Brand Name

Warning: Long post ahead. If you just want the trailer, it’s this – “Everything is changing. Again.”

Tomorrow morning we’ll kick off our most ambitious event to date, TechCrunch Disrupt, in New York. The event is sold out, but we’ll have tens of thousands of people also tuning in to the livestream of the three day event. If you’re not attending, watch that livestream from the comfort of your office, living room or wherever it is that you people spend your time. There are some things happening at the event that you don’t want to miss.

We’ve called the event TechCrunch Disrupt, but we weren’t thinking about the name as a theme for this particular event. It’s our go forward brand name for our three-times-a-year launch and tech conferences.

And yet, as I have conversations with the launching startups and the amazing speakers lined to to talk at Disrupt, it’s become clear to me that we are indeed in a massively disruptive moment. And by moment I’m not talking about a generation or a decade. I’m talking about things happening right this moment in time.

These conversations are why, for the first time, I am extremely nervous to go on stage tomorrow morning.

Until the last few days it hasn’t crystalized for me. It’s sort like when you’re getting the flu and you feel the symptoms come one by one. Stomach ache, no problem. Headache, ouch. Cold sweat – uh oh, I’ve caught something.

The “symptoms” I’ve noticed are only there because I’ve been sitting down with these people – leading entrepreneurs, venture capitalists and others – and just listening to what they have to say. Putting it all together in my head. Discounting for bias. And after all that, what they are saying is making a lot of sense to me.

You are going to hear a lot over the next three days about how our world is changing in a fundamental way. It’s easy to think about what’s happening now as just a further evolution of the Internet era. But the disruption from this change is more profound than that.

Before I dive deeper, here’s a taste of what I’m talking about. Venture capitalist John Doerr, who is arguably the most successful venture capitalist of all time, told me this during our briefing call for Disrupt:

Zynga is the fastest growing business Kleiner Perkins has ever invested in.

That was said by a man who’s firm has invested in Google. And Amazon. And AOL, Compaq, Electronic Arts, Flextronics, Genentech, Intuit, Lotus Development, LSI Logic, Macromedia, Netscape, Quantum, Segway, Sun Microsystems, and Tandem, among many, many others.

Zynga. The fastest growing business Kleiner Perkins has ever invested in.

First thing tomorrow John Doerr is going to outline why he thinks that is happening. He’ll talk about the Third Wave.

The First Wave was personal computers and the wave of disruption that caused. The second wave was the Internet, ditto. We are now, says Doerr, in the Third Wave.

What exactly is the Third Wave? It’s the tectonic shifts we’re seeing in mobile platforms (read his post here about the iPad), the social graph (particularly Facebook), and online commerce. All of these things are related and being accelerated by each other (Facebook is the largest mobile application, Zynga leverages Facebook and also stokes Facebook growth, Groupon is social/flash commerce, etc.).

Yuri Milner, who is second on deck on tomorrow morning’s agenda after John Doerr, made sense of all this to me over lunch yesterday.

Milner is investing in the fastest growing consumer Internet companies, and he’s doing it more aggressively than anyone else. He has stakes in Facebook, Zynga and Groupon. His method is fascinating and we’ll be diving deeper into it tomorrow.

But what shocked me into realizing that Doerr is very, very right and that real disruption is happening right now wasn’t the how he invests, but why he invests, and in who. Why is he so confidently investing hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars in companies at multi-billion dollar valuations?

The Internet was a tremendous business accelerator, he says, but Facebook is another accelerator on top of that. Zynga’s Farmville grew to 75 million users just a few months after launching last year, and the company went from near zero revenue a year ago to hundreds of millions of dollars today.

It wasn’t that Zynga invented the killer game (every single Zynga game was copied from someone else, in fact). It’s that CEO Mark Pincus understood better than anyone else how to leverage that Facebook accelerator and ride that tsumani.

And when I asked him what Groupon, his third U.S. investment, has to do with the Facebook accelerator effect? He says that they grew so incredibly fast simply by advertising on Facebook.

Groupon tweaked and tweaked their model endlessly until they got it right – they felt real traction. Then they turned on the advertising. And what worked wasn’t television spots or Google ads. It was Facebook.

That must be freaking Google out right about now. It’s also the cornerstone of my belief that we are entering into the Age of Facebook. At no point in history has such a large number of people interacted so intimately with anything. Facebook’s half a billion monthly visitors is probably far more meaningful (although not yet as lucrative), as the nearly 1 billion people who visit Google each month.

The depth of interaction with Facebook is unprecedented. And it explains a lot of the privacy hysteria we’re all going through with them right now.

Ok, Back To Earth

The Third Wave is happening, but that doesn’t mean that Facebook, Zynga, Groupon, Twitter and a few others are the only winners, or even the biggest winners. Facebook may have created a monster that it simply cannot control, for example. The social graph, over time, may well become more of a federated model with many players. Listen closely to what both Milner, a Facebook investor, and Doerr, who isn’t, have to say about that tomorrow.

But those are just the historical details about who wins and who loses. The shift is happening right now. Groupon is blowing away Amazon’s early revenue and profit milestones by a scary factor, for example. Don’t think Amazon isn’t looking at Groupon with the same wary eye Google uses on Facebook.

And when you look at the world in this way – a Third Wave – it becomes easier to understand the strategic moves by the incumbents from the Second Wave. Yahoo is fleeing, looking for a warm place to hide. AOL is BFFing Facebook. Facebook is trying to set up the chess board so that they win all of this in the long run. And Google is standing toe to toe with Facebook and will not be backing down any time soon.

Meanwhile, the only mobile platforms that matter even a smidgen right now are the iPhone and Android. And that war looks too much like the Windows/Apple wars in the 80s over dominance of the personal computer.

There is so much creation going on around us. With that comes destruction, too. Nobody dies quietly in an all out war.

A stealthy startup called Flipboard has raised funding from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, we’re hearing from multiple sources.

What is Flipboard? We’re not sure. But it must be an exciting concept or team, if a brand-name firm like Kleiner is willing to back it pre-launch. Kleiner declined to comment.

There’s nothing public at flipboard.com, and the Flipboard Twitter account has a single, not particularly revealing tweet. But whatever Flipboard is, it looks like the app or site post messages to Twitter, judging from a couple examples floating around online. It may also be relevant that when announcing the expansion of Kleiner’s iFund for iPhone and iPad apps, partner John Doerr said the iFund has two stealth iPad companies that were about to launch.

