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9 Comments 294 days ago PERMALINK

Beware what Infographics you Embed/Pin

Infographics are all the rage. They are great for creating attention to your site or service. I had pinned a gun infographic on my blog previously that was “The History of Guns” and was made by a gun safe company. It was very transparent who it was from and what it was about. Unfortunately, more and more infographics are being used to generate traffic for sites and not specifically related to the products or services the infographics represent.

I received an email after someone saw the other “History of Guns” infographic on my site and asked if I would embed their infographic. The image they sent me to is the one on the right, which talks about girls and guns and statistics. For the first 3 seconds I was reading this I was wondering what is the catch?

READ VERY CAREFULLY

The links created by this graphic link to an Asian Escort Service site with content that is not safe for work. Generally, you will not see anything about Asian Escort services on my blog. What this will do to you site is take some of the authority you have built up in your site and pass it on to the target site. These backlinks will help the site gain authority and raise it in the search engine result pages in Google. Do you want to help them gain in search results when they were not upfront and honest with you?

I have also seen this trick done a few different times. I have seen an infographic about Facebook on a car dealer site and baking recipe infographic on a pet supply company URL.

How to spot this trick

Look for the URL in the embed code. Just look for the URL after http:// . Most of these places have URLs that are very descriptive of what the site is or “exact match domains.” That will tell you right away if the creator of the infographic is playing SEO games. You can play games back and upload the graphic and pin it without a URL link.

Do you see this happening? Leave a comment and let me know what you’re seeing!

5 Comments 349 days ago PERMALINK

PicPlz closing: Looks like Instagram wins out!

I have written before about the pending adoption of Instagram by the Android user base in February. It seems the effects of the Instagram offerings to Android users have finally taken hold. A brief email went out today to PicPlz users saying that they will be shutting their doors and deleting all content on July 3.

On July 3, 2012, picplz will shut down permanently and all photos and data will be deleted. Until then, you can log in and download your photos by clicking on the download link next to each photo in your photo feed. Thank you for your support of picplz and we apologize for any inconvenience this may cause you.

The PicPlz blog didn’t add anything about what has happened other than they will pursue other ventures.

My thoughts are that when Instagram was finally released to the Android market, that could have been the nail in the coffin for the Instagram competitor. PicPlz had tried to add some more statistics to its offerings, but that was not enough to be a differentiator.

I picked up the Instagram app for Android in February and have used it several times. I can’t say that I like it more than PicPlz, but I guess that I have no options now.

One of the ironic things is that every PicPlz pic I took was copied to Dropbox. Now, I have no need to even go back to the site. All I need to do now is delete the App from my phone and remove the plugin from my blog. What can I get from Instagram to replace it? I’m sure there are many options out there.

Apps , Droid , Technology

0 Comments 414 days ago PERMALINK

Great Ways to show Some #FollowFriday (#ff) Love

I’ve talked about some of the ways to do a Follow Friday or #ff before on Twitter using Follow Friday Helper. Now, I’d like to talk about some of the cool things you can do to go over the top and show some real love for your tweeps! Automation can go so far in helping you do a #ff or Follow Friday, the real craft is in doing things creatively! Here are a few suggestions:

Create a video

I have done this a couple of times and it is really pretty painless. I have it down to 12 minutes to create a video for Youtube that thanks my friends for their follows. This is a link to my first #ff video. I’ll share my secret on how to do this.

Grab the avatars from your friends Twitter accounts. (you can usually do 3-4 in this method.)
(Optional) Download a piece of Royalty Free music from Jamendo.
Go to Animoto and pick a free template to create a free 30 second video.
Plug in your pictures and friend’s names, and say thank you with a text screen.
Select either the pre-loaded music or upload your own.
Produce video and download from Animoto (there will be an Animoto logo at the end unless you upgrade. People normally don’t care/notice.)
Upload it to your Youtube account and share it with your friends. (Don’t for get the #ff or #followfriday hashtag!)

Call people out individually

Using Follow Friday Helper or FollowFriday.com‘s automated services are great if you’re strapped for time. But it is more effective if you tell people why you like this Twitter friend. Here is an example:

#ff @dpillie He always gives great advice and information on #indiana #politics

Using some qualifier will help your followers to see what you like about someone. Not everyone has the same interest. If you’re not in Indiana or not interested in Politics, you may not want to follow @dpillie. (He’s such a nice guy that you’d want to follow him anyways!) The more information you can provide here the better!

