Alert Blog Reviews

So the other day I logged into LinkedIn and went to my Inbox to view some messages. There I saw a connection request that I had obviously rejected back in November. I don’t like accepting request on LinkedIn unless I have met the said person face to face. So it’s not unusual that I would have rejected someone’s request. However, when I actually read this one request something was different. This person apparently met me while in Las Vegas at PubCon. Why did I refuse his request? Well, to be honest, I don’t remember the guy at all. I mean, I met a lot of cool folks at PubCon and apparently I met some non-memorable ones as well. Being non-memorable is a problem, especially for people at networking events. I have to make a confession: I don’t have a trendy smart phone. Now don’t get me wrong I have nothing against them, it’s just that my current phone does everything I need and more. I have been thinking lately about upgrading to a new smart phone, but quite honestly it has been really hard deciding which to pick. One of my old friends from college used to have a BlackBerry and now is using a Motorola Droid. So I called him up to get his opinion. We talked for a long time about all the different options in the smart phone market and I still didn’t feel any closer to picking out a phone that I wanted. Why can’t I decide? What keeps getting in the way with this decision? Honestly none of the phones “jump out” at me. I mean really, when it all boils down to it, they are all the same. Sure some have different features. Some come with different services plans. Some come with different apps and widgets. But seriously they all pretty much do the same thing. Why aren’t any of the smart phone makers creating devices that stand out from the crowd? Why aren’t any of them creating memorable products? Why do they all pretty much look the same? Why can’t I get one shaped like a banana with pink and purple stripes? I want one that can also open a bottle of beer, or something else equally ridiculous . Seth Godin will tell you that your brand has to be remarkable.  However, before your brand can be remarkable it has to be memorable. It has to stand out from the crowd. It has to make me want to know more.

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Cup of Joe: Give Me a Smart Phone With Pink & Purple Stripes

It appears that not just the Year of Mobile is being christened this January but new competitive lines are being drawn as well between Internet giants Google and Apple. Yes, it’s time to officially deem Apple an Internet company in my opinion but you are always free to disagree. According to All Things Digital Apple is preparing to announce a purchase that virtually mirrors the acquisition made of AdMob by Google. Apple is ready to buy Quattro Wireless for $275 million. Apple had been in the mix for the AdMob deal but Google won that one. So as a result Apple and Quattro’s ad platform will be getting geared up to fight out the looming iPhone v. Droid device conflagration (great ‘over-the-top’ word, huh?) that could shape the future of how many people acquire information from the Internet. Quattro was already ID’d as a potential win as evidenced by investment and there are more players out there says All Things D: Waltham, Mass.-based Quattro has raised close to $30 million from two main venture investors–Highland Capital Partners and Globespan Capital Partners. Founded several years ago, its clients include Ford (F), Disney (DIS) and the National Football League. Competitors in the space are many still, despite these big acquisitions, including Millenial Media and Jumptap, both of which are now clearly in play to other players from telcoms to other device makers to big Internet companies. So get ready for the battle that lies ahead. Who are you putting your money on?

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2010: The Year of Google v. Apple?