While we were looking into the story, we also heard that there was “lunchtime chatter” that Index Ventures is another participant in the found. On its own, that doesn’t sound terribly reliable, but it’s worth including since it corroborates our first source on the Kleinr backing, and also names a second investor. A Index spokesperson said she’s contacting the firm for information.

I’ll update this story as I hear more.

Companies: Flipboard, Index Ventures, Kleiner Perkins

21st Century Insurance Hands Media Account to Mindshare — NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Auto insurer 21st Century Insurance and Financial Services has shifted its estimated $50 million U.S. media planning and buying account to WPP's Mindshare without a review. The account was previously run by Omnicom Group's Omnicom Media Group.

One of the more mysterious parts of the new version of Microsoft Office that the software giant plans to launch next month is the online version — the responses I’ve seen to early sneak peeks of the web-based version of Office has been pretty mixed. Beyond the Office brand name (which is certainly formidable), what’s going to make these apps any better than what companies like Google already offer?

Well, Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg just shared a feature that could give Microsoft a big advantage over competitors. Microsoft and Facebook launched a site called Docs.com this morning, which is all about sharing your documents using Facebook. He didn’t offer too many details, but said the site will work closely with Facebook. So if you want to share a document on Facebook, you can do so using the connections you’ve already built on the social network.

Here are some quotes from the Facebook post introducing the site (which is formatted, rather annoyingly, as an online Office doc, making it much harder to copy-and-paste):

Built on Microsoft Office 2010, the Docs app enables Facebook users for the first time to create and share Microsoft Office documents directly with their Facebook friends, using the Office tools they already know. …

This exploration exposes yet another facet of Ray Ozzie’s broad and long-held vision of social productivity. Although quite simple (and fun!), docs.com and its Facebook app bring together the best of “software” with the best of “services.” Documents can be created directly within the app, or can be uploaded from your PC. After starting work on a document alone, you might then choose a few others with whom to share it. Or you might instead share it with all your friends, or you might share it with the world.

‘The iPad, the Kindle, and the Future of Books’ —

Terrific piece by Ken Auletta in The New Yorker from a few weeks ago on the state of the book publishing industry. Auletta covers the shift to e-books mostly from the publishers’ perspective, which is illuminating:

Tim O’Reilly, the founder and C.E.O. of O’Reilly Media, which publishes about two hundred e-books per year, thinks that the old publishers’ model is fundamentally flawed. “They think their customer is the bookstore,” he says. “Publishers never built the infrastructure to respond to customers.” Without bookstores, it would take years for publishers to learn how to sell books directly to consumers. They do no market research, have little data on their customers, and have no experience in direct retailing. With the possible exception of Harlequin Romance and Penguin paperbacks, readers have no particular association with any given publisher; in books, the author is the brand name.

That the publishers view bookstores — rather than readers — as their customers explains much of what ails the industry. And that Tim O’Reilly has always seen the reader as his customer explains why O’Reilly Media, which was once as print-centric as any other book publisher, is thriving today.

Another choice observation, from Amazon’s Russ Grandinetti:

In Grandinetti’s view, book publishers — like executives in other media — are making the same mistake the railroad companies made more than a century ago: thinking they were in the train business rather than the transportation business.

(Think about that observation as applied to Microsoft’s executive leadership: Do they think they’re in the software business, or the Windows business?)

I put together the following “Twitter Cheat Sheet” for a client, and thought it might be also helpful for others who are still struggling with how to get started with Twitter. It provides some gentle guidelines that should help to keep emerging best practices in mind.

Why Use Twitter

There are many reasons to use Twitter, but here are my top three.

• Branding. The more others refer to you or “retweet” what you tweet, the greater your reach. Extend your brand by tweeting “retweetable” tweets.
• Communications. Twitter can be a powerful communications tool, particularly because of its potential to reach not just your own followers, but your followers’ followers and so on. Google  and other search engines are also including tweets in search results now.
• Community. By engaging your followers, you can begin to build a following, and join in conversations in meaningful ways.

How to Use Twitter

When you first open up Twitter each day, here are a few key things you’ll want to do to make the most of your “tweeting time.”

1. Check @ messages. First check to see who has publicly referenced you in their tweets and acknowledge, answer or respond.
2. Check DMs. Next check your direct messages (DMs) from people who have messaged you privately. Note that you don’t need to respond to auto-responders that say things like “Hey, thanks for following me! Can’t wait to learn more about you.” Responding to those is not expected.
3. Check your Twitterstream. Read through the first few pages or screenfuls of tweets to see what the people you are following are saying, and to see where there might be appropriate opportunities to retweet, respond or reference them.
4. Check Searches. You save searches for terms such as your brand name, product names, and keywords pertaining to your business or industry. These can be good sources of additional tweet fodder.

How to Make Your Tweets “Retweetable”

Twitter limits the length of tweets to 140 characters. In order to make your tweets “retweetable” (to make it possible for others to retweet you without having to edit the tweet), you need to reduce the the maximum length even further. Add five to the number of letters in your Twittername, then subtract that from 140. So, for example, there are 12 letters in “alizasherman” — adding five to that is 17. So I subtract 17 from 140, which equals 123. That is the maximum length of my “retweetable” tweet.

How to Retweet

There are two standard ways to retweet – adding “RT @Twittername” at the start of the tweet,  and adding “via @Twittername” at the end of the tweet. Either is acceptable, but the latter takes up more valuable “character real estate” — it’s longer, so you can fit less into the retweet. It is acceptable to change spellings of words to make a retweet fit the character limit.

You can also use Twitter’s built-in retweet button, but this is a newer feature has not been adopted by everyone,  and it’s not the ideal way to retweet as it seems less “personal.” You can personalize retweets by adding a comment at the beginning or end.

Here’s a screenshot showing all three types of retweet:

Types of Tweets

There are many ways to tweet. Here are a few examples of different types of tweets to give you some ideas.

