R.I.P MyBlogLog – Yahoo Announces Shutdown of Service

After many rumors over the past twelve months, Yahoo has officially announced the shutdown of MyBlogLog in an email to users:

Dear MyBlogLog Customer,

You have been identified as a customer of Yahoo! MyBlogLog. We will officially discontinue Yahoo! MyBlogLog effective May 24, 2011. Your agreement with Yahoo!, to the extent that it applies to the Yahoo! MyBlogLog, will terminate on May 24, 2011.

After May 24, 2011 your credit card will no longer be charged for premium services on MyBlogLog. We will refund you the unused portion of your subscription, if any. The refund will appear as a credit via the billing method we have on file for you. To make sure that your billing information is correct and up to date, visit https://billing.yahoo.com.

Questions?
If you have questions about these changes, please visit the Yahoo! MyBlogLog help pages.

We thank you for being a customer on Yahoo! MyBlogLog.

Sincerely,

The Yahoo! My BlogLog Team

As I’ve said before, never has a great service gone so rapidly downhill after being acquired.

R.I.P MyBlogLog

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Finding The Right Social Media Strategist

Many large companies have extended teams managing their social media strategy and community managers who interact with customers, but there are still many organizations, especially non-profits and small businesses that are just getting started. One question asked during my San Francisco Social Media Week panel presentation really stuck with me, “If I’m looking to hire someone to do social media on their own, what can I expect from that one person?” It seems like a straightforward question, but the answer really lays in the foundational building blocks of the organization. This brings me to the organizational challenges that all social media managers face:

1. Who is your executive champion? Do you have the right senior leader who will help cut through the organizational challenges and pave a path to success?

It will be challenging to gain traction for a social media program without an executive champion who is willing to prioritize social media appropriately against other marketing and communications initiatives. A champion can help ensure the social experience is integrated into all the other parts of the organization – customer care, marketing, product development – and that social has a place at the table. You’re not looking for an executive to create the strategy or execute the programs, but you are looking for a champion who is willing to be educated on how social media can augment other functional areas of the company.

2. Do you have the right “silo buster” as your social media lead?

Virginia Miracle has some great tips on Social Silo-Busting. I have found that the greatest predictor of success is looking for someone who has an entrepreneurial past and is not afraid of boundaries. It is crucial to find the right internal employee who can pivot into a new role as social media lead (maybe this person has a track record of gaining consensus on challenging problems) or to hire the right external person who can pull the right levers in your organization and bust silos. The social media lead should be prepared to give non-threatening advice to an executive who is much more senior but also, work closely with communications managers to execute on the strategic plan.

3. Once your social media organization is on track, how do you evolve beyond the Social Media Help Desk that Jeremiah Owyang discusses in his recent report (which Ogilvy 360DI participated in) and achieve Escape Velocity?

Social media organizations get more budget and credibility as they demonstrate results, but there is always that inflection point when you need to evolve from Social Media Help Desk and create an organizational structure that supports social media in a scalable and strategic way. Your social media leader’s entrepreneurial drive to make change happen and proactively adapt the organization will be the deciding factor in how your social media program evolves. This underlines the importance of finding the right leader who can build a social media organization through collaboration not coercion.

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And MySpace Came a Tumbling Down

I feel bad for MySpace. They came to us with a plan to socialize the internet. It was an easy way for everyone, from the student to the CEO to get together and share their interests, their thoughts and the ups and downs of their day. With a single click, strangers from across the world could become friends. It’s like that old Coca-Cola commercial where people of every race, creed and color stand hand-in-hand while they learn to sing in perfect harmony.

So what happened? How did MySpace go from harmony to off-key? Is it simply a case of not being the popular kid on the block anymore? Even after the recent upgrades, are they still that far off the mark?

Check out this Chart-of-the-Day from Silicon Alley Insider. It’s a cold, hard look at the end of an era.

I hear that MySpace started out as an online data storage site, thus the name. Perhaps this is a business model they should reconsider.

What do you think? Is this scenario unique to MySpace or will all social networking sites end up biting the bullet just as badly one day?

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Most People Leave Twitter Because it’s Pointless

52% of people who stopped using Twitter said they did it because they realized Twitter was pointless. Imagine that. The stat comes from the latest installment of ExactTarget’s Subscribers, Fans and Followers report. This one is called “The Social Breakup” and it’s all about why people stop following a brand on social media.

Yesterday, we talked about Facebook. Today, it’s all about Twitter.

On the upside, people said they liked Twitter because the messages were short, it provided unprecedented accessibility and even more than email or Facebook, Twitter was seen as a two-way street. Though more than half the people who started a Twitter account have stopped using it, the ones that stay are very active and they’re ready to engage in conversation.

For the marketer, that means that monitoring your Twitter accounts and Twitter in general is crucial. Checking in once a day isn’t going to cut it. Twitter moves faster than any other social media network so a response that takes 24 hours is really more like a week in social media years.

Being responsive, doesn’t mean firing off marketing Tweets every hour. Too many repetitive or boring posts was the number one reason people stopped following a brand on Twitter. As with Facebook, too much general clutter was a close second and 27% said they only followed the brand for a one-time deal.

Very few people, only 12% said they left a brand because their own circumstances and needs had changed. That means that the overwhelming majority of the responsibility lies with you, the marketer. People will stay connected as long as you hit that magic number of informational versus entertaining Tweets. What that number is, however, is anybody’s guess.

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Google Collects Part of Kids’ Social Security Numbers for Contest

Google can’t seem to get out of its own way sometimes. Of course, it is a big company that may have certain parts doing one thing while another part does another without real knowledge of each other’s plans. That happens in big business. Of course, you would suspect that there is some kind of algorithm keeping everyone in order, right? If it is, it certainly doesn’t have a “WTF?” filter on it.

Apparently there needs to be some good old fashioned human supervision based on some of the decisions coming out of the Googleplex these days. The latest is the fact that Google collected the final four digits of the entrants of an art contest whose entrants were kids. Google claims a ‘no harm, no foul’ on this one but just the idea of it happening is enough for a raised eyebrow or two.

