The Social Media Wars are Upon Us

Twitter is evolving!

Facebook and Google+ have demonstrated how difficult social media can be, how many “circles” we can be made to jump through on our way to nirvana and social media engagement.

Enter Twitter!

Twitter is doing it right:

• Simple
• Engaging
• Interesting

The Social Media Wars are upon us!

The stakes?

• Our time
• Our attention
• Our data.

And in the end?

It is all about our data!

Guard your privacy.

Soon it may be an illusion…a distant memory!

More on Twitter’s evolution.

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• 

The Ning Violation

Is Ning’s Decision Good Business?

I usually write about Internet marketing, inbound marketing, online business, offline/online business, and the like here at The Internet Marketing Quest Revealed. This blog post is related to all of those topics and more.

The decision Ning made, and will enforce tomorrow, will affect people from all walks of life, many who simply built a wonderful little, or not-so-little, online community.

The Ning Violation is, in fact, a violation of a commitment, an agreement between Ning and all of those little online communities and their members. It will affect many people and it has been handled badly. It is not about the money.

It is about an implicit contract, a social contract if you will, between Ning and its users.

That is why I call it The Ning Violation!

The Ning Violation

I awoke this morning, went through my usual routine, and then went to my email box. I always put off email until I have accomplished my two major tasks of the day, so as not to be distracted. Email is the bane of almost every marketer’s existence. You can’t work effectively if you focus too much time and attention on email, it will suck precious minutes and hours out of your day; and, conversely, you can’t do business without it, email is a crucial component in today’s interconnected, online world.

So, on to my email inbox and what do I find?

An email announcing The Ning Violation, a take it or leave it upgrade policy. I have Ning pages and have set them up for clients, so naturally I was concerned. Several things popped into my head almost at once, the first was a twinge of anger at the prospect of my work being held hostage; and, right along with that thought was the thought that, if this was rubbing me the wrong way, it had to be affecting others the same way.

Mountain out of a mole hill?

Tempest in a teapot?

Perhaps!

After all, at first glance I can upgrade for as little as $2.95 per month or $19.95/year.

Peanuts!

But then, I looked at what I get for “peanuts” and it seems pretty obvious where I am being pointed by the marketing team at Ning.

Next, I reviewed Ning Plus with Advanced Features for $19.95 per month or $199.95/year and it looks a bit better.

Until I realize that Ning has conveniently left out the capability to add new videos or offer music, two of the most popular Ning features. They do allow access to current videos, so they do appear to understand the concept of grandfathering, but it appears to be too little, too late.

Finally, we get to Ning Pro, announced as being Built for Scale. Ning Pro os $49.95 per month or $499.95/year…and I save 17%!

API Access, unavailable at the lower levels is offered as an upgrade at the Pro Level, as are additional Bandwidth and Storage.

Ning offers sponsored networks for Education at the Mini level and Health at the Plus level. Both sponsorship networks require an application process and a sponsorshiop acknowledgement must be placed on the header of your Ning Mini or Ning Plus page.

If it is in one of those two categories and if it qualifies.

Several questions popped into my mind:

1. Why was this notice the first notice? I am very good about catching this sort of thing and even go through my spam folder before deleting it to make sure nothing important gets trapped. But I will concede this point, perhaps I was missed or missed the announcement.
2. Why am I getting this notice one day before the cut off?
3. How are my clients going to react to an increase in fees, however small, for something they perceived as free?
4. Is this ethical?
5. Is this good business?

The Ning Violation

This is clearly not a lot of money and we all have more important things to occupy our time.

So, why do I feel violated?

This is the heart of it:

This is bad business, plain and simple. The cost is irrelevant, the threat is, take it or leave it. It is unethical. Interestingly, if you have a Ning page and you do not upgrade to the appropriate level? They are holding your content. You can’t see it, it isn’t available to anyone through their network, but it is there and you can download it to your computer.

But then what?

We all know who the content belongs to. It belongs to the creator of the page and the members. That content is as much a part of their lives as anything they have built online and now they either accept Ning’s terms or they have no vehicle for expression.

Yes, I am sure Ning has that tied up in the Terms of Service (TOS). I haven’t checked as of this writing but it is irrelevant at this point because they have lost a user, several actually.

Ning obviously knows what a Grandfather clause is.

Why didn’t they use it in some way, shape or form?

Let’s look at a possible scenario:

A community develops a soccer program and tells everyone in town they can play and the community will pick up the bill, play on the community fields. etc. Coaches can create the best team possible from the available pool of children who want to play. To build the program and the individual teams, everyone will invest their time to get the program going and make the individual teams successful.

Now comes The Soccer Violation

After a couple of years the program has been built and the teams are flourishing.

Now, the community steps in and says:

“Things are going to change beginning tomorrow. Beginning tomorrow, you can play in the pasture over by the barn for $3 a month per child or you can play in the baseball diamond outfield for $20 a child or you can continue to play on the nice, new community soccer fields for $50 a child. Up to you, take it or leave it…the new program starts tomorrow.”

There will be a lot of kids out of soccer in that community…today!

I am willing to bet, there will be a lot less Ning pages in the online community tomorrow and a lot of ill-will for a long time to come.

Here are the questions that started rattling around in my brain as soon as I read the email and as I dug into this deeper:

If Ning can do it, who will be next?

If Ning can pull off The Ning Violation, why not Facebook or YouTube or Twitter?

Perhaps it is coming, in one way or another. Bit by bit and drip by drip, things will change, they always do. But many have asked this question, faced this scenario head on, and balked.

Why did Ning push the envelop?

Are they in trouble financially?

Hard to say!

But the question I come back to time and again is:

The Ning Violation: Is it Ethical?

This is not what I had intended to write about for this blog today…but I think the question deserved the space.

I hope you agree!

Thank you for taking the time to visit and read this post/rant.

Please, feel free to comment and don’t forget to subscribe…we have an awesome ebook coming out on September 7, 2010 and it is only available to subscribers…free.

John Zajaros
The Ultimate Internet Image
Lakewood, Ohio 44107
216-712-7004
Skype: johnzajaros1

PS, Check out our newest blog at Ultimate Inbound Marketing. It is still young but will grow fast…I hope you will grow with us!

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• 

How to Use Social Media Effectively: A Lesson in Overlap, Privacy, and the Power of a Tweet

Social media is the newest toy, a fad, a phase, a resource, a platform for social expression, a political weapon, a marketing platform, a symptom, a pathology, a paradox, a conundrum, a black hole….

A MYSTERY!

Social media may be all of the above and more. In fact, social media is whatever you want it to be…because you define your experience!

Or do you?!

