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The same, from a clickbank blog, this article is about getting backlicks, hope you find it helpful.
"Posted by: Steven Clayton, Guest Blogger
Anyone who pays attention to SEO techniques knows that getting high quality, “do follow,” and diverse backlinks is the key to search engine optimization. The challenge, of course, is where to find places to get powerful backlinks.
Most people build their link building strategies around blog and forum postings. This makes sense and is certainly part of our plans as well. However, it stands to reason that Google also knows that most marketers who are using SEO tactics to rank their sites are doing this, and it makes sense that they will be looking for a much more diverse backlink pattern to award the highest rankings to.
With that in mind, I’m going to share the top 5 non-forum/blog backlink sources that we teach in Commission Blueprint 2.0.
1. Squidoo Lists
Squidoo.com is a great place to get links back to your site. Type the following into a Google search:
“add+to+this+list”+site:squidoo.com
You will be presented with a huge list of Squidoo lenses where you can add your site, with custom anchor text. Many of these have very high PageRank as well!
For extra credit, append +”keyword phrase” onto the end of this query, and you can target your links for relevance. For example, if you were trying to rank a fitness site you could type:
“add+to+this+list”+”fitness”+site:squidoo.com
2. Web 2.0 Profiles
Many Web 2.0 sites that allow you to create profiles and interact with others provide high PageRank, “do follow” links to the website listed in your profile. Some examples include www.linkedin.com, www.flickr.com, www.twibs.com, and www.zoominfo.com.
When creating profiles on these sites (which you could do for every niche you’re in) you’re able to list your website, which becomes a high quality backlink to your site.
3. Article Marketing for Links
Most marketers are familiar with writing articles to get traffic, but we write most of our articles for backlinks. If you’ve put a link to your site within the article (and let’s certainly hope you’re doing that!), every article that gets posted becomes a backlink (or even 2 or 3). The more articles that get posted, the more links you can build.
To get started, you simply have to write the article and submit it to a few article directories. I recommend: www.Ezinearticles.com, www.goarticles.com, and www.articledashboard.com.
There is absolutely no problem or penalty with submitting the same article to all three places (submit to Ezinearticles first, though, as they are the strictest with regard to unique content), and if you are accepted by all three and have 2 links in each article, your article will result in 6 high quality backlinks!
4. Relevant Lists and Resource Directories
There are many websites that function as a resource for people interested in a particular topic. For example, one site may maintain a list of top weight loss sites to visit. A backlink from pages like these can provide high quality, highly relevant backlinks. The relevance of backlinks is being talked about much more by Google lately, and it is assumed that relevance will play a larger role in site ranking in the near future.
The trick is to find these sites quickly and efficiently. We’ve found the following Google search queries to work very well:
“Keyword phrase” + “add url”
“Keyword phrase” + “add site”
“Keyword phrase” + “add website”
For example, if you’re looking to build backlinks to a fitness-related site, you can search for:
“fitness” + “add url”
Google will return a huge list of sites that will allow you to add your web site, creating a backlink to your site.
One thing to watch out for is that many of the sites you’ll come across will ask for a reciprocal link (i.e., we’ll link to you if you link to us). These should be avoided. It’s worth the effort to sift through these sites to find ones where you can add your link without having to place a reciprocal link on your site, because these links are less valuable for SEO purposes.
Make sure to keep a list or database of all of these great link building sites/resources that you find, so you don’t have to search for them again the next time!
5. Easy EDU Links
I’ve saved my favorite and most unique tip for last. It’s commonly accepted knowledge that .EDU and .GOV backlinks are valued very highly when Google decides on your search rank position. Some people also know the “trick” to finding blogs and forums on .EDU domains, where they can leave useful comments that link back to their sites. If you don’t, here’s a great Google query to find .EDU blogs:
site:.edu inurl:blog “post a comment” -”you must be logged in”
We’re after something more valuable, though. How about a whole page on an .EDU domain where you can put an article or a whole blog post, as opposed to just a comment? All you need is a willing college student!
At many schools, college students are given web space they can use for anything they like. Of course, this web space is hosted on the .EDU domain. All we need to do is to get this college student to allow us to post our material if they like it. But how do you go about finding these students?
