5 Rewarding Social Networks for Book Lovers

Reading is a great past-time that can be both comforting and rewarding — though to some people it can be more of a chore. One of the best ways to discover new books to read is by seeing what others are reading. Though there are many social networks out there dedicated to book lovers, here are the top 5 that I feel have the most to offer. Feel free to share your personal favorites in the comments.

Goodreads

Goodreads is the one that I’ve personally been most active on. It’s really great for keeping track of your reading progress on individual books, writing reviews and seeing what your friends are reading. You can create and join groups, explore things like trivia and quizzes (related to books) and swap books with other users. This works by finding a book you want, paying for shipping and then having the owner ship it to you. It also has Facebook Connect, which allows for quicker a login process.

Shelfari

“Shelfari is the premier social network for people who love books. Create a virtual shelf to show off your books, see what your friends are reading and discover new books.” It has a beautiful user interface, and the virtual shelf looks like an actual bookshelf. You can also rate and review books for the world to see, and of course connect with others who have the same tastes in books as you. They also let you ask your friends for book recommendations and participate in group discussions. You can easily find your friends on the site by entering your Gmail credentials.

Revish

With Revish you can write book reviews, maintain reading lists, keep a reading journal, participate in groups and much more. They have many actions that you can do when viewing a particular book: add to a list, add to favorites, watch, review, rate, edit title. Also, if you’re interested in purchasing a specific book they offer links for you to find and purchase the book on various other sites. There is also an “ask & answer” section that lets you ask and answer questions about any particular book; it’s kind of like a Yahoo Answers for books.

LibraryThing

“LibraryThing is an online service to help people catalog their books easily.” You can access your catalog via the web or your mobile phone. This site is great for connecting people who have the same taste in books, and even gives you suggestions on what to read next (based on your reading history). You can catalog up to 200 books with a free account, or upgrade your account for $10/year (or $25 for a lifetime membership). LibraryThing is often described as the “MySpace for books” or “Facebook for books”.

aNobii

aNobii is kind of similar to to Shelfari, especially when it comes to the virtual bookshelf. Once again you can review books and connect with those with similar tastes as you. They also allow you to display your “aNobii Shelf” outside of the site (by embedding it as a widget) — which is pretty neat. It’s a great way to share what you’re reading across the web. They also have a slick iPhone app that lets you cary your shelf wherever you go. You can also use Facebook connect to sign up for an account and find to find your friends.

What is your favorite book related social network?

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Ad.ly Makes Celebrity Endorsements Accessible for All

I’ve gotten used to seeing Kim Kardashian get sloppy with a Carl’s Jr. burger on TV but the idea of Heidi Montag hawking a dogfood delivery service on Facebook perplexes me just a little.

In-Stream ad network Ad.ly has just announced a program where you can get celebrities to update their Facebook with glowing reviews of your product. It’s a service they’ve been providing on Twitter and MySpace for some time but Facebook feels like a much bigger step. With it, a client will now be able to generate a celebrity endorsed campaign on all three social networks — kind of like the Triple Crown of online advertising.

Ad.ly’s system is self-service in that you choose your star, submit your pitch and wait to see if it’s accepted. The list of potential Tweetpersons includes skateboard legend Tony Hawk, edgy talk show host Chelsea Lately, Chris Brown, Snoop Dogg and the a fore mentioned Kim and Heidi.

Because you pay per message, the cost to have a celeb promote your product is much cheaper than it would be if you needed them for a traditional ad campaign, but will consumers go for it?

The FTC requires that all sponsored Tweets, posts and updates have “ad” at the end to show that it is indeed a piece of advertising. In Heidi Montag’s case, three out of the last four Facebook posts were sponsored ads and that’s got to take away some of the effectiveness. Some of the nearly 100 responses to the dogfood delivery ad were snarky replies to the advertising. Others responded as if Miss Montag actually used the service asking her questions about the cost.

I don’t know what the company paid to have this post run, but I imagine that if they only got a handful of new customers from the exposure then it was worth the cost.

You can see the full list of available celebrities right here.

If you were going to hire a celebrity spokesperson on Facebook, who would you want it to be?

Source: ClickZ and Tech Crunch

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Manage Multiple Twitter Accounts via the Web with Multwiple

If you own multiple Twitter accounts, you know how frustrating it can be finding the right tool to manage them all. Multwiple aims to make that process easy by letting you “use all your Twitter accounts in one place.” They offer secure OAuth-based login, an easy-to-use interface and a convenient web interface.

When you login you’ll see three columns: home, direct messages and mentions. For each tweet you can reply, add to favorites, send a direct message and retweet (with or without a comment). The columns do auto-refresh, but there is also a refresh button at the top of the page if you’d like to manually refresh. How often the columns refresh can be customized in the settings.

Clicking on a users’ avatar image will show a small window with their latest tweets, along with how many people they’re following, how many followers they have and how many tweets they’ve sent out.

Replies and updates can be posted via the tweet box above the columns. There is also an integrated URL shortener. To use, click on the “URL shortener” link and enter the URL that you want to shorten and click the “add” button. The short URL will then automatically be inserted into the tweet box.

The navigation bar is located on the left side of the page. There is a search box at the top for searching through Twitter. Results are shown in a new column, like with all the other options in the menu. Other options in the navigation menu include retweeted by me, retweeted to me, favorites, people you follow, your followers, trends and a shameless plug button for Multwiple.

Lastly, there there is a “plus” button that you can click that lets you add other Twitter accounts. When you add a new account, a whole new tab will be created for it. You can then go back and forth between accounts by clicking on the corresponding tab. If you need to delete an account, this can be done in the settings.

