NEW BLOG PAGE

Check out my new Blog. I am a abandoning this one for this now look. Hope you like it.

THE NEW BLOG

also check out my

Book Review Podcast Blog

Get More People to Look at Your Blog

But will they listen?

If you have a blog or plan to start one you should keep one thing in mind. A blog is a product, regardless if it's information based.

There are a lot of blogs out there, so yours better be good. If you want people to read it, then you should start promoting it and when they come to read it they better be blown away or entertained... or whatever you have written will quickly be forgotten and your blog will join the millions of other blogs that no one reads regularly. Here is some great advice from Lauren Hatch who has a great blog that people read.

Consistency
Readers want lots of posts, and "neglected content may inadvertently translate to neglecting your readers too."

Eloquence
Read a lot, write well and proofread. Weinberg's favorite bloggers "always have something insightful to say," and "their content exudes intelligence and occasional wit."

Uniqueness
Channeling Darren Rowse, Weinberg argues that being unique "requires not doing what everyone else does." I.e. don't repeat the news with nothing new to offer.

Specific
Focus on a niche and master it.

Personal
Let readers get to know the person behind the screen. Write "personal stories as it relates to your mission in blogging," Weinberg says.

Analytical
"People love data, and they love knowing how data can be aggregated to make conclusions. They love charts and graphics, and they love the findings that can be made from this data in aggregate," Weinberg says. So give it to them.

Detail
Details take a regurgitated news story and make them your own. The more detail, the better.

Thought-Provoking
Leave your readers thinking about your post long after they click away.

Passion
If you are passionate about your blog, readers will notice.

Instructional
Teach your readers how to do something interesting and useful, and it will be impossible for them not to share.

Networked
Be active in your quest to attract readers. "In order for people to find you," Weinberg says, "you need to be able to market your blog to them. How does one do this? Comment on other bloggers’ posts consistently. Send tweets out to the bloggers with your own commentary."

Does social media actually work? The White Paper Report

Paper paper everywhere but not a piece to jot...

Michael Stelzner at the WhitePaperSource has produced a pretty in depth report on the social media marketing whitepapersourceindustry. The industry now has enough years on it that this research is becoming more valuable to help make sense of this fast growing and often unwieldy area of the marketing mix.

The report is based on interviews of over 900 social media users of varying degrees. The findings are interesting in some areas and not so surprising in others. Some highlights include:

• The Top 10 social media questions that marketers want answered
• Experience levels are low with 72% of the marketers questioned having just started or only being involved in social media for a few months
• As a surprise to me, owners of 2- to 100-employee businesses were the most experienced (29.3% reporting doing social media marketing for years)
• Another startling finding was people aged 60 to 69 were significantly more likely to be just getting started with social media marketing than other age groups. In all honesty, I can’t imagine my parents on Facebook or Twitter!
• After only a few months and with as few as 6 hours a week, more than half of marketers have generated qualified leads with social media marketing
• The top 4 social media tools were Twitter (81%), blogs (79%), LinkedIn (78%) and Facebook (77%) topping the list of the Top 10. Owners preferred LinkedIn.
• The least understood outlet are social bookmarking sites

As it is with all research it is important to see how it measures up to your particular situation. These are interesting bits of data and can be convincing to the many new users that are currently just feeling their way around. It’s probably fair to say that almost everyone is feeling their way around social media though because the rules are being written and rewritten even as you read this.

Food as Art

Yummy in My Tummy

I had an awesome culinary experience tonight with a couple of special friends from China. The chef from green-t-house created some awesome food and the presentation was breathtaking.

One of the most interesting things about this haute cuisine is that all the dished utilize tea as an ingredient. The Shrimp with wasabi was amazing and the dessert came with tea infused dark and white chocolate slabs... yummy.

Next time you're in Beijing, do yourself a favor and treat your test buds and eyes to an amazing dining experience.

Check out there flash driven website here.

The Power of Persistance

Reminds me of days at art school

As an art project this is pretty ambitious. Check out what the student says regarding the creation of this great piece of work.

"This is the final piece for my AS art course, a flipbook made entirely out of biro pens. It’s something like 2100 pages long, and about 50 jotter books. I’d say I worked on and off it for roughly 3 weeks."

Google Maps and the Vancouver Olympics

Where are the bars?

Check out this great map.

Olympic Reporter's 2010 Winter Games

Vancouver Sun 2010 Olympics reporter Jeff Lee's comprehensive listing of Olympic venues, hospitality events, pavilions, sponsor houses, road restrictions, Flag Walk & more for the 2010 Winter Olympics and Paralympics.

