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If Facebook Existed… A Mashup

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Family and friends send some of the best material for the Saturday Morning’s Post to me. My niece, Heidi, in an email, initially sent this one. That’s how social media works, right? People you know, talking about things you find interesting –and then sharing it. I also find it interesting how many ways great Internet content is disseminated email, Facebook, You Tube. It’s countless!

To get started on this post, I wanted to make sure I was crediting the right source; I googled it. Here is what I found.

Google Search for If Facebook Existed years ago

After a bit of research, I discovered that the original author isn’t even listed in this search –wow. The original author of the first three works of creative-writing art is Coolmaterial.com, check out their website (after you read this post). And the WWII author appears to be Matthew Leeb of Collegehumor.com. And happily, the blogger with the best SEO on this topic is Vinnie V who credits his sources carefully.

BUT I also found that this very popular initial posting caused a wave of similar posts. Some are better than others, but here I have done a mashup of sorts and put all of the posts that I could find together. I think you could go on for days with similar “what if they said this back in the day” ideas. Could it possibly be a future creative-oriented game? Fun.

The Original

If Facebook existed yeara ago

Source: CoolMaterial.com

Then there was Part Two.

Cool Material -if facebook existed years ago -part 2

Source: CoolMaterial.com

Then, what if God were on Facebook?

What if God were on Facebook?

Source: CoolMaterial.com

What if these Countries were on Facebook during WWII?

OMG- WWII on Facebook Source: CollegeHumor.com

And finally, there is even a Facebook Page dedicated to this line of thought. Check it out on Facebook, of course. As you can see, once again, the wealth of the web runs deep. What did we ever do without it?

This has been Social Energizer’s Saturday Morning Post, a less business oriented, more personally related edition than our blog that is offered during the week. Social Energizer’s purpose is to help companies develop lasting relationships with their customers and increase their visibility online.

In addition to building dynamic and affordable websites, we integrate inbound marketing techniques into each business’ current marketing plan and utilize digital channels and strategies like Blogs, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Search Engine Optimization, and Web-integrated Email Campaigns.

We invite you to comment and rate each blog, so we can ever improve our offerings to you. Are you venturing into online marketing? Give us a call!

The Perils of Working At Home

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Hi Everybody!

Just a short little TGIF Friday Freebie for you today. I love working at home -most of the time. This morning was one of those times when you can’t help, but appreciate it, take the time to smell the roses and all that jazz. (Even though I do have five blogs that need to be written today.)

We have a family of Wild Turkeys living in our backyard. This is not really that uncommon in Appleton, WI (near Green Bay, WI), but it is funny when they come in to your birdfeeders -with their babies! They brought the whole family. What a shocker!

So anyway… my husband was working from home (don’t you just love 2011? for that) today, too, and he said “take a video”. So I did. Well, I couldn’t resist editing it a little bit, throwing a voiceover on it and posting it on You Tube and Facebook. Enjoy! I think it will help move that Friday along a little more quickly for all of you ‘brick n’ mortar’ working folks.

Caution: if you are a PETA person you may want to turn the sound off.

Part Four – How do I know I’m not ‘spamming’? I’m just trying to promote my blog

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Hopefully last week’s post didn’t make you stay awake at night wondering if you, too, were a spammer. When you leave comments on someone else’s blog how do you know it’s not spam? You can rest easy if you are leaving thoughtful comments on blogs that match or at least have something to do with your blog’s topic. In fact, commenting thoughtfully on someone else’s blog is a great way to get people to visit your own site and create backlinks. If you are cutting and pasting from one blog to another then you just may be.

White hat versus Black hat SEOwhite hat vs blck hat seo

In broad terms, SEO techniques are classified as white hat vs black hat. Just like in the Lone Ranger, if you want to be considered one of the ‘good guys or gals’ you want to be in the ‘white hat’ category. White hat SEO tends to look long-term and builds sites that are based on good design and interactivity. Black hat marketers use tactics that take whatever means to build rankings and often involve deception. One method uses hidden text where the text and background blend together. Another uses a practice called cloaking, which provides a different page response depending on if the page requested is by human or search engine. Search engines may remove black hats from their databases or reduce their online rankings.

And for God’s Sake, Don’t ‘Content Spam’ Either

Bloggers should also be cognitive of Content Spam. We all get ‘good’ at knowing what the search engines want and we want to make it easy for them to get it. If you do this job too well, you run the risk of being tagged a content spammer. Here some things to look out for:

Keyword spamming

This is using calculated placement of keywords within a page to raise the keyword count, variety and density of the page. This may include keywords that are directed more to the demographic, than what belong in the article. For example: a promoter wants to attract moms with children under 5. He or she places hidden text that may be similar to a popular women’s site hoping that the site will get picked up by search engines and will receive visits from these moms. In reality, the site might be for a matchmaking site or something similarly unrelated.

