About ten days ago my husband was taken ill. It was a shock but it wasn’t what you’d call sudden. He’d been looking ill for some time. Very ill as a matter of fact, but getting any kind of information out of him about how he feels is like getting blood out of a stone. And he sees illness as weakness so… I left it.

Anyway, he had a heart attack. Didn’t tell me about it–I heard from family members. He says he didn’t want to worry me! (Men!) Then he went off to have surgery. They put two stents in, and now he’s recovering. But of course I am still busy looking after him.

So day-before-yesterday I went online for a few minutes for the first time in days, to find all my friends have been playing without me. Yes, Plurk is the new online obsession. It’s fun. Come on board and try it out with us. My Karma is still very low–much lower than my friends because they had a head start. I’m still pouting!

Anyway, it’s wonderful to be back, and I have a renewed sense of joy now that I realize how much my husband means to me.

I’m looking forward to fixing my broken sites that have been left in the lurch. There’s my main work site, Wellwrittenwords, which was undergoing a complete overhaul and looks very sorry for itself at the moment. And there’s my brand new site, Tweetpro. With any luck you’ll forgive me for this disastrous state of affairs now that you know why. Hopefully I’ll have all the planned changes in place by the end of next week.

God bless my friends.

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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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1. You cannot expect me or any other serious Digg user to accept your shouts if you have set your profile to not receive shouts in return. Are you kidding?

2. Wherever possible, serious Digg users will always respond to a shout. But just occasionally, the article in question will be offensive, or will be diametrically opposed to our personal beliefs. Even if you send us 10 shouts we won’t be voting for it, so take it easy.

3. And while we’re on that topic, here’s one I think I may be slightly guilty of. Don’t keep sending shouts about the same topic to everyone. Please try and keep track of who you’ve shouted, so they don’t get 100 shouts about the same item.

4. Do not make offensive comments about what we are Digging. If you don’t like it, simply unfriend us and that’s the end of the story. That’s how social media works.

5. When you send a shout, do it if possible through the Share icon. If you do it through your friend’s page, put the link to your Digg item, and not the actual source URL. That is an infuriating waste of time, and some of us are very busy.

6. Don’t use SMS-speak when you’re sending shouts. Some of us hate it and don’t have time to decipher it all. Unless you would like me to reply in Arabic (cos I might), then use plain English that everyone can understand.

7. If you’re sending us an old story, it just better be riveting. We don’t have time for twenty day-old stuff that no one paid attention to anyway.

That’s it. Not too difficult, but doing it right can make a world of difference to how you’re viewed in the Digg universe.

If you follow these guidelines you will have a much easier time of it, and who knows, people might like you enough to actually help you become a Digg power user. Good luck.

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Rumblings of discomfort are being felt by some web users who have found to their cost that someone, somewhere sees what you do online. The social media sites are great networking tools, and can be useful for business. But if you don’t take steps to guard your reputation there can be repercussions.

Most recently Twitter has come in for some close scrutiny because every micro-post by members can potentially be indexed by the search engines, and therefore could appear in a search. From reading the ‘tweets’ posted by members, I can imagine that some could find their twitter activity potentially embarrassing, and even a threat to their business credibility.

Another social media site that has been exposed for serious security gaps exposing users to all kinds of private leaks is MySpace. Here’s a Google search of just some of the ways MySpace has been in the news recently for privacy issues.

Although personal interaction does not go out for public consumption on most social media sites, your profile is indexed by many, including Facebook, Flikr, YouTube, Wikipedia, Digg, LinkedIn, Xing, FriendFeed and as we mentioned, Twitter.

Here’s a list of what NOT to do if you value your online reputation:

• Never insult, accuse, or otherwise denigrate anyone on a social media site of any kind, unless you don’t care if it comes back to bite you.
• Never write anything about yourself anywhere online that you wouldn’t want your boss, mother, husband or friend to know about you. Someone is bound to draw their attention to it sooner or later.
• Never announce your intention to divorce your husband, fire your boss, crash your car to claim the insurance, or set fire to your neighbor’s cat anywhere online either, for the same reasons noted above.
• Unless you feel it won’t make a difference, don’t use bad language that could affect how other people think about you.
• Think very carefully before indulging in online venting of your feelings about someone who has done something bad to you, because they might decide to repay the compliment.