As Silicon Alley Insider reports

Google asked parents to enter the last four digits of their children’s Social Security Numbers, as well as their city of birth and age, as a condition to enter a Google-sponsored art contest.

While it is uncertain of any of the parents thought this request was out of hand (although one wonders if a parent should willingly give up this data for the sake of Junior’s art sensibilities in the first place) it came to the attention of someone who decided that more questions should be asked and he asked them on the Huffington Post which is the online equivalent of a year round celebration of the Festivus Airing of Grievances. This time it was done by a documentary film director, Bob Bowdon. He postulated

You see what Google knows and many parents don’t know is that a person’s city of birth and year of birth can be used to make a statistical guess about the first five digits of his/her social security number. Then, if you can somehow obtain those last four SSN digits explicitly — voila, you’ve unlocked countless troves of personal information from someone who didn’t even understand that such a disclosure was happening.

A stretch for sure and even he admits that he has no evidence of this being Google’s intent (or there being any intent other than to separate entries and prevent duplicates). Of course, it is fun to throw out there though and it does get links and page views so nice work, Bob (cut to HuffPo management smiling and giving polite golf applause).

But back to this ‘story’. Google was shown the error of its ways. Back to SAI.

Some of the people who tipped Bowdon off about the story sent an email to the FTC on February 17 wondering if it was even legal to solicit kids’ Social Security Numbers.

As one of my kids would say “Uh oh, potatoes!” Google quickly responded by changing the form and releasing the following explanation of why this even happened in the first place.

This year we started accepting doodles from kids even if their school hadn’t registered for the contest. To help us keep entries distinct and remove duplicate entries from any particular student, we asked parents for limited information, including the last 4 digits of a student’s social security number. We later updated our forms when we recognized that we could sufficiently separate legitimate contest entries while requesting less information. To be clear, these last 4 digits were not entered into our records and will be safely discarded.

The city of birth helps us identify whether contestants are eligible for the contest, as winners must be either U.S. citizens or permanent legal residents of the U.S. The information isn’t used for any other purpose.

OK, so here is my question. Well, maybe a few questions. That information had to be entered into some system or record to make the determination of what Google was trying to figure out, right? We all know how those pesky ‘non-entered’ pieces of data can leave a trail. In other words, that statement is a bit ridiculous for us to swallow even though it is likely that the intent of the statement is genuine. If collecting this data even seemed a little odd wasn’t there another way? Couldn’t there have been a PIN created rather than asking for that kind of information?

As you know, I really like Google, for the most part. I think that in an overall sense what they do is incredibly beneficial to society for all kinds of reasons. It’s moves like this, however, that make one wonder. This was something that was given wider attention and Google quickly pulled its hand back from the data cookie jar. In fact, Google called the whole timing of the FTC letter and their removal of the information from the form as a coincidence. Ok, Goog, we trust you!

By the way, wasn’t there also the ‘accidental’ collection of data from their Street View drones roaming the countryside as well? Hmmmmm. Whoops! Our bad!

With stuff like this happening, you start to wonder if Google is being consulted regarding privacy issues by Mark Zuckerberg.

Anyway, this may be all a big dust up over nothing but it does show that data collection is the name of the game and the big players are not afraid to push any envelopes at all since big data = big money.

How do you feel about this one? Is it the honest mistake that Google portrays it as or is it a warning to the rest of us? As the personal data jackpot gets bigger and the stakes get higher is that the old sales phrase “better to ask for forgiveness than for permission” mantra is alive and well in Mountain View? Should we all be concerned?

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On Facebook Breaking Up is Not So Hard to Do

Getting customers to follow you on Facebook is hard enough, but once you have them, it’s just as much of a chore to keep them. According to the latest Subscribers, Fans and Followers report from ExactTarget, social media followers are like Goldilocks. Too big, too small, too hard, too soft — finding a happy medium that suits the majority of your visitors is nearly impossible according to their stats.

“After liking a company, 51% of consumers say they expect the company to send them marketing messages, while 40% say they don’t expect to receive marketing messages from the company.”

Forget Goldilocks, that’s more like Alice in Wonderland. If you don’t get the mix of entertainment vs value correct, only 57% of the unhappy followers will click the “Unlike” button but don’t rejoice yet. The rest of the unmerry band will simply ignore you or chose to stop showing your posts in their feed. Either way, it means you’re broadcasting to less people than you think you are. That’s why page activity is, in many ways, a better indicator because it’s proof that people are actually reading your message.

Why do people jump ship? Mostly because there were too many posts coming through either individually (63%) or because the have too many marketing messages in their newsfeed as a whole (43%).

38% said they unliked a brand because it was boring and 26% said they only signed up to get a one time offer and unliked soon after. I’m surprised that number is so low. With so many companies offering deals and giveaways on Facebook, I would expect that “one-time” number to be much larger.

The good news is that “unlike” doesn’t mean you’re un-loved. 63% of people surveyed said that their decision to disconnect from a brand on Facebook didn’t effect their opinion of the brand overall. I love Hershey’s chocolate but I don’t follow them on Facebook. Maybe I should.

Unfortunately, the point of all of this is that there’s no formula for success on Facebook. Random posts may work for Skittles but not so much for Bank of America. TV fans may tolerate multiple posts a day from their favorite show but as much as I love Del Taco, I’m signing off if they hit me up more than once a day.

The best thing about Facebook is that it’s easy to change the plan. Play around with content and frequency until you find the right mix that works for both you and your followers. It could take a while to get there, but if you hit the mark, it’s worth the effort.

You can download the full Subscribers, Fans and Followers: The Social Breakup report for free at ExactTarget.

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Looking to Get Out of Jury Duty? Be a Social Media Dimwit

As is the case in many things in life, just because a lot of people have something it doesn’t mean they know how to use it. Back in the Stone Age of video everyone had a VCR but no one could program the darn thing.

We are now seeing the same happen with social media. There are a lot of people with accounts or profiles or whatever in the social media space but that doesn’t mean they can harness the power of the medium or even understand much beyond updating a status.

One area that is getting more aggressive in its use of social media channels is the law. It is already fairly well known that divorce lawyers are using social media outlets to catch opposing spouses in compromising social media positions. Now lawyers are turning to social media to help clean up the jury pool before they go to trial.

