10 most Commonly Used Passwords

Taking an aggregate sample of passwords (primarily from the UK), we take a look at the most commonly occurring. If you spot your own password listed - it might just be time for a change!

10. 'thomas' (0.99‰)

9. 'arsenal' (1.11‰)

8. 'monkey' (1.33‰)

7. 'charlie' (1.39‰)

6. 'qwerty' (1.41‰)

5. '123456' (1.63‰)

4. 'letmein' (1.76‰)

A modern-day version of 'open sesame' - and 1 person in 560 will type 'letmein' as their password. Quite why is beyond me.

3. 'liverpool' (1.82‰)

2. 'password' (3.780‰)

1. '123' (3.784‰)

With nearly 4 people in 1,000 opting for a simple numerical sequence as their password (it should be noted that there was no lower length limit specified), '123' must be the first thing a lot of people think of when asked to specify a password. One dreads to think what their PIN number might be!

Have People Stopped Clicking on Google Ads?

Have People Stopped Clicking on Google Ads?

OR DID A WEB-TRAFFIC FIRM GET THE NUMBERS WRONG? - By Chris Wilson
 On the morning of Feb. 26, the investment firm Bear Stearns sent out an alert (PDF) about some unwelcome news for Google. According to comScore, a leading Web-analytics company, the company's domestic paid clicks—that is, the number of times people in the United States clicked on a Google ad—were down 0.3 percent compared to last year and down 12 percent since October. By 7:16 a.m., former tech-securities analyst (and Slate contributor) Henry Blodget reported the news on Silicon Alley Insider under the headline "Google Disaster." As news of the comScore report circulated, Google got killed on Wall Street: The stock opened the day down $25 a share and continued to fall, sinking to an 11-month low of $464.19 before staging a modest comeback.

Wall Street's anti-Google stampede came despite some good news. The company's advertising numbers from the previous quarter were strong, particularly outside the U.S., and Bear Sterns also reported that Google has "healthy growth prospects that should lead to market share gains [and] a strong balance sheet." Nevertheless, investors were spooked by the idea that Web surfers had stopped clicking on text ads—perhaps a sign that even mighty Google wasn't immune from an economic slowdown. Wall Street, however, shouldn't have made such a leap. ComScore's click numbers, like so many stats about user behavior on the Web, are unreliable and opaque. Instead of using comScore reports to predict a tech company's future performance, an investor would be better off ignoring them.

ComScore is one of several firms in the United States that peddles statistics on Web traffic. It seems like it should be easy to get an exact count of how many people visit a Web site, click on an ad, and so forth. But as Slate's Paul Boutin has pointed out, these stats are a moving target. Analytics firms like Nielsen and comScore don't count every time a Web page gets accessed; rather, they extrapolate the numbers based on data from panelists who install the companies' tracking software. ComScore claims its panel includes more than 2 million people who are recruited either directly or through third-party software packages that offer services like virus protection and performance optimization. (The company terms this "researchware." Less charitable types call it "spyware.") The company takes the data it gets from these users and weights it according to demographics to draw a statistical portrait of traffic to individual sites. ComScore is, essentially, making an educated guess. Nobody except Google is keeping a tally of each individual click on the company's text ads.

Even though comScore's numbers are an estimate, they've been repeated as gospel with little discussion of margins of error—this despite the large psychological difference between a 0.3 percent decline and a small gain (or a bigger loss). Why did Wall Street respond so emphatically to comScore's numbers, ignoring the big-picture reassurances in Bear Sterns' report? One can certainly blame a jittery market on the watch for bad news as economic indicators everywhere are looking ugly. It's also probably fair to guess that crafty investors—guessing that less savvy investors will panic—would sell early in an attempt to make money off this skittishness. But it's impossible to avoid the conclusion that Wall Street types put way too much stock in the reliability of Web traffic stats, numbers that should not be used for day-to-day management of a portfolio.

After the public hubbub over its Google numbers, comScore released an analysis of the data on the site's blog. The post lists many caveats, including the possibility that the recent decline in clicks might have been the result of Google getting better at reducing "bad clicks"—accidental clicks by people who have no interest in the product being advertised. Many in the tech-blog community saw this response as comScore getting spooked by the fallout from its report or bending to pressure from Google. (A comScore spokesman told me there was no contact between Google and comScore executives between the time of the initial report and comScore's elaborations.) More likely, comScore was simply being realistic about the reliability—or maybe the unreliability—of its own data.

ComScore's numbers are particularly prone to error when making long-term comparisons, like the year-over-year comparison of Google's paid clicks. For one thing, the group of panelists that provided comScore's data in January 2007 isn't the same as the group from January 2008. We don't know how different the groups were because comScore doesn't release that data.

Like most companies that deal in Web statistics, comScore gives few specifics about its methodology. In order for investors and tech buffs to get a better sense of the accuracy of this data, firms like Nielsen and comScore have to become more transparent—something the Interactive Advertising Bureau, an umbrella organization for 300 companies involved in online advertising, has called on them to do. (For a great side-by-side comparison of how different Web analytics companies work—so far as we know—see this primer from the Web marketing firm Antezeta.)

