17 Reasons Why You Need to Grab Your Space on Twitter

November 26, 2008 by Patricia Skinner · Comments
Filed under: social networking 

Blogging is a new industry, and while it is already huge, it seems the surface hasn’t really been scratched yet. Learning how to use blogging to enhance business might be something you’ll want to do in order to establish your online brand. One of the latest forms of blogging is micro-blogging, as in Twitter or Plurk.

There are lots of reasons why opening an account with Twitter is a great thing to do for your business:

  1. Joining Twitter is free, easy and takes only seconds (OK you’re right, that’s two reasons right there).
  2. You can create a Twitter network that links you up with some really impressive people in your niche. We even have celebrities like Britney Tweeting now. You can find best selling authors like Scott Allen and towering business personalities like Guy Kawasaki.
  3. Twitter is one of the best ways there is to keep abreast of trends in your niche. Communication is essential for anyone wanting to succeed in this information age, and if that information can be had in real-time on a breaking news basis, just imagine what an edge that would give you compared to your competitors who have not yet discovered Twitter. Many times we hear important news before it breaks in print and broadcast media. There have even been instances where they’ve taken queues from us–not always successfully. Jill Whalen calls it the ‘water cooler aspect,’ and that about sums it up.
  4. Even if you don’t feel like it now, grab your Twitter ID (especially your name) now in case you really regret it later when you see that everyone’s using Twitter, (chances are you will).
  5. Twitter is a fantastic way of getting inspiration for your blog or website, or any other project you’re working on. Users often use it for feedback, canvassing the market and a lot more. Here’s just one example of how bloggers get material for posts as well as business development ideas.
  6. Have questions about business? Give them up to the Twitter universe. Chances are you’ll be pleasantly surprised at the results.
  7. Used correctly Twitter can be a superb reputation management tool both for getting the good word out and suppressing the bad. But that will only work if your Twitter network is already well established when you have a reputation crisis to contend with.
  8. Some really interesting writers/artists are easy to link up with.
  9. Itinerary coordination: Obama’s presidential campaign made extensive use of social media channels including Twitter for announcements and coordination.
  10. Twitter makes a very effective mode of communication and coordination if there’s a crisis, or heaven forbid, a disaster. But if you’re not already established on Twitter with an effective network, when a crisis erupts it’ll be too late.
  11. If you choose to you can keep an eye on your market/network anonymously by signing up for Twitter in another name. You can have as many accounts as you want, and if you use an Twitter client like Twhirl, Spaz or Tweetr for Mac you can tweet in more than one profile at once.
  12. You can Tweet from your PC, laptop, handheld or smartphone.
  13. Twitter takes far less effort to keep up with than some other social media platforms, such as FaceBook, for example. You are in complete control of how much interaction you choose to take on.
  14. All the coolest bloggers like Tech Crunch, Problogger, Copyblogger and lots more, are on Twitter. And before all my blogger-friends raise a howl of protest, I cannot list all you cool and notorious bloggers on here I want to finish some time today. :)
  15. You can post your Twitterfeed to your blog or website to increase your network and provide enhanced interactivity for your clients/customers.
  16. Join a multitude of entrepreneurs who are actively promoting their goods or services via Twitter in the form of special offers and so on.
  17. There are a multitude of Twitter applications such as Twitter Grader, or Mr Tweet that will help you gauge your popularity, market reach and even shortcomings. All vital for social media marketing in any form.

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SEO Blackhat SMO Tricks Can Hurt You Even if You Didn’t Do it Yourself!

October 2, 2008 by MichD · Comments
Filed under: SEO 

“Search engine optimizers’ Backhat social media optimization tricks can hurt you without you doing it yourself? Yes, it’s true, and here’s why.”

Today’s search engine optimization or SEO is rapidly changing to meet the New World Wide Web order of things. SMM (social media marketing) SMO (social media optimizing) SSM (social search marketing) and ‘personalized search’ are not only the catch-all SEO phrases or marketing fads of the moment: Search and social marketing now go hand in hand. Both social media and search optimization can work beautifully in tandem when used properly as a combined marketing strategy. Social media is here to stay, but Web 2.0 is old. Personalized Active Semantic Grid 3.0 is going to be the next Big Thing.