The Wall Street Journal reports

Facebook is increasingly being used in courts to decide who is—and who isn’t—suitable to serve on a jury, the latest way in which the social-networking site is altering the U.S. court system.

Prosecution and defense lawyers are scouring the site for personal details about members of the jury pool that could signal which side they might sympathize with during a trial. They consider what potential jurors watch on television, their interests and hobbies, and how religious they are.

This is one of those developments that is generating significant talk from both sides of the argument. Lawyers love being able to turn over a rock on a perspective juror that reveals a potential bias that could hurt their client’s chances of victory. Not everyone connected to the law is happy about this development though.

Some legal experts oppose this growing practice of scouring social-media sites, arguing that the traditional jury-selection process, which involves lawyers questioning prospective jurors, provides more valuable information than out-of-context online comments.

“I don’t think we should abandon that system in favor of Internet snooping,” said Jason Schultz, co-director of the Samuelson Law, Technology & Public Policy Clinic at the University of California, Berkeley, law school. “There are a number people who post who they want to be, as opposed to who they are.”

No kidding? Really? People acting all unlike their real selves online? Well, looks like it’s time to pack up the plantation and move on because I though everyone was always honest online.

It’s getting pretty high tech in the world of law these days for sure. Here is one instance where this idea was applied

Armando Villalobos, the district attorney of Cameron County, Brownsville, Texas, last year equipped his prosecutors with iPads to scan the Web during jury selection.

He acknowledged that they sometimes dug up only the unprotected tidbits that Facebook users share with everyone, such as their alma mater or favorite band.

Many people, he said, limit access to more telling details to those they have “friended.” (It’s unclear, for example, what his prosecutors would glean from Mr. Villalobos’s own Facebook page, without friending him: It shows he is married and a fan of the TV show “Spartacus.”)

Now is where it gets pretty silly because we know that lawyers like to find ways around things. In order to help with getting more information on a jury pool the lawyer mentioned above, Mr. Villalobos, has come up with this possible scheme to help folks in a jury pool pass the time.

Mr. Villalobos is considering a method to get behind the site’s private wall to learn more. One option: granting members of the jury pool free access to the court’s wi-fi network in exchange for temporarily “friending” his office.

Would anybody really fall for that line? Whether they do or not, it looks like the legal field is certainly still willing to stretch the boundaries of anything as indicated by this quote from another lawyer.

Mr. Josh Marquis, district attorney of Clatsop County in Oregon, said that even small details, like a person’s favorite show, could say something about them. A predilection for crime shows, such as “CSI: Crime Scene Investigation,” tells Mr. Marquis that the prospective juror might have unrealistic expectations that DNA evidence could be obtained from every crime scene.

I wonder if my choice of Seinfeld as a favorite TV show makes me an unfeeling, self-centered, narcissistic person (or does that make me a Twitter guru?)?

Are there limits, in your opinion, as to how far this open information world we live in should go to? Are people really aware of what they are doing to themselves with their online behavior? I sincerely doubt it considering some of the things I have seen people do (and, admittedly some of the incredibly stupid moves I have made which has caused me to know just how my foot tastes).

But hey, if you can get out jury duty by just being yourself maybe there is an upside? What are your thoughts?

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Are You Too Busy to Write? Seven Ways to Blog More Productively

Is finding time to blog something you struggle with? A number of people have asked me how they can find time to blog on top of everything else that I have going on.

Writing content is vitally important for your blog. It is your source of direct visitors, plus the meat of what you share in social media, the combination of which is essentially all the marketing many of us do. Your content attracts and maintains a relationship with your subscribers, and it is also what prompts readers to take action, even if that action is simply a blog comment.

Without regularly added, fresh, original, useful content … well, your blog becomes the web equivalent of the Pacific Junk Patch.

One thing you might have noticed though is that I don’t stick to a rigid writing schedule. This helps me find time to work on my blog around other commitments, but is only possible for me because of a few factors:

1. I already have a reasonably sized, engaged audience. You might say I have some “credit in the bank”.
2. “Traffic” is not something I rely on for my income. Providing I help enough people work towards their own goals then I will attract “few but enough” customers to pay my bills.
3. My philosophy is that you are only as good as your last post. Given the choice between “phoning it in” to keep up an arbitrary schedule and waiting to post something I am happy with … well, you guessed right, I wait.

You might not have these luxuries so need to balance your schedule a little more in favour of keeping in touch with subscribers more often but without making it too taxing a job for you.

My approach is to offer my loyal audience content you will want to bookmark, give you actionable tips via the benefit of my experience. If I succeed then I get more subscribers and clients, and really, unlike many bloggers my subscribers and customers are the only people I need to worry about where my blog is concerned.

I have no advertisers to keep sweet, and I don’t intend ever selling my blog, so I have no need to inflate my page views. Providing I do well with keeping my readers happy then my peer group and potential partners will also be happy.

If however you make money from impressions or ad clicks then you will need to get your traffic up and maintain that high level. That makes having a more rigorous publishing schedule a priority.

At the same time you can’t let your quality suffer because you are pushing quantity, making your productivity even more important.

Most of my readers are individuals, professionals or small businesses, so it might be well within your reach to shift your online business model to be more about authority than page views and clicks. If that is the case for you then focus on one solid article a week rather that try to achieve an unrealistic schedule – that might be all the solution you need. If you do want to eek out a few more hours in your week though, read on for some more tips!

How can you find time to not just write but create great content?

