and Reflections of a [Former] Digg Addict

As many of you know, I took off my Digg hat and put it on the shelf on January 28th after algorithmic changes at Digg made it extremely tough for me to appreciate the social news site that used to give you somewhat of a “high” for getting your stories front-paged. In the subsequent months, many ...]

How Spying On Your Friends Causes Reevaluation of Endorsed Content

Last month, I wrote about the ease of FriendFeed to spy on your friends. In other words, I can check someone’s Friendfeed page and get any information I want about them, including when they are actively engaged in social media activities and how much of a priority social media is to them in their ...]

SXSW: Mark Zuckerberg Keynote (the edited liveblogged version)

Greetings all from SXSW! It’s been an incredibly busy and physically taxing few days (with little hotel internet and no real opportunities to sit down and edit posts), so you’re seeing yesterday’s keynote today (and numerous other posts to be put on this blog in the upcoming days). Here we go with ...]

With 4 Days Before Blogger Social, I Bring You the 4×4 Meme

As I was traveling on my last of three conferences, Chris Kieff tagged me on the 4�4 meme that’s going around. The idea of this meme is somewhat like previous memes, but it’s four times full of fun. You’re given four questions and you need to provide four answers. Then, you need ...]

How FriendFeed Can Teach You About Your Friends

FriendFeed has been out for just a few months and has already established itself as a solid startup with an indefinite amount of potential. Founded by four ex-Googlers, FriendFeed allows you to subscribe to your friends’ updates across 35 social networks and to stay up to date with the content they’re discovering and sharing across ...]

Is Social Media the Final Frontier of Marketing?

This is a guest post from Pierre Far, who recently launched a very cool program called Social Alerter which notifies you as soon as your website has a solid chance of hitting the Digg or del.icio.us frontpage. We have all engaged in debates over the past few years about social media. Is it new? If so, ...]

Techipedia Redesign is Finally Live

After months (and I mean months) of planning, the blog redesign for techipedia is finally live. This wouldn’t have been possible if not for a few people, so I’d like to thank them for their awesome work. First, thanks to designer Patrick Winfield of 10e20 for the excellent graphic design work. Pat was very patient, and ...]

SMX West ‘08 Recap: Takeaways, Shout Outs, and Pictures

SMX West occurred last week, kicking off a bunch of conferences and meetups for yours truly (I’m headed to SXSW Interactive on Thursday followed by SES NY right after I get back, and then there’s the Saturday night Blogger Social event only a week later). As all conferences I’ve attended, it was a great ...]

SES London 2008 Day 3

I attended SES London on Thursday, my first since way back in 2002 or was that 2003, Christ I can’t remember! Customers Prospects and Drug users The first session I went to way a presentation by Brian Eisenberg of Future now entitled Redefining the Customer loosely speaking, Brian hit on important aspects to consider when ...]

Google spidering its own custom search results?

I was doing a little search this evening and found this amongst the results on the 1st page. I thought it might be something related to me being signed in to a Google account so I signed out and tried again. Same result. So I opened up IE7 and same result. I tried the same query ...]

Google Subscriber links - The Good - The Not So Good and The Reality

Google Subscriber links There’s a little bit of buzz about today over Googles subscribed links feature. I thought it might be handy to share my robwatts view on it. The view being one that is informed from 3 perspectives. A google user a site owner and an SEO. I’ll stick to three classifications, good, not so ...]

Site links for yack yack

Cool - This domain now has site links (not to be confused with subscribed links). A search for the phrase ‘yack yack’ returned this Who searches for yack yack? Answer - no one, but hey - for those who are interested there are lessons to be learnt. I’d like to know how they arrived at those titles ...]

SEO’s our own worst enemies and Negative SEO

I just wanted to get this out there and vent a little it’s a little rant fired up by what I keep seeing every single week on forums, blogs etc. It isn’t going to go away, I know that - but I’ll feel better for getting it off my chest. To any SEO who ...]

How to Deal with Negative Social Network Groups

As part of our small series looking at 8 Types of Reputation Management Issues, we are looking at how you can go about dealing with each issue in the best possible manner for your brand. This post is going to look at ways in which you can deal with negative social network groups. With so many ...]

38 Must Reads on Online Reputation Management

Now that I’m a huge fan of Delicious to keep my online life organised, I’ve spent a lot of time researching the web for quality resources relating to the subject of ORM (Online Reputation Management) and then started saving them for future use. This was something I felt as very important when I decided to ...]

Online Reputation Management Proposals: A Guide

Being a relatively new online service, reputation management proposals are not something a lot of people have experience with. However, with a change of focus on this site, reputation management proposals are exactly what I have been spending a lot of time with, either doing them myself or training others on how to do them. To ...]

Social Media Presence of the Technorati Top 20

If you have read this blog for any length of time you will know I’m a bit of a stats geek and love researching things in quite a bit of detail. This post is no different; I decided to check if there was any correlation between the amount of mentions on 3 big social media ...]

Online Reputation Management eBook is now Available!

Today is a great day for me, I’m finally releasing my Online Reputation Management eBook that I’ve been working on for the last few months. The eBook is entitled “All You’ll Ever Need to Monitor and Manage Your Reputation Online“. The guide is 75 pages long and has been completely written by myself, here’s a look ...]

ViperChill Updates & eBook Changes

While I like to keep most of the blog posts informative, I also like to write on a personal level and have as many operations in this company as transparent as possible. With that in mind, here are some status updates… Reputation Management Growth With the shift into being one of the main sites that solely focuses ...]

Protecting Your Personal Brand: 4 Simple Steps

If you don’t think you are “big enough” to be protecting your personal brand online then you are thinking along the wrong tracks. What happens if you suddenly write that killer blog post, release that awesome software or get mentioned by another big name and people start trying to utilise you. For a serious and very ...]

What is Online Reputation Management?

With quite a company “shift” from ViperChill in the direction of Reputation Management, and the new eBook on the subject, I think it’s only right that I explain what exactly online reputation management is. What is ORM? Online Reputation Management or ORM is, in simple terms - The process of monitoring a brand online, knowing how to ...]

A New Wave of Reputation Management Issues

I follow a lot of news websites as some are clients and often click through to stories because of their interesting headlines. However, a few days ago one of these stories really caught my eye which I’m going to share with you now. Let’s have a peek at three pretty normal looking women: These three women found ...]

ORM Ebook - Free Or Paid

Update: - The Online Reputation Management eBook is now available! I’m going to release the Online Reputation Management Ebook - The Guide to Monitoring and Managing your Reputation Online. It’s currently well over 40 pages and would love some advice on whether people think it should be free or cost a fee. Here is a sample of ...]

Improving Clickthrough rates on SERPs

A link from Als weekly round up on Self Made Minds to an article on improving organic click through rates got me thinking. Sadly the article fails to indicate how they quantitatively measured their results which means the claim of 3x increase of click through is to be taken with a pinch of salt, make ...]

Bots meet form, form meet Google

Ok so very quickly Google announced via Webmaster Blog that the ever mighty and slightly naughty GoogleBot has been given new directives to boldly go and fill in forms. Now it is pretty restrictive and currently purely an experiment... In the past few months we have been exploring some HTML forms to try to discover new ...]

State of the nation

I attended a local business meeting the other day, given this was not a technical discussion I resorted to my off pat what I do lecture but before launching into a twenty minute presentation on why I am not a spammer. I did a quick straw poll on some very basic questions to get a ...]

JQuery plugins for the SEO

Let it never be said that if I see a bandwagon I don't jump on... Why Javascript in the first place Javascript and Search Engine Optimisation rarely if ever meet, simply because on the whole Javascript is not indexed by the major search engines in any meaningful way and so for most SEOs what it does is ...]

grumpy links

This is an unsubtle links round up, simply as I have been busy at work and in a fair amount of pain so please do forgive if its not my usual sarcastic self. I will be back having almost collected enough data on the improving click through experiment and with a couple of fun new ...]

Wordpress suitable for SEOs?

One of the more obscure things Venture Skills does is Forensic reinclusion or reconsideration requests. This is when a site has been removed from Google and other search engine indices and we are asked to help determine why and fix the problems. The usual reasons are: Bad SEO work – hidden text etc Other Penalty related – ...]

