How to promote your website - SEO and SEM

I have been hearing more and more phrases using the words “tweet” or “twitter” lately. Here are just a few: twittering, tweeting, my tweets, twitterers, tweeted, twitters, and my favorite tweetness. Is tweetness even a word? I guess it is now.

Ok, so since my last post I have found many other great websites that make twitter even more addictive (i mean useful). I hope you find them just as useful as I have.

TweetStats
I like how this one displays very visual graphs of your twitter stats quickly. Here is my TweetStats

TweetStats also shows tag clouds for your tweets. Check out my personal Tweet Cloud.

Mr. Tweet
This site was recommended to me by @cnotes and it provides statistics about your personal twitter account. Here are my Twitteristics
Today it tells me that I tweet 2X as much as the Twitter founders(5.2/day), I am Conversational(29%), and a Good Connector(27%)!

One of the best features about Mr. Tweet is the recommendations. You can request recommendations or give recommendations of other people you follow. If you would like to recommend me please do.

You can also follow Mr. Tweet (@mrtweet) and if you do he says that after you follow him,
he will send you a DM with what he finds for you!

WeFollow
This site was suggested to me by @sharp3d
The first thing you want to do is add yourself to WeFollow. This will add you to 3 different popular categories on Twitter. I just found out about this site today, but @sharp3d said that it boosted his follower count immediately. I can’t wait to see how this works out for me. This site also has a huge directory that is easy to search through and find new people to follow yourself. I found many people I was interested in following.

Let’s not forget my newest favorite twitter app for the iPhone called TwitterFon
It makes it so easy to reply, re-tweet, and direct message people you follow.

I have been reading a great book written by Joel Comm about the Power of Twitter. In this book Joel teaches how to properly use twitter as a great marketing and networking tool. He really opened my eyes to the strengths of how twitter can be used.

Here is a link on Amazon to buy his book called Twitter Power
You can also get the audiobook version of Twitter Power at Audible.com

Here is Joel’s twitter page.

Here are a few Cool sites that are very useful for Twitter users (twitterers)

Twitter Counter - gives you stats about your twitter account
Here is my stats page for Twitter @SocialShark
Notice how much it has gone up around the beginning of March, this was after reading TwitterPower.

Twellow - search for people on twitter

TweetLater - This site lets you schedule tweets, send automated thank you notes to new followers, automatically follow new followers, and much more.

Twist - see trends in twitter

TweetBeep - It’s like Google alerts for twitter

TwitThis - add this button to your website or blog so people can tweet about your site

TwitPwr - Shorten URLs for tweets

Twitter background site:

TwitterImage

These are my top apps for twitter:

TweetDeck - Mac app
Twittelator Pro - iPhone app

So far the three “one on one” consultations I had today at the Internet Retailer Miami 09 conference were wonderful. Here is a run down of the great consultants I met with:

Danielle Savin with Fit for Commerce - focused on the website M.J. Soffe
Scott Kincaid with Usability Sciences - focused on Delta Apparel
Brian W. Wu with Inside Out Design - focused on Junk Food Clothing

After reading more on the Fit for Commerce website I have noticed that Brian Wu with Inside Out Design also works for/with Fit for Commerce, you can read more about him here.

I really enjoyed talking with each of these individuals and found them to be quite helpful. I hope that the rest of this conference is just enlightening as today has been!

Well, 2008 has come and gone. There have been so many changes in technology and the web in 2008; iPhone 3G, Facebook redesign, Twitter buzz, Google chrome, FireFox 3, AppStore, the new MacBook, and now widescreen YouTube.

So what do we expect for 2009? Rumored iPhone Nano, Windows 7, and the new Mac OS called Snow Leopard. Do these new technologies simplify our lives or just make them more complex? I guess we will have to wait and see.

Now I am going to check the App Store to find out what new applications I can download onto my iPhone 3G.

Happy New Year!!

Website: Let me Google that for you
The other day a friend of mine sent me this link to check out. It’s great for when you have someone ask you something that you KNOW they could have looked it up on Google themselves to find the answer but they were just too lazy. Anyway it provides a special link that you can send back to them that shows them how to use Google to look up the same silly question.
Here is an example:

I searched “what is twitter”

It will provide you with a Tiny URL button that will auto create the tiny url link for you then you just copy/paste this: http://tinyurl.com/6e5f6t (click this link to see!)

That’s it, just send that link to your lazy friend. After you do this about 3 or 4 times i would hope that they would figure it out. but you never know…….