Ultimately, only time will tell. As with everything new, and in the grand scheme of things social media is in its infancy, in geological terms an instant in time (or less), there will be myriad changes before anything approaching its final expression will emerge.

The ultimate social media question, particularly interesting from an anthropological perspective may be:

What will social media look like in its final form, if a final form is indeed possible, or will it simply evolve until it eventually goes extinct? Will social media go the way of the Yo-Yo, the hoola hoop, console televisions, the Sony Walkman, the Commodore computer, Atari, the American Football League, the USFL, the Brooklyn Dodgers, and the Milwaukee Braves?

Think of all the things that were “here to stay” in your lifetime. I’ll bet you can name quite a few. Where are many of them now?

If we can bank on one thing, it is the attention span of the public, or lack thereof, the public here in the USA and around the world. It is fleeting!

Doubt it? For those of you who have been using Twitter for the last couple of years, how many of the people you connected with, “tweeted” with on a daily basis two years ago are still around? Of the ones who disappeared, I would be willing to bet many are still following you…they have simply vanished! And I am talking about people you really hit it off with, not the plethora of entrepreneurs engaging with you in an attempt at “relationship marketing” (a.k.a., social media marketing – an oxymoron), I am talking about people you conversed with daily about everything!

They are gone! Lost interest. Didn’t pay. Whatever!

Retention is social media is beyond the scope of this post but it is in the mix. Why? Because as social media continues to evolve on its way to a final form or extinction, it is going to reveal a lot about its users and about how society uses information.

And that is the reason for this post dealing with social media!

I came across this slide presentation dealing with social media at length on SlideShare and it is brilliant, thought-provoking, and even a bit frightening. I guarantee you haven’t thought of everything this man has. This SlideShare presentation is worth your time to read and digest because it is instructive, informative, and…a warning!

Social media is all of the above and none of the above mentioned manifestations. But whatever it is to you, it is a resource for others, an information base that is being compiled for a myriad of reasons.

So, be careful what you share on social media because regardless of how you perceive social media, there are others who will USE what your share differently; and, ultimately, for their own purposes!

Enjoy the slide show! It is worth the time!

John Zajaros
The Ultimate Internet Image
Lakewood, Ohio 44107
216-712-7004
Skype: johnzajaros1
johnz@ultimateinternetimage.com

PS, Please leave a comment if you like it…or if you don’t!

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• 

How to Build a Social Media Presence: The Use of Autofollowers and Other Mistakes

As more and more Internet marketers hop on the social media band wagon, chasing social media riches, many focus on building huge followings using the various autofollowers.

With all the hub-ub about Twitter, and social media in general, that people would attempt to shortcut the system in order to get the most out of it, or simply because the alternative is too labor intensive, is not suprising in the least!

Regardless of the reason or reasons for the various shortcuts (e.g., shortage of time, personnel, greed, pie-eyed optimism, whatever), many people have resorted to various pick and shovel resources, the resources sold to the “gold miners” of social media, the “49ers” if you will, the men and women, even boys and girls seeking their fortune via social media.

Some of the more common ‘picks and shovels” are autofollowers, autotweet platforms, and even entire Twitter management systems. I am going to leave the numbers two and three alone, for now anyway, and focus on the auto-followers and their use…or abuse.

Twitter has been working hard to deal with the avalanche of spam complaints and much of it stems from the shortcutting enaged in my individuals and companies attempting to gain and edge.

Significantly, much of the spam and many of the resulting complaints stem from those individuals aggressively, some would argue too aggressively, building their following, connections, friends, and so on with the various “tools” being sold to the “miners” as the next-best get rich quick with social media ploy.

The ironic thing about all of this is that Twitter and the other social media platforms do not work like that, they aren’t Web 2.0 or 3.0 slot machines. In other words, you can’t simply post a link, or “link up,” and expect the Heavens to open, manta to be delivered from On-High, and gold to be discovered in “them thar hills!”

Yes, once in while someone may purchase something but it is rare and the ROI just plain sucks! The time spent posting links can be better spent writing articles, making videos, and doing the real work of Internet marketing. There are no shortcuts and a huge following without brand recognition is just about worthless…it is the connection, that’s the real power of social media!

We all want to make the most with the least amount of time and effort, the 80/20 Rule and all of that, but certain things just don’t work and linking up with every tweet or post is not only ineffective, it is the kiss of death!

Social media marketing is an oxymoron, marketing within social media, and I am talking about all day every day linking up from morning to night, will not only NOT lead to sales, it will lead to social media suicide.

Social media mugging is a concept I am in total agreement with. You simply cannot link up on the first encounter, with every link and/or in every situation. I have referred to it as the ” Psst! Hey Buddy, wanna buy a watch?” syndrome! It is just as alienating and just as ineffective.

Don’t do it!

Build your following like you are building a foundation for your own home, do it one brick at a time, one follower, connection or friend at a time. The nice thing about this approach is that, although it will take more time, you will know where all the bricks are and you will know exactly what you have. And, that is what yields results, knowing your following, not simply having an amorphous mass of strangers, unresponsive, cold, and totally unaware of you you are and/or what you are about!

Build one person at a time, review profiles, send invitations before, during and after your follow each other and you will achieve success in a way most people using the shortcuts only dream of!

18,000 followers in 18 days or 18,000 in a year? The former is useless, the latter is responsive, engaging, and fun…they are friends! 18,000 social media friends is incredible…18,000 strangers is a mess! Which would you prefer?

Thanks and contact me anytime!

John

Professor John P. J. Zajaros, Sr., The Bad Back Guy
216-712-6526
216-539-7412
Skype: johnzajaros1
johnz@thequestrevealed.com

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• 

How to Succeed in an Online Business

Going from Newbie to Profitability in a few Short Months…Instead of Years!

The journey from what they call a “newbie” to profitability has been an interesting one, one that has taken many hours, days, weeks, and months. Making money with an online business has taken quite a bit more time and effort than most would have you believe while they attempt to rope you into the latest “get rick quick” scheme.

The road to Internet marketing profitability has been full of ups and downs, with quite a few moments when I simply wanted to throw my computer right out the window…and then track down each and every person who had introduced me to the computer age…to “thank” them, of course!

Sound a bit harsh? Not if you have been in the Internet marketing world for any length of time, either attempting to make money in an online business or with an Internet presence for a traditional brick and mortar business!