Google crawls MSN who Crawls Yahoo it’s weird sex

While trying to help a friend diagnose problems relating to their site and Google sudden belief it is a porn site and not a wholesome family viewing I came across what has to be one of the weirdest search results. So lets get this straight Google has indexed MSN RSS feeds which in turn are indexed ...]

Mr Cutts are you sure about that?

Matt says if a domain changes hands, Google resets the links vale to zero/near zero. Quote from John Andrews who is live blogging from live domain roundtable, but I got to ask Mr Cutts how do you know? The choices When Whois record is changed When hosting or IP is changed Some monumental onpage change Now all three have the potential ...]

Simple Block segmentation analysis

A recent Blog post on Bills SEO by Sea about block segemention started to get me thinking, but when Tony Hirst wrote a note on his del.icio.us bookmark about the same post I took it as a challenge. “I wonder how easy it would be to write a script to ...]

Near perfect sales pitch by Bob Massa…

There I was sitting reading the email of the day it was so good I thought I would share it! Here is how to almost write the perfect sales pitch, just note the few minor technical details, I have included for their benefit to make it perfect! Hi Tim, My name is Shrenik Vora with Techndu and ...]

Digg Not Saved, Please Reload and Try Again

Or go to a site which actually works. From the Digg blog, “Hey everyone, We know that we are currently having some issues on Digg at the moment. Submissions, commenting, digging and other actions may sometimes fail. We have a crack team assigned to it and will be making numerous fixes as soon as possible to get ...]

Dude, Where’s the Mental post gone?

After discussing it with a number of trusted colleagues I have taken the step of putting the “Mental Linkbait” behind closed doors. I had thought discussing tactics in an open way was a good thing but it seems I am giving too much away and was attracting a crowd I really don’t have any time ...]

Loren Feldman 1, Shel Israel 0

Shel Israel Should Not Be Anywhere Near A Camera Loren Feldman is pretty much the only guy who can make me laugh out loud on the interweberscope. Good round up of the spat here, The Best Advice For Getting Yourself Out A PR Nightmare. I love a good spat, in fact I like to start the day ...]

Are Your Digg Buddies Holding You Back?

Check this out, this digg front pager greeted me at 5am on a Saturday morning. I noticed out of the 20 other front pagers there were 7 stories similar. As you can see, none of my friends dugg. But what is interesting is I cannot see any of the usual suspects. Friends of ours. Kinda sounds ...]

A Message to Twitterers from the Middle Ages

“Keep silent unless what you are going to say is more important than silence” It’s a self portrait of Rosa Salvator from the 17th century. Its unusual for it’s age as the quote is actually in the painting. This is one of my favourite paintings in the National. If the quote is familiar it is because it ...]

I Hate the How to Linkbait Ebook

A year ago I thought about writing an ebook about linkbait and social media marketing. It seemed the most effective way to teach what I have learned and to do in a format that is financially rewarding. At the time I had to postpone it as clients got in the way, all wanting me to ...]

How I Use Twitter for Headline Examples

I finally found a use for Twitter which combines my love for knocking headline ideas around. Basically, I get a headline idea which I think worthy of the Twitter mosh pit and I throw it in. If I get feedback great, if not, the headline needs serious work. Even is the response is, “Dude, you’re a ...]

Getting the Twitterati to Talk about You

Chris Winfield of 10e20.com published a blog post today about Twitter. It’s a great example that if you talk about those who talk, you are going to be talked about. Most marketing is common sense. Big up ten people and you will find ten people bigging you up in return. Does this represent a new label for ...]

UK Linkbaiters Poker Tournament

I’m putting together an online poker night for linkbaiters, seo’s and other reprobates. I’m planning it for next tuesday evening, 20th May, not set on a time yet as I will welcome feedback, but I’m thinking around 8pm. Going to hold it at Pokerroom.com as they have a java client allowing all those “funny” people who ...]

The Problem With Linkbait

When you have every social media marketing blog loaded in your RSS reader, you soon come to identify a problem within the space. The problem is the term Linkbait, it is overused, misused and stretched to cover almost all content ever published on the web. Different definitions of linkbait I have heard: A top ten list Anything that ...]

Can You Make (a LOT) of Money with Premium Content?

I’m hereby naming 2008 the year of premium content. Yes, I’m aware that The New York Times is moving away from the premium content model, as are several other traditional general media outlets. But I’m actually seeing things move in the other direction. I think premium (paid) content is making a huge comeback, and will ...]

5 New Niche Social Media Sites, Vegas Updates, a Domainer Sh*tstorm and a Special Surprise

Mr. Tropical is back after a short blogging hiatus. After I convincingly won the bet with Scoreboard (first man to 350 bloglines subs got $500 Cleveland Browns tickets), I was uninspired to write for a while. But you know what? I miss your guys’ snarky comments. I miss the glamour. And I miss all the ...]

Party Like a Coked-up Has-Been Rockstar at Pubcon: Tropical SEO and Scoreboard Contest

On the heels of Shoemoney and Neil Patel’s announcement, Scoreboard Media has announced a contest of his own. Winners “get” to “party” with us at “Vegas”. Check out the details here and submit your entry. And don’t forget to bring cash. Lots and lots of cash.

Blog Action Day: BE the Change! 5 Easy Tips

Readers, I am really excited about Blog Action Day and all the revolutionary change it is bringing about in the world. I’d like to throw my $.02 into the mix with these five easy tips I suggest everyone follow: Read all of the posts about Blog Action Day Wash the cat pee out of your clothes Repeat after ...]

A Festivus Gift for My Readers: 9 New Niche Social Media Sites

I hope all you readers had a good Festivus this year. The Airing of Grievings was pretty brutal to me, apparently I’ve been a real dick to a lot of people this year. But all ended well as I crushed T-bo in the Feats of Strength ceremony. Meanwhile Tropical SEO is once again bringing you the ...]

Rand Fishkin & Tropical Give Advice to Startup CEO’s

From Rand’s advice to CEO’s: I’ve also found that personally, it’s easy to spot someone who’s just in the business for the money vs. those who really care and want something great for the industry. It might be the optimism speaking, but I feel that the latter group usually produces the brightest innovations (and eventually, profit, ...]

Sell Your Web Site to Tropical SEO, Lose 15 Lbs, and Attract Hot Women (or Men)

My last post offering to buy readers’ sites turned out to be a modest success, so it’s time to self-whore my blog once again. My company DomainDev has an acquisitions budget we’d like to spend in the next few months, and I’d rather give it to an intelligent, snarky Tropical SEO reader than some random dude ...]

Digg’s “Florida Update”: Digg Anti-Spam 1, Linkbaiters 0

If you’re a n00b in the SEO world, you may not know about the Florida Update–basically, it was the single day in history when Google rolled out a new algo and thousands of SEOs said to each other, “Dammit, Google finally got smart.” Well, as the latest Digg update rolled out, thousands of SMOs/linkbaiters reacted by ...]

My Predictions for 2008

On the heels of some other guy’s, I give you my own… Linkbaiting will not jump the shark. It’s here to stay. Online and Off-. Forever. Naysayers, please fast forward to 2026 — will Cosmopolitan publish “Collected Thoughts from a Writer on How to Have Sex Better” or “33 Ways to Drive Him Wild and Make ...]

Must-Read Monday Links

Normally I try not to do posts like this but I think every competitive webmaster needs to read the following two posts: Guilty Until Proven Innocent by Jay Weintraub Excerpts from Google Reviewer at SEO Blackhat (and good for you if you have a membership to read the whole thing!) Back to the first link download mp3 ringtones ...]

How to Create Cool ‘Graphical Text’ for Linkbait Pieces

Last week I wrote about how to create great header graphics for linkbait pieces. Now I would like to go a bit deeper into that and explain how I create graphical text, text that is an image, that stands out and screams to be noticed. Like the last tutorial mentioned, it is important for your article ...]

How to Create Great Header Graphics for Linkbait Pieces

For this ‘How to…’ I am going to use a linkbait piece from PC World called 10 Cool Gadgets You Can’t Get Here-Yet. The piece tells about how often the coolest gadgets originate overseas and usually in Asia. The information is interesting enough to hold my attention and I want to see which gadgets they selected ...]

Call to Action! Creating Cool Gradient Style Buttons.

“Contact Us”, “Learn More”, “Click Here”, “Free Money!”. OK that last one I made up, but we have all seen these calls that ask us to do something. Calls to action in interactive media are usually buttons or links that begin a process. Making these important calls stand out requires some designing further than, and ...]