I read a very interesting article today on Mashable.com about common mistakes social media markers make. Here is a rundown of the 12 mistakes:

• Respond to all negative comments
• Participate in flame wars to increase traffic
• Hire a voice talent for $2,000 to read a podcast for you
• Send a specially selected mass mailing to your friends
• Assume that social media doesn’t exist until you arrive
• Post a comment on your own Facebook profile wall
• Don’t engage with people who only want to push their own initiative
• Over-architect a site with features and content without talking to your customers
• Be overly careful about everything you say online
• Don’t come to your own defense when people bad mouth you online
• Accept friend requests from people you barely know
• Stalk women on Facebook

Read the entire story here: social-media-guru-mistakes

Here are a few more mistakes that I can think of:

• Creating fake profiles on MySpace, Facebook, or other popular Social sites. (be transparent with your consumers)
• Do not make duplicate profiles | On a single Social site or even duplicate information on different social sites (be original)
• Keyword spamming your profile! - Please don’t do this.
• Social Networking/Bookmarking only for the reason to link back to your own site (on sites like Digg, Twitter, etc. )

Social Networking is a great way to network with your consumers and spread your brand. Just make sure the tactics you use are not “black hat“.

I added some new widgets to my wordpress blog tonight, so let me tell you more about them.

AIM WIMZI Widget
The first one was the AIM widget that you will find in the right side bar. This is a slick way to add a “chat service” to your blog or website. Very slick. Too bad it only works through AIM, and it seems to be that I MUST be logged in. I was hoping it would work with my mobile AIM and just send the message to my phone via SMS. I will keep testing it. Here is a link to read more about this AIM WIMZI widget. Oh, and do make sure you at least have an AIM account before trying to set this up.

Retaggr - The virtual business card
This next widget is very slick. It lets you link just about every type of social networking, blogging and communication site, to your web-based business card. It also securely provides the ablility for you to post your email address and other contact information. (it does not show your email address, to keep you from getting spammed, this is a great feature)
Well, I can give your more information about this widget but Chris Thomson provided a very in depth article here you can read: Retaggr: Your Business Card for the Web

Here is Retaggr’s site.

I am still trying to find a way to attach this thing to my signature for outgoing emails, if anyone figures this out let me know.

Today ends the Internet Retailer conference in Chicago, IL and I had a truly amazing time here. Not only did I have the opportunity to learn from the many great speakers but also networking with the vendors and other attendees like myself.

Photos taken with my iPhone
Chicago is an amazing city and the weather has been so nice this week. I will post a few photos that I took during the conference and around the Chicago area.

This first one is from my room at night, I was on the 31st floor of Hyatt McCormick Place.

This one I took the second day of the conference

And this is just a random photo taken while walking over a bridge somewhere near the Hyatt Chicago

Contacts and Networking
One of the best parts about this conference is the ability to network with other people who attend. I want to mention a few who I had a great time talking to and connecting with:
Kathleen with Zippo
Mark from ML Consulting
Ryan with PlubmerSurplus
Robert with Digital Transactions
Susan from Always for me, Inc
Robert from ebay
Angela from SIGMA

Some Great Vendors
I am so glad I finally was able to meet in person a few of the individuals I have only spoken to over the phone. Some are vendors I am already doing business with and a few are ones I hope to be working with in the future. Here are just a few of them:
Brad with Bronto Software
Shannon with McAfee
Jonathan and John(Mr. Powers) with Power Reviews
Brigitte and Brian with position tech
Michael with Rich FX
Chris and Ed with SLI Systems
Jeary with LivePerson
Fred with MyBuys
Kriss with RedSun Systems
Dave, Sundeep, Brad and Todd from Rich Relevance
Kathy from Fast Transact
Amber from BazaarVoice
Randi from mercado

Magicians?
Oh, I almost forgot to mention the cheezy magician at the Collabera booth! Great job getting attention, but does anyone remember what the heck Collabera does? I still have no idea.

I don’t think this actually helps you with website promotion, but I did find this information very useful so I thought I would pass it on.

You can add “+” and “.” in the first part of your Gmail address and it will still work. Here are a few examples:

original Gmail address: johndoe@gmail.com
Modified: johndoe+emaillist@gmail.com or john.doe@gmail.com or j.o.h.n.d.o.e@gmail.com

The periods can be placed anywhere in the first part of your email. The “+” sign must follow after the first part of your email address. I think it would become very useful when signing up for email lists and such. It will save you lots of time when you are making customized rules in your Outlook or Mail application. For the full article go here to read more about this.

I added a Digg widget to the left sidebar of my blog today. It displays all of my most recent Diggs and here is were I went to get the widget. They have a simple customization form and it even shows you what the widget will look like. As seen in the screenshot below:

Here is a blurb from the Digg page: You can easily display the latest Digg news on your site by adding a Digg Widget, now with more choices for what to show and how it’s displayed. When news is updated on Digg, it will automatically be displayed on your site, in the format that you choose.

Once I finished customizing how I wanted the widget to look I had to change the width of the widget to 175 pixels to fit in my left sidebar. The size will depend on your wordpress theme.

Then you just paste the code into your sidebar widgets in the presentation area of your wordpress admin. Good luck!

Here is my Digg page.