If you really think about it, you can’t possibly be many degrees of separation away from knowing someone who’s in college right now. Think about your circle of friends and family, and branch out from there. For example, even though I’m “older” (I have teenage children… sigh), I still have 3 cousins that are attending college right now. If I expand my reach further, friends of my parents have children in college. I’m also getting to the age where my friends are starting to have kids in college. In short, I can’t throw a rock into my personal network without hitting a college student!
All you have to do is approach these students in your network and ask for their help, or give them something in exchange, for the privilege of putting some content on their site. It’s as simple as that.
I hope these tips help you improve your search engine rankings and make you a more successful Internet Marketer!"
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Tuesday, 25 May 2010
5 Steps to Making Your First Sale as an Affiliate Marketer
Found this following article from a clickbank blog, very useful, so to share with you guys.
"Written by: Steven Clayton, Guest Blogger
One of the things I get asked a lot is where to begin as an affiliate marketer.
It can all be so overwhelming. There are so many different ways to get traffic, build sites, and pick products to promote (these are the three components of any affiliate marketing effort). In addition, some of these traffic and site building options can be expensive and highly technical, requiring a lot of training and expertise.
My goal in this post is to highlight a way to get started as an affiliate that’s relatively easy, risk-free, zero cost, has a great chance to make your first money online, and doesn’t require any technical knowledge or experience.
We’re going to use ClickBank for our product, a BlogSpot blog for our website, and search engine optimization to get traffic. If you’re totally new to search engine optimization and want a very quick introduction, you may want to check out this video.
Step 1 – Find 10 products you’re interested in promoting
One of the best parts of being an affiliate for ClickBank is that it’s so easy to get started because there are thousands of unique products to promote. Once you have a ClickBank account, go to the Marketplace and browse it to find products that you have an interest in and/or that you or someone you know would buy.
Make a note of the products, including their Pitch Pages and the custom HopLinks you’ll use to promote them (you’ll get these by clicking the Promote button next to the Marketplace listing). It’s a good idea to save this information in a text file on your computer.
Step 2 – Find potential keywords using Google’s keyword tool
Go to Google’s external keyword tool.
For each product you picked in Step 1, enter the most generic keyword that applies to your product. For example, if you’re promoting a product on how to cure tinnitus, use the keyword “tinnitus” and click the Get Keyword Ideas button.
Go over to the Match Type drop down box and select Phrase Match.
Sort the list in descending order of global search volume by clicking on the column Title.
Make a list of any keyword that is between 10000 and 30000 global monthly searches, and that has something to do with your product.
At the end of this step, you’ll have 10 lists. Some of these lists may be empty, as it’s possible that there won’t be any keywords that meet our criteria. We’re being very careful about selecting only the ones that will work for us, so have patience and don’t get discouraged.
Step 3 – Evaluate the competition for SEO
Now we need to see if it would be possible for us to actually rank in Google for terms that would drive traffic to the product we’re going to market. For each keyword identified in Step 2, head over to Google and type the keyword in quotes. For example, if the keyword phrase was “cure tinnitus,” you’d type “cure tinnitus” into Google.
You’ll see the search results and the words “Results 1-10 of about xx,xxx” on the right hand side. If the xx,xxx number is less than 100,000, move on to the next step. Otherwise, discard this keyword.
Do another Google search by typing inurl:”keyword phrase”. For example, for our keyword above it would be inurl:”cure tinnitus”. Take a look at the number of results again. If that number is below 1,250, this keyword is a winner. Make a note of it.
Step 4 – Pick the keyword you want to start with and build a BlogSpot blog
We’ve picked a BlogSpot blog for 2 reasons: it’s easy to build a nice-looking site quickly, and blogs rank very well in Google.
In general, pick the keyword phrase that has the highest search volume, the lowest competition numbers from step 3, and seems to be the best fit for someone looking to actually buy your product. There are really no wrong answers here, just go with your instinct using these criteria as a guide.
Build your BlogSpot blog. Sign up and watch the tutorials on how to create content like posts. When setting up your blog, make sure that the blog title is your keyword phrase.
Make sure that the blog address (URL) also contains the keyword phrase you’ve picked in some way. So in our example, best-tinnitus-cure, my-tinnitus-cure, etc., all work just fine. Dashes are fine anywhere, so with a bit of creativity you should have no trouble coming up with a name that’s not been taken.