Multwiple is said to take its inspiration from Seesmic and Echofon, which is definitely evident. Thought it doesn’t offer a ton of features, it’s great for those looking for simplicity and an easy to user interface.

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OnStar Declares a Social Media Emergency

“This is OnStar, what is your emergency?”

“I just saw Britney Spears buying bananas at Ralphs and I have to tell everyone I’ve ever met.”

No. I’m not kidding. Sam Mancuso, general director of marketing for OnStar told Advertising Age this week that the company is beta-testing a feature that will allow drivers to update their Facebooks by voice while on the road. It’s part of a push to make the brand seem hipper and cooler and it includes a new slogan “Safely connecting you in ways you never thought possible.”

Mancuso stands behind the idea saying that people are going to update their Facebooks by texting while driving and that’s dangerous and illegal. With OnStar, they can do it safely while keeping both hands on the wheel. He also claims that if they find this new feature to be distracting and unsafe, they will discontinue it and they’ll be upfront about the mistake.

Once you build social connectivity into a car, the next step, as with mobile phones, is figuring out how to use it for marketing purposes. Mr Mancuso’s response to that:

“There are many things that are technically possible. Whether it becomes an advertising medium depends on what our customers desire and value.”

I can’t imagine customers ever desiring advertising piped into the car like canned elevator music, we have the radio for that. Maybe OnStar will start including ads with every emergency response. “The ambulance is on the way, Mr. Jones, and remember, for the aches and pains you’ll be suffering tomorrow, Tylenol is the number one pain reliever.”

As for advertising OnStar itself, Mancuso says the outlay on their new campaign will be “significant.” In addition to radio and TV advertising, they’ll be hitting Times Square and going the social media route.

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Phone a friend or ask the audience?

I recently bought a new (old) home in Atlanta. Temperatures have been, well, hot and the AC has not stopped running all summer long. But when my energy bill tripled for last month’s usage I had to wonder if there was something I should do. So, I reached out to my social circle; but neighbors, friends and family all gave me different opinions on what was “normal” for this time of year. I just wanted to know what normal energy consumption should be and understand how my home compared. While I’m sure there’s an app for that, I opted for a simple search which brought me to Microsoft-hohm.com where I could see how my home compared with my neighbors, the state and the nation. In fact, the site suggested that I could save quite a bit of money if I took steps to make my home more energy efficient. Decision made. Add more insulation, seal the windows and then reevaluate.

My point here is that while some decisions, like buying a pair of jeans, might require a couple thumbs up from your friends on Facebook, involved decisions, major behavioral changes and shifts in opinion may require an up-close and personal encounter with aggregated data from a substantial sample of “people like you.”

Access to other people’s information through social networks and aggregated data sites have made us more inquisitive about “how we compare.” Am I normal? Am I unique? This is the next generation of keeping up with the Joneses, just a bit smarter and less impulsive.

Conceptually, I like the ideas expressed in IBM Smarter Planet site (cl) that, “The planet has grown a central nervous system…we should  instrument the world’s systems, interconnect them, make them intelligent.”
So, not only are we getting faster access to data, but that data is also being used to make faster more accurate and effective decisions. This cyclical relationship between data collection, aggregation, consumption and sharing will only expedite with time.

Advances in technology, analytics and computational modeling all in stride with  the progression of social media – the possibilities for new engagement, connection and influence seem limitless.

The takeaway for communicators here is to know what data sources will influence  your target audience to make a decision, change behavior or shift an opinion?  And furthermore, what type of decision is your audience facing – Impulsive? Moderate involvement? High involvement?

In other words, is the individual buying a pretzel at the mall (impulsive), a pair of jeans (moderate), or buying a house(high)?  And, who or what will motivate the individual? Will he be self motivated, directed, encouraged , or permitted  to change behavior (consumption, purchase, perception, opinion)? Will this influence come from a single person, a group of friends or a substantial aggregate of data from a group of people “like him?”

When it comes to decision time will your target audience phone a friend or ask the audience?

Just a few examples to explore…
Phone a Friend
Shopping goes social:
blippy.com
swipely.com
Travel Advice gets personal:
TripAdvisor Trip Friends
Ask the Audience
Personal finance:
bundle.com
Home Purchase:
zillow.com
Energy Consumption
microsoft-hohm.com
Travel
tripadvisor.com

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5 Ways Twitter Can Actually Be Useful… For Anyone

Though most people who use Twitter enjoy it and think it’s a great service, it has gotten something of a bad rap for, supposedly, being useless and frivolous. When people do talk about putting Twitter to use, they’re usually discussing it solely from the standpoint of self-promotion or social news marketing.

This has, unfortunately, kept many people away from Twitter who would benefit from it. Many who are otherwise very active in social media can’t justify the time required to get involved in Twitter and, as a result, steer clear of it.

However, the people who view Twitter in that light are seeing less than half the story. Whether or not Twitter ever intended to be useful, it has become a very powerful and practical communications platform but the secret is knowing how to use it.

If you need proof of that, here are five practical things that you can do with Twitter right now and you don’t have to be a Twitter wizard or have a powerful account to do them.

5. Reach Out to Companies

If ever you’ve tried to reach a live human being at a large company, you know how difficult it can be. However, most large companies are putting people in charge of monitoring Twitter for what’s being said and many are actively responding. If you need to get in touch with a human being at a company, you can use this to your advantage.

First, see if the company is on Twitter and follow their account (very important). Then, @reply the company making sure to put something before the @ symbol if you want most of your followers to read it. If they don’t have a clear Twitter account, mention the company name and see if someone who works for it is following the term. If you followed the account, there’s a good chance they’ll DM you or reply back, giving you a chance to email or call.

Though this is most commonly used as a means to address grievances against a company, it can be useful, as I found, for finding someone to interview for your site or just getting a more difficult question answered.