Give out a link

Amplifying someone’s message is always a great way to show you like what someone has to say. You can either link to something that your Twitter friend has shared or link to their blog or a profile. Here is an example:

#ff @kpbergman Great Ways to show Some #FollowFriday Love | kpbergman.com

Doing this will add to the information that your followers will see on the person you think is a great tweep! It will also amplify the message they want to send out and get the benefit of extra traffic or exposure.

So, do you have other ways you like to show your #fridayfollow love? Do you #ff? Why or Why not? Leave a comment.

Social Media , Twitter

0 Comments 428 days ago PERMALINK

3.16.12 Follow Friday for a few of my friends on Twitter

@sookietex, @dpillie, @Ang0904, and @CdrCarpenter are my Follow Friday friends for this week. I thought I’d be nice an put together a short video to say thank you for the mentions and conversations lately. I normally don’t do this, but it might be a nice change. Normally I just go to the followfriday.com site and do it the lazy way.

Here is a link to my article on How to do a #FF (FollowFriday).

Have a great day!

Other Social Media , Social Media , Twitter

0 Comments 437 days ago PERMALINK

First Car Story from Subaru = Great Marketing

FirstCarStory.com was brought to my attention through a Klout Perk. The perk offers a T-shirt and a link to go and visit the First Car Story site. I cannot embed the flash video I created from the site, but here is a link to My First Car Story.

The video creation in this is very easy to do and takes less than a couple of minutes if you know what your story is. You select a car avatar and name it. You then type your story. The program selects terms from the story to add to the video. You can select words to highlight in the video and it will use text art to add illustrations in the video. The video is very stylized and looks great. Then you can explore your friend’s videos by driving your car around the screen.

What’s so great about this?

This has huge viral potential. In the 10 minutes since I had created my First Car Story on the site. More than 15,000 impressions have been made and at least 1-2 people that I can verify have watched the video I made. I’m creating this post to see what kind of traffic will be generated from someone writing about this site in an honest fashion.

The people at Subaru are making a great move with this. The concept is slick and stylized with plenty of interaction to be had on the site. The integration with Facebook to log in and feature your Facebook friends in the video is ingenious. Once you are done with the creation of your First Car Story, the site turns into a mini driving game that you can drive your car around and see other’s stories, or watch a video on the new Subaru Impreza.

How does this site miss the target?

The only complaint that I can have about this site is that it was done completely in Flash. That will make the site fun and interesting, but it will miss out on much of the mobile market if there is not an alternative. I will have to look into this further and see if anything has been done to accommodate the iPad and mobile users out there.

I’m interested to see how many of my friends latch on to this site and create something. What do you think?

Advertising , Business , Facebook , Klout , Other Social Media , Social Media , Twitter

0 Comments 452 days ago PERMALINK

Sumazi: Making the Connection

I caught a link from a new follower: @sumaya on Twitter. I took a peek at it and saw a glimpse at Sumazi. I was intrigued by what Sumazi is working towards in their efforts. The front page sums it up.

Sumazi helps introduce you to the people who are out of sight, but not beyond your reach.

I went through the sign up process and Sumaya Kazi that the access was granted to the beta. There are a variety of categories to sort through as to how the call out’s for introductions or opportunities are handled. You can also add a geographic tag to limit your search further.

Initial thoughts on the site

The site appears very clean, well-planned and executed. I was wondering how communication between the people who were connected within the site was dealt with by Sumazi, but I was not disappointed. The site sticks with it’s core goal and doesn’t stray from it.

Making the connection

I put out a search to find someone to communicate with on some of my interests. Within a day or so, people passing along the request I had to other people through Facebook and Twitter, and possibly email. Likewise, if you are interested in making the connection with someone, or know someone who would be a match for someone’s need or opportunity, you can help them out as well.

About 2 days or so after I made my request I was connected with someone and other people were also starting to make the connection. These referrals and first hand interests were all on target and above board for my expectations. Some of them could even be considered a mentor level connection. I WAS VERY IMPRESSED!

I have had email communication with about a third of the connections I have made there and there have been at least connections made through Facebook. Below is an image of what a connection dashboard looks like:

Final Word

You can look at the great things that have been in the press about Sumazi and tell that it is going somewhere. I’d recommend that you go and request an invite for the beta. Sumazi can only get better with the increased number of people participating. I look forward to seeing you there! (Below is a video on how Sumazi works.)