Until Nielsen, comScore, and other analytics companies become committed to sharing their data and methodologies, personal fortunes and the fates of tech companies will depend on data that might not be anywhere close to accurate. Wall Street, at least, shouldn't be so willing to act on this kind of report.

Before public demand for better methodology is likely to mount, however, those whose personal fortunes rest on this data will have to understand that it is a methodology in the first place, not some universal registry of Web use data with a margin of error of zero. Next time you see a press release that says clicks are going up or down, take it for what it is: a guess—as far as we know.

Questions to ask before starting a Social Media Campaign

Questions to ask before starting a Social Media Campaign

1: Why do you want to use social media? While, I think that many companies should exploit the numerous benefits that social media marketing (dubbed relations) affords them, there are equally as many companies who should stay clear from the medium. Determine what the underlying goal is and why social media should be used to achieve same before you continue.

2. Which department will social media become a vertical to? Often it’s the technical department that gets the thumbs up. But think carefully. The Marketing and PR departments are generally the creative, content-driven folk who hold the key to any company’s target market. This is at the soul of any social media strategy! Also, well executed social media is a result of an integrated approach.

3: Is the company ready for social media engagement? Often, so much blue tape exists within corporate society that we forget that it’s not conducive to the pace-of-lightning speed that social media is. Determine beforehand what processes need to be in place for your engagement to be real and timely.

4: Similar to point 3, is your company ready for the brutally honest feedback that exists on the Internet about your company or brand and if so, is the business ready to make positive changes to the business? This includes having access to senior management - even Exco level - so that they’re aware of what’s happening in the space.

5: What part of the bottom line are you hoping to improve on with social media? This is a biggie. You see, I’m all for brand positioning. It’s important. But it generally costs a lot of money and on its own does very little to a business’ profit margins. Social media, like any other online marketing channel, needs to be used for the purpose of generating leads. Sure, the approach may be different but there needs to be a financial target. It’s that simple. Anything less is fluff.

6: Have you got access to target social media communities that you can rely on to launch a blogger or social networker seed campaign? Being able to reach out to influential online networkers with a large following is important to accelerating the campaign and its message into the social media community.

7: Speaking of bloggers, are you aware that social media goes beyond bloggers and blogging? Often a company will jump on the blog bandwagon not realising that other social media channels do exist that could offer far more value to both your business and customers. Do the research. Call someone in. Make informed decisions.

8. Have you experimented and ideally succeeded with a SEO campaign? Because Search is the lifeblood of online traffic, it is important to understand the fundamentals of Search and Optimisation to reap the benefits across online marketing disciplines. Similarly, it’s important to be able to make sense of quantitative and qualitative metrics.

There’s probably many more things that I can add to this list. What do you think is missing?

See you in May. It’s going to be a very exciting month on so many levels...

Yahoo! to Rewire for Social Graph and Data Portability

Yahoo! announced today at the Web 2.0 Expo the availability of the first program in its large vision for a dramatic overhaul of the company across all its properties. The Search Monkey developer platform will let site owners alter their search results listing, including through semantic markup. Mark Hendrickson at TechCrunch has an in-depth review of that platform.

Search Monkey is just the first of many steps that Yahoo! discussed today. CTO Ari Balogh said that the entire company was rewiring, across all its properties, in the spirit of the social graph and data portability. Flickr's influence was tangible. Here's a high-level overview of some of the biggest changes.

Installable Apps

It's all about the platforms and conference organizer Brady Forrest was kind enough to referenceour post yesterday on what comes next after APIs and platforms are ubiquitous in his introduction of the Yahoo! CTO. Sure enough, Yahoo! has its own vision for what comes next and it's a pretty good looking plan.

Yahoo! will soon allow developers to write apps that work easily across every property in the company. Hosting will be offered or the apps can live off-site. When a user ads an application, they'll be asked which of the Yahoo! sites they want that app to be installed on. This will include the front page of Yahoo! - which will soon host 3rd party apps. Look out Facebook.

Those apps will include an event stream (ala FriendFeed/Facebook Newsfeed/MySpace friend activity feed) that's prioritized by topic area and social graph. The activities of your sports friends will appear on the Yahoo Sports page, your closest email buds will be surfaced on Yahoo! Mail.

You might not feel like you have a well developed social graph across Yahoo! but think about Flickr, Upcoming.org and Del.icio.us. Let's see Yahoo! acquire Twitter or FriendFeed and then we'll really be talking.

The Social

Social graph data, or prioritized friends lists, will serve as the relevance filter for the apps that operate across Yahoo. Back in November we discussed this strategy in a post about the Inbox 2.0 strategy titled Yahoo! Says the Future Will be Modeled on Facebook.

While Facebook stagnates, struggles with app spam and looks more like MySpace every day though - FriendFeed has taken center stage in experimenting with friend activity data, friend of a friend conversations, friend recommendation and prevention of information overload.

Yahoo will do that type of work, but will also leverage its work with in the Identity and Data Portability communities. Users will be given extensive control over where they share their data, something Facebook for example says it is focusing on before it can make Data Portability real.