1. Informative with a link

2. Provocative or timely statement or quote

3. Questions to start conversations

4. Referring to someone with an @

5. Response to an @ message

6. Retweet

7. Promotional (with a link or link to image)

How to Use Hashtags

Hashtags are simply words prefixed with a hash sign (#) added to your tweet. Hashtags provide ways to group and find topically-related or conversationally related tweets — readers can click the hashtag in your tweet to find related discussions on the same topic. For example, if you tweet about wine, the best hashtag for wine discussion is “#wine.” By using it strategically, you could attract more followers.

Here are some example tweets using the #wine hashtag:

#FollowFriday or #FF

There is an organic Twitter-wide event called “Follow Friday” where people recognize their favorite Twitterers by referencing them in a list and then adding the hashtag “#followfriday” or “#ff.” Note that you should make sure your Follow Friday list is retweetable.

Follow Friday is a great way to give kudos, help others discover new and relevant Twitterers and to attract the attention of people you follow who may not follow you back yet.

It’s a good idea to thank people when they give you kudos or list you in a Follow Friday tweet, but don’t thank everyone one by one as this can be annoying to your followers.

What are some of your favorite Twitter tips?

Photo by Flickr user Mr_Stein,  licensed under Creative Commons

Tweeting 101: A Twitter Cheat Sheet —

I put together the following “Twitter Cheat Sheet” for a client, and thought it might be also helpful for others who are still struggling with how to get started with Twitter. It provides some gentle guidelines that should help to keep emerging best practices in mind.

Why Use Twitter

There are many reasons to use Twitter, but here are my top three.

• Branding. The more others refer to you or “retweet” what you tweet, the greater your reach. Extend your brand by tweeting “retweetable” tweets.
• Communications. Twitter can be a powerful communications tool, particularly because of its potential to reach not just your own followers, but your followers’ followers and so on. Google  and other search engines are also including tweets in search results now.
• Community. By engaging your followers, you can begin to build a following, and join in conversations in meaningful ways.

How to Use Twitter

When you first open up Twitter each day, here are a few key things you’ll want to do to make the most of your “tweeting time.”

1. Check @ messages. First check to see who has publicly referenced you in their tweets and acknowledge, answer or respond.
2. Check DMs. Next check your direct messages (DMs) from people who have messaged you privately. Note that you don’t need to respond to auto-responders that say things like “Hey, thanks for following me! Can’t wait to learn more about you.” Responding to those is not expected.
3. Check your Twitterstream. Read through the first few pages or screenfuls of tweets to see what the people you are following are saying, and to see where there might be appropriate opportunities to retweet, respond or reference them.
4. Check Searches. You save searches for terms such as your brand name, product names, and keywords pertaining to your business or industry. These can be good sources of additional tweet fodder.

How to Make Your Tweets “Retweetable”

Twitter limits the length of tweets to 140 characters. In order to make your tweets “retweetable” (to make it possible for others to retweet you without having to edit the tweet), you need to reduce the the maximum length even further. Add five to the number of letters in your Twittername, then subtract that from 140. So, for example, there are 12 letters in “alizasherman” — adding five to that is 17. So I subtract 17 from 140, which equals 123. That is the maximum length of my “retweetable” tweet.

How to Retweet

There are two standard ways to retweet – adding “RT @Twittername” at the start of the tweet,  and adding “via @Twittername” at the end of the tweet. Either is acceptable, but the latter takes up more valuable “character real estate” — it’s longer, so you can fit less into the retweet. It is acceptable to change spellings of words to make a retweet fit the character limit.

You can also use Twitter’s built-in retweet button, but this is a newer feature has not been adopted by everyone,  and it’s not the ideal way to retweet as it seems less “personal.” You can personalize retweets by adding a comment at the beginning or end.

Here’s a screenshot showing all three types of retweet:

Types of Tweets

There are many ways to tweet. Here are a few examples of different types of tweets to give you some ideas.

1. Informative with a link

2. Provocative or timely statement or quote

3. Questions to start conversations

4. Referring to someone with an @

5. Response to an @ message

6. Retweet

7. Promotional (with a link or link to image)

How to Use Hashtags

Hashtags are simply words prefixed with a hash sign (#) added to your tweet. Hashtags provide ways to group and find topically-related or conversationally related tweets — readers can click the hashtag in your tweet to find related discussions on the same topic. For example, if you tweet about wine, the best hashtag for wine discussion is “#wine.” By using it strategically, you could attract more followers.

Here are some example tweets using the #wine hashtag:

#FollowFriday or #FF

There is an organic Twitter-wide event called “Follow Friday” where people recognize their favorite Twitterers by referencing them in a list and then adding the hashtag “#followfriday” or “#ff.” Note that you should make sure your Follow Friday list is retweetable.

Follow Friday is a great way to give kudos, help others discover new and relevant Twitterers and to attract the attention of people you follow who may not follow you back yet.

It’s a good idea to thank people when they give you kudos or list you in a Follow Friday tweet, but don’t thank everyone one by one as this can be annoying to your followers.

What are some of your favorite Twitter tips?

Photo by Flickr user Mr_Stein,  licensed under Creative Commons

Does Your Company Twitter? 10 Tips To Become A Great Business “Twit” —

What do you think of when I mention Twitter?  Do you think about teenagers posting what color socks their wearing to school today?  Or do you think about the sales/conversions your company makes by utilizing these accounts?  Social media is a fantastic way to increase your brand exposure.  By creating a successful Twitter account you essentially have a direct line to your customers.  Utilize the following tips to gain “followers” and to maximize your company’s Twitter experience.

1. Carefully Choose Your Twitter User Name

Make sure you put some thought into what username you want to use on Twitter.  Do you want to use your company name, brand name, or your full name?  Each one of these types of user names has an advantage, for instance we use @DKS_Systems for our Twitter user name.  @billgates chose to use his real name even though he is the founder of his company Microsoft.  It’s up to you; decide which one is the best fit for your company.

2. Your Twitter Image

Your Twitter image is what everyone will see next to your username.  Every time you publish a tweet people will see this image.  Does it make sense to put your company’s logo as the image? Alternatively you can post a picture of yourself.  Considering Twitter is a social network I like to suggest that everyone posts a picture of themselves.  This I believe adds more of a community feel and less of a B2B connection.  I find that it’s easier to get people to follow your account with a personal picture than a company logo.  This is an issue you can always test as Twitter easily allows you to update your picture within your account settings.

3. Twitter Profile Optimization

The search engines will index your Twitter profile so it’s important to optimize as much as you can.  Below are a couple fields you can change to help your profiles search rankings.