Other Social Media , Social Media

0 Comments 456 days ago PERMALINK

Bufferapp: a Better Way to Share on Facebook and Twitter

One of many annoyances out on social media channels is when people start blasting out tons of posts or tweets in a row. I may not want to read all the items that person has blasted out and it clutters things up. That’s one thing that Bufferapp fixes!

Bufferapp does what its name implies. It is an application that creates a buffer of posts for your Facebook and Twitter accounts. It allows you to spread out the pieces of content you wish to share to targeted times throughout the day and into the next if necessary. This auto scheduling works very well and with the free account, you can get out plenty of posts at a time and let them go on their own. You can upgrade to a paid account and get more posts in your buffer as well as adding more accounts.

Tracking Stats

Bufferapp also has a pretty good tracking system. It keeps track of all the buffered content and tells you on Twitter the number of clicks on the buffered link. It also tells how many impressions were made through your posting and retweets.

How to get items into your Buffer

There are a few ways to get items into your Buffer. My favorite way is use the browser-based applications. In Chrome it is a simple push of a Buffer icon to trigger the start. Then you can check the post. Decide if you want it to go to your linked Twitter and/or Facebook accounts and add it to Buffer. It is pretty slick. With the Chrome Extension, you can also click on a Buffer icon that appears in Twitter posts to buffer those items as well. The same thing appears to happen in Google Reader as well.

Similar applications are available for Firefox and Safari. Sorry, no Internet Explorer. For IE users, you can use a bookmarklet to carry out the same thing!

There is also a Bufferapp available to download for your Android mobile device or phone on the Android Market. Sorry, nothing is available yet for the iUsers yet.

Bufferapp is also a channel that can be fed through an IFTTT recipe. (I’ll have to explain this in another post. )

Final Word

There are several great uses for Bufferapp that I won’t get into. What I like the most is the ability to auto schedule sharing posts on Facebook and Twitter and how they have covered most of the platforms with their technology. The scheduling will both keep you from being one of those who blasts things out once a day and reach your people when you want to reach them instead of when you’re available to push buttons. This s one of the great tools that I have used over the last few months.

Facebook , How-to / Shortcuts , Other Social Media , Social Media , Twitter

0 Comments 513 days ago PERMALINK

fort wayne SOCIAL MEDIA PEEPS nominated

It’s that time of year again. Time for the 3rd Annual Indiana Social Media Summit and Smackdown. You thought I was going to say Christmas didn’t you? While there are no gifts to be had, there will be awards and this year Fort Wayne has a bumper crop of social media superstars nominated.

So what is the Social Media Summit and who is getting smacked around? Amy Stark, a former resident of Fort Wayne, started up the yearly event in order to: “Generate a list of social media best practices, Create feelings of goodwill and unity among social media professionals in Indiana, Showcase Indiana’s “grooviness” to the world, Encourage all involved to NOT take themselves too seriously.”

For a list of nominees and link to vote, read more: http://www.kevinmullett.com/

Announcements

0 Comments 617 days ago PERMALINK

FollowFriday Helper: Tool helps make #ff on Twitter simple

FollowFriday Helper screenshot

FollowFriday Helper makes getting that #ff out easier each week if you don’t have someone that comes right to mind.

How to use FollowFriday Helper

While it is still “very much a beta,” the tool seems to work very well. You simply use the Twitter OAuth to attach it to your account and sign in through there. Then you click one of the various links to go to “The App.”

It takes you to the FollowFriday Helper screen where you can sort the twitterers that you interact with based on Twitter mentions, Twitter retweets, your retweets, favorites and recommendations received on Twitter.

For Multiple people you want to give a shout out to

You are able to assign one of several friendly hashtags to a Tweet you build in their interface and start adding names to your tweet with one click. You can scroll through your list and get them all done at once!

For sending out a Solo recommendation

If you see someone that needs or deserves that special attention, then you can click on the “Recommend” link and it pops up to a screen to use the same interface and give the person a more detailed recommendation as a tweet.

Final Word

While I have yet to verify the accuracy of the metrics involved in FollowFriday Helper, it appears to change each time I look at it and I do remember most of the mentions happening. So, I don’t think it can be that far off. As I would say with any tools for Twitter: Nothing is better than pure human interaction! So, if you get in a jam and can’t think of anyone at that point to show appreciation to, give this a shot.

Social Media , Twitter

A FEW WORDS

…. from kpbergman

PicPlz closing: Looks like Instagram wins out!

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