Yahoo! users will have a single unified identity across all Yahoo! properties. I was sitting next to Kaliya Hamlin, known as Identity Woman, when this was announced and asked her how that sounded. She said that if a unified identity was a requirement, that would be bad, if they were an option that would be ideal, and if they were "toggleable" (like multiple personas) that would be ideal. I agree.

There's a whole lot of potential here and Yahoo! has really been engaged in the Identity world in particular. If they can make a few radical steps and perhaps a few key acquisitions - then social graph + 3rd party apps + semantified search indexing could make the user experience at Yahoo! very, very compelling. Coincidentally, or not, these moves were very close to what our own super-prescient Josh Catone called on Yahoo! to do almost a year ago.

It is a really tall order to fill, but with the infusion of so many smart people into Yahoo! after years of acquisitions like Flickr - a company wide rewiring seems relatively plausible.

28 Tips To Make You a StumbleUpon Superstar

28 Tips To Make You a StumbleUpon Superstar

StumbleUpon or SU, can be a great asset for your online marketing

 strategy. Here are 28 tips to take you to SU heaven.

1. Your Avatar, the little picture which represents your account. You need to have one, it seems obvious but I regularly come across "anonymous" accounts with ghost avatars. Your avatar is usually the first thing which people know about you, in the seconds or even micro seconds where your avatar is digested it's important not to make simple, initial mistakes. You want to get to the situation where when people see your avatar they get excited
2. Make your Avatar stand out, it's only a small space so use high contrast colours.
3. Only use a photo which has been designed to be an avatar. Do not use a passport photo or the "Best Employee of the Month", type photo you find in fast food joints.
4. If your logo works well as an avatar, use it. But most don't, you may be in love with your logo but think about how it will be perceived on SU. People using SU to improve their business are not welcomed with open arms so it's best to adopt a regular user status.
5. Be bold, be striking, but don't offend unnecessarily. Your avatar should not cause offence and the use of religious or political symbols should be avoided.
6. Pay a graphic designer to put together an avatar based on your website or company logo, if you don't have the budget create it yourself but show it to lots of friends to get feedback before you publish.
7. Concentrating on quality is the most effective way to stand out from the crowd. In a competitive environment it is quality which is the most important element when it comes to attracting friends and influencing people
8. Having more friends and fans means your stumbles will be seen by more people. Stumbleupon allows you to friend only 200 people, so make sure each one you friend, friends you back. Make sure they are active stumblers too, if someone hasn't logged on to their account they are not likely to be of any use to you. Drop them and friend someone more useful.
9. If your focus for using SU is business then you are not on StumbleUpon to make friends to meet hot partners of the opposite sex or even the same sex if that's your bag. As Marlon Brando in the Godfather says, "It's only business." I keep this in mind as I use SU. Forget making friends or meeting the love of your life, that may happen, but it's not why you are there.
10. Keeping focused on business means: Not friending every hottie in a bathing suit (they are probably fake accounts designed to sucker you in anyway). Keep in mind that networking can sometimes be better described as notworking.
11. Don't get personally offended when someone does not friend you back, simply remove them and try someone else.
12. It is not a popularity contest but a way to market your brand. It's not the amount of people in your network, it's what the people in your network can do for you.
13. Learn to say no. Learn to reject, learn to say get lost to your best pal who is sending you low quality spam to stumble. People know what you stumble and you will be judged on that.
14. Focus on those why certain people are successful. Some stumblers are more powerful than others, make sure you understand why they are power users. A lot of people spend a huge amount of time Stumbling, you cannot do this, you have a business to run. But closely analyze those who get stumbles in your sector and ask yourself, how can you get them to not only friend you but to submit your stuff.
15. There is a specific culture that exists on SU and it will help if you can understand it. It's not one that can easily be taken advantage of by someone running a business. Those who make the mistake of going against this culture, rightly or wrongly can attract a vicious element on SU. Tread carefully and do not annoy the natives.
16. There is a psychological technique called modeling, where someone wishing to emulate the success of someone puts themselves in the mindset of that person. SU is no different. If you have the time, spend a whole day looking at the those people who stumble the hot stuff in your sector and beyond. Then either create similar content or expand on the themes raised.
17. Think of SU as people stumbling ideas rather than websites The power users on SU are bright, erudite, literate, curious and deep thinking people. Think less about content as something you look at, but at the ideas it inspires. Model your own content with the same concept. People swarm around ideas on SU and it's important to deconstruct the content down to its original idea; you can then take that idea and create your own content.
18. Your politics, or personal view are irrelevant, for example if you think Global warming is bogus, then raise the issue. But not in a dogmatic or "out to make people look stupid" way, but in a way which attracts people into the conversation and into stumbling you. For example you could highlight the hypocrisy of so called " green" celebs who drive a Toyota Prius and yet have a private jet which they fly their personal chef in to cook them breakfast.
19. Don't only stumble your own stuff, but make it a healthy ratio. Stumble other peoples stuff at least 5 times more than your own.
20. Learn to find cool stuff to stumble. A website called popurls.com can do a lot of the work for you by scanning what is popular on other websites. The logic being that if it's hot on digg it could be hot on SU also. However, competition is stiff amongst professional submitters to submit the best stuff, so be aware that a considerable time investment may need to be made.
21. Choose your topics carefully. SU allows you to decide what kind of areas you stumble, some other members of SU will use this list to judge whether or not you are worthy to add. Rule of thumb is to be honest and pick the things you are passionate about, just don't go crazy and keep it focussed.
22. Be polite. Yes you may have had the third cringe worthy, low life, spammer request to ask you to friend them, but good manners costs nothing and yet being rude has the danger of creating enemies with no real bonus except being a smart ass.
23. It probably does not need to be said but best not assume anything. Do not spam, do not send out random requests for people to friend you and do not submit low quality, spammy content. SU works without a real algorithm, if you submit good stuff it will rise to the top and your account will rise in value. Submit rubbish and you will get nowhere.
24. Accept criticism. When someone gives you the thumbs down, learn from it. It's not personally (unless it's the spammer you just told to get lost) it's probably just about the content. Look at the content again and ask yourself what you could have done not to have got that thumbs down. Thumbs down are rare, so when it happens take note.
25. Do not submit front pages of e-commerce sites. People are just not interested. If you have an e-commerce site, think about a blog, think about creating some interesting content specifically crafted for the SU audience.
26. You need one of two things to really take advantage of SU, time or money. If you have the time you can see down and build an effective SU strategy. If you have the money you can pay someone to do it for you.
27. Don't think that SU is the answer to your online marketing problems. It may not fit your ROI, don't get sucked into spending resources on it till you are sure it's for you. My Dad has an engineering business where SU would be of little use. The ROI would be worthless. Perform tests before you commit time and money.
28. The definition of a valuable Stumble account is one in which people visit regularly because of the useful and interesting posts. See it as a mini blog, a way to demonstrate your knowledge of your sector. As you go on, your reputation and brand will build enabling you to use your SU account to further your business.