Before we get into the highs and lows, the strategies that work and the schemes to avoid, let’s define a few terms:

Newbie: The word newbie is a slang term for a person new to some form of online activity. For our purposes, the definition we will use applies to an individual engaged in Internet marketing and online business for the first time…with little or no experience. While in some corners it has derogatory connotations, for our purposes and in the manner most people online use the term, it is for descriptive purposes only. Of course that is not to say there aren’t those out there who won’t use it in a derogatory fashion; this is, after all, the real world and there are people like that in every walk of life. But for our purposes, it simply means an individual just starting down the road to an Internet marketing education, usually to build and online business of some kind.

Guru: The word guru, and I am using it with a small “g” on purpose, has entered the online lexicon, conferring the status of “more-than-expert” on an individual. While the original usage of the word had religious connotations and was bestowed on an individual with great authority through wisdom and knowledge, particularly in India with Hinduism, Sikhism, and Buddhism. In much of the Western world, the term or designation of guru generally applies to anyone who amasses a number of followers, not always in the religious or philosophical sense…but in business and academia, as well. In it’s latest incarnation, the Internet Marketing and online business usage, the term guru is used to denote authority due to a particular set of skills…in this case building online businesses and marketing on the Internet.

The above terms are used in various ways by the Internet marketing crowd. Suffice it to say, they are not universally recognized or applied, often meaning different things to different people. The term “guru” being particularly problematic, as the designation of one with great authority and wisdom has carried over from the original usage and meaning; and, this use of the word has been encouraged by many Internet marketers today, for obvious reasons!

Significantly, as a beginner or newbie online, and one not completely understanding the nuances of the jargon and the history behind the evolution of the usage of the words above, this often leads people to chose to follow someone who has not earned the designation conferred or bestowed upon them…a designation either bestowed by others or, just as often, by the person himself or herself!

So Newbie Beware!

Things are not always as they appear online…but this is true in the offline world, as well. The problem online is many of the Internet marketing “gurus” are often quite adept at pushing all the right buttons in just the right way, creating a sense of desire and urgency, a powerful combination and an often irresistible force! Some of them are true gurus, at least in the sense that they are excellent marketers, fully capable and willing to part a budding newbie from his or her hard earned, and often limited resources!

So, how do you succeed at Internet marketing? In fact, who do you believe and who do you learn from if you don’t know who is a legitimate Guru and not simply a self-appointed, or self-anointed “guru”?

The best advice I can give you is to talk to other newbies. Most newbies will tell you if they have had a bad experience with a certain Internet marketer (see The Law of 250 below) and will usually be forthcoming about what works, and what doesn’t, as well.

Also, follow the conversations on social media, many of the conversations, and I am not referring to the recent unending linkfest over at Twitter, what a spamfest that has become, I am talking about reading the articles posted on LinkedIn and Mashable, just to name two excellent resources for newbies. Another wonderful resource is the free material provided by some of the more established Internet marketing firms, including TrafficGeyser, StomperNet, and HubSpot. (see the links below)

Opt-in to the email lists of the recommended programs (below), read their free material and follow the advice. When ready, they are some of the best programs on Internet marketing and they will teach you everything you need to know once you join…and they will help with implementation too, a rare combination.

The first steps to take in building your online business:

1) Decide on a niche. There are literally thousands of niches, so pick one you can get excited about. But also make sure it will pay!

2) Do the necessary keyword research and competitive analysis before jumping into an unprofitable niche. (I use Market Samurai, Google, and Wordtracker)

3) Only after the first 2 steps are completed should you purchase your own domain name. (I use GoDaddy)

4) Make sure you have a hosting company, a good one, one with 24/7 support. I use HostGator and SEOHosting (Both owned by the same company and they offer Fantastico…a must)

5) Get an email account set up, for your email marketing and your autoresponder. (I use a branch of AWeber)

6) Set up your profile for your social media image and make sure it is appropriate to and for your business model.

7) Set up an account at EzineArticles and a couple of others and begin to write a few articles. (We will get into this in an upcoming article)

Set up your YouTube, Break, and Viddler Channels for video. When ready, go to TrafficGeyser-link below-don’t try to “go it on the cheap” with the
freebie services, they all have major drawbacks and hooks! You get what you pay for, especially with implementation!

9) Find a great SEO course and apply yourself immediately. Get the SEO right from the beginning because it is huge and once everything is set up correctly, it will be your biggest asset! Get it wrong and you will pay for it in a myriad of ways and over the life of your business.

10) Find a mentor! I cannot overstate this point!!! Even Michael Jordan, Kareem, Tiger Woods, Babe Ruth, and Hank Aaron had/have their coaches and mentors. The major Internet marketing Gurus have coaches and mentors. They may not always talk about them but they all have them! Once you have a mentor? Follow their advice! If you play for Don Shula or Pat Riley or Joe Paterno and you don’t follow their advice…you are off the team! The same holds true for following a mentor! If you don’t think enough of the mentor or coach you have to follow their advice…find another one, because you obviously don’t need the one you have, or you would apply what they teach you. Lombardi, Hayes, Jackson, Paterno, Riley, Rupp, whomever…if you don’t play by their rules, you don’t play on their team. So, once you are fortunate to find a quality coach or mentor, one willing to spend their precious time on you, apply what they teach you because good coaches are hard to come by! Every Tom, Dick, and Mary is calling themselves a coach, mentor or “life coach” nowadays…make sure you have a good one, and then hold on for dear life!

11) Keep learning! Internet marketing and online business building is as fluid as any marketing and business endeavor I have ever been involved in. If you do not continue your education, and I am talking about daily, you will be left in the dust. Internet marketing is active, vibrant, and engaging. If you do not stay current, you will not prosper.

OK!

That’s a lot to cover and we have quite a way to go, yet! However, if you lay the proper foundation, if you get the bare bones stuff right, you will be on your way to profitability! Get it wrong and you will be struggling a year from now…if you last that long.

This is not rocket science! All you have to do is listen to some of the people who have made it, and made it big, to know that you can do it. It simply takes a concerted effort, application on a daily basis, constant education, and what Tony Robbins calls CANI!

Constant and neverending improvement!

If you build each day upon the one before, you will prosper. It will take time but if you apply yourself and understand that there is a learning curve and that The Law of 250 is a make or break proposition, you will do well. In fact, there may come a day when someone refers to you as an Internet marketing Guru…capital G!

One last thing…and this is the biggest of all!

Stop listening to the siren’s song and the promises of “Instant Wealth” every Tom, Dick, and “guru” that comes along is making! Get with a mentor or a quality program, learn it, stick with it, and build it! The tools are available, you simply have to educate yourself and then apply the knowledge to your Internet marketing endeavor. If you do? Your online business will be amazing, and so will your profitability!

REMEMBER: DO NOT LISTEN TO THE SIREN’S CALL!