• Title Tag – This is your “Name” followed by your Twitter user name.
• Meta Description – Google shows your profiles “BIO” as your meta description.  So keep in consideration whatever you type here is what will show up in the search engines.
• Your website URL – take the www out of your URL.  This way people can see more of the actual web address.  Twitter only shows 17 characters.  Our website address just makes the cut and shows “http://dkssystems”

4. Customize Your Twitter Background

Twitter allows you to create and display your own custom background.  Create a background image that displays more information about your company!  (I will freely admit that I too really need to work on this tip!)   This is by far the best resource I can point you to on how to create the best Twitter background for your account.

5. Be careful who you follow

You may not have any control over who follows your account however you do have full control over who you choose to follow.  Don’t follow any accounts that you wouldn’t be willing to explain to your boss or even your clients.  I have never seen this being an issue however it would be a real shame to lose a sale/client over you choosing to follow a specific political candidate or questionable celebrity.  This tip doesn’t apply to every user; however it’s something to keep in the back of your mind.

6. Use Hash Tags In Your Tweets

It’s very important that you use Twitter just like everyone else on the website.  #hashtags help categorize your tweet in with a specific topic.  If you’re talking about SEO you might want to consider adding #SEO at the end of your tweet.  This way anyone who is searching for “SEO” tweets will find yours in the results.

7. Don’t Spam People Who Follow You!

Remember how I suggested that you be careful who you follow on Twitter?  If you send out ten tweets in a one minute period your followers are going to be annoyed.  If you annoy them enough they may just un-follow your account.  You need to publish your tweets sparingly.  I would suggest a couple of tweets an hour at most.  This is just a general rule and is something you will need to figure out as you get use to your Twitter account.

8. It’s Not All About Business

Don’t bombard your followers with your company’s products and or offers.  Twitter is a virtual hang out space for everyone.  If someone in real life got in your face and tried to make you buy something wouldn’t you avoid them each time you saw them on the street?  However, if one of your “buddies” suggested you go see the latest movie or buy a certain product wouldn’t you take it into a little more consideration?  Make sure to tweet about everything.  The color of your socks, your amazing fast food lunch, and a funny joke someone told you etc.  After several of these posts you can slide one or two tweets advertising your product or service.

9. Think Before You Speak… I Mean Tweet

How many times have you read in the news about a celebrity or a successful business person putting their foot in their mouth?  People don’t always think before they tweet.  Twitter is not a place for you to complain about your clients or customers.  You don’t want to say anything that will sabotage your brand or company either.  My rule of thumb is before I submit a tweet I ask if my boss would be ok with reading this.  If I think it’s questionable I will re-phrase it or choose not to tweet that message.   Just remember to think before you tweet, if you don’t you may get yourself and or your company in trouble!

10. Personal Messages and Re-Tweets

As mentioned before, Twitter is all about being social.  Talk to your followers, ask them questions, and make sure to answer any questions they may ask you.  You want to maintain a form of friendship with your followers.  Twitter allows customers/clients to have a direct access to you that they otherwise wouldn’t have.  Take advantage of this, write them personal messages. (Tweets only they can see)  Also make sure to re-tweet (RT) their tweets if you find it interesting.  Building these relationships may help you create some sales in the future.

Have You Created A Twitter Account Yet?

I hope that this article has shown you the value of investing time into Twitter.  Twitter is a fantastic way to keep in touch with your existing clients and customers. When customers get a sense of satisfaction they are more willing to make additional purchases.  Twitter also gives your company an opportunity to reach out to people interested in your niche.  Engage with them and answer their questions, you may just have another customer in the future if you do it right.

Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal.

Does Your Company Twitter? 10 Tips To Become A Great Business “Twit”

A beginner’s guide to blogging for business —

The benefits of a decent business blog go far beyond the SEO perks of adding fresh content to a site, but do you know how to make the most of your business blog?

It’s pretty apparent to anyone that knows me that I’m a huge believer in the value of a blog. Not only do I blog frequently for my company and a number of other industry websites, but I encourage all our new starters to get involved and write for the SEOptimise blog.

For them, it’s great way to start to build a reputation and to join in the wider industry conversation. There are many more benefits and we've recently run a seminar on why businesses should be blogging, so I thought it would be useful to share this online:

Why should you blog?

A blog is a way of sharing information, industry news and opinion. It fills your pages with naturally keyword rich content and encourages inbound links, which is SEO gold.

Provided it’s a useful blog, it offers value to visitors and encourages repeat visits. You build your industry reputation and strengthen your online brand.

It allows your company to develop an online personality. You stop just being a brand name and start being a collection of individuals – and it’s much easier for would-be clients to connect with people than with a firm.

A blog builds your corporate credibility – it shows how thoroughly you know your sector. Of course, that’s only if you’re writing decent copy.

I think one of the main benefits of a blog is that allows smaller companies to really box above their weight. Small enterprises can suddenly compete with major brands just by sharing some of their expertise through a blog.

Some advanced benefits of blogging

A simple, successful corporate blog will add real value to a website. However, if you have time and energy to develop one of the leading blogs within your sector, there are some really lucrative marketing benefits.

If you’re a leading industry commentator then you’ll be the person the press approach when they need opinions. It doesn’t matter how niche your sector; if it’s suddenly in the news then journalists will be looking for an expert to explain the issues to their readers and viewers. At the very least, you’re likely to attract the attention of specialist industry press.

An eloquent, informative blog will make you the obvious choice when reporters need an ‘expert’.

You may also be invited to offer articles and opinion to other blogs or online resources, all of which helps spread your brand name and build your reputation. I’ve even been interviewed by the BBC on the benefits of writing a blog.

The dangers of blogging

Corporate blogging is not without its hazards. If you don’t use some basic common sense then you could get your business in hot water.

Although there are many benefits to a company blog, if you do it badly you’d have been better off not doing it at all.

Don’t slander your competitors, don’t write glowing reviews of your own products or services, don’t fill your pages with typos, misspellings and grammatical errors.

These kinds of mistakes damage your brand, meaning your blog could actually end up causing you problems.

One final danger – there’s nothing worse than a blog that’s not been updated in three months. If you find you cannot commit the time, you’d be better off taking the blog down. Otherwise, it will give the impression that you simply cannot be bothered.