1. Set time aside – preferably quiet, focused time with zero distractions. I recommend actually putting this time in your diary and sticking to it. If you try to “catch 10 minutes” then you are going to either keep pushing the task back or you are going to find that time just vanishes altogether. Also setting a specific time allows your subconscious to prepare.
2. Write in Batches, and if possible schedule your posts in advance – Most blogging software such as WordPress allows you to write articles in advance and set the date and time when they should go “live”, visible on your blog. Publishing in advance allows you to write in quieter times and have the articles visible at busy times. While I no longer do this on chrisg.com I have always done this when writing for clients (when you have a contract for a certain number of posts per month it is not a good idea to write them just before they are meant to be sent out to subscribers!). Writing in batches allows you to get into a flow and you will find the writing process far more fluid than trying to task switch between your main job and being a writer. Darren often has cafe days where he will sit and batch write a whole raft of posts, and he ran away to a hotel to complete his work on the Problogger book!
3. Jot down ideas as they come to you – When you relax your brain or think about something else is when some of your best ideas will come to you, so make sure you store those ideas on a notepad, in your phone, or on some scrap of paper! A really cool aspect of the WordPress is you can use multiple tools, even email, to send a draft of a post to your blog for later use. I have a whole bunch of draft posts that are just headlines and some bullets waiting for me to complete them.
4. Repurpose content – “Repurposing” is taking your content and using it in a different location, in a different way, or re-packaging it. So I might take a series of posts and create an ebook, or I might expand an article into a presentation. Someone might request they republish my article in their newsletter. It can work the other way though, and it can be a great way to fill your blog. Take points from your presentations and write them up as blog posts. Maybe you have a transcript that you can copy and paste as a starting point? Have you got a section of a report or ebook tat you can use? Emails to customers? Existing content is an asset to be reused if you are creative!
5. Answer questions – Taking the last point further, my customer, coaching client and audience questions are my best source of content. This post came from a question I get asked a lot and was asked in interviews twice last week. When you answer a question in email, on a forum, in a chat, blog comment, or in an interview with a transcript, then you can copy, paste and edit to create a post. The best part? You KNOW it is on-topic and relevant.
6. Have a system – My coaching clients know that I have a writing system that allowed me to write for at one point twelve different blogs at once. This has meant I have written thousands of articles, and to be honest was probably too many because people were telling me I was getting over exposed! In brief, use headline formulas, write an outline, create without stopping, turn off the internal editor until you have a first draft. People try to write the whole thing at once and get stuck switching from creating to editing and back again. Don’t do that – split the creative part from the editing part and you will work with your brain rather than against it!
7. Failing all that – outsource! If you still struggle then get guest writers, pay writers, or what I think is a really smart move, get an editor to take your thoughts and ideas and polish them into finished articles.

These might not be silver bullets but they do work. While my family is watching TV I can sit with them with my laptop tapping out outlines, drafts, or editing. Some times it will take three or even four days for a post to get to the point where I am happy to hit publish but I have also had articles written in under half an hour that have been big hits in social media and in terms of traffic.

The big difference though is when you make time.

How do you find time to blog? Do any of my tips work (or not) for you? Please share your thoughts, experiences and tips in the comments …

Talking of being more productive … I want to tell you about my latest course …

Make More Progress: Quickly implement effective tactics to get more done and achieve more in your business.

Increase your productivity without any rigid organisation systems that cause even more work, rapidly create and launch information products in record time, and get more done with less effort.

Go ahead and click here right now to find out more!

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Make Your Facebook Fan Page a Party

This guest post is by Caz Makepeace of y Travel Blog.

Facebook Fan pages are swiftly becoming a standard extension to blogs’ brands and messages. This is a highly effective form of engaging with your target market and building a community around your brand.

If you focus on making your Fan page your homepage for the social web, you can create a page that serves as your mini-hub. Then use it as your platform to connect on a deeper level.

Today’s currency is engagement

People like to socialize with, and ultimately do business with, people they like and trust. So it’s very important that you’re actively engaging with your followers and they are engaging with you—hence the word “social”. That’s how you build strong and rewarding relationships.

From personal experience, by building an engaged and interactive community through our own travel blog’s fan page, our community member numbers grow every day. And although ours may not have as many fans as some other Fan pages, it does have a great deal more engagement, which is not only important to us, but important to Facebook.

Facebook rewards you for building relationships. The degree to which you engage with your fans, and how much they interact with you, determines whether your status updates show in your fans’ news feeds.

Strive for social success first, not marketing success

There are five critical errors most people make when they start using social media for business.

The secret to our success has been very simple. We made the intention for our Fan page to build an engaged community and start conversations. We wanted to create a place where those within our travel community can meet for some socializing and fun, not just get travel tips and information. Our intention is not to use our Fan page purely as a marketing tool.

Although we know it’s a highly effective tool, we do not build our fan page community based on this. If your intention is just to use your page as a tool to promote your products, that will clearly come through, and your success with Facebook will be limited.

Think of those who are most successful in your niche. I bet most of them began blogging by building their brand and a community first, and any monetization came later. First, build a passionate community based around social interaction and sharing. Any monetary rewards will come naturally later on.

Make your Fan page a party

We approach our Fan page strategy as if we were hosting guests at a party. For us to remove all thoughts of the page being a marketing tool, we had to think of it as the type of place we’d like to hang out. So our intention was to make our fan page more like a party. We love to socialize, and have never been shy in hosting parties in real life in any of the countries we’ve lived in. After all, isn’t that what the “social” part of social media is all about?

We invite and welcome

First of all, we invite and we welcome visitors. No one will come to your party if you don’t first invite them. We have clear invitations set up on our blog and all our other online platforms. And when our new guests arrive, we warmly welcome them in. We tag and give a shout out by video to every 100th guest. And we also have a “Fan of the Month,” which is the person who has contributed the most to the community in that time.

We interact and respond

This is our biggest recommendation for keeping social media “social.” How long would your party last if you didn’t talk to your guests? Or worse still, if they spoke to you and you ignored them? We do not ignore our guests. We respond to every comment left on our Fan page. Yes, it takes work, but we value our community members and suggest you value yours. Fostering a community involves a strong leader who supports, encourages, recognizes, and inspires.

Managing fan comments has become much easier since we started using a great free app called Hyper Alerts.

We ask questions and share

To be interesting, you must be interested. The best way to get to know new people is to ask questions. Remember, people like to talk about themselves, so let them. Don’t make the conversation all about you, what you’re doing, and your opinion.

Ask questions as a way to get your fans to share, to stimulate conversation, and to give advice. A lot of people won’t open up initially if they don’t feel like someone wants to listen or will respond. Be the listener and when your guests do answer the question and share, be the responder. Continue to ask questions throughout the conversation to encourage a more in-depth discussion.