The above article was written in collaboration with Lyndon Antcliff, a social media marketing expert.

You can find me (Junaid Alee) on StumbleUpon here:

http://junaidalee.stumbleupon.com

Feel Free to Add me as your friends and share your pages with me and my Friend's Network.

10 ways to WOW your Clients

A happy client is a pleasure to have, but an ecstatic one is even better.  When you go above-and-beyond to wow your clients, they can become a wellspring of repeat business. They’ll refer new customers to you, and publicly reinforce your reputation to others over and over again.

But how do you turn an ordinary client into a raving fan?  All it takes is a little understanding of their wants and needs – and some creative strategies for exceeding their expectations.  Here are 10 ways to create raving fan customers who give the word-of-mouth marketing that your business needs to succeed.

#1 – Customize Your Approach To Their Problems

Learn as much as you can about what has been preventing your clients from getting the results they want in the past, and customize your marketing approach to highlight how you are the perfect solution.  Instead of a typical “here are our services” pitch, present yourself in a way that will make them take notice and say “This is exactly what we’ve been looking for!”

#2 - Create A Guide That Positions You As An Authority

Being seen as an authority is a powerful way to deliver the “wow-factor” to your clients that increases their desire to stay loyal to you (as well as the amount of business they bring your way).  Creating a companion guide to your products or services is an excellent way to showcase your experience and to establish your position as a company who is on the leading edge.  Add an extra layer of exclusivity by offering it only to current clients – just one more perk of doing business with you.

#3 - Master The Art Of Accessibility

One of the easiest ways to consistently impress your clients is to keep turnaround time on emails an phone calls to a minimum.  In today’s world of poor customer service, having a swift response rate to client inquiries is a powerful way to keep them impressed and away from the competition.  A quick tip on email – even if you can’t address a client’s needs immediately, reply to them and let them know you’ll get back to them soon.  Reinforcing their feeling of being valued gives them another reason to be a customer for life.

#4 - Anticipate Their Future Needs

Your clients have a specific idea of where they want their business to go, but they may not be seeing all the options they have available to them.  Talk with them and get a feel for how they plan to grow their business, and offer them advice or services that will make it easier for them to grow.  Then connect them with the people who can help make those things happen.  Open their eyes to ways they can make their business or their offerings stronger down the road, and they won’t forget how valuable it is to keep doing business with you.

#5 - Offer A Workshop That Gives Your Clients An Edge

Home improvement stores offer free do-it-yourself workshops to give customers a reason to shop at their store.  Financial planners offer free investment seminars to educate clients on additional service options.  Your business could do the same.  Look at what it is that you sell, and consider the knowledge gaps your clients might have when it comes to choosing options or getting the most out of what they buy.  Then offer a free workshop that closes the knowledge gap, and see just how much more your clients appreciate you.

#6 - Ask For Feedback After The Sale

They typical business follows up only when they have something to sell, but you can wow your clients by following up with a request to make their last transaction more satisfying.  A simple phone call or email that follows up with the question “Is there anything we missed, or anything more we could do to make your experience better?” tells your clients that you are 110% committed to making sure they are treated fairly and respectfully – and that you’re not going to settle for letting them get anything less than the best from you. 