Meta-tag stuffing

This involves repeating keywords in the Meta tags and using keywords that are unrelated to the site’s content.

Hidden Text

The explanation was covered above in Black Hat SEO tactics.

Scraper Sites

Scraper sites use various programs to glean content that scores high in the search engine results pages. By taking a sampling of info from many sites, and recombining them new content is created. Some of these sites end up with higher rankings than the original writer of the information.

Article Spinning

Article spinning uses existing articles, usually taken from other sites, and rewrites the content. It is usually done by automated means or by hired writers.

Do not confuse article spinning with recycling your content. Using information from blogs you have already written and changing them up can be a good thing. It’s not what you do but how you do it. When using old content be sure to add some life and vitality to it. Can you pull out some questions for a poll? Can you do a video version? Doing things like that separates it from the dangers of article spinning.

Sometimes the lines are less than clear as to what the acceptable standards are. And when they are clear the lines themselves tend to keep changing. As with all things social media, use common sense, ask if you don’t know, and admit that you may be doing it all wrong.

Thank you for visiting my site and if you’ve read all four articles in our four-part series or if you’ve only read this one, I’d love to hear from you. Please don’t be afraid that because I watch closely for spam, I’ll think you are spamming me. Comments are what we bloggers live for! But maybe just add ‘not spam’ in your comment this time, then I’ll know for sure. I dare you.

Social Energizer’s purpose is to help companies develop lasting relationships with their customers and increase their visibility online.

In addition to building dynamic and affordable websites, we integrate inbound marketing techniques into each business’ current marketing plan and utilize digital channels and strategies like Blogs, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Search Engine Optimization, and Web-integrated Email Campaigns.

Give us a call today!

Part Three – Sorting Out Spam Comments in your Blog

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What a thrill it is to get people commenting on your blog. That’s how it works, right? People from all over the world will discover your writing talents, appreciate your knowledge on a certain subject and leave comments. That is what all of us engaging in the social media world have all been promised, right? Well, good comments will happen, but I hate to tell you that here, too, spammers are lurking in the background.

Usually these spammers are trying to get into your site by adding links where you may not even realize it. This is called link spam and they are doing this to give their websites higher rankings by adding lots of links. These link spammers use various methods, which include link-building software, link farms (aka mutual admiration societies), hidden links and spam blogs.

So how do you recognize valid comments from a spam comment?

Many times you can recognize link spam by the nonsensical, irrelevant text and by the large quantity of links that all point to a single site. Link spam causes various problems from wasting your time in reviewing them, to clogging search engines, and in scraping content from other’s sites making real new content difficult to locate.

Sometimes it’s not easy to distinguish between spam comments and valid ones. They try to convince you with their high praise that you are literally the ‘cat’s pajaams’ (I had one that said exactly that).

Here are five things to look for and ways to clean up your comment list quickly:

1- First, delete the obvious ones, like the ones shown below entirely. Don’t let them get any link juice from your site.

Obvious Spam

Obvious spam message in blog

2- Do you know the commenter or business name behind the comment?

3- Is there content that appears original? Meaning that it responds to information that you specifically provided in your post or addresses you by name.

4- Multiple comments sent from the same address or domain.

Repeat Spam

5- Reply to their comment with a thank you and a question. Do you get an answer? If not , it’s probably a spammer.

Adjust how your blog or website is set up

There are some simple things you can do to deter link spamming in the setup of your website like: adding validation software like CAPTCHA, making comment links “no follow”, not allowing multiple consecutive submissions, and blocking certain keywords (Levitra, etc).

Use an anit-spam software like Akismet or Discus. This software helps by showing multiple email addresses, allows you to track back to the IP address easily and allows you to tag comments for spam, and approve or disapprove comments. I also like it because I can reply to a commenter without using my email address and putting that at risk.

Social Energizer’s purpose is to help companies develop lasting relationships with their customers and increase their visibility online.

In addition to building dynamic and affordable websites, we integrate inbound marketing techniques into each business’ current marketing plan and utilize digital channels and strategies like Blogs, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Search Engine Optimization, and Web-integrated Email Campaigns.

Give us a call today!