At least once a month, we have a status update that runs something like this:

“Go ahead and introduce yourself:

1. Where are you from?
2. Where are you currently?
3. What is your favorite travel destination?
4. Can we help you with anything?”

This gets people to open up and feel welcomed. Sharing helps others to make new connections and form bonds. Simply through this particular update, community members become aware of others’ geographical locations and special interests, and can connect more directly. Sharing also shows that you are interested in and care about your fans. We also make an effort to share other people’s articles, videos, and blog sites through our Fan page.

Every Friday we have “Post Your URL Day,” when we encourage other travel bloggers to post their URLs and a three-line description under their status updates. From the URLs posted, we randomly choose a winner to do a featured interview on.

We say it with photos

Pictures really do tell a thousand words. Being in the travel industry, we find there’s no better way to inspire others and stir emotion than through travel photos. So we post a daily travel photo of a destination we have personally visited.

We also post random photos from our day-to-day lives. That way, our community members get a behind-the-scenes look into our life that creates a deeper connection.

People love to look at others’ personal photos, and Facebook is great for that. And did you know that using photos to stand out in the Facebook news feed carries more weight than text updates when it comes to your Facebook EdgeRank Score?

We play games

Everybody loves a good game—especially if they’re at a party and there are a few beers involved! There won’t be beers at your Fan page party, but you can still have a good time. We run a “Where in the World” game, where we upload a travel photo from somewhere in the world, and our fans have to guess the location. This stirs interaction and creates a fun vibe.

We also have “Happy Hour” once a week, where we encourage our fans to post a link to their favorite blog, website, or resource on the Web. Take some time to think of games you can play on your Fan page that relate to your niche and encourage participation.

We run competitions

Once you have enough fans engaged and interacting at your party, consider introducing competitions with prizes to let them know you appreciate them. We run photo contests every second month with a different photo theme which relates in some way to our prize. Last month’s prize was a backpack sponsored by Kelty, and the photo theme was National Parks. Fans get to vote on the best photo, and the top five are then sent to the sponsoring company, which selects the ultimate winner. Competitions like this are a win-win for you and your sponsor, who gets exposure to a new audience.

New ideas for a fantastic fan page party

Keep thinking of new ways to make your Fan page—and party—better. Don’t initially approach Facebook asking, “How am I going to use this as a monetization tool?” Instead, ask “How am I going to make this the fun place to hang out?” That’s the way to create an engaged community.

Don’t just create a Fan page, create an experience. Get this right, and the rest will naturally follow.

How much of a community are you building around your brand on Facebook?

Caz Makepeace has been travelling and living around the world since 1997. Along with her husband Craig they are the founders of y Travel Blog. You can visit her Facebook Fan Page or sign up for her

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Deals, Discounts and Coupons: The Thrill is Gone

It’s President’s Day and you know what that means! Low low prices on mattresses, bedding, jewelry and cars, cars, cars. If George Washington were alive today, he’d be lining up to get a great price on a new Toyota! Honest, says Abe!

Do you remember the days when Washington and Lincoln were respected men of history and not hyperactive, humorous pitch men? Me neither.

But there was a time when people planned for holiday sales because it was the only time of the year you’d get such a great deal. Magazines would publish articles about the best time to buy new sheets or barbeque grills because most of the deep discounts were calendar-based. How does that work now that we get bombarded with great deals every day? From Amazon’s Daily Deals to Groupon’s half price offers, to downloadable and printable coupons for hundreds of products and restaurants, the average person could go broke saving money.

On a daily basis, I get a dozen discount offers in my email box and a few more via Twitter. Even Best Buy now reminds me that I can save if I buy completely unrelated products through the Best Buy rewards program. I love a good deal and I’m known for never paying full price but even I’ve grown weary of the constant stream of deals, discounts and coupons.

The very word “deal,” used to imply that you were getting something special. A reward for shopping at a certain time or for being a loyal customer. Now, when ten mommy bloggers note it on their blog and three people send it to me via Facebook, I don’t feel so special anymore. And can it really be called a discount when the item never actually sells for the full price as is the case with Amazon?

Studies have shown us that people follow brands on Facebook and Twitter in hopes of getting a coupon. Studies also show a huge rise in the number of people using deal sites like Groupon on a regular basis. But at what point will we all begin turning a blind eye on the great deal? How soon before 50% is looked at as hardly worth the effort? It’s 90% off or nothing!

If being different is how a company stands out in a crowd, maybe it’s time someone tried reverse psychology. To honor those men who helped shape our country, we give you the President’s Day Full Price Sale. Nothing discounted, because when it comes to quality and standards, you always get what you pay for.

I’ll bet there are a couple of marketing geniuses out there who could totally make that idea work.

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Introducing Marketing Pilgrim Channels: Sponsors Welcome!

We are excited to provide our Marketing Pilgrim readers and sponsors new opportunities.

For our readers we are going to create content channels that make stories about important subject areas easier to find. These channels will include: SEO (search engine optimization), paid search (PPC), social media, Google, Web Site Analytics, Social Media Analytics, Local Internet Marketing (SMB), Mobile and Internet Law. Of course, with a rapidly changing landscape like the Internet marketing world these could just be the start of the channels we start to track.

For our sponsors and advertisers this a great new opportunity to reach our audience of Internet marketing influencers and decision makers.

We are really excited about this new phase in Marketing Pilgrim’s evolution. If you would like to learn more about sponsor opportunities with Marketing Pilgrim Channels contact Frank Reed ( editor AT MarketingPilgrim dot com).

Channels will be coming online in the next few weeks. If you have any suggestions of what you would like to see let us know!

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For Bloggers, Now May Be the Time to Start Tweeting

Tweet

To tweet or not to tweet has been a question bloggers have had to ask themselves pretty much since the dawn of Twitter.

The main question is whether or not the time, effort and energy spent on creating and nurturing a Twitter profile is justified by the benefit one gets out of it. It’s always been a tough question and one where the answer heavily depends on the blogger, their niche and their audience.

Howver, with an update to Google’s “Social Search” feature today, Twitter just received a potential boost in terms of its usefulness. Now Twitter can not only be a way to communicate with your friends, family and readers, but now it might also directly impact your site’s position in Google itself.