The goal of your blog is to inform and to sell. Provide valuable content from the Pitch Page of the product, as well as outside resources. Add your HopLink to the actual product using text and possibly images. You can often get images from an affiliate page for the product, which can be found in the product’s Vendor Spotlight in the ClickBank Marketplace.
Important: Never make up any information about the product! I encourage you to buy the product or have someone you know purchase the product, so you can give a truthful and accurate opinion of it.
The exact steps to build out the site are too extensive to go into here, but an example should do the trick. Check this page out. It will give you a great idea of what we’re after.
Step 5 – Do some link building
Link building is the key to search engine optimization, and the best way to quickly get included in search engine results for the keyword you’re targeting.
The process of getting a backlink is a bit different for each option listed below, but you can’t go wrong here. The idea is to do three things: get a link to your site, use your keyword phrase in the description or tag when you’re using a bookmarking site, use your keyword phrase as the “anchor text” (the text that’s clickable…that is the actual link to your site) whenever possible. Don’t worry about getting this perfect…any link is better than a perfect link, and you can do no harm!
Blog comment posting is a popular way of getting backlinks. Here’s a nice page that explains how to do it.
Social bookmarking can be a great way to build backlinks to your site. Here’s a huge list of them! Just set up an account with them and add your site.
Web 2.0 properties like Squidoo, Hubpages, etc. are great places to put up a small amount of content and then to add a backlink to your site. Here’s a nice list of these types of sites.
Also take a look at this guest blog post I did previously for other ideas.
Try to build at least 5-10 backlinks every single day! This will give you the quickest results.
Conclusion
The most important part of this process is the keyword research in steps 2 and 3. If you have trouble finding the right keyword phrases for the 10 products you selected, go get 10 more and try again. Have patience. If you stick it out and find the right keywords, the rest will usually take care of itself.
After a while… it could be days, could be weeks, you should show up in the Google search results and people will click on your links to the ClickBank product and you’ll make your first money online! Best of luck in your affiliate marketing efforts."
See the original post
"Written by: Steven Clayton, Guest Blogger
One of the things I get asked a lot is where to begin as an affiliate marketer.
It can all be so overwhelming. There are so many different ways to get traffic, build sites, and pick products to promote (these are the three components of any affiliate marketing effort). In addition, some of these traffic and site building options can be expensive and highly technical, requiring a lot of training and expertise.
My goal in this post is to highlight a way to get started as an affiliate that’s relatively easy, risk-free, zero cost, has a great chance to make your first money online, and doesn’t require any technical knowledge or experience.
We’re going to use ClickBank for our product, a BlogSpot blog for our website, and search engine optimization to get traffic. If you’re totally new to search engine optimization and want a very quick introduction, you may want to check out this video.
Step 1 – Find 10 products you’re interested in promoting
One of the best parts of being an affiliate for ClickBank is that it’s so easy to get started because there are thousands of unique products to promote. Once you have a ClickBank account, go to the Marketplace and browse it to find products that you have an interest in and/or that you or someone you know would buy.
Make a note of the products, including their Pitch Pages and the custom HopLinks you’ll use to promote them (you’ll get these by clicking the Promote button next to the Marketplace listing). It’s a good idea to save this information in a text file on your computer.
Step 2 – Find potential keywords using Google’s keyword tool
Go to Google’s external keyword tool.
For each product you picked in Step 1, enter the most generic keyword that applies to your product. For example, if you’re promoting a product on how to cure tinnitus, use the keyword “tinnitus” and click the Get Keyword Ideas button.
Go over to the Match Type drop down box and select Phrase Match.
Sort the list in descending order of global search volume by clicking on the column Title.
Make a list of any keyword that is between 10000 and 30000 global monthly searches, and that has something to do with your product.
At the end of this step, you’ll have 10 lists. Some of these lists may be empty, as it’s possible that there won’t be any keywords that meet our criteria. We’re being very careful about selecting only the ones that will work for us, so have patience and don’t get discouraged.
Step 3 – Evaluate the competition for SEO
Now we need to see if it would be possible for us to actually rank in Google for terms that would drive traffic to the product we’re going to market. For each keyword identified in Step 2, head over to Google and type the keyword in quotes. For example, if the keyword phrase was “cure tinnitus,” you’d type “cure tinnitus” into Google.