Time to Catch Up

You know the old saying about the cobbler’s children’s shoes? Well unfortunately our blog has become the children in that analogy. We’ve been so busy kicking out amazing campaigns for our clients that it’s been hard to keep up with our writing. And we also didn’t want to fall into that trap ...]

Creating Linkbait Graphics with Stock Photos [How Would I Do This?]

For this round of the ‘How Would I Do This…’ I am looking at an article on CNN called ‘How do you know your love is real? Check Facebook’. I am also going to tie in my previous post on the overuse of stock photography. The article from CNN is a news story that is ...]

14 Things You Absolutely Must Know to Get Publicity in Major Magazines & Newspapers

This is a recap of a teleseminar I attended which was given by Steve Harrison. It was “Seven Things You Absolutely Must Know to Get Publicity in Major Magazines and Newspapers.” The intent of this call was to give information on how to get publicity and to impart this information; he provided ...]

Chris Winfield in USA Today: ‘AOL-Yahoo combo wouldn’t change much for users’

Last week I was featured in a USA Today article about the craziness that continues to swhirl around Yahoo. Will it be AOL? Will it be Microsoft? Will Rupert jump in? Jeff Graham wrote an interesting article about what a combined AOL-Yahoo company would be like for users. Personally I ...]

Using Pull Quotes & Lift Outs: How to Grab Your Reader’s Attention

When you need to focus the attention of the reader to a certain area in the text or story pull quotes are the best method. Pull quotes are small pieces of the story or article that is being repeated and set in a larger size font and placed near the middle. The idea is to pull ...]

My April Speaking Schedule

Here’s a quick run-down on where I’ll be speaking during April. One thing that I have tried to do is vary events up a bit so that I can come in contact with all kinds of different people from different industries. Here’s a look at April: SEO Class. This Friday (April 11th) ...]

The Overuse of Stock Photography (and 3 Ways To Avoid It)

OK, before I begin let me say that I use stock photography. Stock photos are a great convenience. I sometimes depend on it, especially in a crunch or when I just need someone smiling and expressing happiness for a call center spot. That being said, there comes a time when stock photography is so obviously ...]

Motherhood can be mother of blogging

San Francisco Chronicle: Motherhood can be mother of blogging. Excerpt: A decade ago, blogging and social networking largely were a means for teenagers to keep in touch with friends. Now, tech-savvy moms and dads use Web 2.0 and mobile tools to instantly share news about their wee ones, connect to other families and prepare for their role as parents. Social-networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace have become a resource for parents to check out baby names and, later, to research potential caregivers and babysitters. ...

Details of Future of News sessions

At the Philadelphia airport after giving a talk at the Future of News conference at Princeton University two hours ago about the changes news organizations need to make to embrace social media. Kevin Anderson, editor of the Guardian blogs (and a new friend), did a superb job live-blogging my session and the entire conference.

Use of social media in direct marketing

Here's an interesting chart on how often marketers use social media in their direct marketing. MarketingVox has details on a report from the Direct Marketing Association on Web 2.0 ??? blogs, virtual words, social networks, user-generated content, RSS feeds and wikis.

Online video viewing still rising

eMarketer.com: Online Video Viewing Still Rising. Excerpt: Internet users in the US watched 11.5 billion online videos in March 2008, up 13% over February 2008 and 64% over March 2007, according to comScore Video Metrix. That is an average of 83 videos watched per viewer during March. Online video viewing is a mainstream activity for Internet users in the US. Nearly three-quarters of the online population watched an online video in March. Nearly 85 million viewers watched 4.3 billion videos on YouTube (50.4 videos per viewer), while over 47 million viewers watched 400 million videos on MySpace

Craig looks beyond the Web

NY Times: Craig (of the List) Looks Beyond the Web. (NY Times photo) Excerpt: There is a real Craig in Craigslist, and lately he is looking at life beyond his little list that happens to be the seventh-most-popular Web site in the United States. It is also a site that is deeply tied up with the fate of newspapers ??? indeed, many in the newspaper industry blame the site???s founder, Craig Newmark, for the downturn in their classified-advertising business. An ardently no-frills, ad-free, user-sensitive site, Craigslist has, by the estimate of its chief executive, Jim Buckmaster, generated more

'Future of News' at Princeton University

I'll be flying to Princeton University early tomorrow for a two-day workshop on the Future of News, put on by the Center for Information Technology Policy. The workshop will be broadcast live and can be accessed at www.princeton.edu/webmedia on Wednesday and Thursday. Panels are The People Formerly Known as the Audience; Economics of News; Data Mining, Interactivity and Visualization and The Medium???s New Message. I'm on the final panel along with Markus Prior, Assistant Professor of Politics and Public Affairs, and author/historian Ed Tenner. Dan Gillmor and Eric Alterman will also b

Tearing down the news-opinion divide

Jeff Jarvis: Tearing down the news-opinion divide.

Felten on the Future of News conference

Here's a quick video I did with Prof. Edward Felten of Princeton University (famed for his opposition to black box voting) about the Future of News conference I'm attending (I'm speaking in a couple of hours, streamed live here). He also mentions his new Center for Information Technology Policy. The video was conducted with my Nokia N95 cell phone. Ourmedia page Watch on YouTube

Can newspaper classifieds be saved?

Steve Outing asked me what the future holds for newspaper classifieds. He's behind the site ReinventingClassifieds.com, an initiative aimed at bringing experts together to revive newspaper classifieds by finding a new business model that's relevant in the Internet age. Here's the Seesmic video (my first) I made to offer some ideas.

Credibility on the Web

Mike Caulfield offers a deconstruction of a Washington Post columnist's attack on amateurs participating in the mediasphere.

Linda Bustos is Your Homegirl

Just having some fun with Photoshop today. I may not be posting much here on Smogger since joining ecommerce software solution provider Elastic Path, but I’m still Postergirl, and I am still your homegirl.

Larry and Sergey as Two-Headed Ghoulgle

Via GetElastic.

Heave Better Attraction! Yes You Can!

Hands down the funniest Facebook Ad I’ve seen to date: What on Earth could this possibly mean? Amazing results as in: a. Reduction of heaving through drugs and pills, therefore better attractiveness to others b. Reduction of heaving induced by drugs and pills, therefore better attractiveness to others c. Have better attraction, this is just a typo, the ...]

Google Buys Jaiku - What Will This Mean For Twitter?

Is Google planning to take over the world one social media app at a time? Just announced, Google’s bought cat-blogging social network Jaiku. And isn’t that every startup’s dream, to get bought out by the big G? My question is, why didn’t Google buy Twitter? Do you use Twitter/Jaiku/Pownce? Do you think Google’s acquisition ...]

Drupal Fanboys and Fangirls Going Social

I’m really excited for my friends at Image X Media. They launched a redesigned web site last week complete with a shiny, new web design and development blog! About Image X Image X Media is a top-notch Drupal development and web design studio out here in BC. The team plans to get their hands dirty with ...]

2008 Is Off To A Great Start

It’s been far too long since I’ve posted here on Smogger. As you may or may not know, I’m blogging full time for Elastic Path, an ecommerce software company. Get Elastic is an ecommerce blog and I post every weekday so do subscribe, pleease! A New Year’s resolution of mine is to post more ...]

Mashup YouTube Videos with Searchles Video Editor

Ever wanted to slice and dice a YouTube video to mash up something new? Searchles TV Remash is a recently launched social search and social networking hybrid with an online video-editing tool that allows you to edit ANY YouTube video and mashup the video cuts. You get your own Searchles channel which is a player ...]

Please Vote For My Icanhascheezburger Caption

I had the awesome privilege of attending September’s Shop.org Annual Summit in Las Vegas - staying at the lovely Luxor and enjoying the most amazing ice cream from Svendsen’s. We don’t have Svendsen’s here in Canada, so all I can hope is that someday I win a caption contest for ICanHazCheeseburger plus $500 spending money. ...]

Stalk Stumble Upon Rockstars With StumbleRank Top 100

Ever wondered who the power-Stumblers are? Well now you can check out the StumbleUpon leaderboard over at StumbleRank. Remember, this table works like a spreadsheet so you can click on any heading to “sort by.” For example, I sorted the table by # of Fans (because all social media really is just a popularity contest, ...]