Perhaps most interesting of all though is that, at this time, Facebook “likes” are not having the same impact as Twitter, meaning that, for the moment at least, Twitter is the only social network that can directly affect your Google ranking, other than Google’s built-in network.

So, if you haven’t been using Twitter because you didn’t see the point, now there may be one to give you a reason to start.

How it Works

SEO experts have long speculated that tweets affect search engine ranking, something that was confirmed in December of last year, but the impact seemed to be of dubious value, making other factors more vital to focus on.

However, today’s changes to social search have the potential, especially for your followers and their connections, to greatly boost your presence.

The reason is that, for logged in users who have connected their Twitter or other accounts to their Google Account, relevant links that were tweeted by the people they follow will be sprinkled in with the regular results, often bringing sites to the front page that would not have been there otherwise.

This means that, if you blog about microphones and tweet out your links, any follower of yours who searches for information on mics will, very likely, see your page high up in the results with an icon indicating who it is from.

It is also likely, though not confirmed, that these results may also help your Google ranking in broader searches, especially if Google sees that your followers find what they are looking for at your links.

In short, Twitter could become something of a proving ground for new content, letting webmasters show Google that their content is right for the search results and that, in turn, could be a powerful shortcut or boost to Google success.

How to Take Advantage of It

The good news is that, to take advantage of it, you really don’t have to do much of anything. All that you have to do is have a Twitter account, work to grow your presence and tweet out your content.

However, if you want to see results from the people you follow in Google, you have to connect your Google Account to your Twitter account, instructions for which are in the original Google post on the upgrades.

Bear in mind that this is a new Google feature that is being rolled out over time and may not be available until next week, depending on when your account has it activated.

But how big will the impact of this new feature be? That remains to be seen but there are several reasons to be wary abou spending too much time investing in your Twitter presence because of it.

Reasons to be Wary

As great as getting an immediate Google boost for relevant searches sounds, it’s crucial to remember that it only applies for the people who have connected their Twitter (or other relevant account) to their Google account and are following you.

Most likely, even if you have a large number of Twitter followers, that’s going to be a fairly small pool of people. The odds of them searching for content relevant to your links are, in truth, fairly small.

Still, those who do perform such searchers, click your links and find useful may, in turn, give your site a boost across broader Google results. It is unclear if that will happen and the issue of how Google interprets user data into its rankings is hotly contested, but it still seems that getting clicks and lasting visitors from Google is better than being ignored or sending visitors right back to the results page.

In short though, the benefits will likely be limited to a very small subset of your Twitter followers but, it is at least conceivable that it could have an impact across the broader results because of it.

However, it’s still up to individual bloggers to decide if it is worth taking part in, meaning that we are more or less back where we started on the “to tweet or not to tweet” debate.

Bottom Line

Once again, it’s up to bloggers to decide, individually, if it is worthwhile to invest the time and energy in setting up and maintaining a Twitter account. All that has changed is that now there is a new SEO benefit to factor in, even if the announcement back in December probably has a larger in the long run.

What is clear is that the search engines are taking Tweets much more seriously and, if you’re a webmaster interesting in maximizing the SEO potential of their site, then having an active and prominent Twitter account just makes sense.

Still, it is a lot of time and effort and there are many other factors that may be more important. So the decision is up to you, but if you’ve been on the fence about the benefits of tweeting for your site, now may be the best time to start.

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Waiter? There’s a Social Media Spammer in my Google SERPs!

I’ve never been a big fan of adding as many “friends” to my social networks as possible. Why add unwanted noise to my socially-connected world?

Well, I’m now even more glad that I’ve been selective with who I friend and follow because Google just shoved everyone into my search results.

First, social search results will now be mixed throughout your results based on their relevance (in the past they only appeared at the bottom). This means you’ll start seeing more from people like co-workers and friends, with annotations below the results they’ve shared or created. So if you’re thinking about climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro and your colleague Matt has written a blog post about his own experience, then we’ll bump up that post with a note and a picture:

To be fair, Google’s not just forcing these new social results on me–I have to connect my networks with my Google profile–but if you’ve connected your accounts, and not been selective in your friends, you’re about to see a lot more avatars in your SERPs. And Google’s about to get even more aggressive in getting you to connect your social networks:

In addition, if our algorithms find a public account that might be yours (for example, because the usernames are the same), we may invite you to connect your accounts right on the search results page and in your Google Account settings:

Now, here’s where it gets interesting. If we accept that the days of everyone seeing the same ten blue links are over, and, we accept that spammers are still going to want to try and get their craptent in front of you; what do you think is going to happen? My guess? Spammers are going to do their best to weasel their way into your social network so that they can push their content higher up in your search results?

Of course, Google’s not confirming that “shared” content will be given a boost in its search results:

So is Google using social signals to alter the actual results? Yes and no. In some cases they are, in some cases they’re not, Cassidy says. He declined to get into specifics, noting that it was a part of their special sauce. But he did say that there are several things that the algorithm now takes into account from a social perspective on top of all the other more traditional signals.

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Google, Social, and Facebook: One Ring Does Not Rule Them All

When I read Google announcements like this one, An update to Google Social Search, I find myself wondering why Google doesn't just come out and say something like this: "We know social search is important, and we're working on it. However, we don't think the solution lies in working only with Facebook, because, to be honest, we think social media is bigger than one company, one platform, or one "social graph." We've got a bigger vision for what social means in the world, and here it is."

Wouldn't that be great?

Because honestly, I think the company does have a bigger vision, and I think it's rooted in the idea of instrumentation and multiples of signals (as in, scores if not thousands of signals understood to be social in nature). In other words, there is not one "ring to rule them all" - there is no one monoculture of what "social" means. For now, it appears that way. Just like it appears that there's one tablet OS. But the world won't shake out that way - we're far too complicated as humans to relegate our identity to a single platform. It will be distributed, nuanced, federated. And it should be instrumented and controlled by the individual. At least, I sure hope it will be.  

Google might as well declare this up front and call it a strategy. In that context, it might even make sense to do further Facebook integration in the near term, as one of many signals, of course. Google already uses some limited Facebook data (scroll down), but clearly has decided to not lean in here (or can't come to terms with Facebook around usage policies). Clearly the two companies are wary of working together. But it's my hope that over time, whether or not they do should be a moot issue.