Part Two – Spam on Social Networks

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Recently I got scam-spammed on Facebook by reposting an entry on Amy Winehouse’s death stating that it was getting more media attention than several soldiers who were killed in action. I should know better, right? Maybe you saw it, too? Oops. Sorry! How did I find out? Shortly after I posted, I received an email from a friend that said it was an inaccurate message. The exact same message had circulated about a year earlier using Lindsay Lohan’s name. That got me mad enough to write this blog. People need to know how insidious spam has become.
'Folding the flag.' photo (c) 2008, Sam Craig - license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/

Chuck Anastasia has done a nice job researching and straightening out the facts. What I learned from this incident was that in the future before I repost anything, especially posts honoring our fallen soldiers, I will check them out first. The great disrespect these soldiers’ families have experienced and the great pain caused to them is horrible.

Increasingly, social networks are experiencing viral marketing tactics that use embedded links that cause great harm to ever larger groups of people. They lure people to click on these links in many deceptive ways, some will say a person is missing and to click on the missing persons flyer, some say your system has a worm virus called “insert name of horrible sounding virus here”, some use a celebrity breaking news item, some use the lure of checking out ‘who’s checked your profile on Facebook’, etc. Similar links can be embedded in quizzes, games and apps. After the individual clicks on one of these embedded links a variety of things can happen. Some will take control of your address book and send malicious messages to your friends and some will download viruses, spyware or Trojan horses right onto your computer.

Plus, there are other tricks that these spammers employ. If you are asked to “Sign Back into Facebook” beware! This is a sign that they are phishing for your password. Legitimate sites, using Facebook Connect, will open a new window with the URL starting with ‘facebook.com’. Do not type in your password using any other domain name. If you are asked to connect to an app and you are unsure of it, simply ‘deny it’ or ‘leave App’.

Where should you check first?

1- My first spam, scam, fraud and urban legend point-of-reference is Snopes.com. They have a treasure trove of information categorized on most everything. If the story is true, they say so. Although they didn’t have the Amy Winehouse on Facebook story yet, I still use them often.

2- I plan to continue checking Coolsparks, Chuck Anastasia’s blog. The comments from the Lindsay Lohan blog, posted over a year ago continue to come in.

3- About.com does a nice piece called Urban Legends.

Next week, for part three of this four-part series, I’ll talk about “Sorting Out Spam Comments in your Blog”. If you missed last week on recognizing spam, click here. Hope to see you then. Thank you for visiting.

Social Energizer’s purpose is to help companies develop lasting relationships with their customers and increase their visibility online.

In addition to building dynamic and affordable websites, we integrate inbound marketing techniques into each business’ current marketing plan and utilize digital channels and strategies like Blogs, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Search Engine Optimization, and Web-integrated Email Campaigns.

Give us a call today!

Spam, Not The Ham. How Do You Recognize It?

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Do you always know if and when you’re being spammed? Sometimes, it’s hard to tell. It has become so prevalent in our daily lives that I am writing a 4-part series, starting this week on spam, what it is, how do you recognize it and what are the best ways to manage it.

First, what exactly is spam?
'Spam' photo (c) 2008, Andy - license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/2.0/

We experience spam everyday, but what is it? According to Wikipedia, Spam is the use of any electronic messaging system that sends bulk messages indiscriminately. In 2011, the estimated figure for spam messages is around seven trillion. Fraud and lost productivity are the costs of this illegal activity and are largely borne by the public as a whole.

Although originally referred to as the sending of unwanted emails, the use of the term has now broadened to include other media like: instant messaging, forums, search engines, blogs, wikis, mobile phones, and social networking sites. Spam messaging ranges from openly blatant messages that ask you to send money to a foreign country for some reason or another, to phony ads for Viagra, to cunningly difficult to detect messages that contain embedded links.

Most of us are used to seeing spam emails and can easily recognize them because the people that sent them are either unknown to us or the messages sent are completely out of character for these people. As we enter the larger world of social networking, forums and blogging the people we interact with, by design, are not necessarily known to us. Spotting spammers is becoming more difficult. There is no ‘one size fits all’ for detecting spam.

In the next three weeks, I’ll break down how spam can change, depending on the venue, and what you can do about it. There is a lot to cover on this topic, and as things keep changing, it becomes more important everyday to keep up to date with what is going on in the world of spam.

Social Energizer’s purpose is to help companies develop lasting relationships with their customers and increase their visibility online.

In addition to building dynamic and affordable websites, we integrate inbound marketing techniques into each business’ current marketing plan and utilize digital channels and strategies like Blogs, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Search Engine Optimization, and Web-integrated Email Campaigns.