On the other hand, you can also use these same mechanisms for avoiding bad situations and even turning them to your advantage. It is relatively easy to create a good reputation or a positive effect using your everyday online activities. For example, let’s suppose you want to get promoted. First you want to start posting flattering comments (make them believable–no obvious boot-licking here) about your boss or your superiors. Make it conversational. You may, or may not, want to mention somewhere your ambitions: depends on the job and the situation. Then make sure that the existence of these posts is ‘discovered’ by at least one critical person who you think might take the bait and pass it on.

This won’t work by itself of course. You have to have done your homework in the real world too.

Managing Your Online Reputation When Things Have Gone Bad

Now supposing someone has written something really bad about you online, or you’ve done the deed to yourself in a moment of weakness. How then do you make this nastiness go away? The first thing to do is the most obvious: go to whoever is in charge of the website and ask them nicely to please take it down.

If that doesn’t work, and chances are it won’t, then you’ll have to go the long route. You need to make sure that lots of positive information about you is posted on the web, and that it appears on pages that are considered an ‘authority.’ The idea is to produce lots of other Google entries mentioning you in a positive light, so that the bad stuff gets buried deep within a search. The deeper the better.

One quick and easy way is to sign up with all the social media sites you can find and make sure that all the good stuff is included. The professional networking site, LinkedIn is particularly good for getting a positive profile indexed. Your own website (if possible with your name in the URL) is a perfect medium for controlling what gets said about you. If you have a blog, that’s good too. But you need to work hard to get it noticed. Commenting on other good blogs is a fast way to get your information indexed.

An alternative to this (it can be pretty time-consuming) is to hire someone to do it for you. It won’t be cheap–but how much is your reputation worth? Some celebrities are rumored to have paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to make sure bad news is buried. The good news is that reputation management for the average Joe Bloggs will probably be a lot less expensive!

Here are a few celebrities who have recently paid to make bad news about them ‘go away.’ Kate Moss Paris Hilton, Mel Gibson, Madonna, and many, many more.

Some high profile companies who have found reputation management a dire necessity include Halliburton, Enron, and Hewlett Packard. Note that these results don’t come up in a straightforward search for the company name. Type into a search (for example) ‘Halliburton accused.’

But for the most part you won’t read about this kind of reputation management online or in the news. Quite simply, most SEOs and reputation management experts sign non-disclosure agreements with their clients so they don’t spill the beans. After all, no matter how deep dirt is buried, if they know it’s there, lots of people will dig for it (no pun intended).

A word of consolation if something unpleasant has surfaced about you on the Internet: Most of us are nowhere near as interesting as celebrities or big-name companies, so not only is it easy to bury negative information, not many people will be interested or notice it while it’s coming at the top of a search. If you proactively employ reputation management strategies as outlined, you can very quickly forget about bad publicity.

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Like any other industry (but perhaps even more so than some) the virtual marketing industry has its celebrities. What I’ve noticed is that the guys at the very top, like Aaron Wall of SEOBook, Rand Fishkin of SEOmoz and Danny Sullivan of Searchengineland, and bloggers of huge import–OK I was going to name a couple here but I fell into that trap yesterday and was reproached for not (at first) mentioning all the greats. Here’s my list of Red Hot Bloggers (scroll down a bit). It’s not complete–I couldn’t include everyone who I consider exceptional.

All these are nice, friendly, and very approachable people. Then there’s Seth Godin and Guy Kawasaki who are both towering personalities of the marketing world, online and off, and they still manage to be nice to everyone they come across.

Beginning to see a pattern? Because I most certainly have.

Then there’s a strata in all these niches that consists of individuals who prematurely think themselves great and too-good-for-the-rest-of-us, and behave like (put celebrity name here) chasing paparazzi with a shotgun every time someone not in their clique comes near.

Branding Yourself as a Nice Person

Just like anyone else I understand the constraints of juggling an ever-expanding professional life with life in general. The more successful (and therefore busier) you become, the more people will naturally seek a chunk of your time. But personal branding is a very important part of becoming good at what you do. You only have to take a look at Britanny Spears to know that this is true. If you don’ t know how to treat people your success will die a premature death.

Now let me tell you about someone who I now know is even better than his personal branding suggests, and who actually exceeds his legend.

I’ve been a fan of Guy Kawasaki for years. I have several of his books and even though his expertise is only loosely applicable to the SEO industry, I try and make time to read his latest.

Don’t Underestimate Twitter

So it was with interest yesterday that I discovered he’s on twitter. I hurried to follow him, hoping that I might catch some of his wisdom through his tweets. And yes, this is a major reason why twitter is just so popular. In fact, that’s what I love best about it–you can absorb small nuggets of knowledge from so many people of your choice without any effort.