#7 - Present Everything In Terms Of Value, Not Cost

If pre-sales marketing is all about presenting benefits, current-client marketing is all about presenting value.  Each time you communicate with your clients, let them know what they are getting and how it benefits them.  A client who receives “new logo samples,” for instance, is not going to be as impressed as a client who receives a package of “3 logo concepts shown in multiple layouts with original source files for editing.” Make sure your client understands just how much they are getting with each deliverable, and they will feel their money is well spent.

#8 - Reward Client Loyalty With Increasing Bonuses

Keeping clients long-term saves you the time and money of hunting down new ones, so why not pass some of that savings on to them?  Offering clients some sort of bonus or discount periodically, just for sticking with you, is a sure way to impress – especially if the value of that reward keeps increasing.  Whether you choose to give a discount that grows each year, or you throw in a free product or service here and there, these unsolicited gifts will make your clients hard-pressed to go elsewhere.

#9 - Give Your Clients Free Publicity

It’s not uncommon to feature your clients’ success on your own website to enhance your reputation, but have you considered boosting their reputation elsewhere?  Consider working them to issue an online press release that showcases their company or have an article written up and submitted to a relevant publication or website.  This “out of the blue” shot of publicity won’t cost you much, but will make the client remember you for life – and in many of their referral-generating conversations as well.

#10 – Under-Promise and Over-Deliver – Every Time

The surest way to lock a permanent “wow” into your customer’s mind is simply to exceed their expectations, every time.  Don’t over-promise – be realistic and focused when telling them what you’ll deliver and when they should expect it.  Then go the extra mile to make your deliverable impressive and on time (or better yet, early).  This is simply the easiest way to secure your reputation – the very currency of marketing itself – and virtually guarantee a stream of revenue from your current clients, and the clients they refer to you in the future.

Every great brand carries with it a number of features that give it a marketable “wow factor” – that impression of excellence, commitment and quality that invites clients to pull up a chair and stay forever.  To make your brand great, incorporate these strategies into your everyday marketing plans and share your additional tips in the comments below.  You’ve got what it takes to “wow” your clients every day – it’s time to get to it!

Role of Page Strength in Search Engines Rankings

I have couple of experience from last two weeks which leave me in deep thinking about page strength and search engine rankings. I had an article on of the hotel in Mauritius on my website from last six to seven month and i thought i should share this hotel information with different social media website for no intension for ranking, to be honest to just keep my self active in social media.

A week ago i was analyzing my website state and i was wonder to see that i got quite fair amount of hits. i went in yahoo search and type that keywords and surprise to see my digg articles on first page, even though that was not full article, then i though this must be due to same website factor. I start searching for different unknown things about SEO rankings. Then i come across some article on SEOMOZ about page strength. 
To ME this is only due to high page strength that digg is on top with just 1/4 part of my articles and my own website is not top even with full articles. What is page strength i am not full sure exactly but one thing i know it consist of so many factor of on-page and off-page optimization, which factor has more value i do not know? but to me it is very much clear now that page strength is very important factor in natural search engines rankings. Hope this will help you
you can check your page strength at Page strength Tool
Live Your Life Today

Effectively Leveraging Social Networking

Effectively Leveraging Social Networking

Posted by Lisa Barone

Hello, hello. It's day 2. I have orange juice instead of coffee this morning. Lisa's still sick from yesterday. As usual, I blame Susan. I'm going to do my best to make it through today's batch of sessions.

Kicking things off this morning we have Barbara Boser (3 Dog Media), Cindy Krum (Blue Moon Works), Randy Woods (non-linear creations), and Michael Gray (Atlas Web Service). Danny Sullivan is once again moderating. This man is earning his paycheck this week.

Up first is Barbara Boser. Just as a fun fact, if you've never met Barbara, she's probably the nicest woman in the whole world. I'm just saying.

Marketing your Business with Facebook

Pages: You can build a page in Facebook for your business. She looks at DunkinDonuts page because its Greg's favorite. Aw. You can add events and people will get notifications. You can upload photos, start a discussion board, create a poll, etc. Polls are a good way to get answers about products your customers like. You're also able to let people write on your wall and upload their own media. When someone becomes a fan of your company, all of their friends will see that and can join too.

Facebook Social Ads: It's not yet that advanced. You can filter through by age, keywords, place, etc, and narrow down your audience. Good way to target. The ads show up in the users' news feed or on the left sidebar.

Groups: You can search for groups related to your business and then participate in the conversations going on about your company.

Events: Create event pages. People can RSVP and write on the wall.

Sharing: You can share blog posts. Every time you update, all of your Facebook Fans will be informed of that.

Beacon: A little controversial last year because of privacy issues. You put some code on your site and when a FB user completes an action on your site, it gets listed in their news feed.

Lexicon: You can put in a keyword and it tracks how many times Starbucks is mentioned on the Facebook wall across all profiles. Pretty cool.

Apps: If you're on Facebook you probably have a whole list of people wanting you to download an application. Once you join, people will see a link to your company. You want to create something that's viral and that people will want to share with their friends.

How Much Traffic Can I Get?