You’ll see the search results and the words “Results 1-10 of about xx,xxx” on the right hand side. If the xx,xxx number is less than 100,000, move on to the next step. Otherwise, discard this keyword.
Do another Google search by typing inurl:”keyword phrase”. For example, for our keyword above it would be inurl:”cure tinnitus”. Take a look at the number of results again. If that number is below 1,250, this keyword is a winner. Make a note of it.
Step 4 – Pick the keyword you want to start with and build a BlogSpot blog
We’ve picked a BlogSpot blog for 2 reasons: it’s easy to build a nice-looking site quickly, and blogs rank very well in Google.
In general, pick the keyword phrase that has the highest search volume, the lowest competition numbers from step 3, and seems to be the best fit for someone looking to actually buy your product. There are really no wrong answers here, just go with your instinct using these criteria as a guide.
Build your BlogSpot blog. Sign up and watch the tutorials on how to create content like posts. When setting up your blog, make sure that the blog title is your keyword phrase.
Make sure that the blog address (URL) also contains the keyword phrase you’ve picked in some way. So in our example, best-tinnitus-cure, my-tinnitus-cure, etc., all work just fine. Dashes are fine anywhere, so with a bit of creativity you should have no trouble coming up with a name that’s not been taken.
The goal of your blog is to inform and to sell. Provide valuable content from the Pitch Page of the product, as well as outside resources. Add your HopLink to the actual product using text and possibly images. You can often get images from an affiliate page for the product, which can be found in the product’s Vendor Spotlight in the ClickBank Marketplace.
Important: Never make up any information about the product! I encourage you to buy the product or have someone you know purchase the product, so you can give a truthful and accurate opinion of it.
The exact steps to build out the site are too extensive to go into here, but an example should do the trick. Check this page out. It will give you a great idea of what we’re after.
Step 5 – Do some link building
Link building is the key to search engine optimization, and the best way to quickly get included in search engine results for the keyword you’re targeting.
The process of getting a backlink is a bit different for each option listed below, but you can’t go wrong here. The idea is to do three things: get a link to your site, use your keyword phrase in the description or tag when you’re using a bookmarking site, use your keyword phrase as the “anchor text” (the text that’s clickable…that is the actual link to your site) whenever possible. Don’t worry about getting this perfect…any link is better than a perfect link, and you can do no harm!
Blog comment posting is a popular way of getting backlinks. Here’s a nice page that explains how to do it.
Social bookmarking can be a great way to build backlinks to your site. Here’s a huge list of them! Just set up an account with them and add your site.
Web 2.0 properties like Squidoo, Hubpages, etc. are great places to put up a small amount of content and then to add a backlink to your site. Here’s a nice list of these types of sites.
Also take a look at this guest blog post I did previously for other ideas.
Try to build at least 5-10 backlinks every single day! This will give you the quickest results.
Conclusion
The most important part of this process is the keyword research in steps 2 and 3. If you have trouble finding the right keyword phrases for the 10 products you selected, go get 10 more and try again. Have patience. If you stick it out and find the right keywords, the rest will usually take care of itself.
After a while… it could be days, could be weeks, you should show up in the Google search results and people will click on your links to the ClickBank product and you’ll make your first money online! Best of luck in your affiliate marketing efforts."
See the original post
Wednesday, 12 May 2010
LOLCat King on What Makes Internet Culture Viral
Ben Huh is the CEO of The Cheezburger Network, a ring of highly lucrative websites that curate and capitalize on Internet memes and macros. During Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco, he sat down to tell us all about Internet culture: what makes for a guaranteed flop online, and what elements can help content become viral.
Huh places emphasis on sharing, remixing and giving back as opposed to the top-down dictatorship of content that we typically see in pop culture. In mainstream mass media, we’re given a very strict code by gatekeepers who tell us what to wear, what to watch, what to listen to and even what to eat. But because of the way Internet
culture works, with masses of users deciding what should be considered cool or funny, we get Three Wolf Moon t-shirts, David After Dentist, the Trololo guy and way too much bacon.