4. Ask a Question or Give an Answer

Need an opinion on something real fast from an unbaised third party? Twitter can help. Drop a link to what you need thoughts on and encourage replies, even if you don’t have many followers there’s a good chance one or two will step in to help.

Twitter is a great way for getting quick feedback from those who aren’t close to the project. Likewise, it’s a great to grow your reputation as an expert by answering questions asked by others, all you have to do is search for keywords relevant to your field and answer questions when possible.

All in all, there’s no easier way to connect people with questions to ask with those who are wanting to give answers.

3. Follow Relevant News

There’s a lot of ways you can stay on top of your industry’s news but none are more up to the minute than following relevant keywords on Twitter. Though Google News and Yahoo! News can be great tools for keeping on top of an industry, there can be a great deal of delay between when a story breaks and when it appears in the alerts and feeds, especially if it is a niche field.

You can easily narrow down a Twitter search to show you only tweets with links using the advanced search tool and, though you’ll still have to separate a lot of wheat from the chaff, you can rest assured that it will probably be the best tool for up-to-the-minute news about the topics that interest you.

2. Get Important Alerts

In addition to staying on top of your industry, Twitter can help you stay on top of more urgent news. By using Twitter’s SMS feature, you can have tweets from accounts pushed directly to your phone in real time. How is this useful? Many government agencies and other groups have starting using Twitter as a means to stream real-time updates on various topics.

For example, in my hometown of New Orleans, the Department of Transportation has set up a Twitter account for area traffic alerts. Whenever an accident happens on one of the major thoroughfares causing a delay, I get a text message alerting me that I might want to consider alternate routes.

Very likely, your city has similar tools available to you, either through the government or your local media. All you have to do is search.

1. Actually Talk to People

Here’s a radical idea for Twitter: Try talking to people.

It may seem as if 140 characters isn’t enough to say anything meaningful but remember that the limit was put into place to make Twitter compatible with text messaging and consider how many conversations take place via SMS every day.

I have several friends and relatives that Twitter is my primary means of initial contact for them. If I just need to send a quick message, I either use text or Twitter and, since Twitter is free to use and can reach people both on their cell phones and computer, it has proved to be a good way to reach some of my tech-savvy friends.

I wouldn’t use it to talk to my parents, but for my social networking buff friends, it’s a means of communication that can’t be beat.

Bottom Line

In the end, Twitter is as frivolous or as useful as you make it. If you want to make it about what you had for breakfast or for pure self-promotion, that’s your choice. But don’t forget that it does have real, practical power that you can apply to make your life better.

Basically, Twitter is just a tool and you’ll get out of it what you put into it. If you try to make it something worthwhile, it will be, if you don’t, it won’t. It really is that simple.

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4 Ways to Use Twitter to Support Your Blog

In the race to social media stardom, plenty of bloggers have joined Twitter and are furiously tweeting the titles and openings of every post they publish. When they launch a product or open registration for a seminar, they tweet that.

But surely these can’t be the only ways to support your blog using Twitter?  Your tweets might be limited to 140 characters, but the scope of your tweeting is limited — you guessed it — only by your imagination.

Here are some of the less conventional approaches I’ve seen bloggers employ in using Twitter to support their sites.

1. Tell the story of blog content creation.

This approach can be very intriguing and compelling for your followers. One journalist I know often invites his Twitter followers to contribute ideas for elements of the articles he’s working on. By responding, followers buy in to the story, and become intrigued about the article topic.

Perhaps he’ll follow up that request with tweets mentioning that he’s about to interview a subject for the article, or his research has uncovered something interesting. So by the time he tweets the link to the finished article, at least some portion of his followers — those who have been following his journey to produce the piece — are dying to read it.

2. Tweet interesting comment responses.

Rather than focusing solely on the content you produce for your blog, why not intersperse your article tweets with tweets that point your followers to interesting comments that readers have made in response to your posts?

As well as encouraging regular readers to make considered, valuable comments on your blog, this technique supports your online profile, building your and your blog’s reputation for producing quality content that sparks intelligent, innovative discussion. It also indicates that your blog is a place where thinkers congregate, and a source of information that sparks broader interaction among those within your niche.

3. Run a Twitter competition tie-in.

Trying to plug a new product or service that you’re launching? Perhaps you could add a Twitter competition to your launch strategy. Ask questions that followers can find answers to in one of your recent posts (perhaps one published on the same day), then give away your new product to a winner drawn from the pool of people who answer the question correctly.

This can be a great way to engage readers in a fun, constructive manner, and to take a break from the everyday in terms of Twitter content, and possibly, your promotions. It can also create a few moments of light relief for your readers.

4. Create a Twitter conversation around an event.

If you’re running an event in association with your blog, consider making a Twitter conversation part of your strategy. Watching real-time responses to   events pop up in Twitter streams provides entertainment — and opinion, and education — for countless users every day. A recent festival in my town held some events and discussions entirely on Twitter.

Could you do something like this around your next product launch? Can you invite users to discuss an exclusive post — perhaps one that presents a new take on your niche, or includes an in-depth interview with a niche leader –  at the time you publish it?

These are just a few of the alternative approaches you can use to promote your blog through Twitter. What alternatives have you seen or used yourself?

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4 Ways I Compose Posts to Drive Millions of Pageviews to Blogs Through Digg

A Guest Post by Neal Rodriguez.

With the release of the new Digg on August 25th, anybody with the ability to understand how a story, which is promoted to the popular section, is composed, has an edge in attaining viral exposure ranging from tens of thousands to millions of pageviews. Digg’s users constitute a large proportion of bloggers. Thus stories promoted to their popular section, which was previously their homepage and now the Top News page, can attain anywhere from less than 10 to hundreds of links pointing to their websites. Digg also has millions of users; many of whom visit websites that reach the popular section at a rapid rate. My blog went down when I promoted my interview with Ben Huh The Most Popular SFW & NSFW Failblog Pics of the Decade to the popular section and more than 1,000 visitors loaded the page in the first few minutes after reaching the front page.