Its Gonna Be One Massive April Fools…

What better place to celebrate the most mischievous day of the year than swinging by the Vancouver Exhibition and Convention Center for the Massive Technology Show? While you’re schmoozing with the technorati, you can also catch me and the rest of the New Media: Collaboration in Business panel. I’ll be joined by Warren Baxley of ...]

Dear Google

what are you doing to me? i used to love you so so much back in the old days when you were a simple search engine with the bestest results ever. oh and when you invented that toolbar where i could keep track of all the pop-up ads you were kind enough to block for me? and how ...]

Passing the Google Adwords Certification Exam - Part 1

It was bound to happen sooner or later. Having dealt with PPC for a while now it was just in the cards that I would one day have to buckle down and pass the exam to become a Google Adwords Qualified Individual. I wish I could say I was all excited about the prospect ...]

Adsturbation: Time to give yourself the low five.

Everyone loves a countdown. Whether it’s dropping the ball in NYC at New Years or the Top Ten list for light nighters with Letterman. But none get the populace as excited as this weeks. No, it’s not a countdown to my birthday… instead let it be known that there are only six days til New ...]

smoMashup to speak at Cleveland’s eMarketing Techniques Series

Though it might surprise you, I spend most of my time doing actual work and not just running around spreading the love of web marketing to the masses. Granted I’ve had more than my fair share of speaking to clients and groups of potential clients about various subjects but I’ve not officially had a public ...]

Analytical News: Measuring your success, one visitor at a time.

Social Media sites come and go like the wind. It seems like every 5 seconds some entrepreneur is just around the corner with another Digg or del.icio.us knockoff, hoping that whatever Ajax maneuver they can bring to the table will make them this week’s hot topic or at least clever enough to catch the eye ...]

Social Media Optimization Interview

Let it be known that I’m not a huge fan of video. Now don’t get me wrong.. I know how popular video is. I enjoy watching goofy stuff on YouTube and I know it’s an emerging field as far as web marketing goes, however when it comes to information pieces I just can’t ignore the ...]

Pagerank is the Calvinball of Web Marketing

Never ceases to amaze me how upset people get when you change the rules on them mid-game. You’d think that by now everyone would be used to it, especially in the web marketing arena. I mean, this is the game where the rules change daily, remember? It’s why we have clients, keep up on ...]

God is my Facebook friend

I have been spending quite a bit of time lately with Facebook and figuring out everything it has to offer. As I did, I remembered this Barats and Bereta video that I’d come across a while ago and promptly forgotten about. Now I’m not only remembering this piece of social media history, I’m also ...]

Think Global, Act Local Training Class at SES Chicago

As some of you might know, I’m slated to teach a class at this year’s Search Engine Strategies in Chicago. It’s all about local search and how to incorporate that into your PPC advertising. By targeting your marketing efforts according to regional demographics you can significantly increase your sales and your conversion rate. However creating ...]

StumbleUpon - “See Friend Reviews” on Google - Spyware?

It’s a very fine line between being a helpful tool and being spyware and now long time Social Media Optimization favorite StumbleUpon is working on blurring those lines. It seems that some odd behavior has befallen Firefox users who have recently upgraded to the latest version of the toolbar, version 3.15. This latest ...]

My Technorati Favorites Are Too Many

If you are one of the many out there who favorite a lot of posts in Technorati, you may have noticed a small hiccup when trying to view them all. A few refresh attempts got me a 404 page initially and then finally my favorites again. Not sure if that means the fix is finalized and ...]

Reddit Eliminates “Advanced Search” Feature

I am not sure if anyone noticed or not, but Reddit.com has removed the advanced search option from it’s site. I used to use advanced search strings like “(site:brentcsutoras.com)” to check if anyone had submitted my posts to Reddit. When I hit my quick link and found an empty results page, I was a little concerned ...]

Digg Comments: Finally Fixed

About a year ago, Digg launched a new version of their comment system which a large number of users were not to happy about. They introduced the ability to digg or bury individual comments, sorting options based on comment score, making friends comment a greenish hue, the ability to block users, threaded commenting, and a 3 ...]

New Reddit UI and Features are Live

Recently we did a post about the New Reddit UI and Features they were working on. At the time we did not have a solid launch date but knew the launch would be on http://beta.reddit.com. Today the new beta officially launched for users to have a chance to test it and provide feedback. Some initial comments have ...]

Social Media Tools: The Must Haves

Social Media is extremely time consuming. If you are like me and active in all the top social communities, it can take the majority of your time just keeping up with the changes, interacting with the community, and following your various social media campaigns. The good thing is that for each community you decide to get involved ...]

Giving Away Free Stumbles Today

It’s nearly 80 degress and sunny outside today in good’ol Brooklyn. It’s unfortunate that we have to be inside on a great day like this but to make things a little better, I’ve decided to give away free stumbles today for the entirety of the workday (for me until about 7:30-8:00 EST). All you have ...]

34 Google Trusted Social Sites

This is just a theory but I think it’s pretty sound. I was setting up Feedburner for a client earlier this morning and I was in the feed flare section where you can add additional services to your flare. I noticed there was a link to a catalogue of services. Clicking on this link brought ...]

How to SEO Your Site in Less Than 120 Minutes

This post is an ode to Matt McGee’s post How to SEO Your Site in Less Than 60 Minutes. I found myself using this as a quick reference from time to time when first published. It was a great write-up that was very useful to many people. I always wanted to expand on this a ...]

Define: Search Engine Optimization

Oftentimes we’re contacted by a potential client who’s really jazzed about starting a new campaign. In fact they are so pumped they’ve read all they can about search optimization and marketing, social media, viral content, digg, etc and they really want to get the ball rolling. Awesome! You get them signed up and everyone’s ready ...]

Google SERPs – Barack Obama vs Hillary Clinton

Undoubtedly it’s a tight race so I wanted to see how Google (the largest gatekeeper of online information) was treating the Democratic front runners. Let’s take a look at Hillary’s rankings first. After all, she is the candidate who gets asked all the questions first Some up-to-date news worthy information from mlive.com, Michigan Election ...]

Web 2.0 Meetup – Eyebees, Kluster, Washington VC & Wine Library TV

I had never been to the monthly Web 2.0 Meetups before and figured it would be a good networking opportunity. These Meetups are a creation of Brett Petersel from NextWeb. From what I can gather off of the website, NextWeb is composed of four dudes, Chris Boucher (Sales), Brett Petersel (Founder), Oz Sultan (Technology), and ...]

Do You Tumbl?

So over the weekend I attended a social dinner event here in the Williamsburg/Greenpoint area of Brooklyn. It was a great party with some really interesting people. As the night progressed, there were about four or five folks who asked me “do you Tumbl”? What an odd question I thought. Do I Tumbl?! I asked ...]

Forum Creation Is A Snap With the Lefora Web App!

Paul Bragiel, former co-founder of Meetro ( an instant messaging service with geolocational functionality) is now introducing a new take on something tried and true. The Forum. Bragiel’s team of designers and programmers have created Lafora. Think standard forum plus, blog and news integration, embedded photos and video fuctionality, automatic newsletter generation for forum admins, ...]

Yooba - Looks Really Cool but WTF is It?

I received an email from a Gabriel Jonsson this morning about a some new service called Yooba. I get these emails all the time, “visit us and check it out, sign up for our newsletter, join our facebook group”, etc. It was a well written email which grabbed my attention so I clicked-on over to ...]

Twitter Feeds - Linkbait, Link Building & Social Bookmarking

I decided to have a little fun today and created a page publishing tweet scan feeds based on search terms like linkbait, link building, and social bookmarking. Potentially, I can now find out about new sites and strategies pertaining to these topics all on one page instantly. Leave a comment below if there’s anything else ...]

speaking at web 2.0 expo san francisco 2008

i will be speaking at the web 2.0 expo in san farancisco on tuesday april 22, 2008 along with stephan spencer, founder & president of netconcepts. here’s the session information: free traffic: seo/smo 101 (search engine & social media optimization) 04/22/2008 9:00am - 12:00pm pdt room: 2009 if you are going to be at the conference or even just ...]

’social media and simplicity’ - part 10 of 10

part 10 in my 10-part series on ’social media and simplicity’ is up. so many new services are launched everyday that you can hardly keep up with all of them without completely losing sight of your actual goals. at the same time, it is hard to ignore these services and not feel as if you’re out ...]