Engage in conversations

A blog is about more than writing articles and publishing them – it’s a starting point for conversations.

If people begin to discuss and debate your post, it’s important to get involved. A blog is a social platform, not a newspaper. The conversation has to go two ways and that’s not a chore – it’s another blogging benefit.

Having said that, sometimes it’s worth standing back – use your judgement. If other people are having a good discussion about your post, then comments from the blog’s author might stifle debate.

What kind of content should you create?

If you’re not used to writing, it can be difficult to know where to begin. It’s important to write short, accessible paragraphs and break up your comments with sub-headers and bullet points.

As a rule, lists of tips, ‘top tens’ and advice go down well. Articles that will obviously contain useful information will be shared.

Some people worry that their sector is simply to niche to justify a blog but actually, this can make a blog even more useful, because there’s likely to be very little online information elsewhere. True, if you’re writing a blog for a national house cleaning company, you’re probably never going to get an enormous audience.

However, you’re going to get a lot of attention from house proud people with high disposable incomes and very little spare time. Consider your target audience and write with them in mind.

Seek practical advice

Take a look at our blogging white paper (PDF link) for some tips on writing for the web and some practical advice on writing with search engines in mind.

I believe the most important thing to remember is that you’re writing for readers. There’s no point throwing useless, badly written articles onto your site just in the hopes it will help your SEO. To attract inbound links, to get people talking about your posts, to encourage people to tweet about your comments, you need valuable articles.

Interesting tidbit over at Techdirt this morning about a Grease Monkey script called Fluff Busting Purity formerly known as Facebook Purity. While the Techdirt article is good, there are some interesting side issues here that should be noted.

Many people run scripts within their browser that kills data coming in from web sites, most popular ones are the ad blocking software that has caused so much angst for people who try to make a living or at least a little pocket change from the ads on their site. This includes Ars Technica doing a trial of blocking content if the ads are blocked.

Facebook presents an interesting issue of “who controls what you render in your browser” by taking on Facebook Purity under a number of different concepts. One is the well understood “brand image” process where something using a brand name is generally a bad idea, meaning that Facebook Purity was taken down because the software used the name “facebook” as its software name. Generally this is well understood even if you can put up an “I hate facebook site” much like the popular “I hate starbucks site” or other negative sites concerning big brand names. But in an interesting tactic Facebook deleted the Fan Page for Facebook Purity as commented on the now named “Fluff busing purity” site:

Well Facebook decided to kill the F.B. Purity Fan Page, with practically zero notice, at the time of execution the page had 5042 fans, and I had spent a hell of a long time building the community up. How goddamn rude of them! Now they are after this domain too, and they seem to be intent on shutting down the script… Yet another example of this *^%&%^ company treating their users with contempt. Source: Fluff Busing Purity

Techdirt brings in the idea that:

So the guy changed the name to Fluff Busting Purity. No trademark issue at all. But Facebook is still complaining. The thing is, this is a Greasemonkey user script — meaning that everything happens in the user’s browser — which Facebook has no claim over. If you tell your browser to ignore certain things on a website, that should be your choice. This add-on is there to help people who want it, such that it makes Facebook more useful to them. Source: Techdirt http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100324/1806018708.shtml

It is well worth reading the FB Purity news page also linked from the developers Twitter page. Facebook is in general pulling out the big legal folks and generally going after the developer. This makes this more of an issue of what happens when someone writes a script that people use that masks content in the browser on the user’s machine. There is a bigger picture here as ad blocking software and other scripts that block content from the server to the browser are very popular. While this might not hit the courts, there is already many blocking type software packages out there. Even Google with its “Safe Search” option blocks information from people who do not want to see it. Realistically, if Facebook wins this one, the control of what is rendered in the browser is at stake, with a deeper ramification to ad blocking software and other software that performs the same function.

Facebook has taken out a larger dragnet with larger implications than one grease monkey script, and opened another issue that has not been dealt with by the courts. The issue is what control does a user have over what a server sends them. Law needs to catch up with technology if that is possible, and while it is unlikely to go to court, this is a bigger issue and one that we should all take notice of in general. People love ad blocker scripts and software, people love scripts like FB Purity, and companies generally hate them because it damages revenue streams. At some point, this issue will go to the courts, and when it does, people need to win to keep control of what happens in their browser.

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Google aims to provide as much information as possible to users so that they can make informed decisions. For this reason, we have been awaiting a series of decisions by the European Court of Justice that explore the extent to which trade mark rights can be used to restrict information available to users. The first of those decisions was delivered today.

The question before the court was whether advertisers should be allowed to choose keywords freely when reaching out to users on the Internet. In other words, if advertisers are allowed to show advertisements when another company's brand name is entered as a search query.

Trade marks are part of our daily life and culture, helping us to identify the products and services that we may be looking for. They are key for companies to market and advertise their products and services. But trade mark rights are not absolute.

We believe that user interest is best served by maximizing the choice of keywords, ensuring relevant and informative advertising for a wide variety of different contexts. For instance, if a user is searching for information about a particular car, he or she will want more than just that car’s website. They might be looking for different dealers that sell that car, second hand cars, reviews about the car or looking for information about other cars in the same category.

And, contrary to what some are intimating, this case is not about us arguing for a right to advertise counterfeit goods. We have strict policies that forbid the advertising of counterfeit goods; it's a bad user experience. We work collaboratively with brand owners to better identify and deal with counterfeiters.

Some companies want to limit choice for users by extending trade mark law to encompass the use of keywords in online advertising. Ultimately they want to be able to exercise greater control over the infomation available to users by preventing other companies from advertising when a user enters their trade mark as a search query. In other words, controlling and restricting the amount of information that users may see in response to their searches.

Today, the Court confirmed that Google has not infringed trade mark law by allowing advertisers to bid for keywords corresponding to their competitors’ trade marks. It also confirmed that European law that protects internet hosting services applies to Google’s AdWords advertising system. This is important because it is a fundamental principle behind the free flow of information over the internet.

Our guiding principle has always been that advertising should benefit users, and our aim is to ensure that ads are relevant and useful. We will study the decision as we move forward in order to make sure that we continue to deliver advertising that is perceived as both valuable and relevant by our users.