No matter how much of an efficient promotor of content you are, you will not get your blog’s pageview count passed the two people who made you nine months ago without writing content that people are willing to share among their online friends and acquaintances. There are just some stories that people are willing to pass on to their fellow digital networkers through email, Facebook Like action, retweet, pigeon carrier, or Greek messenger. What are some of the elements that increase the chance that a story will spread virally?

1. A Picture is Worth a Hundred Thousand Pageviews

I was surprised to hear that my friend had launched his photo blog and had grown his traffic level to 100,000 monthly pageviews in 3 months. Now together with Digg he is behind one of the biggest viral campaigns on the web in the past few weeks: the dry erase girl. Photos on the web appear to have the hypnotic ability of making people share them upon first encounter. Ben Huh reportedly did nothing but post photos of people failing at everyday tasks on his blog. Last time I spoke with him he was driving 1 billion pageviews to his blog network every 4 months.

On the blog post to which I alluded in the first paragraph, I aggregated the most popular photos posted on Ben’s blog in the last decade and performed some social outreach on the news aggregators. The post made the front page of Digg and drove 26,690 pageviews in the first few hours. It received 36,019 pageviews the following day. The post has received over 77,000 pageviews in total.

You should add photos to every blog post you write. The funnier the picture the better. Even the most serious topics work great with a offbeat picture that can also represent the post’s topic. Stunning pictures such as those posted on PDN Photo of the Day Aftermath (6 photographs) show the story of a woman’s breast cancer treatment in a series of self-portraits. I drove over 200,000 pageviews to this story on the first day of publication. It went popular on Stumbleupon and made the front page of Reddit, a social news aggregator, to drive over 90,000 views over the weekend when traffic is typically slowest. The only reason I didn’t put it on Digg is because nudity was not allowed at the time. I have found I have been able to drive the most traffic when I aim to tell a story through pictures.

2. Opinionated Stories

My first blog post on the Huffington Post briefly outlined reasons why I thought we as consumers brought the U.S. financial crisis upon ourselves. In short, my argument contended that increases in foreclosures were the product of people buying homes that they could not afford. Whether you think I was wrong or not, this post made the front page of Digg in 2007 and incited a huge response. If any of you have attempted to promote content on Digg, you know that solely stories that receive the most response and support from the community get promoted to its popular page.

I got insulted on this post for my lack of substantiating my arguments with 3rd party facts. However, I did help people close no-paper A loans as a credit repair specialist back in ‘03; so, considering the amount of people for which I secured $300,000 loans without showing income documentation, I had a pretty good idea from which to draw an opinion. No excuse, nonetheless, in your iteration, ensure that you back up your content with solid facts, statistics, and other expert opinions to make your argument as credible as possible.

My opinionated piece that called for the arrest of a Bart police officer who shot an unarmed man in 2009 also made the front page of Digg. My thoughts on why the Bart police officer who shot Oscar Grant should be held without bail was the most popular story on the Huffington Post on its day of publication with over 40,000 views through my outreach efforts.

What also made this post popular stand out, is that mainstream media wasn’t giving it the attention that the American people thought it should. Now touching on the subject of race, I received a hundreds of racist insults. Expect to get verbally abused when taking a strong stance on many subjects; especially touchy subjects that cover sensitive issues such as race. Just log out of Foursquare and Facebook Places before hitting the check-in button while you watch your 3-year old impersonate a Oreos commercial eating cookies in your house. Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me.

3. Infographics

Infographics are visual representations of an outline of information. The graphic typically constitutes a skyscraper and rectangular image that is 500 pixels or wider. Inside the infographic, you can see factoids represented by smaller images. The smaller images can constitute pictures, graphs, and/or any other imagery associated with the information its representing.

Infographics can get tough to do if you don’t have a graphic designer. However, beyond the sparkling quality of the color and resolution of the images, the information conveyed in the infographic is what will determine its viral success. I put up a simple infographic on what other items could be bought with the money put into a Super Bowl ad and drove over 50,000 views to the Adfreak blog in a few hours.

When creating a infographic keep in mind the following best practices:

• Research your topic from at least 10 resources.
• Try timelines and abstract ways to display diagrams, graphs, and charts; a popular way to graph data is by using rows or columns of images associated with the data – e.g. stick figures like those used to identify public mens and womens rooms when providing information on people.
• Post key information that surprises or intensely interests people upon disclosing it; little-known historical facts and processes work well.
• Use colors for the fonts, background, and images that relate to the topic being discussed. In this case we used colors in relation to football. We used the two team colors that were playing: the Colts and Saints.
• The font size should poke readers’ eyes into their throats. Make them big, bold and colorful. Emphasize the words that are most important and experiment with different font sizes and styles.

Add several facts that constitute the ‘WOW factor;’ that your audience can relate to. So in the Super Bowl infographic, we related the factoids to popular memes on Digg since that was the initial channel of promotion. And again, although the graphic quality is important, put more focus on the information you will be embedding in the infographic. Visualize the image and draw a rough sketch outlining how you want it to look on paper or digitally.

4. Rewriting Headlines

The new Digg allows you to edit a headline before submitting it to the community. Your headline is the first thing a user sees when the story is posted on his feed. You should incite the need to click and read what loads upon clicking the title.