’social media and simplicity’ - part 9 of 10

part 9 in my 10-part series on ’social media and simplicity’ is up. your mistakes and your failures are what force you to strive to better yourself everyday, and nothing is more valuable than that. head on over to freelance switch to simplify your social media workflow today. Technorati Tags: blogging, ...]

coming soon: web 2.0 expo san francisco 2008 presentation - online

i will post my complete presentation with notes and external links to tools and additional information soon. unfortunately, due to time constraints, the presentation had to be somewhat abridged and i want the information posted online to be as comprehensive as possible. while you wait for the complete presentation, check out this very comprehensive write-up from ...]

what cpm is your facebook app making?

inside facebook has an interesting look at the cpm different developers are getting on their facebook applications. Technorati Tags: inside facebook, facebook, cpm, developers, facebook applications

twitpitch - the future of your pitch

stowe boyd has completely shift to twitpitch as his sole medium for companies to make pitches to him. sarah perez has previous coverage of twitpitch. Technorati Tags: twitter, twitpitch, stowe boyd, sarah perez, readwriteweb, rww

twitt(url)y - real-time link tracking for twitter

twitt(url)y is a new service that uses a link tracking mechanism over a 24-hour periods to determine what people are talking about on twitter at a given moment. the service displays the 100 most popular urls with threads of tweets discussing the links. competing services include twitlinks, tweetmeme, and quotably. Technorati Tags: microblogging, twitter, ...]

social media optimization and marketing 101

thanks for the overwhelming response to my presentation at the web 2.0 expo san francisco 2008 on social media optimization and marketing. here are the original slides along with all the references i used within the presentation. i have disabled downloading for now but you can embed the presentation on your site using the code. | ...]

the decline and fall of quality on digg

i’ve written a guest post at read/writeweb on how the content promotion algorithm is making the quality on the front page of digg suffer. note: this isn’t meant as an attack on any user and his or her submissions. all the users mentioned and displayed on the graphs are my friends and i respect their submissions. ...]

guest post at search engine land: the elevator pitch is dead. introducing the twitpitch

i’ve written a post on search engine land on the future of your company’s pitch. the landscape of corporate public relations is changing fast. first the press release died and we told you how to write a press release for the social media audience. now the elevator pitch is dead and here’s how to adapt. visit ...]

Google Pushing Local Search?

Today while doing research for a client, I happened to notice something very interesting in Google’s results.

The given search was for “hampton inn” and further research on other geographically relevant, broad terms returned similar results like “restaurant” and “mcdonalds.”

Entering a city, state or zip code returned the Google map and relevant results based on the given entry. This did not appear differentl

April Fools 2008

Here is a quick breakdown of April tomfoolery this year:

Search Engine Roundtable becomes - Search Engine Squaretable

MyBlogLog goes… Plaid!

Google Australia

Google Australia offers gDay with MATE:

About gDay technology
The core technology that powers gDay is MATE (Machine Automated Temporal Extrapolation).
Using MATE’s machine learning and artificial intelligence techniques developed

RSS Day 2008

What is RSS?
RSS (Really Simple Syndication) is a format used to deliver information from websites and pages that get updated regularly. An RSS document (which is called feed) contains either a summary or the full content from a website.

What are you planning for RSS Day?

Post from: SEOpittfall.com

RSS Day 2008

Google Turns Black To Go Green

Google users in the United States will notice today that we “turned the lights out” on the Google.com homepage as a gesture to raise awareness of a worldwide energy conservation effort called Earth Hour. As to why we don’t do this permanently - it saves no energy; modern displays use the same amount of power regardless of what they display. However, you can do something

Anatomy of Organic Listing Snippets in the SERPs and Outlining Best Practices

When returning results to a user, search engines use various resources based upon the particular search or query. The basic information published on a Web page may not be visible to a user, even when the page is displayed in an Internet browser, such as Internet Explorer or FireFox. Some of this information is used by the search engines to determine the topic (content) of a particular Web page.

Search engines use many specific characteristics to evaluate a

Meta Tags Constitute Trademark Infringement or Not?

A couple of influential court cases in the US have been decided, however, they differ on the overall outcome when it comes to use of trademarked words in META data including keywords constitute trademark infringement.

North American Medical Corp. v. Axiom Worldwide, Inc.

But in this case, I do not think Axiom denied placing those terms in their meta tags. The question Happy Easter

Google Search within Search - User Assistance or Retailer Handicap?

Google recently began experimenting with a new site search box within results:

Through experimentation, we found that presenting users with a search box as part of the result increases their likelihood of finding the exact page they are looking for. So over the past few days we have been testing, and today we have fully rolled out, a search box that appears within some of the search results themselves. This feature will now occur when we detect a high probability that a user wants

SEO Standards - To Be or Not To Be?

Background
There has always been a lot of mystery surrounding the online marketing industry especially Search Engine Optimization. There are even some that consider the efforts of SEO as selling “snake oil” and even some

WOMMA WOMM-U- Carla Hendra Keynote
The last keynote of the day is delivered by Carla Hendra - Co-CEO Ogilvy North America, Chairman of Ogilvy New York. Her take on WOM - "Brand Marketing: It's all word of mouth now!" There currently exists the opportunity to engage a global network of brand activists, and what's better than having the consumer do our jobs for us?

WOMMA WOMM-U: Bob Pearson from Dell Keynote
Bob Pearson, of Dell is presenting the first keynote of the morning. He hates podiums so he's actually walking through the crowd. So what Dell's Learned so far? #1 the online world is undergoing the most significant transformation so far. There is growth ever second. A month ago China over took the US with the number of people online. Over...

WOMMA WOMM-U- Jordan Corredera Keynote
With the previous keynote running 10 minutes over it's timeslot, and technical issues further delaying the start, this keynote shrank from a 45 minute presentation to a 30 minute presentation, which as it turned out was probably a good thing. Unlike the previous, more polished / rehearsed presentations, this one came off as more like a time filler. Which isn't...

Twitter Policy - Do You Have One In Place?
Twitter is growing at a phenomenal pace. There's no doubt that as more and more companies adopt new communication platforms like Twitter into their marketing strategies, as well as allowing their employees to use them, some rules should be set up along the way. Back in December I wrote a piece about "Is Twitter Really Dangerous?", which was prompted by...

Trolls or Upset Customers? Do You Know the Difference
Shining a bright light on a troll isn't always the wisest thing to do (especially when they are certifiably crazy, or have had issues in the past). You have to be careful because sometimes they will steal your goat, or steal your baby (as those old fairy tales would tell us) or they will flame you in a community or...

WOMMA WOMM-U- Pick a Charity Workshop Results
Following on from the Pick a Charity Workshop sessions yesterday and this morning, the ideas and results for each of the 3 different charities were presented over the lunch sessions. Overall, some interesting solutions were generated and presented, with ideas ranging from generating basic awareness to eco-terrorism. So here's what each group came up with, just to give you an...

Overstock Terminates All New York Based Affiliates
Months before the Former Governor of New York, Elliott Spitzer was in the news for his scandalous behavior he was making news for his potential major impact on e-commerce. The buzz was from his attempt to pass legislation that would make it necessary for online merchants to collect taxes on Internet sales made by New Yorkers. Specifically, the legislature would...

Online Marketing Tips: Conversion Types - Purchase, Email Sign-ups, Time on Site, & Page Views
Last week Brian presented our Tuesday's Tips in Online Marketing and spoke about Web Metrics for your website. I'm back this week with our next edition of Tuesday's Tips in Online Marketing, taking that web metrics theme a little further by bringing the post about Conversion Rates I did to video. This will be a two part series, this week...

WOMMA WOMM-U: Jen Gulvik Presents Houlihan's WOMM Case Study
Houlihan's went through an entire restructuring, down to even changing the forks and the music. Half the people who live within a 3 mile radius of the restaurants, have never been to a Houlihan's or were lapse customers. The only people who really knew about Houlihan's was employees, current customers and a "few" others. They do limited mass media advertising....

Want Your Ideas to Spread Easily? Try Narrowing Your Message Focus
Yesterday, I visited my friend Tara’s place and noticed that she put a large piece of paper on her bedroom wall, next to where she slept. On it was written some quotations and general life principles. Tara wanted to remind herself of these words when she woke up everyday and before she went to bed. ...]

Building a Popular Social Media Profile: Seven Essential Characteristics
If you’re a new or not yet established brand, how should you use social media to build a reputation for yourself? Apart from making sure your product/website is relevant to the social media channel, it is also useful to participate in social media communities as an end-user or brand representative. My previous post on social ...]

