Social Media
Google Buzz: Positives, Negatives, and the Unknown
If you are an Internet marketer, you’ve no doubt been inundated with Google Buzz over the past few days. As I’ve read through articles and blog posts about Buzz, there’s certainly mixed emotions.
From my perspective, I see opportunity, but it might not be the same opportunity services like Facebook and Twitter (the apparent direct competition) bring to mind.
After a week of experimenting, here are some of my thoughts on the positives, negatives, and unknowns that could make or break Google Buzz as an serious player in the social networking space.
The Shrinking Gap Between Personal & Professional Space Online
The BBC recently published a video on how the internet is blurring the social boundaries between our personal and professional lives seen online. It brings to attention how much of ourselves is being broadcast on the internet and how a younger generation’s comfort with these applications brings inherent risk as well.
As 2009 comes to a close, I’ve been reflecting a great deal on how social media is bridging a shrinking gap between my personal and professional space online, and what it means to me.
8 Essential Tools for the Aspiring Digg Power User
With over 40 million unique visitors per month (according to Compete.com) Digg is one of the most popular sites on the Internet. Getting an article on the Digg home page can send tens of thousands of unique visitors and generate hundreds of back links.
The Power of Niche Communities in Traffic Acquisition
The most underrated component of a social media strategy is the targeting of niche communities. I’m not sure why that is the case but have a few suspicions.
For one, success stories and buzz around popular networks like Facebook, Twitter, Digg, etc dominates the web. Niche communities are also harder to locate. In many cases, the initial traffic/networking value may seem poor in comparison to the time investment.
I’m a firm believer in finding your sweet spot in niche communities. Here are two examples from friends and colleagues.
A Beginner’s Guide to Personal Brand Management in Search
A set of recommendations for ranking for your name in search engine results.
As recent as a year or two ago, Google would list a map of “Edmond, Oklahoma” when you searched for “Derek Edmond“. It was annoying but not a big deal in the grand scheme of things.
Even before Google finally realized my name should not be associated with “oil dereks in the Oklahoma area“, I was working on making sure the rest of the search results showed more “professional” information.
Is Twitter Making You a Lazy Blogger?
Apparently, I was a week behind with feeds in my RSS reader but did manage to read Lyndon Antcliff’s post on why he won’t tweet Rand Fishkin. If you’re suffering from writers block yet spending too much time on Twitter, perhaps you should read it as well.
Experimenting with Google Friend Connect
I’ve started paying attention to Google’s initiatives with the Social Web, particularly Google Friend Connect and the development of Google profile-related initiatives. Here’s a video that explains Friend Connect:
Social Networking and Google
Digg Broke Up With Me Last Week, But Now We’re Working Things Out
A few weeks ago, I was enjoying a nice relationship with Digg, hitting the front page (FP) with over half of my submissions (less than 1% of all submissions hit the Digg FP*). Things were going great.
Then, last week, the relationship seemed to abruptly end. My next eight submissions failed to make the FP. For a few of those, I wasn’t even close.
What was I doing wrong?
List of Sites Preventing DiggBar with a Framebuster
As an active Digg user, I’ve been paying attention to the discussion around the new DiggBar and it’s pros and cons (see the bottom of this post for articles of reference). I find that DiggBar makes voting on Digg submissions more convenient, but I certainly understand some of the arguments against it.
Since I’ve been using the DiggBar regularly for the past week or so, when a site is using Framebuster or Frame Killer code to disable it, it sometimes can throw me off (particularly if I closed the browser window with the original Digg submission).
A List of Sites Preventing DiggBar with a Framebuster
Cape Cod Twitterers: 70+ Twitter Profiles on Cape Cod
With millions of users and over 3 million visits per month (according to Compete.com), Twitter has rapidly grown from a niche service into a mainstream online application for communication, branding and networking.
70+ Twitter Profiles on Cape Cod & The Islands
In the spirit of recently published Twitter user lists including everything from prominent members & brands to online marketers and even home builders, here is a list of Twitter profiles in and around Cape Cod and the Islands.