Posted by Dr. Harjinder S. Obhi, Senior Litigation Counsel, EMEA

Did you know that you could subscribe to any RSS feed with your instant messenger client? There are actually quite a few ways this can turn useful:

(!) Be one of the first to learn about any breaking news;
(!) Be the first to Digg a post from the Digg-friendly site (and this can be tough, you may know that);
(!) Free up the clutter from your email subscriptions;
(!) Never forget to check the blogs which are important to you.

Besides, you can create an aggregated feed combining the resources that matter most to you and subscribe to this feed with your IM.

Here are a few ways to do that:

The RSS to IM tool	IM clients supported	How to subscribe	Notes
RSS.im	XMPP/Jabber and Google Talk	Feed or blog URL	The message includes the extract from the post/update (as well as links mentioned in it)
iNezha	MSN, Skype, Gtalk	Domain	You can set up the update frequency
Notify.me	Adium, Jabber, PidGin	Feed URL	Sends updates to IM clients and/or mobile phones

(Screenshots and details can be found below)

1. RSS.im

RSS.im is a powerful and very easy to use tool. It supports the following commands:

• LIST to view the status of your subscription,
• STOP to stop all the notifications,
• STOP <domain> to stop notifications from the specified domain,
• START to activate all previously stopped notifications.

And here’s how it notifies me of new mentions of the brand name I am tracking on Twitter:

2. Inezha

Inezha was already mentioned by me in my Gtalk bots overview. It uses its own URL shortener for links and supports the following syntax:

• en for English service;
• <domain.com> to subscribe (the bot will find and retrieve the feed). You will be instantly given your new feed ID;
• “-ID” to unsubscribe from any feed;
• list to see the list of all your feeds (and to see the ID of each one);
• Timer [Minute] (e.g.” Timer 30″ for 30 minutes) to set the update interval.

3. Notify.me

Notify.me reads your chosen feeds and reports any updates via the chat window in your IM client.

The installation process includes the required registration with the service and then the IM client set-up:

After that you will be able to add the feed you want to track (or subscribe to the internal feeds within any topic).

Did I miss anything?

Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal.

3 Ways to Subscribe to Any RSS Feed with Your IM

It is huge news that ExactTarget is acquiring CoTweet. Huge news because of the ramifications this business “deal” will have on the world of social media and corporate communications. ExactTarget is already a leader in the world of email marketing and soon will be the pioneer of cross platform collaboration in the social media environment. So why is this important? Why am I so excited with this transition? Here are 5 ways why this is important and will change the world of social media.

1. One Enterprise System is Needed for Collaboration.

The technology world has been scrapping to produce one system that will manage all accounts across the worlds of Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Plaxo…. etc. ExactTarget and CoTweet now have the means to create an integrated system that will help in building out that platform. Don’t get me wrong, this is not a system that can be used by the individual but is closely tied to the return-on-investment (that is extremely needed) in the world of business development.

2. Measurement will Be An Investment and Priority

It is extremely hard to find a system that will measure ROI when it comes to using social media. I know that we can search, scrap, and put together a unique system that will measure influence and coupon discount codes but we are still lacking. Radian6 does a great job at measuring influence and helps in tracking a brand name across the different social sites… but it is hard to find a unique system to measure one-to-one online marketing. In order to monetize and work CoTweet into the enterprise system of ExactTarget measurement will have to be a priority. ExactTarget prides itself on ROI and measurement of email campaign and the same thing will apply to CoTweet.

3. Email and Social Need to be Combined

The next logical step for social media tools and marketing online is for email and social to be combined in one fluid marketing message. It is hard to find a system (Flowtown has started) that has combined all forms of Internet marketing in one cohesive message. If you send out an email you must copy and paste the same messaging to a blog… to Twitter.. to Facebook… and so on. This is speaking strictly from a corporate perspective. If you are a sole entrepreneur or a rock star like Chris Brogan it may be easy to build out a system that combines all forms of your online marketing…. for the corporate world it is extremely difficult.

4. Corporate Checks and Balances for Social Media

It is not a mystery that the majority of Fortune 1000 companies that are not involved social media because of the fear of…. content… plain and simple. Social Media is untamed and there is a huge need for one system to support PR, Marketing, and HR in their pursuit of using social media for content sharing. ExactTarget and CoTweet will create a system that allows for managers to double check all content being shared by individuals within the company. With almost two-thirds of Fortune 100 companies using Twitter and other social media platforms… now is the time to develop a unique product for content distribution.

5. Perfecting Customer Engagement and Communication

There is a power within social media that is just underneath the surface… ready to break through. We are talking about the power of the multiple customer touch point. If you can drive a users engagement through email marketing you could (and should) drive engagement on the other social media platforms that user is involved. With the integration of CoTweet and the investment into development from ExactTarget we are going to see a complete solution towards driving customer engagement online. I know that ExactTarget was not interested in just bolting on some functionality into their system… they were interested in meshing with a solution that has a proven track record.

——-

This is huge news for social media, the city of Indianapolis, CoTweet, and ExactTarget. I am extremely excited to be on the front lines. Here’s to the future of social and online marketing!

The recent launch of Google Buzz has once again surfaced an undercurrent in the social Web - where a small number of active accounts can gain the lion's share of activity, either through their own interactions, or those of an active follower base. Whether earned through years of consistent activity on their blogs or parallel networks, or having volume thrust upon them through celebrity or suggested user lists and bundling, there are brand name individuals who command a greater share no matter where they go, and if you choose to follow them, your stream runs the chance of being overwhelmed.

Buzz, evolutionary but not revolutionary, has not yet made it simple to follow very active accounts, such as those from Robert Scoble, Jason Calacanis, Pete Cashmore or me, as updates on our threads bounce to the in box by default - almost as a penalty for anybody who has chosen to engage, or who may have seen their ID added to a thread through the service's @Reply feature.


Busy accounts can be a nuisance on practically any network, whether that's Facebook, FriendFeed, Twitter, Buzz or any other. But in services where active feeds are resurfaced or pushed to the top, such as FriendFeed and Buzz, the impact is not actually from the originator of the content, but from their community. Comments on active feeds push the items back to the in box, or back to the top of the feed, and if you are following some of the more prominent accounts, you'll no doubt see the same names at the top.


That said, if this is getting in your way, and you are seething with rage at these social media power users, you're not using the tools well. Practically every network gives you tools to solve the problem.