All in all, while technically things are different, nothing has really changed for SEO. What’s different to the Web as it was a short while ago is that Blackhats, marketers and Whitehats alike now use social media as part of their daily routine. The core principles of optimization have maintained identical faces in both worlds. Good gets good results and bad gets bad results. So most likely SEO professionals will continue to develop their talents and meet a demand through to the next phase of the Internet.

Why ramble on about what we already know? For some reason no SEO has yet broached the subject of the real issues with Blackhat optimizers. Once, link farms and mass directory submissions were just about standard practice, and when a Blackhat got started on your site, all that would be left was a disreputable, hollow husk. Even then, using these shady methods would hurt your ranking far more than they would help, and the same is true today. But what so many online business owners don’t realize is that when you have a Blackhat inside your social circle operating in stealth mode, you will unknowingly be ruining you own social search rankings just by associating with them.

“HOW in the WORLD could that possibly EVER happen?”

If you’re a quietly-observant person who is active on the internet, you may have already asked yourself this question. It may also be that you have already noticed the very thing I am about to unveil.

To make my point I can give some simple examples any social media user would have seen recently.

Blogs: Have you ever heard of Akismet? How about these spine-chilling terms: comment spam, feed scrapers, hacked blogs, hidden links, pingback spam, trackback spam, XSS injection? These are Blackhat tools and blog-abusing tricks. Every single one of these can destroy a site’s authority, ranking and traffic.

Take Delicious: Once a quality indicator for websites across the internet, now the most overcrowded, insanely dense sea of innumerable tags, more an exercise in pointlessness than anything at this point. What does that mean for you? Your bookmarks may or may not get credited, listed or scanned. Why? Because of the flood of spam, Delicious is now filtered to protect the site itself. Poisoned links can seep into your pool, fed by mass shares, bot armies and forced homepage listings that only seem interesting at first glance.

Digg: Wow this one is Easy. Digg.com has virtually ground to a halt in the last few weeks. Reports of hundreds, if not over a thousand diggers banned for unwittingly aiding technical social Blackhats. It’s a story that has played out many times, but perhaps not on so large a scale.

As the redirected sites and obviously ad-fueled ADVERTISEMENT INCORPORATED sites flooded the Digg gates, scores of unwittingly complicit users then vanished. A new community of new and old faces replaced them. Now those users are mingling in a social site permeated with fear. Yes, it could and probably will happen again.

StumbleUpon: This is by far the most dangerous target for users. Blackhats can send you direct pages, often in a friendly way that will leave you unsuspecting. Yet according to the terms of StumbleUpon, no click should be asked for or suggested. Users guilty of asking for Stumbles can be banned, no questions asked. So next time you get a Stumble request, ” blah blah … stumble and review plz” read “make me money … get banned dummy”.

Twitter: Twitter oh our cruel mistress of dread. It’s addictive once you get started, yet staring you in the face is the Blackhat core from the dark depths of the Internet. Everything from adult and hijack redirects to mass-Google blacklisting has befallen Twitter users. Again as a Twitter user you may not be doing anything you would think could harm you, but you can get tagged as a spammer by association, and this can be visible to everyone and totally out of your control on ratings sites all over the Web. Talk about a reputation management nightmare.

As you now may see, the Internet as we know it has changed, in many ways for the better, but in some ways for the worse. Facets and faces of marketing will always be part of any product or consumer driven society, therefore greed or need will always drive some to choose the darker path.The bright side for all of us is that as technology changes, new and better is always just ahead. Test it, try it, explore the possibility of the Web. Go search and be thoughtful, be vigilant while you’re being social. Consider your actions and your associates carefully, and all will be well.

Another ridiculous yet interesting searchable socialized rant-ramble by: Mich D … yeah the very same dude :) [ @MichDdot 4D twest U pleepz N tweepz ;) ]

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