But Internet culture isn’t just for the Internet anymore. These days, the intersection between online and mainstream media is evermore blurry as celebrities jump onto Twitter
and TV shows pull meme content into storylines. When do ad agencies and movie stars go too far in their attempts to use the web? And when do they hit a sweet spot that satisfies all parties involved? Check out Huh’s thoughts, and let us know your own opinions in the comments.
Older Users Hear Facebook Is Bad News [STATS]
According to one study, adults ages 35 and older hear more bad news about Facebook than good. Between bugs, changes and privacy fear, uncertainty and doubt in the media, these mature folks have heard significantly more negative reports than have their younger counterparts.
Does this mean “older” people aren’t into Facebook? Hardly. It just means that they’re more aware of negatively slanted news reports, which likely has more to do with their preferred news sources than their online habits or personal opinions.
The pollsters at YouGov BrandIndex did a pulse check on adults’ perceptions of Facebook in the media using the company’s “buzz score.” They asked respondents, “If you’ve heard anything about the brand in the last two weeks, was it positive or negative?” and calculated the score by subtracting negative buzz from positive buzz. Buzz scores range from 100 (totally positive news) to -100 (totally negative news).
Over the past six weeks, Facebook’s buzz score for adults 35 and older has slid from 26.7 to 21.2. Over the same period of time, buzz scores from folks between the ages of 18 and 34 increased from 32.8 to 44.8.
YouGov rep Drew Kerr wrote to us, “For the 35+ demo, Facebook had below zero buzz scores as recent as late 2008 and then made an impressive ascent. But as the features change and people talk among themselves, paths diverge with the younger bracket only in the past month.”
What are some of the Facebook news stories you recall hearing about lately? Did they affect your opinion of Facebook as a social network or a company at all?
Blippy Users Streaming $1.5 Million in Purchases Per Week
Blippy, the web app that shows the world what you buy, has announced that users are sending data on $1.5 million worth of purchases each week.
Taking this as a sign that consumers want to share data about their purchases, Blippy is now opening an API for developers and, to a large extent, the brands who employ them. This type of data is incredibly valuable to brands, as it gives them insight on purchasing habits, product inventory, income, customer loyalty, gifting and more — all the better to advertise to users, of course.
Some examples of apps developers might create are, according to Blippy, “an app that tells you every recipe you can make from the ingredients currently in your kitchen… An app that knows it’s your 9th purchase from the local coffee shop and lets you know that your 10th cup is free… An app that recommends movie rentals based on what your friends have rented and what they think.” Developers are invited to apply online.
Blippy has stated that only approved developers will be permitted to access the API. After last month’s major security glitch, where users’ credit card numbers were splashed all over Google search results, security and privacy are going to have to be of the utmost importance for Blippy and its developers. After all, the information they’re handling is penultimate to a user’s real-world identity, much more so than data found on Facebook orFoursquare
.
In other news, Blippy is also adding purchase-sharing capabilities for select supermarkets, so users can now share their grocery carts.
What’s your opinion: Would you let third-party Blippy applications access data about your credit card and online purchases?
Why the Fashion Industry Loves Foursquare
Testing the power of location-based fashion marketing started with Marc Jacobs and Foursquare during New York Fashion Week in February 2010. A few months later, luxury footwear and accessories brand Jimmy Choo jumped into the location game. And recently, shoe retailer Diesel tested their own version of online to offline engagement, integrating Foursquare promotions into its “Faces of Stupid” campaign.
“With the rise of mobile, the mixing of the web with the physical world seems only like the natural evolution of things. Mobile apps that combine location, real-time and social characteristics are in high demand by brands that want to promote their sales, and most of all, give to their physical stores a touch of the social ‘glitter’ of the web,” says Amalia Agathou, Technology Editor for Glamour Magazine in Greece.
So what can brands learn as they start creating geo-location marketing campaigns? A look at Diesel’s recent efforts yields valuable insights.
Diesel’s “Faces of Stupid” Campaign
The Faces of Stupid campaign is a contest in which people can come into a Diesel store and get stickers that read “BE STUPID.” The contestants then put the stickers anywhere on themselves, take a picture, and send it to the Faces of Stupid website, along with their “stupid stories.” Contestants are then entered to win include exotic prizes, like swimming with sharks off South Africa or cutting a record in Jamaica.