MAP ICON KEY
Snowflakes - Official celebration sites
Green tents: Official competition & practice venues
Red dot tags: Canadian official houses
Red tags: Other countries' pavilions
Yellow tags: Sponsor sites & events
Yellow pins: Vancouver Sun offices & house
Pink dot tags: Media centres
Green dot tags: City Halls
Green tags: Special Olympic sites
Blue flags: Official IOC sites
Trains: transit & Amtrak
Ship: SeaBus, ferries, Norwegian Star, RCMP cruise ships
Airplane:YVR, Harbour, Helijet
Blue dot tags: Olympic bus network,
Purple dot tags:free bicycle valet

Google View on Whistler slopes!

Where are the Mars Bars...

Leave it to Google Maps to take it to the next level. Yep they have done a street view of Whistlers sky runs just in time for the Olympics. Check them out and see where you would like to sky next year when the slopes have less competition.

FaceBook Fan-page Analysis

But what about Canada?

With the emergence of several new sources of data this week the lowly analyst is bringing fascinating new insight into the world of Data Mining and social applications like FaceBook. Check out this cool little web-data page to get the lowdown on fan-pages.

Here is part of a fascinating article "The Man Who Looked Into Facebook's Soul"

If what people call Web 2.0 was all about creating new technologies that made it easy for everyday people to publish their thoughts, social connections and activities, then the next stage of innovation online may be services like recommendations, self and group awareness, and other features made possible by software developers building on top of the huge mass of data that Web 2.0 made public. It's a very exciting future, and Warden is about to fire one of the earliest big shots in that direction.

If you think that's interesting you will really enjoy these defining zones in good old USA.

In a nutshell, Warden’s data analysis showed that Facebook users in the U.S. can be roughly segmented into seven regions, which he named facetiously:

Stayathomia: This belt’s defining feature is how near most people are to their friends, implying they don’t move far.

Dixie: Like Stayathomia, Dixie towns tend to have links mostly to other nearby cities rather than spanning the country.

Greater Texas: Unlike Stayathomia, there’s a definite central city to this cluster, otherwise most towns just connect to their immediate neighbors.

Mormonia: The only region that’s completely surrounded by another cluster, Mormonia mostly consists of Utah towns that are highly connected to each other, with an offshoot in Eastern Idaho.

Nomadic West: The defining feature of this area is how likely even small towns are to be strongly connected to distant cities; it looks like the inhabitants have done a lot of moving around the county.

Socalistan: LA is definitely the center of gravity for this cluster. Almost everywhere in California and Nevada has links to both LA and SF, but LA is usually first.

Pacifica: Tightly connected to each other, it doesn’t look like Washingtonians are big travelers compared to the rest of the West, even though a lot of them claim to need a vacation.

G-mail Still the Best

If only it did the dishes too...

If you didn't already know... Gmail is a free webmail and POP email service provided by Google, known for its abundant storage and advanced interface.

It is known as Google Mail in the United Kingdom and Germany and recently aggregrated Google Talk to its online service as well, providing users with an online chat feature for quickly communication from any computer in the world.

It currently offers 2GB+ of disk storage for emails and attachments and it’s fully integrated with Google Calendar. The account memory increases the longer you have the service.

Now, if you know all that, you might be interested in super charging your g-mail skills using Firefox (don't get me started on how good this browser is) . Check out these 2 great locations. If that's not enough then check out this blog post at lifehacker.com for lots of great posts.

TED Continues to Amaze All

But now I have to think more!

"There's a flip side to everything," the saying goes, and in 2 minutes, Derek Sivers shows this is true in a few ways you might not expect.

Why you should listen to him:
Derek Sivers (link to his blog) is best known as the founder of CD Baby. A professional musician since 1987, he started CD Baby by accident in 1998 when he was selling his own CD on his website, and friends asked if he could sell theirs, too.

CD Baby was the largest seller of independent music on the web, with over $100M in sales for over 150,000 musician clients.

In 2008, Sivers sold CD Baby to focus on his new ventures to benefit musicians, including his new company, MuckWork, where teams of efficient assistants help musicians do their "uncreative dirty work."

"Derek Sivers is changing the way music is bought and sold. A musicians' savior. One of the last music-business folk heroes."

Esquire Magazine

A Message for All the Thinkers Out There

This makes me want to try some more...

Who can’t use a little dose of inspiration in the middle of the week? Christian Borstlap recently finished these deliciously simple animated illustrations for Dutch children’s charity, Kinderpostzegels.

Paul Postma did a great job of bringing Christian’s colourful illustrations to life, complimenting them with a playfully restrained animation style to really let their personalities shine.

Auto-Post Tools for Social Medias

Can you change the concept a bit?

Thanks to Jennifer Stalford for his original blog post.