John

Professor John P. J. Zajaros, Sr.
216-712-6526
866-835-2913 (toll free)
Skype: johnzajaros1
johnz@thequestrevealed.com

PS, Here are the resources I promised. Quality Internet marketing and online business programs:

1) Video Marketing: There is only one for video marketing, the rest all feed off of this one in one way or another! Or they just don’t measure up!

2) Article Marketing: There is only one number one!

3) SEO or search engine optimization: Again, there are a lot of wannabes…but only one quality program and it addresses it all and offers an amazing Internet marketing and SEO education! I didn’t realize how much I had yet to learn until I joined this program!

4) Domain Manager: GoDaddy (see icon on side panel and type in “diggnation” at checkout for the best deal) If you are purchasing more than one domain name? Check only the .com and .info boxes (how can you not buy .info for less than a buck?). Then at checkout you will be offered the remainder of the .org .net and .us or whatever at 50% to 75% savings! Do NOT check them ahead of time…only as part of the upsell process after you proceed to checkout. Then, add “diggnation” into the promo code box for additional savings.

5) Hosting: If you are building one website and/or blog, stay with HostGator (on the sidepanel again). Purchase the “Business” account, not the cheapy ones! You will get a dedicated IP address and an 800 number free. These two add-ons are well worth the extra 4-5 bucks! The psychological impact of being able to offer an 800 number, even if you rarely use it, is huge! The little cues make or break a business early! Take advantage of this cue and apply it!

6) Social Media Marketing: HubSpot is super for social media education…they have it down to a science! Do you need their service? No, at least not at first. But you do need their education. They also have a couple of cool tools for grading your efficacy online…so use them!

PPS, There are a lot more tips and I will pass them along in the weeks to come. January 2010 watch for a new online business building tool for any niche in Internet marketing….it will be comprehensive and it will be all you need!

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• 

The recent acquisition of FriendFeed by facebook, and yes all you English teachers out there, the proper name is left uncapitalized, announced to the world in early August 2009, still has much of the Internet wondering…”What next!?”

The consensus seems to be facebook coveted not only the FriendFeed staff of twelve, eleven of whom are engineers, but some of the FriendFeed tools and technology, applications the David-like FriendFeed had developed that left facebook’s Goliath in a rather covetous state.

To paraphrase several observations made in TechCrunch:

As of the publication of the TechCrunch article, since updated (somewhat) and written by Jason Kincaid on August 10, 2009, the details and the full implication(s) of the purchase are, as of yet, unclear…but Kincaid calls it a “good match.”

Clearly, the acquisition is a good match for facebook as it continues to ramp up its onslaught on twitter (yes, also uncapitalized–didn’t these guys go to grammar school?). The motivation behind the acquisition seems to be as much about facebook acquiring FriendFeed’s tools and technology, along with the small but very creative staff.

In the last year, facebook has “borrowed” several of the FriendFeed tools, such as the ‘Like’ feature and also the “emphasis on real-time news updates.”

Clearly, FriendFeed’s overall functionality outperformed facebook in a number of ways and in several key areas, so facebook did the logical thing…they stepped in and bought out their competition!

The consensus among the majority of the tech and social media writers I surveyed, the people who follow this kind of stuff daily (and my thinking, as well), is that the real win here for facebook is the acquisition of the FriendFeed team. The team is made up of several heavy-hitters from Google, including Paul Buchheit, responsible for the creation of Gmail and the original AdSense model. The ex-Googler team is clearly the the driving force behind the tools facebook covets and the ultimate reason for the facebook-FriendFeed deal.

Is this the next step in facebook’s onslaught on twitter? It would certainly seem to be the case!

In the meantime, FriendFeed remains a very interesting Web 2.0 platform and one worth getting comfortable with.

If you are very active on even a handful of social media sites, you know how difficult and time consuming it can be to keep them all updated with current material. A post on one may not been seen by someone who is a friend or follower on another site, and so on. So is there a solution for this? Some say FriendFeed is the answer.

While the long-term future of FriendFeed is still up in the air, whether it will remain a separate entity or will become part of facebook, the applications and tools continue to make this an attractive and very useful social media site. Yes, there are other sites offering various components of the FriendFeed toolbox…but the mix of tools and applications under one roof, so to speak, makes FriendFeed hard to beat.

FriendFeed is a live streaming web service that takes all of your activity on various social media and social bookmarking sites and consolidates it into one place. Members can subscribe to each other’s streams, and carry on a conversation right from one place instead of signing in and out of numerous sites. If you want to keep track of someone who is not a FriendFeed member but who does use social sites, FriendFeed gives you the option of having their various RSS feeds compiled into one place.

The number and variety of sites friendfeed supports is increasing all the time. Some of the more popular ones already on board are twitter, facebook, YouTube, Flickr, StumbleUpon, Digg, Seesmic, last.fm, and Furl, as well as RSS and Atom feeds.

FriendFeed is a great way to stay in touch with friends, family members and colleagues, but there are numerous other ways you can use its functionality:

1) Start or Join a Room: Have a hobby or cause you are passionate about? A Room is a place where you and others can have conversations about only that subject matter. This is also a great way to engage current and perspective customers, and provide information about your product or brand.
2) Grow your Social Network: When scrolling through streams, if you see someone with great posts or comments, hover over their name and hit subscribe.
3) Broaden your Interests: Everything a person you are following likes, is shared with you. Conversely, what you like – from pictures, to music, to articles, to videos, is shared with them as well.
4) Poll the People: FriendFeed has an easy way for you to ask for the opinions of others.
5) Conduct Searches: FriendFeed will not only provide you with links to related material, but you will also see user’s comments about them.
6) Segment your subscribers/friends into various categories to include: Home feed; Personal; Professional; and, Favorites.

You can also check out the most popular entries of the day, week, and month…all at the click of a mouse! Not only can you check out the most popular entries overall but you can also see how your comments fared and which comments attracted the most attention, from you and from others.

FriendFeed offers tools so you can pick how much content you want to see from each user, and a way to block those whose posts are less than desirable.

When you’re on the road, keep in touch via iPhone’s mobile application, FriendFeedToGo.

Until now, friendfeed’s user base has been relatively small, especially when compared to the likes of twitter, however, all indications are this will be changing rapidly over the next several months.

A recent press release states that FriendFeed will continue to operate normally, for now. However, it seems that the founders of both sites, facebook and FriendFeed, have admired each other’s work for quite some time and will work well together. Perhaps? It will be interesting to see if the long term plan will be to fuse the best of both services together to create the largest interface for users to aggregate all of their social networking updates and news items in one place or they will remain separate and distinct entities. Time will tell!