Social Media Networking and ROI: How to Maximize Value and Minimize Cost
Return on Investment (ROI) is a simple concept: You set aside something of your own, be it time or money and expend it with the hope of getting something in exchange. ROI measures the profitability of your returns, when compared against your costs. Many people have talked about ROI in relation to social media and one ...]

How to Get More Twitter Followers: Some Methods That Work
Darren Rowse recently wrote a series of posts about increasing your Twitter presence, in which he mainly talks about how to use Twitter by adding value in order to increase your Twitter following. While Darren made several good points, I want to give you my perspective on it, which is somewhat different. You’re interested in increasing ...]

Understanding the Value of ‘Friends’ in Social Media Websites
Most social media websites give you an individual profile page alongside the option of befriending other site users. The adding of someone as a ‘friend’ on a social media website is not just an empty gesture. Usually when you add someone as a friend, you’re giving them greater access to you through the social media ...]

Rethinking Blog Comments: Much More Than Just A Quick Way to Get Web Traffic
A comment left on a popular blog may be viewed by a few hundred people in one day. Multiply that by the lifespan of the blog and you’ll see that a simple comment may say a lot about you. Every blog comment is usually permanent. It’s not just a hyperlink but a long-term representation of ...]

The Benefits of Social Media Aggregators and Lifestreaming: A Look at Friendfeed
Social media aggregators are web sites which amass what you do on social networks or websites and centralize it all in one location. These aggregators enable lifestreaming, which is a simply the publication and sharing of your daily activities in continuous sessions. These social lifestreams allow you to keep track of what your friends or ...]

Managing Information Flow: How Prioritization Will Improve Your Work and Learning Efficiency
Information rarely organizes itself into something coherent, usable or enriching. It usually goes through a series of filters before it reaches you: for example an algorithm developed to automatically sort data or a writer who took the time to translate the complex into the actionable. These filters are there to make information relevant, to allow ...]

Dosh Dosh Finally Gets a New Site Design
Yes, it’s been long overdue but I finally changed the design for Dosh Dosh after more than a year. Because of the lack of time, I’ve been procrastinating but frankly, I’m just really glad its finished now. If you’re reading this from your feed reader or inbox, come over and check it out. I haven’t ...]

Microsoft’s Brilliant PR Strategy for Xbox 360: The Benefit of Untapped Social Environments
Microsoft is teaming up with a charity foundation to deliver Xbox 360 kiosks to children’s hospitals across America. Each of these kiosks will come with games, movies and access to a private nationwide network that’ll allow hospitalized children to play or chat with one another. This is great news because I think it will really ...]

Questions For Ken Evoy of Sitesell
Image via WikipediaMy previous post on 54 minute video with

How To Get Noticed?
Ken McArthur has pulled out all the stops for the launch of his new book now selling on Barnes & Noble. That isn't an affiliate link, I am not a B&N affiliate so I just pulled that link from Ken's blog (one of many). What I can refer you to is the free stuff, a ton of great audio recordings There are 2 featured recordings

New WordPress SEO Blogging Software

What a difference 24 hours make.

A few days ago I was honestly prepared to rip a product to shreds. It wasn't that it was a bad product, but it wasn't as well prepared as it should have been, and from what I can tell it was due to an honest communication error between a well respected online marketer and his programming team.

But before I talk about the product itself, I am going to give you a little history lesson.

Wordpress Elite

A few years ago I purchased a script called WordPress E

Blog For A Cause Or Fabricate A Story
Today in partnership with Blogcatalog and Amnesty International, bloggers Worldwide are blogging for human rights. As I usually do for each Bloggers Unite initiative, I am taking part, but as usual I want to at least try to k

When Will New York Introduce A Google Tax?

Today's news is that Overstock have decided that they are axing 3400 affiliates in the New York area because of the previously reported "Amazon Tax" - which Amazon are fighting.

I think Janet was the first to break the news of the Overstock changes

This is a story that both Linda at 5 Star Affiliate Programs

SEO Tool - Site Seer - Coming Soon

I mentioned in my second poll post that the Stompernet guys would be coming out with a new tool soon, and that also they would be limiting availability of some of their goodies to those that subscribe. That will include this new SEO tool.

First off, I have worked out how to get their videos to syndicated correctly, so click through to watch the video showing off this new tool.

The bad news is that the first piece of totally new content, a video on keyword research by Dan Thies.

Now Dan is kn

Blogging Response Rate (Part 2)
I mentioned I was testing on multiple posts, and that also included the recent Adwords video from Dan Thies of Stompernet. Here are some important notes

The headline was chosen to be a little more appealing - it wouldn't have affected people reading a full feed, or receiving my content by email (even though that was switched off), but it would affect links from social media and other blogs, and also platforms that only show headlines, such as Blogrush, Technorati Favorites, Alltop etc.

I was sneaky - I didn't have a suitable graphic, and a synd

Blogging Response Rate (Poll)

Whilst the test I performed over the last few days isn't ideal, recently, just for a few days I actually switched off my email subscriptions. Email subscriptions has never accounted for the largest percentage of my subscribers, but I have always recognised them among my most responsive readers. I assure you the decision wasn't taken lightly, especially with a number of major launches to write about which were highly targeted to my core audience.

One of the promotions I was testing was for Jeff Johnson's Continue reading | 13 Comme

The New Social Media Democracy
This guest post comes from Mark Seall - Mark is the founding writer at TalkClimateChange and is also a regular contributor at ProBlogger. You can find Mark’s full Bio on his personal blog at marksblog.org. Until recently, I have to admit to being very skeptical of the long term value of social media. My own experience ...]

The German Wikipedia: Rip-Off Incorporated
It seems that plans are in the works for a slimmed down, condensed version of the German Wikipedia to be made into a printed encyclopedia book and it will be sold in bookstores for 20 Euros ($32). As many people have said, it’s “reverse publishing”. I say it’s a bit ...]

Starting a Conversation: The Art of Comment Fetching
Photo by Mia Mia Everyone measures the success of their blog in different ways - but when it comes to measuring engagement, comments and trackbacks are what really count. Granted there are other ways of measuring engagement, such as Sphinns or Diggs - but let’s be narrow minded for a moment Seth Godin pointed out ...]

Fight Crime On Facebook With The Manchester Police
Coming from a police family, I have always had enormous respect for law enforcement and the job they do, and after having just seen the Facebook application for the Greater Manchester Police (GMP) in Great Britain, I am even more impressed. This just goes to prove that Facebook CAN be useful. Take away all ...]

How to be Popular: Overheard on Twitter #5
18 minute old Twitter account - 2 updates - 400 followers. The math doesn’t add up, does it? You know what happened? Jason Calacanis said “follow him.” (I took out my angst on the picture, can you tell?) I really enjoyed refreshing every 3 seconds to see another dozen or so followers adding Mr. Modine, and some ...]

TWhirl Steals Alertthingy’s Thunder
My current social media obsession is Friendfeed. I like it for a variety of reasons but the main reason is that it pulls together nicely all my various online activities. Being a tech blogger, I tend to try out every online service under the sun and so it gets more and ...]

Google Reader Has Just Got Socially Sexier
I think Google Reader has just got a damn sight more sexier and any lingering disloyal thoughts I might have had about going back to My Yahoo are now well and truly gone. The reason for my unwavering loyalty? Notes! Yes you heard me right - notes! There's now no doubt now that Google is gradually building a social network to rival all other social networks but it all seems to be in dribs and drabs and it's a bit confusing how they are going to eventually connect it all up. I

This Space for Rent: Overheard on Twitter #6
Andrew Baron tried selling his account on eBay this week. The eBay auction has closed, but you can still see the bidding history here, as it went as high as $1,550. Publicity stunt? Yes. Original? Yes. The real story here was that it received lots of exposure. Speaking of exposure, is a limited commercialization of ...]

Diagnosis : Facebook Syndrome
Never a day goes by without me hearing of another case of how people are getting more and more hacked off about Facebook and its never-ending crappy applications. All I can say is, I can feel the pain. There used to be a time when someone would ask me what the difference ...]

The Delicate Balancing Act Of Monetizing Twitter
Twitter has rapidly become one of those social media applications that people can’t live without. Everyone may say what a waste of time Twitter is but truth be told, they really love using it (me being one of those people). But the people who run Twitter have to eat and they have to ...]