Top # Lists

When content is already listed or outlined but the title doesn’t read so, you may increase the chance of promoting a story to popularity using a numbered list title. A Forbes story once listed the most expensive private jets in the world. I rewrote the headline to “The 10 Most Expensive Private Jets on the Planet.” I successfully promoted the story and drove thousands of pageviews to it in a few hours. A good way to structure a list is by using the Cracked.com forumula

“The” + (Number) + “Most” + (Over the top adjective) + (Subject) + Of All Time (Synonyms like “in History” or “Ever” will also be accepted) = Popularity

Topics Important to the Digg Community

Some stories generally cover an event or developing topic. At times you will find a something that is dear to the heart of Digg users. I promoted a story for PBS that was covering a political convention, which had a tent catered for bloggers. Digg was mentioned once as a the sponsor. You probably know what I did better than me. I stated how Digg was sponsoring the event as the title. I successfully promoted the story to the front page and exposed it to its million-person user base.

Percentages

I also take the most important percentage that proves the key fact in the story and have made it as a headline. A story explained how betting pools were operating for the upcoming Super Bowl. The story’s key finding reported that 80% of bets were for the underdog, my NY Giants. I used this stat as the headline – “80% of Super Bowl Bets are on the Giants” – and successfully promoted the story to the front page.

How have you composed posts to drive the most traffic to your blogs?

Neal Rodriguez is a social media marketing operator ready to jog in blizzards this winter to get ripped for the summer in New York City.

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The Freakonomics Guide to Making Boring Content Sexy

It’s easy to write about certain topics, like celebrities, or technology, or even social media. Everybody wants a piece of it.

But what if your passion is botany, supply chain logistics, or cognitive psychology?

How do you get noticed with a compelling story when your subject is … well … boring?

In the summer of 2006, an economics book was on the New York Time Bestseller list. The title was provocative and promised to be anything but a boring read.

Even my hero Malcolm Gladwell said, “Prepare to be dazzled.”

Since I really can’t stand economics (hated it ever since college), I skeptically handed over my $25 and took Freakonomics home.

From the very first page, I was treated to a wild ride through the most bizarre stories I’d ever encountered. I learned about cheating schoolteachers and self-sacrificing sumo wrestlers. Why drug dealers still live with their moms and how the KKK is like a real estate agent.

Every story taught a boring economic principle in a way that made me want more.

I realized that Freakonomics was an instruction manual for transforming boring blog posts into sexy must-read masterpieces.

Check it out:

People love “dot connectors”

Our world is getting more complicated by the second. Every day your readers are trying to get a handle on what happened yesterday, what’s happening now, and what will happen tomorrow. If you connect the dots for them, you can get popular in a hurry.

Freakonomics is built around connecting dots in an interesting way. For example, it’s long been an economic principle that almost every choice we make is connected to incentives. Pretty boring stuff — until author Steven Levitt used a story about daycare centers to show how some incentives backfire.

Since parents were showing up late frequently, the daycare center started a policy of a $3 fine to incentivize parents to show up on time. Unfortunately, the fine wound up incentivizing parents to pay $3 for an hour of babysitting and not feel guilty for showing up late!

Giving your reader’s these “aha” moments is a great way to keep them reading a so-called boring topic and have them asking for more.

Headlines still matter

Even with all of our shiny social media tools, good ol’ standby skills like writing a great headline still matter.

You can be a masterful storyteller and write killer posts, but you still lose if no one reads them.

Titles are the closest thing us writers have to a “silver bullet.” Don’t waste ‘em. Do you think that Freakonomics would have been a New York Times Bestseller with the title Aberrational Behavior and the Causal Effect of Incentives?

The quickest way to give your boring blog a facelift is to put some eye-hijacking power into your headlines. In fact, write your headline first, before you even start the rest of the post. It’s that important.

Numbers are a blogger’s best friend

One common complaint of blogs is that they can’t be taken seriously. We are accused of playing fast and loose with the facts and being weak on proof. It’s easy to avoid hard numbers and focus on writing the soft stuff, but Freakonomics shows that this is a mistake.

Many bloggers are afraid that statistics, equations, and hard facts will scare away our readers, but that’s not giving our readers enough credit. The problem isn’t the numbers — it’s that we stick numbers out there without a story.

Freakonomics uses numbers to reveal a hidden story. Levitt looked up the numbers on standardized tests for Chicago students. On the face of it, this was pretty boring data. This district got such-and-such a score, this district got such-and-such a score. Yawn.

Until those numbers revealed that teachers were cheating.

In some districts, teachers received salary boosts when their students performed better on standardized tests — motivating them to fill in a few additional correct answers for their students.

The story makes the numbers interesting. The numbers make the story credible. Give it a try.

Everyone loves a mystery

Why would a successful sumo wrestler throw a match? The obvious answer would be that he’s getting paid to do so, but Levitt quickly discovered there was a much more mysterious motivation that drove who won and who lost in Japan’s sumo contests.

The answer is buried in psychology, probability, and incentives, but the only thing that I care about is that there’s a mystery. Any mystery begs for gumshoe detective work. We can’t leave well enough alone and we want to know why — especially if someone else is going to do the legwork of figuring out the answer for us. That’s why the CSI series has spun off more offspring than a jackrabbit.

You can use this quirk of human nature to make your topic enticing. Look closely at your topic and uncover some old-fashioned mysteries. Now write a post that presents the mystery and leads your reader through the investigation to its incredibly satisfying conclusion.

Provide a better way to solve common problems

Freakonomics uses a powerful set of tools to explain the way the world works. By the end of the book, you can’t help but think that every problem imaginable can be solved with the right incentive, data analysis, or storytelling. When you’re finished you feel that there is a better way to tackle your problems.

This is what “added value” means. Simply restating a problem is boring. Offering new tools and perspectives to solve problems helps your reader get closer to their goals — and that makes you someone whose content they’ll want to read every time you come out with something new.