“This contest is a way for us to communicate the global campaign in a very viral and fun way, as obviously a huge portion of our audience are avid web surfers,” says Diesel’s Vice President of Marketing David Ireland. “Faces of Stupid is a great way to utilize the web for everyone to share their own ‘STUPID’ experience and give away a ridiculously awesome prize to the winner. These are all trips that we would love to take … I’ll be kind of jealous of our winner, to be honest.”
To date, the contest is one of the most intricate campaigns implemented by a fashion brand. When asked why Diesel went to such lengths for the promotion, Ireland said, “It was a natural extension of the brand’s overall philosophy towards its customers. [At Diesel], we live the lifestyle that we sell, and we want to share that with the people that are fans of the brand. We book the bands that we want to hear, we throw parties that we want to go to — that’s what has always made Diesel so amazing. It’s just a very authentic relationship between the brand and our customers.”
Foursquare as an Organic, Viral Marketing Tool
During a one-day event at Diesel’s flagship store in New York, Foursquare users who checked in within a three-city block radius of the Union Square location were alerted of a special promotion at that store. Once they checked in to the Diesel venue, they had their choice of specially printed tee shirts in red or purple.
Diesel didn’t create a Foursquare badge as Marc Jacobs did for their event. Instead, they offered a “deal,” and focused on utilizing Foursquare as a promotional tool to bring people into a retail store that they otherwise may not have entered. Within the first hour, the store saw four people come in and do just that. “To me, that’s tremendously exciting,” said Leslie Hall, founder of Iced Media, the agency responsible for the online components of the campaign.
For the Foursquare initiatives, Diesel chose not to extensively promote the event. “We wanted it to be a true test,” said Hall. “We didn’t want one hundred blog features going up beforehand. We wanted the promotion to roll out in a very organic way, much like the overall campaign has.”
Stats: Diesel’s Campaign Could Have Been Bigger
Looking at Diesel’s audience, their customers are mostly males between 18-30 years old. Foursquare’s users are about 65% male, so it made sense for Diesel to partner with Foursquare for the campaign.
During the event, Diesel reported 44 check-ins, 17 tweets, and 20,957 aggregate Twitter users reached from those social updates.
In an analysis of the Diesel campaign results, Crosby Noricks, founder of PR Couture, and Senior Social Media Strategist at Red Door Interactive said “It’s exciting to see Diesel acknowledge the tremendous potential inherent in Foursquare’s online-offline integration by including this as a component of their ‘Be Stupid’ campaign. While it was obviously not their intent to make a big deal out of this promotion, I’m not sure this was the most effective execution in terms of harnessing and identifying the real potential of the Foursquare community for the brand.”
Noricks continued, “In this iteration, without pre-promotion, it also failed to drive the level of activity I feel would be required to qualify its replication, although I applaud them heartily for trying. What is potentially more valuable for the brand is the post-event coverage that promotes Diesel as an innovating, digitally-savvy company who puts together pretty incredible experiential opportunities for its customers.” Noricks added that she hoped to see Jimmy Choo follow suit with its post-event coverage.
What Fashion Brands Can Learn From Diesel
“Luxury brands have used location-based services like Foursquare to create buzz and promote new lines and stores. The challenge for the retailers is to find ways to use these services in order to build a cohesive shopping experience in the web/mobile and the physical world. The retailers are now presented with a plethora of geo-location apps to choose from, but it remains to be seen the amount of control they will want to have on them. On the e-commerce front, the battle is already on between eBay and Louis Vuitton,” says Amalia Agathou.
As more fashion brands start to use location-based services like Gowalla and Foursquare to drive online customers into retail locations, it’s important to remember that location-based marketing efforts can and should be used to accomplish more than one marketing goal. Brands should strive to not only engage customers, but to enhance their shopping experiences.
Improving in-store customer service or loyalty programs are additional ways Foursquare could be implemented, though many retailers are cautious about that route, noting the network is still in its early-adoption phase, and full integration may be cost prohibitive.
If integrating Foursquare into the marketing mix seems too complicated, or if it doesn’t match a brand’s core audience, consider partnering with a publication that is already exploring these strategies. Lucky Magazine has already started developing a solid presence on Foursquare, and has interactive and socially-enabled smartphone applications that show great marketing potential, for example. Tristan Walker, Vice President of Business Development for Foursquare informed us that a customer loyalty program integration usually costs less than $10,000 to implement (as seen in the case of Tasti D-Lite).