She talks about Neil Patel's Flixster Facebook application where it compares what movies you like to what movies your friends like. He got 16+ million visits from Facebook. Barbara says that number has already doubled. Wow.

Next up is Cindy Krum to talk about MySpace. Ew, MySpace.

She still believes MySpace has a lot of value if you're trying to reach certain demographics. It still has 80 million users worldwide.

MySpace Whoas (aka the good things):

Flying Dog Brewery: Local Denver brewery with a MySpace page. The have used their page to establish a company voice and personality. They're reaching out to a specific demographic. They're talking to people and creating a community around the brand. They also use it to notify users about events and products.

They're taking paper flyers and putting them on their MySpace page so all of their friends can see they're having a zombie dance party. Wow. A zombie dance party, eh? Snazzy. That flyer is also their new profile picture, which helps to draw attention to their profile.

They also use MySpace Events to promote all of their events. People can type in their zip codes to look for events and the cool things happening in their city.

They use MySpace bulletins. It's similar to the wall in Facebook. You can announce contests, release newsletters, offer discounts to MySpace users etc.

Companies can also put YouTube videos on their page or post the videos on their friends' pages as comments. Because that's not annoying. They've also used their photos as a catalog for their merchandise. They can't buy from the MySpace page, but they can direct them to their real site.

This has search engine optimization value. These pages rank well in the engines.

True: Web-based dating community. Creating brand awareness.

Link to quizzes, badges and fun games from their MySpace profile to engage visitors.

They have a Create a Date game where you can skew pictures of people and then send it to a friend. It's viral. They have a Date-O-Rama game to help you find and plan a date. They've also put an entry way to their site in the corner of MySpace. It gets people where they need to go.

MySpace Woes (the bad things)

Westwood College: There were a lot of people who had self-identified as Westwood Students. They wanted to create a community online. The profile would encourage communication between students and disperse information about classes, events, holidays, news, school closures, etc.

Your MySpace profile has to be a good representation of your brand. You can't just slap something up there. A cool branded profile takes a lot of time and skill - use CSS or MySpace's profile layout tool. Cool profiles have to be updated frequently.

You can't accept everyone who wants to be your friend. You have to manage them and make sure they're appropriate. Get rid of those with questionable photos. Make sure they represent your brand well. She talks about how sometimes friends' profiles change. They had a nice guy in a polo T-shirt join. He was really active and participatory. And then he changed his profile pic of a photo of him in S&M gear. They had to remove all his comments because he suddenly didn't represent them well. (Hmm, not sure how I feel about that, but okay.)

Communication needs to be managed. Will you respond to emails? Will all comments be approved? Will you participate in groups? What kind of blog communication is appropriate for your brand?

Travel Site: They wanted to create a travel widget that would be useful for travelers and travel bloggers. They needed something cool that hadn't been done before. They wanted a widget that would work in all social networks.

Not all Developers are widget developers. MySpace messes with your code. Widgets that work on other social networks may not work in MySpace. And Widgets that work in MySpace/IE7 may not work in Firefox.

Tips for Developing Widgets:

• MySpace converts HTML into its preferred object format before saving
• Links: All links are encoded. Links in Flash won't work at all.
• MySpace bans some widget companies
• Use Flash Version 9 & Action Script 3.0

You can also use Open Social.

Randy Woods is up to talk about LinkedIn.

He starts off with some disclaimers. He's Canadian. Everyone laughs. Most of his clients are in the US. He's also old. His company started in 1995. He's also a generalist. He talks about conference brain. Conference brain means you're hung over. Wow.

He says marketing is being defined in its narrowest sense - promotion. Social media is also important for the other elements of marketing - product and positioning.

LinkedIn - Why Bother

• About 20 million professionals
• Average income: 140,000
• Vampire free
• About 2 million of these at executive level
• 500 of Fortune 500 represented at executive level

Harvard Business School did a study on LinkedIn and found out that 90 percent of people on LinkedIn are relationship managers. Five percent are networks and five percent are contractors. All of the Fortune 500 people you're interested in are in the relationship manager piece. They're only talking to people they know already. They don't want to meet strangers.

But they do want their problems solved. They want to know before they engage with you that you can solve their problems. That's where the Question & Answer service fits in.

You can use LinkedIn Answers to reach influencers. The challenge is that the people you want responding to these questions are your most valuable employees. They're the people who don't have time to be cruising social networks. But if you use Yahoo Pipes, you can combine everything and put it into one dashboard. Or something. Yahoo Pipes is about 10 leagues over my head.

LinkedIn Answers means dollars in your pocket.

Case Study: 11 percent conversion rate for free traffic.

Four Things I Don't Believe:

1. Conversions Don't Matter
2. All Visitors Are Created Equal: I don't care about 20 million people at Digg. I care about the people who are targeted to our business.
3. Don't Write A Thesis: If what you're selling is expertise, you better make sure what you write can sell that.
4. Never Force Registration

Recap: Marketing is more than promotion. No one important wants to hear from you. You have to get their attention. LinkedIn Answers equals dollars. LinkedIn Converts.