Why? Because I view my Facebook data as, well, mine. Now, that may not really be the case, but if it's mine, I should be able to tell Google to use it in search, or not. That's an instrumentation signal I should be able to choose. Just like I can chose to use my Facebook identity to log into this blog, or any number of other sites and services. It should be my choice, not Facebook's, and not Google's either.

Switch the control point to the customer, and this issue sort of goes away. I have a longer post in me about "social clothing" - came up on a phone call with Doc Searls yesterday - and hopefully when I get to that, this might make a bit more sense....

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SMB’s Optimistic But Still Struggle With Economy and Marketing

SMB’s are an interesting group. Many of these people are just regular folks. Most are not true business people in the sense that they went to business school and have applied rigid business principles to their business. Many don’t have marketing teams, on staff PR people or any of the niceties that make talking about Internet marketing and social media marketing much easier if the audience is a Fortune 500 that has employees that aren’t spending their own money on services.

As a result they rely a lot on relationships, street smarts, networking savvy and a sometimes oversized portion of optimism. I say oversized only because they have to keep hoping that things will get better or else they can lose the will and, quite plainly, not have the resources to keep the doors open.

One of the companies that is tied to these folks, MerchantCircle, has produced its fifth Merchant Confidence Index for Q1 2011 and the results paint a picture that is typical SMB: cold harsh reality living right next store to hope and optimism. Here are some of the results from the survey.

How would you rate today’s economy compared to the past twelve months?

About 62% of those surveyed said the economy is the same or weaker today then it has been over the past 12 months. Enter the SMB Optimist’s Club!

How do you expect sales revenue to change over the next 3 months?

57% feel that their sales will improve somewhat or significantly in the coming months. This is where you have to love the SMB because in one breath they say that conditions in the overall economy are not so hot but they feel that it will break in the coming months.

When it comes to marketing it looks like it won’t be the thing that helps that sales increase happen!

75% of the respondents said that their current level of marketing spend will either remain the same or decline. If you work with SMB’s on a regular basis the ‘news’ that their marketing spend will remain the same is not a good thing. SMB’s tend to spend money on marketing when they have it rather than actually having a budget for it. In this economy, many don’t have it so remaining the same in their spend could be a euphemism for “we aren’t spending much this year either”.

The hope for this group comes in the form of social media which is still perceived as a near no cost option for them to get the word out. That perception holds until the realization that the cost of time, people resources and knowledge are indeed ‘expenses’ can be a bit of a buzz kill but it sure beats spending cold hard cash on Yellow Page ads.

What are the ways that these folks are promoting their businesses? The following list is the percentage of SMB’s who said they will be using these particular outlets to promote their business

Facebook – 70.3%
Google – 66.2%
LinkedIn – 58.2%
Google Places – 51.4%
Yahoo – 49.2%
Yahoo Local – 45%
Twitter – 39.8%
Citysearch – 39.7%
Yellowbook – 39.3%
Superpages.com – 33.3%
Bing – 33.2%
Yelp – 32.2%
Facebook Places – 32.2%
YouTube – 26.8%
YP.com – 25.6%
Ask.com – 19.9%
MySpace – 19.2%
Foursquare – 8.7%
Groupon – 6.6%
LivingSocial – 5%
Gowalla – 3.4%
Bizzy – 2.5%

Aside from the largest players it’s pretty interesting to see that the cooler the service is perceived to be by the Silicon Valley technorati the less it is used by the common man. Is there an Internet reality divide developing where the hip and cool come up with toys for the hip and cool while the masses just look for things that might actually work to help them?

So how do you react to these findings? Do you see it differently? Where are we on the mass adoption scale for location-based services and the like? Is that kind of talk just for the VC crowd to get all hyped up about? Are findings like this something to be concerned about regarding a bubble in the Internet space?

Let’s hear your thoughts and opinions. It’s good because it gives us something to do during a slow news day!

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TweetDeck: Now With Longer Tweets

Bigger is always better, right? That’s the idea behind Deck.ly, a new service from TweetDeck that allows you to Tweet as long as you like. In the two weeks since the service has been active, 1.35 million extended Tweets have been posted to the program, like the one below from Tony Robbins.

But isn’t allowing you to tweet over the limit, counter to the whole point of Twitter? I get that sometimes you need a few extra characters, but one of their most popular deck.ly Tweets is like the first chapter from a novel. Can this even be considered a Tweet?

TweetDeck reports that many Twitterattis are up in arms over this development. I’m not really sure why. If you don’t like the service, don’t use it but the naysayers may grow in number as TweetDeck moves forward with its plan:

The other motivation behind Deck.ly was to experiment with generating revenue from various types of TweetDeck-specific ad-targeting on the deck.ly landing pages.

Each deck.ly link takes you off Twitter to a page that looks very much like a single post on a blog. Here, you can see all the comments on the post and it’s actually quite nice if you can get past the ugly color scheme. Currently, the pages have a big, empty sidebar which TweetDeck wants to fill with ads. Go for it. Why not? This is another case of people expecting something for nothing. You get the software for free, so buck up and live with a few ads. Click on them sometimes, do your part to keep the service alive.

So far, TweetDeck is showing some nice numbers:

1,350,000 Deck.ly landing pages
1,200,000 visits
850,000 unique visits
1,500,000 page views
1,340,000 unique page views

Some commenters have said that the influx of clicks stem from the fact that people think the deck.ly links are like any other shortened link, so they’re being tricked into clicking. Not really. It clearly says (cont) before the link, so I think people get it. The only problem it may create is that it takes you to another page which, if you’re reading it with a mobile device, can be annoying.

When I first read that TweetDeck was offering a way to write extended Tweets, I thought it was unnecessary and annoying. But, after following the flow of a couple of these Tweets, I’ve changed my mind. What you have here is no different than the blogger who links to her post on her blog and the fact that you can collect comments in one spot is very nice. I think we need to look at this, not as a way of extending the Twitter experience, but as the next step in homogenizing our social media efforts. And the fact that it opens up a new space for advertising is good news for all of us.