Freakonomics: The Movie is coming out soon, and I’ll be first in line — because reading the book was so valuable to me I can’t wait to see what else the authors have to offer. To get devoted fans who’ll anticipate your every output with the same enthusiasm, give them some solutions.

Time to get freaky

Have you ever used any of these techniques to make your content sexier? Can you see how to apply some of them to your own blog?

And if you read Freakonomics yourself, tell us in the comments about any other blog-enhancing tips you picked up!

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Will Google Me Become Reality?

Google’s Chief Executive Eric Schmidt started a buzz or maybe a wave when he let it “slip” today that Google will be adding a  ‘social layer’ this fall.

Oh, there’s so much to discuss in that statement. First of all, ‘social layer?’ Some reporters are taking this to mean that Google will be adding social elements to all of their current sites as opposed to developing a new site specifically aimed at competing with Facebook. This being the case, it’s likely they’ll create a home page for people that allows them to link to and follow all of the related info from their friends.

Remember, Google already tried a similar trick with Google Buzz which was a horrendous failure. But Buzz was like Twitter meets Digg and not a true social networking site where you can spend virtual time with your friends.

The second part of the statement is the “this fall” part. Isn’t it fall? Or is he talking about calendar fall which will happen on September 22. Sure there have been rumors of a social site on the horizon, but are they really ready to roll out a major program in the next few weeks?

As for the “slipped” part, I wasn’t there, but according to Bloomberg, Schmidt dropped the info unexpectedly when a Facebook executive made a comment about Google building a social networking site. When questioned further, he wouldn’t elaborate, except to say that he hoped Facebook would allow Google access to their data. The Wall Street Journal wrote:

“The best thing that would happen is for Facebook to open up its data,” Mr. Schmidt said. “Failing that, there are other ways to get that information.” He declined to be specific.

If Google Me gets it even half right, they could be the first real competition Facebook has seen in a long time. Looking at the track record though, I don’t expect to see a mass exodus from Facebook anytime soon.

Can Google can put together a strong social networking site that’s strong enough to knock out the current king? What do you think?

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Twitter Gets a Make-Over

I use Twitter everyday, but I rarely do it from the actual Twitter page on the web. I use HootSuite and other applications to get the most from the service, but that is about to change.

Today, Twitter announced that they’re getting a make-over and it’s a doozy. It’s a big step toward making Twitter more than just an information handler. It’s a step toward making it a Facebook-ish time sucker and that’s good for all of us.

The new Twitter page will now work as two separate columns. The left side will be the feed you’re used to, but the right side will be a pop-out that expands on the tweet you’ve clicked on. This change was needed for one big reason — the fact that you’ll be able to watch videos and see photos without leaving the site.

From next week(ish) on, when one of your friends tweets a photo of his lunch you’ll be able to see it without clicking over to TwitPic. And that can’t miss viral video? It’s going to show up right there next to the tweet. Sweet.

All of this is going to work because Twitter is partnering with Dailybooth, DeviantArt, Etsy, Flickr, Justin.TV, Kickstarter, Kiva, Photozou, Plixi, Twitgoo, TwitPic, Twitvid, USTREAM, Vimeo, Yfrog, and YouTube. So, it’s not like this new service is going to put any of them out of business. In fact, it’s going to make Yfrog and pals even more popular.

In Facebook style, you’ll see a list of who else on your friends list has retweeted an item so you can make sure no one gets left out. Related content will also be displayed, including replies, maps and more bio info.

If you want to learn more about the new look, you can’t, because right now there isn’t more to tell. There is a video, but it’s nothing but a self-congratulatory, oddly pastoral trip through Twitter land that ends with a shot of the new site. You can find it here.

It’s a big step for the little information engine and I imagine this is just the beginning.

What do you think of Twitter’s new makeover?

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Nielsen Mobile Study: Facebook, Weather, Maps and Music

A recent Nielsen study shows that regardless of the platform (iPhone, Android, BlackBerry or Windows Mobile) the apps that are most commonly used show what people on the go are interested in. It’s friends (Facebook), weather (The Weather Channel), music (Pandora) and what’s local (Google Maps). Here’s the picture story.

What is interesting is that Twitter only made the Top 5 for the BlackBerry OS. Speaking as a recent BlackBerry user that moved over to the world of Android, the Twitter BlackBerry experience was one of the few that I found to really translate on a BB device so it kind of makes sense (to me at least).

The study is full of other information such as what people do when using mobile and the most popular “next steps” is more research. If you haven’t paid attention to the importance of local presence in Google Maps and other places by now you are going to miss out. More smartphones equals more research on the go which means greater dependency on Google Maps and Place Pages. Get it?

The last chart doesn’t bode real well for mobile advertisers because even with the most likely group to pay attention to ads are 13-17 year olds, 87% of that top group say they only sometimes or actually never look at mobile ads. That number goes well over 90% as the demographics move to older groups. Not a great statistic but what do you expect when evolution talk these days should include a category called “Increased ad blindness capability”?

So we learn more about people today in the mobile age. Actually do we, though? Finding out that people want to know where to go with their friends and how the weather will while they listen to music getting there is not real revealing or new. What is new, however, is how we get the things we want to know, which is more “instantaneously” than ever before in human history.

Feel free to download the full report from Nielsen.

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If RSS is Dead, Someone Please Explain This Chart to Me!

It seems like the latest “xxxx is dead” bandwagon is RSS–and some A-listers are jumping on it with gusto!

We’ll overlook the fact that many of these people also thought FriendFeed was going to be the holy grail of social networking aggregation, and instead take a look at this chart:

That’s Google Reader’s growth over the past five years.