Define Your Purpose Before you go changing anything around on your twitter profile to make it more professional you must decide what the purpose of the account is. Is your purpose to connect with friends and family? Is your purpose to share important updates to customers of your store or online business? Is your purpose to attract potential clients and to give them an understanding of why they should choose your product or service? If your purpose is only to connect with friends and family then you don’t really need to have a professional presence in my opinion. But if your purpose is business related then the following steps will help you create a professional presence on twitter. Sometimes people will have a personal and a business-related purpose for using twitter. In those cases I recommend having a personal twitter account and a separate business related account on twitter. 1. Get a custom background To create a professional presence on twitter you want to have your own unique background. The default background is used by millions of people and you want to set yourself apart. There are many websites that will help you create a customized background for your twitter account. And the best part is that most of them are free. To create a custom background for my twitter account I used Twitbacks.com. 2. Use a picture of yourself Twitter allows you to have a small avatar picture associated with your account and I recommend using a personal photograph for this. It doesn’t have to be a professional headshot where your hair and makeup is perfect; it just needs to be a picture of you. This allows your followers to connect your tweets and messages with a real person. This personal touch adds credence to what you say. 3. Your phone number I like to post my phone number on my twitter account for all of my followers to see. When followers see a phone number listed with a twitter account it gives them confidence that if they had a problem or question there is someone they could call. I know some of you will be uncomfortable doing this and it’s completely understandable. But if you run a small business or work in any line of sales then you really need to have your phone number listed on your twitter account. To my knowledge twitter does not allow you to actually list the phone number as part of your account. But you can have it be part of your background. In the example below you can see my phone number is on the far left side: 4. List your email address You will also want to list your e-mail address on your twitter account. Just as with phone numbers, you can’t actually list your e-mail on your account but you can include it as part of your background. I know some of you will be concerned about posting your e-mail and receiving spam. To deal with this I created a second e-mail address that I used specifically for my business. And this is the e-mail address that I post on my twitter account. Luckily Gmail has a very good spam filter and so I actually get very few spam messages in my inbox each week. 5. Be professional in your tweets People follow you for a reason. Whether it’s to hear about new products your store is offering or updates about the cause you represent, people are listening to what you say. And the minute you deviate from that you will lose followers. So before you post a tweet ask yourself, “Why are people following me? And is this new tweet something they want to hear about?” If the answer is no or if you’re not sure then do not post the new tweet. 6. Tweet regularly but don’t overdo it I will usually tweet something in the morning and then sometimes in the evening. 1 to 3 tweets today is optimal. You want to your followers to see something from you each day but you don’t want to overdo it. The last thing you want is for one of your followers to see that the last 20 tweets are all from you. When this happens to me I immediately unfollow the person. 7. Only follow people that you’re interested in A popular way to get followers is to follow a whole bunch of people and hope that many of them follow you back. This results in you having 3,000 followers and you are following 3,000 people yourself. When people see this it looks less professional. They know there is no way you can be listening to what all 3000 people are tweeting about. On the other hand it is much more impressive if you follow just a few people and yet have hundreds of followers yourself. When people see this they are more likely to follow you in my opinion here. © 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips . 7 Ways To Create A Professional Twitter Presence

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7 Ways To Create A Professional Twitter Presence

A number of people have asked me recently what I think about running advertising in Twitter streams. Should it be done or avoided? What impact might it have on you as a Twitter user if you do run them? Are there times you should and shouldn’t use ads to monetize your Twitter account? My opinion is pretty simple. I know no everyone will agree but it’s probably somewhere in the middle of the spectrum of opinions on the topic. Some argue that Ads should never be used on Twitter – others argue that you should monetize your account in any way you can. My Opinion on Ads on Twitter: I have nothing against it in principle. I see now reason why someone investing time, creativity, energy and brain power into becoming an influence in this medium shouldn’t be able to receive financial reward for doing so. People on Twitter who genuinely grow their audience big enough to attract advertisers are usually doing something useful. Whether it be entertaining, informing, educating, empowering etc – I see people using other mediums making money for doing this type of thing, why not on Twitter? I make a living from my blogs (about half my income from them is from advertising) and while Twitter is a unique medium in some ways I don’t have issue with it being monetized if done well. Interestingly it was 5 or so years ago that the big debate was about whether blogs should be monetized – many of the same arguments were going back and forth at that time – just replace ‘Blog’ with ‘Twitter Account’ and you’ll from some of those old articles to see where the debate is heading! Having said that – I personally believe that three elements probably should come into play when considering whether you run a particular ad on your account. The first is perhaps more about ethics than the other two which are for me just good business sense and about delivering value to my followers: 1. Transparency If you’re being paid to tweet, disclose it. How you clearly do it in 140 characters can be challenging but it can be done ranging from ‘Sponsored Tweet’ in the tweet to ‘#ad’. I suspect we’ll see some widely accepted practices emerge around this in the coming year. 2. Relevancy I was asked a while back to run an ad in my twitter stream for running shoes. I refused in the same way I would refuse to run the same ad if someone wanted me to run it on my blog. My blog and twitter stream are on the topic of social media and blogging – not shoes or running. While I do stray off topic from time to time on Twitter (and my followers forgive me for doing so) – receiving money for a tweet that is totally irrelevant to my topic will probably not go down well with my followers. I’m not sure it’d deliver much value to an advertiser either to promote an irrelevant ad (although I see my fair share of them on TV). Related to this I’d probably also be wanting to only do sponsored tweets that are legitimate and not scammy products or services. Really it comes down to keeping on topic and being useful to followers. 3. Frequency I’ve run three disclosed and relevant advertising tweets on my @problogger Twitter account in 2 years (one through ad.ly and another two were sold directly). In that time I’ve tweeted 15,330 times. I don’t think I’m in danger of letting my Tweet stream become overrun by paid tweets. However if twitter advertising does take off I could see the temptation for some Twitter users to let their streams become overrun by sponsored Tweets. In the same way that I refrain for letting all of the real estate on my blog above the fold get overrun with advertising (pushing the content down under the fold) I would want to let ‘content’ and being useful be the primary thing that I do on my Twitter account. What other Factors Would You Ad? These are the three main factors that I’d consider as I look at whether I’ll tweet something for money. © 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips . My Opinion on Ads on Twitter [or Sponsored Tweets]

