Remind me why I’m following you? photo credit: furryscaly

Twitter is a great tool for meeting people, sharing information, and creating connections — but only if you can actually use it to build a community of people who are interested in following you. The question is: what makes you followable?

A good place to start is by knowing what makes people NOT want to follow you. Jenn Lowther’s blog post on 10 things that will make me not follow you on Twitter is a funny overview of what makes someone grotesquely unfollowable — like Jenn, I’m quickly turned off by ugly MySpace-style designs, animated avatars, pointless rambling, and other blatant no-nos.

But what makes you a compelling tweeter? That’s a little harder to answer, at least in a universal way — but if you’re using Twitter and hoping to build a community of followers, you’d better know the answer to this question.

New people are visiting your profile every day and deciding whether to follow you or not. They’re spending somewhere between 5 and 30 seconds making that decision. If you want to get followed, you need to give them a good reason to follow you, and you need to make that reason shine through in your tweets and your profile.

Of course, being followable depends on who you are and who follows you. Being a followable celebrity is different from being a followable dog trainer or web designer or mom. But great tweeters share a few universal characteristics that transcend the specifics of niche, profession, and other details. So in the interest of helping you become a bit more followable, here’s my personal list of 10 things you can do that will make me way more likely to click that little “Follow” button. Continue Reading »

photo credit: Derek Farr ( DetroitDerek )

If you haven’t been living in a cave for the last twenty years, you probably find the title of this post laughable. I hope you do. I was trying to be funny, or at least a little ironic, when I wrote it.

Simple, you ask? It isn’t, of course. The Internet is about as simple as a map of an elephant’s nervous system, or a set of space shuttle blueprints. Internet marketing? Even more complex.

But here’s the thing with complexity: If you step back far enough away from anything, no matter how complex, complex details become simple pictures.

That nervous system diagram becomes a large mammal with thick skin and a weird nose. That blueprint becomes a plane with undersized wings strapped to a big rocket. And Internet marketing becomes a folding table and a pitcher of lemonade on a hot summer day.

I spend a lot of time using the Internet to learn, to communicate, to do business, and to make money. It’s the medium I work in, and I love it. But there are plenty of times when Internet marketing leaves me feeling confused, ignorant, overwhelmed, or irrelevant. Or all of the above.

So when new clients come to me for help and admit sheepishly that they’re bewildered by the strange universe that is Internet marketing — believe me, I understand. I’ve been there, and in some ways, I’m still there.

All of which got me thinking: What if I had to explain the whole universe of Internet marketing in an hour? Would it even be possible? And could I explain it clearly enough that it would give someone who’s never sold a thing online everything they need to get started?

That’s the challenge I’m giving myself today. It’s the simple story of Internet marketing. Twelve installments, five minutes to read each, for a total of an hour. And if you’re new to online marketing, you’re the person I’m writing it for.
Continue Reading »

It goes both ways. photo credit: psd

A guest post I wrote for TravelBlogs late last year has been getting a lot of attention via StumbleUpon lately, which got me wondering: How exactly do you thank people for stumbling your site?

After all, a few stumbles can make a huge difference in the amount of traffic and attention you get. And there are plenty of other benefits — ever since I posted the article, my friend requests on other social networks like Twitter and LinkedIn have jumped dramatically. I’m no Chris Brogan, but hey, I’m getting there.

These are influential web users who have appreciated your content enough to take a second and indicate that they like it. They’re giving you a bit of virtual real estate because they feel you’re worth it.

So how to thank them for all this free attention? Here’s a quick guide to sharing the StumbleUpon love. Continue Reading »

The many, many, many faces of Web 2.0. photo credit: luc legay

Vancouver search marketing firm 6s Marketing tweeted this story on CNN proclaiming that “Web 2.0 is so over.”

I’m not going to offer any opinions on whether it’s “so over” or just getting started — but either way, Web 2.0 is (has been?) a social revolution, giving Internet users the power to share and publish content. In that sense, the revolution has been a success: people everywhere are publishing, innovating, and directing attention to achieve goals that would have been unthinkable ten years ago.

(Here’s a recent example of web-driven fundraising I found moving. Chip in if you agree.)

But the “2.0″ in Web 2.0 was also supposed to signal a relaunch of the Internet after the first dot-com bust as a financially viable platform for launching new businesses. And in that sense, the CNN piece points out, the top-tier successes have been underwhelming thus far. Continue Reading »

The joy of reading. photo credit: pedrosimoes7

Like pretty much anyone working in communications, I use a feed reader (in my case, Google) to keep tabs on a large number of publications by subscribing to their RSS feeds. This lets me take a few minutes out of a busy day and flip through stories as I wish, enjoying them a bit like the guy in this post’s picture is doing.