Give us a call today!

Make People See Your ‘It’, A 5-Step Approach

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Here’s a short story on innovation from Seth Godin that I’d like to share. It brings home what we do and why it matters.

The sad, true tale of Otto Rohwedder'Wonder Bread' photo (c) 2005, Anthony Easton - license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

Otto Rohwedder invented sliced bread. He focused, like most inventers did, on the patent part and the making part.

The thing about the invention of sliced bread is this- for the first 15 years after sliced bread was available no one bought it, no one knew about it. It was a complete and total failure.

And the reason is that until Wonder came along and figured out how to spread the idea of sliced bread, no one wanted it.

They found that the idea of sliced bread like the success of almost everything is not always about what the patent is like, or what the factory is like, it’s about can you get your idea to spread, or not.

Ideas that spread, win.
(story as told by Seth Godin, SethGodin.com/sg)

 

I love this story and most things from Seth Godin. From a brand and social media perspective, he’s dead on. I think most people in medium to large-sized companies understand this story and how it relates to what they do quite easily. Medium-large-sized businesses usually employ agencies that help them ‘think out of the box’ and ‘stand out in the crowd’. They spend a lot of time and energy doing exactly that. At least that was my experience working with Cargill and Kimberly Clark. If you run a small business, I think it’s more difficult to understand where this fits in and how to act upon this little piece of wisdom.

Small businesses simply do not have the budgets to employ a New York or even an Appleton, WI ‘agency’. So what do you do?

1- Start by learning to understand your business from the ‘outside’.

How do your clients view your business? Take your blinders off. How do they see you in comparison to your competition?

2- How do you want them to see you?

Is there anything as special as ‘sliced bread’ about you or your business? What’s your niche?

3- Are you capitalizing on any special niche you have?

Pull together a small group of trusted clients, friends and family. People who care enough to be candid with you and care enough to get their heads around what you’re trying to do. Brainstorm on ways to stand out. Be remarkable. Be bold!

4- Put a plan into action.

Decide which idea or ideas you want to try out. Remember, the best ideas are not necessarily the most expensive. Don’t worry if your first attempts are not perfect. Wonder Bread probably didn’t get it right the first time either.

5- Evaluate.

Keep an eye on who and how many people are involved with your idea. Is it spreading? No? Then change it up. Do something different. Yes, it is spreading? Change it up again. Improve on what you’re doing based on feedback. Your audience expects and deserves it.

Social Energizer’s purpose is to help companies develop lasting relationships with their customers and increase their visibility online.

In addition to building dynamic and affordable websites, we integrate inbound marketing techniques into each business’ current marketing plan and utilize digital channels and strategies like Blogs, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Search Engine Optimization, and Web-integrated Email Campaigns.

Give us a call today!

5 Social Media Must Haves

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Here are the 5 things every business must do to build a community online and bring in clients via social media.

1. Website

It’s your web basecamp, start here.
Work in Progressphoto © 2006 Grant Kwok | more info (via: Wylio)

2. Blog, forum, or some way of delivering active audience-focused content.

I have a few clients that really do not want to blog. They know they should to get the best online results, but they do not have time to create a post daily, weekly or sometimes even monthly. Hmmm, what to do? Well, number one, you can try NOT calling it a blog. Call it News and Events, or Random Thoughts. It gives you the ability to post when YOU want to without hearing the tapping of your audience’s foot waiting for a post sent out at strictly timed intervals. Sure, you might not get astronomical SEO, but you will get the liberty of posting at a time that is right for you and your business while still building your SEO. Forums, yes, forums. Great audience-generated content. Sit back and engage with your audience in a forum on your site. Glean that great content for use in blogs, I mean a ‘Random Thoughts’ column, new product ideas or your next promotion. Downside? Monitoring the forum for the wayword spammer or opinionated [expletive here] that maybe has ulterior motives or just wants to cause trouble. Other ideas? I’ve seen everything from ‘a quote of the day’ snippet to contests that involve the audience on a daily basis. I liked the later much more than the former. The key here is knowing your audience, using some imagination and creating something that entices people to involve themselves with your site regularly.

3. Social Media Networks

Facebook, Google, My Space, Google+, and Twitter are just a few of the networks where you may want to create a presence. Deciding which ones to join and how many you can be active with is a choice you will need to make, but usually the more the better.