John
Join me on FriendFeed!
Join me on facebook!

Professor John P. J. Zajaros, Sr., PhD
216-712-6526
866-835-2913
Skype: johnzajaros1
johnz@johnzajaros.com

PS, I am presently taking on mentoring and coaching clients, so contact me any time and leave a message 24/7. I am also recommending anyone interested in growing their business check out StomperNet and TrafficGeyser, the two tools no online business, of any kind, should be without.

PPS, Check out my personal site, The John Zajaros Blog anytime!

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• 

Dan Hollings was brilliant tonight, talking about the Twitter marketing portion of StomperNet’s new Internet marketing platform.

As has been the case with every member of the StomperNet faculty over the past month, Dan was fantastic! The ladies and gentlemen of the StomperNet faculty have defined Internet marketing and online business success; and, they have also demonstrated the professional way to launch an Internet marketing product, with first-class information and a quality platform!

If you follow me anywhere on social media, you know that I am a big advocate of implementation. In other words, taking action using the proper tools, and to do so in the most efficient and effective way possible. I am talking about an Internet marketing business system, combining the necessary tools to make money online, along with those necessary to run a business effectively, not just in the sort run…but for years to come, should that be your desire.

I am always skeptical when I read some of the sales letters written by people calling themselves “gurus.” In some instances, these tomes are written by people barely able to keep their businesses afloat, offering this program or that, many of the words bandied about are:

Guru, and you may already know how I feel about that term as a descriptive adjective for most marketers!

Mentor, always at a prices that would make a Vegas Madam blush!

Coach, I wonder what John Wooden or Joe Paterno would say?

“Life” Coach, as opposed to what?

And many more!

Many of the people using these appellations have never built a lasting business of their own, in good times or bad, and fewer still have any real idea what it takes to be successful in the long-term. Yet we are bombarded daily with parroted advice from those among us…

“Faking it, until making it!”

Don’t get me wrong!

I am 100% behind people making a go of it online, in Internet marketing proper or in affiliate or niche marketing, because it’s all really the same thing (or is it?), they have my respect and admiration!

The problem I have is with people attempting to run before they have a good understanding of what it takes to walk…and attempting to lead others over the same cliff you may be heading for. The drop is steep and unforgiving.

So, my question is this:

If you aren’t sure of what you are doing, how in the world are you going to teach others?

The answer:

You can’t, at least not without pulling the both of you down together!

You see, sales and marketing is a lot more complex than most people maintain in their books with the catchy phrases. While many throw around names like Hill, Nightingale, Ziglar, Hopkins, Girard, and now Robbins and Tracy, they have little understanding of what drives people to act on a consistent and continuous basis, on both sides of the equation; sales/marketing; and, the purchasing-target audience/market.

Unfortunately, certain Internet marketing “gurus” have created an air of positive expectancy that doesn’t always match up with reality.

Some marketing “gurus” claim the “chosen few” will make from $10,000 to $100,000 per month in a matter of a few weeks, implying that all you have to do is:

1) Spend $X dollars for an application fee…that one kills me!

2) Spend $Y dollars an ebook…usually written in vague generalities in order to sell more, you guessed it, stuff!

AND

3) Spend $Z dollars for a monthly membership…and we get what for that? More stuff!

FINALLY

4) The heavens will open and all will be made clear from one high!

After all, their sales letter maintains…just look what Gee Willacres did in just 6 months after:

1) Having a leg removed…the wrong one!

2) Being trampled by a horse…a pony from the traveling carnival really!

AND

3) Having open-heart surgery…when he was supposed to have a kidney transplant!

If Gee can do it…well, gosh…so can you!

Pile on top of this line of whooey, whooey being a technical term I learned at the George Carlin School of Internet Marketing and Online Shenanigans Annual Conference, in suburban Tehran, the idea that a web presence (nice word for mass produced website) set up as some sort of a cookie-cutter, big scheme Internet marketing (Read: MLM) template is going to do draw the thousands to tens of thousands of victims, I mean visitors, per month necessary, based on even the best conversion numbers online, to generate that sort of income is flat out tom-foolery!

Another Carlin school term! Being a graduate, I am allowed to thrown them around!

And I am being very kind with the descriptive adjectives…sans the four letter ones!

Reality?

The reality of an individual with no clear idea of what to do and how to do it, just laid off from his or her job at Bob’s Burger Palace and Horseshoeing Emporium, a gig they’ve had for the last 20 years, and turning to the Internet in desperation is very different from the reality of an individual who has a marketing background, a stable home life, time to build a proper foundation before going full time, which includes the time educate one’s self, the moxie to network properly, and plenty of resources to spend on education and to fall back on if he or she takes a header off of one of those Internet marketing, online business cliffs!

Yet Internet marketing “gurus” seem to focus on the target market en mass…without realizing that Joe Palooka’s Internet marketing needs are very different from Betsey Homecki’s online business aspirations! Very few people (read: gurus with a small “g”) actually take the time to build any version of “Bob” (watch The New Money Masters with Frank Kern and Tony Robbins, brilliant!), and if they are, they must be way off the mark, because most of the people I talk to are frustrated, angry, disenchanted, and even bitter…tracking back to their experiences with the “gurus!” They want to make it, many want it with a white hot desire! The problem is with the delivery of information at a reasonable cost and in a way that is truly user friendly.

I don’t believe many of the “gurus” have a clue how people learn, much less what it takes to teach them! The end result is a support nightmare, a lot of people referring to “gurus” as scam artists, and a stadium full of people (Read: Joe Girard) screaming don’t buy from so-and-so! More to come on this topic!

So, getting back to Internet marketing, online business success, coaching, mentoring, and implementation!

The problem most people have starting out is not a lack of information, there is plenty of good information available if you know how to research and know what you are looking for; it’s not that there isn’t a proven template for success, there are several successful online business models available; and, it’s not that there is a lack of quality software to implement even the most ambitious strategies, there are some great Internet marketing implementation platforms available. The challenge is in knowing who to listen to, understanding what they are saying, which means cutting through all the hype; and finally, which program to invest in…in order to pull it all together…or at least start on the right path.

Who: Who to listen to and, more importantly, who to believe!

What: Understanding what they are saying. This means understanding the basics of marketing in general and Internet marketing specifically!

Which: Which way to go! There is no shortage of voices in the wilderness, some as soothing and convincing as any Siren’s call! Knowing which program to invest in has with it its own set of qualifiers and traps to avoid!

Beware!

Or better yet: Buyer Beware!

The reality…ah, back to reality…is that you can go any which way and get to where you are going. Or, as the old one-liner goes:

“You can’t get there from here!”