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My Opinion on Ads on Twitter [or Sponsored Tweets]

While there is always some information to discuss about how the news will be consumed via the free model online or through a myriad of paywalls another area of the news industry is changing just as rapidly. News reporting is still the domain (for the most part) of the professional journalist but the amateur news reporter is becoming more and more desired. YouTube recognizes this and is offering a service to help get the amateurs and the pros connected. The New York Times reports YouTube has signed up NPR, Politico, The Huffington Post and The San Francisco Chronicle for YouTube Direct, a new method for managing video submissions from readers. The new feature, (formally introduced) on Tuesday, is a tool to make it easy for YouTube users to submit clips that news media companies can choose to highlight. The site plans to sign up other media partners. “We’re trying to connect media organizations with citizen reporters on YouTube,” said Steve Grove, the Web site’s head of news and politics . How it works is that when a visitor goes to a one of the subscribing sites they will have the ability to upload a video to YouTube that will be flagged for review by the sites editors and powers that be. Pretty straightforward and direct. We like that. It seems like a good way to manage or even create a process that didn’t exist before or, if it was in place, was hacked together thus inefficient. With news agencies needing to cut back on staff and not being able to be in all places at all times any way this can create a new model that will be a supplement or complement to the existing news environment. Always thinking about where the next dollar is Google explains that the service is not just for the news set. YouTube also envisions uses beyond the day’s news. The site suggested in a blog post that businesses could use the tool to solicit endorsements and that politicians could “ask for user-generated political commercials.” Nice move in my opinion. Any organization that can provide some form or shape to the ‘wild west’ of user generated content will be helping everyone in the long run. What usually happens is that when you create something that actually helps people then the revenue will follow. Right, Twitter?

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YouTube Helps YouReport

I still have no clue how to use Google Wave . Not that I’m stupid, I’m just not motivated to invest the tremendous effort needed to learn the new interface–especially when not all of my friends have invites yet. Still, it helps to see a real-world use of Google Wave–at a conference no less. Instead of using Twitter–and hashtags–attendees at the recent Ecomm conference were given Google Wave accounts. The resulting collaboration gives me a better feel for at least one practical use of the new service. Take a look: Of course,  I see one immediate problem. Where’s the opinion? What I love about conference Tweets–and blog posts–is reading the opinion that’s thrown in with the coverage. The above Google Wave example seems just a little too sterile for my liking. Anyhow, I’d better get on the Google Wave soon because, apparently , Google has aspirations of taking the Google Wave "look and feel" and making it uniform across all of its apps.

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Google Waves Goodbye to Conference Twittering

Living in the Research Triangle Park (aka The Triangle) area of North Carolina is a good deal. The weather is great because you get 4 seasons but winter is just a taste of what most of the area’s Northeastern US transplants are accustomed to. There is also a very vibrant technology and new media scene as the area has even been considered a threat (albeit a minor one in my opinion to Silicon Valley because of the education focus of the area and a reasonable cost of living. What has been missing, however, is an Internet industry event that was worthy of the area’s reputation. Looks like we may be on the way to curing that ill. Today was the programming portion of the 2nd Internet Summit that is put on by TechJournal South and Southern Capitol Ventures. The site for the event states simply The Internet Summit supports web oriented entrepreneurial activity, innovation, and the resultant economic development of the southeast region. While I did not attend last year it is apparent that there was no evidence of a sophomore slump. In fact, the brand spanking new Raleigh Convention Center as a setting made it very comfortable and that was before any presentations were given. As for the content it was well presented in moderated sessions with some pretty serious titles on the various panels. There was Rick Klau, product manager for Google’s Blogger platform, John Kosner, SVP of ESPN Digital Media, Richard Jalichandra, President and CEO of Technorati and Joe Kennedy, President and CEO of Pandora to name a few. Oh and of course the organizers had the good sense to make sure that MP’s own Andy Beal was on a panel talking about, you guessed it, New Media and Personal Branding. A rather cool feature included a demo hall where area technology start-ups , as chosen by the Summit’s team, displayed their offerings. This included a wide variety of early stage companies that had a chance to show off their offerings to a tech savvy crowd. This is the fourth event I attended this year and it was by far the best of the bunch. While I could give you some of the highlights all you need to do is search Twitter for #isum09 and you’ll get the gist. Better yet plan to attend next year. The Triangle would love to have you!

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Internet Summit Gives Strong Sophomore Effort