1. On Twitter, you only have to see the updates from those you follow - with the exception of items retweeted by those you follow, from their connections, which you can opt out of on an individual basis. If an individual is too noisy, you can unfollow them at any time. Some innovative applications, including Brizzly, let you even "mute" a user for a short time so you can have them disappear during particularly busy times.

2. On Facebook, you can hide an individual's updates from your News Feed if they are too talkative. You can also hide all updates from specific applications (like Farmville or Mafia Wars) if you never want to see those updates. And yes, de-friending or blocking is available.

3. On FriendFeed, you can hide individual posts, block individual services (like Twitter or Disqus), block specific service updates by user, or, most successfully, you can put noisy people in their own lists, to sequester them from the rest of your feed. If worse comes to worse, again, you can always unfollow them, or block them outright.

4. With Buzz, you don't yet have the option to hide specific service updates or updates by user. But you can mute any thread just my using the "m" key, and as Buzz is integrated with GMail, you can use the same kind of filters available to any other e-mail. For example, I have set up a rule to move all Buzz entries into a mail box I call "social", taking them out of the in box.


If you want to quiet the impact of busy users, like Tom Foremski did by unfollowing Robert Scoble and me in Buzz, you can use GMail filters to your advantage - taking them to a dedicated folder and out of your in box.

For example, set up a filter where the Subject is "Buzz from Louis Gray", "Skip the Inbox (Archive It)" and "Apply the Label" of "Noisy", or whatever you like.. Then do the same for Robert and Pete and Chris Pirillo, Jason Calacanis, or anybody else who is swamping your Buzz experience.

Should we be blaming the noisy folks?

Like I mentioned last night, in sharing my social media data flow, I know there are people who have chosen to stop seeing my updates because of their frequency. But I don't plan to change my activity because of a new way it is interpreted and displayed by a new social network.

Part of the reason I am among the more active and visible people on Buzz is because over the last few years, I have promoted and cultivated the use of Google Reader and having active conversations there. I took the time to connect to and talk with more than 1,000 people in my shared items, and Buzz has taken advantage of that social network, moving it to a new place. Where others have not optimized for sharing, they are starting with less of a community.


But because of this, the community is also very comfortable talking on my feeds, as they are with other engaged folks. It is the ensuing conversations that bump them to the top, not the frequency that I share. I have been sharing 20-30 items a day in Google Reader every day for years, and it is filling Buzz the same way it has filled Reader and Facebook and FriendFeed.

If it's too much for you, use the tools that are there. Mute. Filter. Unfollow. Block. But there will always be discrepancies between the average users and those most active. Go ahead and make mine more active.

So with this whole thing where Apple has removed and banned like 5,000 “sexy apps” from the App Store, I think I’ve figured out the reason why, including why they’re granting exceptions to established names like Sports Illustrated, Playboy, and Victoria’s Secret. It’s about branding. Let me just state right here up front that I don’t agree with or like how they’re doing this. I’m just trying to make sense of it.

It’s easier, though, to first run through what this is not about.

I’ve seen a lot of speculation that the exceptions are about money. I.e. that Apple wanted to ban the sexy apps but left the big-name ones in because they don’t want to lose their 30 percent cut of the money these apps generate. That doesn’t hold water, though — a slew of apps that have been banned were top sellers, established brand names or not. If it were just about revenue, Apple would have left them all in the store.

Henry Blodget speculates that the established brand-name exceptions are about setting up deals for iPad apps from the companies behind them. But that’s just a variation on the “it’s about the money” argument. Again, if Apple’s interest here was about money, they wouldn’t be banning any of these apps in the first place. Apple is not going to be hard up for iPad apps and content. If anything, I suspect the problem with iPad apps will just like that with iPhone apps — too many of them, not too few.¹

Another iPad-related theory — suggested by several DF readers via email — is that it’s about the education market. The idea being that Apple wants to sell iPads to schools and therefore wants anything even remotely objectionable out of the App Store. But institutional iPads will be managed devices, just like “enterprise” iPhones are today. Students using a school-owned iPad won’t be able to install apps from the App Store, so it doesn’t really matter which apps are for sale.

Lastly, if you think about it, it’s clearly not about banning porno and bikini-clad-semi-porno from the iPhone entirely. MG Siegler writes:

Apple is going through all this trouble of removing these apps, and creating more work in scanning for the next sexy apps to reject, when built into every iPhone and iPod touch is not one, but two huge entry points for explicit material — and both are apps made by Apple themselves. The first, I alluded to above: iTunes. There are no shortage of films and TV shows with nudity and sexual content (along with violence and everything else) that are available on iTunes for purchase on the device. The same is true for explicit music.

But the second app is far worse: Safari. Each iPhone and iPod touch has a web browser that is more than capable of accessing any site on the web with a few clicks. This includes sites with hardcore pornography, or anything else a teenage kid can dream up. Apple is going through all this trouble to block sexy apps (which have never contained nudity, by the way, just sexy pictures), when they offer one of their own that makes it much easier to find far more sinister content.

Siegler is correct that MobileSafari is completely open to anything and everything published on the web. But he draws the wrong conclusion. Apple isn’t futilely trying to ban this sort of content from the iPhone. They’re just removing it from the App Store. Think about a physical world analogy to the retail Apple Stores. There’s all sorts of software (and hardware) you can buy and install for Macs that Apple would never sell in their stores.

The purest representation of the Apple brand is Apple’s own remarkably small (for a company of its size) lineup of products. Retail Apple Stores (and Apple’s web store) are a slightly expanded representation of its brand — they sell many third-party products, but they are carefully selected by Apple itself.

The App Store is looser. The vast majority of the 150,000+ available titles would not be there if Apple were managing the App Store the way they manage their retail stores. It’s good that it’s looser. It almost has to be. (It’s pretty hard to find people complaining that Apple allowes too many titles into the App Store.)

But, still, Apple sees the App Store as an extension of the Apple brand. That’s why flat-out pornography has never been and never will be allowed. You can walk into a Barnes and Noble and buy a copy of Maxim, but you won’t find a copy of Hustler. Not because Hustler wouldn’t sell, but because selling pornography goes against the Barnes and Noble brand.