Ultimately, you have to put your faith, if trust is too big a word right now, in someone and something…both of them!

You must deal with the 3 Ws:

Who
What
Which

Back to Stompernet!

I have recommended a handful of programs over the last year, the ones I have wholeheartedly endorsed, and still use, I can count on one hand!

Enter StomperNet!

At $10,000 per year, it was just not in my make-up to invest that kind of money, even at $800 per month, in a marketing program, particularly at the stage of development I was in when StomperNet appeared on my radar. I have followed Brad Fallon, and he back, almost from day one of my involvement on Twitter, so I knew of Brad and StomperNet…and had heard nothing but good about both the man and the Internet marketing opportunity, because StomperNet is much more than a program, it is a complete system!

Ah, finally! The final piece of the puzzle:

System!

Like TrafficGeyser, a much more specialized system, one I endorse wholeheartedly, StomperNet is not only an Internet marketing system, it is a community, a university of sorts…in a very real way, a bit of academia on the Internet.

StomperNet is perhaps the only true Internet marketing university!

For that reason, and because I am so impressed with the StomperNet system and it’s community, including its amazing faculty, I am going to make the following offer:

If you purchase StomperNet using my affiliate link, you may contact me at any time, day or night 24/7 for the next 365 days, no kidding, for the next year, and we will work through the implementation together! I will always get back to you in short order, always!

PLEASE!

Do not take this as some sort of a “I am the greatest, I will lead you” ego trip!

I will be starting with StomperNet just like you, from the beginning! However, I do have experience with some of the components as individual products, so we will not be flying blind. What I am offering is a mastermind of at least two, open almost at your beck and call, and all you have to do is make your purchase through my link.

We will do the rest together.

In fact , I will make this even better:

For the next 90 days, we will meet online, via Skype, 3 evenings a week…for at least an hour a session…perhaps longer!

After the first 90 days we will see how things go. You never know, we may find we enjoy the mastermind sessions and simply expand upon it.

That’s my offer! I am so impressed with StomperNet, I think this is something that can serve to push a bunch of new “stompers” up all at once!

Once you get your email confirmation, and I get mine, we will set up our first session!

I am looking forward to having you as a fellow Stomper, as a colleague, and as a member of a mastermind focused solely on our collective success in Internet marekting!

John

Professor John P. J. Zajaros, Sr., PhD
216-712-6526
Skype: johnzajaros1
johnz@thequestrevealed.com
excellencepaidforward@gmail.com (my very personal email address)

PS, In case you missed it, the links toward the top of the article above are for the webinar series, the ones down the page are going straight to the StomperNet main page! Either way, see you soon!

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I received a message from a facebook friend. I belong to several groups, some are good, some are vehicles for spam…I get out of them fast! The man who sent me this is usually quite good about sending reliable information and not spamming, he is usually dead-on as far and insights and content. I got this message and I have enclosed the message and my response…and a few notes on the side.

By the way, this is not a knock on the group, it is a quality group, nor the gentleman, he seems like a great guy!

Message begins:

“Hi, John Doe (name changed) here.

Here’s a little thing I’ve noticed recently…

Now, I’ve learned amazing things in my 10 years in the home business industry. Life-changing things.

Here’s a quirky one that makes me giggle.

It’s this…

A. People loves to reference ‘Think and Grow Rich’ as their favorite book.
B. Most of those same people have never read it.

Now, I’m not here to judge you if you haven’t. (It truly is gold.)

Sure, the language in it is a little stiff, but the principles are what success are based on. Hands down. No fluff or filler.

So, here’s my time-saving gift for you…
All of Napoleon Hill’s Success Principles…in one place.

http://his product.com

Print it out and put it on your wall.

Rock and roll,
John Doe (name changed to protect the innocent)
Direct: XXX-XXX-XXXX (someone after my own heart, he puts his phone number on his stuff!)

http://XXXXXXXXXXXX.net

P.S. I live [X] blocks away from Michael Jackson’s star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and It’s been a complete mad house over here. Proof that one person CAN absolutely impact the entire world. The next person to do it could be you. ”

Message ends!

My response:

I wonder why it makes you giggle? Is it just that they haven’t read it or that they are “faking it until they make it,” something the “gurus” have told them to do? Clearly, many of the “fakers” don’t have a clue about the real power of the work…but then I wonder how many “gurus” do either?

I first read Think and Grow Rich after watching Zig Ziglar and J.Douglas Edwards speak years ago, decades ago! It is still with me. The real power of the book in the underlying theme, the unwritten lesson. Like you mentioned in your comment about Michael Jackson, and the impact one person can have on the world, Napoleon Hill was fortunate enough to have a mentor, someone who was wiling to say “Do this… and I will show you the way!” Andrew Carnegie changed Napoleon Hill’s life. Or at least Carnegie provided the vehicle for Napoleon Hill to change his own life. Infinitely more valuable!

Carnegie didn’t say, “Do this and I will show you the way. by the way, that will be 5 easy payments of $497! Or one payment of $97 and, by the way, here’s this one time offer!”

Carnegie said, “Spend the time, do the research, and I will reward your efforts with something of far greater value than money!”

I wonder how many Napoleon Hills are out there without the money for the upsell and the irresistible one-time-offer? A “guru” willing to get paid based on the if-come? Ha! Never happen! Not with the current crop of mentors and “gurus!”

Interestingly, it is precisely the pursuit of riches that most readers take from the work, the main idea or lesson. Yet Hill clearly states that is not where the real treasure lies!

I guess I was just perplexed by the “giggle” comment. Contrary to a “giggle,” I am almost saddened when I think of how profound an impact the work has had and how so many people have it dead wrong!

John

Response ends!

He Messaged Back!

“Good call, brother John. I should have worded this better. My giggle is the head shaking, “you guys are missing out” kind.

My life has been transformed by Hill’s principles. It seems ludicrous to me that people will reference the book as a favorite, but have never cracked it open.

And like you, it drives me nuts when someone thinks buying one ebook will quickly and easily show them the way. The lessons are learned in doing the thing. And man, doesn’t is seem like all our best stories are from those times we fumbled through it?

Loved hearing your piece of mind.

I saw Zig one time live. Boy, he is a master of owning the stage. (I also get a kick out of when he refers to his wife as “The Redhead.”)

John Doe”

His Response Ends!

I Followed Up!

Well said! Have a great night!

More like a chuckle than a giggle. I know what you mean now.

I think the key is in the title! “THINK” and grow rich! Most people are simply absent the “THINK” in the message, focusing solely on the riches.
Of course, they will never get it, the message or rich…but that’s what makes the world go around, I guess!