1. HootSuite 2.0 allows management of multiple Twitter accounts with tracking capabilities, scheduling features and feeds blogs to Twitter. It now also interacts with LinkedIn, Facebook, Facebook pages, and Pingfm.
2. Ping.fm - ”Post From Anywhere – To Anywhere”. This can auto-post to 49 different social medias. The biggies included are LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, Blogger, Delicious, and WordPress. Users can also use this on their SmartPhone.
3. Posterous is “the dead simple place to post everything”. This is done directly through your email account. In addition to having it auto-post to 10 social medias, users can attach url links, files, photos, video, blogs, and MP3’s. The largest social medias it works with are Facebook, Twitter, Blogger and WordPress.
4. Twitter Feed - This works with Twitter, has analytics that are viewed on a personal dashboard, rss capabilities, works with blogs, and improvements have been made to the login process.
5. Friendfeed states that it’s ”the easiest way to share online”. Users can post something on their phone, Facebook or email and it disperses it to their friends.
6. Facebook allows users to auto-post to Twitter but only works with Facebook pages so it is ideal for businesses.
7. EzineArticles has a feature that auto-posts a message on Twitter that indicates a user’s article has been published.
8. WordPress to Twitter rates very well by users, shortens links and is compatible on WordPress blog versions up to 2.8.4.
9. Twitter Notify is a blog plugin created by Windows Live Writer Microsoft for Live Writer. It posts to Twitter and shortens the link to a blog post.
10. xPollinate is another free blog plugin for Live Writer. This can auto-post a portion or an entire blog post to multiple social medias including Twitter, Facebook, MySpace and more through Ping.fm.
11. Socialooph is a free social media management site for managing your Twitter account.
12. Postling is “social media management for businesses”. It allows multiple people to manage multiple accounts. You can create accounts for your team or your clients and control their access, including which brands they can interact with.

La Mime After My Own Heart

...., .... .., .. ... ..... ...!

This has got to be the best Mime on the planet. La Mime has figured it out how to be a funny mime. He also keeps in the tradition of being a bit creepy with his since of hummer too. This one particularly poignant because of the new laws in BC regarding cell phones and driving.

Be warned you could be watching this guy for hours.

Great Tweeting Tips for 2010

Tweeting all the way to the Bank

Be more innovative with Twitter this year. Here are 10 useful tips.
Thanks to Andra Picincu for her great blog post.

1. Expand Networks
Using Twitter, you can join topic groups related to your business and career and gain valuable information from scanning others’ tweets. Your company will gain new customers and potential partners. Do a search for keywords related to your product on Twitter Search and then follow the users.

2. Build Credibility
If you hold free workshops, seminars or web meetings; let people know that it’s starting soon, how to participate and join in by tweeting about it.

3. Highlight Your Tweets
Twitter allows you to share the latest news and events related to your business in 140 characters. Set up a Twitter feed for the specific purpose of notifying customers when new products come in.

4. Look For Leads On Twitter
Twitter can be used to direct traffic to your websites. You can share information that is useful for prospective clients or employers to enhance your reputation.

5. Communicate With Employees
Twitter is a great collaboration tool, which can be successfully used to save time and money.

6. Deals & Promotions
Offer incentives to those who follow you on Twitter. You can give them free coupons, discounts, package deals and samples.

7. Customer Complaints and Service
By accepting customer complaints in the open, other consumers can see what kind of company you really are.

8. Interact With Your Competition
You can read the tweets of your competitors daily and stay in touch with them. Although this rarely happens in the real world, Twitter has changed it all.

9. Organize A Local Tweetup
Twitter can help you organize meetups. All you have to do is to send a message announcing the time and place of the meeting. It’s an informal and effective way of planning a meeting.

10. Brand Loyalty
With Twitter, you can always stay in touch with your followers. All these people are potential customers, so you must help them get used to your products and services. Participate actively to conversations and tweet constantly.

Social Marketing is still marketing: know your audience

Are you talking to me? ...are you taking to me?

Check out this great blog post that takes you through a wonderful example of how to approach your social marketing as part of your overall marketing strategy. The original blog post was written by Heidi Cool and can be found here.

Social Media Marketing is hip. It seems like everyone wants to get involved, call themselves an expert and use the magical powers of social media to triple sales, recruit students, etc. But social media isn't magic. Social media, like advertising, direct mail and telemarketing is but one of many tools in the marketer's toolbox. Like any tool it needs to be used in the proper context—in conjunction with other marketing strategies. As such social media—when used for marketing—still relies on basic marketing principles such as understanding your target audience, the features and benefits of your product or service, brand awareness and so forth.

Taking the time to narrow your audience to an easily defined niche makes marketing more cost effective. People think of social media as being a free alternative to traditional advertising or direct mail, but making successful connections requires time and labor. By targeting your audience you can focus that labor on connecting with the people who matter most to your goals.

Once you've found that audience you need to connect with them on their own terms if you want to achieve any level of success. Study the usage patterns of the social media services/platforms you intend to use. Find out how your audience uses these tools, then follow their lead. If you put as much effort into tailoring your communication methods to your market as you put into developing a product or service that suits their needs you'll have a far better chance of establishing connections than you would with a more generic approach.

It doesn't take magic, just time, research and work.