Michael Gray will finish things off by discussing Twitter.

Twitter is a microblogging platform. You write short messages and share them with the world. Twitter is what happens between blog posts. Or conference sessions.

Why Marketers Should Care About Twitter

Using twitters as a permission marketing tool to reach bleeding edge customers. It works like RSS. It's pull technology. It allows you to protect/block your updates from people.

Twitter = Traffic

• Use Twitter to drive traffic to your Web site or blog when you post a new update.
• Use Twitter to share news, information, and links with your followers
• Use Twitter to help with your other social media efforts
• Use Twitter to drive conversions and sales
• Depending on your sector and quality of followers, Twitter can have really high CTR.

Understanding How Twitter Works:

Next to everyone's name is a star so that you can save it if you want. There's also an arrow to make it easy to reply to someone. If people reach out to you, make sure to respond back to them. The Archive section allows you to see everything you've ever Twittered.

Tools To Get More Out Of Twitter:

• Web Browser Based - Twitter, twitbin, twitterfox
• Desktop Clients - Twhirl, alert thingy
• Blog Tools - Twitter tools, Loud Twitter, Twit This
• Email - Twittermail
• Smartphone - twitterberry, itweet
• API - Roll it into your own application

Who's Using Twitter?

CarnivalCruise - Sends you to different articles
JetBlue - They're really interacting with people and their community. They're a great example.
AmazonDeals
Woot
TechMeme
Sphinn
Zappos
HillaryMomJeans
Maratriangle

More Tips for Getting More Out of Twitter

• Set up a profile with an avatar
• Have updates
• Don't follow people with a blank profile
• Always reply to your @ messages
• Twitterbots will follow everyone who follows them
• People will follow and unfollow depending on if you match their expectations.

Twitter Tracking and Twitter Search Tools

You can type a word into Twitter and it will tell you everyone who has mentioned those words. If you're a company dealing with the public you should be tracking your company name.

TweetScan

Quotably: Makes @ messages into a threaded conversation. Helps give you context to a conversation

He also points out the Twitter leaderboard.

Twitter Ranks

Jason Calacanis' Twitter feed ranks 4th for his name.
Barack Obama's Twitter profile has a top ten ranking for his name.

Question and Answer

Are there any legal issues to create a Facebook brand profile?

Cindy: You have to be careful of what you say, especially if you're not the brand spokesperson. As far as legal stuff, she's not sure. Treat it like you would treat any other marketing venue.

Age demographics of Twitter?

Michael's not sure.

Seems heavy handed to only let certain people by your MySpace friend. Do you think you're alienating people?

For her example, they were trying to create a community for a private college. They wanted to create a perception of what the brand was. They wanted to control the image. They didn't want people to think that people who went to this school were heavy drinkers or pot smokers. I have so many problems with that answer.

Barbara: On Facebook you can just be a fan and not necessarily have a friend relationship, so it's a bit different. Even if you're not going to use the social profile, you should claim the one for your company before someone else does.

Randy: In a broader sense, there just may be some brands for whom the social networking sites aren't appropriate. I'm not sure if that's a long term strategy.

Source: http://www.bruceclay.com/blog/archives/2008/04/effectively_lev.html

Google's Engineering Philosophy

A slide from a presentation at last year's Google Engineering Open House listed 12 principles that guide programming at Google:

1. All developers work out of a ~single source depot; shared infrastructure!
2. A developer can fix bugs anywhere in the source tree.
3. Building a product takes 3 commands ("get, config, make")
4. Uniform coding style guidelines across company
5. Code reviews mandatory for all checkins
6. Pervasive unit testing, written by developers
7. Unit tests run continuously, email sent on failure
8. Powerful tools, shared company-wide
9. Rapid project cycles; developers change projects often; 20% time
10. Peer-driven review process; flat management structure
11. Transparency into projects, code, process, ideas, etc.
12. Dozens of offices around world => hire best people regardless of location

Adsense Optimization: How to apply Top Paying Keywords?

Applying top paying keywords in your website is quite similar to Search Engine Optimization. However, there are many differences as well. I have done in-depth research on the subject. On the basis of that research, I have marked the points you need to keep in mind while optimizing your website for maximum payouts through highest paying Adsense keywords. We will discuss how to apply top paying keywords as well as traffic pulling keywords to a webpage for maximum payouts and traffic. First of all, we must understand that Google Adsense bot (formally known as Google Mediabot) is a subset of Google's main crawler. The crawler detects the theme of the pages and makes an entry in the Google's index (a private index - not shown publicly) that records the theme of all the pages hosting Adsense script. In other words, Google Mediabot has the characteristics somewhat similar to Google's main crawler. There are two types of optimizations that you need to follow to make a web page search engine optimized. Same is the case with Adsense Optimization.
Internal Optimization : Internal Optimization includes Meta tags, Title Text, Optimization of content, and internal linking of your website. Here we will learn how to increase relevancy of ads and how to inject keywords that will help you get high paying ads. Internal Optimization has a high impact on the relevancy of ads and CTR. External Optimization : This includes the web pages that are giving links to you (external profile of your website), anchor text being used to link your website, and many more variables that search engines use to evaluate the authoritative importance of a web page. External Optimization helps bring relevant traffic to your website and enables you to earn more by getting more CTR (Click Thru Ratio).