Does that look to you like the death of RSS? Nope, me neither. In fact, I thought it quite ironic that the people claiming the death of RSS pushed that news out to their RSS feeds, which then ended up in my Google Reader dashboard.

I personally still rely heavily on RSS feeds. Sure, I can get news from Twitter or Facebook, but that’s like turning on the TV and hoping that there will be a segment on “climate change” at some point during the day. With RSS, I can segment, tag, and categorize the flow of news, like this:

How would I do that without RSS?

Perhaps the issue is not the death of RSS. Maybe these same A-listers simply over-hyped RSS to start with and are now having to come back down to the reality.

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Groupthink: How Social Media Made Coupon Clipping Cool

The Sunday circular was once a premier destination for grandparents armed with scissors at the prospect of saving $0.15 on frozen peas. I used to roll my eyes and wonder how this habit could be a smart investment of time. Then I found FatWallet.com, a site that gives users 1%-30% cash back with a few clicks of the mouse. Suddenly, FatWallet = the Sunday ads and my mouse = scissors.

It was then I realized the apple didn’t fall far from the tree and my miserly roots were exposed. Even though I was effortlessly getting cold, hard cash back on my click investment, I was hesitant to reveal this find to friends. Saving money hasn’t ever had its time in the spotlight. Microsoft tried to build momentum around the concept with Bing Cashback, but the program never took off and sang its swan song July 30. Geek got chic, so why couldn’t frugality?

And then, just when parsimony was destined to be a virtue relegated to secrecy and smoke-filled rooms, along came Groupon.

Socially-Driven Deals Sweeten the Pot

It was a slow build at first; Facebook ads touting half-priced cupcakes and killer deals at pizzerias. Sign-up? Try and stop me! Eventually, loads of people were learning about new, interesting, and off-the-beaten-path restaurants every morning –with the prospect of eating out at deep discounts. Formula for success, right?

No, definitely not. These deals were still coming to inboxes where the cupcake-consuming cadres were drooling over emails in the privacy of their cubicles. Ho hum. Just another cooperative coupon program that will go the way of Entertainment Books – but at least with those you get a decent doorstop.

The reality was (and still is): coupons aren’t cool. Not only does the cost-benefit seem questionable, but they’re also currency of the lame, cheap, and self-conscious parts of our nature. For those reasons, they’re awkward. Throw down a BOGO on a date? Unthinkable. Chop the price of your haircut by 50%? Prepare to be judged, possibly marred. Whip out a coupon amongst a group of friends? Not unless you can withstand 12 sets of rolling eyes.

Why then are we comfortable haggling on eBay, searching exhaustively with Kayak, and tangling with the Priceline Negotiator for a cheap hotel room? The answer is simple: social context. This penny-pinching is done without looking anyone in the eye – neither customer service rep nor best friend. This phenomenon can be surmised with the following equations:

Private consumerism + promo code = WOOT!

Public consumerism + dog-eared coupon = BAIL!

Given this historic accumulation of ridicule, Groupon had to do something drastic. Sure, the online discount service was offering unthinkable deals for intriguing places, but it still had to beat the Shame Game and move deals from inbox to outgoing. Luckily it had an x-factor: digital media.

Groupon gave the age-old discount a fresh coat of warpaint in the battle against MSRP. Popular bistro? New bar? Concert tickets? All deals to share with friends and facilitate group outings over Facebook, Twitter, and other networks. To encourage conversation, Groupon played another brilliant card by incentivizing users to share deals via a link eligible for account credit if friends got their Group-on. More recently (and awesomely), the program released mobile apps that simplify the process of buying, sharing, and using deals. Not only does this add value for users and facilitate buying (it saved my freakin’ payment info!), it distances a Groupon even further from the rough-edged wad in your back pocket.

By embracing digital platforms and sparking word-of-mouth, Groupon has achieved great success; not only in making coupons acceptable to the social masses, but also expanding nationally and globally. In a textbook case of imitation as a form of flattery, that success has spawned numerous socially-driven deal sites from programs as niche as wahanda and as mainstream as foodie resource Yelp. With Groupon, future generations have another word for coupon – one that doesn’t come with a side dish of chagrin.

As Groupon continues to grow and its competition multiplies, one must wonder: Are we molding consumer behavior around the daily deal? Possibly, but that’s a separate blog post. In the meantime, enjoy savings free from shame - and without the paper cuts.

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Marketing to the Marketers: LinkedIn Wins

Most advertising execs are quick to jump on the social media bandwagon when it comes to marketing a product to consumers, but when it comes to marketing themselves, not so much.

A recent study by RSW/US took a look at the business-to-business social media habits of a variety of ad agencies. As reported by Brandweek, 54% of the agencies polled said they never or rarely use social media when prospecting for new clients. Of those that did use social media for outreach, LinkedIn was the clear favorite getting 51% of the vote. Facebook polled at only 9% and Twitter less than that.

The agencies polled complained that in general, it was getting harder and harder to reach marketing execs and they blamed it on the budget. With revenue down, many people have had to take on more responsibilities within their companies leaving them too overloaded to respond to any type of outreach. Mark Sneider of RSW/US says,

“People don’t have the time to answer their phones, check out e-mail and be active in the social scene. That [fact] even more so justifies a need to make sure you’re in all those touch points.”

If marketers are so slammed, why aren’t they hiring an outside agency to help lighten the load? Again, money was mostly to blame but they also pointed to the fact that hiring a consultant slowed down the process and they were perceived as having conflicts of interest and limited value.

This is where social media can help. Sneider says that sites such as LinkedIn offer a way to get one-on-one time with an exec you’d like to pitch to. But it’s not enough to just send over your list of accomplishments.

“What’s more important here is not the tool, but the message. Where people are falling down is in simply pounding their chest and talking about how great they are.”

