The answer you get by any SEO expert on keeping your readers faithful is -have great content! Although writing ‘great content’ is easier said than done, we can use a few simple tools to keep our readers on board with additional content to our own. In this post we will show the use of a few simple widgets that can enhance our blog’s content.
The first advantage of widgets is that they are easy to install and use. You don’t have to be a software designer in order to install a text widget on your site or blog. The second advantage is that most widgets can be customized in size, color and style to fit your blog in an elegant way. In this post I”ll recommend a few content-related widgets, that add relevant content to your readers in addition to your own original content:
Twitter Search Widget – There is no doubt about the impact tweets have on the web. over 50M users tweet daily billions of tweets, why not share the relevant ones for you with your readers? Instead of adding a twitter widget of your own tweets, add the search widget and cutomise it to your blog topic.This example is a search widget on ‘Ipad’
HootSuite seems like another social network web application. Well, it doesn’t have any killer features that you won’t find elsewhere, but it does have important features that make it a useful tool for networking
Twitter, one of fastest growing social media tools in 2009. One of the popular uses is promoting content through Twitter. In this post I’ll explore the possibilities of using Twitter with automatic and manual tools.
The first and not recommended option for Twitter users when promoting content is manually tweeting every time you post a blogpost, video, podcast. This is not recommended, especialy when most bloggers post more than once a week at their blog, FaceBook, LinkedIn,etc. and upload a video to YouTube every now and then. You would usually like to tweet on most of that. Luckly, today you can add your Twitter account to most of the existing platforms.
The subject says it all: we are active on more than one social platform. It can be difficult to manage all at the same time and connect them with your blog or website. Wibiya is a new and cool tool that does it in a very elegant way.
Operating and managing your blog’s social media activity can be a lot of work, and it might not be so effective if not done right. Many tools offer badges, widgets and toolbars for blogs and websites, I found the Wibiya toolbar very effective and well designed. We implemented it both on this blog and on Sortfix’s blog.
First of all the Wibiya toolbar has a simple step-by-step plugin installation wizard-
Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter. If you aren’t using one of these social media platforms, now is a good time to start, even if you aren’t big on online socializing. Using social media can help with keeping in touch with your customers and associates. This post explains how.
About a decade ago, a friend bragged about a new phone he just bought, that can hold up to 300 contacts in his address book. This sounds funny when thinking about it in 2009. He then showed me that except for name and phone number you can type in additional details such as city, birthday and mail. To demonstrate the abilities of the new gadget (I remind the readers this is 1999 we are talking about) he showed me a memo the phone just made about one of his customers. The customer’s daughter just turned 16, and my friend called to congratulate his customer for the sweet sixteen birthday party they are holding. We can learn 2 things from this ‘ancient’ story:
Know your customers – they will return a favor by doing business with you again.
In 2009 there is no need to input your phone manually, we have technology for that!
We wrote here about LinkedIn’s groups, and how to network through them. An associate of mine told me that it didn’t work for him. When I asked him why, I understood his that he came in too strong by putting a link immediately after joining. This was considered spamming, and he paid the price. Here’s a lesson for all of us.
We have discussed LinkedIn here before, and pointed out the groups as one of its advantages. In this post I will elaborate on the groups feature, which can be very useful for business and networking.
How do you join groups? First thing, decide what are your fields of interests are. What does your business do? Real-estate, law, consulting? In almost any subject you’ll find groups and subgroups with many professionals in them. People (like you) on each group are looking to hire, talk and write on the selected topic. In other words, people are looking to connect – to network.
During my work with business partners and clients I hear all kind of opinions and thoughts on how the web, social media, and online networking influence our business. I collected a few that are all a part of the World Wide Web mythology.
Setting up a website can cost as low as $150: there isn’t a bigger mistake for a business than this one, especially for small and medium businesses. In many cases, a business website is the ‘Front Cover’ of the business and your reputation. This is where most of the new clients and costumers first encounter your product. That ‘Front Cover’ of your business should reflect the quality of your product. You don’t have to spend a fortune on it, but have a professional do the job, plan wisely what your site should consist of, make sure the design is friendly, and that all the features work properly(links, payment, video’s, ads etc.). This still isn’t a big cost, and it is of great importance. Isn’t it worth paying a little more on your website?
Social media is a waste of time. I will start by how NOT to use social media (Sent by Shooky Galili) Read more…
There’s no official ethic code for any social network. But some things aren’t done. Befriending someone one Facebook just to send him a link to your blog is problematic, but it happens too often. Let’s identify the networking issue and suggest a better way to do it.
Facebook Networking Done Wrong
When a person you don’t know befriends me on Facebook, I politely ask the obvious question: Do I know you? When I have the patience, I also add a few more words, such as: We have mutual friends, but I don’t seem to recall you.
About a week ago I met and old colleague for a beer after work. While having our beer, I heard someone ordering a beer in Spanish two seats away from us on the bar. Being curious about the spanish, I introduced myself, and so did my colleague. The person we met turned out to be ‘Gale Talk‘, A Madrid based techno artist, who came to town for a concert. We had a fun talk about music and a few more rounds of beer.
Gale Talk
From here on, networking went on using MySpace, where you can find information and more importantly a few tracks. So I could listen to his music, which I really liked. Hope you will enjoy it too. I couldn’t make it to the concert, hope to see it next time in town.