When I woke up this morning, only a few hours after following him, I found that Guy had actually bothered to follow me back. My jaw hit the floor. Now THAT my friends is personal branding in style. You can’t tell me that Guy has loads of time on his hands. Although I have read from him that he tries to make time for what he considers the important things in life, following people he’s never heard of on twitter can’t be one of those. I never for one moment expected him to follow me, I would have been more than content to here what he has to say. But he followed me and now my opinion of him is indestructible!

Then there’s Darren Rowse, who has to be another one of the busiest people on the planet. Yes he just published this list of ways to contact him on his blog.

If you want to make it in any walk of life you have to be nice to be near. And I’m not talking about personal hygiene. Those who don’t like giving as well as taking should resign themselves to mediocrity, where they belong. It’s just not good enough to be nice only when you want someone to scrape up a few extra follows for you on twitter, (and then you don’t even bother to follow them back or help them out), or when you want a few extra Sphinns or a stumble but you’re not prepared to do the same in return (off the top of my head here). Business is all about reciprocity no matter what your line.

Twitter is just one of the social marketing sites that you can use to successfully brand yourself in so many ways. Being nice to those you meet along your way is only a small part of it all, but it can also be a major contribution to your success. It pays to remember that often the people you network with are potential customers, and if that’s not the case, then they almost certainly rub shoulders with potential customers of yours. Someone like Rand Fishkin, who always answers his email and isn’t too high-and-mighty to hob-nob with those who are still trying to make it in this business, will be my first choice for a recommendation, unlike those who have been rude or mean to me, or who have been unwilling to return favors.

Sure, upsetting just one person online won’t put much of a dent in your bottom line. But if you make the huge mistake of considering yourself an island, you can kiss goodbye to those big profits you’re dreaming about.

Rant over!

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Guide to Networking with twitter
There’s no shortage of social networking sites online. In fact, if you’re like me you sort of get a sinking feeling every time you see that another one has been launched. It’s getting overwhelming. And worse, most of them are a total waste of time; a short flash-in-the-pan that fades away to nothing.

I actually thought twitter was going to be like that. Boy was I in for a surprise. I never thought this tiny, simple micro-blogging application would soon be the one I use more than any other. In fact, twitter has a way of growing on you, and now I see it as my most useful networking tool: I can easily choose who I network with. I have even been getting backlinks from twitter, and a small amount of traffic (hey, traffic is never to be sneezed at, especially if it’s targeted).

It would be churlish of me to try and create a twitter resource without making reference to others who have done a far better job than I might have done:

Let’s start with this ‘how to’ guide from New Media Bytes. It tells you all you need to know to get twittering in the shortest amount of time. I should mention that it was intended for journalists, but bloggers and just about anyone else will find it very useful too.

Second up we have Lee Odden over at Top Rank Blog with a pretty comprehensive twitter guide.

This list of SEO twitterers is the work of MarketingPilgrim, and you’re going to love it if you’re at all interested in SEO.

That should be more than enough to get you started on twitter. Now tell me you don’t love it?

Stumbleupon: How to Get Tons of Traffic in One Easy Lesson

Stumbleupon quickly became my all-time favorite once I reinstalled it last year. I say reinstalled because I dabbled with it some years ago when it was new on the web, but couldn’t see a purpose for it at the time. Wrong again. When I began using it this time, I noticed a curious thing just a few days after I installed it: a huge spike in my web traffic. I couldn’t understand it–about a thousand visitors from nowhere. When I investigated, every single one of them had come from Stumbleupon. I was excited about this discovery–so much free traffic at absolutely no cost–it deserved to be investigated.

Oh, just one word of caution here: I actually had to change my hosting provider once I started using Stumbleupon because they closed me down a couple of times saying I had used up all my bandwidth. Don’t burn traffic by not being prepared for it when it comes with plenty of usable bandwidth.

You can be sure this nugget of information piqued my interest: The more active you are on Stumbleupon, the more traffic you get. So you can even control how much traffic you get. But you can’t just go in there and spam members. If you do you run the risk of getting buried, or worse. Be sure you’re doing it right: read these highly informative articles about using Stumbleupon before you even download the Stumbleupon toolbar. This one is for Firefox, but you’ll find the IE version there too.

Here’s an explanation of how to use Stumblupon like a Pro that should put you in a great place to start stumbling right away.