But even though I’m diligent about eliminating “stale” feeds, I’ve got 99 blogs dumping content into the pipe for me to read — many of which publish so much it makes me wonder how fast these people can type. I’d love to read them all, but if I did, well, I wouldn’t get anything else done.

That’s why I keep an A-list folder. This is the gold — the stuff I’ll make time to read no matter what comes up. Many of these are blogs I’ve been reading for years. They’re not plain old news like BBC and CNN headlines, which I do follow (if sporadically). This is the stuff that’s a little outside the box - the content that keeps me entertained, informed, well-rounded, and growing as a professional and a person. Continue Reading »

How identical is too identical? photo credit: The Iglesia`s

Sergey asks: “I have an article posted on my website - can I post it on my blog either and/or submit it to some PR resources without violation of Google duplicate content policy?”

This is a question that worries a lot of people when they’re starting out online. If you publish one thing in two places, do you have to worry about getting nailed because of some mysterious Google policy.

No, you don’t. Continue Reading »

Who can resist a little chrome? photo credit: mikebaird

In the traditional cloud of online fanfare we’ve come to expect when Google releases anything new — Google Chrome is now available.

For PC only.

This comes as little comfort to those of us who are traveling the world armed solely with a Macbook. After half a year on this equipment, I’m as much a Mac fanboy as anyone currently tickling the white keys or fondling some touchscreen… but it’s sad that we’re always second-tier in the big-time releases.

And I don’t double-boot.

For my surfing needs, I’m currently using Flock’s browser with a lot of positive results — I *love* clicking little tabs to open those always-logged-in sidebars for Flickr, Twitter, Facebook, and the rest of the social stuff.

But frankly, Flock bogs down a fair bit. So I’m really keen on trying a stripped-down new browser that places top importance on trimming the fat… er, chrome.

So what to do if you’re waiting to download Google Chrome browser for Mac?

1. Get on the Google Chrome for Mac mailing list to be alerted when it’s released.
2. Head over to Cool OSX Apps and gloat about all the cool stuff your (relatively speaking) glitch-free operating system can do.
3. Fondle the touchscreen on your expensive Apple device and check your email obsessively.

Or, if you have something better to do, do that.

We are the flock. photo credit: The Pack

Flock is really, really cool.

Especially if you’re geeky like me and are always logging in to, oh, Gmail, Facebook, flickr, Twitter, a few self-hosted Wordpress blogs, YouTube, and any of a billion other Web 2.0 properties.

Lashing together your identity online? Amazing opportunity of the 21st century.

Doing it all from your sidebar? Priceless.

(Unless you like logging into a dozen accounts a day.)

Tags: flock browser web 2.0 online services

I’m in Ontario, California at the Podcast and New Media Expo. It’s a brilliant conference full of podcasters — a fascinating breed.

After two days of attending sessions and wandering the tradeshow and hanging out with all these new media types, I’m sold. The enthusiasm is irresistable… and I’ve learned about a lot of great tools for content creation, distribution, and all that fun stuff.

So I just pitched a podcasting project to my favorite client — my wife Lindsie.

I’ll tell you all about it when it’s underway. Promise. And I’ll write up some of the notes I’ve taken on what’s new and exciting in the world of, well, new media. Stay tuned.

I just finished some consulting on a site called First Time Secrets that sells a guide to losing your virginity. (An instruction manual — now why didn’t I think of that?)

Among editorial and other consulting work, I really dug into the search engine optimization on this one. Things are going really well — the site’s already up to the first page of Google results for terms like “how to lose your virginity” and “guide to losing your virginity.”

How did we do it? Well, picking a good niche was a great start — there’s no direct competition. After identifying some lucrative possible keywords, I created a Google-compliant sitemap, then a homepage with solid title tags, meta tags, and a decent keyword density for the page content.

The real kicker has been the addition of a blog on virginity and other sexual topics. The mix of random and SEO-driven content here really add up, and we’ve watched traffic climb to 30-40 unique visits per day already.

Next up, I’ll be working on some linking strategies and article submission to continue growing site traffic, and exploring some different content strategies. Marketing to teens and youth is fairly new to me, something I haven’t really looked at since I tried to sell Grade Eight students on the merits of Shakespeare. (In another life as a high school English teacher…)

What else are we going to start seeing instruction manuals for? I wonder.