How long does your webpage take to show high paying ads?

This is an important question that needs to be answered. As soon as you apply Adsense script in a webpage, it is visited by the Google Mediabot (within 2 hours to 48 hours, if the bot is free - immediately). Google Mediabot's responsibility is to evaluate the theme of the web page, and enable ads almost immediately so that your website traffic does not see FREE SERVICE ADS. The relevancy of ads increases as Google's main crawler visits your website and updates its index. Furthermore, you may observe an increase in the earnings as the PR of your website/web page increases. This means that in case of Google Adsense, the internal factors that affect the ads of a particular page are evaluated by Google Mediabot (but Google's main crawler can overwrite them). And on the other hand, the external factors are inspected by the Google Crawler over a period of time. Having said that, there are simply many many factors (including those which you cannot control) that affect your ads. We are going to discuss the factors that you can control. Lets take control!

Remember:

1. Relevancy of ads may increase as your page is indexed by Google.
2. EPC (Earnings Per Click) may increase as your PR increases.
3. It entirely depends upon you how well you promote your website and get maximum earnings from your website/web pages.
4. In case of Google, many variables are involved.

Digg Secrets Exposed - Tips to increase your story visibility on Digg

Digg.com is one of the most popular social tools which can increase your traffic significantly. A story which makes to digg frontpage recieves anywhere between 5000 - 10000 unique visitors very quickly. Many times its found that digg traffic led to bandwidth overflow and server shutdowns due to more memory use and concurrent MySQL connections. But getting to digg homepage is not at all a easy feat. There are many factors which leads to a story becoming popular on digg. Some people i notice try to ask friends to digg because they think that getting some diggs would get the ball rolling. Its true upto some extent. But a experiment will clear all the doubts. Goto Digg Homepage and see the top 10 stories, you will find that most of them have been submitted 10 - 20 mins ago, some of them make to 500 diggs in just 10 mins. Do those guys ask people to digg?, no never. It is actually a separate set of factors which controls the popularity of stories. Some of the most important digg related points are given below-

1. Importance of the Title and the Topic:- The title of the story must be eyecatching and tempting people to read it out. Perhaps the title is the single most important factor which leads to a person clicking the article and visiting the site. The second thing is the topic. If you write a 1000 words article on the topic “How is Diabetes Treated ?”, OR a 200 words on “Why is my company so great ?” it will probably never attract the interest of people. First thing is no one is going to read 1000 words on diabetes (a small fraction of digg users are suffering diabetes actually ) and probably no one will be interested to know why is your company so great. You need to write topics which immediately create a buzz in the eyes of the people and they are tempted to read it and after reading the first 50 words, they become so interested that they digg the story and read the other parts. Once few people dugg your story, it catches momentum, more people start digging it and within minutes it goes viral and turned into popular.

2. Keep the Content Short and Interesting :- No one would like to read a 1000 words article. People look for short informative, humorous and interesting pieces of content.

3. Numbered Lists are great :- It has been noticed that numbered lists work wonders on sites like digg.com. Interesting lists could be “10 Reasons you should eat a lot of choclates”, “17 Reasons why laptops are better than wives” , “15 Tricks to drive massive traffic to your website”, “101 Tips for successful blogging” etc. are found to hit the homepage instantly.

4. Your Digg Profile :- The single and the most important factor which carries 90% weight and is more important than all the above factors. Its is how strong your digg profile is. Okay take a bit time to read this piece from Rand Fishkin which says that Top 100 Digg Users Control 56% of Digg’s HomePage Content. Guess what ? it is true. If your digg profile is very strong, then you submit a story and and it instantly gets noticed by all famous digg users and undergoes a spontaneous reaction. So the next question is what does a strong profile mean and how to make your profile strong. Okay Christopher Finke has a list of top 100 digg users. Do have a quick look at the list and you will find what makes your profile strong. Its 5 things -

1. Number of stories submitted
2. Number of stories which became popular
3. Popularity Ratio which is the percentage of your submitted stories which became popular. Kevin Rose is the only person who has 100% popularity ratio. Means all the stories which he submitting went popular. Well for those who don’t know Kevin Rose is the founder - CEO if Digg :D
4. The number of stories you dugg
5. The number of distinct people who viewed your profile.

Out of these 5, point number 3 is the most important and point number 5 is least important. You can find all these numbers on your digg profile page right sidebar bottom.

Okay now the question arises is that, how do you build your profile very strong. The answer is simple, its social networking website so focus on the word social. Digg other’s popular stories, add good members to your friends list. Read and comment on other’s stories. Submit good stories to the site (Not necessarily from your own website). If you find a good story on on a big site like CNN, then submit it too. There are more chances that it will quickly make to front page. If it makes to the front page, people view your profile and you ass a friend increasing your credibility. If you follow these then after a few months, you will be able to make it to the top 50 digg users and then any story you submit will again undergo a spontaneous reaction providing you extreme high traffic on your fingertips.