Do you want to be my Facebook Friend?? Stop Threatening Me!!
Image by Miky Jpeg I have been a little disappointed in Facebook lately. Well, maybe not Facebook directly, but instead some of the people that I have agreed to Facebook Friendships. And, due to the tactics these people are using on Facebook to pass the word about things they feel ...]

The People Pleaser 2.0
Photo by *sean The People Pleaser 2.0 We have all come across a People Pleaser at one point or another. People Pleasers love making people happy. They seem to become happier themselves by making others happy. They are super nice…. almost too nice, some might say. If you have ever have been a ...]

26 Reasons Why I Love Twitter - Plus 27 More just in Case
A while back I wrote a post about how I just didn’t get Twitter. At that time, It didn’t make sense to me to hear people rave about Twitter. But, I must say….. Twitter is another Social Media Activity that I am really enjoying. As a matter of fact, ...]

How Web 2.0 has changed Education
Photo by chbradshaw When I was a kid I would walk 6 miles to school in snow that was up to here (points to his shoulders). I remember as a young girl my Grandfather telling me stories like this. And, when he would say this to me I would be thinking, "Thank G-d ...]

StumbleUpon Changes - Are you a List or Grid?
In the past few days I’ve noticed a few changes on StumbleUpon. They aren’t huge changes, but changes none-the-less. These changes appear on your own StumbleUpon page. What is cool about these changes is that you have a choice. You can choose to keep things the same as they ...]

8 Random Things about Me - A Meme
I have been tagged by Julie Joyce, one of my favorite SEO Chicks, to do the Meme, "8 Random things About Me". Being a huge fan of all the SEO Chicks I was more than a little excited about participating in this Meme. So, here are 8 Random things about Me. 8 Random things you ...]

I am so in Love….. and it is not with Social Media
Photo by Osvaldo_Zoom Since Valentine’s Day is coming to an end I wanted to write about Love. But, not my Love for Social Media and Web 2.0. But, instead my Love for other things in this crazy World. So, take a ...]

Lymphoma the Victor in IM-NY BOTW SMO Contest For Charity!
Each year coinciding with a major SEM event, The Internet Marketers of NY throw a Manhattan party bash to benefit a deserving charity. This year during Search Engine Strategies New York, the event’s sponsor Best of the Web ran a friendly poll where “advocates” ran unofficial ...]

I’m Not Only a Social Media Marketer… I’m also the Tooth Fairy.
I have a little secret…. I’m the tooth fairy. It’s true. And, guess what else?! I’m also Santa Clause, The Easter Bunny, and Cupid. Last week my 6 year old daughter, Hannah lost one of her front teeth and just yesterday she lost the other front tooth. She is missing both of ...]

Are teens today lacking in Interpersonal and Communicative Skills?
� Image by BdwayDiva1 Are Texting & Social Media Platforms causing teens to lack in Interpersonal Communicative Skills? I received a text from my oldest son last week that was very disturbing. He was obviously too freaked out to discuss the topic with me face-to-face and instead ...]

BBC Diggs Social Media, But Doesn’t Seem To Get It
Last August I wrote about how happy I was to see that the BBC had added social bookmarking chicklets to all of their stories as it suggested that they really understood the way the world of new media works. Unfortunately it would seem like I was being slightly naive as Patrick Altoft has found what looks ...]

Internet World Wednesday Day 2 Recap
My first Internet industry conference expo thingy was very interesting to say the least. In a previous life I attended Informex USA and Chemspec Europe as a glorified salesman carting my laptop around the exhibition halls demonstrating and selling AgriBase. This time all I am armed with is a pen and paper (mainly because there ...]

SMX Sydney: A Truly Great Conference
I was lucky enough to spend last week in Sydney as I was (as far as I know) the only British speaker invited to speak at the inaugural SMX Sydney, alongside an all-star cast of local & international speakers including Rand Fishkin & Jane Copland (SEOmoz), the most quoted man in search - Gord Hotchkiss ...]

Habbo Hotel Figures On Contagious
Contagious Magazine has some interesting facts from Habbo Hotel, the teen equivalent of a 3D social network or Second Life. They spoke to 58,000 teens aged 11-18 over 31 countries, including Europe, US and Latin America. Instant Messenger was used by 76% of respondents to communicate. Email has seen a dip in usage, being favoured for more ‘official’ ...]

Google Opens up Brand Name Bidding
Google’s AdWords policy change, which comes into effect from 5th May, removes restrictions on non-brand owners from bidding on trademarked terms. The change only applies to trademarks held in the UK and Ireland and brings these two countries into line with Google’s trademark policy in the United States. Under the new policy, advertisers can still ...]

Pecha Kucha: An Inspiration To Us All
Inspiration comes in many forms and what inspires one person may cause another to run a mile. “An agency, such as a person or work of art, that moves the intellect or emotions or prompts action or invention.” How many times have you been to a presentation or gone round a friend’s house and looked at pictures ...]

Live Diggnation (No, Really) In Amsterdam
At The Next Web Conference 2008 the cult podcast Diggnation will be doing its second Live show outside the USA, the first being in London at FOWA last year (just to clarify, by live I mean in front of an audience, as opposed to just from a sidewalk somewhere). If you don’t know what Diggnation is, ...]

Google To Overtake ITV In 2008: Online Catching Up With TV
There has been a flurry of results released this week, all of which seem to show that the march of online marketing is showing no signs of abating. Considering that a picture often is worth 1,000 words, I’ll point you in the direction of a lovely little bit of animation from The Guardian which maps ...]

The Web’s Global, But It’s Still Different Everywhere
I’m flying out to Dublin tonight to speak at a conference tomorrow organsied by our clients Group GTI. The conference looks at the world of graduate recruiting in Ireland and I’ll be speaking on how recruiters can use search & social media to influence possible candidates, as well as simply attracting them. As part of my ...]

Gonzales Playing At The ICA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vmiWHLx_v4c Is this it? With Jamie Liddell and more notably Feist’s recent inclusion to the fame academy I’m just wondering if arguably the most talented and certainly the most entertaining of the same clan is finally to hit the big time. He’s doing a show at the ICA in London tonight. It’s sold out but if ...]

Erebelle update
If you've been reading us for a while, you may know about our work with Erebelle, an Austin-based women's clothing brand that we've invested in. Here's an update. Website. An updated website that positions the brand ("active wear for women") and showcases all of its pieces is nearly finished. To date, Erebelle has been sold only in boutiques and fitness...

5 things you need to know about women and word of mouth
Wondering how word of mouth works when marketing to women? We asked Michele Miller, co-author of the new book "The Soccer Mom Myth: Today's Female Consumer: Who She Really Is, Why She Really Buys" to share five tips for understanding word of mouth and women. Do women and men differ in they way make recommendations or share information? Women are...

Jargon and marketing maturity
There's an inverse relationship between a company's ability to communicate well and its public use of jargon. Facebook is a good example. Smart people run the company, but their communication with the world is usually pretty awful. From my vantage point at a packed coffee shop in Austin this weekend, Facebook's familiar interface illuminated laptop screens on multiple tables. The...

Mickey Drexler knows me
Does this dress make my hips look big? It was a question for which I needed an honest answer this weekend as I shopped at J. Crew. My salesperson complied. "Yes, it does," she said. She smartly suggested another, more flattering dress instead. Thank you. I appreciated the honest advice. Long-time readers of the Church probably know I love J....

Are you hyperconnected?
Do you read email on your PDA before you get out of bed? Do you Twitter in the bathroom? Do you update your Facebook profile while IM'ing and talking on the phone? If this sounds like you, you're probably part of the hyperconnected culture, where multi-tasking communication is the norm. The power switch is always on. An IDC/Nortel study of...

Remodeling customer surveys
The other day, a big company sent me an email, asking for feedback about my recent purchase experience. That's the good news. Even though sites like SurveyMonkey have made it ridiculously inexpensive (and easy) to gather and calculate quantitative customer feedback, I'm rarely asked for feedback. When a request arrives, I always consider it. The bad news is that this...

Keeping up with the social media fire hose
A few days ago I marveled how Salesforce.com rapidly responded to my tweet on Twitter about one of the company's products. I asked Kingsley Joseph of Salesforce how he saw my tweet so quickly. He sent me a link to his Yahoo Pipes setup that tracks Salesforce's online word of mouth. Yahoo Pipes allows you to build a single feed...