4. Review Sites

Review sites like Trip Advisor, Yelp!, etc. are often overlooked, but surefire ways of getting great objective feedback. It’s always best when someone says something nice behind your back. They make it easy to ‘nudge’ those comments along with widgets that you can put on your website to show off your reviews. This is a free and easy way to make a big impact with your social network.

5. Visit the folks –other folks that is.

Find a forum or comment on someone’s blog (not your own) where your audience or fringe audience hangs out. You might learn what you should be doing and be able to offer some advice or help out. A couple of useful places to engage with an audience, whether niche or broad, is Quora and Alltop.

Integration

As you build this infrastructure, you’ll need to integrate as much as possible. From adding a Facebook ‘Like’ button to adding your website in your signature as often as possible there are countless possibilities for integration. The person that does this best wins.

At this point, someone usually says –“That’s it! That’s all you have to do.” Or “You can do this all yourself practically for free.” Yes, you can. But if you decide to do all this on your own when will you have time to produce your product or deliver your actual service? Now, might be the time that you realize that there are some things you do and some things you get help for. Give us a call today! We’ll set up a social media system that fits your talents, what you need and what you can afford.

Social Energizer’s purpose is to help companies develop lasting relationships with their customers and increase their visibility online.

In addition to building dynamic and affordable websites, we integrate inbound marketing techniques into each business’ current marketing plan and utilize digital channels and strategies like Blogs, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Search Engine Optimization, and Web-integrated Email Campaigns.

Small and Medium-Sized Business Tips On Raising Your Brand

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I posted this article late last fall and today I think it needs repeating. Since posting, I’ve come to realize that small and medium-sized businesses have difficulty understanding the need of developing a recognizable brand. Why would Harry’s Garage in Green Bay or The Little Doz’ Inn in Appleton, WI need a brand? Because it pinpoints what you provide in images, words and actions. It helps your customers understand why and how you are different from your competition. It gives you a chance to stand out from the crowd. In today’s tough economy, how can that NOT be important?

Like Raising A Child, It Doesn’t Happen Overnight.

Building a brand is a little bit like raising a child. You start with a baby, an infant. You really might not feel much of an attachment right away, but slowly something magic starts to build. You feel something. You form that malleable little being into something that models yourself and those around you. You help define their morals, their judgement, their humor. It’s the same for a brand as it is with a child. Now, your child isn’t full-grown for many years, sometimes kids never grow up; the same with brands. Budget-wise you may spend a lot on both children and brands, but it is done slowly over time and just like with children you usually know pretty quickly when your money has been well spent. If you do it right, you’ll see it as the best money you’ve ever spent, giving you rewards far into the future.

Below is the original article from last fall, let me know what you think.

Wait! Don’t Forget Your Brand!

It’s hard to handle everything during the launch of a dynamic inbound marketing strategy, but don’t forget your brand along the way. It’s at the top of the marketing priority list of every successful business. Take Apple, for example. When a person buys an iPad or Mac they are buying the appeal, design and support of the Apple brand. They know it will be trendy and cutting edge. It will make them feel cool. That is the power of good brand creation and alignment.
future apple brand whorephoto © 2005 james keller | more info (via: Wylio)

Every marketing dollar you spend should support your brand. It’s how you stand out. It adds value to your product or company that can be measured in dollars. The brand is the story you tell people about what you provide. Below is a short overview on branding and some tips to be sure you don’t overlook your brand as you launch inbound marketing efforts.

A brand

• Expresses your company name and essence visually through a logo

• Extends throughout an organization’s communications and includes all functions of a company, product development through sales, as integral pieces of your brand

• Includes how customers perceive the company and the inherent value they place on your business

• Provides something that consistently draws attention and focus

• Is distinguished – your brand should give your audience something it wants but is not getting from your competitors

Defining your brand identity

• Determine your company’s positioning and core values

• Understand your strengths and weaknesses through honest analysis

• Know the why. Why will people want what your offer?

• Discovery — Getting to the brand’s essence takes introspection, participation and work.

Building brand equity requires a team that can create a consistent, predictable approach that stands out every time. No matter how brand efforts are scaled to fit the size and scope of the business, ignoring brand principles places businesses in peril and does not capitalize on its benefits. As a brand-experienced Inbound Marketing Coach, I would love the opportunity to help align your brand, while getting your inbound marketing efforts underway. Give me a call today!

Social Energizer’s purpose is to help companies develop lasting relationships with their customers and increase their visibility online.

In addition to building dynamic and affordable websites, we integrate inbound marketing techniques into each business’ current marketing plan and utilize digital channels and strategies like Blogs, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Search Engine Optimization, and Web-integrated Email Campaigns.