There are many ways retailers and brands can dip their toes into location-based marketing. Just remember that those who do it before their competitors stand the best chance of reaping the big rewards.
StreetSpark: Foursquare for Dating
Quick Pitch: StreetSpark is a real-time, location-based social mobile matching network. It’s like Foursquare for dating. StreetSpark shows compatible “Sparks” nearby.
Genius Idea: Using the StreetSpark app on the web or for theiPhone [iTunes link] (coming soon for Android and BlackBerry), you can find people nearby who share your interests and are compatible with your external social networking behavior.
This is a pretty cool approach to online matchmaking because not only does it use geolocation and the user profile you create for StreetSpark, it also pulls in and analyzes data that you share publicly across your social networks. Information like Foursquare checkins and likes on Facebook are all factored in. When the service finds a person that it thinks might be a good match for you, it highlights them as a Spark on your device.
This video gives an overview of how StreetSpark works:
We like that you control what information is viewable and that both parties have to “ignite” a spark before more information will be revealed. The app also uses augmented reality to show off Sparks in your area, which is novel if not exactly useful. We also think that the algorithmic use of public social networking data alongside more traditional metrics to figure out compatibility is an interesting idea.
If you’re looking for a way to make more social connections with those around you, you might want to give StreetSpark a shot.
Sponsored by Microsoft BizSpark
BizSpark is a startup program that gives you three-year access to the latest Microsoft development tools, as well as connecting you to a nationwide network of investors and incubators. There are no upfront costs, so if your business is privately owned, less than three years old, and generates less than U.S.$1 million in annual revenue, you can sign up today.
Entrepreneurs can take advantage of the Azure Services platform for their website hosting and storage needs. Microsoft recently announced the “new CloudApp()” contest – use the Azure Services Platform for hosting your .NET or PHP app, and you could be the lucky winner of a USD 5000* (please see website for official rules and guidelines).”
Top 5 Social Media Tips for C-Suite Execs
For the rank and file at companies big and small, social media is infiltrating the workplace and fast becoming an important part of day-to-day activities. When it comes to executives and upper management, though, social media mostly remains anart unpracticed.
We gathered up expert advice from Tim Bray of Google, Guy Kawasaki of Alltop (formerly Apple), Doug Ulman of Livestrong, John Battelle of Federated Media and Steve Rubel of Edelman on the why and the how when it comes to C-level executives and social media.
Their tips and advice range from practice to crucial and point to the need for C-suite executives of this generation to heed social media.
1. Go Where the People Are
First things first — making the case for social media. In terms of seriousness, there’s no question that Twitter has its share of pointless babble and that Facebook users like sex. But both social networks have their serious sides and both have permeated public consciousness, and blogs have evolved to become an important source of news and information.
When it comes down to it, the people of this world speak social media, which means any CEO or C-level executive will need to be fluent in social media in order to keep their companies relevant.
Edelman Digital’s SVP, Director of Insights, Steve Rubel says that when it comes to social media, “It’s simple math. Executives understand that their time/financial investments need to go where people are spending time, and that’s social media.”
Rubel — who comes across all varieties of CEOs in his line of work — convincingly uses research to drive this point home. “The average American consumes almost 12 hours of information per day in total (all formats) according to a study by the University of California at San Diego. However, social networks are increasingly directing these information flows. Nielsen reports that time spent on social networking sites averaged six hours per month globally.”
Rubel further breaks it down in terms executives can relate to by comparing social media platforms today to carrying the same power and reach as television networks.
“Basically marketers have always focused on generating maximum awareness and (now) engagement with the greatest efficiency. In the past this was TV. Now it’s social networks. Facebook, YouTube, Twitter andLinkedIn [are] the new ABC, CBS, ABC and Fox. So my advice is to maximize these as best you can – but this requires surface area and thus not just a media buy.”
To help, CEOs and executives should empower employees to explore social media initiatives and leverage paid and earned media. “Activate as many employees as possible to scale genuine engagement and secure surface area but use paid media to amplify your investments in time,” recommends Rubel.
2. Invest in People
Most of us who are socially savvy recognize the value of relationships, but for the busy CEO or overworked CTO, the relationship side of social media takes time, and time is money.
