I’ve just been reading a great article by Clive Thompson on Twitter over at Wired.

He says that Twitter is giving members a sort of Sixth Sense about their community:

Twitter and other constant-contact media create social proprioception. They give a group of people a sense of itself, making possible weird, fascinating feats of coordination.

I agree with just about everything Clive says, but I feel there’s more to it. I feel that Twitter is actually a powerful real-world tool to help you learn, grow, and find your own perfect community. It’s not like an ordinary chat room or forum where you might like some of the members, but there will always be someone you just can’t stand, on Twitter you can pick and choose. Someone annoying you? Simply ditch them. Someone fascinate you? Follow some of their friends too so you can get a bigger picture.

Like millions of other Twitter users, i initially signed up, took a look around, thought to myself “What an abject waste of time.” And left, not to return until some months later when someone I admired said “you are on Twitter aren’t you?”

I was happy, in that moment, that I had registered, and rushed over to see what I’d missed if someone so successful thought it was great.

Within hours I was hooked. It was the hooking up that hooked me, so to speak. Twitter is only ever going to be as good (to you personally) as the people you are hooked up with. For anyone who hasn’t yet taken the plunge, the procedure is that you hunt someone down and click ‘follow’ once you’re on their profile. This will enable you to read what they Tweet, but they won’t read what you Tweet unless you send them an @name message. You cannot send them d name messages, which are private, at all unless they decide to follow you back.

It doesn’t really matter if an industry-leader decides not to follow you back (or doesn’t notice that you’re following them because they have literally thousands of followers), but there are quite a few interesting people who will follow you back as a matter of course.

You can learn a great deal by following people who have knowledge you’d like to acquire. In the course of their day they frequently Tweet about what they’re doing, what they’ve discovered, and how they feel about a multitude of subjects. It’s like looking over their shoulder while they work.

Here are a few tweets from my Twitter feed:

Yes, it’s true that because the number of people using Twitter is doubling roughly every three weeks, they are suffering quite a few system crashes. This weekend has been particularly bad. But if you use a Twitter client like Twhirl (my personal favorite) you can bypass most of it and continue to Tweet happily, although you won’t be able to add new contacts or update your profile (who cares?). While outages are always annoying I can’t help thinking everyone is a little hard on Twitter admin. With usage at the level it is, I think they’re doing an good job for a great service.

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Before I tell you how busy I’ve been, let me show you how much time I’ve been wasting, lol.

6,402,215
How much money will you be worth?

I don’t want to bore everyone, but I’m really slammed at the moment, so it will be a few days until I can get another of the great posts I have planned for you off to press.

Meanwhile, take a look at some of the projects I have going:

Update and new look for my Wellwrittenwords site.

Creation of a completely new niche: Creating profiles for Twitter folk. This is completely down as I write due to a combination of mishaps and HostGator’s arbitrary change of passwords today. God this annoyed me–it’s the last thing I need right now.

And something of interest if you buy domains, as I have lately:

Domaining Domainers promises to be a handy site full of info.

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I really have the goods for you today! If you just read through this post and follow the links, you will be arming yourself with knowledge from true experts in their field. If you use it, the Internet community better watch out!

There is no better way to learn than to keep up with the best blogs in the business. With this in mind I’ve decided to pull together the best ever SEO blog post from a number of really cool blogs.

First up is Barry Welford with his Headlines are for Humans, Titles are for Robots. Barry’s right. The first thing you need with any web page or article is a really superb title. It has to grab the attention of the reader, who may be scanning a list, and it has to impress the search engines with relevant keywords too.

Donna Fontenot chose her Search Marketing and the Persuasion Principles where she discusses

Still on the subject of copywriting, which is a priority with good SEO, Chuck Masterson sent me his hottest post on the subject, which is The Discovery Library. There are gems in here so be sure to read it.

Yura has already made a great compilation about all aspects of a succesful site that he says is his most successful post: Learn How to Write Titles to Get Traffic and Links: The Ultimate Guide.

OK, we’ve had a lot about what we should be doing for good SEO: Now let’s look at a tongue-in-cheek account of what we shouldn’t be doing as SEOs. Judith ‘deCabbit’ Lewis from SEOchicks nominated The Seven Deadly Sins of SEO as her most successful SEO post.

Julie Joyce nominated another SEO Chicks post: Could a Chimp Do SEO? Heck Yes!

The Gypsy nominated this post by Aaron Wall: How much is a Page #1 Google Ranking Worth? It’s a very long article: amounts to a complete commercial appraisal of whether or not a coveted #1 ranking on Google is what you really need.

Link building specialist Debra Mastaler suggested I include a post from the Semmys.org. well, if you can choose between these then you have better powers of deduction than I do, so go see for yourself!

If you are not familiar with the name Todd Mintz, you should make a point of paying attention to him. He doesn’t blow his own trumpet, but he’s quietly very knowledgeable about SEO. Without further ado, I give you his post SEO, Surrealism and Salvador Dali!

Here’s my personal favorite from all the posts mentioned here: Why Do the (Good) SEOs Cost So %&*# Much?Nominated by Will Scott, this struck a chord with me for many reasons, and I’m sure it will with just about every other SEO too. The average client just can’t see what’s the big deal about SEO until he’s not ranking. And once we do our job and a site is doing much better, that same client tend to think their success is due to a lot of other factors too, thereby stealing our thunder. Sigh.

Let me bring up the rear with my favorite from my own posts, Top SEO Expert Aaron Wall Speaks Out. This was a hugely successful post for me, thanks to Aaron who gave such informative answers to my questions. Interestingly (well to me anyway) this only got about 70 percent of the traffic that came to my other most popular post, 17 Habits of Highly Popular Bloggers. That has 30 percent more traffic, but judging by how long people stayed on the page, that traffic was less highly targeted. I had far more interaction with the Aaron Wall post.

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From time to time I come across a product that’s worth talking about. Recently I checked out a new report on landing page optimization available over at Invesp Consulting.

The opening words of any information product are often enough to tell you if you’re reading quality material. And certainly, after only a few paragraphs you’ll know if you have in your hands a report that’s backed by true knowledge and industry experience. Quite categorically Landing Page Optimization: The Complete Guide is a quality report; it promised me a good read right from the beginning.

Even to the end I wasn’t disappointed. The words demonstrate the author’s thorough knowledge and experience of his subject. More than that, the author cites a great deal of research conducted by Invesp Consulting.

The report clearly defines the reasons why you must optimize your landing pages. You’ll learn how to increase profits by 75 percent or more, without increasing your advertising budget by a cent. Follow the step-by-step suggestions to tweak your landing pages for super-effective performance.

While including a lot of basic, commonsense marketing information, Invesp also includes some great advanced selling tips; even your copywriting will find a fresh, revitalized direction. It’s in language that we can all understand too, which is somewhat of a novelty in the tech world—and there’s even a glossary at the end.

You will learn exactly what’s required and how you can make the grade for a super-successful landing page: great usability, trust and more importantly, results.

One of the things I particularly like about this report was the exhortation to not target landing pages for absolutely everyone. It’s great advice to focus your target market so that you’re more successful with those who really matter. You cannot be all things to all people no matter how hard you try.

I am also impressed by the detailed help you get with usability definitions. Most reports on this subject talk about the need for good usability standards without actually going into detail on how to achieve it.

The report points out how many companies make huge marketing mistakes, like tying themselves up in knots with highly complicated testing. The author offers concrete alternatives that will help readers get results in no time flat!

In short, this report shows you, step-by-step how to get your landing page optimized for maximum conversions in the shortest time possible. Highly recommended.

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