Take care!

John

Response Ends!

I added a couple of comments within the first response but it is 95% as written. The second part is 100% us! I wonder what Napoleon Hill or for that matter Andrew Carnegie would have to say about the interpretation many have applied as gospel? The gospel according to Napoleon Hill! I would be willing to bet the man is spinning in his grave. If Napoleon Hill could, I will bet you he would shout from the tree tops, for all to hear:

“You’ve got it all wrong!”

The fact is, many do have it wrong! There are key words many readers seem to have missed or simply do not get!

Words like:

Pursuit
Conceive
Achieve
Believe
Burning Desire
Mastermind

and so many more!

Think about the words in the context he used them, in the context of the day! The history of the times! Not how we shape them but how they were intended…as a guide, a process, and a journey!

There is no ultimate destination, other than death!

Success, and in fact life is all a process, a discovery process, a lifetime PURSUIT!

Success is the pursuit of a worthwhile or worthy ideal or goal!

The goal is simply a stepping stone to the next goal and the next worthwhile pursuit!

A goal is a single event in a lifetime full of PURSUITS, endeavors, journeys, and processes!

Riches are not a destination, they may be a reflection of how effectively you translate action into dollars, time into money. But they are in fact only a reflection, and not a very good one!

The destination? The goal? To live life fully and without remorse! Full of hope, and faith (in something, anything!), and love!

A successful life as one individual sees it, may not be a successful life for another. If success is viewed in terms on dollars?

Mother Teresa died a failure!

Success is the worthwhile pursuit of an ideal, a QUEST! When you look back upon your life, that is when:

The Quest is Revealed!

Will you die serene and fulfilled, as Mother Teresa did?

Or will you die one of the richest people on the planet, whose final words were:

“I blew it!” Sam Walton

Professor John P. J. Zajaros, Sr.
216-712-6526
Skype: johnzajaros1
johnz@thequestrevealed.com
http://johnzajaros.com
http://ultimateinternetimage.com
and about 30 more!

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How do we to get the biggest bang for our social media buck? In other words, understanding the metrics of Twitter is on everyone’s mind these days. As marketers attempt to determine the efficacy of their overall social media marketing strategy and how “the new kid on the block” fits into it, the challenge becomes, how do we optimize and monetize our efforts? In other words, how do we quantify Twitter?

As noted in the first two articles in this series, Twitter has taken the world by storm. Or to use a corny pun, < Twitter has the Internet a-flutter! The fact is, the growth rate of Twitter is nothing short of phenomenal. The mini-blogging phenomenon has taken the social media world by storm, 140 characters at a time. On Thursday, June 25, 2009, Alexa ranked Twitter #17 in the world, up 66 in 3 months, with an average rank of 36. The growth has been steady, with quite a few peaks and very few valleys. In fact, the valleys seem to be reflective of daily usage patterns rather than any sort of a dip in popularity. The only two areas of decline are in Pageviews/User and Time on Site, down 14.2% and 5%, respectively. The popularity of Twitter in the United States is immediately apparent, with 43.5% of all traffic coming from the States. However, the social media phenomenon is also ranked high in South Africa at #10, #13 in Australia with 2.6% of all traffic to the site originating Downunder, #14 in the US and UK, with 6.2% of all Twitter traffic originating in the British Isles. Significantly, Germany is ranked #20, contributing 8.7% of all traffic to the site, second only to the US. Finally, Japan #137, Russia #153, France #161, and China #169 are at the bottom of the list, in terms traffic rank for those countries listed by Alexa.

One of the most remarkable things about Twitter is that it is entirely free, at least in terms of dollars and cents. Interestingly, the real cost, and one difficult if not impossible to quantify, is the cost in terms of time. As Marc Warnke notes in ONO: Options Not Obligations, his masterpiece on “Family First Entrepreneurship,” “money is time”. Marc Warnke discusses, at length, the link between family and business, the book is an awesome template for business and life. “Money is time”, not the other way around! An interesting point, crucial to understanding the real value of time, one that takes some time to get your thinking wrapped around. The book is an awesome template for business and life, one that places emphasis where it belongs and creates a new awareness of the value of time and family.

Money is time!

With Marc’s words in mind, it is easily recognized that Twitter can be addictive. Beyond that, the real benefits of having a presence on the social media platform may be difficult to track in terms of traditional metrics. Yes, I know I just used a gobbledygook term! “Metrics!” The real and lasting value of an online presence on Twitter, an Internet image if you will, may rest with the fact that the social media platform offers the “newbie,” just beginning to emerge as an Internet marketer, to establish himself or herself with a foothold, a place to test the waters and hone their message and skills. The advantage to such a presence should be immediately apparent, particularly if the entrepreneur has chosen the Internet marketing niche, a niche that may appear incredibly incestuous at times. A social media presence may allow the new marketer an opportunity to assert himself or herself in what some have referred to as an “old boy network,” and others have referred to as a “high school clique,” of sorts. Whether a valid point or not, the difficulty for the “newbie” to break into the Internet marketing niche is eased somewhat by the ability to connect, build relationships, and indeed bond with perspective clients and fellow entrepreneurs, alike.

So, how do you track the effectiveness of your social media marketing campaign on Twitter or on any other social networking site for that matter? Remember, I called that phrase, social media marketing, an oxymoron in a previous article! Beyond that, what is the return on investment (ROI) in this case; and, the chief investment being…time? Before we get into the various tools available to track message and impact, the balancing act between message and selling must be addressed. In other words, when does your message become spam and when is it posting useful information? Because of the nature of this very unique social media platform, it is recognized, even by TwitterL, that because you consent to follow someone, either by following or following back, that the dynamics of the relationship come with an implied permission to message. If you don’t like the message, you may simply unfollow the messenger!

During an unscientific study conducted over the course of an hour on one of the slower days for Twitter, Saturday, June 27, 2009, I counted links. Peak days are actually Tuesday and Wednesday, respectively. The next highest tweeting day of the week is Friday, probably as a result of #FollowFriday, then Monday, Thursday, Saturday, and finally, Sunday. I counted tweets during the peak period for tweets on any day, from 12:22pmEST to I:22pmEST. And, I counted the number of links per page at 5 minute intervals, for 10 minutes at a time. The number of links was actually pretty surprising! Of 800 tweets, 20 per page, 200 every 10 minutes, there were 636 links provided by 612 Tweeple. Interestingly, 2 Twitterers or Tweeple linking up more than once on the same tweet, 1 with 3 on the same tweet. That’s 79.5% of all tweets having links, provided in 76.5%of all tweets provided on the individual Twitter result pages or TWRPs!