What do you think of TweetDeck’s new extended Tweeting program?

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Free Top Ranking Keywords Report from SEO Link Wheelers

Over the past few months I’ve been getting back into the game I love, and that’s focusing on building web sites and killer content. As much as I love building web sites, it’s never fun to work on the backlinks and social bookmarks it takes to truly get a web site indexed and getting the search engines to love you. With that said, I’ve been looking at a lot of different solutions for link building and bookmarking management.

I remember when I first paid a few hundred dollars for a company to help with building links and getting my site ranked in the search engines. It was complete crap… I rarely ever hear from them and I don’t recall seeing any results. This was around seven years ago, but it’s just a reminder of how horrible the link building industry can be if you don’t know where to go. With so many to choose from, how are you supposed to know where to go? One of the most trusted solutions around is SEO Link Wheelers, and they are actually heavily promoted and used by ShoeMoney as well.

How SEO Link Wheelers does Link Building

There are many different methods for link building, such as article marketing, social bookmarks, backlinks, using anchor text and forum posting. Trading links with other web sites may seem like a good idea, but one way backlinks is where the link juice really flows. Everyone has a different concept on what works best, but SEO Link Wheelers takes a bit of everything and builds actual “link wheels” to increase backlinks to their customers web sites. In addition to backlinks being spread across article directories, blogs, and web 2.0 directories, SEO Link Builders also creates original content and YouTube videos to build quality backlinks.

SEO Link Wheelers gives you a 100% guarantee that any links they build for your web sites will be Dofollow, all content will be relevant, unique, and created 100% by hand. The video below was created by SEO Link Wheelers to give a better understanding on how their service works, and why it’s important to cover all link methods when building the right link wheel for your web site.

What are Your Target Keywords?

Before even jumping into the SEO and backlinking game, you need to take a look at what your web site is ranking for and how you can improve your results. Head over to SEO Link Wheelers and submit your url into the box on their main page. You will quickly see a report with three of your top ranking searching terms. If you want the full list, just click the “Full Report” link and confirm your email, then you will have free access to a report like the one below.

This report is an excellent summary of how your web site is listed and ranking in the search engines. You will see up to 100 keywords and rankings, along with the average CPC, traffic volume and the url of your site that is ranked for that search term. This report is completely free to access. You then have the option to choose a link wheel package to improve your rankings.

Building Your Backlinks and Putting It All Together

Taking everything we’ve covered, SEO Link Wheelers will build a link wheel and campaign just for your web site and the keywords you are looking to rank for. With three different packages available, you can choose from 37 links ($379), 74 links ($479) or 119 links ($664). When you first look at these prices, they may seem high to you, but that is because SEO Link Wheelers is actually building a link wheel with original content just for your web site and backlinks… these aren’t just links thrown around on Twitter, Facebook and dead forums. The value in these links is that they are spread across high content sites with pagerank and original YouTube video is also created. You can see a breakdown of what links are included in each package below.

At the very least, I highly recommend you head over to SEO Link Wheelers and grab your free report on what search terms are sending you traffic. If you decide to signup for a backlinks package, be sure to use coupon code “ZACJOHNSON” for 12% off your first order with SEO Link Wheelers.

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NBA Social Media All-Stars

Professional sports has been one of the industries that has best embraced and utilized social media. Fans now have unparalleled access to their favorite quarterbacks, 1^st basemen and point guards, and in turn, athletes get direct access to their fans without having to participate in a staged event. So in honor of the upcoming NBA All-Star weekend (my favorite All-Star event of all professional sports), I chose my NBA social media All-Stars - one from the West and one from the East.

Representing the Western Conference, from the University of Texas and featuring quick Twitter hands, Kevin Durant!

By taking one look at Durant’s website, you’ll instantly realize that he not only has a great all-around game on the court but also in interacting with his fans through his various social media platforms. His website features prominent links to his YouTube page, Facebook fan page, Twitter handle and a link to vote him into the All-Star game.

On his Facebook page, which has over 800,000 “likes,” he provides his fans with a behind-the-scenes preview of his new sneakers, posts links to his interviews and encourages his fans to upload pictures of them in his jersey or with his signature sneakers.

Meanwhile, on Twitter, Durant not only regularly replies to his nearly 500,000 followers but he gives his fans a glimpse into what his thoughts are after a tough loss and what he does with his free time, which, not surprisingly, often consists of watching basketball, joking with friends and listening to Jay-Z.

Lastly, Durant takes social media full circle by promoting and inviting fans to in-person events. Durant is hosting a Nike event in Santa Monica on Feb. 17 and fans can RSVP for the event via his Facebook page, and he is even providing a livestream for fans who can’t attend. In addition to all of this, Durant has his own URL shortener, tag cloud and a “partners” Twitter stream that features tweets from his corporate partners.. I would argue that no NBA All-Star has a better presence on social media than this rising superstar.

Representing the Eastern Conference, standing at 6′8″ and better known as King James, LeBron James!

Although LeBron is still being criticized for his “Decision” fiasco last summer, he has been trying to make up for his misstep by providing his fans with a wide variety of ways to interact with him. LeBron does a lot of the things that Durant does on Twitter and Facebook but he steps his game up when it comes to providing his fans with inside access to his life beyond basketball. On LeBron’s website, he has a “gift guide” of his favorite things interviews with people in the fashion and music industries, and insight into what he eats and how he stays in basketball shape.

His Facebook page, which has over 5 million “likes,” asks his fans engaging questions to encourage discussion such as “What’s the better Super Bowl snack?” and “What is your favorite Jordan moment?”

Additionally, although his website is graphic heavy, his team made sure that it was accessible via mobile phones, in particular iPhones, which a number of websites from his fellow All-Stars did not take into consideration. LeBron may have some detractors but his social media presence will win over a lot of fans.

Bonus All-Star Honor

Hoopism - Because the NBA has allowed fans to post and edit their own video clips of games and highlights (unlike some other leagues), it has allowed for the emergence of a video visualization of every NBA Slam Dunk Contest video by year and a collection of the NBA’s Greatest Shots, which is organized by where it was taken on the basketball court. If you have the chance, take a look and play around with both gifts from hoopism.com.

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