Tamar Weinberg wrote this Stumbleupon How-to guide for 10e2 a year ago, but it’s well worth a trip over to read it.

Andy Wibbels wrote this article about how to find great websites using Stumbleupon, and this is useful information too.

OK, so now you know why you should be using twitter and Stumbleupon. Don’t forget to follow me (I’ll reciprocate) on twitter, and be my friend on Stumbleupon. See you there.

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Want to know what’s the single most important thing you can do to increase your conversion and grow your business? No, I’m not about to sell you on some insane program. This is vital stuff that you can and should be doing for low-cost or free.

Again and again search marketers tell their clients that they really, really need to track everything they do. Sadly a lot of the time this sage advice falls on deaf ears. If you’re new to the business the whys and wherefores of tracking everything you do online can be missed, to be sure.

But this subject is worth grappling with and I can’t think of a better example than Facebook, which is now worth a whopping $15 billion according to the (very reasonable) calculations of Danny Dover over at SEOmoz.org

Just for the sake of comparison, MySpace changed hands in 2005 for a mere $580 million, yet it has been around for much longer than Facebook, which is only five years old, and the MySpace user base was over 100 million as of 2006.

Now why should Facebook be worth so much more than any of the other social networking sites?

It’s all down to tracking. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has tracked everything his members do and stored that information.

So what?

Well just think for a moment how much more effective it would be if you wanted to place an ad on Facebook, and you could choose the age and gender of your target market. Not only that, but you could match your product to their interests (just to mention a few simple parameters of search). Just think how much you could increase your conversion rate by knowing these details and being able to target in this way.

Well, that’s the secret. That’s why advertising on Facebook is likely to be so much more effective than advertising on any of the other social marketing sites.

Now, almost certainly this information is going to have you rushing out to arrange for tracking of your site. Good idea. But before you do it take the time to shop around. If your web hosting doesn’t provide you with a range of comprehensive tracking tools (mine does: the button to HostGator is to your right over there), then go and sign up immediately with Google Analytics. Its free, you can track as many sites as you want, and you can even set some goals for yourself over there.

Stay tuned for a post on the best tracking tools out there in the next day or two.

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We’re seeing a new trend in the already-burgeoning social media market. As popular as it already is, we’re set to witness social media become an even more important part of our lives with the event of ’social media niches.’ You may be rolling your eyes and thinking ‘oh please–let there be an end to this social media thing…” but we have to face the fact that social media sites fulfill a need and play a definite role in our online lives–for most of us that is.

One niche SM site I’m particularly fond of myself is Danny Sullivan’s Sphinn. This is new, and just for SEO and search marketing-related folks. It has taken off remarkably, and Danny’s done a great job. Highly recommended if you’re in the business (and if you’re not you might learn a thing or two).

Then there’s Blue Dot, which is mainly entertainment. Not my thing, but lot’s of others go for it.
Just yesterday I received an email announcing the birth of another niche SM site: Based on the Sphinn model, Duah4me is just for Muslims, and hardly likely to be of interest to non-Muslims–it’s also taking off like a rocket despite its very recent launch.

The birth of these sites is in direct opposition to SEOMoz’s views on ‘long tail social media.’ I have to respectfully disagree with Mozquarters (Rand what have you started) on this issue. I think the long tail in social media is going to prove the most fruitful in the longrun.
Lee Odden had something to say about the subject too, upon his return from San Jose.

Just for good measure today, here’s a related post about niche social media. Perhaps we should now be keeping an eye out for ‘niches of niches!’

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A successful website is now a major goal for nearly every business. A well-designed, easy-to-read, popular online presence is key to establishing online branding.

One of the best ways of achieving a high-profile online presence is promotion. This is a lot easier than most people think. Having your site mentioned on one of the social bookmarking sites is mighty powerful, especially if a number of your visitors do this. Here is a list of the most popular Social Bookmarking sites

If you are finding my posts helpful, informative, or even just inspiring, please comment on them. I would really, really appreciate it if you’d also recommend any of my pages to one of the Social Bookmarking sites listed. In fact, if you do, send me the link to consultant [at] marketmou.com, and I’ll send you not one, but three valuable ebooks on starting and running an online business, with lots of essential information for getting your website noticed. Not bad for five minutes work!

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It seems amazing now, that only five years ago, there was no such thing as an “SEO copywriter,” which is what I am today (and about ten million other writers as of the past 18 months)! This is proof that the Internet is causing us to evolve at a shattering rate. Another new concept that is just putting in an appearance is… (more…)

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