I think what Apple was getting squeamish about wasn’t the sexy apps themselves, but the cheesiness that the sexy apps (and their prominence in best selling lists) was bestowing upon the general feel and vibe of the App Store. One thing I wasn’t aware of before the recent crackdown was the degree to which these apps were seeping into various non-entertainment categories. E.g., like half the “new” apps in the “productivity” category featured imagery of large-breasted bikini-clad women.

The App Store is never going to be like Apple’s retail stores, and Apple knows it. Apple’s retail stores, branding-wise, convey an image sort of like between the Gap and Banana Republic — friendly premium. The App Store is more Old Navy, or maybe even Target. But these sexy apps were casting the App Store into something junkier, bordering on the skeevy.

What iPhone users choose to access through MobileSafari doesn’t reflect on Apple. But what is listed in the App Store does reflect on Apple. What you see when you peruse the App Store effectively is the App Store.

So what I see as hypocritical about Apple’s decision here is not about the fact that you can access the same sort of content via MobileSafari, but rather about the exceptions granted to Sports Illustrated, etc. I see why: Sports Illustrated, Victoria’s Secret, and Playboy are not just strong brands but also quality brands. But who’s to say some new brand couldn’t be just as good? The best apps in all sorts of categories across the board in the App Store are frequently from new companies, building new brands. It’s no more fair for the “hot chicks in bikinis” category to be occupied solely by existing major brands like Sports Illustrated/Victoria’s Secret/Playboy than it would be if the, say, photo manipulation category were occupied solely by Adobe and Corel, or if games were only allowed from companies like EA.

If Apple’s going to allow any of these apps, they ought to allow all of them. They should be evaluated by content, not by the names submitting them. If Apple doesn’t want these apps boogering up the best-seller lists in various categories across the App Store, they should assign them all to a single category. (Tough job: finding a name for that category.)

The other thing that bothers me, and ought to bother Apple, is the obvious capriciousness with which these apps were removed. These apps were allowed for about a year and a half. Some developers were prospering by them. And then, boom, they were gone. The reason Apple ought to be concerned about this is that it unsettles all developers — even those whose apps and ideas for future apps were nowhere along the lines of girls-in-bikinis. What developers see here isn’t Apple managing its own brand. What developers see is that the App Store is a shaky foundation upon which to build a business. One day you’re prospering, the next day your app is gone. There are awesome iPhone OS apps that aren’t being built because developers don’t trust Apple not to yank the carpet out from underneath them.

Apple sees the App Store as an aspect of its brand. Developers see the App Store as the entirely of the Cocoa Touch platform. This is a significant conflict. Developers, if rejected from the App Store, can freely deliver whatever content they choose through MobileSafari — but you can’t reuse compiled Cocoa Touch apps that way. The work invested in a native app can only be recouped through the App Store.

It’s entrepreneurism to be willing to take your chances in the market. It’s healthy skepticism to worry about being locked out of the market after you’ve already invested heavily in building your product.

Compare Social Media Performance Head-to-Head with uberVu —

What Compete does for website analytics uberVU is now trying to do for social media. The company has just launched Compare, a new tool that does instant side-by-side social media performance comparisons by keyword or brand name.

Compare offers a freemium social media head-to-head comparison tool where users can input two brand names, keywords or phrases and view charts and graphs on how the entities rank against each other in terms of daily social media mentions, percent share of conversations for a particular site, and various sentiment breakdowns. Premium users can also export the associated data.

It’s a simplistic service on first look, especially for non-pro users, but for quick comparisons on products, movies and businesses, Compare overs a convenient glance at the bigger social media picture, especially as it evolves over time.

For instance, looking at Avatar against Inglorious Basterds (see screenshot below), you can begin to see the story of how the movies are individually tracking in terms of social media mentions, and how they compare side by side.

Given that the tool is simple to use, easy on the eyes, and can be applied to almost any purpose, we can see it becoming an incredibly useful utility (especially to the entertainment industry). uberVU Pro plans start at $29.99 p/month, making the service a reasonably priced alternative to other social media monitoring services on the market.

[img credit: rezachka, iStockphoto]

Tags: MARKETING, social media monitoring, ubervu

A new report from TechCrunch shows that Facebook drives 44 percent of social sharing on the web. What can internet marketers learn from this?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In the past, online marketers simply had to execute a solid SEO strategy or hire an agency to do the work for them. Today, it's not so simple, and this data proves it. Social media has made it incredibly easy for users to share content (video, links and photos) with their friends and colleagues online. As a marketer, your business needs to have a presence in social media, no matter how niche your target audience may be.

Many people wondered what Google was thinking when they launched their own social media platform, Buzz, last week. Google is working hard to stay ahead of the social media traffic curve. If Buzz can be successful, it gives Google a chance to compete with Facebook and Twitter in the social traffic space.  If you're an inbound marketer, this is a clear sign that waiting around is not an option anymore, your business needs to have a presence in social media.

In order to balance the traffic your site receives from Search Engines, Blogs and Social Media, marketers need to think more like publishers. Here is a four-step action plan to help you get started:

1. Protect your Brand - Even if you don't plan on leveraging social media in your marketing efforts for six months, now is the time to reserve your brand name on the major social networks. Take control of your brand name before someone else claims it.

2. Content Strategy - Do you have one? The fundamental key to a successful inbound marketing strategy is to produce compelling content on your own site first. Social media only works if you have something interesting to say. Become a thought leader in your industry, or teach your audience something new. This is the type of content that attracts visitors, builds inbound links and promotes the sharing of content online.

3. Use Your Street Team - Your current audience members are your best advocates. Allow them to easily share your content with their personal networks on Twitter, Facebook, etc. Make sure your blog posts can be shared via Twitter & Facebook. A few simple links and your content will begin spreading faster than you could ever email it. Interesting content is being shared every minute of the day, now is the time to join in.

4. Get Analytical - Don't be afraid to test, track and learn from your early forays into blogging or social media. Make sure you have marketing analytics in place before you begin. This will make it easier to determine who is sharing your content online, and what the outcome of that social interaction is on your business. You should also track the specific sources of your traffic. Which social media site works best for your particular audience or vertical? This data allows you to make informed decisions at a later time. Inbound marketing is constantly evolving - without data to back up your decisions, your not giving yourself a fair chance to be successful.

This article is written by Shaun Pinney, a member of our consultant team at HubSpot. Check out Shaun's Bio. 

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