If you’re going to use social media for outreach, you must make sure your message is tightly on-point and useful. Don’t send a request for a meeting, send an idea and you’re more likely to get heard.

Do you use social media to prospect for clients? Or have you ever hired a consultant whom you “met” over a social media channel? We’d like to hear both sides of the story.

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Join Me in Hawaii this October 5th for Just $97!

You could attend a conference that costs $2,000+ for registration and travel expenses.

Or….

You could spend $97 on registration and use the other $1,903 to cover the cost of your travel to….HAWAII!

On October 5th, I’ll be speaking at the The Hawaii Social Media Summit at the Ala Moana Hotel in Waikiki, Honolulu, Oahu. It’s the excuse you’ve been looking for to tell your boss you absolutely need to visit Hawaii AND the math above will help you justify the expense!

As for the conference, in addition to my presentation on Online Reputation Management, the event will cover:

• How to effectively integrate social media to help grow your business
• Best practices for gaining exposure, website traffic, and visibility with Social Media Marketing
• How to take your current or existing social media strategy to the next level
• Best tools and strategies from national and local industry experts
• How to use social media to build a company’s brand that customers and clients will recognize
• Results from social media campaigns that you’ll be happy about
• Incorporating video into marketing and grabbing customers’ attention before they have a chance to leave
• …and MORE!

All for just $97! Let me put that into perspective for you. The last time I hosted a one-day workshop in Hawaii, the rate was more than $2,000!

Whether you’re already in the Aloha State, or just fancy a Fall break, I hope to see you there!

Register here!

PS. It goes without saying that if you need expert advice on planning your trip to Hawaii, I recommend Go Visit Hawaii!

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Social Media Monitoring Foundation: 6 Vital Pillars

Over at TopRank Online Marketing Blog, Lee Odden was kind enough to invite me to write a guest post on a topic near-and-dear to my heart: social media monitoring.

How could I refuse!

With everyone (and their mother) jumping into social media monitoring, I thought it would be best to help you get the most out of your efforts by implementing a solid foundation. I provide six critical steps, starting with:

1. Understand Your Goals

Just because you can monitor everything that’s being said about your brand online, doesn’t mean you should just jump in, without setting clear goals. That’s the monitoring equivalent of hanging out at an open bar–you’ll quickly get dizzy and will end up with a major headache!

Take the time now, to write down what your goals are for your social media monitoring campaign. Are you trying to better understand how Twitter users talk about your products? Are looking to measure the success of your new viral marketing campaign? Or, perhaps you suspect a rogue employee is sharing too many company secrets.

We talk a lot about “monitoring” social media, but you also need to “measure” the information you collect. You can’t do that without first defining your goals!

Want to read the other five steps? Head over and read ”Six Critical Steps to Take Before Starting Your Social Media Monitoring Initiative“

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The Trifecta: Making Email, Facebook and Twitter Work Together

You may think that email, Twitter and Facebook are all slight variations on the same tune, but the ExactTarget Research Series, Subscribers, Fans and Followers has shown that each venue has its own X-Factor which makes it special. The trick, which is summarized in their newly published final report, is figuring out how to make them all work as a team.

The study begins by breaking down the numbers and there was a surprise here. 93% of online consumers say they receive at least one permission-based email a day. These are the subscribers. 38% said they are a Facebook fan of at least one brand. These are the fans. The surprise is in the followers, those U.S. online consumers who say they follow at least one brand on Twitter. That number is 5%. That’s it.

I probably spend more time on Twitter than the average person, so my idea of the usage is likely skewed by that, but I would have guessed the number at 10-15%. The upside is that of that 5%, 37% said that following a brand it made it more likely that they would purchase something from them. 27% of subscribers agreed as did 17% of the Facebook fans.

I’m not great with math, but I’m pretty sure that means that a larger number of people are getting emails and are getting influenced by them as compared to Facebook and Twitter. But all three venues have their success rate, which is why it’s so important to make them work together.

Many of the people surveyed said they were confused by where to look for information because the branding across the venues wasn’t consistent. For example, if I want a company’s monthly coupon offer, will I get it if I sign up for the email, or only if I become a fan on Facebook? Consumers didn’t like being told they had to subscribe to any one particular method in order to receive information.

Ideally, you want consumers to follow all three channels. To do this, you must cross-promote one channel with another. Announce Facebook winners in the email newsletter, Tweet about content that’s exclusive to Facebook, create a special email newsletter for Twitter followers. All of that takes time and that’s money – two items most businesses don’t have in abundance. That means you have to pick your battles. Try mixing and matching and monitor the results. If a campaign isn’t getting results, try something else. Social media is so new, there isn’t a proven pattern for success.

There are a few tips you should keep in mind and these come right from the consumers you’re trying to reach.

• Make it worth their time.
• Show gratitude for their business.
• Deliver quality products.
• Honor their individual preferences.
• Provide excellent customer service.
• Be honest.

I’ll bet you already knew those things, but are those points coming across in your email, Twitter and Facebook campaigns? That’s what is important.

You’ll find a lot more detail in the ExactTarget Subscribers, Fans and Followers report. If you haven’t downloaded this six part series, do it. It’s free and there’s a wealth of information in each report. As a bonus, the reports are light on text and big on graphics, perfect for those of you who want to be informed but don’t have the time to plow through a twenty page report.

Finally, let me leave you with this thought. If your audience is on the go, they may prefer Twitter over email so that’s where you should be concentrating your efforts. More of a social audience? Hook them in with fun games and community events on Facebook. The point is, the only statistics that really matter, are yours after you run a social media marketing campaign.

Do you have any ideas for making you email, Twitter and Facebook accounts work together?  We’d like to hear about it.

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