Spam or not to spam, that is the question?

Whether ‘tis nobler to tweet for tweets’ sake, as opposed to “for Pete’s sake,” little pun there, or is it OK to link away? The evidence seems to suggest that the group-think allows it, if not by rule, certainly by action. However, I cannot help hearing the admonition of Mark Twain, written in his 1904 Notebook, that…“Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to reform (or pause and reflect).” Certainly, the majority, by example seems to condone and even encourage what I have come to call “linking up!”

I have covered my feelings on this topic at length in a previous article, and intend to address it again in an upcoming series, but suffice it to say that while I too, from time to time “link up,” I am a reformed “linker,” a reformed “linkaholic,” if you will. I do suggest an occasional program and even offer an affiliate link now and then but “I can handle it!” Sound familiar? I wonder!

The fact is, linking up may be hazardous to your social media life, and to you Internet image. Why? For a myriad of reasons, some already covered and some we will cover in the upcoming articles.

Back to “metrics,” and how to quantify your Twitter experience. The first tool worth mentioning is TwitterCounter. This application has a number of useful features. The feature immediately apparent upon entering the site is the graph showing the recent follower buildup. The side panel also displays other recent trends, such as growth per day and predictions for the future. It is also possible to compare Tweeple, more than two at a time if you ever had a need for such information. Additionally, you can track your overall follow/follower growth over last few months, as well as the number of tweets during that period. The app also provides a “badge” for your blog or website, featuring the latest Twitter follower stats. There are also a number of other toys you can play around with but they are distractions, beyond the scope of this article.

The next tool to review, one that is also basic like TwitterCounter, yet offers a few nice advantages and is actually quite a powerful application, is Tweetstats. This Twitter application allows you to track how active you have been with a rather nice, colorful graph providing the number of tweets per hour, per day, per month, a nice Tweet timeline, the number of reply statistics, and the number of @’ed Tweeps.

On the day this article was written, the number one spot for @’ed Tweeps belonged to DonnieWahlberg with 133, and that was as of 2:33pmEST. The day’s Top 10 Twitter apps are listed as follows: the web, as in Twitter direct, led the way with 58.6%; TweetDeck was next, at 8%; mobile web (iPhones) followed, at 5.7%; and, twitterfeed was right behind, at 5.6%. TweetStats also includes the day’s “Top 10 Trends” and “Current Trending,” useful information for marketers. The application also provides two clouds, one with the “Top 50 Trends of All Time” and the other “Today’s Twitter TrendCloud.”

While a very attractive tool, and one with a great deal of promise, the length of time required to access the information is a real drawback and one that may push Tweeple out the door, particularly those with too little time to wait for the system to load the information requested. I got this as I waited:

“Please be patient while I load your tweets. You are currently queued, with 439 other people. – Have a party! Hey, what can I say – people want their stats! ;o)”

Interestingly, once the information is finally available, in my opinion at least, it was worth the wait. Tweetstats provides a “Your Tweet Timeline,” broken down by the day (tpd) and by the month, a Tweet Density broken down by the day and by the hour, very cool, Aggregate Daily Tweets, Aggregate Hourly Tweets, Replies to @’s (as a percentage of total tweets), the Interface most often used (i.e., web, TweetDeck, etc.), and Who You Retweet (RT’s as a percentage of total tweets). This is a great tool for tracking time spent, when that time was spent, and whom you have been tweeting with, to, and about. On a single page, this offers as much useful information as any tool available.

Next in line is a site called Twist Flaptor, just one of the applications offered by Flaptor, a very useful information retrieval engine. You may already be familiar with another Flaptor application, TwitterSearch Flaptor. The Twist Flaptor application is very helpful for breaking information down over periods of time, providing a glance at various trends and activity patterns, as well. The big difference with Twist is the fact that it is very powerful and quite up-to-date. Not only can you get trends for the last 24 hours, you can get them for the past 7 days and the last 30 days, all on the same graph. It will also provide the actual tweets for any keyword, and trend, you are interested in for any given day. Very useful! The side panel on Twist also provides the current “Trending topics,” including the most popular links, something the others do not offer. Overall, this application is quite useful, particularly when used in concert with other apps, and may add to our overall marketing strategy.

Last but certainly not least is Hubspot’s Twitter Grader! The Grader application is available for Twitter and for facebook. Twitter Grader is very interesting and useful, collecting data and then running it through an algorithm to establish the measure of an individual’s reach, authority, and even their power on Twitter. As the developer of the Grader explains how it measures and “grades” users, “when you tweet, what kind of an impact does it have?” The application measures number of followers you have, the power of those followers, the number of updates and the recency of those updates, the following/follower ratio is accounted for, and the “engagement” level, based on the reach of an individual user.

Once all of the above factors are entered, a grade calculation, a ranking, and an evaluation as to “areas of concern,” if any, are delivered. The Twitter Grader also offers a powerful search application, several features of adding badges to blogs and websites, others for making tweeting easier, and still others for discovering the top users, cities, states, and countries are. Overall, the HubSpot Twitter Grader is a very nice application and one every marketer should have in his or her arsenal.

There are other Twitter tools we will discuss in the next article in this series on Twitter and social media. Some of the tools to be discussed are awesome for tracking links, some are great for ascertaining overall influence, some for helpful for tracking ReTweets, and still others are good for establishing how deep and wide your reach is on Twitter and in social media generally. Additionally, we will discuss applications with marketing possibilities, particularly those tracking up-to-the-minute keyword and trends on a display similar to a Twitter page. Overall, Twitter offers a number of possibilities for marketers and should be considered a valuable tool. However, it is still this author’s opinion that many are simply not using Twitter properly or at least to its fullest advantage. We will continue to discuss this position during the ongoing series of articles on social media, and yes, social media marketing.

I would like to invite you to my newest blog, The John Zajaros Blog. I am attempting to develop a central hub, a single place from which people can jump off to my various web properties, my Internet real estate. So, whether you are looking for information about Internet marketing, online business in a variety of niches, back pain and sciatica, online or in-home tutoring, soccer training tips, football training information, the coolest new stuffed animals and innovative, novel toys on the market, addiction information, the ultimate weight loss plans and more You can go there through The John Zajaros Blog.

Or perhaps you simply want to connect with me by way of the various social networking sites like Twitter, facebook, or LinkedIn to name just a few…The John Zajaros Blog will get you there or at least get you started!

The John Zajaros Blog

Or you may wish to visit me at :

The Ultimate Internet Image International

Ultimate Internet Marketing

Professor John P. J. Zajaros, Sr.
216-712-6526
Skype: johnzajaros1
johnz@thequestrevealed.com

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