Yes, we're all replicants
The Chicago Tribune follows a student at Northwestern University who's a member of Macy's brand ambassador program and tries to paint a scary, Blade Runner-like future: "Lured by free goods and cash, everyday people are talking up products both in public and private, leading critics to envision a world in which every corner of American life is saturated with pitches...

10 questions with David Vinjamuri
Is it possible to build a very successful company and know zilch about marketing, branding or maybe even business? Yes, according to David Vinjamuri. He's an adjunct instructor of marketing at NYU, a brand consultant and author of the new book, "Accidental Branding." It tells the stories of eight entrepreneurs who built brands such as J. Peterman, Columbia Sportswear and...

How free goes viral
Michele Miller posted this on SWOM. It's so good I wanted to repost it here: One of the hottest videos on YouTube today is the Free Hug Campaign - one man giving away free hugs and the effect it has on the people around him. It's a perfect parallel to building a viral campaign for your business. Watch the video...

Friday Feature: Winning the paper clutter war 2/4
(www.myorganizedbiz.com) - This month’s Friday Features are addressing the challenges of paper clutter. Today’s feature comes from the unclutterer.com from the first in their series called Paper Clutter Begone. They kick off the series explaining a cool product that digitizes your documents - which makes the paper disappear - and progress from there. Do you ...]

Fun Friday: Where Does Your STUFF Come From?
We’re full of fun here at the b5media Biz Channel ("You’re full of somehing!" my husband would say if he were here right now), and what’s more fun than the economy???? Today, we’re taking a look at socially conscious consumerism — and I’m not just talking about buying green. Over at taxgirl, Kelly asks where the ...]

Another bank scam mail for Uk banks to deal with.
According to the twitter and newspeak I hear, spammers and scammers are getting evermore present even after the biggest spammer of all time was arrested. One has to use firefox to try and weed some of them out. If you belong to google groups, yahoo, facebook or where-ever, and lets face it, most of us do, you’ll ...]

Made in the USA?
It’s been suggested on this blog - and others - that the big “fix” to the economy would be to buy more American products. I don’t know how much of an immediate impact it would have on the economy but doing it is actually harder than it sounds. So many products - even those that ...]

Are real estate agents becoming more professional?
The survey, conducted by the National Association of Realtors, says that a greater number of real estate agents are earning additional professional designations. To earn these designations -- which agents usually list as various initials after their names -- Realtors must take several classes and pass tests. In other words, they must study up on their business.

S. Dawn Jones Answers Our Election Questions
This week, rather than chatting with a business owner, we’ve got some answers from S. Dawn Jones, a correspondent for Talk Radio News Service. Dawn covers Capitol Hill and was kind enough to answer a few questions about the election and her job. 1. How did you wind up covering politics for Talk Radio News? I previously ...]

Theoworlds
Have you ever wondered why some advergames look similar? Then Theoworlds could have the answer. From this dev shop you can buy game develop kits or licence prebuilt games to put your own touches on. Not everyone has huge marketing budgets and using these tools can be a shortcut to get something ...]

Duh - It’s Friday, Not Thursday
I just realized today is Friday, not Thursday…. a senior moment? Jobs are coming… Write well and often, Two newsletters: Abundant Freelance Writing - a resource for freelance writers including 3x a week job postings. Writing With Vision - for those who want to get a book written. Image from http://www.sxc.hu Tags: authors, editors, freelance writing links, freelance-writing, home-business, work-at-home, writersShare ...]

SOB Business Cafe 05-16-08
Welcome to the SOB Cafe We offer the best in thinking–articles on the business of blogging written by the Successful and Outstanding Bloggers of Successful Blog. Click on the titles to enjoy each selection. The Special Edition this Week are: Creative Think had been shaking up our heads again. The more ...]

Tell Your Story … and Tell It Today
If your organizations has no story to tell, or has trouble telling its story, you’re going to find yourself struggling to stay afloat. Your story is what gives meaning to your mission; it is what your fundraisers use to persuade donors to say yes, and what focuses you on engaging the causes you’re advancing. Today is ...]

Video: Amazon Kindle Unboxing and First Impressions
I finally broke down and ordered an Amazon Kindle, now that they’re back in stock. It’s an ebook reader device, and since I read so much (borderline obsession), and there are growning piles of dead tree versions of books all over my house, I figured a Kindle was a good idea. In this video, we go ...]

social blog roll with tag: SMO

Global Food Crisis: How Bloggers, Social Media Users and SEO Experts Can Help

Findability, New and Better SEO? Experts Disagree; 12 Findability Resources

Twitter Dilemma: To Tweet or Not to Tweet? Pros, Cons, 50 Links & Tools

3 Phases of Flagship Blog Growth or How to Fall in Love with Blogging

How to Blog: 7 Writing for Blogs Guidelines that Define Blogging

How to Get Content and Earn Credibility with Old News

Semantic SEO: Your Website is a Goldmine with On-Site SEO 2.0

Top 10 Reasons Why Great Content Fails on Social Media

Top 7 CSS Tricks for Better SEO

CNN Adds Mixx Buttons, 5 of Them!

Red 1715

Given up the Coke habit

Distraction will drive you into mediocrity

Dealing With Death

Link Dump

Have at least one perfect moment a day.

Why being a glass half full person is a good thing

Why you will never get what you want.

The Ultimate guide to keeping focussed

Lyndon Antcliff - Interviews

Internet Marketers of New York Charity Party: March 18, 2008

Zicam and the Reputation Management Fiasco

Confessions and Reflections of a [Former] Digg Addict

How Spying On Your Friends Causes Reevaluation of Endorsed Content

SXSW: Mark Zuckerberg Keynote (the edited liveblogged version)

With 4 Days Before Blogger Social, I Bring You the 4×4 Meme

How FriendFeed Can Teach You About Your Friends

Is Social Media the Final Frontier of Marketing?

Techipedia Redesign is Finally Live

SMX West ‘08 Recap: Takeaways, Shout Outs, and Pictures

SES London 2008 Day 3

Google spidering its own custom search results?

Google Subscriber links - The Good - The Not So Good and The Reality

Site links for yack yack

SEO’s our own worst enemies and Negative SEO

How to Deal with Negative Social Network Groups

38 Must Reads on Online Reputation Management

Online Reputation Management Proposals: A Guide

Social Media Presence of the Technorati Top 20

Online Reputation Management eBook is now Available!

ViperChill Updates & eBook Changes

Protecting Your Personal Brand: 4 Simple Steps

What is Online Reputation Management?

A New Wave of Reputation Management Issues

ORM Ebook - Free Or Paid

Improving Clickthrough rates on SERPs

Bots meet form, form meet Google

State of the nation

JQuery plugins for the SEO

grumpy links

Wordpress suitable for SEOs?

Google crawls MSN who Crawls Yahoo it’s weird sex

Mr Cutts are you sure about that?

Simple Block segmentation analysis

Near perfect sales pitch by Bob Massa…

Digg Not Saved, Please Reload and Try Again

Dude, Where’s the Mental post gone?

Loren Feldman 1, Shel Israel 0

Are Your Digg Buddies Holding You Back?

A Message to Twitterers from the Middle Ages

I Hate the How to Linkbait Ebook

How I Use Twitter for Headline Examples

Getting the Twitterati to Talk about You

UK Linkbaiters Poker Tournament

The Problem With Linkbait

Can You Make (a LOT) of Money with Premium Content?

5 New Niche Social Media Sites, Vegas Updates, a Domainer Sh*tstorm and a Special Surprise

Party Like a Coked-up Has-Been Rockstar at Pubcon: Tropical SEO and Scoreboard Contest

Blog Action Day: BE the Change! 5 Easy Tips

A Festivus Gift for My Readers: 9 New Niche Social Media Sites

Rand Fishkin & Tropical Give Advice to Startup CEO’s

Sell Your Web Site to Tropical SEO, Lose 15 Lbs, and Attract Hot Women (or Men)

Digg’s “Florida Update”: Digg Anti-Spam 1, Linkbaiters 0

My Predictions for 2008

Must-Read Monday Links

How to Create Cool ‘Graphical Text’ for Linkbait Pieces

How to Create Great Header Graphics for Linkbait Pieces

Call to Action! Creating Cool Gradient Style Buttons.

Time to Catch Up