John Battelle — Federated Media’s chairman and CEO — has long been an active Twitter user and blogger, and over the years has found immense value in investing in people via social media. (Disclosure: Federated Media is a partner of Mashable.)
Battelle advocates that, “When sharing information with fans on Facebook or followers on Twitter, don’t forget that your job is to add value to these folks’ lives. Social media is about relationships.”
Whatever the platform, social media allows for this type of human investment. Battelle advises that CEOs and executives should, “Be the kind of person others want to seek out because each time they interact with you (or your brand), they feel like you’ve earned their attention and their loyalty.”
Battelle practices what he preaches. It’s not common practice for CEOs to promote their Twitter handle in their email signature, but each of Battelle’s emails include links to his blog and Twitter account, driving home the notion that he’s interested in the people side of the business. This, combined with an engaging and interactive Twitter presence, has helped Battelle develop social equity — the very definition of earned media — that contributes to the bottom line of his business.
3. Be a Subject Matter Expert
Alltop CEO and former Apple evangelist, Guy Kawasaki is the poster child for the active social media executive. Kawasaki’s perspective comes from years of blogging and using Twitter to further his business initiatives. He sees social media as a means for executives, “To establish yourself as a fascinating subject-matter expert.”
For the executive looking to become a subject matter expert in the eyes of the public, and not just inside the organization, Kawasaki says that, “It’s all about finding good stories, videos, and blog posts about your subject and providing links to these sources.”
“For example, if you own a restaurant, then you could post a link to The Second Annual New York Foodie Photo Scavenger Hunt, Cilantro Haters, It’s Not Your Fault, and Check It Out: Get Your Groceries At The Library. Do this for a few months, and people will recognize you as a food expert. And guess what? They’ll come eat at your restaurant.”
He uses StumbleUpon, SmartBrief, Alltop (a network he founded), and even outsources part of the story-discovery process to staff members. It’s not a strategy that everyone agrees with, but at the end of the day Kawasaki is able to curate the best stories of interest for his audience, and in so doing, become an important — read: must-follow — source of information.
On that note, Kawasaki concludes that, “The test for your social media efforts is whether people find what you post so fascinating that they retweet it (or favor it, share it, or email it). Trust me, today the sincerest form of flattery is retweeting, not imitating, you.”
4. Make it Personal
As a cancer survivor and the CEO of LIVESTRONG, Doug Ulman has the difficult of job of trying to be both a compassionate human being to others affected by cancer and also a strong business leader. Instead of taking a strictly business approach to Twitter and social media, Ulman prefers to be transparent and he advises other CEOs to do the same.
For Ulman, it’s about experiencing social media to its fullest potential. He says, “My best advice would be that you must be transparent. If you use social media to simply push an agenda, a product or a cause you will not realize the true benefits that these tools provide.”
Just as social media is about relationships, there’s also humanness behind each and every Tweet and Facebook status update. The CEO that can make it personal can connect with the individual beyond the medium.
“I think people want to know who you are. What you do? What makes you tick? Not just hear your marketing agenda. They want to get to know you and you can only engage in that manner if you share some personal information and thoughts.”
Of course, Ulman also recognizes the value of privacy. His personal take is to, “share things that are of interest to me – workouts, books that I am reading and articles I have read. They are not always related to LIVESTRONG or cancer but they are related to who I am and what inspires me.”
5. Don’t Neglect Internal Social Media
Considered a thought leader by many, Tim Bray is the co-inventor of XML, a prominent technology blogger, and as of March, Google’s Developer Advocate, primarily with a focus on Android.
As someone who gets both traditional corporate culture and the freedom that blogging and social technologies allow, Bray’s message to executives is: “Don’t neglect internal social media.”
Bray says, “Since I’ve started at Google, I’ve been extremely impressed how well the internal version ofGoogle Buzz works to facilitate routing important information to people who need to hear it, and facilitate fast reactions.”
For Bray and his team the internal tool of choice is Google Buzz, but that’s obviously a choice motivated by his employer. Companies should consider a host of other internal social media options such as SAP Streamwork, 37Signals products, enterprise microblogs like Yammer. The adventurous employer could even experiment with Foursquare. Regardless of tool choice, the point is that internal parties can accomplish tasks faster by leveraging social technologies inside the workplace.
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